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absence two months previously, but before receiving it had attended to the exigent matter of fortifying West Point, like the good soldier that he was.
Since he last left home much had happened to distract and break him down, including the loss of his wife by death, and the loss of Washington's friendly support, through no fault of his own. He was deeply grieved over the change in the commander's attitude toward him, as well as puzzled to account for it, knowing full well that he had done nothing to incur his displeasure, now so plainly manifested, not alone to General Putnam but to others.
The change was probably due to their radical differences of temperament, habits of life and education. While Washington the soldier recognized the sterling qualities of Old Put, the veteran fighter, yet Washington the aristocratic planter shrank from contact with Putnam the blunt, and at times perhaps uncouth-appearing, farmer. Writing about that time, a surgeon in the American army said: "This is my first interview with this celebrated hero, Putnam. In his person he is corpulent and clumsy, but carries a bold, undaunted front. He exhibits little of the refinements of a well-educated gentleman, but much of the character of the veteran soldier."
This was not the style of soldier that the Commander-in-Chief liked to have about him, and he allowed his personal prejudices to pervert his judgment.
"What shall I do with Putnam?" he breaks out in a letter to Gouverneur Morris. "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