Episode Details

Raised in a strict Quaker household and turned down for an officer's commission because of a limp, Nathanael Greene became one of George Washington's most trusted generals. This episode explores the paradoxes of a self-taught strategist who exhausted the British in the American South by being willing to lose battles.

We follow Greene from secretly studying military history to his break with the Quakers after the Gaspee Affair, his costly mistake at Fort Washington, and his difficult service as quartermaster general at Valley Forge. Then we examine his Southern campaign, from the race to the Dan River to Guilford Courthouse, and the debt and tragedy that marked his final years.

• How Greene secretly educated himself in law, mathematics, and military history
• How the loss at Fort Washington and his response to it shaped his strategy
• Why his work as quartermaster general made logistics his greatest weapon
• How splitting his army, the race to the Dan River, and Guilford Courthouse wore down Cornwallis
• His postwar debts, his refusal to duel James Gunn, and his death at 43 at Mulberry Grove