| Birth: | Aug. 7, 1742 | | Death: | Jun. 19, 1786 | 
American general in the Revolutionary War, sharing the distinction with George Washington of being the only generals who served from first campaign to last. Raised a Quaker and trained as a manager in his father’s iron foundry, he served several terms in the Rhode Island assembly, and, in 1785, when Rhode Island established a “Army of Observation,” Greene was selected as a brigadier general. His specialty was supply and logistics, which led Washington to appoint Greene to the post of Quartermaster General in 1778, having served by Washington’s side in the Long Island, New Jersey retreat, Trenton, Princeton, Germantown, Brandywine, and Monmouth campaigns. Greene resigned as Quartermaster General in July 1780 after coming to an impasse in negotiations with Congress over requisitioning procedures. After Gen. Horatio Gates was trounced by the British at the Battle of Camden (August 1780), Washington appointed Greene Commander of the Southern Department. His adversary, General Lord Charles Cornwallis, seemed to be in a far superior position, as not only did he have the larger, better-equipped army, but he also had a communication network based in the large body of Loyalist sympathy which remained in the South. Greene played a cat-and-mouse game with Cornwallis, splitting the Colonial forces, allowing them to travel faster and lighter than they would have as a single unit, but still within proximity for concerted action. Cornwallis was forced to split his army as well, which he was tactically and strategically not prepared for. Greene’s forces led Cornwallis further and further inland from the British supply bases at Wilmington and Charleston, and the two armies finally confronted each other at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse (now Greensboro, NC) on June 15, 1781. Technically, Cornwallis won, since Greene’s army left the field, but the British casualties were such, and his lines of communications were so stretched, that all he could think about was moving North to Virginia to lick his wounds. When Parliament was informed of the “victory,” Charles James Fox exclaimed, "Another such victory would destroy the British Army." The spot Cornwallis chose for his resupply base, a peninsula on York River near the Atlantic coast, turned out to be his undoing: Yorktown. After the War, Greene retired to a plantation near Savannah, Georgia, but difficulties with the life of a farmer and debts still being held over him from the war led to ill-health, and he died of a stroke at the age of 44. (bio by: Paul F. Wilson)
Search Amazon for Nathanael Greene | | | Burial:
Johnson Square
Savannah
Chatham County
Georgia, USA |
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Jan 01, 2001
Find A Grave Memorial# 418 |
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