WHO WAS THE
COMMANDER AT BUNKER HILL?
WITH REMARKS ON
FROTHINGHAM’S HISTORY OF THE BATTLE.
With an Appendix.
BY S. SWETT.
BOSTON:
PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON,
21, SCHOOL STREET.
1850.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by
S. SWETT,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District
of Massachusetts.
COMMAND AT BUNKER HILL.
Thirty–two years since, though without any pretensions to be an
author, we consented to write an account of Bunker Hill Battle, as
a feeble contribution to the monument of fame that history owed our
ancestors. But, we find, one may be an author in spite of himself; we
have been compelled to address the public repeatedly in defence of our
history, though never before with so great reluctance. By this time
we hoped to enjoy the privilege of age, to exempt us from this task;
and, notwithstanding our friendly regards for Mr. Frothingham, and a
high appreciation of his book for its intentional honor and honesty
and successful research, we shall be obliged to notice at least one
of his mistakes. For he is under the same ban as all our race: “to
err is human.” And were his mistake solitary, it would compensate for
that by its magnitude, nay, its sublimity. According to him, the great
Battle of Bunker Hill was fought, on our side, by a headless mob; and,
to prove this, he adduces the most incontrovertible argument in the
world, were it true,—that the army at Cambridge, which had been for
two months collecting and organizing under the able and experienced
Gen. Ward, assisted by a host of accomplished veteran officers,
was itself a mob. He terms it, by a new–invented name, “an army of
allies;” a misnomer, calculated to mislead his readers in regard to
its organization. On the files of the Provincial Congress, and by the
Committee of Safety, it is termed the New England army; and, in the
gazettes of the day, the American army. Gen. Putnam, he says, would
have been the commander in the battle, had the army been “regularly
organized;” but, because “it had not yielded to the vital principle of
subordination,” he was present as a patriotic volunteer. He has treated
Gen. Putnam’s character with the utmost candor and kindness, as animals
destined for the altar are pampered, to be sacrificed at last.
It will be our duty to enter into a thorough investigation of this
subject of the command, though with great repugnance, on account of
its involving the rival claims of Putnam and Prescott. For both those
heroes we entertain the most devoted admiration, and the deepest
interest in their fame. Could we have imagined that any such discordant
claims might be advanced, our history had never been commenced. In
our numerous conversations with Judge Prescott on the subject, we
never discovered their existence until our history was published. He
had presented to the Athenæum Gen. Heath’s Memoirs, as a declaration,
we presumed, that the statements in them relative to his father were
correct; and to Heath’s opinions we subscribed. We have contented
ourselves heretofore with a simple statement of the facts that were
known relative to the command; but an historian is bound to state
the principles, as well as the facts, relative to the characters he
introduces, and the legitimate conclusions resulting from those facts
and principles, as much as a counsellor is bound to do so for his
client.
The author, in robbing Putnam of the command, “not enriches” Prescott,
nor any one else. He does not intimate the possibility that Prescott
may have been the commander of the battle: so far from it, he
emphatically denies that he issued any order whatsoever on Bunker Hill,
or at the rail–fence; and states that he was one of the junior colonels
in the army, that Col. Frye was an older officer and in the battle;
whilst he does not pretend that Prescott exercised, or had a right to
exercise, any command over him, or over other colonels who were in the
battle, and older officers than himself. He attributes to Prescott
nothing more than a colonel’s command over his detachment, which, by
some unaccountable mistake, he computes at twelve hundred, whilst it
is limited at one thousand by Col. Prescott himself, and all reliable
authorities. He states that Prescott held councils of war; but he ought
to have added, that this was not at any time whilst Gen. Putnam was in
Charlestown; and that they were confined to the junior officers of his
detachment. He confines him during the battle to the redoubt; and he
might have added that it was impossible for him to have exercised any
command through the line, because he was on foot; though he does add
one fact which is exceedingly important,—that Prescott had but one
hundred and fifty men left under his command at the redoubt,[1] during
the battle, as is stated by the colonel himself, and others who were
with him; and, in conclusion, he observes, that Prescott was left in
the redoubt, during the battle, without the slightest interference,
control, or command from Gen. Putnam or any one else. Now, there never
was, and never will be, any one to question or deny one tittle of these
statements relative to Prescott; we subscribe to them implicitly.
But the author has labored, throughout a large portion of his book, to
prove the most insignificant abstraction that ever entered visionary’s
imagination,—that Gen. Putnam possessed no right to command Col.
Prescott. Grant it; and it would not add one leaf to the laurels of
Prescott, nor a single ray to the splendor of his fame. Nor, on the
other hand, would Putnam lose by the concession. Grant to Putnam the
command of all the rest of the battle, and all that is thus demanded
for Prescott would constitute so insignificant an exception, as merely
to illustrate the proverb, that the general rule is proved by the
exception.
Mr. Frothingham says nothing of any command at the breastwork, though,
by describing it as reaching down to the slough, he has represented
it as longer than it was, and has marred and obscured by this mistake
one of the principal features of the battle. The breastwork did not
reach down to the slough by six or seven rods; which space was nearly
or quite unprotected, as was the farther space of 190 yards between the
breastwork and rail–fence, except by the slough, that did not reach
back to the rail–fence by 80 yards. Now, this was the weak point and
key to the American position, which the enemy were grossly culpable for
not discovering, through their previous reconnoissances and knowledge
of the ground. We did not discover, till we had written thus far,
that the author had our own authority for his mistake, or rather our
printer’s. In our map of the battle, we have represented the fact
correctly; but in our text it stands, that the breastwork ran “to”
instead of “toward” the slough.
Taking for granted all the author says of Prescott, we should pass over
the authorities he has accumulated concerning him, were it not that,
left unexplained as they are by him, they may mislead his readers into
the belief, that Prescott had command, not only of his detachment,
but of the battle. We will go through the list. The report of the
Committee of Safety says, “The commander of the party gave orders to
retreat from the redoubt;” and one of the writers of the the report is
supposed to have called Prescott “the commander of the provincials.”
That is, Prescott commanded the _party_, the _provincials_, who raised
the redoubt, and those of them who fought there under him, till he
gave them orders to retreat. The author denies that he commanded any
others: “Gen. Ward, in his letter to President Adams, 30th Oct. ’75,
says that Bunker Hill Battle was conducted by a Massachusetts officer.”
Ward was endeavoring to make out a strong case for the Massachusetts
against the Southern officers. As he knew it was physically impossible
for Prescott to have conducted the battle, because he was on foot, and
militarily so, because there were generals and other officers older
than Prescott on the field, he must have intended to designate himself
or Warren as the conductor of the battle. Possibly he intended to claim
the honor himself. The first syllable of the word “conducted” has been
altered by the pen: he began perhaps to write the word “commanded;”
but, recollecting that he could not claim the command, altered it into
“conducted.” And he was authorized to claim to have been the conductor
of the battle, and to have conducted it with great skill and discretion.
Mr. Frothingham thinks, that, “in a military point of view, it would be
difficult to assign a just motive to either party for this conflict.”
We place in our Appendix the declaration of the proscribed patriot
Adams on the subject, which will justify Gen. Ward, and satisfy every
one on this point.
But, notwithstanding Gen. Ward’s use of the word “conducted,” he
probably intended to say that Warren was the conductor or commander
of Bunker Hill Battle, knowing that he was on the field, vested with
all the rights and authority of a major–general;—which was literally
true, notwithstanding Frothingham’s mistake in supposing that Warren
told Prescott, as a reason for not assuming the command, that he had
not received his commission. This is a mistake of fact and law: Warren,
according to Gen. Heath, said not one word about his commission, and
his want of one did not diminish his rights of office; a point that
has been settled by the Supreme Court of the United States. It was not
so extraordinary for Ward to call Warren the commander, as for Gen.
Humphreys to do so in his life of Putnam, whose Aid he had been. Both,
doubtless, were ignorant of the fact, that Warren refused to exercise
any command on the occasion. It was not generally known till published
by Gen. Heath, twenty years after the battle. Martin the chaplain,
who was present the night before and during the battle, says, “The
Americans took possession of the hill under Prescott.” This is taken
by Frothingham from Stiles’s Diary; and the reason why Stiles does not
quote Martin as saying they were under Putnam likewise is, doubtless,
because he had just before entered the same fact in his diary from the
all–sufficient authority of Gen. Green. Martin says, that he urged
Prescott in vain to send for Putnam and a reinforcement; that Prescott
and he differed, even to quarrel, about the reinforcements; and that he
ordered one of the men off himself to Gen. Ward, which brought Gen.
Putnam and a large reinforcement about noon. “Gordon says one thousand
men under Prescott intrenched; Gen. Putnam is busily engaged in aiding
and encouraging here and there as the case requires.” “Dr. Thatcher
says, Prescott headed the detachment, and retained the command,”
that is, the command of it. Frothingham says this is unequivocal in
favor of Prescott. Instead of that, Thatcher is unequivocal in favor
of Putnam’s command, by placing him at the head of all the officers,
in the following words:—“Generals Putnam, Warren, Pomeroy, and Col.
Prescott were emphatically the heroes of the day.” “Pitts says, it
appears to me there never was more confusion and less command; no one
seemed to have any but Col. Prescott.” “Gen. Heath says, Prescott was
the proper commanding officer in the redoubt.” And Heath says, and
Frothingham in another place quotes it as an instance of a collision
between Putnam and Prescott, that Putnam rode up to the redoubt, and
told Col. Prescott that the intrenching tools must be sent off; and
that Col. Prescott, though he remonstrated against it, obeyed the
order. Gen. Lee, in his memoirs of the war in the Southern States, has
what is called an _obiter dictum_, a few words foreign to his subject,
in which he remarks that Gen. Howe found his enemy posted on Breed’s
Hill, “commanded by Col. Prescott.” The author gives no explanation
of Lee’s words, nor does he claim that they mean any thing more than
Prescott’s command of his detachment and the redoubt on Breed’s
Hill. Lee quotes no authority, and was no authority himself. He knew
nothing about the battle. His ignorance was so gross, that he says the
Americans had no artillery. Lee states, however, that Prescott received
no promotion in the army of the United Colonies. It is impossible,
then, that he could have been the commander of the battle. Judge Tudor
throws no light on the subject: he says, “There was no authorized
commander; Col. Prescott appeared to have been the chief;” “the whole
business appeared to have been conducted without order, or regular
command.” Our author adds the words of Col. Prescott’s son: “Neither
Gen. Putnam nor any other officer ever exercised or claimed any
authority or command over Col. Prescott, or the detachment, before or
in the battle.” It follows not that they had no right to do so. The
author attributes to Col. Scammans an anonymous note in a newspaper,
written perhaps by the editor, saying, “As there was no general
officer who commanded on Bunker Hill, was it not Whitcomb’s duty to
have been there?” This probably meant early in the day when Scammans
met Whitcomb, and Putnam was not on the hill. But the author omits to
mention here, that in the same paper it appears from witnesses under
oath, and not denied, that Scammans, during the battle, sent to Gen.
Putnam, at Bunker Hill, to see if he was wanted, and that his regiment
went to the top of Bunker Hill; “after which Gen. Putnam came up, and
ordered the regiment to advance within hearing of Col. Scammans.”[2]
We have gone through Mr. Frothingham’s list of authorities; and in the
whole of them there is not the shadow of an excuse for his conclusion,
“that no general officer was authorized to command over Prescott
during the battle.” But, if these authorities were trumpet–tongued in
support of his conclusion, it would remain one of those things which no
evidence can prove. The author is dealing with hard characters: Ward,
Warren, Putnam, and Prescott, are not rag babies, that an historian
may bend and distort according to his fancy. The whole kingdom of
Great Britain could not bend one of them. Yet, if this story be true,
Ward, a stickler for the authority and dignity of officers according
to their rank, imposed on Warren and Putnam the insulting restriction
of fighting the battle, shorn of half their authority and command; and
these high–spirited and gallant heroes submitted to so ignominious a
condition. Still worse; they no sooner arrive on the field than they
deny their own agreement. Warren, in a shuffling answer to Prescott,
implies his right to the command, and makes a merit of foregoing it in
favor of so distinguished a veteran; while Putnam not only disavows
his agreement, but has the atrocious folly to attempt to bully such an
officer as Prescott out of his command, who obeys him, however, without
daring to assert his rights. This is certainly very strange history;
but, unless every word of it is true, the author’s conclusion must be
false. The author has taken no notice of Gen. Dearborn’s declaration of
Col. Prescott’s conversation with him on this subject. Dearborn states
expressly, that he was informed by Prescott that he sent to Putnam to
come forward and exercise the command, as he could not do so for want
of rank; confessing thus that Putnam, while on the field, was fully
entitled to be the commander. All the world knows that he did come
forward and exercise the command most effectually, from the beginning
to the end of the engagement.
There may be some unwilling to believe that the opinion of Mr.
Frothingham is entitled to no weight; but he, as well as myself, are
writing on a subject technical and professional, belonging to the art
of war, concerning which both of us confess we know little or nothing.
He seems unable to distinguish between a separate and an independent
command. Were he writing on chemistry, he might perhaps exclaim,
of a well–known fact, as he does about Putnam and Prescott, “It is
impossible that two white things put together should make a black one;”
or in astronomy, that it is quite impossible the earth should have any
movement of its own, while it was under control of Jupiter and the Sun.
We have made the supposition of the author’s fundamental error being
solitary; but errors, like misfortunes, never come alone. The lost
traveller, who wanders from the right road, enters on a boundless
field of aberration, and at every step plunges deeper into a chaos of
mistakes.
To prove that Putnam was not the commander, the author alleges that,
in some cases, he was not obeyed as such. Now, we say with the utmost
confidence, that, any few cases of cowardice out of the question, no
military despot ever was obeyed with more implicit subjection than
Putnam was, throughout the battle, by every one, officers or men, from
their enthusiastic love and admiration of him, and boundless confidence
in him, as a great, experienced, and fortunate hero and patriot.
The first case he imagines to have been an instance of disobedience is
that of Col. Sargent, whom he charges with disobeying Gen. Putnam’s
order for him to go on to Bunker Hill.[3] This injustice to the
reputations of Putnam and Sargent arises from the most inconceivable
misconstruction of Col. Sargent’s letter to us, the only document on
the subject. Col. Paul Dudley Sargent refuse to go on to Bunker Hill,
or any other battle–ground! He was one of the greatest fire–eaters of
the revolutionary army. Gen. Washington observed, that, in all his
councils of war, whenever he proposed any measure which his other
officers thought too desperate to be undertaken, Sargent always voted
for its execution.[4] Had the author ever heard of the man, or made the
slightest inquiry among his relatives in Boston, he would never have
imagined the possibility of such an imputation. Had Putnam ordered him
on to Sinai’s hill, with all its fires, he would not have hesitated,
had there been fighting there.
Whilst Col. Sargent was at Cambridge, his regiment, and that of
Connecticut, were stationed under the immediate command of Putnam at
Inman’s farm, the most exposed and important post of the army, near
which place the enemy had landed at the time of Lexington Battle.
During the Battle of Bunker Hill, both these regiments were like
“greyhounds on the slip,” earnestly entreating of Gen. Ward for
permission to join in the conflict. But, apprehending the enemy would
land at the same place again to assail him, he would not grant them
permission, until it was too late for Col. Sargent to participate in
the battle. When he arrived at Charlestown, the battle was over; our
troops had retreated; and Sargent found Putnam, with all he could
rally, on top of Prospect Hill, where, in hot haste, he was throwing
up intrenchments, often laying some of the sods himself to encourage
his men. The day after the battle, he observed that for three days he
had neither washed nor changed his clothes. But, though the battle was
over, Sargent could not deny himself the satisfaction of scenting the
British Lion. He lingered under the enemy’s cannonade till every one of
his men had run away, and he himself was wounded, when he returned to
Cambridge. Putnam, in defiance of Ward’s orders, who, notwithstanding
his urgency, had always refused him permission, was fortifying Prospect
Hill, and sent repeatedly for Sargent to join him, which he declined;
but why he does not intimate. He might have exposed himself to a
court–martial by a compliance. These are all the facts the author has
for the assertion, that Sargent disobeyed Putnam’s order to go on
to Bunker Hill. It is simply and palpably impossible that any such
order should have been given or disobeyed. (For more of Sargent, see
Appendix.)
The only other instance in the author’s book of Putnam’s being
disobeyed, to make good his allegation that such cases existed, is
that of Capt. Callender of the Artillery. If any thing could be more
wonderful than the author’s mistaking one hill for another, when both
have been before his eyes from his birth, it would be his adducing
this case as one of disobedience, or a case of any kind to disprove
that Putnam was the commander. And it is quite as extraordinary that
he should refer to a newspaper for the facts in Calender’s case, when
he had before him a complete statement of them in the report of a
committee to the Massachusetts Congress; a report from which he has
extracted only five words, saying that Putnam ordered Callender to
go back, though it is so important in a description of the battle,
and especially for the fame of Gen. Putnam, that any historian who
neglects it commits a most unfortunate mistake. This committee say, “We
applied to Gen. Putnam and other officers, who were in the heat of the
engagement, for further intelligence. Gen. Putnam informed us, that,
in the late action, as he was riding up Bunker Hill, he met an officer
in the train, drawing his cannon down in great haste; he ordered the
officer to stop and go back; he replied, he had no cartridges; the
general dismounted, and examined his boxes, and found a considerable
number of cartridges, upon which he ordered him back; he refused until
the general threatened him with immediate death; upon which he returned
up the hill again, but soon deserted his post, and left the cannon.”
Now, this is the strongest case imaginable, not of disobedience, but
compulsory obedience. Callender obeyed Putnam to the letter, as the
committee say; he deserted his post afterwards. And we ask the author
whether this conduct of Putnam was that of a volunteer. But allow the
author to make his own case regardless of facts.[5] Suppose Callender
disobeyed Putnam, and that it was for this he was condemned, instead
of cowardice only, as he was, this imaginary case would be worse than
the real one for the author and his argument; it would give us the
sentence of the court–martial to prove that Putnam was his commander.
As if purposely to declare he did not think any thing relative to
Putnam deserving of ordinary care or attention, he says, “This report
states Callender was riding down the hill,” when there is not a
syllable of the kind. The author has racked his fancy to discover other
objections to Putnam’s having the command, that are as groundless as
the foregoing. He objects, that, if Putnam had been the commander, he
would have boasted of it in his letter to the town of Cambridge, in
which he claims the merit of having saved that place from the incursion
of the enemy, after the battle, by erecting fortifications on Prospect
Hill. In the first place, the argument proves too much: it would prove
that he was not the commander in the battle at Chelsea; for he does not
mention that in his letter; and he had more reason to boast of that,
than of Bunker Hill Battle, to the people of Cambridge, who would have
thanked him for nothing in regard to the latter. It was he who, with
Prescott, had urged on that battle for the good of the country, but at
the imminent risk of Cambridge, and brought on them the very danger to
which he alluded. But he had a better reason for not mentioning either
of those battles. He was not a braggadocio. The author’s next objection
is, that Putnam did not at the time publicly claim to have been the
commander. Putnam claim the honor of the command, when all the world at
that time agreed in attributing it to the martyred Warren! “Putnam’s
generosity was singular;” “he was generous almost to a fault.” Was he
the man to pluck from the bloody brow of Warren the crown of honor, for
the nominal command of Bunker Hill Battle?—from Warren, whom he adored
as a patriot, and loved as a friend and brother; who had just stood
by his side at the cannon’s mouth at Chelsea and Bunker Hill? In the
bosom of his family, he declared the bare idea was abhorrent to him. In
that sanctuary, however, he did not hesitate to declare that he was the
commander.
The author represents President Stiles as stating, in his Diary, 20th
June, as one among various rumors from camp, that Gen. Putnam took
possession of the hill the night before the battle; and that Stiles,
on 23d June, after receiving additional information from those who had
seen Gen. Putnam, enters in his Diary “that Putnam was not on the hill
at the beginning.” The author has no right to introduce the second
entry to contradict the first, because he knows that, if it does so,
it is false; for he has stated himself that Putnam was present at the
beginning of the intrenchment. For the same reason he cannot adduce it
to prove Putnam was not present at the beginning of the battle. But
there is no contradiction between these entries: both of them are true.
President Stiles was not a man to contradict himself; his meaning is
perfectly clear; he is speaking of the 17th June, and says Putnam was
not present at the beginning, that is, the beginning of the contest
by the enemy’s cannonade at daylight. But who would imagine, that,
instead of any rumors, as the author calls them, on which Stiles makes
his first entry, Stiles says not one syllable of any rumor? So far
from it, he states expressly and distinctly that William Ellery, the
leading man of Rhode Island, and well–known signer of the Declaration
of Independence, had just shown him a copy of a letter from Gen. Greene
at Roxbury, second to no one in the army except Washington, and a
copy of another letter from the Committee of Supplies [of R. Island
at Roxbury]; and that Gen. Greene said, Gen. Putnam took possession
and intrenched on Bunker Hill, Friday night, 16th inst.; “and that
Gen. Ward said, the enemy’s loss was three times as great as ours.”
“Greene,” Styles says, “seemed to doubt this at first; but, from
after–inquiry, and considering that Putnam fired from the trenches,
and that it was said the dead of the enemy covered an acre of ground,
Gen. Greene seemed rather to credit the estimate.” The Chamber of
Supplies says, “The king’s troops attacked Gen. Putnam, who defended
himself with bravery, till overpowered and obliged to retreat.” Now,
these accounts alone settle the whole question of Putnam’s command for
ever. Instead of being base metal to be stigmatized as rumors, they are
sterling gold, and stamped at the highest mint in America.
We have gone through the objections of the author to Putnam’s
claims, as we did through his positions in favor of Prescott’s, and
demonstrated them all to be groundless. We repeat that we have done
this with the greatest repugnance, not only from our personal respect
for the author, but because we may be suspected of doing so from
rivalry. But the author will bear us witness, that we did all in our
power beforehand to render his history as perfect and correct as
possible, for the very purpose of avoiding the necessity of writing
again on the subject. Whence his invincible prepossession against
Putnam’s claims it is useless to inquire; but he acknowledges the
assistance of a number of gentlemen, who, as well as he and myself,
belong to Massachusetts; and we must all acknowledge our natural and
instinctive preference and partiality in favor of an officer of our
own Commonwealth. This is fearful odds against Putnam; but, in his long
warfare for his country, he came off triumphant in many a desperate
conflict while living; and his hard–earned reputation may suffice to
gain him one victory more, though he is dead. In the fable of the lion
painted by man, the lion complains that man is the painter instead of
himself. Putnam, the lion of Connecticut, might well complain that
we men of Massachusetts are drawing a picture of him in Bunker Hill
Battle. But happily for the moral of that fable, three other lions of
Connecticut, Stiles, Dwight, and Whitney, have done the same; and their
picture of him is much more life–like than Frothingham’s.
We are delighted to discover, at last, something amusing in one of the
author’s mistakes, to relieve this dry and dolorous discussion. He
says, Putnam had the command of a regiment, because he was complimented
with the empty title of colonel of a particular regiment, or rather the
regiment was complimented by bearing the name of the nominal colonel
according to the etiquette and fashion of that day. But this gave the
nominal colonel no more right of command over it, than my signing
myself the author’s humble servant gives him a right to call on me for
menial service. The regiment, in these cases, had a full compliment
of officers in command, exclusive of the nominal colonel. The King of
Prussia paid the same compliment to the King of France, by making him a
colonel of one of his regiments; and even the Virgin Mary was appointed
by Louis XI. the colonel of a regiment.
We are at a loss to account for the author’s hallucination: perhaps,
being an antiquarian, he has adopted the odd notion of our ancestors,
that some men are born for perdition, whose good deeds are filthy
rags, and all efforts to save them useless; in fact, that Putnam was
one of those culprits described in our common–law code as outlaws,
who wear wolves’ heads, “_caput lupinum_,” and whose brains it is the
duty of every one to beat out. He seems to imagine, that the head of
the wolf Putnam slew in the cavern may by some legerdemain have been
transferred to his shoulders; and it must be acknowledged there are
some who appear to be of that opinion.
Putnam was a large, strong, muscular man, with an open, bold,
determined countenance, and a large head, with full broad forehead and
brain, proclaiming prodigious power and energy of mind to govern and
direct, and passion to impel. As a farmer–boy, born and brought up in
Essex, Massachusetts, one of the most enlightened counties in America,
he must have partaken of the universal cultivation around him, though
his schooling was confined to a few winter weeks annually. Before the
Revolution, he had been many years in the army, in continual desperate
battle on the continent and in the West Indies, and fought his way
up from captain to a colonelcy. For particular accounts of him, we
refer to the biographies, eulogies, and histories that mention him.
Frothingham has given us the flattering eulogies on him by Gen. Reed,
than whom a more intelligent officer was not under Washington. The
late eminent scholar, John Pickering, sent us an eulogy upon him, from
the English Annual Register, which he thought was written by the great
Edmund Burke. Gen. Dearborn says, “The universal popularity of Putnam
at the commencement of the Revolution was such as can scarcely _now_
be conceived, even by those who _then_ felt the whole force of it.”
Gen. Burbeck says, “He was the great gun of the day.” President Dwight,
and no one knew him better, says he was “a man whose generosity was
singular, whose honesty was proverbial; a hero who dared to lead where
any dared to follow.” But Washington has stamped on Putnam the fiat
of fame. The first moment he met him on Prospect Hill, he paid him a
flattering compliment, “that he inspired every man under him with his
own energy and spirit;” and he pronounced various eulogies on him up to
the moment of bidding him his last farewell. Their mutual confidence
and friendship were uninterrupted, except for an instant, when
Washington thought Putnam was desirous of doing more than his share of
the fighting. Washington called for part of the troops of Putnam, who
waited to entreat permission to head them first against New York, as he
had before against Boston. Washington, though his military sternness
was as gigantic as all his other good qualities, rebuked him with more
forbearance than he ever exhibited on a similar occasion. He was more
severe on Hamilton for a slight want of punctuality, when he said to
him, “You must change your watch, or I must change my Aid.”[6]
But the appointment of Putnam as Brigadier–General by Connecticut, and
Major–General by the Federal Congress, over the heads of many most
respectable officers, would prove, without any of these notices, that
no other officer could have been selected as the commander of the
battle, as he had been on three very conspicuous occasions before. If
commander there was, he must have been the commander; and “that there
was, all nature cries aloud.” Since the world began, in all history or
natural history, there never was a battle known without a commander.
It is the instinct of all animated nature, insect, animal, or man;
from the bee to the buffalo, from the Indian savage to Gen. Taylor.
Milton’s battles of the angels were fought under Michael and Satan as
the commanders.
Our next incontrovertible proof that Putnam was the commander is
founded on the fact, that the army at Cambridge was regularly organized
and consolidated under Ward, Warren, Putnam, and other officers in
regular gradation, without any distinction in regard to the colonies
whence the troops came. The author acknowledges, if this was the fact,
that Putnam was the commander; we take him at his word, and will make
this so clear, that he who runs may read. The question is one of fact
only, as regards both the army and Gen. Putnam; whether the army was,
in fact, a consolidated and organized body, and whether Putnam was
commander of the battle _de facto_. Whether all this was technically
legal and constitutional is a question as abstract and useless as
that other of the author’s, whether Putnam had any right to command
Prescott; and more hopeless: it is almost on a par with that of free
agency, or the origin of evil. It would be as preposterous to deny that
Putnam was the commander, even if the army was not a legal one, as for
British historians to have denied that Washington was the commander in
the battles he fought, because they said he was not a legal commander,
and Gen. Howe said he was no General, only Mr. &c.; though he found
to his sorrow, that Washington and Putnam both were generals, and
out–generalled him,—Putnam at Bunker Hill, and Washington ever
afterwards. There is poor encouragement for any one to enter into this
question of the legality of the organization of the army, when Pres.
Adams, sen. and Judge Tudor failed under it so egregiously. They both
jumped into this quickset hedge, and the author shuts his eyes and
follows them. The result is, Pres. Adams doubts whether any one was
authorized to command the troops of all the colonies; and whether any
one, except the old militia Gen. Pomeroy, a volunteer with no command
over an individual in Cambridge, had a right to command the troops of
Massachusetts. Judge Tudor doubts with him. The author is positive
that the army was one of allies only, and Putnam a mere volunteer.
Putnam was no more a volunteer than the whole army at Cambridge was
a volunteer army, or than the governments of the colonies who sent
the troops there were volunteer governments; and they were in fact
mere governments _de facto_, without constitutions, or conventions
to form any. New Hampshire, rather the worst off in this respect,
had two separate governments,—the royal, under the very popular and
conciliatory Gov. Wentworth; and the rebel, under a convention; and
both were in operation for a month after the battle. But just as much
legality and constitutionality as there was in these governments, so
much there was in the consolidation and organization of the army under
Gen. Ward. The facts were perfectly well known to all three of the
colonies, and their tacit consent and approbation was as binding on
them as if it was expressed by their regular enactments enrolled and
recorded.
The author omits, in his extracts from Adams’s letter, far the most
interesting and important part of it, as it regards the subject, and
especially Putnam’s claims. Adams thinks his objections to the legality
of the army extend to it, and to Washington, when he took command. Now,
this fortunately gives us the conclusive authority of Washington, to
show that all these legal subtleties are of no practical importance.
Adams doubts whether the army was sufficiently organized to authorize
Washington to try by courts–martial the delinquents in the battle.
But Washington did not hesitate a moment to cut this Gordian knot.
He brought Mansfield, Gerrish, Scammans, and all other delinquents,
before courts–martial; and made Gen. Greene, of Rhode Island, the
president of them, as if for the express purpose of declaring his
opinion, that this colonial question did not affect in the slightest
degree the organization of the army, or the authority and liabilities
of the officers. Our author labors to make out an argument against
Putnam’s command, by showing that there was more legality and intimacy
in the connection of the New Hampshire troops with the rest of the
army, than in that of the troops from Connecticut. So complete was the
union of the Connecticut troops with the rest of the army, that Putnam
could not obtain Ward’s permission to take the Connecticut regiment
to Charlestown the night before the battle, though he strenuously
urged it. The most he could obtain was two hundred of them; and they
were placed under the command of Prescott, who had likewise a company
from New Hampshire (Capt. Dow’s) under his command. Could any thing
be more conclusive as to the consolidation of the army? We have the
pay–rolls of New Hampshire to prove, that her troops were adopted and
paid by her from the first moment they went to Cambridge. On the side
of Connecticut this union was not only expressed by the manner in which
their officers were detailed for duty by Ward; but he placed under the
immediate command of Putnam, Patterson’s Massachusetts and Sargent’s
New Hampshire regiments, in addition to one from Connecticut, at
Inman’s Farm, the most exposed and important outpost of the army.[7]
And the very important action was fought, and the victory achieved,
under the command of Putnam, the 27th of May, at Chelsea. On the 13th
May, all the troops at Cambridge marched under the command of Putnam to
Charlestown, and defied the enemy under the very muzzles of their guns.
Lieut–Col. Huntington writes to Gov. Trumbull from Cambridge, 27th
April: “Gen. Ward being at Roxbury, Gen. Putnam is commander–in–chief
at this place.” Now, how is it conceivable, that the author, after
narrating these three striking cases of Putnam’s command over all
the troops, and after this overwhelming evidence of the complete
coalescence of these troops, should a few days after, when Putnam
appears again with the army at Bunker Hill, turn to the right about
face, like lightning, and deny that he could possibly command, because
it was an army of allies?
The organization of the army at Cambridge, just before the battle,
was as follows: Two full regiments, under Stark and Reid, and another
small one under Sargent, from New Hampshire, and one full regiment
from Connecticut under Lieut.–Col. Storrs, immediately after the
battle of Lexington, about two months before that of Bunker Hill,
came to Cambridge, and voluntarily united themselves with the army
under Major–Gen. Ward. All these troops previous to the battle, as
we stated in our history of it, in the very words, we believe, of
Gov. Brooks (Maj. Brooks, of Ward’s army), were regularly organized
and consolidated, and the routine and operations of a regular army
were performed by them precisely as though they had been all of one
province. The following extracts from Gen. Ward’s orderly book will
put this beyond dispute:—April 22, he orders Col. Stark to march to
Chelsea with three hundred men. May 2, he orders Maj. M’Clary, of the
same regiment, to keep a vigilant look–out as far as Winter Hill.
June 6, Lieut.–Col. Storrs is officer of the main guard. June 7, Maj.
Durkee Connecticut troops are made repeatedly; and, on the 12th of
June, Ward orders a court–martial with Col. Frye, president, and
other officers of Massachusetts, united with Coit and Keyes, and Jos.
Trumbull, judge advocate, all of Connecticut. Here, then, we have a
demonstration, as clear as were it mathematical, of the complete union
and coalition of the whole army, not only with their own consent, but
with the sanction and approbation of their several provinces, to whom
all this was known. But allow the gentleman, as in regard to Callender,
to manufacture his own case, grossly regardless of all known facts.
Allow that these New England provinces, who had always lived like
brothers under one general government, should, when their object,
danger, and enemy were one, be so discordant and repulsive, that each
provincial corps, even in battle, must be insulated, he would not be
one step nearer to his object. Is it possible he is ignorant that
allies, as he calls them, when in military detachments, must be under
the command of the oldest allied officer, who ranks the rest? This is
so perfectly settled, that it would be burning daylight to prove it.