(1718-1790)
[Illustration: Men searching in rocks. [TN]]
Israel Putnam, the redoubtable hero of Indian and French adventure in
the old colonial wars, the survivor of many a revolutionary fight, was
born at Salem, Mass., January 7, 1718. His grandfather, from the south
of England, was one of the first settlers of the place. The boy was
brought up with his father on the farm. He had little education in
literature; much in the development of a hardy, vigorous constitution,
in his contest with the soil and the actual world about him. He was
fond of athletic exercises, an adept in running and wrestling, in
which he proved himself more than a match for his village companions.
The story is told of his being insulted for his rusticity, on his
first visit to Boston, by a youth of twice his size, when he taught
the citizen better manners by a sound flogging.
Before he was of age, he was married to the daughter of John Pope, of
Salem, and presently removed with his wife to a farm in the town of
Pomfret, in Eastern Connecticut. His rugged powers were, no doubt,
sufficiently taxed in the ordinary labors of the field. In those days
the farmer had enemies to encounter, which have since vanished from
the land.
The well-known fable of AEsop, of the boy and the wolf, had then a
literal application. Every child in the days of our fathers knew the
story of Putnam, and the she-wolf which he dragged from its den. This
and similar tales go far to make up the popular reputation of the
hero, and it was as a man of the people that Putnam first appears upon
the public scene.
On the breaking out of the old French war, as it was termed, at the
age of thirty-seven, he drew together a band of his neighbors and
reported himself with the Connecticut contingent before Crown Point.
He appears to have been employed in this service under Major Rogers,
the celebrated partisan "ranger," whose life he is said to have saved
in an encounter with a stalwart Frenchman. Putnam conducted himself as
a man of resources and valor in this mixed species of warfare, in
achieving a reputation which brought him, in 1757, the commission of a
major from the Connecticut Legislature. It was the year of the
memorable massacre of Fort William Henry. Putnam was with the forces
whose head-quarters were at the neighboring Fort Edward, under command
of General Webb, and made several vigorous attempts to assist in the
support of the beleaguered fortress, but his efforts were not seconded
by the commander, who ungenerously left the fort a prey to Montcalm
and the Indians. These adventures of Putnam displayed his personal
courage, in approaching the enemy on Lake George, and subsequently in
command of his Rangers in rescuing a party of his fellow-soldiers from
an Indian ambuscade at Fort Edward.
The year 1758 saw Major Putnam again in the field, under the command
of Abercrombie, at the scene of his former labors, in the vicinity of
Lake George. In the early movements of the campaign, Putnam
distinguished himself in an ambuscade, by a destructive night attack
upon a party of the enemy at Wood Creek. When the main line advanced
toward Ticonderoga, he was, with the lamented Lord Howe, in the front
of the centre, when that much-loved officer was slain upon the march.
It was the first meeting, after landing from Lake George, with the
advance of the French troops. There was some skirmishing, which
attracted the attention of the officers. Putnam advanced to the spot,
accompanied, contrary to his dissuasions, by Lord Howe, who fell at
the first fire. The party of Putnam, enraged by this disaster, fought
with gallantry, and inflicted a heavy loss upon their opponents. The
result of this miserably conducted expedition, however, made no amends
for the loss of the gallant Howe. Two thousand men were blunderingly
sacrificed before Ticonderoga, and the threatened siege was abandoned.
The life of Putnam is full of perilous encounters incident to border
service against the Indians. In one of these he narrowly avoided
capture by the savages on the Hudson, near Fort Miller. He escaped
only by shooting the rapids with his boat, a marvellous adventure,
which is said to have wakened a superstitious veneration for him in
the minds of his Indian assailants.
Not long afterward, however, the barbarians had an opportunity of
treating him with less respect. It was in the month of August of this
year that he was engaged with a reconnoitring party in company with
the partisan Rogers, near Ticonderoga. They had been employed in
watching the movements of the enemy, and were on their return to Fort
Edward when the attention of the French partisan officer, Molang, who
was on the lookout, was attracted to them by a careless shooting-match
between Rogers and a fellow British officer. A confused hand-to-hand
action ensued in the woods, in the course of which Putnam, his gun
missing fire, "while the muzzle was pressed against the breast of a
large and well-proportioned savage," was captured and bound to a tree
by that formidable personage. The English party now rallying, drove
their pursuers backward, which brought the unfortunate Putnam to a
central position between two fires. "Human imagination," well says
Colonel Humphreys, "can hardly figure to itself a more deplorable
situation." Putnam remained more than an hour deprived of all power
save that of hearing and vision, as the musket-balls whizzed by his
ears and a ruthless savage aimed his tomahawk repeatedly, with the
infernal dexterity of a Chinese juggler, within a hair's breadth of
his person. This amusement was succeeded by the attempt of a French
petty-officer to put an end to his life by discharging his musket
against his breast. It happily missed fire. The action was now brought
to an end in favor of the Provincials; but Putnam was carried off in
the retreat by his Indian captor. He was now destined to witness one
of those scenes, since so well described by Cooper, of the peculiar
tortures inflicted by the Indians upon their prisoners in war; but
unhappily with less complacent feelings than the reader of the skilful
novelist experiences, whose terrors are tempered by the delightful art
of the narrator. With Putnam the spectator and the sufferer were the
same. He has been bound on the march with intolerable thongs, he has
almost perished under his burdens, he has been tomahawked in the face;
he is now to be roasted alive. A dark forest is selected for the
sacrifice; stripped naked, he is bound to a tree, and the inflammable
brushwood piled around him. Savage voices sound his death-knell. Fire
is applied, when a sudden shower dampens the flame, to burst forth
again with renewed strength. Though securely fastened, the limbs of
the victim are left some liberty to shrink from the accursed heat. He
has thought his last thought of home, of wife and children, when the
desperate French partisan, Molang, the commander of the savage hordes,
hearing of the act, rushes upon the scene and rescues him from his
tormentors. Putnam is now restored to the guardianship of the Indian
chief by whom he had been captured, and from whom he was separated
during these hours of agony, when he had fallen into the hands of the
baser fellows of the tribe. The party now reach Ticonderoga, where
Putnam is delivered to Montcalm, and thence courteously conducted by a
French officer to Montreal.
There he found himself within reach of a benevolent American officer,
then a prisoner in the city, Colonel Peter Schuyler, who generously
ministered to his necessities, and who was instrumental in procuring
his release from the French commander, when he himself was exchanged
after the capture of Frontenac. Putnam, on his return home, gallantly
conducted through the wilderness the sorely tried Mrs. Howe and her
children, whose adventures in Indian captivity and among the French,
equal the inventive pages of romance.
The next year, in Amherst's great campaign, Putnam returned to
Montreal under better auspices. He was with that commander in his
onward movement, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and rendered
efficient service in the passage down the St. Lawrence, by his bravery
and ingenuity. When the fort of Oswegatchie was to be attacked, and
two armed vessels were in the way, he proposed to silence the latter
by driving wedges to hinder the movement of their rudders, and to
cross the abatis of the fortification by an attack from boats, armed
with long planks, which were to be let down when the vessels,
protected by fascines, were placed alongside of the work. A timely
surrender anticipated both of these expedients. The dying Wolfe had
conquered Canada at Quebec, making victory easy elsewhere in the
province. Montreal surrendered to the allied forces without a blow.
Putnam, it is recorded, availed himself of the opportunity to look up
the Indian chief who had taken him prisoner, and exchange civilities
and hospitalities, now that the tables were turned.
We next find Putnam in charge of a Connecticut regiment, in a novel
field of warfare, on the coast of Cuba, in Lord Albemarle's attack
upon Havana, in 1762. He was in considerable danger in a storm, when
the transport in which he embarked with his men was wrecked on a reef
of the island; a landing was effected by rafts, and a fortified camp
established on the shore. He was again fortunate in escaping the
dangers of a climate so fatal to his countrymen. On his return home,
he was engaged in service against the Indians, with the title of
colonel. The war being now over, he retired to his farm, which he
continued to cultivate till he was again called into the field by the
stirring summons of Lexington.
In the preliminary scenes of the war, he fairly represented the
feeling of the mass of his countrymen, as it was excited by the
successive acts of parliamentary aggression. As a soldier of the old
French war, he had learned the weakness of British officers in
America, and the strength of a hardy, patriotic peasantry. "If," he
said, "it required six years for the combined forces of England and
her colonies to conquer such a feeble colony as Canada, it would, at
least, take a very long time for England alone to overcome her own
widely extended colonies, which were much stronger." Another anecdote
is characteristic of the blunt farmer. Being once asked whether he did
not seriously believe "that a well-appointed British army of five
thousand veterans could march through the whole continent of America,"
he replied, "no doubt, if they behaved civilly, and paid well for
everything they wanted; but--if they should attempt it in a hostile
manner, though the American men were out of the question, the women,
with their ladles and broomsticks, would knock them all on the head
before they had got half way through."
The news of Lexington--the war message--transmitted from hand to hand
till village repeated it to village, the sea to the backwoods, "found
the farmer of Pomfret, two days after the conflict, like Cincinnatus,
literally at the plough." He unyoked his team and hastened in his rude
dress to the camp. Summoning the forces of Connecticut, he was placed
at their head, with the rank of Major-General, and stood ready at
Cambridge for the bloody day of Bunker's Hill. He was in service in
May, in the spirited affair checking the British supplies from
Noddle's Island, in Boston Harbor, and resolutely counselled the
occupation of the heights of Charlestown. When the company of Prescott
went forth on the night of June 16th, to their gallant work, he was
with them, taking no active command, but assisting where opportunity
served. He was seen in different parts of the field, but his chief
exertions appear to have been expended upon the attempted
fortification of Bunker's Hill, where he met the fugitives in the
retreat, and conducted "such of them as would obey him," says
Bancroft, to the night's encampment at Prospect Hill.
Putnam's was one of the first Congressional appointments, ten days
before the battle, when the rank of Major-General was conferred upon
him. He continued to serve at the siege of Boston, and when the
theatre of operations was changed by the departure of the British to
New York, was placed by Washington, in 1776, in command in that city
until his own arrival. He employed himself during this short period,
with several devices for the safety of the harbor. In August, on the
landing of Howe, he was, upon the sudden illness of Greene, who had
directed the fortifications, and after the arrival of the British,
left in command at the battle of Long Island, and much censure has
been thrown upon him for the neglect of the passes by which the
American left was turned. In the actual combat there appears to have
been a divided authority.
The abandonment of New York next followed, with the retreat to
Westchester and the passage through the Jerseys. Putnam was then, in
January, 1777, ordered to Philadelphia to make provision for its
defence. In May, he was put in command of the post at the Highlands,
to secure its defences, and observe, from that central position, the
movements of the enemy. In the summer of this year, Sir Henry Clinton,
at New York, sent up the river a flag of truce to claim one Edmund
Palmer, who had been taken in the American camp, as a lieutenant in
the British service. This drew forth from Putnam a reply which has
been often quoted:
"HEADQUARTERS, August 7, 1777.
"Edmund Palmer, an officer in the enemy's service, was taken as a spy
lurking within our lines; he has been tried as a spy, condemned as a
spy, and shall be executed as a spy, and the flag is ordered to depart
immediately.
"ISRAEL PUTNAM.
"P.S.--He has been accordingly executed."
In September, a portion of Putnam's command was withdrawn by
Washington for the support of the army in Pennsylvania, by a
peremptory order which, it is said, put an end to a plan formed by
Putnam for a separate attack on the enemy at New York. Forts
Montgomery and Clinton, at the entrance to the Highlands, fell into
the hands of Clinton by a surprise shortly after, but the conquest of
this important position was neutralized by the victory of Gates, at
Saratoga. The British remained at Fort Montgomery but twenty days.
Putnam seems still to have entertained some project in connection with
New York, which led him to withhold troops called for by the imperious
necessities of Washington. The neglect of these orders brought a
pointed letter from Hamilton, and an equally significant rebuke from
Washington himself. In the following spring, Putnam was relieved of
his command in the Highlands by the appointment of General McDougal to
the post, and was ordered to Connecticut to superintend the raising of
the new levies. He was stationed the following winter at Danbury, when
the famous descent of the precipice at Horse Neck occurred, one of the
latest marvels of Putnam's anecdotical career. While he was on a visit
to one of his outposts at Horse Neck, Governor Tryon of New York,
advanced upon the place with a considerable body of troops. Putnam
planted his small force on the hill, but was speedily compelled to
provide for the safety of his men by a retreat, and for his own, by
plunging down a formidable rocky steep by the roadside.
In 1779, he was again in the Highlands, superintending the defences
then erected at West Point, one of which, the fort now in ruins, bore
his name. In the winter, he visited his family in Connecticut, and as
he was returning to the army, at Morristown, was struck with
paralysis. His right side was enfeebled, and his active career ceased,
though he enjoyed the cheerful, tranquil pursuits of age. His memory
remained unimpaired. One of his amusements was to relate to his friend
and military companion, Colonel Humphreys, those events of his varied
life, which that officer wrought into the pleasing narrative
appropriately addressed to the State Society of the Cincinnati in
Connecticut, and published by their order. The dedication of the work
to Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth, bears date June 4, 1788, about two
years before the decease of the hero of the story. General Putnam died
at Brookline, Conn., May 29, 1790, in his seventy-third year.