George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

[326] Aided by intelligent men of his own village, or

Chap. XXX.} 1775. May.

of Newport, he read Euclid, and learned to apply geometry to surveying and navigation; he studied Watts's logic, Locke on the human understanding, pored over English versions of the Lives of Plutarch, the Commentaries of Caesar, and became familiar with some of the best English classics, especially Shakespeare and Milton.

When the stamp-act was resisted, he and his brothers never feared to rally at the drum-beat. Simple in his tastes, temperate as a Spartan, and a great lover of order, he rose early, and was indefatigable at study or at work. He married, and his home became the abode of peace and hospitality. His neighbors looked up to him as an extraordinary man, and from 1770, he was their representative in the colonial legislature. Once in 1773, he rode to Plainfield in Connecticut, to witness a grand military parade; and the spectacle was for him a good commentary on Sharp's military guide. In 1774, in a coat and hat of the Quaker fashion, he was seen watching the exercise and manoeuvres of the British troops at Boston, where he used to buy of Henry Knox, a bookseller, treatises on the art of war.

On the day of Lexington, Greene started to share in the conflict; but being met by tidings of the retreat of the British, he went back to take his seat in the Rhode Island legislature. He next served as a commissioner to concert military plans with Connecticut, and when in May the Rhode Island brigade of fifteen hundred men was enlisted, he was elected its general. None murmured at the advancement of the unassuming man whom nature had so gifted with