Life of Israel Putnam (“Old Put”), Major-General in the Continental Army

Serious students of the history of the American Revolutionary War understand that General Israel Putnam was the commander of the troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill, the first major battle of the war, but if you happen to be visiting the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and wander outside to the lawn west of the Littauer Center, you will see a granite monument marking the place where Colonel William Prescott addressed his troops the day before the battle.  This seemingly innocuous little monument posthumously promotes Prescott to the rank of general and suggests that he, rather than Putnam, was the commander of the Continental troops that day.  That stone on Harvard’s lawn symbolizes two and a half centuries of increasingly inaccurate embellishment of Prescott’s contributions, created and carefully cultivated by Massachusetts intellectuals.

Originally published in 1876, this book deals with the controversy generated by this long-lasting propaganda effort, including the defamatory pamphlet published by General Dearborn in 1818, when he was running for governor of Massachusetts, calling into question Putnam’s leadership abilities and personal courage.  This is not a controversy that faded with time: the stain spreads all the way into the Information Age—if you look at the Wikipedia entry for Prescott, there, too, you will see him credited with being the commander of the American troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and also with uttering the famous words, “Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes...”

Israel Putnam actually said those words, although it was the “color of their eyes” he specified which makes more sense when you think about it.

So what is going on here?  Why this false elevation of William Prescott to a hero status he did not earn and what was Henry Dearborn’s goal when he wrote his pamphlet?  Well, that happens to be the subject of this book, and Increase N. Tarbox, the author, a scholar from a family of scholars, is meticulous in his defense of Israel Putnam, starting with his family background and childhood to give you an idea of what sort of man he was, taking the reader through his daring exploits in the French and Indian War, reminding everyone that George Washington—who was made commander-in-chief after Bunker Hill and immediately led an investigation into what went wrong—thought so highly of Putnam's performance that he made him second in command of the entire Continental Army, and, finally, marshaling the testimony of dozens of eyewitnesses from both American and British sides of the conflict.

Mr. Tarbox will leave you, at the end of this book, with no doubt in your mind—not a shred—that Dearborn was wrong about Israel Putnam’s character, and furthermore that General Putnam commanded the American troops that day, not Colonel Prescott.

Life of Israel Putnam (“Old Put”), Major-General in the Continental Army is a fascinating read.  It’s also a fun read, a page-turner that holds the reader’s interest more like a mystery novel than a scholarly work of history.