The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

Major General Nathanael Greene, who would earn acclaim as one of the finest commanders in American military history, seemed an unlikely great captain. “I was educated a Quaker, amongst the most superstitious sort,” he had written in 1772, a fifth-generation Rhode Islander and the third of eight sons in a black-garbed clan that made anchors and heavy chains. Taught Euclid and a smattering of Latin, young Nathanael otherwise educated himself to dispel “the mist of ignorance,” devouring Horace, Swift, Pope, Locke, Blackstone, Jacob’s Law Dictionary, Book-keeping Methodized, and various military treatises, including Frederick the Great’s Instructions for His Generals. Though he could be thin-skinned and moody, his imitation of the fumbling, pudgy Dr. Slop in Tristram Shandy was much praised by his friends for comic verve. A severe asthmatic whose togs smelled of forge smoke, Greene was a double-chinned, blue-eyed bumpkin with a deep chest, brawny shoulders, and heavy palm calluses, which he shaved to make his hands more supple.