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