Note 566 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

The connection of Putnam with the final stand at Prospect Hill naturally conveyed the impression of his commanding through the day, as he was known to have been by turns upon different parts of the field. Gen. Greene, who hurried up from Rhode Island that night, got this impression from the understanding of the case which he found prevailing in the Roxbury lines, when he wrote back the next day (June 18) to Gov. Cooke, of Rhode Island. "General Putnam", he says, "had taken post at Bunker's Hill, and flung up an entrenchment with a detachment of about three hundred" (Sparks MSS., no. xlviii. p. 67). This notion reached England, and on a print of Putnam published there Sept. 9, which is annexed, Putnam is called commander-in-chief (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Nov., 1881, p. 102). An American engraving, by Roman, which appeared shortly afterwards, represents Putnam on horseback at the redoubt, as if commanding there. Col. Trumbull gave him similar prominence when he painted his well-known picture in 1786, though he is said to have regretted it at a later day. The earliest general narrative to give the command to Prescott was Gordon's, which followed closely the account of the Committee of Safety, and this was printed in 1788. The Life of Putnam by Humphreys was published in 1788, while Putnam was still living, and makes no mention of his having the command; but the Rev. Josiah Whitney, in 1790, in a note to a sermon preached upon the death of Putnam, took exception to this oversight (Stevens's Hist. Coll., i. no. 685). In 1809, Eliot, in his Biographical Dictionary, represents Prescott as commanding at the redoubt and Stark at the rail fence. When Gen. Wilkinson's Memoirs were published, in 1816 (reviewed in the N. Am. Rev., Nov., 1817), the conduct of Putnam on that day was represented in no favorable light; and Gen. Henry Dearborn, who was with Stark at the rail fence, asserted that Putnam remained inactive in the rear. It is also significant that Major Thompson Maxwell, who was with Reed's regiment at the rail fence, also asserted that Prescott commanded (Essex Inst. Hist. Coll., vol. vii.; N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Jan., 1868, p. 57). Dearborn's statement was made in a paper in the Portfolio (March, 1818), which is reprinted in the Hist. Mag., August, 1864, and June, 1868 (Dawson, p. 402). It was printed also separately at the time in Philadelphia and Boston (1818) as An Account of the Battle of Bunker Hill with De Bernière's map corrected by General Dearborn (16 pp.). Col. Daniel Putnam replied in the Portfolio (May, 1818) with numerous depositions (all reprinted by Dawson, p. 407), which was issued separately as A letter to Maj. Gen. Dearborn, repelling his unprovoked attack on the character of the late Maj. General Putnam, and containing some anecdotes relating to the Battle of Bunker Hill, not generally known (Philadelphia, 1818). Both tracts were reprinted as an Account of the Battle of Bunker's Hill, by H. Dearborn, Major-General of the United States Army; with a letter to Maj. Gen. Dearborn, repelling his unprovoked attack on the character of the late Maj.-Gen. Israel Putnam, by Daniel Putnam, Esq. (Boston: Munroe & Francis, 1818). Each document is paged separately, and the last has a separate title. Dearborn replied in the Boston Patriot (June 13, 1818), with depositions, all of which are in Dawson, p. 414. See account of Gen. Dearborn by Daniel Goodwin, Jr., in the Chicago Hist. Soc. Proc. In July, 1818, Daniel Webster, in the North Amer. Rev., vindicated Putnam, but claimed for Prescott as much of a general command during the day as any one had, which claim he held to be established by Prescott's making his report to Ward at Cambridge when it was over. (Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., June, 1858.) John Lowell offered counter-depositions in the Columbian Centinel (July 4 and 15, 1818), again reprinted in Dawson, p. 423. In October, 1818, Col. Samuel Swett appended an Historical and Topographical Sketch of Bunker Hill Battle to a new edition of Humphrey's Life of Putnam. In the Boston Patriot, Nov. 17, 1818, D. L. Child claimed that Putnam was not in the battle, and he published separately An Enquiry into the Conduct of Gen. Putnam (Boston, 1819). In 1825, Swett enlarged his text, and published it as a History of the battle of Bunker Hill (Boston, 1825), followed by Notes to his Sketch in Dec., 1825. His history passed to a second edition as a History of the Bunker Hill Battle, with a plan. By S. Swett. Second Edition, much enlarged with new information derived from the surviving soldiers present at the celebration on the 17th June last, and notes (Boston, 1826). A third appeared in 1827. (Cf. Sparks in N. Am. Rev., vol. xxii.)