Nathanael Greene

George Washington considered Nathanael Green his most trustworthy General in the Revolutionary War. Like Washington his mentor, Greene did not always win his battles and he committed occasional strategic errors; but he always retained the devotion of his men and, in the end, won the victory that counted. When the war ended, Greene’s military reputation was second only to Washington’s– Not bad for the youngest general in the army, an asthmatic iron monger from a pacifist sect, hobbled with a congenital knee problem, and whose only prior experience involved recruiting state militia.