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

ISBN-13: 9780865972636 / Angielski / Miękka / 2000 / 149 str.

David Humphreys;William C Dowling

Opis

David Humphreys was aide-de-camp to Washington during the American Revolution. His Life of Israel Putnam, originally published in 1788, has been described as the first biography of an American written by an American. It is described as a classic of revolutionary writing, demonstrating the temper of the new republic in the period immediately after the American Revolution. The subject is General Israel Putnam, remembered to have commanded American soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill not to fire until they saw the whites of the enemy's eyes. 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.