The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [350]
—MADAME ANNE-LOUISE BRILLON
NATHANAEL GREENE
During 1782, he continues to maintain his post in the Carolinas, and when the British evacuate Charleston, Greene occupies the city as his headquarters. He spends long months assisting the state of South Carolina to rebuild its government. He is thus rewarded with enormous gifts of both land and money from the three states in his department, the Carolinas and Georgia. In August 1783, he travels home to a hero’s welcome in Rhode Island, but returns to the south with prospects for settling into the life of a gentleman farmer.
His personal reputation is severely damaged by a scandal involving the finances he had worked to secure for the feeding of his army, a problem that Washington had eliminated through the support of Robert Morris in Pennsylvania. But the Southern Departments are too far removed from the concerns of congress, and Greene learns that those he trusted to secure the debts necessary to provide for his men have squandered the funds. Despite his reception in the southern states as an heroic savior, he is nonetheless held accountable for the financial pledges, and thus, most of the gifts he has been rewarded are reclaimed by the states as payment.
In the summer of 1785, he moves Kitty and his now four children to the one remaining property he holds in Georgia, called Mulberry Grove. His years of frustration in dealing with the congress, both as Washington’s subordinate and as quartermaster general, give him considerable insight into politics, and he writes often about the critical need for a central government. His principles and suggestions mirror many of those eventually written into the Constitution. Though he is considered a likely candidate for several political offices, he refuses any offers, has had enough of life so far removed from his family. He settles well into the pleasant life on his farm, surprises himself that he shares Washington’s enthusiasm for the soil. He is surprised even more when he learns his passion is shared by a new neighbor, “Mad Anthony” Wayne.
But Greene’s New England upbringing has given him a weakness he cannot predict, and despite so many campaigns and so much physical distress in war, it is the summer sun that strikes him down. Accompanied by Kitty, he journeys to Savannah in an unsheltered carriage, and the oppressive heat gives him a fever from which he never recovers. On June 19, 1785, attended by Kitty and Anthony Wayne, Greene dies. He is forty-four.
He is one of only two general officers who serve in the army continuously from the first siege of Boston through the surrender. The other is Washington, who, after the British surrender, salutes Greene with what is now an ironic note: “I congratulate you on the glorious end you have put to hostilities in the Southern States. The honor and advantage of it I hope you will live long to enjoy.”
Strangely, Greene is often overlooked by early historians, and his greatest notoriety emerges first from the pens of the British. Sir John Fortescue writes: “Greene’s reputation stands firmly on his campaign in the Carolinas. His keen insight into the heart of the blunders of Cornwallis and his skillful use of his troops are the most notable features of his work. He is a general of profound common sense.”
Greene’s friend and subordinate, Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, proposes to congress a resolution that a monument to Nathanael Greene be constructed in the nation’s capital. The motion passes with no controversy, but the matter is strangely forgotten. In 1875, the issue is reopened by Rhode Island’s two senators, and ninety years late, the monument is finally constructed in Washington, D.C.
As long as the enterprises of Trenton and Princeton shall be regarded as the dawning of that bright day which afterward broke forth with such resplendent luster, so long ought the name of Greene to be revered by a grateful country.
—ALEXANDER HAMILTON, 1789
MARIE DU MOTIER, THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE