General Greene by Francis Vinton Greene

Author:Francis Vinton Greene [Greene, Francis Vinton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Barnes & Noble

Delaware 1 regiment of infantry.

Maryland 5 regiments of infantry.

Virginia 8 regiments of infantry, 1 of artillery, and 2 of cavalry.

North Carolina 4 regiments of infantry.

South Carolina 2 regiments of infantry.

Georgia 1 regiment of infantry.

—

Total

21 regiments of infantry, 1 of artillery, and 2 of cavalry.

Or a total force of about fifteen thousand men.

But all this was on paper. It was even more true now than when Washington said it four years before, that "there is a material difference between voting battalions and raising men." Washington had about seven thousand men in the Northern army, and Greene had two thousand at the South; the rest of the forty thousand men called for by the resolutions of Congress did not exist. The regiments of South Carolina and Georgia had never been raised, and nearly all the regiments of Virginia and North Carolina had been made prisoners at the fall of Charleston. The regiments of Delaware and Maryland had marched from New Jersey to North Carolina, under De Kalb, in the spring of 1780. They had formed the Continental portion of Gates's army, and had been in the disaster at Camden. What was left of them constituted the eight hundred men fit for duty when Greene took command.

The so-called Southern army, as Greene wrote to Knox, was "rather a shadow than a substance, having only an imaginary existence." It was not only deficient in numbers, but lacking in organization, discipline, equipment, supplies, and everything that constitutes an efficient force. The men had little or no clothing, there were no wagons or other means of transportation, there was but little ammunition, there was no organized medical department, and there was no ready money to purchase supplies; the men were dispirited by defeat, and they were in the habit of going home when they felt so inclined and returning at their pleasure. The outlook was in the last degree discouraging.

Nevertheless Greene was hopeful, and he immediately set to work to introduce some degree of order. His first step was to put a stop to men absenting themselves without leave. A deserter was tried, convicted, and hanged in the presence of the entire force. He next put Lieutenant-Colonel Carrington in charge of the quartermaster's department, and Lieutenant-Colonel Davie in charge of the commissariat—both excellent appointments. Though their resources were slender, yet they soon contrived to keep the army so far supplied that it was able to move. Greene kept up an incessant correspondence with his representatives in Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, urging them to forward men and supplies. He made arrangements for collecting a supply of boats to transport his stores up and down the rivers, and for another lot of boats to form an improvised pontoon train, which was of the greatest value a few months later in his rapid marches across the numerous rivers which run from the Alleghanies through the Carolinas to the sea. His army was so destitute of everything, that he was compelled in his correspondence to specify the urgent necessity of such minor articles as boards, nails, and horseshoes.

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