[562] Battles of the Amer. Revolution, N. Y. [copyrighted 1876], ch. 15.
[563] Gen. Carrington has contributed other papers on the battle to the Granite Monthly, vii. 290, and Bay State Monthly, May, 1884. Edward E. Hale has given accounts in his One Hundred Years Ago (ch. 4) and in a chapter in Memorial Hist. Boston, vol. iii. Dr. George E. Ellis was one of the earliest to collate carefully the sources in his Battle of Bunker Hill (1843). Barry (Massachusetts, iii. ch. 1) gives the story with care, and fortifies it by references. Irving's account (Washington, i. ch. 40, 41) is of course flowingly done.
[564] See Hollister's Connecticut, and other histories; Stuart's Life of Jonathan Trumbull; lives of Putnam; Hinman's Conn. in the Revolution; Memorial Hist. of Hartford County, ii. 473;, and H. P. Johnston on "Yale in the Revolution", in The Yale Book. The news of the battle as it reached Connecticut is remarked upon in the Silas Deane Correspondence (Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., ii. 270, etc.).
[565] Stark's letter to the N. H. congress, of June 18, has already been mentioned. Cf. memoirs of Stark by Caleb Stark and Edward Everett; "Col. Jas. Reed at Bunker Hill", in N. H. Hist. Soc. Proc. (1876-84), p. 111; account in N. H. Adj.-General's Report, 1866, vol. ii.; the rosters of her regiments in the Adj.-General's office; N. H. Prov. Papers, vol. vii. pp. 516, 586; N. H. Rev. Rolls, i. 32-44; ii. 739; C. C. Coffin in Boston Globe, June 23, 1875; N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., xxvii. 377, and the account by E. H. Derby in the number for Jan., 1877. Evans' account of the service of New Hampshire troops, 1775-1782, is among the Meshech Weare papers (Letters and Papers, 1777-1824, vol. ii. p. 61, Mass. Hist. Soc.). For the part of New Hampshire towns: Hollis, N. H. Prov. Papers, vii. 601, by S. T. Worcester; N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., xxvii. 377; xxx. 28; xxxi. 169; S. T. Worcester's Hist. of Hollis (1879), p. 146. Manchester, Potter's Hist. of Manchester.
[566] 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.)
A new advocate for Putnam appeared in Alden Bradford's Particular Account of the Battle of Bunker or Breed's Hill, by a Citizen of Boston (two editions, Boston, 1825, and since reprinted); while Daniel Putnam during the same year recapitulated his views in a communication to the Bunker Hill Monument Association (Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. i.). A summary of this Putnam-Dearborn controversy is given in G. W. Warren's Hist. of the Bunker Hill Monument Association.
The dispute now remained dormant till 1841, when George E. Ellis delivered an oration at Charlestown, and then, and in his Sketches of Bunker Hill Battle, with illustrative documents (Charlestown, 1843), he presented at fuller length than had been before done the claims of Prescott to be considered the commander. This led to a criticism and rejoinder by Swett and Ellis in the Boston Daily Advertiser. See Judge Prescott's letter to Dr. Ellis in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. (iv. 76), and another to Col. Swett (xiv. 78. Cf. Memoir of Swett and a list of his publications in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1867, p. 374). In 1843, John Fellows, in The Veil Removed; or reflections an David Humphrey's essay on the life of Israel Putnam; also, notices of Oliver W. B. Peabody's life of the same; S. Swett's sketch of Bunker Hill, etc. (New York, 1843), ranged himself among the detractors of Putnam.
In 1849, the question was again elaborately examined in Frothingham's Siege of Boston (p. 159, etc.), favoring Prescott, which produced Swett's Who was the Commander at Bunker Hill? (Boston, 1850), and Frothingham's rejoinder, The Command in the battle of Bunker Hill (Boston, 1850). Cf. also the Report to the Massachusetts Legislature on a monument to Col. Prescott (1852). In 1853, Irving favored Prescott (Washington, vol. i.). In 1855, L. Grosvenor, in an address before the descendants of Putnam, reiterated that general's claims. In 1857, Barry (Hist. of Mass., iii. 39) gave to Prescott the command in the redoubt, and to Putnam a general direction outside the redoubt. In 1858, Bancroft in his History (vol. vii.) took the view substantially held by the present writer. In 1859, Mr. A. C. Griswold, as "Selah", of the Hartford Post, had a controversy with H. B. Dawson, who exceeded others in his denunciation of Putnam, and this correspondence was printed as parts 6 and 11 of Dawson's Gleanings from the Harvest-field of American History (Morrisania, 1860-63), with the distinctive title Major General Putnam. In 1860, the Hon. H. C. Deming published an address on the occasion of the presentation of Putnam's sword to the Conn. Hist. Society.
The question of the command was again discussed at the season of the Centennial of 1875. The chief papers in favor of Putnam were by I. N. Tarbox in the N. Y. Herald (June 12 and 14), in the New Englander (April, 1876), and in his Life of Putnam; by S. A. Drake in his General Israel Putnam the Commander at Bunker Hill; by W. W. Wheildon in his letters to the N. Y. Herald (June 16 and 17) and in his New History of the battle of Bunker Hill. Gen. Charles Devens' oration in The Celebration of the Centennial Anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill (Boston, 1875) did not extend Prescott's command beyond the redoubt, as was done, however, in Francis J. Parker's Colonel Wm. Prescott the Commander in the Battle of Bunker's Hill (Boston, 1875), and his paper "Could General Putnam command at Bunker's Hill?" in New Eng. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. (Oct., 1877, p. 403). During this same year, Dr. George E. Ellis recast the material of his earlier book in his History of the Battle of Bunker's (Breed's) Hill (Boston, 1875, in 16mo and 8vo, the last revised).