[Pamphlets. American history]

18
fled and had lost the whole peninsula. In the days immediately
following that of the battle, certainly, and probably for many
months thereafter, the Provincial authorities were inclined to speak
in apologetic terms of the action. The Committee of Safety
evidently ascribed the defeat to the mistake in proceeding beyond
their lines to Breed's Hill. (I.) Mr. David Cheever ascribes it
to the want of supplies and the shortness of time; (2.) and the
recriminations among the officers found vent in courts of enquiry
and courts-martial. When Colonel Prescott, in August, wrote an
account of the battle, in a letter to John Adams, he takes occasion
to say that he was ordered to intrench on Breed's Hill, and speaks
in tones of complaint of the weakness of his subalterns, but he
does not shirk the responsibility of the command.
Colonel Scamman testified that no general officer commanded
on Bunker's Hill. John Pitts, a member of the Provincial Congress, wrote to Samuel Adams, within six weeks of the date of the
battle, that no one appeared to have any command but Colonel
Prescott. Peter Thacher, who drafted for the Committee of Safety
the official narrative of the battle, expressly declares that Prescott
commanded the Provincials; (3.) and General Ward, whose
testimony alone ought to be conclusive, wrote to John Adams,
October, 3oth, 1775, " I think there has been no one action with
the enemy which has not been conducted by an officer of this
colony (Massachusetts), except that at Chelsea, which was conducted by General Putnam." At which last, by the way, Dr.
Warren, the President of the Provincial Congress, was also present
in person, and Putnam may therefore have been acting by special
delegation from the civil authority.
General Putnam appears to have been a nervously active man,
with plenty of personal courage, -one to whom constant motion
was almost a necessity, and whose self-confidence inclined him to
1. Letter of Provincial Congress to Continental Congress, June 20, 1775,
closes, " If any error was committed on our side, it was in taking a post so much
exposed."
2. David Cheever to New Hampshire Congress: "New England forces were
unprovided, by the shortness of time, for such an]] attack."
3. Cited in "Siege of Boston," frloi Mss. ill possession of Al,,. Antiq.
Society, W'orcester.