New York Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, 29 July 1854.

[The August Putnam's] is filled with papers of unusual interest and value, even for that excellent periodical … “Israel Potter,” the sub-title of which caused us to pass over its first chapters in the last number, is a simple relation of a series of 'adventures through which a young American passed after the Battle of Bunker Hill. It is whispered that it is by Herman Melville, but if the report be well founded, then indeed has the author effected a sudden and great improvement in his style, which in this tale is manly, direct and clear. “Israel Potter's” story is told quite as if De Foe had undertaken to tell it, albeit it is more enlivened with dialogue than it would be in that case…

New Bedford Mercury, 12 March 1855.

The wide circle of habitual readers of Putnam's Monthly Magazine, will be glad that this very pleasant “autobiography,” dedicated to “His Highness the Bunker Hill Monument,” is rescued from its fragmentary state, and has a permanent identity of form and style of Mr. Putnam's best. Mr. Melville's works are unequal, but none of them can be charged with dullness, and he is especially at home on his native soil, with a keen sense of the rugged but abounding picturesqueness and beauty of its scenery, and of the peculiarities of the Yankee character at the revolutionary period.