06/29/23
6/29/2023Nearly everyone knows that Jefferson is named for Thomas Jefferson, 18th Century intellectual, author of the Declaration of Independence, and third President of the United States.
And many people know that Greene County’s namesake is Nathanael Greene, Revolutionary War general. But that’s about the extent of it. Greene deserves more. A lot more.
George Washington named Major General Nathanael (and that’s the way it’s spelled, not Nathaniel) Greene as commander in chief of the Continental Army in the South in December 1780. A native of Rhode Island and a lifelong Quaker, Greene had served honorably with Washington going back to the early days of the war at Boston, New York, and Valley Forge, including a stint as quartermaster general of the army.
The appointment came after the new nation had sustained more than five years of debilitating wartime hardship and hit-and-miss battlefield engagements. Earlier in 1780 Washington had been forced to take harsh action to put down mutinies within his ranks. At times some members of Congress suggested replacing him as top commander.
The military was chronically short of ammunition, supplies, and pay for the troops. Militia volunteers came and went based on their own personal and family needs rather than the necessities of the battlefield.
British strategy added to Greene’s difficult 1780 assignment. They planned to conquer the South and then head north to defeat Washington’s army. Lord Charles Cornwallis’ seasoned Redcoats had pushed into South and North Carolina, taking control there as well as in Georgia. They had soundly defeated Greene’s predecessor, General Horatio Gates, at Camden, South Carolina, capturing 1,000 American prisoners along with precious artillery and supplies.
When Greene arrived in western North Carolina in December to take command of the American military in the South, he found only a skeleton of an army left after Gates’s Camden defeat, with very little financial help from Congress and supplies woefully short. In the next couple months he set about scaring up ammunition, other supplies, and recruits.
Early in 1781 Cornwallis’ seasoned army launched an offensive against Greene’s much inferior force, and that was when Greene’s military skill showed itself. The British effort failed, thanks to Greene’s careful evasion tactics, such as keeping rapidly rising rivers and streams between his men and the Redcoats. Meanwhile he was amassing more men, equipment and supplies, and Cornwallis was extending his troops farther and farther from their own supply lines.
By March 1781 Greene had grown his forces to the point where he felt ready to confront Cornwallis. The battle took place at Guilford Court House, North Carolina. The British won, but they sustained 633 casualties, many more than Greene’s losses, in large part due to accurate American riflemen’s marksmanship.
Overextended, Cornwallis retreated to the coast at Wilmington, thereby handing control of North Carolina to Greene. The British retreat encouraged more volunteers to join Greene’s army, and the expanded American forces harried Cornwallis and his lieutenants out of most of South Carolina as well, leaving only the coastal city of Charleston in British hands.
Before long Cornwallis gathered his forces into Yorktown, Virginia, near the ocean, and the rest is history, with Washington and the French fleet forcing Cornwallis’ surrender in October 1781. A year later the British withdrew from Charleston, and Greene took possession of the city. He resigned his army commission in late 1783.
Nathanael Greene’s postwar life, sadly, was short and difficult. Grateful Southern states awarded him estates for his service, and he and his wife Catharine relocated to Mulberry Grove Plantation outside of Savannah, Georgia.
But his loyalty to the American cause during the war years hounded him. In 1782 and 1783 he had had difficulty supplying his troops in Charleston with clothing and provisions, and he personally borrowed money to furnish supplies. The U.S. government authorized the payment, but because of unscrupulous actions by the supply contractor, Greene ended up having to pay the debt himself. Financial trouble continued to plague him.
In June 1786 he stopped at a friend’s rice plantation on his way home from Savannah. During a long inspection of the rice fields under the hot Georgia sun he fell ill from sunstroke, and died a week later back at home. He was 43.
Greene earned a sterling reputation for his service and his ability. One historian describes him as Washington’s “most trusted military subordinate,” and fellow officers described him as the man Washington had designated to succeed him if he were killed or captured. Cornwallis wrote that Greene was “as dangerous as Washington. There is but little hope of gaining an advantage over him.”
One American historian maintains that Greene was the “most underrated general” in American history.
Not a bad namesake for a county. ♦
