Redding, ye 11 of May, 1779.
Dear Sir: On my arrivol to this plas I could hear nothing of my hard mony and so must conclud it is gon to the dogs we have no nus hear from head Quarters not a lin senc I cam hear and what my destination is to be this summer cant even so much as geuss but shuld be much obbliged to you if you would be so good as to send me by the teems the Lym juice you was so good as to offer me and a par of Shoes I left under the chamber tabel. I begin to think the nues from the sutherd is tru of ginrol Lintons having a batel and comming of the leator it is said he killed 200 hundred and took 500 hundred what makes me creudit it is becaus the acounts in the New york papers peartly agree with ours
my beast Respeacts to your Lady and sistors and Litel soon.
I am dear sir with the greatest respects your most obed and humbel Sarvant
Israel Putnam.
Old Put's anxiety as to his destination having been allayed, he established his military family at or near Buttermilk Falls, about two miles below West Point, where, says Major Humphreys, "he was happy in possessing the friendship of the officers of the line, and in living on terms of hospitality with them. Indeed, there was no family in the army that lived better than his own. The General, his second son, Major Daniel Putnam, and the author of these memoirs, composed that family."
Putnam was probably at this point when, on that dark and stormy night of the fifteenth of July, "Mad Anthony" Wayne stormed and captured Stony Point, on the river not far below. This remarkable exploit was not only the most important event of the year, but, like the battle of Monmouth of the year previous, almost the only action worthy of note. It had the effect, probably, of causing the British to withdraw their troops from along the Sound, where they were engaged in ravaging the seaboard places of Connecticut; but the post was again taken by the enemy, who, like the Americans, did not find it worth the while to hold it.
The most important members of Putnam's military family, his son Daniel and Major Humphreys, accompanied him home on leave of absence, in November, whence, early in December, the General set out on his return to the army, which was to winter at Morristown. Soon after leaving Brooklyn, and while on the road to Hartford, he "felt an unusual torpor slowly pervading his right hand and foot. This heaviness crept gradually on until it had deprived him of the use of his limbs on that side, in a considerable degree, before he reached the house of his friend Colonel Wadsworth"—the gentleman to whom he had written the letter of the eleventh of May previous.
Having tried, though vainly, to shake off the terrible torpor and regain the use of his limbs by exercise, the stricken soldier was at last compelled to admit defeat and resign himself to the inevitable. He returned home after a short tarry with his friend, and passed the remainder of that winter at the farmhouse he had built in his younger days, surrounded with loving care and affection by his children. At first disposed to rebel against this stroke that had rendered him useless while his country still stood in need of his services, eventually he regained his cheerfulness and gave himself up to the enjoyment of the home comforts of which for so many years he had been deprived.
The partial paralysis from which he suffered was premonitory of the final stroke; but it was eleven years before it came and removed from earth this stout-hearted man who had given his best years and his best efforts to battling for his native land. There is no doubt that his mighty struggles in the several wars—his daylight marches and nighttime vigils; his tremendous exertions in emergencies like the fire at Fort Edward, the running of the rapids at Fort Miller; long hours without rest in the saddle, and in the trenches, with wet and frozen clothing sometimes unchanged for days—all conduced toward the weakening of that mighty frame prematurely stricken with paralysis.