Nathanael Greene
Major-General Nathanael Greene was an American military officer and planter who served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. He emerged from the war with a reputation as one of George Washington's most talented and dependable officers and is known for his successful command in the Southern theater of the conflict. Born into a prosperous Quaker family in Warwick, Rhode Island, Greene became active in the colonial opposition to British revenue policies in the early 1770s and helped establish the Kentish Guards, a state militia unit. After the April 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord, the legislature of Rhode Island established an army and appointed Greene to command it. Later in the year, Greene became a general in the newly established Continental Army. Greene served under George Washington in the Boston campaign, the New York and New Jersey campaign, and the Philadelphia campaign before being appointed quartermaster general of the Continental Army in 1778. In October 1780, Washington appointed Greene as the commander of the Continental Army in the southern theater, where he was involved in several engagements, primarily in Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina. After taking command, Greene engaged in a successful campaign of guerrilla warfare against a numerically superior British force led by Charles Cornwallis. He gained several strategic victories at Guilford Court House, Hobkirk's Hill, and Eutaw Springs, eroding British control over the American South. Major fighting on land came to an end following the surrender of Cornwallis at the siege of Yorktown in October 1781, but Greene continued to serve in the Continental Army until late 1783. After the war, he settled down to a career as a plantation owner in Georgia, but his rice crops were mostly a failure. He died in 1786 at the Mulberry Grove Plantation in Chatham County, Georgia. Numerous locations in the United States are named for him.
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