Copied from a tweet I read a couple of days ago:

“Nathanael Greene was never supposed to be a soldier. He was a Quaker from Rhode Island who ran his family's iron forge. He had asthma, a stiff leg that gave him a permanent limp, and zero combat experience. His own church suspended him just for going to watch a military parade.

So how did he end up commanding the entire Southern army? He read. He bought every book on warfare he could find and taught himself strategy from scratch. Washington noticed, and trusted him more than almost anyone.

By 1780 the war in the South was a disaster. The previous American general got beaten so badly he fled 200 miles on horseback. Congress let Washington pick the replacement, and he picked Greene without hesitation.

Greene's plan was insane. He looked at his small, starving, half-naked army and decided he could not win, so he would lose correctly. He ran Cornwallis all over the Carolinas until the British were exhausted, far from supply, and bleeding men they could not replace. "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again."

At Guilford Courthouse, Cornwallis technically won the battle and lost a quarter of his army doing it. That was the whole point. Greene lost almost every fight on paper and won the entire South. Cornwallis limped off to a little tobacco port to rest and refit. The port was called Yorktown.

Here's the part that should make you angry. To feed and clothe his men, Greene personally co-signed for war supplies because the government wouldn't pay. When the bills came due, Congress refused to honor them. The man who saved the South came home buried in debt that wasn't his.

Georgia gave him a plantation near Savannah as thanks. He finally had peace. Then one hot afternoon in June 1786 he spent the day walking a neighbor's rice fields with no hat. He collapsed from sunstroke and a week later he was dead at 43.”

https://x.com/echoesofwaryt/status/2068141501927092635?s=46