(Editor’s Note: This is a college essay I finished on 11/10/05. It’s one of the best papers I’ve ever written and it’s about one of the most unappreciated and underrated figures in American History. I hope you get something from it.)

At first glance, Nathanael Greene appears to be a most unlikely candidate for savior of a fledgling nation.  His father scorned formal education.  He walked with a limp and had problems with one eye.  He was also given to asthma attacks that would keep him awake all night. Most damning of all was his Quaker background. In spite of all these perceived defects, Nathanael Greene was the man who the embryonic United States needed to secure its liberties and guarantee independence.  Without General Greene, the ideas advanced by more intellectually perceptive patriots would not have had a country in which to take root.  Nathanael Greene’s ideology leading up to, and role during, the American Revolution created an ardent patriot who led with action rather than prose and a nationalist who was bound to be discouraged by some of the conditions following the war.