Washington's General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution [Hardcover]

Terry Golway (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2004

The overlooked Quaker from Rhode Island who won the Revolutionary War's crucial southern campaign and helped to set up the final victory of American independence at Yorktown

Nathanael Greene is a revolutionary hero who has been lost to history. Although places named in his honor dot city and country, few people know his quintessentially American story as a self-made, self-educated military genius who renounced his Quaker upbringing-horrifying his large family-to take up arms against the British. Untrained in military matters when he joined the Rhode Island militia in 1774, he quickly rose to become Washington's right-hand man and heir apparent. After many daring exploits during the war's first four years (and brilliant service as the army's quartermaster), he was chosen in 1780 by Washington to replace the routed Horatio Gates in South Carolina.

Greene's southern campaign, which combined the forces of regular troops with bands of irregulars, broke all the rules of eighteenth-century warfare and foreshadowed the guerrilla wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His opponent in the south, Lord Cornwallis, wrote, "Greene is as dangerous as Washington. I never feel secure when I am encamped in his neighborhood. He is vigilant, enterprising, and full of resources." Greene's ingenious tactics sapped the British of their strength and resolve even as they "won" nearly every battle. Terry Golway argues that Greene's appointment as commander of the American Southern Army was the war's decisive moment, and this bold new book returns Greene to his proper place in the Revolutionary era's pantheon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Born into a prosperous Quaker family in Rhode Island, Greene (1742–1786) had no formal education and remained at his family's forge into his 30s, when he abruptly abjured pacifism as the Revolution gathered steam. Through thorough research, Golway (So Others Might Live: A History of New York's Bravest), who has written for American Heritage, makes Greene's numerous and complex accomplishments accessible, committing few excesses of patriotism (and fewer of psychobiography). From the Revolution's earliest stages, Greene was appointed commanding general of the Rhode Island contingent in the Patriots' siege of Boston; Golway shows him as one of Washington's most trusted subordinates, with a mixed record as a field commander and a good one as a very reluctant quartermaster-general (a job that made making bricks without straw look simple). In the war's darkest days, in late 1780, Greene was appointed commander in the Southern theater, where the British had nearly swept all before them. Without ever winning a major battle, Greene, Golway shows, kept his army in the field, supported Patriot militias and suppressed Tory ones, undercut British logistics, eventually forced Cornwallis north to Yorktown and besieged Charleston. Along the way he married and had a lively family life, became a slave-owner (through owning land in Georgia) and then died of sunstroke and asthma. Golway makes a convincing case that Greene should be better known. (Feb. 2)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Nathanael Greene's historical fame arises from his thwarting of Britain's southern campaign in 1780-81 during the War of Independence. Since the appearance of the previous comprehensive biography more than four decades ago, scholars have collected and published Greene's papers, a project that works to this author's advantage in giving an intimate impression of Greene's qualities, both positive and negative. Much of his correspondence to his wife survives (though hers to him doesn't), enabling Golway to narrate Greene's performance in the battles and campaigns of the war, in most of which he participated. Before the war, Greene was apparently politically inert but became radicalized over British depredations that damaged his Rhode Island enterprises. Although Golway is always attentive to Greene's personal interests (and alludes to Greene's possible embezzlement while quartermaster general of the army), Greene did acquire a nationalist outlook and in fact relocated to the South after the war, albeit to become a slaveholding plantation owner. In a solidly sourced, evenhanded portrait, Golway gives readers a Greene with faults but also with the military strengths on which George Washington relied. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 355 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1st edition (December 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805070664
• ISBN-13: 978-0805070668
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #588,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book about a truly underapppreciated American hero, September 19, 2005

By 

Howard Schulman (Providence, RI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Washington's General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution (Hardcover)

Why a magazine columnist from New Jersey would choose to write about Rhode Island's unsung Revolutionary War hero is beyond me, but I'm sure glad he did. To me, it's quite clear that Greene was never adequately recognized for his wartime accomplishments because he died unexpectedly in 1786 of a stroke at age 44 and never had the chance to participate and obtain fame in the founding of the new nation.

Who knows where events would have lead had he lived. He clearly had Washington's utmost respect and gratitude, and he demonstrated the highest integrity, leadership, dedication, competency, determination, and ability to get things done during times of great stress and deprivation.

Nathanael Greene's "Southern Campaign" is probably the most under appreciated aspect of the War in the books coming out today. The recent best sellers "1776" by McCullough and Pulitzer Prize-winning "Washington's Crossing" by Fisher seem to imply that after the surprise victories at Trenton and Princeton the war was all over, but this couldn't be further from the truth.

The next several years were dismal (the winter at Valley Forge was 1777-8), and it wasn't until the war later moved into the South and Greene assumed control that the colonialist learned how to defeat the British--inflict punishment, lead the British away from their supplies, and then retreat into the woods. This was Greene's strategy, and he executed it with utmost ability and skill. This is why a battered Cornwallis headed to Yorktown, to get desperately needed supplies. Washington had the personal touch, but Greene got things done, and Washington knew it and appreciated it. Everyone knew that if Washington was injured, Greene would take over.

The book read very quickly, especially the exciting section on the Southern Campaign. It also presented the more human side of Greene very well--his fondness for his very attractive wife Caty, his fierce loyality to Washington, his weakness for needing to receive recognition for his accomplishments from Washington, his determination to derive personal profit from the war, and his strict aesthetic Quaker upbringing against which he rebelled.

Earlier this year I visited the Greene homestead in Coventry, Rhode Island. It's a very simple home, set on roughly ten acres of land that is amazingly just now being cleared of overgrown brush. I'd definitely recommend a visit. The curators mentioned that there were more visitors from the South than the North. I still have a hard time believing it, but at least now I understand this better. Apparently, down south, Greene is getting his due. It's kind of a shame for the Rhode Island home boy.

The Sept 7, 2005 reviewer mentions that the two maps in the front of the book, indicating where battles were fought, could have been better. I'd have to agree.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Introducing General Greene, August 7, 2005

By 

P. Microulis (North Providence, RI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Washington's General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution (Hardcover)

Years ago I attended Nathanael Greene Elementary School in Pawtucket, RI, but it is only now that I can see I know anything of substance about a man who can claim a great deal of responsibility for the favorable concluding of our Revolutionary War.

The author presents, if in a manner occasionally lacking direction, a photograph on a Revolutionary Hero whose fall to the second or third tier of Founder status was certainly not due to his ability, his efforts or his promise. His portrayal is of a common man of the period - constantly concerned with his finances (as were all those we count as leaders of the Independence effort); very guarded and jealous about his reputation (another common trait among these folk); but clearly fallen on one side of the fence dividing Tories and Revolutionaries.

Greene's escapades thru the Carolinas and Virginia, and the cat and mouse game he played with British General Cornwallis, gave the rebels the opportunity to win the war. Without these accomplishments, the British might have indeed, as Washington worried, gain command of the southern colonies, and with that foothold, move their way northward. Instead, Greene's dance led them in a variety of different directions, and ultimately to their fate at Yorktown.

The author has captured in his portrayal of Greene, the marks of a hero, and the flaws and failings of a man. His accounts of Greene's quarrels with Congress, his unwavering pit-bull defense of Washington, and his arguments with, among others, John Adams, color the general as a man of conviction, if not always grace. At the same time, the author shows the easily bruised ego, the roving eye for financial opportunities, and the man who cannot say NO to his beautiful young wife.

The coverage given to Katy Greene is either too much or too little. For the amount of space she inhabits here, the conclusions that can be drawn about her, beyond her fertility, are few.

Overlooking a few editorial miscues (On at least a few occasions, the book refers to Greene's activities in Conventry, RI - instead of Coventry), this book takes you away from the hero worship that is given to a handful of people from this era, and brings home the notion that the war was fought and won, not by Adams or Franklin or Jefferson, but by those whose existence was murky, and whose commitment to this effort lived through circumstances so dire that we can only read about them. We certainly cannot grasp or understand them.

It also tells you about the dangerous nature of those times. That Greene could die within 5 years of the war's end, in his mid 40s, from a sudden illness, reminds us that living in those days was difficult in even the most basic ways.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greene Gets His Due........., July 3, 2005

By 

M. Gaines (Alabama, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Washington's General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution (Hardcover)

Terry Golway's "Washington's General" is a marvelous piece of history written in the same manner as McCullough's "1776", in which Golway pays tribute to the most important figure in American history behind Washington.
In Golway's arousing and commanding writting style we are transported through history to a time that seemed as if there was little hope for the vision of independence held by Washington and Greene.
Through Greene's Quaker religious upbringing and sparse education, we see the developing stages of a man who would go on to lead the American Republic through the trials and tribulations of a new political idealogy.
Though Greene was stigmatised by critical condemnation, his unyielding dedication to Washington and the cause of liberty elavated him above those who espoused the elements of a new republic but lacked the self sacrifice that requires victory.
Greene accomplished and sacrificed much for the new Republic from his assigned duties as Quarter Master General of the Contental Army, which he lothed, saving the starving army of Valley Forge and Jocky Hollow with his adminstrative skills and underming the Conway cable who sought to undermine Washington at a time that questioned his abilities to lead the army to the victories it so strived to achieve.
Greene lead the victory with brilliant hit and run strategy of the southern campaigns that brought an end to Cornwallis's expedition through the Carolina's and his eventual surrender at Yorktown.
There is much to learn about a true unsung hero of the American Republic and with Golway's exuberant storytelling Nathanel Greene's historic legacy has been brought to its rightful forefront of American History. Brilliant, rewarding and insightfull.............