Greene or move toward the north, Cornwallis was forced
to withdraw to Wilmington and thence to Yorktown.
This allowed Greene and his men to gain a much-needed
rest. Greene again moved against the British in South
Carolina, taking several garrisons and confronting Brit-
ish forces at Orangeburg on 11 May 1781 and at Eutaw
Springs on 8 September 1781. Here the British, under
Lieutenant Colonel James Stuart, withdrew. However,
when Greene’s forces stopped to loot the abandoned
British camp, Stuart was able to rally his men and return
to the field, catching them unprepared and forcing an
American evacuation. The British suffered 85 dead and
350 wounded; the Americans had 139 killed and 375
wounded. Once again, however, the English were forced
to withdraw to Charleston without following the Ameri-
cans. Eutaw Springs is generally considered a British vic-
tory, but Stuart could not support Cornwallis’s troops
at Yorktown and remained penned up in Charleston for
the rest of the war. This led to Cornwallis’s decision to
surrender at Yorktown on 19 October 1781, ending the
American Revolutionary War.
Although he was a national hero, Greene refused
invitations to serve the new government as secretary of
War in 1781 and 1784. In recognition of his service, the
states of South Carolina and Georgia awarded him land
and money. He built an estate on the land in Georgia,
naming the property Mulberry Grove, and retired there
in 1785. On 19 June 1786, after suffering from sun-
stroke, Greene died at Mulberry Grove, age 43.
Despite his excellent command of American forces
in the war that gave birth to the United States as a na-
tion, Greene’s name has been largely forgotten. One
biographer, David Paul Nelson, wrote: “The first time
[that] Washington met Greene he declared that Greene
could be relied upon to assume command of the Con-
tinental army should he become incapacitated. Thomas
Jefferson asserted long after the war that Greene had no
equal as a military thinker among his peers in the officer
corps, and Francis Kinloch, a congressman who fought
in the war, called him the ‘military genius’ of the Ameri-
can Revolution. These assessments of Greene are borne
out by his military record in both the North and the
South, and historians today evaluate his military abili-
ties as highly as did his contemporaries. Few would deny
that he deserves to be remembered as the ‘strategist of
the Revolution.’ ”References: Greene, George W., Life of Nathanael Greene
(New York: G. P. Putnam and Son, 1867–71); Paul, David
Nelson, “Greene, Nathanael,” in American National Bi-
ography, edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes
(New York: Oxford University Press; 24 volumes, 1999),
IX:528–30; North, Bruce, “Greene, Nathanael,” in Ency-
clopedia of American War Heroes (New York: Checkmark
Books, 2002), 102.Gustav II (Gustavus Adolphus, Gustavus II, Gustav
Adolf the Great) (1594–1632) king of Sweden
Gustavus Adolphus was born in Stockholm on 9 De-
cember 1594, the son of Charles IX, king of Sweden.Nathanael Greene
guStAv ii