Free Washington's General by Terry Golway

Guards also recommended him. Whatever the case, just six months after he was considered a “blemish” on the good appearance of the Kentish Guards, Nathanael Greene was given an army and the title of general.
    Greene’s commission ordered him to “resist, expel, kill and destroy” any enemies who might invade or assault America, “in Order to preserve the interest of His Majesty and His good subjects.” Even at this late date, America’s enemies did not include King George III, at least not in the eyes of all but the most advanced radicals. Men acting in the king’s name, men like Gage and the government’s ministers, were the enemy–but not the king himself.
    Greene spent the next few weeks organizing his army, arranging forsupplies, and conferring with his officers. By late May, he was on his way toward Roxbury, near Boston, to choose a campsite for his army. The Rhode Islanders were preparing to join other patriots in laying siege to General Gage’s hated troops now trapped inside Boston.
    He left Caty behind in Coventry, telling her to rely on his brothers and their families for support. Caty was just beginning to feel the effects of her first pregnancy, and now her husband was off to war.

4 An Uncommon Degree of Zeal
    From the forests, farms, and towns of New England marched men bearing muskets, rifles, axes, and a grievance, heading for the outskirts of Boston to join a fledgling army poised to challenge the finest soldiers in the world. They gathered in a semicircle around the port city, cutting off the British from communications and supplies by land. These New Englanders were acting on their own accord, for there had been no national call to arms, no formal declaration of hostilities. They heard only an appeal from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, which issued a cry for help in defending “our wives and children from the butchering hands of an inhuman soldiery.”
    General Gage knew it would be a mistake to underestimate these hostile Americans. He suspected, however, that his superiors in London might make that very mistake. After news of the skirmishes in Lexington and Concord reached Britain, the Irish-born politician and writer Edmund Burke spoke for many in Parliament when he complained thatCrown troops had conducted a “most vigorous retreat” in the face of “feeble Americans.”
    Feeble
was not the word Gage used in describing his opponents. True, the Americans were poorly equipped, and their leaders were middling militia commanders at best. Still, the British commander understood that the men gathered on the hills outside Boston were motivated, brave, and dangerous. “The rebels are not the despicable rabble too many have supposed them to be,” he wrote. In fact, he said, they possessed an “uncommon degree of zeal and enthusiasm.” Knowing that many skeptics in Britain would cite the unimpressive American performance during the French and Indian War, Gage warned that this war would be different. The Americans “never showed so much conduct, attention and perseverance as they do now.”
    Presiding over the siege was a heavyset merchant and militia commander named Artemas Ward, a veteran of the French and Indian War. Ward, no relation to the powerful Ward family of Rhode Island, was not the most inspiring or charismatic of figures, not the kind of leader who could turn a collection of militiamen, adventurers, and smooth-faced teenagers into an army. Still, he was the best available officer, in the judgment of the political radicals of Massachusetts.
    Nathanael Greene reported to Ward’s headquarters on May 23,1775, and immediately offered to serve under the senior general’s command. On the face of it, Greene’s gesture might not seem so extraordinary. Ward, after all, held the seemingly explicit title of commander in chief. But his authority formally extended only to troops from Massachusetts. The