Was Col. Paul Dudley Sargent Wounded at Bunker Hill?

The Wikipedia entry on Col. Paul Dudley Sargent of the Massachusetts and Continental Army is only the latest description of him that says he “was wounded at Bunker Hill.” (In fact, that part of the sentence comes right out of the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography for 1895.) But was he? Well, that depends on what one means by “at Bunker Hill.”

On 20 Dec 1825, Sargent sent his recollections of that battle to Samuel Swett, who was gathering information for an expanded edition of his book. Sargent wrote:

I made application three times that day to be permitted to march my regiment to Charlestown, but General [Artemas] Ward feared my post [at Ralph and Elizabeth Inman’s farm in east Cambridge] would be attacked, and for once judged right, for a large schooner, with from five to six hundred men, attempted to gain the landing, but the wind against her and the tide turning, she returned.

About 4, P. M., General Ward permitted me to march my regiment with one called his own to Charlestown, but too late to do any good. Gen. [Israel] Putnam, then on Prospect Hill, sent an officer to order me on to the hill, but finding I did not attend to his order, he sent a second, who I took no notice of. A third came open mouth, saying Gen. Putnam says the devil of hell is in you all, you will be all cut to pieces.

The words were scarcely uttered when I was left with Lieut. Col. [Jonathan] Ward and my waiter. I had before this received a scratch from a four pound shot—the same shot took off Lt. Col. Ward's catouch box, and knocked down a subaltern behind him. I returned to head quarters.

Swett relied on that letter in his History of Bunker Hill Battle (1826), saying that Sargent was “slightly wounded,” evidently in west Charlestown short of the peninsula. Swett didn’t quote or mention the letter, however.

Richard Frothingham cited Sargent’s letter with a quote in a footnote in his 1849 History of the Siege of Boston. But Swett objected that that book gave the impression that Sargent had refused Putnam’s order to go onto Breed’s Hill, where the main battle was fought. By “the hill” Sargent meant Prospect Hill, where Putnam was trying to organize a defense after the British army had taken the peninsula; in refusing to go there, Sargent was refusing to pull back to a fortified position, as well as refusing to take orders from a Connecticut man.

In fact, Swett and Frothingham both interpreted Sargent’s phrase the same way, as their dueling pamphlets eventually made clear. Swett’s two-page objection to Frothingham on this point might have been a proxy for their bigger dispute over Putnam’s role in the battle. Swett might also have been pushed to that public objection by complaints from the Sargent family, who were quite protective about the colonel’s reputation.

In any event, Col. Sargent and his regiment never made it onto the Charlestown peninsula—though not for lack of trying. His “scratch” came near Bunker’s Hill, and after the main fight. Still, it was a wound, and it was during the overall battle. I think Sargent’s recollection is most valuable in demonstrating Gen. Ward’s worry about where else the British forces might attack. While we can look back in perfect hindsight, on 17 June 1775 no one knew which direction the fighting would go.