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"SO PRECISE AND FATAL WAS OUR FIRE" (AMERICAN REVOLUTION.) Grosvenor, Thomas. A detailed account of the Battle of Bunker Hill by a key participant. Autograph Letter Signed to Colonel Daniel Putnam (son of Israel) of Brooklyn, CT. 4 pages, 10 x 8 inches, on one sheet; minor wear, short separations at center fold. Pomfret, CT, 29 April 1818
Thomas Grosvenor (1744-1825) was a lieutenant in one of the first Connecticut regiments sent to the relief of Boston in 1775, serving under Israel Putnam. He is depicted in Trumbull's famous painting "Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill." He rose to the rank of colonel before the war's end. After the war, he served as a judge in Connecticut. Grosvenor was asked to write this letter in response to a recent publication which had undermined General Putnam's reputation. He provided a dramatic recounting of the battle, with a focus on Putnam's role. "Our detachment in advancing to the post took up one rail fence and placed it against another (as a partial cover) nearly parallel with the line of the breastwork, and extended our left nearly to Mistick River. Each man was furnished with one pound of gunpowder and forty eight balls. . . . A second division of British troops landed, when they commenced a fire of their field artillery of several rounds, and particularly against the rail fence, then formed in columns, advanced to the attack, displayed in line at about the distance of musket shot, and commenced firing. At this instant our whole line opened upon the enemy, and so precise and fatal was our fire that in the course of a short time they gave way and retired in disoder out of musket shot, leaving before us many killed and wounded." Grosvenor's regiment held off a second assault, but retreated after a third. He noted that his immediate command of thirty men suffered "eleven killed and wounded; among the latter was myself, though not so severely as to prevent my retiring." He asserted that "at the rail fence there was not posted any corps save our own under Knowlton at the time the firing commanced, nor did I hear of any other being there 'till long after the action. Other troops it was said were ordered to join us, but refused doing so." The letter was published in Daniel Putnam's 1818 pamphlet "A Letter to Major-General Dearborn, Repelling his Unprovoked Attack on the Character of the late Major-General Putnam." From there it was widely published in periodicals, such as the Port Folio of July 1818, pages 9-11. Putnam edited the text slightly in several places for publication; his editorial marks appear on the present letter.
