An Essay on the Life of the Honourable Major-General Israel Putnam

An Essay on the Life of the Honourable Major-General Israel Putnam image
ISBN-10:

086597263X

ISBN-13:

9780865972636

Author(s): Humphreys, David
Released: Jun 30, 2000
Publisher: Liberty Fund
Format: Paperback, 172 pages
to view more data

Description:

David Humphreys was aide-de-camp to Washington during the American Revolution. His Life of Israel Putnam, originally published in 1788, has rightly been described as “the first biography of an American written by an American.” It is, as William C. Dowling observes, “a classic of revolutionary writing, very readable and immensely interesting in what it says about the temper of the new republic in the period immediately after the American Revolution.” The subject—General Israel Putnam—is remembered to history and legend as exclaiming: “Don’t fire ’til you see the whites of their eyes!” to American soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill. As Professor Dowling notes, “All the episodes are retold—Bunker Hill, the Battle of White Plains, the crossing of the Delaware, the Battle of Princeton—but from the perspective of one who was there throughout, and who always permits us to see Putnam as the sort of character by whom history is, in the last analysis, made.” Humphreys wrote the biography when formation of the Society of the Cincinnati, composed of men who were officers in the Revolution, “focused debate in the new republic about the competing claims of individual liberty and the good of the community.”

William C. Dowling is a Professor of English at Rutgers University












We're an Amazon Associate. We earn from qualifying purchases at Amazon and all stores listed here.