Ready and willing was Putnam—of that there is no doubt. Too willing, some of his enemies declared, when in September, 1774, news coming from Boston that American blood had been shed, without waiting to verify the report, he started out to alarm the country. This proved a false alarm, and he was strongly censured by those who had not kept a close watch on happenings in Boston; but he defended himself so sturdily that his critics were silenced. Two things were proved by this false alarm: that the people were ready to be aroused on the slightest provocation, for they filled the highways and flocked by thousands in the direction of Boston; again, that the British intended to stay where they were, for they extended their fortifications. Both sides were warned, and the lines of demarcation began to be visible where before they had seemed hardly to be distinguished, between loyalists and patriots. It was now either for England or for America, even the common people felt, while the leaders, like Israel Putnam, saw in the closer approach of warlike preparations only the fulfilment of their predictions.
The very next month, October, 1774, the militia of Putnam's State were ordered to provide themselves with an increased supply of powder, bullets and flints for their muskets. More vigorously than ever now he applied himself to the training of the sturdy militia; hoping for continued peace, perhaps, but preparing for nothing less than war. When war broke finally, with the first blood shed at Lexington, it found the minutemen of New England better prepared than their enemies believed, and when the news of this epoch-making event reached Israel Putnam, this great exemplar of the minutemen proved a model worthy their emulation.
The messenger with the doleful tidings found him plowing in the field back of his house at Brooklyn Green. His son Daniel was with him driving the oxen, and when the patriot had gathered the full meaning of the news he left the boy to unyoke the team, and himself hastened to his barn, where he saddled and mounted his best horse and started out to arouse the country again, as he had done seven months before. He had no doubts this time as to the truth of the rumor, for it had come direct and contained its own confirmation on its face.
The British, eight hundred strong, had left Boston for Concord, where they hoped to find some military stores. Encountering a small body of militia at Lexington, Major Pitcairn, in command of the British soldiers, called out to them to throw down their arms and disperse; but as they did not do so he ordered his men to fire, killing eight of the sturdy Americans, who even then did not run away, but joined themselves to other minutemen now assembling, and again came in contact with their foes at Concord Bridge. Just how many were slain the first message did not accurately report; but it was enough that blood had been shed, and it mattered not whether that blood was from ten men or a thousand.
The die was cast, the moment for armed resistance had arrived, and Israel Putnam tarried not for details, but sped straight for the home of Governor Trumbull, at Lebanon (the same who was afterward known as "Brother Jonathan"), and receiving from him mandatory permission to proceed to the scene of strife, hastened back to Brooklyn, arriving at his tavern home late in the afternoon. He had already been in the saddle for hours, as the news reached him between eight and nine in the morning, but before sunset the tireless warrior was again on horseback and galloping for Cambridge and Concord. He probably had received refreshment, food and drink at intervals, but he had not stopped to change his working clothes for better, and went off on both long rides in the farmer's frock which he wore when plowing in the field behind his house.
Though the Putnam mansion at Brooklyn Green is no longer in existence, the great trees that stood in front of it in his time still cast their grateful shade upon its site, and the walled field, sloping toward a verdant meadow, may be seen by the visitor, much as it lay to the sun on that lovely morning in April, 1775, when the farmer-patriot was peacefully running his furrows.
The distance to Cambridge was nearly ninety miles, yet Putnam covered it in an all-night's ride, going pretty much over the same ground he had traversed when, a young man of twenty-two, he had taken his wife and child to their new home in Connecticut. Thirty-five years had elapsed since the young pioneer had made his first venture in the world, ten of which he had passed in fighting for the King against whose soldiers he was soon to lead his fellow countrymen in war. Trained to fight the battles of Britain, yet those ten years of experience in warfare with the Indians were to prepare him for a wider, vaster field. He must now have felt this, his patriot friends must have believed it, for their eyes were turned expectantly toward Israel Putnam, as soon as the first blood was shed at Lexington and Concord.
See that sturdy figure, hurrying on horseback over the rough roads, through the darkness of the night, toward the goal of duty! The British had marched out of Boston at night, on the eighteenth of April, their purpose and their route foretold by Paul Revere (who, by the way, was in the campaign at Lake George, if not a comrade of Israel Putnam at that time). At or near daybreak of the nineteenth, at Lexington, the shots were fired "heard round the world"; at noon the British were in retreat from Concord, where they had been routed by the minutemen, and by night, exhausted, disgraced, defeated, they had reached Charlestown, under the escort of Lord Percy and his 1,200 reenforcements, where they were protected from the enraged militia by the guns of the fleet.
With such celerity traveled the news, that Putnam heard it on the morning of the twentieth; and with such celerity traveled Putnam, that he was at Cambridge on the morning of the twenty-first, and that same day at Concord, wonderful as may seem the feat performed by gallant horse and rider.