There may be some unwilling to believe that the opinion of Mr. Frothingham is entitled to no weight; but he, as well as myself, are writing on a subject technical and professional, belonging to the art of war, concerning which both of us confess we know little or nothing. He seems unable to distinguish between a separate and an independent command. Were he writing on chemistry, he might perhaps exclaim, of a well-known fact, as he does about Putnam and Prescott, "It is impossible that two white things put together should make a black one;" or in astronomy, that it is quite impossible the earth should have any movement of its own, while it was under control of Jupiter and the Sun.
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 on a boundless field of aberration, and at every step plunges deeper into a chaos of mistakes.
To prove that Putnam was not the commander, the author alleges that, in some cases, he was not obeyed as such. Now, we say with the utmost confidence, that, any few cases of cowardice out of the question, no military despot ever was obeyed with more implicit subjection than Putnam was, throughout the battle, by every one, officers or men, from their enthusiastic love and admiration of him, and boundless confidence in him, as a great, experienced, and fortunate hero and patriot.
The first case he imagines to have been an instance of disobedience is that of Col. Sargent, whom he charges with disobeying Gen. Putnam's order for him to go on to Bunker Hill.[3] This injustice to the reputations of Putnam and Sargent arises from the most inconceivable misconstruction of Col. Sargent's letter to us, the only document on the subject. Col. Paul Dudley Sargent refuse to go on to Bunker Hill, or any other battle-ground! He was one of the greatest fire-eaters of the revolutionary army. Gen. Washington observed, that, in all his councils of war, whenever he proposed any measure which his other officers thought too desperate to be undertaken, Sargent always voted for its execution.[4] Had the author ever heard of the man, or made the slightest inquiry among his relatives in Boston, he would never have imagined the possibility of such an imputation. Had Putnam ordered him on to Sinai's hill, with all its fires, he would not have hesitated, had there been fighting there.