R.I.’s Revolutionary hero started life as a Quaker

WOONSOCKET -- Pssst. Don’t tell anyone, but historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist David McCullough’s next book may focus on the life and times of American Revolutionary War general and Rhode Island native son Nathanael Greene. That little tidbit of insider information was provided by Norman Desmarais, professor and acquisitions librarian at Providence College, who presented his "Redcoats and Rebels" program at the Museum of Work and Culture Sunday.

Desmarais recently met McCullough, who apparently became interested in Greene’s story while researching his most recent best seller, "1776."

Greene, second only to George Washington among military leaders in the Revolutionary War, is noted for his victories against the British in North and South Carolina during 1780 and 1782. Greene was born in Potowomut, R.I., on Aug. 7, 1742, to a prosperous Quaker farmer. In 1770, hemoved to Coventry to work in the family foundries. Because of his interest in many military affairs, the Quaker fellowship expelled him due to its opposition to war. He was later elected to the Rhode Island General Assembly.

Desmarais’ presentation was the last in a series of six free National Park Service Ranger Days lectures held at the museum since January. Like the five previous programs, Sunday’s event attracted a large number of attendees who came out to hear Demarais discuss the creation of the Continental Army and how it compared to the armies of the crown’s forces during the Revolutionary War.

An active re-enactor and author of "Battlegrounds of Freedom," Desmarais was joined by fellow re-enactors Marshall Sloat and Frank Daly. All three were dressed in period uniforms and equipped with replica flintlock muskets and other authentic props. Desmarais came dressed in the Continental soldier’s uniform, while Daly was dressed in the everyday farmer’s clothes of the minuteman. Sloat sported the frontiersman look of the Revolutionary War rifleman.

The trio’s extensive historical knowledge of uniforms, weapons and battles brought the American Revolutionary war to life for the 40 or so people attending the lecture, which was accompanied by slide photos of Revolutionary War re-enactments, including those staged by the Ye Olde Lebanon Towne Militia.

The crowd listened attentively as they explained the history of the flintlock musket. The main use of the flintlock musket was to provide volley fire by the soldiers -- that is, a large amount of soldiers stood in a line next to each other and fired their weapons at once on command. This could produce a devastating effect if the enemy was within the useable range of between 50 and 80 yards. Beyond that, the musket was inaccurate and would miss its target by a wide margin. The firearm, which had no sights, was seldom aimed but mostly pointed in the general direction of the enemy.

"They could load and shoot four rounds in a minute, but most of the time they couldn’t hit a damn thing,’ said Desmarais. "If 100 men lined up shoulder to shoulder and shot at the same time they would be lucky to hit 20 percent of their target."

What made the flintlock musket a more devastating weapon, he said, was the attached bayonet.

"The typical soldier in those days stood about 5 foot 3 inches tall, which was about as tall his musket," he explained. "The bayonet gave the soldier a little more reach."

The bayonets used in the war were later outlawed by the Geneva Conventions because the wounds inflicted were devastating and nearly always fatal.

The Continental Army also had several companies of expert rifleman who hailed from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The long rifle was intended to be used at a range far greater than the usual smoothbore musket and enabled the marksman to select his target, rather than to blindly fire at a mass of men.

These sharpshooters, who could hit their targets at 250 yards, terrified the British, Sloat said.

In making another Rhode Island connection, Desmarais said one of the largest battles of the war was fought on Aquidneck Island. The Battle of Rhode Island took place on Aug. 29, 1778, when units of the Continental Army under the command of John Sullivan attempted to recapture Aquidneck Island, also known as Rhode Island (rather than the state of Rhode Island), from British forces. The battle ended inconclusively, but the Continental Army had to give up its goal of capturing the island and securing Narraganset Bay for American and French ship traffic.

From American Heritage (emphasis added in bold):

Shortly after the American Revolution, a good part of Cumberland was bought by General Nathanael Greene, commander of American forces in the South at the end of the war. [See “Men of the Revolution—in” in the December, 1971, AMERICAN HERITAGE.] In 1785, when Greene completed his purchase of almost the entire southern end of the island, Cumberland was still covered with large stands of virgin live oak and pine. The General wanted to timber the island, and he began logging operations immediately. He also drew up plans for an enormous mansion to be situated on the southern end of Cumberland, where Oglethorpe had built his hunting lodge. Grecnc planned to call the house Dungcness, after OgIethorpc’s lodge, and he intended the home to be a summer retreat for his large family, then living at Mulberry Grove Plantation on the Savannah River in mainland Georeria.

Greene was heavily in debt as the result of personally guaranteeing payment for his troop supplies in the closing days of the war, and he was struggling to reclaim old rice fields at Mulberry Grove and recoup his fortune when he died suddenly of a stroke in 1786. His widow, the beautiful and elegant Catherine, carried through her husband’s plans for Dungcness, and in 1803 moved her family (including a second husband) into the massive house that rose far above the trees at the south end of Cumberland. Dungeness was made of tabby (a concretelike mixture of limestone and oyster shells), and it was truly enormous, containing thirty rooms and standing four stories high forty feet from the cellar sloncs with walls six feet thick at the base. There were four chimneys and sixteen fireplaces, and twenty rooms above the first floor. It was a tremendous and expensive undertaking for the time and the place, and the house was never finished. Someone invented the story that an old Greene family superstition forbade finishing the house, but the truth is that neither Catherine nor her second husband, Phineas Miller, ever had the monev. The house was situated on a huge shell midden, and it was visible for miles. It became, almost immediately, one of the most famous plantation residences of the islands, an elegantly appointed house surrounded by an enclosed twelve-acre garden of tropical and semitropical plants, including crepe myrtle, sage palms, orange, clove, and fig trees, rubber plants, date palms, camphor and coffee trees, Portuguese laurel, guava, lime, citron, pomegranate, and many, many others. East of the house was a grove of eight hundred olive trees, and south, beyond the garden, a littie spit of land extended into the marsh where live oaks, festooned with Spanish moss, formed a natural canopy to shade out the hot Georgia sun. It was to this cool, relaxing spot, which the Greene children called the Park, that the family would retire at the end of the day.

All in all, Dungeness was an enchanting place, and Catherine Greene-Miller was a lavish hostess. Few weeks went by without at least two or three houseguests present. Kitty, as many of her friends called her, was a beautiful and sophisticated woman, a friend of many of the most illustrious patriots of the American Revolution. She was one of the handful of women who had borne the bitter winter at Valley Forge, gaining there the admiration and friendship not only of Washington but of Lafayette, Anthony Wayne, von Steuben, and Kosciusko as well. But no person as lovely and popular as Kitty Greene could long remain without enemies, and soon after General Greene died, she was linked romantically with Anthony—“Mad Anthony”—Wayne. The republican farmers of Georgia, who disliked Mrs. Greene for her aristocratic, federalist leanings, quickly spread the rumor that she and Wayne had been having an affair long before Greene died. Later the rumor was broadened to a version that had Kitty and Wayne murdering the General with a butcher knife.

But Catherine Greene was no murderess. She was a highly intelligent woman, strong-willed and accustomed to getting her way, yet accustomed also to hardships and disappointment. She had the knack of turning friendships—even casual ones—into extremely intimate relationships, and, of course, this was always interpreted in the basest physical terms by the local citizenry. Furthermore, Kitty was from Rhode Island, and most of her friends were Yankees, including Eli Whitney, who invented the cotton gin at Mulberry Grove in 1793. It was Catherine Greene who originally encouraged Whitney to work on the gin, and popular lore even credits her with a hand in the invention. When Whitney was perplexed over how to sweep the gin teeth clean, it is said that Mrs. Greene remarked, “Why Eli, you need a brush,” and flicked the lint from the teeth with her hairbrush.

It was Catherine’s second husband, Phineas Miller, who formed the illfated partnership with Whitney to manufacture and sell the gin. The innumerable lawsuits and trials of Miller & Whitney to protect their patent are too well-known to detail, but it was the frustration of dealing with the shrewd, unscrupulous backwoods Georgia farmers that led Whitney ultimately to observe: “I have a set of the most Depraved villains to combat and I might as well go to Hell in search of Happiness as apply to a Georgia Court for Justice.”

I grew up hearing from my father that I was somehow related to the famous General Nathaniel Greene. The folklore that ran in my family basically said that in his day, Greene was more popular than George Washington, himself. (I guess his wife Catherine had something to do with that).

It's popularly held that had Nat Greeene not suffered from heat/sun stroke while out surveying his land on a hot Georgia day, he might have become the first President of the United States. He died in 1786.

In May 1787, George Washington headed the Virginia delegation to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and was unanimously elected presiding officer. His presence lent prestige to the proceedings, and although he made few direct contributions, he generally supported the advocates of a strong central government. After the new Constitution was submitted to the states for ratification and became legally operative, he was unanimously elected president (1789).

Had Nat Greene lived and become the First President of these United States, our paper currency might have come to be known as "Greenebacks"...

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