PUTNAM'S FLIGHT.
Three times the English did this, when the ammunition in the fortifications gave out, and they charged with fixed bayonets and reinforcements.
The Americans were driven from the field, but it was a victory after all. It united the Colonies and made them so vexed at the English that it took some time to bring on an era of good feeling.
Lord Howe, referring afterwards to this battle, said that the Americans did not stand up and fight like the regulars, suggesting that thereafter the Colonial army should arrange itself in the following manner before a battle!
However, the suggestion was not acted on. The Colonial soldiers declined to put on a bright red coat and a pill-box cap, that kept falling off in battle, thus delaying the carnage, but preferred to wear homespun which was of a neutral shade, and shoot their enemy from behind stumps. They said it was all right to dress up for a muster, but they preferred their working-clothes for fighting. After the war a statistician made the estimate that nine per cent. of the British troops were shot while ascertaining if their caps were on straight.[4]
General Israel Putnam was known as the champion rough rider of his day, and once when hotly pursued rode down three flights of steps, which, added to the flight he made from the English soldiers, made four flights. Putnam knew not fear or cowardice, and his name even to-day is the synonyme for valor and heroism.
