01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 2, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

With Benedict Arnold gone, West Point needed a commander; Nathanael Greene asked Gen. George Washington for the job:

I take my liberty just to intimate my inclination for the appointment, he wrote to Washington on Oct. 5, 1780. I hope there is nothing indelicate or improper in the application.

While applying for this post, Greene was also lobbying a friend in Congress for a bigger prize: Command of the Southern Department.

The difference between the two commands -- West Point and the Southern Department -- was radical. The commander at West Point would live in relative comfort and safety, with a house and a citadel to protect him and his family; the commander of the Southern Department would have what was then the most demanding, dangerous job in the Army. For in 1780 the real fighting of the American Revolution had moved into the South. King George III had decided to move the seat of the war into the South under the theory that the Southern Colonies could be more easily conquered than the rebellious places in the North, thus severing the North's supply routes. It was a sound strategy.

Greene was aware that the South had become a graveyard for generals, not by taking their lives but by killing their careers and reputations. The last three generals sent there had lost entire armies: Robert Howe at Savannah; Benjamin Lincoln in the siege of Charleston; and most recently Horatio Gates, a man Greene had never liked, outside of Camden, S.C.

Naturally Greene's wife, Caty, hoped that he would not obtain the Southern command. "She is much Alarmed for fear you Should go to the Southward," his brother, Jacob, wrote from Coventry. "You will Do well to Satisfy her of this Matter if you are not Agoing which I wish you may not as Nothing but Disgrace and Disappointment had Attended Every Commander on that Station."

Jacob Greene was right, "Disgrace and Disappointment" had befallen all three generals who'd had the misfortune to command in the South. Lincoln's loss of an army in "Charles Town" was the single biggest American defeat of the war.

Charleston, as it's called today, was the New York City of the South. Thanks to extensive rice plantations farmed by some 70,000 slaves, it held more wealth than any other city in America.

On May 12, 1780, after a long siege, the American flag came down over Charleston. Beaten American troops led by Lincoln -- a short, narcoleptic 225-pound man with a war wound that left him hobbled -- straggled out of the garrison to lay down their arms.

The loss in terms of men and materiel, was the largest of the war, exceeding even Greene's loss of Fort Washington. At Charleston, the Americans lost 2,571 regular officers and men, plus 800 militiamen. British returns also showed the capture of 5,315 muskets; 15 stands of regimental colors (the fiercely protected flags of regiments); 33,000 musket balls; and 376 barrels of powder.

Command of the Southern Army

Washington did not keep Greene waiting. One day after Greene asked for the West Point command Washington wrote to say yes, he could have it, but not to get too comfortable:

"There is no disposition that can be made of the Army at this time under our pres[ent] uncertainties that may not be subjected to material change. . .. If under this information you should incline to take the immediate Command of the Detachmt which is about to March for West Point . . . it will be quite agreeable to me that you should do so."

Greene wrote to his wife about the promotion, but warned her: This is only a temporary disposition for the fall. It is yet uncertain what disposition will be made for the winter. Perhaps I may spend the winter there and perhaps not -- a hint that he may still move south. The situation [at West Point] is not much to my liking, there being little prospect of glory or comfort; and therefore I am almost afraid to give you an invitation to come and see me. However if you think you can be happy in this dreary situation with me, I shall be happy to receive you to my Arms, as soon as you can render it convenient to come.

On receiving Greene's letter, Caty drove her carriage into Providence to have the Greene coat of arms painted over the Kennedy family's Tory coat of arms stenciled on the carriage doors; this would allow her a safer passage through Patriot-friendly country to West Point.

She was staying in James M. Varnum's Providence house when word came from West Point:

My dear Angel

What I have been dreading has come to pass. His Excellency General Washington by order of Congress has appointed me to the command of the Southern Army: Gen Gates being recalled to under[go] an examination into his conduct. This is so foreign from my wishes that I am distressed exceedingly: especially as I have just receivd your letter of the 2d of the month where you describe your distress and suffering in such a feeling manner as melts my soul into the deepest distress.

"I had been pleasing myself with the agreeable prospect of spending the winter here with you . . . . How unfriendly is war to domestic happiness."

Actually, Greene was telling a lie when he wrote that he'd been dreading an appointment to the Southern Command; he'd been lobbying for it ever since 1779, when Washington had told him: "I shall not hesitate in preferring you to this command" over other generals. But the choice then belonged to Congress.

Now after losing three armies under their handpicked generals, Congress decided that it would let Washington choose the next Southern Commander.

From headquarters in New Jersey, Washington wrote to Greene:

"As Congress have been pleased to leave the Officer to command on this occasion to my choice, it is my choice to appoint you."

Washington followed this up with another letter telling Greene:

"You will therefore proceed without delay to the southern Army, now in North Carolina, and take the command accordingly. Uninformed as I am of the enemy's force in that quarter, of our own, or of the resources which it will be in our power to command for carrying on the War, I can give you no particular instructions but must leave you to govern yourself intirely according to your own prudence and judgment and the circumstances in which you find yourself."

Headed South

Maj.-Gen. Nathanael Greene pulled out of West Point bound for the southland with four wagons hauled by 16 good horses, such cash as he could borrow from the quartermaster and a heart full of doubt.

Washington had chosen Greene to lead the Southern Department; now in the autumn of 1780 the war was shifting to the South, and this command was the Army's most important.

My best endeavors shall not be wanted to serve my country, Greene wrote to Gov. William Greene; but I much doubt my abilities for such a difficult command. . . .

I leave the Northern World with a heavy heart, as it will be such a great remove from my nearest and dearest connections. Mrs. Greene [his own wife, Caty] will be made very miserable upon the occasion; and what will serve to make it more still grievous is, its duration is altogether uncertain; and the distance is so great; and my fortune so small, that I shall have but little opportunity to see any part of my family until my return.''

By today's standards his "fortune" would be large, for he owned a lot of land. But real estate in a war-ravaged country was not worth much.

As Richard Showman, the first editor of The Papers of Nathanael Greene noted: "Critics who accused him of profiting greatly from his quartermaster commissions would have been surprised to learn how little" Greene owned. By war's end, he'd own much less for he plunged deeply into debt to buy food, soap, candles and clothes for his army, a debt that would plague Greene till his dying day.

Along the way

Nathanael Greene's wagons rolled into the main army camp at Preakness, N.J., where he picked up Baron von Steuben as his inspector general and traveling buddy.

From there the trip south had its pleasant moments -- a stop at Abraham Lott's mansion and a visit with Martha Washington at palatial Mount Vernon -- and its tedious chores: nearly two weeks talking with Congressional committees in Philadelphia, and a similar stop in Richmond, Va., to cajole Gov. Thomas Jefferson and a slumbering legislature to send supplies southward.

En route Greene wrote to his wife on Nov. 18, 1780:

My dear,

I am now in the capital of Virginia; and should feel myself tolerably easy notwithstanding the difficulties which I forsee I have to contend with, was it not for the distress and anxiety which you are in; the very contemplation of which hangs heavy upon my spirits; and renders my journey melancholy and dull. I was at his Excellency General Washington['s] seat [i.e., Mount Vernon]; and spent a day with Mrs. Washington.

To Washington, Greene wrote from Richmond the next day: Matters here are in the greatest state of confusion imaginable; and the business of government at a stand for want of money and public credit. Our prospects with supplies are very discouraging. The Gouvernour [Jefferson] says their situation as to cloathing is desperate. Nor is the business of transportation in a much more eligible condition." In Richmond he found little money, no clothes and few wagons.

Greene left von Steuben -- who'd been filling Greene's head with military strategy he'd heard directly from Frederick the Great -- in Virginia; then he pressed south along the Great Wagon Road, the 18th century's Route 95 connecting Philadelphia with Augusta, Ga.

As he crossed into North Carolina the country in which Greene now moved was as strange to this Rhode Island Yankee as any foreign country. He hungered to know this ground that, against long odds, he hoped to conquer.

On Greene's first day in North Carolina, Dec. 1, 1780, he wrote to militia Gen. Edward Stevens:

I want you to appoint a good and intelligent officer with 3 privates to go up the Yadkin [River] as high as Hughes Creek to explore carefully the River, the Depth of the Water, the Current and the Rocks, and every other Obstruction that will impeded the Business of Transportation. All which I wish him to report to me. Let the Officer be very intelligible, and have a charge to be particular in his Observations.

A colonel who worked in the commissary department under Greene's predecessor, Gen. Horatio Gates, observed that after one night's study of the landscape and supply routes, Greene "better understood them than Gates had done in the whole period of his command."

Greene also sent a party to scout the Dan River and its tributaries; the Carolinas acted as a huge drainage basin for the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains, and Greene was determined to use the country's network of rivers to his advantage. He remembered how well the big, shallow-drafted Durham Boats had served the Continental Army in crossing the Delaware, as he wrote to Stevens:

It is my intention to construct Boats of a peculiar kind . . . that will carry Forty or Fifty barrels and yet draw little more Water than a common canoe half loaded.

After reading the lay of the land, Greene's next order of business was to find his army. Somewhere out in the wilderness of North Carolina was a poorly clothed rabble that was waiting for him to lead it. It had been two months since he'd last heard from Gates, the man he would be relieving. The Southern Army was then camped in Hillsborough.

In December 1780, Greene wrote to Caty:

My dear

I arrivd here the 2d of this month and have been in search of the Army I am to command; but without much success; having found nothing but a few half starvd Soldiers who are remarkable for nothing but poverty and distress.

Battle of Camden

Greene found his army in Charlotte, N.C., on Dec. 2, 1780. Their previous commander, Gates, had come to the South in the summer of 1780 as the Hero of Saratoga. Now he was a beaten man, 52 years old, terribly myopic with thick glasses that earned him the sobriquet "Granny" Gates. When Greene found him encamped at Charlotte, Gates had just heard news of the death of his only son.

When Gates came South in late July he'd had in his camp a general, Johann Kalb, who was among the best of the foreign officers, the Marquis de Lafayette included, who had rallied to the American cause. Kalb was a big Bavarian peasant -- over 6 feet tall, strong and a good strategist; he had fought with France's Marshal Saxe, whose writings on war were scrupulously studied by Henry Knox and Nathanael Greene.

After just two days in camp, Gates ordered his army into motion: he wanted to attack Camden, S.C., a small crossroads town protected by a high, stockade fence where 1,200 British troops were stationed.

Kalb argued that the best route to Camden was through Salisbury and Charlotte, towns friendly to the American cause where the army could draw provisions. Gates nixed that idea. That route was 50 miles longer than the 180-mile march he proposed, a beeline through the Pine Barrens of South Carolina.

Little sunlight dappled through the high, thick canopy of the Carolina Pine Barrens, an immense forest of longleaf pine. These trees stood 125 feet tall, with roots sunk into the rolling sand hills of the piedmont, sand some 40 and 50 feet deep. Between tall trees grew a carpet of wire grass a yard high; nothing edible grew in there.

Day after day Gates pushed his troops through the deep sandy soil of the gloomy Pine Barrens. Occasionally they'd find an area cleared for a peach orchard or cornfield, but in early August the peaches were green, the corn unripe. Hungry men ate them. Officer thickened their meager beef soup with hair powder. Diarrhea cramped the troops, and men kept falling out into the woods slowing the march.

On Aug. 15, 1780, Gates rested his troops within 10 miles of Camden. Then he ordered a nighttime march. His officers could not believe it; most of Gates' troops were raw militia who knew little about maneuvering in columns and lines, and he was sending them out a night on unfamiliar ground held by a strong enemy.

Gates told his officers he had 7,000 men; Col. Otho Williams, who'd later be of great help to Nathanael Greene, doubted it; he sent an adjutant around to count the troops and learned they had 3,052 men, two-thirds of them militia. Gates told Williams, "These are enough for our purposes."

At the same time his troops were falling out through a humid August night bound for Camden, Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis was moving his army north through the night along the Great Wagon Road toward Gates. Advance parties from each side crashed into each other in the night. After a couple of flaring booms from muskets and pistols, both sides withdrew to form battle lines and wait for first light.

From prisoners Gates learned what was out there in the dark forest just 600 yards from his men: more than 2,000 troops, half of them the best British regulars with mostly battle-tested Tories, all under direct command of Cornwallis.

"The general's astonishment could not be concealed," Williams wrote. "He ordered the deputy adjutant general to call another council of war. All the general officers immediately assembled in the rear of the line. The unwelcome news was communicated to them. General Gates said, 'Gentlemen, what is best to be done?' " Hardly inspiring words from a general on the cusp of battle.

To keep their powder dry in the steamy night men lay on their rifles. They waited for first light, their hearts pounding against the thick pine mulch of the forest floor.

At daybreak they felt the percussion of cannon fire in the pits of their empty stomachs. Through the forest's morning mist they saw men in red striding toward them with fixed bayonets shouting, "Huzzah! Huzzah!"

The American militia on the left side of the line dropped their muskets and ran. Gates tried to stop them but got swept up in the tide. Kalb and his regulars held their ground on the American right, but they were soon surrounded. Kalb fell with 11 deep wounds in his big body from bayonet and ball. It took him three days to die.

Gates, astride the son of Fearnought, a famous racehorse, beat it back to Charlotte -- and beyond. In the three days that Kalb lay dying, Gates covered the 180 miles his army had marched in 19, retreating all the way back to Hillsborough.

Naturally much sport was made of Gates' galloping retreat. Alexander Hamilton wrote to a friend in Congress: "Was there ever an instance of a general running away, as Gates has done, from his whole army? One hundred and eighty miles in three days and a half. It does admirable credit to the activity of a man at his time of life."

Nathanael Greene couldn't resist one sarcastic shot at Gates: His retreat is equal to that of Xenophon -- a Greek soldier who led a months-long retreat from Persia of 1,500 miles -- but only a little more rapid.

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

Bibliography

Sources consulted for today's installment:

Boatner III, Mark M. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, Pa., 1994.

Buchanan, John. The Road to Guilford Courthouse. Buchanan; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: New York, Chichester, Weinheim, Brisbane, Singapore, Toronto, 1997.

Fields George. Untitled lecture at Camden battlefield: Camden, S.C., Nov. 7, 2003.

Greene, George Washington. The Life of Nathanael Greene, Vol. 3. New York: Hurd and Houghton. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1871.

Scheer, George F., and Rankin, Hugh F. Rebels & Redcoats. Da Capo Press Inc.: United States of America, 1987. copyright The world Publishing Company, 1957.

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

A continuing series.