Delete comment from: Boston 1775
The Battle of Bunker Hill led to a lot of finger-pointing, both in the summer of 1775 and then in the controversy over who was in command in the early 1800s, so I doubt there were accusations that hadn't been aired.
I have a hard time believing that the whole three-volume collection was as unreliable as Ellis claimed. It's possible that a significant amount of testimony was indeed exaggerated or outright false, and I've found one lauded "veteran of Bunker Hill" who was clearly describing a different action. (I'll write about him some year.) But Ellis wrote off the whole collection as worthless.
Samuel Swett quoted from the testimony Sullivan collected. His quotations focus on the activity of Gen. Israel Putnam, so they're not complete, alas. Together they add up to a picture of lots of individual bravery and organizational confusion. There are some strange details (Putnam splitting a cannon?), but nothing so obviously wrong it would impeach a whole stack of recollections.
I glanced at Ellis’s book on the battle to see if he strongly disagreed with a particular take, thinking that may have motivated him to deem any testimony saying otherwise to be unreliable. Nothing stood out for me in his writing, but maybe there's some subtle animus I didn't pick up on. As of now, the whole affair raises lots of questions and provides almost no answers.
Jul 4, 2019, 4:59:52 AM
Posted to “Wholly worthless for history, and some of it discreditable”