Historian Michael Lee Lanning writes of Grant’s
legacy: “Grant—short, stocky and round-shouldered—
never impressed anyone with his military bearing. A
failure in nearly everything else he attempted, he nev-
ertheless ranks as one of the most influential military
leaders in history. His casualty lists were long, and he
did indeed drink to excess. However, he won the most
divisive and decisive war in U.S. history and ensured
that the Union would survive and that slavery would
be abolished.”
References: McFeeley, William S., Grant: A Biography
(New York: Norton, 1981); Coppée, Henry, Grant and
His Campaigns: A Military Biography (New York: C. B.
Richardson, 1866); Marshall-Cornwall, Sir James Handy-
side, Grant as Commander (London: Batsford, 1970);
John Keegan, “Grant and Unheroic Leadership” in The
Mask of Command (Viking/Elisabeth Sifton Books, 1987),
164–234; Thompson, Henry Yates, An Englishman in the
American Civil War: The Diaries of Henry Yates Thompson,
1863, edited by Sir Christopher Chancellor (London:
Sedgwick and Jackson, 1971); Lanning, Michael Lee,
“Ulysses Simpson Grant,” in The Military 100: A Ranking
of the Most Influential Military Leaders of All Time (New
York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1996),127–131.
Greene, Nathanael (1742–1786) American
general
Nathanael Greene was born on 7 August 1742 (not 6
June, as reported in some accounts) in the village of
Potowomut, near Warwick, Rhode Island, the son of a
Quaker farmer. When he was 26, he moved to Coventry,
Rhode Island, and was elected to the colonial legislature;
he was reelected several times until 1775. In 1774, he
joined the Rhode Island militia, but his military activi-
ties conflicted with his strict Quaker upbringing, and he
was expelled from the Society of Friends.
By 1775, relations between the American colonies
and the ruling government in London were at a crisis.
Greene was placed in command of a militia unit raised
in Rhode Island, and, when the war for independence
began, he joined his forces to the colonial army at
Cambridge. On 22 June 1775, Greene was appointed a
brigadier general by the Continental Congress, and the
American commander, General George Washington,
placed him in command of the city of Boston after En-
glish forces under Lord William Howe evacuated the
city in March 1776. His work in consolidating colonial
gains in New England led to his promotion on 9 Au-
gust 1776 as one of four major generals in the Con-
tinental army. Placed in command of American forces
on New York’s Long Island, Greene became violently ill
and could not take part in the battle of Long Island (27
August 1776). He was transferred to take command of
Fort Lee, New Jersey, and in October 1776 he succeeded
General Israel Putnam as the commander of Fort Wash-
ington, New York. Before he arrived there, Fort Wash-
ington came under attack by English troops under Lord
Howe and the colonial side took heavy losses. Although
Greene had not been present when the attack took place,
he was widely blamed for the defeat, but Washington,
realizing that Greene was blameless, took responsibil-
ity for the loss. This confidence in him allowed Greene
to command troops in several important battles, most
notably at Trenton (26 December 1776), Brandywine
(10–11 September 1777), and Germantown (3–4 Oc-
tober 1777).
On the resignation of Thomas Mifflin as quarter-
master general, Greene accepted Washington’s request
to replace him on 2 March 1778 while continuing to
command forces on the battlefield. However, in August
1778, after only five months in the post, Greene resigned
as quartermaster general when he clashed with the Con-
tinental Congress over the rights of a treasury oversight
board to interfere with the militia administration.
When General Horatio gates failed to stop the
advances of Lord cornWallis’s British forces in South
Carolina, Washington again turned to Greene, naming
him commander in chief of the southern wing of the
Continental army. When Greene arrived in North Caro-
lina in December 1780 to take command, he found an
ill-equipped army with low morale facing a vastly supe-
rior force under Cornwallis. With tremendous energy,
he brought the army into better condition. He then de-
cided to divide his forces and dispersing them around
the area, forcing the English to do likewise. At Cowpens,
South Carolina, on 17 January 1781, a small American
force under General Daniel Morgan defeated an English
contingent under Lord Cornwallis. Greene used his dis-
persed forces to stage a series of hit-and-run attacks on
the English, forcing Cornwallis to fight a war for which
he was not prepared. Although Greene was defeated at
Guilford Court House on 15 March 1781, Cornwal-
lis took so many casualties (548, nearly half his force)
that his triumph was a Pyrrhic victory. Unable to pursue gReene, nAthAnAel