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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
Thirty-two years since, though without any pretensions to be an author, we consented to write an account of Bunker Hill Battle, as a feeble contribution to the monument of fame that history owed our ancestors. But, we find, one may be an author in spite of himself; we have been compelled to address the public repeatedly in defence of our history, though never before with so great reluctance. By this time we hoped to enjoy the privilege of age, to exempt us from this task; and, notwithstanding our friendly regards for Mr. Frothingham, and a high appreciation of his book for its intentional honor and honesty and successful research, we shall be obliged to notice at least one of his mistakes. For he is under the same ban as all our race: "to err is human." And were his mistake solitary, it would compensate for that by its magnitude, nay, its sublimity. 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. He terms it, by a new-invented name, "an army of allies;" a misnomer, calculated to mislead his readers in regard to its organization. On the files of the Provincial Congress, and by the Committee of Safety, it is termed the New England army; and, in the gazettes of the day, the American army. Gen. Putnam, he says, would have been the commander in the battle, had the army been "regularly organized;" but, because "it had not yielded to the vital principle of subordination," he was present as a patriotic volunteer. He has treated Gen. Putnam's character with the utmost candor and kindness, as animals destined for the altar are pampered, to be sacrificed at last.