Read Online Washington's General by Terry Golway - Free Book Online

the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and part to the Colony of Connecticut.” Sherwood added that he found the report hard to believe. Nevertheless, with the great port of Boston closed and their neighbors in Massachusetts under martial law, Rhode Islanders had reason to believe that anything was possible, given their own record of defiance. Wanton set aside June 30 as a day of fasting and prayer. In keeping with custom, Rhode Islanders were asked to pray for the king, and while they were at it, for the “relief ... of the town of Boston.” A correspondent identified only as “the Preacher” wrote in the
Newport Mercury
that it was “now high time for the Colonies to have a grand Congress to complete the system for the American Independent Commonwealth, as it is so evident that no other plan will secure the rights of this people from rapacious and plotting tyrants.” Such a congress did, in fact, convene in 1774–the First Continental Congress. But the Preacher’s goal was more radical than most of the delegates, who sought a more peaceful resolution to the growing conflict.
    Nathanael Greene followed events in Boston closely, and he oftenvisited the city, sixty miles from his home in Coventry, during the crisis in 1774. At some point during his journeys to Boston, he met a portly young bookseller named Henry Knox, who shared not only Greene’s love of literature but also his growing interest in military science.
    The Boston Port Act and the Intolerable Acts solidifed Greene’s evolution into a fledgling revolutionary. His letters now were filled with language that Samuel Adams would have enjoyed. Britain’s political leaders, he wrote, seemed “determined to embrace their cursed hands in American Blood, and that once Wise and Virtuous Parliament, but now Wicked and weak Assembly, lends an assisting hand to accomplish their hellish schemes.” He condemned the soldiers in Boston as “insolent above measure.” And, like Adams, he saw events speeding toward a violent end. “Soon very soon expect to hear the thirsty Earth drinking in the warm Blood of American sons. O how my eyes [flash] with indignation and my bosom burns with holy resentment.”
    It was not only resentment that so agitated Greene’s bosom. Quite the opposite. He had fallen in love, again, this time to a nineteen-year-old beauty he had known since she was a little girl. Her name was Catherine Littlefield, and she was a cousin of Sammy Ward’s. Catherine’s mother died when she was ten, so she left her home on Block Island and moved to the home of her mother’s sister, who was married to William Greene, a distant relation of Nathanael’s and a prominent political leader in the colony. Nathanael Greene was an occasional visitor to William Greene’s house, so he watched the couple’s niece, known to her friends as Caty, blossom into a charming and flirtatious young woman who enjoyed the company of men. One observer described her as a “small brunette with high color, a vivacious expression, and a snapping pair of dark eyes.” Other descriptions insist, with equal enthusiasm, that those dark eyes actually were violet.
    Her aunt, Catherine Ray Greene, was just as charming and lovely as Caty Littlefield. When Catherine Ray was younger and single, she fell in love with the married but frequently obliging Benjamin Franklin. Franklin and young Catherine Ray carried on a memorable correspondence indicating that they were on the verge of intimacy, but never actuallygot there. However, they remained friendly once Catherine Ray married into the expansive Greene family.
    Catherine Ray Greene was a strong influence on her niece, seeing to it that she took French lessons and developed an interest in the world outside their home. That latter assignment was relatively easy, because the outside world was very much a part of the Greene household. William Greene was building a