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