The son of a prosperous Quaker ironmaster, Nathanael Greene developed into one of the Continental Army's finest generals, second only in talent and achievements to George Washington. Without winning a major battle, Greene waged a campaign of masterful maneuver that liberated South Carolina and Georgia from British rule.

Greene was born in Warwick, Rhode Island, on August 7, 1742. He did not receive much formal education, but became an avid reader. During the first half of the 1770s, Greene married, helped manage the family iron business, and served in the Rhode Island Assembly. Worsening tensions with Great Britain led Greene to take an interest in military affairs, which occasioned his expulsion by the pacifist Quakers. In 1774, he organized a militia company called the Kentish Guards. A stiff knee, the result of a childhood accident, made Greene limp on the parade ground, and the Kentish Guards refused to elect him as an officer. He humbly took his place in the ranks as a private.

After the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the Rhode Island Assembly recognized Greene's leadership abilities in May 1775 by appointing him a brigadier general to command 1,500 state troops recruited for the Siege of Boston. Greene and his brigade transferred into Continental service in June.

Promoted to major general on August 9, 1776, Greene proved his worth as a combat commander at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth. He also won the trust and friendship of General George Washington, who regularly confided in the former Quaker. From February 25, 1778, to August 3, 1780, Greene oversaw the Continental Army's logistics as Washington's Quartermaster General, performing wonders in a thankless job.

Following the British conquest of Georgia and South Carolina, Greene assumed command of Patriot forces in the South in late 1780. He not only outgeneraled Lord Charles Cornwallis, but managed to recapture most of the territory lost to the enemy, eventually penning up the British in Savannah and Charleston. Greene summed up his tenacious strategy with these words: "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again."

With the war's end, financial troubles forced Greene to sell his Rhode Island holdings and move his family to an estate presented to him by a grateful Georgia. He lived there for only a year, dying from the effects of sunstroke in June 1786.

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