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

General Israel Putnam is remembered in history and legend as exclaiming to the American soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill, "Don''t fire ''til you see the whites of their eyes!" As 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."