Part 2

On these two letters of Sargent and Thaxter, I remark, 1. They serve to show the character of this sort of authority, and how cautiously it must be used. 2. Here two manuscripts, so long unpublished, harmonize on one point. Sargent (1825) says that about 4 P. M. Putnam was on Prospect Hill: Thaxter's letter (1818) says that Thomas Cooke went on to Prospect Hill and saw Putnam, who did all man could do to induce men to go to Breed's Hill. Now Stiles (June 23, 1775) states that towards night Putnam went away from the action "to fetch across reinforcements, and before he could return our men began to retreat." 3. Sargent says Prescott was the commander, while Thaxter and Cooke say there was no command.

3. Here as well as any where, another charge of Mr Swett may be noticed, because it serves to show how far partizan feeling has carried him. He has nearly a page of disparaging remark on the history, because the name of _this same_ Rev. Joseph Thaxter is not mentioned in it, and especially in connection with the celebration of the fiftieth Jubilee (1825) of the battle, when he made the prayer. Mr Swett, after remarking that he "looked in vain to find his name," says (p. 27) that, "The author has devoted twenty-two pages to this jubilee and monument, without one syllable to spare for the patriotism, eloquence, and unction of this most interesting relic of olden time, or for the mention of any religious service whatsoever on the occasion;" and again he remarks that, though I "dwell on Webster's eloquent address," yet there is "_not the slightest notice_" of any prayer; and _finally_, his pious indignation culminates in asserting that, "The neglect of all religious services on the occasion will be considered by all those who give credit to the author's history as a serious imputation on our national character"!! Well, our national character _certainly_ ought to be looked after. But 1. As to the twenty-two pages of matter. The reader will find in them accounts of the early celebrations of the battle; of the first monument on Breed's Hill; of the origin and progress of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, and the only account of much length there is existing; a history of the building of the monument; a general view of the two great celebrations of 1825 and 1843, and of the Ladies' Fair; the cost of the monument, and a minute description of it! So much for this twenty-two pages about "this jubilee and monument!" Cannot Mr Swett state a thing right? 2. "A faint outline" only is presented of the great celebration of 1825; and of this, _the whole notice_ in the text of the ceremony of laying the corner stone, and of the oration, _including_ where I "dwell on Webster's eloquent address to the sovereign people," and even quote his splendid words, _makes ten lines_! But it is NOT TRUE that, in them, there "is _not the slightest notice of religious services_;" for the account concludes, (p. 345)--"_When the exercises here were concluded_," &c. One definition of "_exercise_" is "act of divine worship," and Mr Swett may look into either Webster's or Worcester's dictionary as authority! Now the "Address" had been mentioned, and "exercises" after it, _manifestly_, do not refer to wheeling regiments, but imply, in _addition_ to the address, _the acts of divine worship_ that, in this Christian land, are common on such occasions. Even the language itself must be perverted to sustain such libel as Mr Swett has written! And those who wring out of this account "a serious imputation of our national character," must hate this character intensely, be most inveterate word-catchers, and twist language from its obvious import. 3. It might have been better to have stated that Rev. Joseph Thaxter made the prayer, but no want of respect for the memory of this venerable veteran occasioned the "neglect." Better this omission, however, than to have been guilty of garbling and falsifying the account of the battle the patriot left behind him.

4. The next alleged error relates to the case of Captain Callender. Mr Swett lets his pen run as follows: "If any thing could be more wonderful than the author's mistaking one hill for another, when both have been before his eyes from his birth, it would be his adducing this case as one of disobedience, or a case of any kind to disprove that Putnam was the commander," p. 12. This indeed would be wonder upon wonder--if it were only true. But that I mistook Prospect Hill for Bunker Hill is one fancy; that this case of Callender is cited to disprove that Putnam was the commander, is another fancy. _Where_ is it so "adduced?" Really Mr Swett's devotion to his hero leads him into strange misapprehensions. The reader will _look in vain_ for such mistakes and citations in the pages of the Siege of Boston. Once more I ask, what in the name of common sense _does_ Mr Swett mean? On page 164 of the Siege _this very case_ is "adduced" among the things that bear _in favor_ of Putnam, and _no where_ is it cited against his "claims!" _The very report_ made to the provincial congress, which Mr Swett accuses me of _neglecting_, was thoroughly studied, (_and Mr Swett knew it_) and is fairly quoted, and in favor of Putnam! Indeed this report, and the evidence given on the trial of Colonel Scammans were the main authorities for stating that General Putnam _gave orders_ to the reinforcements.

But the strictures on pages 12, 13, relative to Callender, were not enough, and so Mr Swett (p. 22) adverts to this case again, and says:--"But allow the gentleman, as in regard to Callender, to manufacture his own case, grossly regardless of all known facts." _What case_ have I manufactured? What "_known facts_" have I been regardless of? The chief thing that appears to be specified in this case is this:--"The author's declaration that Callender was tried for disobedience 27th June, seems to be a poetic license. Ward orders the court martial at that time, without the slightest intention of such a charge," p. 13. Why does not Mr Swett quote my language? But 1. He alludes here, I presume, to a remark (p. 185) of the Siege, when _the question of command is not alluded to_, but where an account is given of Callender, and it reads--"Capt. Callender, for disobedience of orders _and alleged cowardice_ was tried June 27th." And again I say--"Captain Callender despised the _charge of cowardice_, and determining to wipe out the _unjust stigma_," &c. Now what sort of "license" has Mr Swett taken with my "declaration"? Something more than a poet's license, I fancy! 2. Any one would suppose, from Mr Swett's words, that Ward's order for a court martial specified what the charge was. Here it is--June 27, "The general orders that a general court martial be held this day at the lines, to try Captain Callender of the train of artillery. Witnesses on both sides to be duly summoned to attend a court which is to sit at 8 o'clock A. M., Col. Little president, Capt. Mosely judge advocate." What light does this throw on the matter? And _what must be said of the character of Mr Swett's appeal to it_?

5. Mr Swett, in denying that a portion of the troops refused to obey General Putnam, writes as follows:--"Now, we say with the utmost confidence, that, any few cases of cowardice out of the question, no military despot was ever obeyed with more implicit subjection than Putnam was throughout the battle, by every one, officers and men,"--p. 10. This, coming from so thorough an investigator, from a thirty years' student of the battle, is worth examination; though, had it come from another, it might be passed over with the simple remark, that it indicated more dogmatism than knowledge. Mr Swett, however, confesses that he is leading "a forlorn hope."

Now General Putnam had little or nothing to do with the original detachment, if the two hundred Connecticut men, after they got to the rail fence, be excepted. There is no proof that he gave an order to it throughout the whole affair, but on the contrary, this is denied in the strongest terms. But his principal service was rendered in connection with the reinforcements, which arrived at the scene of action in the afternoon. After the first attack, he rode to Bunker Hill, and to the rear of it, to urge them forward. But they hesitated. He used every effort, especially, it is stated, at Charlestown Neck and on Bunker Hill, to overcome this reluctance. He ordered, entreated, encouraged and threatened, but all in vain. "The plea was"--I quote a report made in 1775--"the artillery was gone, and they stood no chance for their lives in such circumstances, declaring they had no officers to lead them." They could not be prevailed upon to go where fighting was, and so large bodies of the troops remained out of the action. This fact is one of the most reliable, as well as most discreditable, relative to the battle. In truth, the state of things on Bunker Hill and in the rear of it, during the afternoon, was more like positive disobedience, than like "implicit subjection." However it may have been at Prescott's post there was no such efficient command in other parts of the field as is expressed in Mr Swett's language, anything he has written, or may write, to the contrary notwithstanding. There was confusion when he leaves the inference that there was order. The evidence on this point is conclusive--overwhelming.

Thus Captain Chester (1775) states:--"Those that came up as recruits were most terribly frightened, many of them, and did not march up with that true courage that their leader ought to have inspired them with." William Tudor (1775) says--"They were discouraged from advancing." Rev. John Martin (1775) says--"During the whole or most of the action Colonel Gerrish, with one thousand men was at the bottom of Bunker Hill and ought to have come up but did not." Contemporary authority as decisively connects General Putnam with the reinforcements. This is not denied. Thus Daniel Putnam, his son, states that he rode to the rear "to urge on reinforcements;" and Stiles states that he left the field to urge them on. Mr Swett, in his history, has no such "implicit subjection." He relates (p. 35) the efforts Putnam made at Charlestown Neck to induce the reinforcements that reached there to pass across; and although he "_entreated, encouraged, and threatened_," he could only get "_some of the troops_" "to venture over." Again, when Gerrish was on Bunker Hill with part of his regiment, the men disorganized and dispersed, "Putnam"--_it is Mr Swett_ who writes this--"_ordered them on to the lines_; he entreated and threatened them, and some of the most cowardly he knocked down with his sword, _but all in vain_!" Once more, p. 41, he says--"Putnam rode to the rear and exhausted every art and effort to bring them on. Capt. Bailey only reached the lines." The evidence as to the confusion is equally clear. John Pitts (1775) says--"There never was more confusion and less command." In Major Gridley's sentence (1775) emphatic allusion is made to "the great confusion that attended" the transactions. Captain Chester (1775) says of things on Bunker Hill near the close of the battle--"When we arrived there was not a company in any kind of order." But why multiply testimony on this point? Mr Swett himself says, in his history, p. 50--"Great allowance must be made for those unable, and those _unwilling to go on; the men went on or off as they pleased and when they pleased_!"

Now with such evidence--and this is but a tithe of what may be adduced--is it not surprising that such a claim of efficient command should be set up at this late day, with nothing but bare assertion to support it? If it were so, if there were this implicit subjection, this ready obedience, the enemies of General Putnam might ask with force, what they have asked in weakness--'Why, if he was so obeyed, were not the troops at the lines? Could he not have _led_ them up?' To affirm that he was _obeyed implicitly_, by officers and men, and then to be obliged to admit that _those he commanded_ were not in battle raging _a stone's throw off_, is to place the brave old general in an awkward position, a position he never filled in his life time. Mr Swett's zeal here lacks discretion.

6. Another mistake seems to astonish Mr Swett "by its magnitude, nay its sublimity." He says--"According to him, the great battle of Bunker Hill was fought, on our side, by a headless mob; and, to prove this, he adduces the most incontrovertible argument in the world, were it true, that the army at Cambridge, which had been for two months collecting and organizing under the able and experienced Gen. Ward, assisted by a host of accomplished veteran officers, was itself a mob,"--p. 3. No quotation is made to sustain these remarks, and _none can be made_. Nothing to warrant it can be found in the book, and it is enough to stamp it as glaring misrepresentation. I hold no such opinion. I adduce no such argument. It may be cruel to annihilate so much "magnitude" and "sublimity," but I must state that they have no better basis than Mr Swett's imagination.

In opposition to this "mob" theory, Mr Swett goes to the other extreme, and affirms, p. 18--"That the army at Cambridge was regularly organized and consolidated under Ward, Warren, Putnam, and other officers in regular gradation, without any distinction in regard to the colonies whence the troops came." And this is repeated on p. 21, and again on p. 29. In fact this constitutes the foundation of one of Mr Swett's "incontrovertible" proofs that Putnam was the commander. It is strange that Mr Swett should venture upon such assertions flatly in the face of the most positive evidence. He makes no attempt to disprove the facts, first brought together in the Siege of Boston, (pp. 98 to 104) relative to the action of the colonies, and which were drawn entirely from contemporary MSS. and authorities. It is not necessary to repeat them here. They show that each of the four colonies commissioned its troops, supplied them with provisions, directed their disposition, and that it was not until after the battle of Bunker Hill that the Committee of War of Connecticut ordered Generals Spencer and Putnam, while their troops were in Massachusetts, to obey General Ward as commander-in-chief, in order that there might be "a due subordination;" and also advised the colonies of Rhode Island and New Hampshire to do the same respecting their troops. That the army (June 17, 1775) was regularly organized and consolidated is not true.

The evidence in relation to the want of organization in the Massachusetts army is ample. This army certainly cannot be said to have been settled under officers in "_regular gradation_." I have a report made to the provincial congress of Massachusetts, dated June 15, 1775, by a committee appointed "to consider the claims and pretensions of the colonels," which goes with much particularity into many cases, and recommends several to be commissioned, which was not done, however, until after the battle. _On the 21st of June_ an important committee was raised "to inquire into the reason of the present want of discipline in the Massachusetts army, and to report to this congress what _is the proper way to put said army into a proper regulation_;" and on the next day, the congress ordered the committee of safety to present lists of persons worthy to be commissioned, "_that so our army may be organized as soon as possible_." The army regularly organized and consolidated! I beg Mr Swett will make himself acquainted with the facts, from authentic sources, before he writes again.

The old soldiers gave Mr Swett, when he prepared his history, better information than he writes in his last pamphlet. On page 11 (edition of 1826) he says:--"They (the troops) were strangers to discipline and almost _to subordination_. Though nominally organized into regiments, these were deficient in numbers, many of them only skeletons, _and their respective ranks not ascertained_. Some of the troops were yet serving as minute men, and the officers in a number of regiments _were not yet commissioned_." Again, p. 14: The Americans "were unable to appreciate the necessity of discipline or to understand THE UNORGANIZED STATE OF THE ARMY IN EVERY DEPARTMENT!!" But in 1850 the same writer has it that this same army was "_regularly organized and consolidated_," and in "_regular gradation_." It really seems only necessary to adduce Mr Swett's facts to correct Mr Swett's imagination.

The reminiscences of the veterans go so far in this direction as to border even on injustice to the army, if they do not make it a mob. Thus, Gen. Dearborn states that "nothing like discipline had entered into the army," and Mr Thaxter, whom Mr Swett likes as an authority, writes severely on this point. He says:--"As to military discipline and command (in the battle) there was none; both officers and men acted as volunteers, each one doing that which he thought right." * * "At that time our army was little better than a mob, without discipline, and with little command till General Washington came, and Gates, and gave it some regularity." It would be quite easy to increase quotations of this character. But this will answer. It conveys a very incorrect idea of the army to say that it was a mob, but it is as incorrect to say that it was regularly organized and consolidated.

7. Mr Swett, p. 16, writes--"We are delighted to discover, at last, something amusing in one of the author's mistakes. He says Putnam had the command of a regiment, because he was complimented with the empty title of colonel of a particular regiment," &c. &c. And then follows nearly a page of matter in which "signing humble servant" in letters, "the king of Prussia," "the virgin Mary," "wolves heads," figure, along with surmises about my "hallucination," and my ideas about "the odd notion" of "perdition," and of "the head of the wolf Putnam slew." Here, as usual all through the pamphlet, if I am quoted at all, it is with gross injustice. But what _is_ all this for? What is the _offence_? I am _really_ at a loss to know what _it is_. On page 100, the action of Connecticut is stated, and that the regiments of Spencer and Putnam, and part of Parson's, were ordered to Cambridge. Will _this_ be contested? On p. 168, it is stated that Putnam "was in _command of the Connecticut troops_ stationed at Cambridge," and in another place are specified, the regiments and parts of regiments that were here. Will _this_ be disputed? Again, I state, p. 168--"No service was more brilliant than that of _the Connecticut troops_ whom he (Putnam) _was authorized to command_." Again, p. 188--"_The Connecticut forces at Cambridge were under the command of General Putnam_." Is there any thing wrong _here_? What _is_ there then so _amusing_? What has drawn forth nearly a page of _such_ attempt at ridicule? Is it that I name the _undoubted fact_ from the records of the Connecticut assembly, that General Putnam _had a regiment_? Has Mr Swett forgotten how he _commences his own account of the battle_? His first paragraph, p. 18, reads--"The same order issued for one hundred and twenty _of Gen. Putnam's regiment_, and Capt. Gridley's company of artillery with two field pieces;" a statement, by the way, nearly all wrong: for "the same order" for Prescott's, Frye's, and Bridge's regiments to parade (see Fenno's MS. Orderly Book,) 1, did _not_ embrace the Connecticut men; 2, nor Gridley's company; 3, there were _two hundred men_; and 4, they were _not_ all taken from "Putnam's regiment"--four errors in less than three lines! But to return. Once more I ask, what is the _mistake_ I have committed about Gen. Putnam's regiment? What is there so _amusing_? Where is the point of the ridicule?

Mr Swett throughout his pages has much matter rather personal, which may pass for what it is worth. He supposes how I would write on "_chemistry_" and "_astronomy_;" he compares me to a character Colman has in his "_Broad Grins_," and to a clergyman "fulminating" against the "_flaunting top-knots our foremothers wore_;" and he accuses me of mooting questions "_on a par with that of free agency or the origin of evil_." It is not, however, necessary even to specify other such matter. He makes President Adams, Sen., and Judge Tudor, after failing "_so egregiously_" on a certain question, jump into a "_quickset hedge_," and ascribes to me a power of _following_ them with my "_eyes shut_." I feel honored in being put in such society, and as yet suffer no inconvenience from the place we occupy. But one remark I protest against. On p. 10 he says we are writing on a subject technical, and "concerning which _both of us confess_ we know _little or nothing_." Here I claim at least the privilege of the dying. Positively, Mr Swett has no authority to act as my confessor. And how a person, who, in 1818, stated that "from _his attention to military subjects_," he consented to describe the battle, and who since, has had a thirty years' study of it, can in 1850 "_confess_" that professionally, he knows "_little or nothing_" about it, seems "_most inconceivable_."

The errors that have been examined appear to be the most material which Mr Swett has specified, though he names others, and even grows desponding over their number. He remarks, p. 10--"We have made the supposition of the author's fundamental error being solitary; but errors, like misfortunes, never come alone. The lost traveller who wanders from the right road enters a boundless field of aberration, and at every step plunges deeper into a chaos of mistakes." The right road in this case is probably the beaten path of Mr Swett's history, and every step from it is aberration and a plunge deeper into "chaos." The reader can judge of the nature of some of these mistakes. Others are of like character. It is however, entirely inadmissible that facts resting on contemporary documents are to be proved errors by the recollection of aged people. Is it not a waste of words to refute charges based on this sort of proof? I have aimed to give a faithful relation of facts, and on this score fear no investigation and ask no quarter. But more of this in another place.

But in spite of this endeavor to state things exactly, it would be strange indeed if the "_Siege of Boston_" did not contain errors, for what book is without them? As yet none of much importance have been pointed out, though I should thank any one who will inform me of such as there are and should be glad to correct them. Two may be here acknowledged: one on page 135 where "_to_ a slough," should read "_towards_ a slough." I regret to have met with no particular contemporary description of the entrenchments, _and hence quoted Mr Swett's words_, and this error was copied from his History! (This quotation is acknowledged on p. 135 of Siege of Boston as from p. 20 of his History.) Another error is on page 164, where "_riding_ down the hill" should read "_going_ down the hill," an error inadvertantly made in copying for the press. _Long before_ Mr Swett printed his pamphlet he _knew how these errors occurred_, and also knew _they were acknowledged and corrected_ for a subsequent edition of the Siege of Boston. What more could be done?