The Shadow of an Army

When Nathanael Greene arrived at Charlotte in December 1780 to take command of the Southern Army, he wrote to Washington that he had found "but the shadow of an army." That's a figure of speech, but it was also a literal description of the organizational situation.

Camden had destroyed the only structured military force south of Virginia. What Greene inherited was approximately 1,500 men who were, in his words, "without clothing, without shoes, without blankets, almost without ammunition." There was no functioning supply system. There was no commissary. The state of South Carolina had no operating government. The Patriot civil infrastructure that an army normally depends on had collapsed.

What I find most remarkable about the Greene story — and I've spent years with this material — is that he understood from his first week in command that he could not rebuild that army in any conventional sense. He didn't have the time, the resources, or the territory. So he ran a campaign that was almost entirely shaped by what he didn't have.

He split his army, which violates the textbook rule about concentration. He maneuvered to force Cornwallis to split his. He fought battles he intended to lose strategically while winning them tactically — meaning he inflicted damage Cornwallis couldn't replace, then retreated before the British could destroy him. He coordinated with Marion and Sumter without being able to command them directly.

Camden made all of that necessary. If Gates's army had survived, Greene might have commanded a conventional campaign. Instead he had to invent a new one. Whether that's a silver lining is a matter of perspective. From where we stand now, the southern campaign that followed Camden is one of the most intellectually sophisticated pieces of military planning in American history. At the time, it was an improvisation built on a catastrophe.