Founding Myths (56 page)

10: The Whites of Their Eyes

  
1
.
  
Richard Frothingham,
History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1903; reprint edition, Da Capo Press, 1970; first published in 1849), 140. Nineteenth-century sources often used “white of their eyes” instead of “whites of their eyes.”

  
2
.
  
Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George,
They Never Said It
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 106; Tom Burnham,
Dictionary of Misinformation
(New York: Crowell, 1975), 69–70; Lyman C. Draper,
King's Mountain and Its Heroes
(Cincinnati: Peter G. Thomson, 1881), 107.

  
3
.
  
David K. Wilson,
The Southern Strategy: Britain's Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775–1780
(Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2005), 254; James Piecuch, “Massacre or Myth: Banastre Tarleton at the Waxhaws, May 29, 1780,”
Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution
1: 2 (October, 2004):
http://www.southerncampaign.org/newsletter/v1n2.pdf
.

  
4
.
  
Howard H. Peckham,
Toll of Independence: Engagements & Battle Casualties of the American Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 130–134.

  
5
.
  
Charles Royster,
A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 225.

  
6
.
  
William Moultrie,
Memoirs of the American Revolution
(New York: David Longworth, 1802), 2: 96–97; quoted in John Buchanan,
The Road to Guillford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas
(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997), 69.

  
7
.
  
Joseph Plumb Martin,
A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier
(New York: Signet, 2001; originally published in 1830), 79–80.

  
8
.
  
John Chester to Joseph Fish, July 22, 1775, in Frothingham,
Siege of Boston
, 391.

  
9
.
  
Peter Brown to his mother, June 25, 1775, in Frothingham,
Siege of Boston
, 392.

10
.
  
William Prescott to John Adams, August 25, 1775, in Frothingham,
Siege of Boston
, 395.

11
.
  
William Tudor to John Adams, June 26, 1775, in Frothingham,
Siege of Boston
, 396.

12
.
  
Issachar Bates,
The Revolutionary War
(Old Chatham, NY: Shaker Museum Foundation, 1960; originally published in 1833), np.

13
.
  
Ray Raphael,
A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence
(New York: The New Press, 2001), 161.

14
.
  
Bates,
The Revolutionary War,
np.

15
.
  
“Lieut. Dana tells me he was the first man that fired, and that he did it singly, and with a view to draw the enemy's fire, and he obtained his end fully, without any damage to our party.” (John Chester to Joseph Fish, July 22, 1775, in Frothingham,
Siege of Boston
, 390.)

16
.
  
Peter Brown to his mother, June 25, 1775, ibid., 393.

17
.
  
These figures are from the official British returns. Ibid., 389.

18
.
  
Ibid., 382–384.

19
.
  
Ibid., 140–143.

20
.
  
John Marshall,
The Life of George Washington
(New York: AMS Press, 196; first published 1804–1807), 2: 239.

21
.
  
David Humphreys,
An Essay on the Life of the Honorable Major Israel Putnam
(Hartford, CT: Hudson and Goodwin, 1788), 103. Putnam, at the time, was almost as renowned as Washington. This was the first biography of an American written by an American.

22
.
  
Mason L. Weems,
The Life of George Washington
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1962; reprint of ninth edition, published in 1809), 74–75. Emphasis in original. Weems did not have to invent this story; very likely, it was already part of folkloric tradition. Major General Israel Putnam, the protagonist of this tale, was a legendary hero, one of the most famous men in America. Not only had “Old Put” served with distinction in the French and Indian War, people said, but he had also been shipwrecked near Havana, held prisoner by the French, and nearly burned at the stake by Indians.

23
.
  
Paul Allen,
A History of the American Revolution, Comprising all the Principal Events both in the Field and the Cabinet
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1819), I: 259; Charles A. Goodrich,
History of the United States of America
(Hartford, CT: Barber and Robinson, 1823), 158; Salma Hale,
History of the United States, from their First Settlement as Colonies, to the Close of the War with Great Britain in 1815
(New York: Collins and Hannay, 1822), 151; Noah Webster,
History of the United States
(New Haven, CT: Durric & Peck, 1833); Richard Hildreth,
The History of the United States of America
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880, first published 1849), 3: 83; George Bancroft,
History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the Continent
(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1879; first published 1834–1874), 4: 615.

24
.
  
Frothingham,
Siege of Boston
, 154–164.

25
.
  
Those not wishing to show a preference as to the identity of the commander attributed these words to both the leading candidates. In his 1858 biography of Israel Putnam, George Canning Hill wrote: “Putnam told the men, as he passed hastily along the lines, dusty and perspiring, not to waste their fire, for powder was very scarce. ‘Wait,' said he, ‘till you see the whites of their eyes.' ” Not wishing to offend the Prescott fans, he then added: “Prescott gave the same orders to those within the redoubt.” (George Canning Hill,
American Biography: General Israel Putnam
[Boston: E O. Libby and Co., 1858], 148.)

26
.
  
David Saville Muzzey,
The United States of America
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1933), 1:111. Muzzey was the most widely read textbook writer of his, or perhaps any, generation.

27
.
  
John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes,
American National Biography
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 18: 11–12 and 17: 564–564. The Putnam entry was written by Bruce Daniels, the Prescott entry by William Fowler. In popular histories the confusion continues, but so does the story. Louis Birnbaum, in
Red Dawn at Lexington
, goes with Prescott: “Men, you are all marksmen; do not any of you fire until you can see the whites of their eyes.” Robert Leckie, in
George Washington's War
, writes with equal certainty: “Burly Israel Putnam rode up and down the lines roaring the immortal words, ‘Don't fire until you see the white of their eyes! Then, fire low.' ” A.J. Langguth in
Patriots
and Thomas Fleming in
Liberty!
also weigh in with Putnam. Benson Bobrick, in
Angel in the Whirlwind
, hedges. By using the generic term “officers” and writing in the passive voice, he manages to tell the story without favoritism: “Those on the front line were now exhorted by their officers ‘to be cool' and to reserve their fire until the enemy ‘were near enough for us to see the white of their eyes.' ” (Contrary to appearances, this is not a direct quotation from a participant, but only a literary device.) Even so, since Bobrick wants to place Putnam at the heart of the action, he has him uttering further commands: “Fire low—take aim at the waistbands—pick off the commanders—aim at the handsome coats.” (Louis Birnbaum,
Red Dawn at Lexington
[Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986], 241; Robert Lieke,
George Washington's War: The Saga of the American Revolution
[New York: HarperCollins, 1992], 159; A.J. Langguth,
Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution
[New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988], 281; Fleming,
Liberty!,
140; Benson Bobrick,
Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution
[New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997], 141.) Both Langguth and Fleming note that the command had been used in the past.

28
.
  
The entry for Putnam says nothing about it, while that for Prescott states only that the British were “within close range.” Writers during the second half of the twentieth century who stated the distance generally shortened it greatly. Richard Ketchum and Francis Russell, for instance, listed it at fifty feet, or three rods—down considerably from the ten to twelve rods of the Committee of Safety. (Ketchum and Russell,
Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill
[New York: Harper and Row, 1963], 108.) Even at fifty feet, however, patriots could not have seen the whites of the eyes of the advancing Redcoats.

11: Patriotic Slaves

  
1
.
  
For a discussion of Dunmore proclamation, see Ray Raphael,
A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence
(New York: The New Press, 2001), 254–261.

  
2
.
  
For a discussion of Clinton's offer and the response it triggered, see Raphael,
People's History of the American Revolution
, 261–270.

  
3
.
  
Contemporary estimates placed the “loss” of slaves in South Carolina at 20,000–25,000. See Abbott Hall, Custom House Report, December 31, 1784,
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, Julian P. Boyd, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 8: 199; David Ramsay,
History of the Revolution in South Carolina
(Trenton: Isaac Collins, 1785), 2: 382. These figures were probably exaggerated. According to estimates by patriots after the war, 60,000 slaves fled to the British from three states (Ray Raphael,
A People's History of the American Revolution
[New York: The New Pess, 2001], 261–62), but these figures were likely exaggerated to highlight the losses of their masters, who were trying to avoid payment of debts to British merchants by claiming that the British had “stolen” their property. The estimates were also very rough: Jefferson, for instance, recalled that thirty slaves fled from his own plantation, and twenty-seven of these had died of smallpox; by adding a seemingly arbitrary number of zeroes, this led him to conjecture that in Virginia as a whole, 30,000 had fled and 27,000 had died. (Cassandra Pybus, “Thomas Jefferson's Faulty Math: The Question of Slave Defections in the American Revolution,”
William and Mary Quarterly
, 3rd ser., 62 [2005], 243–47.) Despite these exaggerations, even the most conservative estimates by modern scholars suggest that around 20,000 slaves fled to the British in search of freedom, while the total number of blacks who served in the Continental army was only about 5,000—and many of these, perhaps most, were freeman, not slaves. (Pybus, “Jefferson's Faulty Math,” 261; Allan Kulikoff, “Uprooted Peoples: Black Migrants in the Age of the American Revolution, 1790–1820,” in Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds.,
Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution
[Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983], 143–145.)

  
4
.
  
W.W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, eds.,
Papers of George Washington
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), Revolutionary War Series, 2: 125, 354.

  
5
.
  
George D. Massay, “The Limits of Antislavery Thought in the Revolutionary Lower South: John Laurens and Henry Laurens,”
Journal of Southern History
63 (1997): 517.

  
6
.
  
Rachel N. Klein,
Unification of a Slave State: The Rise of the Planter Class in the South
Carolina Backcountry, 1760–1808
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 107.

  
7
.
  
Michael A. McDonnell,
The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 393.

  
8
.
  
The average term for blacks who served was actually four and a half years, not the single year implied by this notice. (Robert Ewell Greene,
Black Courage
,
1775–1783: Documentation of Black Participation in the American Revolution
[Washington, DC: Daughters of the American Revolution, 1984], 2, cited in Charles Patrick Neimeyer,
America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army
[New York: New York University Press, 1996], 82.)