General Israel Putnam and the Battle of Bunker Hill

The reader's indulgence is requested as some background information is necessary: Washington had been appointed Commander in Chief at a session of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia on June 1775, after which he immediately left for Boston to take command of the Continental Army. He carried with him the commissions of four major generals – Artemas Ward of Massachusetts, Charles Lee, Philip Schuyler and Israel Putnam, in that order. Besides Washington himself, Putnam was the only unanimous selection among them.

It was while Washington was en route to Boston that the Battle of Bunker Hill took place in June, 1775. Upon his arrival, he took command on July 3, and immediately convened courts martial to examine allegations of misconduct against several officers during the recent battle. Washington was obviously intensely interested in the conduct of the officers that he would be responsible for selecting to the most important positions in the Continental Army in the coming war against the mighty British Empire.

One of Washington's first acts was to present Israel Putnam's major general commission, making him second in command in the entire army. This obviously exposed Washington to bitter recrimination, since Putnam replaced Artemas Ward of Massachusetts as senior major general. Washington had been thoroughly apprised of Ward's lethargic performance during the battle, which likely caused the American defeat. Ward had 20,000 soldiers available, mostly Massachusetts men, but provided only 200 reinforcements immediately before the battle started. Ward was stripped of all decision making authority for the balance of the war, and promptly retired.

By making Putnam senior major general and second in command to Washington himself, the commander in chief bestowed the most ringing endorsement imaginable upon Putnam – which would have been unthinkable had Washington received even a hint of cowardice or incompetence in Putnam's performance during the battle.

Washington's General Orders of August 13, 1776 authorized and required "all good officers" to instantly shoot down any officer or soldier who fled during an enemy attack. This was intended to prevent the "brave and gallant" from being sacrificed due to the "base and cowardly." While these orders post-dated the battle by more than a year, they codified Washington's well-known intolerance of battlefield cowardice.

Accordingly, Dearborn's 43-year silence about such matters, despite his affirmative duty to immediately report acts of cowardice, constitutes a self-indictment for his own dereliction of duty. It is one further reason to weigh his allegations carefully against the contemporaneous record.

Perhaps more telling, Dearborn's ridiculous allegations place him in the unenviable position of casting aspersions on General Washington's judgement in making Putnam his second in command – and depending on his bravery, judgment and heroism more than any other of his officers well into 1777, the most desperate, darkest days of the revolution. Will we accept the military judgment of Henry Dearborn, under such suspicious circumstances, over that of the commander in chief?

Yet this is what Dearborn and his supporters demand of us. They cannot indict Putnam for cowardice without indicting Washington – as an accomplice in promoting him, depending on him, and trusting his judgment through the most trying conditions of the war. Washington's confidence in Putnam, sustained for a full two years after Bunker Hill, puts the lie to Dearborn's account.

Shouldn't we restore this national hero to his rightful place as second only to Washington as the greatest military hero of the revolution?

In 1788, David Humphreys published the first biography of Israel Putnam. In it, he lavished praise on his subject, not only for his performance at Bunker Hill, but throughout his life.

Humphreys had served as Putnam's aide-de-camp for two years during the war, and later in the same capacity for Washington. He resided at Mount Vernon with Washington for two years, starting in 1787. Thus, the book was composed at Mount Vernon, and Washington actively monitored the progress of Humphreys' manuscript. He made all of his military records, correspondence, journals and recollections freely available to Humphreys throughout the process, and edited the final draft before it was published in 1788 to great public fanfare.

It was Washington's implied endorsement of this laudatory account of Putnam's service that settled in the public mind, perhaps more than anything else, the unmitigated heroism that characterized Putnam's entire life. Humphreys went so far as to refer to Putnam as the "American Cincinnatus."

Dearborn's attack so offended his contemporaries that his reputation never fully recovered. It was Washington's sustained devotion to preserving Putnam's memory – through the Humphreys biography, his correspondence, and his actions – that established Putnam's standing in the public mind. The heirs of Dearborn's account inherit no comparable foundation.

More recent writers have revived elements of the Dearborn narrative – sometimes in extended form, sometimes as passing summary in larger works on the Revolution. None has produced new contemporaneous evidence. The argument restated is, in essence, the argument Dearborn made in 1818, and it falls to the same record that has answered it from the start: Washington's appointment, Adams's testimony, the contemporary 1775 prints, and the sworn statements of soldiers from across the field – including from Dearborn's own regiment.

This site puts that record where readers can examine it directly.

Writing in the Forward of a 2000 edition of An Essay on the life of the Honourable Major-General Israel Putnam, originally published in 1788 by David Humphreys as the first biography of an American written by an American, Professor William C. Dowling of Rutgers University stated:

"General Israel Putnam is remembered to history and legend as exclaiming to the American soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill, 'Don't fire 'til you see the whites of their eyes.' The story of the patriot army in the American Revolution is, therefore, the subject of the second half of the Life of Putnam. Parts of the story are merely entertaining, as when Putnam, whose forces in his winter [1777] encampment at Princeton have been reduced to a mere 50 men, is compelled by circumstances to permit a British officer to visit his headquarters. The stratagems through which he convinces the officer that his troops actually number in the thousands – by putting candles in the windows of Nassau Hall and every vacant house in the town of Princeton, and by marching the same 50 men around all night in detachments of five, ten, and twenty – borders on comedy, but [author David] Humphreys never lets the reader forget that such episodes mask an underlying desperation. For a large garrison of British troops is camped a mere 15 miles away in New Brunswick. Should the British learn just how few soldiers Putnam actually commands at Princeton, or how few Washington has a few miles away at Morristown, or how little the Congress has done to clothe or supply even these tiny forces, the American Revolution would, the reader understands, be over in a week."

Henry Dearborn published his accusations against Israel Putnam in the March 1818 edition of The Port Folio – 28 years after Putnam's death, and long after he could speak in his own defense.