"If Congress mean to lay him aside _decently_, I wish they would
devise the mode."
"It has not been an easy matter to find a just pretense for removing an
officer from his command" (he writes to Chancellor Livingston on the
12th of March, 1778) "where his misconduct rather appears to result from
want of _capacity_ than from any real intention of doing wrong...."
Livingston had written complaining of Putnam's "imprudent lenity to the
disaffected, and too great intercourse with the enemy"--or, in other
words, that he had not persecuted the people Livingston disliked, and
had shown generosity to the foe when in distress. Yet he felt compelled
to add: "For my own part, I respect his bravery and former services, and
sincerely lament that his patriotism will not suffer him to take that
repose, to which his advanced age and past services justly entitle him."
But Congress did not, fortunately, share the views of these
white-fingered, thin-skinned gentlemen, to whom a man's personal
appearance was vastly more than his distinguished services. They held,
with the doughty hero of many battles himself, that, as a soldier's duty
in war was to fight, it mattered not so much how he fought, nor in what
garb, so long as he won the victories.
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