From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com   
      
   Excerpt   
      
   Before departing New Jersey, General Greene had begun to consider his options   
   in fighting Lord Cornwallis, but he knew it was too early to make final plans.   
   At that juncture, and for the next several weeks, Greene did not know whether   
   Cornwallis had been    
   reinforced after King's Mountain. Nor did Greene know the whereabouts of his   
   adversary. Besides, Greene wanted to assess his own army and its officers   
   before laying his plans. Befitting a former quartermaster general, logistics   
   were uppermost on Greene's    
   mind. To assure that supplies from the northern states that passed through   
   Virginia reached his army, he issued orders for the exploration of the   
   Roanoke, Dan, and Yadkin Rivers to determine whether they were practicable for   
   waterborne transportation. He    
   also directed General Steuben to secure the region around Portsmouth in order   
   to inhibit British incursions into Virginia, a directive that was rendered   
   meaningless when Benedict Arnold soon thereafter occupied that site with a   
   powerful force.   
      
   Greene was a whirlwind of activity during his first weeks in North Carolina.   
   Even during his journey to Charlotte, Greene had carefully reconnoitered the   
   landscape, keeping a watchful eye on the rivers he crossed, observing fords,   
   ferries, and other    
   possible crossings. Noting that river upon river coursed through North   
   Carolina, he laid the groundwork for successfully traversing those streams in   
   the event that someday he was faced with having to make a hurried retreat.   
   Unlike Gates, who had    
   imprudently hurried into action, Greene spent weeks making preparations for   
   taking the field. Working with Colonel Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the professional   
   military engineer, Greene set about searching for the bateaux that would be   
   needed for transporting    
   supplies and making river crossings. He appealed to the state assembly to   
   provide him with ample wagons, artisans to keep them running, and teamsters to   
   drive them. He saw to the fabrication of more than twenty strategically   
   located magazines and ordered    
   that a three-day supply of milled grain be stored here and there in   
   patriot-owned gristmills. He undertook "great Alterations” within the   
   quartermaster corps and sought to persuade North Carolina to reform its supply   
   system so that one official "of    
   known Probity” would be vested with "full and ample Powers to call forth the   
   supplies.” Operating on the dictum that "Great events often depend on little   
   things," he advised the state's Board of War to establish additional   
   storehouses for arms and    
   other provisions, gather and "stall-feed" large herds of cattle, and "salt   
   down as much pork," as possible. He was horrified to discover that many   
   militiamen raised both by Virginia and North Carolina during September's   
   emergency had never been sent home,   
    with the result that their foraging had "laid waste almost all the   
   Country.” He knew that he would have to have militiamen, but he wanted them   
   mustered only when the enemy threatened "immediate ravages" or he was about to   
   take the field. From the    
   outset, he took steps to synchronize his army's actions with those of partisan   
   bands, a step with which Gates had scarcely troubled. Greene had hardly   
   unpacked his bags before he contacted Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter. Among   
   other things, he let them    
   know that they were to be a principal source of his intelligence, the "Eyes"   
   of his army, as he put it. Without their help, he would be "groping in the   
   dark,” he said. But he also told them that this war could be won only by the   
   army. Partisan sallies    
   were akin to "the garnish of a table.” They would play vital roles in   
   softening up the adversary though only the army could vanquish the enemy.   
      
   Greene received encouraging word from Virginia during December. It had   
   resolved to raise the three thousand continentals needed to meet its troop   
   quota and by mid-month four hundred of those men were already on the march to   
   join him in North Carolina. In    
   addition, Steuben was sending down 1,500 muskets and bayonets, another 2,000   
   firearms were coming from farther north, and wagons and artillery horses were   
   on the way as well. Greene needed everything. Long before arriving in the   
   South, he had been    
   advised that the army was in deplorable condition, and he immediately found   
   those reports to be all too accurate. His army was "weak,” "half starved,”   
   “without tents and camp equipage,” and in a "wretched Condition,” he   
   said. He told Governor    
   Thomas Sim Lee of Maryland that if the southern army was not strengthened,   
   North Carolina would fall under Britain's thumb, a turn of events that would   
   be "fatal to you" and the potential soldiers languishing at home.      
      
   Greene had never previously been in the South, but he was aware of the   
   problems that two of his predecessors, Robert Howe and Benjamin Lincoln, had   
   experienced with southern authorities. Greene resolved not be over­bearing in   
   his approaches to the    
   officials. "To effect an entire reformation of the plan and politicks of this   
   Country would be a greater task than that attempted by Martin Luther in the   
   Romish Church,” he allowed. Contrary to what some in the North had   
   concluded, Greene soon found    
   that south­erners had "Spirit and Enterprize;' but they "must go to war in   
   their own way or not at all." In their impatience to drive the British from   
   their states, he learned, southerners at times demanded hasty action, and it   
   led him to think it was    
   perhaps what had caused Gates to act too quickly. "Prudence and Caution;'   
   Greene vowed, were to be his watchwords.   
      
   Gates had used something of a sledgehammer approach when seeking assistance   
   from the governors of Virginia and North Carolina. Greene sought to reason   
   with them, but behind his velvet-glove manner lurked a menacing threat. If the   
   army was not properly    
   supplied, he told Abner Nash, the army it would have no choice but to "take   
   what is necessary.” For the most part, however, Greene chose his words   
   carefully. The quickest way to ensure the loss of discipline within an army,   
   he advised the governors,    
   was to sow anguish among the soldiery by not adequately feeding and clothing   
   them. He wrote Jefferson that the "Life of a Soldier in its best State is   
   subject to innumerable Hardships;' but when ill provisioned the soldier's lot   
   become "intolerable.”    
   No man faced with unbearable conditions, he continued, "will think himself   
   bound to fight the Battles" dictated by negligent or indifferent leaders.   
      
      
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