01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, July 20, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

On April 16, 1783, sometime around 11 a.m., an express rider galloped to the John Rutledge mansion with an urgent message for Maj. Gen. Nathanel Greene: the war was over.

A ship from Paris had brought news to Philadelphia that negotiators from the United States of America had signed preliminary articles of peace with Great Britain.

Copies of King George III's speech to parliament arrived soon after: "I did not hesitate," said the king, "to go the full length of the powers invested in me, and offer to declare them FREE and INDEPENDENT STATES, by an article to be inserted in the Treaty of Peace."

Greene took up his quill and wrote to Washington:

I beg leave to Congratulate your Excellency upon the returning smiles of peace, and the happy establishment of our Independence.

Greene had sacrificed as much, arguably more, than Washington. In every aspect of life that is most dear, Greene had suffered: in his health, his marriage and his finances.

Almost immediately, Greene's thoughts turned to home; he wrote to John Collins, a Rhode Island Congressman:

I feel for Rhode Island what I cannot for any other spot on Earth. What is it that recals this attachment; and how is [it] that neither time nor change of place can alter its Steady Operation.

It would be many months of hot and tedious living before Greene could get away. He faced a near mutiny when the First Cavalry deserted, riding off with the camp's best horses; then his malarial fever flared again, leaving him almost blind with sore eyes. Caty sailed for Rhode Island early in June, but he had to stay until the last man marched for home. Greene gave his final orders on June 21, 1783; adjutants stood before their men and read the day's orders, on this day Greene's farewell address to his troops:

To review scenes that are past, and look over incidents of the war, must be interesting to the feelings of every soldier. To call to mind a train of sufferings, and run over the many dangers we have passed in the pursuit of honor, and in the service of our country, affords a pleasing prospect for contemplation.

The general joined this army when it was in affliction, when its sprits were low, and its prospects gloomy. He now parts with it crowned in success, and in full triumph. We have trod the paths of adversity together, and have felt the sun-shine of better fortune. We found a people overwhelmed with distress, and a country groaning under oppression. It has been our happiness to relieve them -- The occasion was pressing, the attempt noble, and the success answerable. In this it has been the General's good fortune to point the way, but you had the honor to accomplish the work. Your generous confidence, amidst surrounding difficulties; your persevering tempers, against the tide of misfortune; paved the way to success; and to these are the people indebted for the repose they now enjoy.

Bells rang out

The last military transport ship left Charleston on July 29, 1783, leaving Nathanael Greene in a pensive mood:

All the Soldiers have embarked and sailed for their respective States; and I am left like Samson after Deliah cut his locks. I am become quite like another man."

The summer felt hotter than any he had ever experienced: temperatures hit the high 90s day after day, and as he tended to the final acts of closing out his army's accounts, Greene's patience snapped. In a letter to his wife, then in Philadelphia, he wrote:

[Charles] Petit . . . writes that he has got you a pair of horses to your liking, and a Phaeton [a kind of carriage] and that a Chariot is making and that the amount of the whole will be upwards of 1400 Dollars. He adds also that he will want the money the moment I arrive. How or where to get it god knows for I dont. Col Wadsworth informs me all my stocks put into his hands have been lost; and that out of upwards of a thousand pounds put into his hands four years ago, when Greene was well paid as quartermaster general, I have not fifty left. . . . I had rather live in a cave than be under so much perplexity.

Like many military men, Greene found the transition to civilian life very hard. He rolled out of Charleston on Aug. 14, bound for Rhode Island by coach. He kept an interesting journal of the trip: along the sandy roads of North Carolina he heard of a child faith healer who is said to cure only with the touch every species of complaint. . . . Hundreds of people are encamped about this child who is but eight years old. . . ." Greene thought it was a bunch of nonsense (I am not apt to be credulous.).

In Virginia he upset his carriage and was nearly crushed by it. Though Washington was not home, Greene stayed at Washington's estate at Mount Vernon which has more dignity than convenience in it. In Alexandria he was laid low for eight days by a fever that left him exceeding weak for a month.

Bells rang throughout Philadelphia to announce and honor Greene's arrival there on Oct. 4. He then rode with Washington from Trenton to Princeton -- a trip made in very different circumstances from the time they'd skulked out of town on a stumpy back road through a freezing night.

Congress was meeting in Princeton, removed there from Philadelphia to avoid armed mobs of soldiers demanding their pay. As he was still officially in military service, Greene asked Congress for permission to go home:

It is now going on Nine years since I have had an opportunity to visit my family or friends or pay the least attention to my private fortune. I wish therefore to return to Rhode Island."

In resolving that "Major General Greene hath permission to visit his family at Rhode Island," Congress took the additional step of granting Greene two engraved cannon "taken from the British Army at the Cowpens, Augusta, or Eutaw" Springs. He never did get them.

Business detained Greene in Philadelphia as he attempted to clear up some accounts. Here he learned for the first time that John Banks, the army contractor, had paid nothing to any of the merchants from whom he'd bought supplies -- leaving Greene responsible for the entire cost of clothing and feeding an army, some 30,000 pounds sterling.

From the City of Brotherly Love, Greene took care of some plantation business: buying slaves. He'd received a letter from his slave broker telling him that the prices Greene wanted to pay for people were way too low:

"[C]ommon field Negroes sold at St. Augustine from 50 pounds to 70 pounds Sterling," wrote the broker, James Penman. ". . . There are several other Gangs for Sale, but they expect higher Prices." With more money Penman could buy a "gang" of 70 slaves "of which 50 are Workers, and the rest Children some of which are nearly fit for the Hoe."

Greene wrote back from Philadelphia that he would be willing to pay more, but not more than 70 pounds per person, and The Negroes must be sound, not old, and the property unquestionable. I beg you will engage the Negroes as soon as possible and have them conveyed to my estate in Georgia.

Greene bought 58 slaves for his Georgia plantation, though he later groused upon inspecting them that "many are small."

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

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources consulted for today's installment:

Conrad, Dennis M. ed. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, vol. XII. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2002.

Parks, Roger N., ed. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, Vol. XIII. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2005.

A continuing series.