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
