Key figures: Nathanael Greene, George Washington, Israel Putnam, Robert Magaw, William Howe
Summary
Nathanael Greene (1742–1786), a Rhode Island ironworks owner and self-educated militia organizer, entered 1776 as one of the Continental Army’s eight brigadier generals and ended it as one of its four major generals and among George Washington’s most relied-upon subordinates. Congress promoted Greene to major general on August 9, 1776, placing him in command of Continental troops on Long Island as Howe’s invasion force gathered. Illness kept him from the field during the Battle of Long Island itself, but he went on to command Fort Constitution (soon renamed Fort Lee) on the New Jersey side of the Hudson and to advise Washington on the fateful decision to hold Fort Washington, whose fall on November 16 he did not personally command but had urged defending. Greene closed the year leading one of the two American columns in Washington’s decisive counterstroke at the Battle of Trenton on December 26.
From Quaker Ironmaster to Continental General
Born August 7, 1742, in Warwick, Rhode Island, to a prosperous Quaker family that owned a forge and mill business, Greene had no formal military education and, according to tradition, was expelled from his Quaker meeting for attending militia drills. He helped found the Kentish Guards militia company in 1774 and, despite starting as a private because of a slight limp that colony leaders felt unbecoming of an officer, was elected the unit’s commander by year’s end. When the Rhode Island Assembly raised troops after Lexington and Concord in April 1775, it commissioned the 32-year-old Greene as a brigadier general of the colony’s “army of observation” — the youngest general officer in the force besieging Boston. When the Second Continental Congress absorbed these forces into the Continental Army in June 1775, Greene was retained as one of its original brigadier generals.
Promotion to Major General, August 9, 1776
As Washington shifted the main army to defend New York against the expected British invasion, Congress moved to fill out its senior command. On August 9, 1776, Greene was promoted to major general — one of four such promotions that August, alongside Israel Putnam, Charles Lee, and Horatio Gates — and was assigned command of the Continental forces defending Long Island. Greene selected the ground for the American fortifications on Brooklyn Heights, work that developed into the earthworks later known as Fort Greene. A severe fever, contracted in the weeks before the British landing, forced Greene from active command; he was still convalescing when the British attacked on August 27, and command of the Long Island defense passed instead to Israel Putnam and John Sullivan, whose lines were routed in the ensuing Battle of Long Island.
Fort Lee and the Fort Washington Controversy
Recovered by the autumn, Greene took command of Fort Constitution on the New Jersey Palisades opposite Fort Washington — a post soon renamed Fort Lee in honor of General Charles Lee. As Washington weighed whether to abandon the Manhattan garrison after the retreat from White Plains, Greene, who had operational authority over the area, urged that Fort Washington could and should be held, judging its terrain nearly impregnable and its loss of stores if evacuated too costly. Washington, uncertain, deferred to Greene’s judgment rather than overriding it. On October 25, 1776, Greene had briefly succeeded Israel Putnam in immediate command of the fort itself before returning his primary attention to Fort Lee. When Howe’s assault overwhelmed the garrison on November 16, Colonel Robert Magaw commanded the fort’s defense and surrender, but the decision to hold the position at all was widely traced back to Greene’s advice. The nearly 2,900 Continental soldiers captured — one of the war’s worst single losses — left Greene, in his own words, “mad, vext, sick and sorry.” Washington nonetheless retained him in senior command, a mark of the trust already established between the two men.
Trenton and the Turn of the Year
Following the fall of Fort Washington and the subsequent loss of Fort Lee on November 20, Greene took part in the demoralizing Continental Army retreat across New Jersey to the Delaware River. On the night of December 25–26, 1776, he led one of the two columns in Washington’s surprise crossing of the Delaware and attack on the Hessian garrison at the Battle of Trenton, advancing on the town from the Pennington Road while John Sullivan’s column approached along the river. The victory reversed the army’s fortunes after a string of autumn defeats and confirmed Greene’s standing as one of Washington’s most dependable field commanders — a partnership that would culminate, years later, in Greene’s appointment to command the Continental Army’s Southern Department.
Significance
Greene’s 1776 traced the arc of an amateur soldier’s rapid maturation into professional command: elected a militia captain in 1774, he was a Continental major general commanding a river fortress and leading an army wing into battle within two and a half years, without ever having served in a regular army. His advice to hold Fort Washington became one of the most scrutinized command decisions of the war, yet Washington’s continued confidence in him after that failure — confirmed at Trenton weeks later — set the pattern for a wartime partnership that would prove decisive in the war’s later southern campaigns.