Nathanael Greene – The Fighting Quaker Who Became Washington’s Most Steadfast Officer

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George Washington described Nathaniel Greene as a gentleman in whom he placed the most entire confidence. Many of his peers and modern historians considered him the second-best American general in the Revolutionary War, and they speculated that Greene would have assumed command of the Continental Army if anything were to happen to George Washington. So today, we’re going to see what all the fuss was about as we explore the life and military career of Nathaniel Greene.

Nathaniel Greene was born on August 7, 1742, at Ford Farm in Warwick, Rhode Island, which was then still a part of the British colonies. He was the second son of Nathaniel Greene Sr. and his second wife, Mary Mott, and he had five other siblings as well as two older stepbrothers. Nathaniel Sr. was not only a successful farmer from one of the oldest families in Rhode Island but also a preacher with the Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers. They were ardent pacifists, so any kind of military action was a strict no-no, causing Nathaniel Greene to struggle throughout his life to reconcile his faith with his desire to fight for an independent America.

Education was also discouraged among Quakers back then, so young Nathaniel was never sent to a proper school. However, he was taught to read and write and became an avid reader who devoured all the books he could get his hands on, including non-religious texts, much to his father’s chagrin. Despite his objections, the elder Greene did not stand in the way of his son’s desire for higher learning and hired a tutor to give him an advanced education.

Once he was older, Nathaniel Greene trained to become a blacksmith and worked at his father’s iron foundry in Warwick. Business wasn’t exactly booming, but it was good enough that the family opened another forge in Coventry, Rhode Island, 10 miles south of the farm. In 1771, Nathaniel Greene relocated to Coventry permanently to manage the second forge. That same year, he and his siblings gained complete control of the family estate after their father passed away. For Nathaniel, this meant he had gained the freedom to do something that his father would have greatly frowned upon: study military history and science.

In Coventry, Greene built a new home for himself, a nice two-story house that sprawled over 83 acres of land, which he named Spell Hall. A few years after the move, Greene met Catherine “Kitty” Littlefield, whose uncle once served as governor of Rhode Island. The two of them got married in 1774 when Nathaniel was 32 years old and Kitty was 19, and they went on to have five children together. Catherine Greene proved to be very dedicated to her husband, and during the war, she tried to visit him at his military headquarters whenever possible. She preferred the chaos and danger of the battlefield to the relative safety of her estate as long as she was by Nathaniel’s side.

Greene recognized the rising tensions between British officials and American colonists. His own family had an ongoing feud with a Scottish admiral named William Duddingston, who once seized one of their sloops and confiscated its cargo. The Greens filed lawsuits against Duddingston to no avail, and then in 1772, a group of men boarded Duddingston’s ship, the HMS Gatsby, ran it aground, and burned it down as a protest against British impositions on the American colonies. Naturally, many assumed that the Greene family had been involved in this rebellion; they weren’t, as it turned out. But the Gatsby Affair, as it came to be known, served as a pivotal moment in the lead-up to the American Revolution, as more and more people came to share Nathaniel Greene’s belief that war between Britain and America had become inevitable.

Nathaniel Greene first became involved with the military in 1774 when he helped organize a militia in Rhode Island known as the Kentish Guards. Word of this reached back home and got him banished from his Quaker community, but for Greene, there was no turning back. Despite his sacrifice and the fact that he helped put the militia together, Greene was only offered a modest post as a private due to his Olympiad since childhood, which made him unfit for combat. While this might tank other men’s careers before they even got off the ground, it only proved to be a small obstacle for Greene. He swallowed his pride and accepted the position of private, marching three times a week to the beat of fife and drum and even risking being arrested in order to smuggle a musket for himself from Boston.

Ultimately, it didn’t take long for others to recognize his innate abilities as a leader. Even though he was never able to serve as a rank-and-file soldier, Greene proved to be much more valuable as a commander than a private. On April 19, 1775, the battles of Lexington and Concord signaled the beginning of the Revolutionary War. When word reached Nathaniel Greene, he kissed his wife goodbye, got on his horse, and rode to East Greenwich to assemble the Kentish Guards. At daybreak the next morning, the guards marched on Providence, where they found out that the fighting was taking place in Boston, where the British army was under siege by the colonial militia led by George Washington.

A swift meeting of the Rhode Island and Connecticut assemblies took place in order to decide how the New England colonies should respond. In a surprising move, the Rhode Island assembly unanimously elected Nathaniel Greene to lead the colony’s army, even though the Kentish Guards had other more experienced commanders at their disposal. This trust placed in Greene was reinforced in June when the Second Continental Congress convened and established the Continental Army, putting George Washington in charge of all colonial forces. They also appointed 16 generals, and Nathaniel Greene was among them.

It took a while before Greene proved his mettle in combat. He was absent from the most important conflict of the Boston campaign, the Battle of Bunker Hill, because he was in Rhode Island at the time trying to muster more troops. Then during the New York campaign, George Washington placed him in charge of Brooklyn’s defenses, but Greene became bedridden with a high fever, so he had to relinquish command. He missed the Battle of Brooklyn, the second-largest battle of the entire Revolutionary War, with 30,000 soldiers engaged in combat. Probably for the best, since this was a crushing defeat for the Continental Army that almost cost Washington his life.

Nathaniel Greene finally saw some action in the following skirmish, the Battle of Harlem Heights. After the British victory in Long Island, they had taken over Manhattan while the Continental Army had to retreat to Harlem. On September 16th, the British emerged in battle with a group of colonial scouts called Knowlton’s Rangers, who had no choice but to head back towards the main camp with the Redcoats in hot pursuit. Washington decided to lay a little trap for the enemy by sending out a brigade of a thousand men led by Nathaniel Greene to meet the opposing force head-on while a few regiments worked their way around the right flank of the British. The plan was to have them emerge behind the enemy and pin them down between the two forces, but the regiments needed to improve their timing; they turned the wrong way and came out too early, right in the center of the flank. The British spotted the trap that was being laid for them, so they retreated in time.

Even though this was only a minor engagement, it was a victory for the Continental Army and a sorely needed one at that, since the sight of Redcoats tucking their tails and turning back served as a much-needed morale boost after the failure in Brooklyn. Following this battle, Nathaniel Greene needed a bit more downtime to fully recover from his illness, so Washington placed him in command of both Fort Washington and Fort Lee, back then known as Fort Constitution, which were on opposite sides of the Hudson River, the former in New York and the latter in New Jersey. At first, this worked out great, as the forts served as valuable supply depots. But in November, three British ships managed to withstand the barrage of fire and made it past the forts, allowing the Redcoats to take up positions on the Hudson River.

Once Washington heard of this, he told Greene to abandon Fort Washington, fearing that it had become too vulnerable since it was located in New York, which was under British control. But Greene was confident that he would triumph should the fort be attacked. He wrote back to Washington words that would haunt him for the rest of his life: “Upon the whole, I cannot help thinking the garrison is of advantage, and I cannot conceive the garrison to be in any great danger. The men can be brought off at any time.” Later that month, the commander-in-chief of the British land forces, General William Howe, decided to test this belief. On November 16, 1776, Howe launched a three-pronged attack on the fort. After a heavy barrage of cannon fire, his 8,000 men overwhelmed the garrison of only 3,000 colonial soldiers, who were soon forced to surrender. In the blink of an eye, the Continental Army had lost dozens of cannons, countless supplies and ammunition, and over 2,800 soldiers who were taken prisoner.

When he heard of the devastating defeat, George Washington himself rode to the remaining Fort Lee and ordered Greene to pack up and leave it behind for the British forces, who crossed the Hudson and occupied it a few days later. There was no sugarcoating this; Greene made a significant mistake, and many people were furious with his insistence on staying at Fort Washington. There were calls to relieve him of his command; even General Washington was starting to have doubts about Greene but decided against it. Fortunately for both men, Washington’s trust was ultimately vindicated.

With New York lost, the Continental Army had no choice but to set up camp in Pennsylvania, making Philadelphia its new headquarters. This arrangement didn’t last long, though, because the British captured Philadelphia on September 11, 1777, following a victory at the Battle of Brandywine near Chad’s Ford, Pennsylvania. Things weren’t looking too sunny in Philadelphia for the Continental Army, but it was time for some personal glory for Nathaniel Greene, whose division was instrumental in preventing the defeat from turning into a disaster. His unit acted as a rearguard that held off the enemy long enough for the rest of the army to retreat to safety and live to fight another day. This act of valor was preceded by two more victories in New Jersey. They weren’t anything major, but taken together, they were enough for Greene’s reputation to recover following the setback at Fort Washington.

This conflict was soon followed by the Battle of Germantown on October 4th. Back then, Germantown was a hamlet outside of Philadelphia proper, where Howe decided to move the bulk of his army, roughly 9,000 soldiers, while only a garrison of 3,000 was left to guard Philadelphia. Washington hoped that an unexpected attack could destroy the main British force and possibly compel the rest to abandon Philadelphia. The plan was to use the element of surprise to trap the Redcoats in a flanking maneuver. General George Sullivan was in command of the main line when Nathaniel Greene attacked the left flank, and General William Smallwood commanded a militia that would cover the extreme right and rear. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned, and this time it was Mother Nature that conspired against the Continental Army. Heavy fog caused Greene’s unit to get lost and enter the fray half an hour after the battle had already started. Delays and poor communication tipped off the enemy and allowed them to occupy fortified positions, resulting in another heavy loss for the Americans.

The Continental Army camped at Valley Forge, about 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia. It was a desolate, wretched location described by Washington as a dreary kind of place and uncomfortably provided the cause of the death of around 2,000 soldiers due to starvation, exposure, or diseases such as typhus and smallpox. Following the harsh and deadly winter, Washington wanted somebody new in charge of the quartermaster department and offered Nathaniel Greene the position of quartermaster general, giving him the responsibility of supplying the Continental Army. Greene didn’t exactly see this as a promotion, feeling that it was a nearly impossible task devoid of any glory. He wrote in a letter, “All of you will be immortalizing yourselves in the golden pages of history while I am confined to a series of drudgery to pave the way for it.” To Washington himself, Greene put it more bluntly: “Nobody ever heard of a quartermaster in history.”

Even so, Nathaniel Greene still did what Washington asked of him, and he did it well. He reorganized the quartermaster corps, established new supply lines, and sent his men on foraging missions to bolster their food supplies. But he missed life on the front lines and asked to be given command of his troops again in order to quell his lust for action. Washington allowed Greene to take part in two battles in the summer of 1778: first, the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey, and then the Battle of Rhode Island in Greene’s own neck of the woods. Neither battle had a decisive finish, but the latter did allow Greene to travel to his home estate back in Coventry and enjoy some much-needed rest and relaxation with his family.

It was perfectly timed too, because afterward came the golden opportunity for Greene to really show what he was made of. The year 1778 was a turning point in the war. For starters, France allied itself with the United States in February. The British abandoned Pennsylvania and withdrew back to New York, allowing the Continental Army to retake Philadelphia in the summer. With both sides entrenched in a solid position, the northern theater became somewhat of a stalemate while the serious action had moved to the southern colonies, primarily Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas.

For the first couple of years of combat in the southern theater, it was the same old song and dance for America. The Continental Army won a few and lost a few, including a disgraceful loss at Camden, where the Americans had the tactical advantage and twice the soldiers, yet the inept command of Major General Horatio Gates led to a humiliating defeat. Up until that point, Gates had been somewhat of a golden boy, with some of his supporters even opining that he should command the Continental Army instead of Washington. However, after that ludicrous display in the last battle where Gates just tried to walk it in, he was not only relieved of his position but barely avoided a court martial.

Naturally, somebody else had to take over. Washington was still busy up north trying to take New York with the help of the French, and he saw no man better suited for the job than Nathaniel Greene. In a letter, Washington wrote, “In my absence, the command of the army devolves upon you. I have so entire confidence in your prudence and abilities that I leave the conduct of it to your discretion.” On October 14, 1780, Nathaniel Greene was named the new commander of the Southern Continental Army, becoming second only to Washington himself.

In early December, Greene reached the main camp located in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he soon discovered that he had his work cut out for him. He had a skeleton of an army, few supplies, and not a lot of help coming from Congress. Meanwhile, the enemy had greater numbers, better training, better positions, and was led by a skilled military commander named General Charles Cornwallis. Greene realized that barring some kind of meteor crash or divine intervention, he didn’t have the ghost of a chance for success in pitched battle. So instead, he relied on guerrilla warfare, launching small-scale, sudden attacks that were over before the British army had a chance to recover and retaliate.

These proved successful, but then Greene took an even bigger risk and divided his army in two, taking the bulk of his forces with him while a smaller division was left under the command of Brigadier General Daniel Morgan. He hoped Cornwallis would do the same with his own army and go in pursuit of Greene, while a smaller force under Colonel Banastre Tarleton went after Daniel Morgan first. The two smaller armies met in combat at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, which proved to be a resounding victory for the American side. Although both forces had a little over a thousand soldiers, Morgan sustained only a few dozen casualties, whereas the British army led by Tarleton was almost entirely taken out of action.

Afterward, Morgan reunited with Nathaniel Greene, who was still leading Cornwallis on a chase through the southern colonies, with the end goal being to get him as far as possible from his main supply base in Charleston, South Carolina. This brought on the so-called “race to the Dan,” referring to the Dan River that passes through North Carolina and Virginia. Again, Greene separated a small force of 700 men led by Colonel Arthur Williams to lead Cornwallis on a wild goose chase away from the main army led by Greene himself, so that he could safely cross the river and retreat into Virginia for resupply and reinforcements and prepare for an all-out battle.

Cornwallis fell for Greene’s decoy hook, line, and sinker. He chased Williams and his men for three days, covering 200 miles, all while thinking that he was closing in on the main enemy force and was getting ready to go in for the kill. By the time the red-faced Cornwallis realized he’d been had, it was too late; Greene was in Virginia, and for the first time since he took over the southern army, he had a decent army of 4,200 well-equipped, motivated men. With no alternatives, the British retreated to North Carolina.

Now was the time to strike. Greene and Cornwallis finally clashed at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in Greensboro, North Carolina, on March 15, 1781. Technically, the British won the battlefield, but this was somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory since a quarter of Cornwallis’s men had been killed, injured, or captured, prompting British statesman Charles James Fox to later say that another such victory would ruin the British army. Meanwhile, Nathaniel Greene managed to withdraw from the battle with his forces mostly intact, accomplishing his main goal of debilitating the enemy army and forcing them to regroup.

After this battle, the British abandoned the Carolina campaign, ceding control of North Carolina back to the Americans. Cornwallis and Greene went their separate ways, as the latter chose to fight in South Carolina and Georgia instead of following Cornwallis into Virginia. What followed was a series of battles known collectively as the “War of the Posts,” where Greene concentrated his efforts on enemy fortifications in order to weaken the British grasp on the southern colonies. Noteworthy clashes included the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill, the month-long siege in South Carolina known as the Siege of 96, and the Battle of Eutaw Springs. Greene’s campaign was a classic case of something greater than the sum of its parts; taken in isolation, none of the battles were particularly impressive, but together they represented a constant and successful effort to chip away at