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General Putnam

To the Editor:

Daniel Cruson’s wonderful new monograph, Putnam’s Revolutionary War Winter Encampment, featured in last week’s article by Nancy Crevier, treats General Israel Putnam tangentially but sympathetically. For example, the book excuses the brutal style in which Putnam staged simultaneous executions on Redding’s Gallows Hill in February 1779 of a 16-year-old deserter and a Welsh butcher dubiously accused of spying as a shock-and-awe demonstration to restore camp discipline, made unavoidable by the excessive leniency the good-natured general had shown mutineers in December 1778. This spectacle was a reprise of a dual execution of a soldier and a civilian that Putnam choreographed on Gallows Hill in Continental Village in August 1777.

Ms Crevier quotes Mr Cruson’s estimation of General Putnam as “a fairly well-respected man.” This qualified praise hints at disrespect in some quarters. It is true that Putnam’s first biography, penned while he lived by his former aide-de-camp David Humphreys while he was employed as George Washington’s personal secretary at Mount Vernon, is unalloyed encomium. But it is equally true that many subsequent biographers and military historians, as well as many of his military contemporaries, including superior and subordinate officers and men, regarded Putnam with contempt, censure, and derision. His detractors variously charged Putnam with military incompetence, aversion to engaging the enemy, abandonment of forces under his command exposed to attack, insubordination and disobedience to General Washington, improper intercourse with the enemy, bizarre and erratic behavior toward his troops, and personal coarseness.

The most notorious event involving the first three charges against General Putnam was his paralysis, while in command of the Highlands Department in 1777-78, in the face of the British attack in October 1777 on the forts guarding the first chain across the Hudson River. Rather than coming to the relief of Forts Montgomery and Clinton just a few miles away, Putnam withheld his force of 2,000 men on the wrong side of the river, poised for the precipitate flight that ensued. As a result, half of the 600 American defenders of the twin forts were killed, wounded, or captured, and the defenses and stores in the Hudson Highlands were razed. The court of enquiry convened by General Washington exonerated the defenders of the forts but blamed “want of men” — a pointed allusion to Putnam’s inaction. Washington replaced Putnam and thenceforward posted him to the rear where he “can least injure the service.”

The following excerpt from a letter that Washington sent from Valley Forge in March 1778 may stand stead for the less restrained denunciations by Alexander Hamilton, George Clinton, Robert R. Livingston, John Lamb, Eleazer Oswald, Gouverneur Morris, and Joseph Plumb Martin: “[General Putnam’s] misconduct results from want of capacity... It is more than probable that the issue [of the court of enquiry] will afford just grounds for [his] removal, but whether it does or not, the prejudices of all ranks against him are so great, that he must at all events be prevented from returning.”

Robert Hutchinson

8 Split Rock Road, Newtown                                 December 14, 2011