26 setts troops to make the breastwork at the rail-fence. Abner Allen, * of the same regiment, in his deposition, says he went on the night before the battle; Putnam was then and there called general, and acted as such. Major Daniel Jackson, 16th June, 1775, then a sergeant in the artillery, entered in his Diary, “ Gen. Putnam with the army went to intrench on Bunker Hill.” Trevett, senior captain of the artillery, the day of the battle, inquired officially of Maj. Gridley, then in command of all the artillery at Cambridge, and whose father was inferior to no one in the councils of war, “ Who had the command of the troops ? ” and was informed by him, “ Gen. Putnam.” “ Then there is nothing to fear,” he observed at the time. He consequently applied to Putnam for orders, and received them. We have mentioned Putnam’s command over three regiments from different provinces; and that, while “Gen. Ward was at Roxbury, Gen. Putnam was commander-in-chief” at Cambridge. Gen. Dearborn,f who was in the battle, represents Putnam as the authorized commander. Our next witness is the Rev. Jos. Thaxter, of Edgarton, who, in his letter A.D. 1818, says, “ On the evening of the 16th June, Col. Prescott and Col. Bridge, with their regiments, under the direction of Gen. Putnam, took possession of Breed’s Hill, and threw up a fort or intrenchment.” We have looked in vain into the author’s book for the name of Thaxter, that most venerable and interesting old man eloquent, and minister of the Most High, who, at the time of the battle, was chaplain in the army, and, while the battle raged, was wrestling with the Lord in prayer for victory; and, in 1825, with head as white and heart as unsullied as the driven snow, appeared again on the battle-field at the jubilee, and laying of the corner-stone for the monument, to bear up to the throne of grace the thanks of the hundred thousand who were present, for the very success that he had prayed for in ’75. The author has devoted twenty-two pages to this jubilee and * Of Killingley. t His pamphlet generally, especially page 13.
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