Revolution 250 Podcast - Nathanael Greene

Hello everyone and welcome to the Revolution 250 podcast. I'm Bob Allison, I chair the Rev 250 advisory group. Rev 250 is a collaboration among 70 organizations in Massachusetts looking at ways to commemorate the history of the American Revolution. And our guest today is Selina Baker who is a novelist, a writer, now based in Texas. Selina, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. And Selina has written a four-volume series called Angels and Patriots, which is an interesting take on the Revolution. I'll maybe let you tell us a little bit more about it as we go on. And you've also written a prequel to it, What Happened Before. And now you are immersed in doing a biography, it's a fictional biography, I believe, of General Nathaniel Greene. Yes, historical fiction, yes. The Line of Splendor, a novel of Nathaniel Greene and the American Revolution. So it's understandable, having done this deep study of the Revolution, that Greene would be a character you would come back to for a standalone book. So what is it you find compelling about the story of Nathaniel Greene? I think it was his roots, like a lot of the men during the Revolution, and women, he came from average America. His father was a Quaker, he had a lot of brothers. He did a lot of manual work. They owned farms, ships, iron forges, and he actually worked in the iron forge by pounding smelt into anchors. And his father didn't believe in book learning beyond math, English, reading and writing. And so he was forbidden to read other literary volumes, but he went ahead and did it anyway. So right there, he was already kind of rebellious young man, going against his father. And so I could see him growing from this young man who decided that he needed to step forward into the world. And he wasn't a huge radical. He was irritated because the British confiscated his ship, the Fortune, for not paying levy taxes at port taxes. So that kind of is what ejected him to the Revolution. And I just saw him grow as a general, as a husband and a father. And I was impressed with how he, no matter how he made mistakes, how many mistakes he made, how sensitive he was to criticism, he just kept going forward. And he earned Washington's trust. And I could just see him growing as a man. And that was my first attraction to him. Interesting. And he is a rebel against his father, but also he's a Quaker. So how, as a Quaker, does he wind up being an officer in the Continental Army? He did some things that were against the Quaker society. He went to plays. He did some things with his cousin Griffin that the Quaker society accused them that were improper, which they had just either gone to a tavern or gone to a military parade. It was one of the two. It wasn't something horrible. So they were put on the spot by the Quaker society and said, what are you guys doing? And Nathaniel and his cousin Griffin refused to talk to them and refused to tell them. And they were ousted out of the meetings. They weren't ousted out of the society, but the meetings. And he just eventually just moved away from them and he didn't want to formally participate with the Quakers anymore. Does he get involved in any other religious organizations that you know of? Not that I know of. His wife, Katie, was not religious either. She grew up on the isolated island, a block island off the coast of Rhode Island, and they didn't really observe religion there either. So he still talked about Providence and God in his letters and things, but nothing formal. One of the striking things about his letters is how much he does talk about these things. He gives such a great window into not only the period, but his mind, his relationship with his wife, with other people. That's tremendous. Very much. So what can you tell us about Katie, Catherine, his wife? She's from Block Island. She was from Block Island. She was 13 years younger than him. He was in love with some other woman and she just finally jilted him and said, you know, I don't want to marry you. He already knew Katie through his distant relative, William Green. William Green's wife was raising Katie. Katie's mother was dead. So Nathanael would go to visit William Green and Katie would be there. She's, you know, this young, vivacious girl. They fall in love. They get married. He leaves her and goes off to the Siege of Boston. She's pregnant. And that begins her many years, like many of the wives, of being alone without her husband. But she goes to the winter cantonments and she's very convivial. She's smart. She's beautiful. The women are jealous of her, except for Martha Washington and Lucy Knox. Not kind of, maybe. But she, she was, ended up being one heck of a woman after he died. The things that she did. She was involved in the invention of Eli Whitney's cotton gin. Her and her second husband. Wow. How did that come about? And what's she doing, what's she doing down in Georgia and North South Carolina after the revolution? Well, when Nathanael Green was, I don't know, I'm kind of like jumping now, but Nathanael, of course, fought with Washington in the North. The Revolutionary Wars, the British and the English Parliament's eyes kind of turned down to the South and they started going down there. They took Savannah. They took Charleston. They took Wilmington, North Carolina. And Washington sent Nathanael Green down there in December 1780 after a series of failures of American general failures to take over. Congress said, you choose this time. He chose Nathanael Green. Nathanael Green went and he chased the British basically out of the South. And so Georgia gave him a plantation and so did South Carolina. So he ended up moving down there because he was in terrible debt and he was trying to recover from the war. Yeah. It's really striking that at the end of the war, there are only three general officers who have been there since the Siege of Boston and they're Washington, Knox and Green. Yes. And so he had left Rhode Island and then for eight years been part of this effort where he's really not getting paid. No. Well, he got paid a little when he was quartermaster. Right. Right. How many children do they have at the end of the war? They had five surviving children. Wow. Wow. And so would the children also have been in the camps when they were at these various winter camps? That's a good question. I know Katie sometimes brought their oldest son, George Washington Green with her. I believe when she went through the other cantonments, she left the children with Nathaniel's brother, Jacob, or some of his family members. He would not let her come to the South, though, for the first couple of years because everything was really bad, really bad down there. Yeah. And that's a fortunate thing for us because he wrote to her a lot about what was happening in the South. Yes. So is George Washington Green the baby who she was pregnant with during the Siege of Boston? Yes. And unfortunately, he drowned in the Savannah River when he was 18. Oh, my goodness. He went to Europe to school and under the care of the Marquis de Lafayette. And he came home and I don't know how long it was afterwards that he drowned, but it wasn't that long afterwards. And he was buried with Nathaniel Green in Colonial Cemetery in Savannah. So I was going to say his body got moved, but I won't go into all of that. OK. And you told me you were working on the book now. We're talking with Selina Baker, who has written a number of novels about the Revolution, and right now she's working on The Line of Splendor, a novel of Nathaniel Green and the American Revolution. You told me you're working on the draft for your own in 1786. I don't want to give away how. No, it's OK. General Green's on the wall behind me over at my business. I see him, yeah. Looking over your shoulder as you write. So how, you must get really invested in these characters as you're really trying to imagine their inner thought, their inner lives, really, as you're doing a novel. So it's not simply this happened, this happened, and this happened. Yes. Recreating a mental world for Nathaniel and Katie and their children and the other people. So what, have you changed your perception of him since you really began this deep dive into Nathaniel Green's life and time? I don't think I have. I think I was pretty enamored with him from the beginning in my Angels and Patriots series. But I have found things that I had no idea. I found his will. He had written a will in October 1785. Just the things that I had discovered just by digging around. It's not all in the books. It's just, you know, fascinates me. Yeah. I think that's maybe the difference between writing fiction and writing history, is you can pursue what, in each case, we can pursue what fascinates us. But you really need to know more to write a novel. You have to be able to recreate what they were, what someone was thinking. Yes. And what they were saying. The conversation part of it. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not just making it up. You have to have some root in what was plausible. That's a good question. And I have read as much as I possibly can about his letters. And so I can, when he's writing his letters, he's writing to someone. And that person might be close to him or they can talk to one another. Another thing I've done is I have read obsessive amounts of biographies of the people that he was with. Katie, Otho Holland Williams, Washington, Henry Knox, because I can't understand how the people he interacted with thought unless I read about them, too. Right. So. No, go ahead. How did the people, did he have any enemies, say, in the Continental Arms? You and I think he's great. Were there anyone who thought, boy, we're not as fond of him as we should be? He was criticized horribly by a lot of people. Charles Lee, who was actually his commander during the siege of Boston and after Washington arrived, criticized him horribly because Green told Washington that Fort Lee and Fort Washington were defensible. Green had command of Fort Lee and Fort Washington. They fell. Lee was horrible to him. They were all horrible to him. But Washington supported him and kept him in the fold. When he was in the South, he was criticized harshly for sticking his nose in civil authority, for bossing the militia around. One of the militia guys, Tom Sumter, hated him. Really? And he was super uncooperative. And some people called him a little dictator when he was in the South. Called Green the little dictator. And he, but he went down there to do a job and he was going to drop dead before he didn't get that job done. He had his faults, oh, for sure. Oh, sure. So what were some of, not that we're going to dwell on his faults, but what were some of his faults? He was sensitive to criticism. And this is just my opinion. I'm not, you know, I don't know what he was thinking, but he had a limp. He had asthma and he had a smallpox scar on his right eyeball. And so his eyes were infected a lot. And when in 1774, he joined a militia company in Rhode Island and they flat out said, you cannot be an officer because you limp. And they said it publicly. Wow. So he was really sensitive to criticism. He could be irreverent. He was pushy. He had, he had a lot of, we all do. He's a man. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. It's good to know. And you mentioned earlier that you saw in him, this capacity for growth and, and then learning from mistakes. And he does make some big ones like Fort Lee and Fort Washington is a big one. And then he sometimes does come down with an illness at an inopportune time, like during the Battle of Long Island. But what is it that makes, how does he first meet Washington and what makes Washington such a strong supporter of Green throughout their time together? That's a, that's a question I've been asked before. And I don't have a good answer for it. There's something Washington saw in Green, maybe because he was, he tried hard. He, he was dedicated to the cause of freedom. He swore he'd give his life. He, he continually produced, he kept his camp clean. He wanted to please Washington because that's his new mentor. So I'm not really exactly sure what Washington saw in him, except for this young man who was enthusiastic and a strong leader, a businessman. And you make the point that he was very young. He was the youngest of the general officers. Yes. And does he, does his father ever come around and say maybe, you know, learning wasn't such a bad thing? His father died in 1770, so. Okay. So he's not part of any of this. No. Nathaniel's brothers were, his brother Jacob kind of was involved, but yeah, his dad was dead. And he's, Green isn't really happy when, Washington keeps putting him in charge of things that are difficult. And one is being a quartermaster, which is something he really doesn't like being, but he's very good at it. Yes. And he hated it. He, he hated being chained to a desk. He argued with Congress constantly. It was a constant battle. Of course, Congress didn't have money. They were disorganized. They would take his deputies away from him. They would reorganize the department. And then suddenly he wouldn't have the same guys working with him anymore. And he's like, I need these guys. I can't do my job without deputies, commissaries. They won't listen to him. And, but he did, was an excellent quartermaster. Anyway, just like everything he did, he put 100% of himself into this job. And then he also presides over Benedict Arnold, over the John Andre trial after the Arnold treason. So then that people seem to have mixed feelings about having to execute Andre as a spy when they really wanted to get Arnold. It must have been a difficult thing to be sitting in judgment on Benedict Arnold, who had been one of their real pillars before. Can you tell us a little bit about Green's role in that? There's not a whole lot of depth, in-depth information that I can find. That doesn't mean there isn't. He, Green was very disappointed in Arnold. I do not know how sympathetic he was toward Andre, because I know some of the officers were. I think Green just saw it as doing his job. So that I, you know, I can't really answer exactly what he thought about Andre himself. Yeah, it's one of the really tantalizing things about this, because he is someone who is a, the way you're describing kind of in two ways. One is that someone who's very good at his job, and then someone who also has this side that you see, which is really interesting. And he reveals a lot to himself, as you were saying, to people he knows, like his wife, his letters to her are different than his letters, say, to perhaps Washington. Are you asking me if they were different, if they seemed different, like how he talked to Katie versus how he talked to Washington? Yes, he talked to Katie more like a husband. They had, like his best friend, like she was his best friend. And I don't, he poured his heart out to everyone, even Washington. So maybe they were very similar now that I'm talking to you about it and thinking about it in those terms. Because he, for instance, when he resigned as Quartermaster General, he told the Continental Congress in a letter, which was that made them extremely mad, that, and he literally wrote this, you have hurt my feelings. Wow. And he would write something like that to Katie as well, and be real, you know, I'm sorry if I upset you, you know, whatever. But he would upset people when he wrote, because he's kind of forward. And then he would have to back off a little bit and say, oh, I'm sorry, I, you know. Why do you think that is? I mean, why, A, he is very upfront, but B, he also is, as you said, sensitive to criticism. I realize you're a novelist and not a psychiatrist, but I'm just wondering if you've given any thought, if you can have any insight into that part of his character. Yeah, just like I said before, I think it's because he had physical challenges, a limp, asthma, smallpox scar on his right eye. But he was criticized for his limp. I think also, too, maybe his lack of formal education may have had something to do with that. Of course, Washington didn't have one either, and neither did the Knox, but it may have had something to do with that as well. And Charles Lee isn't someone who comes across very well in the long scheme of things. When you say Charles Lee didn't like him, that's really not a harsh criticism. It would be worse, I suppose, if Charles Lee really was a big supporter. Well, at first, Charles Lee and Green got along fine. But it was once Green made a mistake, then Charles Lee came in like a bulldog and attacked him really. He even attacked the whole Rhode Island regiments and said they were worthless. It was a bad attack. So at first, they got along fine. Oh, yeah. Wow. Well, it's interesting. We're talking with Selena Baker, who is writing The Line of Splendor, a novel of Nathaniel Green and the American Revolution. And she's also written a four-volume series, Angels and Patriots, which is a fascinating look at the revolution. You have the characters like Green and Washington, but also you have angels and demons playing. I should have mentioned that you also have an interest in supernatural and in fantasy fiction. Here is this period that we know a lot about, but you have injected a whole new way of looking at it. So how did it come to you to do a fantasy series on the American Revolution? My first two books are historical fantasy. They were set in Victorian America. And after I read the second one, I thought, I'd like to continue historical fantasy, but what can I write about? And I thought, what do I know something about? And what do I want to learn more about? Because this is also a learning experience for me. And the American Revolution, I realized I knew enough about it that I could get started with a series. And I started with the Sons of Liberty because I knew something about them. And so I needed to inject fantasy in there. And angels, fallen angels came to me. It's not an unusual thing. People write it down all the time. They came to earth. They were in a war with God's demons because they had disobeyed. They believed that what they had done was affecting the Americans in the colonies because they knew some of the demons were British or in Britain. Now there was no war. It was December 1774 when the angels started realizing this was happening. They went to Boston. They met the Sons of Liberty. They said, we might have brought it down on you. They didn't believe in killing the children of man, whether they were British or English or, I mean, I'm sorry, or American, but they sided with the Patriots. And the series just grew all the way from there, all the way through the surrender of Yorktown. And did you initially see this as a four-volume series? No, initially I thought it was going to be a standalone, but the first book ends right after Bunker Hill. And I was like, I'm not done. There's this whole war we can fight, and the angels are fighting their own war, and the Patriots are coming in and saying, we're okay with that. And I was learning things. It was a huge learning experience because the series is historically authentic, accurate, but of course it has a supernatural element in that interaction as well. But the amount I learned just writing this series was unbelievable. And it was a lot of fun too. I'll bet, I'll bet. Now you must have been a reader of fantasy supernatural fiction during your pre-novelist years. You spent about 25 years as a software writer in the computer world. So would this have been something you would have done to relieve your mind from the technical aspects of doing software? Hmm, that's a good question. I never thought of it that way. It could be. Okay. It's a possibility. Okay. And so you're now doing, to do the angels and demons appear in the pre-novel or is that? No, no. This is not going to be, it's just going to be straight historical fiction. The line is Splendor. No angels, no fantasy. Okay. Angels and Patriots is an adult series where the novel about green is going to be more, you know, PGG. Okay. Because I felt that I wanted to be more respectful if it was just about him. Not that I wasn't respectful. I was in angels and patriots, but just take the fantasy part out. Right. Right. That's interesting. And so do you, as you're writing this, the angels and patriots, I'm really just curious about where you as the novelist draw a line between, you know, the fantasy side of it and the straightforward history side of it, or are they so intertwined that one wouldn't work without the other? No, I, I'm actually with this novel about Nathaniel Green. I'm trying to move a little more. I am moving more towards historical fiction and kind of away from the fantasy, at least for now. Yeah. Since the first two books were also historical fantasy, I thought I probably had done enough with that. Okay. Now Green, I mean, it's, he is such an interesting character. It's almost a shame that Lin-Manuel Miranda didn't read your book before he read the book about Hamilton, because his life would make for, I think, a great musical. I think so too. And his life is the American revolution, basically. What happened to him at the end was tragic. Yeah. And he's a unknown, unsung hero that people really know more about. They should, they should. Of course, he's remembered in places like, well, in Rhode Island, certainly, and then in the Carolinas, where there are places named for him. I don't want to give away the ending of the book, but you mentioned that its ending is tragic. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Without giving away the end of the book? Yeah, I don't know. Well, I think, well, he does die in the end. Yes. He fell into horrible debt, trying to pay for his soldiers, uniforms, and provisions in South Carolina when the war was after Yorktown. And of course, the war wasn't over. He still had an army to take care of. And a lot, and everything went wrong with this loan that he was trying to get. The Continental Congress gave him nothing. He had some bills from the other states, but they were worthless in South Carolina. So he put up his own signature. And he went into horrible debt. And so the tragedy of him desperately trying, and it's very complicated, and desperate trying to get out of debt and all the things he's trying to do. And he's trying to protect his family. And he's embarrassed about what happened with his finances. And he gets no help. He borrows money. And just this man who sacrificed everything, especially in the South, and this is how it's going to end. It's a waste. It was a waste. And it was a shame. The only good thing was Katie stepped up to the plate after he died. And she was not going to let all that just go out the window and do nothing. So that was the bright spot. But that's after the book, the novel was over. You could do another book about her. I thought about that too. She is a fascinating character. As you said, George and Martha are taken with her. Other of the officer's wives are jealous. But then she does have an interesting life after Nathaniel's death. She marries again. And as you said, she's involved. Eli Whitney comes down and she's involved with the cotton gin. And she's a Rhode Island woman who comes to Georgia and stays there. Yes. And that's a good point. She was used to parties and dressing up and the Newport Society or the Winter Cantonments or Philadelphia. And she goes to Savannah. Excuse me. And it's just not happening down there like that. But now she's more mature. And somehow she found her way without a man holding her hand. And when she married Phineas Miller, it was under a prenuptial agreement. So she they had land in Savannah, South Carolina and Cumberland Island, Georgia, and some other various places up north. So there was quite a bit of land. They were land rich, but cash poor. So who was Phineas Miller? Phineas Miller was Nathaniel hired a tutor for the children right before they went to Rhode Island. Katie was pregnant and he needed someone to teach them because she wasn't she was overwhelmed. So Phineas Miller was a Yale graduate, very young man, went with them to Savannah. And when Nathaniel died, Phineas stayed with them. So she and Phineas married about six or eight years later. He was 10 years younger than her. And just around that time, Eli Whitney came down from Yale to tutor her neighbor's children. So they both Phineas and Katie knew him. And they both chipped in on financing that that cotton gin. And actually, Eli Whitney fell in love with Katie Green as well. But that that relationship never happened. I mean, it never came to fruition. So unlike his father, Green, Nathaniel Green did believe in education for his children. Yes, in fact, he left that in his will, what he expected to be done to educate them and the children. And like I said, he sent his son, well, he didn't send him because he's dead by then, but he made arrangements to send his son George to France for it to be educated as well. Yes, so Lafayette takes George back to France or oversees his education. Yes, yes. Then I know it's well beyond where you're writing, but Lafayette does visit with Katie when he comes back to America. Oh, yeah, did he? No, she was dead by then. OK, but he does stop. I think he might. Yes, you're right. It was the 1784 tour he did. He went back, came back. They gave him a tour of Rhode Island. So that was before Nathaniel died, Katie died in 1814. OK, interesting. So we were talking with Selina Baker, who is the author of Angels and Patriots, four books on the Revolution, and she is working on The Line of Splendor, a novel of Nathaniel Green and the American Revolution. And not to put any pressure on you, but when do you think we'll be seeing the book in the bookstores and on Amazon and on your website? Yeah, I'm trying to be patient with myself to make sure it's all I'm hopefully in the next year and a half. It shouldn't be too long. And are there things you wish you knew about Nathaniel and Katie that would, as you were writing this novel about them, I think you really wish you knew? Wish I knew. Yeah, like I wish that they had written down this or is there so you as the novelist would have a better time or the reader would have a better time of understanding. Yes. Katie burned her letters to Nathaniel. He he gave her a complex. He said that she was a bad speller. Oh. And that she needed to watch her spelling. And he told her that quite often. And he was not a good speller either. So I don't know where he was coming with that. But yeah, she burned her letters. Most of the things they know in her biography are from his letters responding to her letters. Wow. The letters after that, she liked Eli Whitney and Alexander Hamilton, who was helping her or someone like that. She those letters are they have been able to find those. So I wish that that she had not done that. I think it would have made for a whole richer feeling of their relationship. But, you know, Martha Washington did a similar thing with her letters. Yes. Wow. Fascinating. So we've been talking with Selena Baker. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Bob. I really appreciate it. It's been it's been great. Yes. And we'll let you get back to the book. I want to thank you and I want to thank Jonathan Lane, our producer and our listeners who have been good with questions and suggestions. And every week I thank folks in different places. So we have regular listeners in Edna. We'll do some capitals today. Edinburgh, Washington, D.C., Bangkok, Madrid. Thank you all for joining us, as well as our listeners in Piscataway, New Jersey and all places in between. So now, Jonathan, we'll have us piped out on the road to Boston. Thank you.