01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, June 25, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

The little boat that sailed down the Sakonnet River toward Newport's Brenton Point bore quite a cast of characters: at the helm stood big John Brown, all 6 feet and 250 pounds of him; for passengers he carried the young Marquis de Lafayette and Maj.-Gen. Nathanael Greene, recently turned 36.

The boat was bound for the flagship of the French Navy's fleet, the Languedoc, which had dropped anchor off Brenton Point. The flagship was obviously in bad shape. Its bowsprit and all three of its masts had snapped as it rode out an August storm at sea, and the masts were now jury-rigged. The ship's shiny black hull was pocked with holes and splintered lumber from where it had been raked by balls from the British fleet.

After being piped aboard the Languedoc with a boatswain's whistle, Greene and Lafayette took their seats in the admiral's quarters for a council of war.

The two men described for the French officers the scene ashore: more than 10,000 American troops now camped near Newport, where some 6,000 British were entrenched behind a line of forts. Greene and Lafayette argued for continued French assistance in pressing an attack on the city. But a majority of the French naval officers voted against the attack. After weathering two days of near hurricane conditions at sea, their fleet was too fragile to fight. Besides, an entirely new British fleet fresh from England had been sighted off Long Island, and if that fleet linked with Admiral Howe's ships, the French would be outgunned and trapped in Narragansett Bay. They unanimously voted to withdraw their fleet from Rhode Island and bring it round to Boston for repairs.

The admiral, Count d'Estaing, gave Greene a chance to appeal. Greene spent the rest of that day, Aug. 21, 1778, aboard ship drafting an argument for why the fleet should stay and do battle. While Brown hovered around him complaining that the "reputations" of the officers at Rhode Island -- including Greene's -- "depended on the success of the expedition," Greene wrote:

The expedition against Rhode [i.e., Aquidneck] Island was undertaken upon no other consideration than that of the French fleet and troops acting in concert with the American Troops.

There has been great expence and much distress brought upon the country in calling the Militia together at this busy season of the year [harvest time]. A force nearly sufficient for the reduction of the place is now collected and all the necessary apparatus provided for subdueing the Garrison. If the expedition fails for want of the countenance of the Fleet and Troops on board, It will produce a great discontent and murmuring among the people.

The Garrison is important, the reduction almost certain. The influence it would have upon the British Politicks will be very considerable. I think it highly worth runing some risque to accomplish.

Greene wrote a couple of pages in this vein, then gave the petition to D'Estaing. The American emissary to the French, Henry Laurens, found no problem with the tone Greene took, calling the protest a "sensible and spirited remonstrance."

Greene never did get to eat the dinner of French cuisine that he'd been anticipating as he boarded the admiral's flagship. The swing of the ship at anchor as he bent over his petition, quill in hand, made Greene so sick that by dinner he could not even eat.

That night a seasick Greene, Lafayette and Brown sailed back to the Army camp outside Newport. Gen. John Sullivan was still livid about D'Estaing's plan to sail away, leaving him with 10,000 men exposed on an island.

Sullivan called a council of his highest-ranking officers for the next morning, Aug. 22, 1778; Greene was there, Lafayette was too. To Lafayette's horror the group drafted a strongly written protest to send to D'Estaing. They outlined nine reasons why the fleet should not leave, including this one: "5thly Because the honor of the french nation must be injur'd by their fleet abandoning their allies upon an Island in the midst of an Expedition agreed to by the Count himself. This must make Such unfavorable impression on the minds of Americans at Large and create Such Jalousies between them and their hitherto Esteemed Allies as will in great measure frustrate the good intentions of his Most Christian Majesty [Louis XVI] and the american Congress who have mutually Endeavoured to promote the greater harmony and Confidence between the french people and the Americans."

In closing, the American officers called D'Estaing's plan "derogratory [derogatory] to the honor of France" and "highly injurious to the alliance between the two nations."

Nathanael Greene signed the petition, along with five others including Generals John Sullivan and John Hancock.

Lafayette refused to sign. He found the petition insulting to the honor of France. Reportedly he clapped his hand on the hilt of his sword and swore that France was dearer to him than America could ever be. He was furious.

Before the petition could even be sent that day the French ships lifted their anchors and began to fall away for Boston. I have only time to tell you that the Devil has got into the fleet, Greene wrote that day. They are about to desert us, and go round to Boston. . . . I am afraid our expedition is now at an end. . . . Never was I in a more perplexing situation. To evacuate the Island is death, to stay may be ruin.

Sullivan sent a fast ship after the fleet to deliver the protest, but D'Estaing did not receive it till it came to him by land in Boston.

As the French ships began slipping away, ancient prejudices between the Americans -- who until recently were Englishmen fighting France in the Seven Years War -- and the French began churning, threatening the new alliance. Col. Israel Angell of the 2nd Rhode Island Regiment wrote in his diary, "the French left us in a most Rascally manner and what will be the Event God only knows."

One civilian observer of the events at Newport noted: "The Monsieurs have made a most miserable figure and are curs'd by all ranks of people."

In his orders of Aug. 24, Sullivan inflamed passions by writing, "The General cannot help lamenting the sudden & unexpected departure of the French Fleet he yet hopes the Event will prove America able to procure that by our own Arms which his Allies refuse to assist in Obtaining."

This statement -- "refuse to assist" -- so incensed Lafayette that he nearly quit the American Army and returned to France. Sullivan tried to smooth over the affair in his orders of the 26th ("we ought not too suddenly Censure" or "forget the aid and Protection which had been offered by the French" thus far, he wrote, which mollified Lafayette.)

Without support from the French fleet's heavy guns, many militiamen wanted no part of the British army's bullets and bayonets. They began drifting away in droves. The day after the fleet left Rhode Island, Greene counted 8,174 men, some 2,000 less than peak strength. Every day saw more men leaving, including John Hancock who said he was riding back to Boston to lobby Count D'Estaing to return his fleet to Rhode Island. Lafayette wrote the Count that Hancock's return to Boston might have been driven by "little eagerness for British bullets."

By the 28th of August, Greene wrote to Washington: Our strength is now reduced from 9,000 to between 4 and 5,000. The disappointment is vexatious and truly mortifying.

The time had come to end the siege of Newport, but how? Sullivan had to ferry nearly 5,000 men across the Sakonnet River with an enemy force of 6,000 at his back. He and Greene were in a precarious position.

Rebels retreat

Dawn brought an astonishing sight to the eyes of Frederick Mackenzie, an officer with the Welsh fusiliers. From his fort near the summit of Tonomy Hill, he could see that the American Army's tents had disappeared from the field below.

"[H]ardly a man was to be seen in their Batteries or Trenches," Mackenzie wrote in his diary. "I rode as fast as possible to General Pigot's headquarters in Newport and informed him of it, and returned to the Camp with orders for all the troops to get under arms with the utmost expedition."

The British army was going to give chase to the retreating rebels.

Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Lossberg took a body of Hessians up the West Road; Gen. Richard Prescott, who was once captured from Newport by a band of Rhode Islanders, took troops to secure the high ground of Honeyman's Hill; and the pudgy Gen. Francis Smith led his troops up the east road. For Smith, this march must have been awfully reminiscent of his march to Concord on April 19, 1776.

The shooting began near 7 a.m. Light troops under American Col. Henry Beekman Livingston ambushed Smith's troops at the windmill near Quaker Hill, firing at them from behind stone walls as the militia had at Concord. Many of the British who fell in the Battle of Rhode Island died in this clash.

From his quarters in a Quaker's house, Greene could hear the muskets booming while he ate his breakfast. A woman servant, concerned for his safety, said, "The British will have you general."

"I will have my breakfast first," he said, and kept on eating.

On both sides of the island the British drove American advance troops back into their lines in Portsmouth.

Von Lossberg's Hessian troops attacked the American right flank, where the Black or First Rhode Island Regiment was posted. This was a key posting, for if the British could overrun the flank, they could press in on the sides and rear of the American line, cutting off their retreat.

Twice the Hessians charged with their bayonets; twice, in deadly hand-to-hand fighting, the First Rhode Island Regiment drove them back. While the Hessians were pressing the attack three British frigates sailed up the East Passage and began blasting the Black Regiment with 24-pound cannonballs. Greene ordered his artillery to drag two cannon to the beach to fire back. With those cannon spitting 18-pound balls and two cannon in the redoubt on Bristol Point firing 24-pounders, the frigates slipped away to avoid the pounding.

After a lull in the fighting, von Lossberg took on reinforcements and again tried to turn the Black Regiment's flank. This time the Hessians succeeded in driving them back. Greene, seeing the threat to his right, ordered the Second Rhode Island Regiment under Col. Israel Angell and another Continental Regiment into the fray; he also brought up a group of Massachusetts Militia and the light troops that had ambushed Gen. Smith that morning. In all Greene brought 1,500 troops to bear on the Hessians.

We soon put the Enemy to rout, he crowed to Washington in an after-action report, and I had the pleasure to see them run in worse disorder than they did at the Battle of Monmouth.

The comparison to Monmouth was apt. Like Monmouth the Battle of Rhode Island was pretty much a draw: American losses were 30 dead, 137 wounded; British losses were 38 dead, 210 wounded. As at Monmouth, both sides could claim victory: for the second time since training at Valley Forge the Americans had stood toe-to-toe with attacking British regulars and had driven them back. Yet again the British kept their objective, in this case maintaining a stranglehold on Rhode Island.

To his wife Greene wrote from his saddle on the day of the battle: We have had a considerable action today; we have beat the enemy off the ground where they advanced upon us; the killed and wounded on both sides unknown, but they were considerable for the number of troops we had engaged.

I write upon my horse and have not slept any for two nights, therefore you'll excuse my writing not very legible as I write upon the field.

As exhausted as he was Greene could not sleep that night either, as his asthma flared again, keeping him up.

A narrow escape

From his perch on Quaker Hill, Mackenzie kept a close eye on the Americans. The day after the Battle of Rhode Island he observed wagonloads of baggage rolling from the American lines on Windmill Hill to Howland's Ferry; a large herd of cattle was driven to the Sakonnet River's edge and ferried over, all signs that the Americans planned to retreat to Tiverton.

The next day, Aug, 31, 1778, Mackenzie wrote in his diary: "Everything quiet last night 'till about 10 o'Clock" when someone reported noises coming from the river. From a field "we could plainly hear the noise of their Oars, much talking, and many boats in motion. About 12 oClock [midnight] many lights appeared on the Howland's ferry shore" in Tiverton. "At day break it was no longer doubted that the Rebels were gone; not a tent was to be seen on Windmill Hill, and as soon as the Sun rose we were perfectly convinced that the whole of their troops had retreated."

All day on Sept. 1 he could see the American troops dispersing -- "some across Mount hope bay, to Kickemuit River; others to Taunton River. Several marched up the Boston road." A whole fleet of flat-bottomed troop ships came out from Bristol and crossed the Bay toward Warwick Neck.

At 2 p.m. a British fleet of near 70 sail, mostly troop transport ships, dropped anchor off Newport. The ships carried 4,000 reinforcements

Nathanael Greene noted: We got off the island in very good season.

From Tiverton, Greene made his way to the glum homestead at the Coventry Iron Works that he now wearily shared with brother Jacob and his family.

Caty had tried living in the army camp Tiverton, but hugely pregnant and not feeling well she had gone home to Coventry in mid-August.

I am sorry you wear such melancholy countenances at Coventry, but it is natural to the family, Greene had written Caty from the camp at Newport. Jacob is always looking over the black page of human life; never content with fortunes decrees.

Neither her health nor his was very good as Greene came riding into Coventry in early September 1778. Her pregnancy became a difficult one, and his asthma bothered him throughout the campaign on Rhode Island.

While Greene recuperated at Coventry he found time for reflection in a letter to his friend John Murray, a former Newport preacher and the founder of the Universalist Church in America. The two men had met in the pre-war years at a dinner at James Varnum's house on Pierce Street in East Greenwich, an impressive manse that still stands. Varnum, who'd been expelled from Harvard then became a member of what's now Brown University's first graduating class, was then a lawyer representing Greene in a civil suit stemming from the Gaspee affair.

In the tradition of Roger Williams all three men were pious nonconformists. At that dinner Murray had scandalized Ezra Stiles, now president of Yale University, by denying Eternal Punishment.

Now in September 1778, Greene wrote to Murray: The Monmouth battle, and the action upon Rhode-Island, were no small triumphs to us who so often had been necessitated to turn our backs. To behold our fellows chasing the British off the field of battle, afforded a pleasure which you can better conceive than I can describe. If, my dear Murray, I had been an unbeliever, I have had sufficient evidence of the intervention of Divine Providence to reclaim me from infidelity: my heart, I do assure you, overflows with gratitude to Him whose arm is mightier than all the Princes of the earth.

While he waited for his wife to give birth, Greene was still as busy as a bee in a tar barrel. Military messengers frequently galloped up to his house with letters from generals such as Sullivan and Washington.

In early September, Washington was still fretting about the rift that had developed between the Americans and their French allies. He sent a letter to Greene at Coventry saying: "I depend much upon your temper and influence to conciliate that animosity, which I plainly perceive subsists" between officers of the two nations.

With his wife days away from giving birth at home, Greene felt compelled to ride the 80-or-so miles to Boston, to tend to some quartermaster business and to soothe the still-bruised egos of the French. While there, he spent a lot of time in the elegant Beacon Hill house of John Hancock, entertaining the officers:

The Admiral [d'Estaing] and all the French officers are now upon exceeding good footing with the Gentlemen of the town, he wrote to Washington from Boston on Sept. 16. General Hancock takes unwearied pains to promote a good understanding with the French officers. His House is full from morning till Night. . . .

I wish to know your Excellencys pleasure about my returning to Camp [at White Plains, N.Y.]. I expect Mrs. Greene will put to bed every day. She is very desirous of my stay until that event, and as she has her Heart so much upon it I wish to gratify her for fear of some disagreeable consequence as women sometimes under such circumstances receive great injury by being disappointed.

Washington responded: "The particular situation of Mrs Greene is a sufficient apology for your remaining at home for the present. You may at the same time be making any necessary arrangements in your [quartermasters] department, especially those for forwarding the Cloathing from Boston to Springfield." Greene took care of that business, sending on more than 10,000 blankets, 7,669 pairs of shoes, 8,000 uniforms and 2,000 shirts. Another 70 barrels of French clothing was en route to Springfield, a bustling crossroads where stores could be ferried down the Connecticut River.

On the 23rd, as Greene prepared to ride from Boston, he took time to write Count D'Estaing one last mollifying letter. Besides censuring the count in his orders book and drafting an inflammatory appeal to him, Sullivan had also sent him an insulting letter -- which never has surfaced.

A gale wind beat at the windowpanes of Hancock's house on Beacon Hill while Greene wrote to the Count:

I am Exceedingly hurt at the contents and Stile of General Sullivan's letter and the more I think of it the more I am astonished. . . . I beg your Excellency not to form an opinion of the other American general officers from the complexion of that Letter. I can assure you with great sincerity and truth, that they entertain the highest respect and veneration for your person and character, and give me leave to add that no one feels a warmer regard and greater respect than my self. . . ."

D'Estaing was grateful for this letter, and though it would be a stretch to say that Greene saved the French alliance through his diplomacy, he certainly helped heal the rift.

After sealing this letter, Greene mounted his horse and set off in the wind-driven rain down the Post Road for home. As Greene rode through the storm a figure on horseback came toward him, seeking him out. It was a servant sent to tell him Caty Greene was gravely ill.

She had been in travail two Days, Greene later wrote to John Hancock. I got Home about nine at night the evening of the Day I left your House. I found Mrs. Greene in bed very ill. The Storm was very severe and I as Wet as if I had been towed the whole distance in Water.

At some time that day, either before or after Greene burst in with wet clothes, Caty Greene delivered their third child, Cornelia Lott Greene, who years later would disappoint her mother by trying to steal some of her slaves.

gcarbone@projo.com / (401) 277-7434

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources consulted for today's installment:

Dearden, Paul F. The Rhode Island Campaign of 1778. The Rhode Island Bicentennial Foundation: Providence, 1980.

Diary of Frederick Mackenzie, Vol. 2. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1930.

Greene, George Washington. The Life of Nathanael Greene, Vol. 2. New York: Hurd and Houghton. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1871.

"Order Book of the American Forces in the Battle of Rhode Island." Original manuscript, Redwood Library: Newport, 1778.

Showman, Richard K., ed. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, Vol. II. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1980.

A continuing series.