02:42 PM EDT on Monday, July 10, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

The day after the Battle of Guilford Courthouse the British ate for the first time in two days: each man got a quarter-pound of flour and a four-ounce strip of stringy beef.

The day after that, March 17, 1781, the British troops moved on from Guilford Courthouse leaving 70 of their wounded. By "easy marches," Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis marched his troops toward the coastal town of Wilmington, N.C., 200 miles away, where he hoped to ship in supplies from his base at Charleston.

Cornwallis wrote: "With a third of my army sick and wounded the remainder without shoes and worn down with fatigue, I thought it was time to look for some place of rest and refitment."

Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene rested and resupplied his American troops at Speedwells Iron Works for a week, plotting his next move. From the Iron Works he wrote:

We have little to eat, less to drink, and lodge in the woods in the midst of smoke. Indeed our fatigue is excessive. I was so much overcome night before last that I fainted.

Our army is in good spirits; but the Militia leave us in great numbers, to return home to kiss their wives and sweethearts.

I have never felt an easy moment [in the six weeks] since the enemy crossed the Catawba until since the defeat of the 15th; but now I am perfectly easy being perswaded it is out of the enemies power to do us any great injury."

From his camp on Troublesome Creek, Greene felt comfortable enough to write a letter to his wife, Caty, then living in what she called "a widowed state" on a farm in Westerly, R.I. Greene's friend Jeremiah Wadsworth owned business concerns in New London, Conn., and would sometimes visit Caty on her farm, which in the conventions of that time was bound to, and did, spawn rumors of an adulterous affair.

For a letter to reach Washington at West Point took a month; for a letter to reach Caty in Westerly took weeks longer.

Greene had fought in almost all the big battles south of Saratoga: Trenton and Princeton; Brandywine and Germantown; Monmouth and Newport. The Battle of Guilford Courthouse, Greene wrote to his wife, was one of the longest and most bloody actions I was ever in. I had not the honor of being wounded; but was very near being taken having rode in the heat of the action full tilt directly into the Midst of the enemy; but by Col Morris calling to me and advertising me of my situation I had just time to retire . . .

The evening after the action I receivd your letter which was some consolation after the misfortunes of the day. Thus the incidents of human life mix, and mingle together. Sometimes good and sometimes bad.

I see by your last letter you are determined to come to the southward, I fear you will be disappointed in your expectations. Nothing but blood and slaughter prevails here and the operations are in a Country little short of a wilderness, where a delicate woman is scarsely known or seen. While the war rages in the manner it does you will have little opportunity of seeing me. . . .

Our fatigue has been excessive. I have not had my cloaths [off] for upwards of six weeks, but am generally in pretty good health. Poor Major [Ichabod] Burnet is sick and is in a situation worse than you would think tolerable for one of your Negroes.

Nathanael and Caty Greene, slave owners after the war, probably "owned" Africans during it; in a letter of 1780 Greene's brother, Jacob, wrote: "Mrs Greene says your Christa is a good houseslav and wishes you To Make use of him for that Purpose" in camp at New Jersey, "as She Cannot Spare John." And prior to that Nathanael had written to Caty in 1777: Pray has your brother Simon [who lived on Block Island] ever sent you your Negro Boy?

Caty probably grew up with slaves at her uncle's Warwick manse on Love Lane, where a 1774 census counted four "Africans," presumably slaves; after the war Nathanael Greene bought more than 150 slaves to farm his plantations in South Carolina and Georgia.

Chasing Cornwallis

On March 24, 1781, Nathanael Greene broke his Army camp on Troublesome Creek and marched out to strike Cornwallis a fatal blow.

He wrote to Light-Horse Henry Lee:

It is my intention to attack the enemy the moment we can get up with them. I am agreed in opinion with you that Lord Cornwallis dont wish to fight us, but you may depend upon it, he will not refuse to fight if we push him.

Rain and muddy roads slowed Greene's chase of Cornwallis, as did shortages of bullets and food. He laid up on South Buffalo Creek for a couple of days while his men stuffed paper cartridges with gunpowder and lead for ammunition.

Cornwallis had a head start on his march to Wilmington, but he too was bogged down by bad roads and by his dying wounded. Greene's Army almost caught him at Ramsey's Mill, arriving there a day after Cornwallis fled leaving his dead unburied.

Here at Ramsey's Mill, Greene decided to break off the chase:

I wish it was in my power to pursue them farther, he wrote to Abner Nash, North Carolina's nominal governor, but the want of provisions and a considerable part of the Virginia Militias time of service being expird, will prevent our farther pursuit.

Now with a small and dwindling army, deep in the wilderness, with no supply lines, I am at a loss what is best to be done, Greene wrote to Washington.

And then Greene laid out a plan that was as unorthodox and as ingenious as his decisions to split his army and to retreat across the Dan.

I am determined to carry the War immediately into South Carolina, he wrote in that same letter to Washington, a plan that meant slogging over all that same swampy territory he and his army had crossed on the Race to the Dan.

Once again Greene was defying conventional military wisdom by exposing his flank to an arguably superior force.

From Ramsey's Mills, N.C., Greene explained to General Washington his reason for retracing his steps:

The Enemy will be obliged to follow us or give up their posts in that State [South Carolina]. If the former takes place it will draw the War out of this State and give it an opportunity to raise its proportion of Men. If they leave their posts [in South Carolina] to fall they must lose more there than they can gain here. If we continue in this State the Enemy will hold their possessions in both.

By moving into South Carolina, Greene presented Cornwallis with two, unpalatable choices: Give up North Carolina, or risk losing his chain of outposts arcing across the South Carolina backcountry.

All things considered I think the movement is warranted by the soundest reasons both political and military," Greene wrote. The Manoeuvre will be critical and dangerous and the troops exposed to every hardship. But as I share it with them I hope they will bear up under it with that magnanimity which has already supported them, and for which they deserve every thing of their Country.

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

A continuing series.

EXTRA: Keep up with all installments in the series, Rise, and Fight Again, at:

http://projo.com/extra/2006/greene/