01:51 PM EDT on Tuesday, July 18, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

In late October 1781, the schooner Adventure slipped into Newport Harbor; it had sailed directly from Virginia's York peninsula, and its captain brought the news that Lord Gen. Charles Cornwallis had surrendered to Washington at Yorktown.

Within a week of getting the news at her farm in Westerly, Caty Greene had packed her two-horse carriage with the Greene coat of arms painted on the doors, for a long trip through a war-torn country to the deep South.

Caty, now a 27-year-old mother of four, had not seen her husband, the now-famous Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene, in nearly two years. When they'd last seen each other at Morristown, N.J., he'd been on the outs with Congress after his resignation from a quartermaster's department that was in shambles. Now he was lionized at home and abroad as the Conqueror of the South.

With the South somewhat calm, Caty was determined to see her husband, who was then encamped in the High Hills of the Santee in South Carolina, near Camden. The trip to see him would be a hard, hazardous journey of more than 1,000 miles. For company, Caty had Billy Blodgett, a funny, Falstaffian character who'd been a major in the Continental Army; she also brought her 6-year-old son, George Washington Greene.

Greene heard of Caty's planned journey in mid-November; he couldn't believe it:

I am told Mrs. Greene is coming to the southward; he wrote to Henry Knox on Dec. 10, 1781, but I can not give much credit to it, as the under taking is so arduous, and I have painted to her the dangers and difficulties in such strong colours. However I left her at liberty to follow her own inclinations, and perhaps her wishes has got the better of of her prudence.

By the time Greene wrote that letter, his wife had already been in Philadelphia for three weeks; she'd arrived "in charming health," Knox reported, and planned soon "to wing her Way to the High Hills of the Santee" with young George.

Those plans went awry: she fell ill; a Christmas Eve blizzard socked in Philadelphia, immobilizing carriages. Then there was the issue of taking the boy George Washington Greene into what was still a hot war zone. Col. Charles Petit, a wealthy Philadelphia lawyer and a good friend of the Greenes, persuaded Caty to leave the boy in his care.

"This consent was more easily obtained than I had expected," Petit reported to Greene, "and in a few moments [the boy] took formal leave of his Momma . . . and came off with me in good spirits. I went back shortly afterwards to see how it would set on Mrs. Greene's mind. . . . Mrs. Greene was not well. She took much pains to convince us it was not owing to the parting; indeed it was too evident that her disorder was of longer standing and in the night it became so formidable as to require the calling in of a Physician & she has ever since been confined to her room. In the mean time George visits her occasionally but considers his home to be in my family & that he is under my direction."

Petit reported that George's mind "appears to be more forward than is usual at the same age." He planned to enroll the boy at Princeton, which he did the following June, but "I do not talk of any plan while Mrs. Greene is here lest I should awaken feelings that might weake[n] her resolution."

Caty's illness lasted a couple of more weeks, and cramps plagued her throughout her trip south. She finally rode out of Philadelphia on Jan. 15, 1782, rolling over frost-hardened roads in the company of Maj. Ichabod Burnet, one of Greene's closest aides though at times a grouchy and impatient travel companion.

"The severity of the weather and the excessive badness of the roads caused many unexpected delays," Burnet wrote to Greene. An ice-clogged river prevented ferry passage, forcing Burnet and Caty to spend a week at Mount Vernon, George Washington's palatial spread on the Potomac. Neither George nor Martha Washington was there -- Martha had just lost her only son, George's stepson, and was then grieving in Philadelphia.

At Mount Vernon, Caty received a letter from her friend from New London, Jeremiah Wadsworth, reporting that he had arrived in Philadelphia just one day after she'd left.

She wrote back: "I am trembling for fear I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you before I go to the South. . . . I know your time is intirely taken up. Be assured if I can not see you I will go Mourning all the way." Burnet, she wrote, was "in an ill humor."

After 20 days on the road Burnet and Caty Greene reached Fredericksburg, Va.:

"Mrs. Greene bears all the fatigue and delay with her usual fortitude and cheerfulness," Burnet reported to Greene. "She is yet undetermined what route to pursue, but will proceed, after refreshing her horses a day or two at this place."

A "day or two" at Fredericksburg turned into nine. The local leaders demanded that the wife of the great General Greene stick around for George Washington's birthday bash.

The ball "was brilliant," the Maryland Gazette reported, "being composed of sixty-odd ladies and an equal number of gentlemen. Mrs. Greene danced with General [Alexander] Spotswood."

She hit the road again on Feb. 13, 1782. After five weeks of wagon wheels churning through the red dirt roads of Virginia and North Carolina, she was just a few days' ride from Greene's camp.

Burnet was shocked by conditions in the South:

"This country is very far from being in that quiet and agreeable Situation you are led to believe," he wrote to Clement Biddle in Philadelphia. "The disaffected [Tories] are numerous and their Situation so desperate that they confine themselves to their private haunts and conceal themselves in the Swamps from which they issue forth and murder and rob every person on the road. This is so much the case, that in the greatest part of the three Southern States it is unsafe to travel without an escort of Dragoons."

Greene's army he found "in a most lamentable situation" without "money[,] perfectly naked[,] fed very scantily with Rice and poor Beef[,] without Rum and what is much worse in a most discontented situation."

Greene moved his army on March 24, pitching camp "in a wilderness, in thicket of brush," an officer wrote in his diary, on the Ashley River. From there Greene could better pinch off the flow of goods from the countryside to the British garrison in Charleston.

With his wife coming any day now, Greene ordered: The new camp is to be kept clean. Tents must be pitched regular and Vaults [or latrines] immediately dug.

The next day, March 25, 1782, Greene received word that Caty was drawing near; he rode out 12 miles to greet her, giving her a hug for the first time in 23 months.

Can you believe it that Mrs. Greene is at Camp in South Carolina? Greene wrote to his friend, Clement Biddle, on April 8. However improbable the thing the fact is so; and I as happy as heart can wish. Poor Girl she has had a most horid time on the way, bad roads, bad accommodations and frequent alarms, and continual delays. . . . I feel myself under great obligations for her for persevering under such a variety of difficulties to come and see me. You know I am one of the old fashioned sort of people fond of my sweetheart; and therefore must be supremely happy at meeting.

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

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