Washington's General (43 page)

Greene's confidence, however, proved to be a shallow trench when rumors began exploding in the American camp. There were reports–highly exaggerated, but Greene didn't know it–that thousands of British reinforcements were on their way to South Carolina from New York and Ireland. Greene, suddenly frantic, demanded reinforcements from Rochambeau's troops in Virginia, but the French were happy to remain in Yorktown. Desperate and convinced that the British in Charleston would soon outnumber him, Greene put forward a radical idea, one that reminded local civil leaders that the commander of the Southern Department was very much a nonsoutherner. He proposed the enlistment of blacks.

In a letter to South Carolina governor John Rutledge, Greene wrote:

The natural strength of this country in point of numbers, appears to me to consist much more in the blacks, than the whites. Could they be incorporated, and employed in [its] defence, it would afford you double security. That they would make good Soldiers I have not the least doubt. . . . Should this measure be adopted, It may prove a great means of preventing the Enemy from further attempts upon this country, when they find they have not only the whites, but the blacks also to contend with.

Blacks already had proved themselves in the Continental service, as Greene saw firsthand during the Battle of Rhode Island. Black troops also had played a prominent role at the Battle of Monmouth.

Political leaders in the South, ever fearful of putting a weapon in the hands of a black man, adamantly opposed Greene's proposal, even though, as he pointed out, blacks constituted a vast pool of
potential soldiers. Previous efforts to put more southern blacks in uniform had failed. In 1779, for example, Congress had authorized the recruitment of three thousand southern black slaves, with owners to be compensated a thousand dollars per slave for their loss. But Georgia and South Carolina vetoed the plan. To add to the injustice, state legislators voted to offer slaves as bounties to attract more white recruits.

Greene's observation about the strength in numbers of blacks in South Carolina was undeniable. Of a population of one hundred and eighty thousand in 1789, South Carolina was home to ninety-seven thousand blacks. In Georgia, nearly twenty-one thousand of the state's fifty-six thousand people were black. Blacks were a huge, untapped resource for an army of just a couple of thousand troops.

Greene proposed that slaves willing to serve in the army should be granted their freedom, “and be cloathed, and treated in all respects as other soldiers.” As with his views on the treatment of Tories, his plan for black recruitment was based on more than altruism and a sense of justice. There were practical considerations as well. In a letter to Lighthorse Harry Lee, Greene observed that blacks had provided the British with “all their best intelligence.” If they were welcomed into the American army, they might be less inclined to do the king's bidding. Blacks, Greene wrote, “will be either more or less useful to [the British] as they are treated well or ill by us.”

A Continental officer and member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, John Laurens, put Greene's recommendation to the test. He introduced a bill that would have authorized the state to recruit twenty-five hundred slaves for South Carolina's regiments. As the debate got under way, Greene reiterated his strong support in another letter to Rutledge. The British, Greene told the governor, were still a threat to South Carolina's independence. If enemy reinforcements arrived and reasserted control in South Carolina, Greene said, it was still possible that Britain might claim the state in any peace negotiations. The northern states, he warned, would be justified “in giving you up” if South Carolina continued to bar its immense black population from military
service. He conceded that his “remedy may be disagreeable,” but he insisted it was the best means to ensure continued American control over the state.

Although Rutledge was a friend and an ally of Greene's, he was “alarmed” by the proposal, and, for a moment, he feared that the arguments of Greene and Laurens might prevail. In the middle of what Rutledge called a “hard Battle on the Subject of arming the Blacks,” the governor heard that support for the measure was building. He was greatly relieved, however, to see that “people in general returned to their Senses” and the plan was defeated. One of the measure's opponents, a legislator named Andrew Burke, spoke for many when he saw a larger agenda behind Greene's proposal. “The northern people, I have observed, regard the condition in which we hold our slaves in a different light from us,” he wrote. “I am much deceived indeed, if they do not secretly wish for a general Emancipation, if the present struggle was over.” He believed that Rhode Island's Greene was one of those secret northern abolitionists. In due course, regrettably, Greene would demonstrate that he clearly was not.

Before the slave-enlistment bill was voted down, South Carolina's legislators and Governor Rutledge passed a motion awarding Greene a plantation–one of the many confiscated from Tory landowners–as a sign of the state's eternal gratitude. This was precisely the kind of premature exhibition Washington warned against, because, after all, the British still were in Charleston and there was no end to hostilities. What's more, Greene was wary about mass confiscations of Tory lands, believing such seizures could only harm efforts to rebuild trust between Tory and patriot once the war was over. He soon supported plans to return confiscated property to Tories who agreed to provide information about British troop movements, arguing that this sort of gesture could help bring together the South's bitterly divided factions. Politicians and militia leaders, however, were not in a particularly forgiving mood, and they opposed Greene's conciliatory gestures.

Despite his personal misgivings, Greene eagerly accepted the confiscated estate that South Carolina offered him. Until now, there was little
indication that Greene seriously contemplated remaining in the South after the war was over. His family and his business interests were based in the North, and, as he learned during his argument about slave enlistment, he remained very much a northerner in the eyes of his southern brethren.

Still, the offer of a free plantation came at an opportune time. Greene was taking stock of his financial future and was rapidly coming to the conclusion that his business prospects in the North were dim. He wrote to his cousin, Griffin, about his new interest in the region he had liberated: “This Country affords a fine field for making a fortune.” After serving his country so well for so long, Nathanael Greene was determined to make sure that the coming of peace would not diminish his hard-won stature as one of the Revolution's heroes. And that, he knew, would require not medals but money.

On March 22, 1782, the marquis of Rockingham succeeded Lord North as British prime minister, with the understanding that his new government would recognize American independence and so bring the long, bitter war to an end. Three days later, Caty Greene arrived in South Carolina, at last reunited with her husband after their longest separation of the war. She had intended to bring their oldest child, George Washington Greene, with her to camp, but her friends in Philadelphia persuauded her to leave the boy in the capital.

The mild southern winter was over when she arrived, and the roads through the Carolinas were filled with the promise of a welcome springtime. The southern war settled into a comfortable stalemate, with the British safe behind their defenses in Charleston and Savannah and Greene in control of just about everything else. Those thousands of British reinforcements never materialized, save for a few hundred. Yet another new British commander, Alexander Leslie, was reluctant to move out of Charleston to challenge Greene, and Greene was not strong enough to assail the city. So the two sides chose to wait upon events.

Without a campaign to plan, Greene was immersed in administrative
and political affairs, tedious work that no doubt reminded him of all the reasons he hated being quartermaster general. But with Caty's arrival, Greene's mood lightened, although only slightly. To Henry Knox, he wrote: “After almost two years absence you may well suppose I was made very happy on the arrival of Mrs. Greene. She is in better health and spirits than I could have expected after such a disagreeable journey. She is kinder to me than I am just to her.” Greene was still worried about the British threat in Charleston. His troops, bored with inactivity, were vanishing into the Carolina wilderness. He believed the British, with their superior numbers, were planning a new offensive in South Carolina. And, to further spoil his mood, those unappreciative meddlers in Congress were at it again, refusing to promote his friend Knox to major general. Greene blamed this injustice on “cursed intrigue.”

He had good reason to dwell on his fears and anxieties, even with Caty at his side, and even with peace and independence ever so near. Troops from Pennsylvania nearly staged a mutiny in late April over their lack of food and clothing. When he discovered the plot, Greene ordered the ringleader to the gallows. “I act with decision,” he told another officer. Although he understood that the soldiers were miserable, Greene would not tolerate rebellion in the ranks. “They had better be quiet,” he said of the troops. They were, but Greene admitted that their complaints were entirely justified.

With peace in sight, there were more laurels for General Nathanael Greene, savior of the American South. Following South Carolina's precedent, both Georgia and North Carolina presented Greene with gifts of land, which Greene eagerly accepted. The North Carolina estate was huge–twenty-five thousand acres. But it was the more modest tract in Georgia, a two-thousand-acre plantation near Savannah called Mulberry Grove, that would become Greene's new home when the war ended. These gifts helped persuade the Rhode Islander that his future lay in the South, where he was regarded as a hero and a liberator. It is a tribute to Greene that these gifts did not muffle his voice when he disagreed with the states' politicians on issues like black enlistment and, later, taxation.
And it is equally notable that Greene's criticisms did not lead politicians to withdraw their gifts in a fit of pique.

The summer of 1782, the last summer of the war, was oppressive and deadly. Malaria killed hundreds of soldiers and sickened hundreds more. On August 26, Greene issued a general order that told of the new miseries and deprivations in camp, even on the eve of victory: “The general has observed that the custom of beating the
dead march
at Soldiers funerals has a tendency to depress the Spirits of the Sick in camp & he is therefore pleased to order that in future this practice be discontinued.”

With several of his friends and top aides dreadfully ill, Greene asked the British commander, Leslie, to allow a group of sick Americans to take refuge on British-controlled Kiawah Island, off Charleston. Leslie, who had earlier asked Greene for a formal truce and was refused–Greene said only Congress had the power to authorize a truce–agreed. While it was a humane decision, it also simply acknowledged the obvious: the war was nearing its conclusion. The British had abruptly evacuated Savannah in July, leaving only Charleston in their control. There was no point in denying Greene's men a chance to rest and recuperate.

And so the convalescents, including Greene's aide Lewis Morris and Colonel William Washington, spent the last few weeks of summer on the sea-swept island and its beaches, joined by Caty Greene. Although she was not as desperately sick as many others in camp, her husband was concerned about “some disagreeable elements hovering over her” and so ordered her away from the fetid atmosphere of the Carolina lowlands.

She brought along a backgammon table, cards, and other diversions that helped re-create the atmosphere of a winter camp–without the cold and snow. Lewis Morris reported from the island: “We are very much indebted to Mrs. Greene for her vivacity and good humor. She keeps us all in good spirits. . . . We laugh, sing and play backgammon. . . . Your lady has got back her Block Island complexion and looks as she used to.”

The patients were not, however, without complaint. One, an aide to Greene named Captain Nathaniel Pendleton, noted with approval that Colonel Washington's new bride, Jane Reily Elliott, often rolled fine cigars for her husband, who smoked them as fast as she could make them. But, he wrote, “I wish they would employ themselves more in this way, and less in kissing.”

When Caty returned to camp on the mainland, the army's health crisis had passed, and so, too, had her husband's anxieties. In late September, Greene wrote that his “troubles in this quarter appear to be drawing to a close.” Indeed they were.

On December 14, General Leslie's troops in Charleston boarded transport ships and sailed out of the last British stronghold in the South. Several hours later, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, Major General Nathanael Greene marched into town to claim the city on behalf of the people of the United States.

The southern campaign of Nathanael Greene was over, and he and his ill-clad, poorly supplied troops were victorious. Greene had been sent to the South at an hour of extreme peril, with orders to stop the enemy's finest general. He lost or tied every major battle he fought, but in doing so he fulfilled his mission and so preserved the Revolution during one of its darkest hours. He did so with scant resources, no personal knowledge of the terrain, and no small amount of local hostility.

But he was not without his own devices. He was relentless, he was organized, and he was disciplined. He understood that the war was not about territory but about ideas and perception. As long as he could field an army, he could and would not be beaten. He yearned for a famous victory, one that might be forever linked to his name, like Caesar and Gaul, or even Gates and Saratoga. When, to his frustration, the fortunes of war denied him the laurels he sought, he claimed them anyway, at Eutaw Springs.