01:48 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 28, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

From his cramped winter quarters in Jacob Arnold's tavern, Nathanael Greene wrote to a friend:

I am happy to inform you that Mrs. Greene is in bed with a fine boy not unlike George [Washington Greene, his first son]. She was put to bed under as promising circumstances as heart could wish, but her delicate constitution, and her former ill treatment under the hands of the old women that attended her [in Rhode Island], I fear will not permit a very speedy recovery. She has been very ill, but is on the mending hand. This is the ninth day since she was to put to bed.

The boy, Nathanael Ray Greene, was born on Jan. 31, 1780.

Greene's friend, Col. Charles Petit, heard news of the birth announced at an "assembly" or dance, in Philadelphia. Officers in the winter camp at Morristown also held a couple of assemblies of their own:

I have many things to say to you, but was at the Assembly last Night and feel not a little fatigued and clouded, Greene wrote in early March to his friend, Col. Jeremiah Wadsworth. We are merry at Camp but have little to eat either for man [or] beast. Our political concerns grow worse and worse. We are now so poor in Camp, that I have not money to pay the expences of the Express riders to carry the public dispatches. Our provisions is out, and forage gone. The Roads are impassable and no communication to be had across the Delaware. Thus we are shet up in Morris[town] without the bare hope of deliverance.

The next day the camp's wagon drivers quit because there was no cash to pay them and no forage for their horses.

Unbecoming temper

Hard times notwithstanding, there were opportunities for fun in camp. Caty Greene liked to tell this story, though the telling of it brought her trouble:

After the officers and their wives ate dinner at Col. Clement Biddle's quarters in Morristown, the women retired from the table to another room while the men drank. George Olney, a Rhode Islander serving as a civilian auditor for the quartermasters department, bluntly refused to drink and joined his teetotaling wife, known only as Mrs. Olney, in the women's parlor.

This would not do. As Washington's aide, Tench Tilghman, recalled the affair:

"It was proposed that a party should be sent to demand [Olney], and if the Ladies refused to give him up, that he should be brought by force. This party His Excellency offered to head."

With mock formality, Washington led his officers into the room and demanded Olney -- "which the Ladies refused," Tilghman wrote. So in jest, they began to take him by force.

The way Caty Greene told the story, as the men tried to wrench Olney away to drink with them, Mrs. Olney brought the frolic to a halt by screeching at Washington, "If you do not let go my hand, I will tear the hair from your head. Though you are a general, you are but a man."

Caty, who liked Washington, then flashed a bit of what she called "unbecoming temper" of her own at Mrs. Olney. Nathanael Greene intervened by taking the Olneys into another room.

Caty told the story to Ephraim Bowen's wife in Rhode Island, and in the re-telling it was embellished so that Mrs. Olney threatened not only to tear out Washington's hair but his eyes as well.

As the story circulated through polite society, an embarrassed Mrs. Olney wrote a letter to Caty accusing her of ruining her reputation by telling a completely false story.

Caty stood her ground, writing back: "as to your tearing out the Genls Eyes I heard, nor said, nothing off but you did say you would tear out his hear [hair] if it is false why did I show you such unbecoming temper, or why did Genl Greene as a friend to you boath, take you into a room to talk to you very ceriously upon it. It is very evident Genl Greene did not think it a jest."

Mrs. Olney conceded only that after the incident Greene had taken her and her husband aside, but "I dare say [Greene] would not thank you for reporting that he seriously lectur'd Mr. Olney for having resolution to withstand every unpolite and irrational attempt to sink him below the brute Creation by getting him drunk. [Greene] very calmly, and with great moderation advised Mr. Olney to adopt a less positive and blunt way of refusing to drink."

Hunger-charged mutiny

The arrival of spring brought no improvements to camp. Greene wrote to Wadsworth in May: The Army is ready to disband this moment for want of proper provision. The Soldiery are neither fed or paid; and are getting sour amazingly fast. Such a temper never appeard in our Army before. God knows how it will end.

It ended in mutiny.

On May 25, 1780, a regiment of the Connecticut troops in Morristown formed a line, beat their drums and began a mutinous march out of camp. They were sick of starving.

Private Joseph Plumb Martin, who marched with the mutineers, wrote of his fellow soldiers: "they could not stand it any longer; they saw no alternative but to starve to death, or break up the army, give all up and go home. This was a hard matter for the soldiers to think upon; they were truly patriotic; they loved their country, and had already suffered every thing short of death in its cause; and now, after such extreme hardships to give up all, was too much; but to starve to death was too much also."

As they shouldered their muskets to march, officers surrounded them with armed Pennsylvania troops, sending the Connecticut men grumbling back to their camps.

"We dispersed to our huts, and laid by our arms of our own accord," Martin recalled, "but the worm of hunger kept knawing so keen kept us from being entirely quiet."

Tory spies carried word of the mutiny to the British in New York, then under the command of Hessian Gen. Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen, the general who had made Greene "mad, vext, sick, and sorry" by storming Fort Washington in 1776. The baron figured with troops mutinying, Washington must be vulnerable. This would be a good time to roll into New Jersey for an attack.

Caty to Rhode Island

Caty Greene, son George, and months-old Nathanael left New Jersey in early June 1780, just after the shooting started.

She rode with her two young sons in a carriage that Nathanael Greene bought from a Tory woman named Mrs. Kennedy, probably the wife of Archibald Kennedy who became an English earl. Washington had considered buying it for himself, but was told it was "too old-fashioned and uncouth" for a man of his stature.

The Kennedy coat of arms was painted on the doors of Caty's carriage, which mortified her husband. After she reached Rhode Island, Greene wrote to Caty: I wish you to get your Carriage painted anew with the [Greene] family Arms upon it. I should not chuse you should ride in it with the present Arms upon it; especially as they are tory Arms.

In that same letter Greene asked Caty for a black and white feather to wear; the General officers being directed to wear them by way of distinction. If you have any or any can be got handy [I] beg youl send me a couple.

I believe I have mentioned in all my letters the shattered condition of my shirts, they are going to ruin a pace, beg youl forward my new ones. . . .

Mr. Olney is as particular as ever. . . .

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

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources consulted for today's installment:

Hornor, Marian Sadtler, ed. "A Washington Affair of Honor," The Pennsylvania Magazine, Volume LXV, Number 3: Philadelphia, July 1941. Courtesy Georgia Historical Society: Savannah.

Martin, Joseph Plumb. A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier. Signet Classic, New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.: New York, 2001.

Showman, Richard K., ed. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, Vol. V and Vol. VI. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1989 and 1991.

A continuing series.