RICHARD FROTHINGHAM.
After a steel plate kindly furnished by Mr. Frothingham's son, Mr. Thomas Goddard Frothingham. There is a memoir of Mr. Frothingham, by Charles Deane, in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Feb., 1885, and separately. Mr. Frothingham was born Jan. 31, 1812, and died Jan. 29, 1880. Remarks made to the society at the time of his death are in the Proc. (Feb., 1880), xvii. 329. Cf. R. C. Winthrop's Speeches (1878, etc.), p. 125.
Peter Thacher in a narrative which was prepared within a fortnight, Thacher himself having observed the fight from the Malden side of Mystick River.[552] This Thacher MS. was made the basis of the account which the Committee of Safety, by order of the provincial congress, prepared for sending to England.[553] There have been preserved a large number of letters and statements written by eye-witnesses or by those near at hand, some of them conveying particulars essential to the understanding of the day's events, but most adding little beyond increasing our perceptions of the feelings of the hour.[554]
After the painting belonging to Yale College. Cf. photograph in Kingsley's Yale College, i. 102; engravings in Hollister's Connecticut, i. 234, and Amer. Quart. Reg., viii. 31, 193; and memoir in Sparks's Amer. Biog., xvi. 3, by J. L. Kingsley.
To these may be added various diaries and orderly-books, which are of little distinctive value.[555] There are other accounts, written at a later period, in which personal recollections are assisted by study of the recitals of others, and chief among them are the narrative in Thacher's Military Journal (Boston, 1823), where the account is entered as of July, 1775, and chapter xix. of General James Wilkinson's Memoirs (1816), embodying what he learned in going over the field in March, 1776, with Stark and Reed. Col. John Trumbull saw the smoke of the fight from the Roxbury lines, and gave an outline narrative in his Autobiography (1841).[556] The account in General Heath's Memoirs (Boston, 1798) is short.[557] A few of the earlier general histories of the war were written by those on the American side who had some advantages by reason of friendly or other relations with the actors.[558] Of the still later accounts, Frothingham and Dawson have already been referred to for their bibliographical accompaniments. The diversity of evidence[559] respecting almost all cardinal points of the battle's history has necessarily entailed more or less of the controversial spirit in all who have written upon it, but for thoroughness of research and a fair discrimination combined, the labors of Frothingham must be conceded to be foremost. Dawson is elaborate, and he reveals more than Frothingham the processes of his collations, but his spirit is not so tempered by discretion, and an air of flippant controversy often pervades his narrative. Of the more recent general historians it is only necessary to mention Bancroft[560] and Carrington. The former gave to it three chapters in his original edition, in 1858, which, by a little condensation, make a single one in his final revision, but without material change.[561] The account in Carrington[562] is intended to be distinctively a military criticism.[563]
The troops of Connecticut[564] and New Hampshire[565] were the only ones engaged beside those of Massachusetts.