Along with Morgan and Arnold there might have been seen on Cambridge
Common a man who was destined to play no less conspicuous a part in the
great campaign which was to end in the first decisive overthrow of the
British. For native shrewdness, rough simplicity, and dauntless courage,
John Stark was much like Morgan. What the one name was in the great
woods of the Virginia frontier, that was the other among the rugged
hills of northern New England,--a symbol of patriotism and a guarantee
of victory. Great as was Stark's personal following in New Hampshire, he
had not, however, the chief command of the troops of that colony. The
commander of the New Hampshire contingent was John Sullivan, a wealthy
lawyer of Durham, who had sat in the first Continental Congress.
Sullivan was a gentleman of culture and fair ability as a statesman. As
a general, he was brave, intelligent, and faithful, but in no wise
brilliant. Closely associated with Sullivan for the next three years we
shall find Nathanael Greene, now in command of the Rhode Island
contingent. For intellectual calibre all the other officers here
mentioned are dwarfed in comparison with Greene, who comes out at the
end of the war with a military reputation scarcely, if at all, inferior
to that of Washington. Nor was Greene less notable for the sweetness and
purity of his character than for the scope of his intelligence.[7] He
had that rare genius which readily assimilates all kinds of knowledge
through an inborn correctness of method. Whatever he touched, it was
with a master hand, and his weight of sense soon won general
recognition. Such a man was not unnaturally an eager book-buyer, and in
this way he had some time ago been brought into pleasant relations with
the genial and intelligent Henry Knox, who from his bookshop in Boston
had come to join the army as a colonel of artillery, and soon became one
of Washington's most trusty followers.
[Portrait: Knox]
[Sidenote: Older officers]
[Sidenote: Israel Putnam]
Of this group of officers, none have as yet reached very high rank in
the Continental army. Sullivan and Greene stand at the end of the list
of brigadier-generals; the rest are colonels. The senior major-general,
Artemas Ward, and the senior brigadiers, Pomeroy Heath, Thomas, Wooster,
and Spencer, will presently pass into the background, to make way for
these younger or more vigorous men. Major-General Israel Putnam, the
picturesque wolf-slayer, a brave and sterling patriot, but of slender
military capacity, will remain in the foreground for another year, and
will then become relegated mainly to garrison duty.
[Sidenote: Horatio Gates and Charles Lee]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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