18 waited to entreat permission to head them first against New York, as he had before against Boston. Washington, though his military sternness was as gigantic as all his other good qualities, rebuked him with more forbearance than he ever exhibited on a similar occasion. He was more severe on Hamilton for a slight want of punctuality, when he said to him, “ A ou must change your watch, or I must change my Aid.”* * For an interesting description of Putnam, see Appendix. But the appointment of Putnam as Brigadier-General by Connecticut, and Major-General by the Federal Congress, over the heads of many most respectable officers, would prove, without any of these notices, that no other officer could have been selected as the commander of the battle, as he had been on three very conspicuous occasions before. If commander there was, he must have been the commander; and “ that there was, all nature cries aloud.” Since the world began, in all history or natural history, there never was a battle known without a commander. It is the instinct of all animated nature, insect, animal, or man; from the bee to the buffalo, from the Indian savage to Gen. Taylor. Milton’s battles of the angels were fought under Michael and Satan as the commanders. Our next incontrovertible proof that Putnam was the commander is founded on the fact, that the army at Cambridge was regularly organized and consolidated under Ward, Warren, Putnam, and other officers in regular gradation, without any distinction in regard to the colonies whence the troops came. The author acknowledges, if this was the fact, that Putnam was the commander ; we take him at his word, and will make this so clear, that he who runs may read. The question is one of fact only, as regards both the army and Gen. Putnam ; whether the army was, in fact, a consolidated and organized body, and whether Putnam was commander of the battle de facto. Whether all this was technically legal and constitutional is a question as abstract and useless as that other of the author’s, whether Putnam
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