Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Mercy Otis Warren claims that Joseph Warren chose “rather to die in the field than to grace the victory of his foes by the triumph they would have enjoyed in his imprisonment,” in History of the . . . American Revolution, p. 122. As Samuel Forman points out in DJW, given that he died with several important letters in his pocket, it’s highly unlikely that he sought death (p. 305). On the possible circumstances surrounding Warren’s death, see Frothingham’s LJW, pp. 517–20. Based on a photograph that survives of Warren’s skull, in which the entry wound of the bullet is clearly visible, Samuel Forman has determined that Warren must have been killed by an officer’s pistol instead of a regular’s musket, thus making one of the accounts collected by Frothingham (in which an officer’s servant seizes his pistol and shoots Warren in the face) the likeliest of the many scenarios that have been attributed to Warren’s death, in Forman’s DJW, pp. 303–4, 365–66. Samuel Swett cites the Reverend Daniel Chaplin and John Bullard’s claim that Prescott asked Putnam, “Why did you not support me?” in History of Bunker Hill Battle, supplement, p. 9. Prescott’s son relates that his father assured Ward that “the enemy’s confidence would not be increased by the result of the battle,” in Frothingham’s Battle-Field of Bunker Hill, p. 23. Howe writes that the victory at Bunker Hill was “too dearly bought” in his June 22–24, 1775, letter in CKG, p. 223. The reference to the soldiers being “charmed with General Howe’s gallant behavior” is in a June 19, 1775, letter written by an unnamed British naval officer, in LAR, p. 137. Swett attributes the detail that Howe “at last received a ball in the foot” to Dr. John Jeffries, in History of Bunker Hill Battle, p. 42. Charles Lee writes of the effect of this “murderous day” on Howe in Charles Coffin’s History of the Battle of Breed’s Hill, p. 8. Dr. John Jeffries’s account of identifying Warren’s body and Howe’s response are given in Samuel Swett’s History of Bunker Hill Battle, p. 58.

  Chapter Eleven—The Fiercest Man

  The reference to the vehicles used to transport dead and wounded British soldiers is from “Clarke’s Narrative,” in Samuel Drake’s Bunker Hill: The Story Told in Letters, p. 49. Peter Oliver’s description of the mortally wounded officer is in OPAR, pp. 127–28. Rufus Greene writes of the funeral of “Uncle Coffin” in a July 3, 1775, letter in Journal of Mrs. John Amory, p. 82. Jonathan Sewall writes of the omnipresence of death in Boston in a July 15, 1775, letter cited in French’s FYAR, pp. 337–38; French also discusses Clinton’s unsuccessful attempt to convince Gage to take Dorchester Heights, p. 260. The letter from the British officer who writes of how they “shall soon be driven from the ruins of our victory” is in LAR, pp. 140–41. Allen French in FYAR relates the account of the dying Lieutenant Colonel Abercrombie claiming that “we have fought in a bad cause,” p. 318. In a November 1, 1775, letter that appeared in the Calendar of Home Office Papers, 1773–1775, edited by Richard Arthur Roberts, an unnamed correspondent in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, recounts a conversation with Margaret Gage “the day after that dreadful one, when you thought the lines so expressive,” then quotes the relevant passage from Shakespeare’s King John, p. 479. Gage writes of his wish that “this cursed place was burned” in a June 26, 1775, letter to Lord Barrington in Correspondence of Thomas Gage, pp. 686–67. John Warren writes of his desperate attempts to find out his brother’s fate at Bunker Hill in his diary, which is quoted in Edward Warren’s Life of John Warren, pp. 45–46; according to his son, the sentry’s bayonet thrust gave John Warren a scar “which he bore through life.” John Eliot writes of the “sincere lamentation and mourning” after Joseph Warren’s death in Brief Biographical Sketches, p. 473. Frothingham in LJW quotes Samuel Adams’s letter to his wife about the “greatly afflicting” news of Warren’s death (p. 521). John Adams writes of Warren taking on “too much for mortal” in a July 6, 1775, letter to James Warren in Warren-Adams Letters, 1:74; Adams continues in that letter: “This accumulation of admiration upon one gentleman, which among the Hebrews was called idolatry, has deprived us forever of the services of one of our best and ablest men. We have not a sufficient number of such men left to be prodigal of their lives in future.” Abigail Adams writes of the profound sense of loss felt in the wake of Joseph Warren’s death in a July 5, 1775, letter in Adams Family Correspondence 1:240.

  In a June 20, 1775, letter to John Adams (also in Warren-Adams Letters), James Warren claims that “had a Lee or a Washington instead of a general destitute of all military ability [i.e., Artemas Ward]” been in command at Bunker Hill, the battle “would have terminated with as much glory to America as the 19th of April,” p. 63. Samuel Gray writes of the battle being of “infinite service to us” in a July 12, 1775, letter in HSOB, p. 394. The reference to the provincial soldiers returning to Cambridge “like troops elated with conquest” is in a June 23, 1775, anonymous letter in LAR, p. 142. Nathanael Greene writes of wishing to sell the British “another hill at the same price” in a June 28, 1775, letter in PNG, p. 92. George Washington’s insistence that he did not “think myself equal” to commanding the American army is from a June 16, 1775, “Address to the Continental Congress,” in PGW, 1:1. Allen French describes Washington’s positive response to the news of Bunker Hill (“Then the liberties of our country are safe”) in FYAR, p. 267. Peter Thomas in Tea Party to Independence describes how the ministry quickly decided after hearing about Bunker Hill on July 25 that New York, not Boston, should “become the seat of the war,” p. 270. Eliphalet Dyer describes Washington as “sober, steady, and calm” in a June 17, 1775, letter in PGW, 1:3. Ron Chernow cites Gilbert Stuart’s description of Washington as “the fiercest man among the savage tribes” in Washington: A Life, p. xix.

  My account of Washington’s early military experience is indebted to Chernow’s biography, Joseph Ellis’s His Excellency George Washington, David Clary’s George Washington’s First War, Edward Lengel’s General Washington: A Military Life, and Fred Anderson’s Crucible of War, as well as his article “The Hinge of the Revolution: George Washington Confronts a People’s Army.” Washington’s letter to Governor Dinwiddie claiming that his “troops of Virginia” were “as regular a corps as any upon the continent” is cited by Ellis in His Excellency George Washington, p. 26; Ellis also argues that Washington was in “emotional turmoil” during the Forbes campaign “because he had fallen in love with one woman and was about to marry another,” p. 35. Fred Anderson writes of Washington’s effort to “become more British than the British,” in “The Hinge of the Revolution,” p. 42. Gouverneur Morris’s description of Washington having passions that were “almost too mighty for man” is in an “Oration upon the Death of General Washington,” in Eulogies and Orations on the Life and Death of General George Washington, pp. 44–45. James Thacher’s description of first seeing Washington is in his Military Journal, p. 30. Washington’s stepson George Custis’s description of the general’s “surpassing grip with his knees” is cited by Richard Brookhiser in George Washington: Founding Father, p. 111; Brookhiser also cites Benjamin Rush’s claim that the typical European king would “look like a valet de chamber by his side,” 114. John Trumbull’s description of being temporarily part of “the family of one of the most distinguished and dignified men of the age” is in his Autobiography, p. 23. On daily life at Washington’s headquarters, see J. L. Bell’s General George Washington’s Headquarters and Home, especially pp. 163–84.

  Fred Anderson writes insightfully about Washington’s reaction to the provincial army in “The Hinge of the Revolution,” commenting that in “the New Englanders’ squalid camps . . . Washington saw the symbol of a mixed multitude in peril of becoming a mob” (p. 29). On the Native American composition of the provincial army, particularly the “Stockbridge Indians,” see Colin Calloway’s The American Revolution in Indian Country, pp. 85–94. William Emerson’s account of the soldiers’ living quarters, including his description of a meal with the Stockbridge Indians in their wigwams, is in a July 7, 1775, letter included in his Diary, pp. 80–81. Washington c
alls the New Englanders “exceeding dirty and nasty people” and describes their “unaccountable kind of stupidity” in letters to Lund Washington on August 20, 1775, and Richard Henry Lee on August 29, 1775, both in PGW, 1:336, 372. On Charles Lee’s differing reaction to the typical American militiaman, see John Shy’s “Charles Lee: The Soldier as Radical” in George Washington’s Generals and Opponents, edited by George Billias; according to Shy, “Washington and Lee looked at the same troops but where the Virginia planter saw only surliness and disobedience, the British radical saw alertness and zeal” (p. 34). In an October 21, 1775, entry in his journal, Jeremy Belknap records that Horatio Gates “said he never desired to see better soldiers than the New England men made” (p. 83). My statement that Washington believed the “ultimate aim of an army was . . . not to generate violence but to curtail it” is based in large part on Fred Anderson’s assertion in “The Hinge of the Revolution” that “the control, not the propagation, of violence was for him the core of military service. . . . To allow war to become the engine of revolution—would be to imperil the social order, together with all the laws, rights, and liberties that he hoped to preserve”; Anderson also discusses Washington’s concerns about recruitment and tour-of-duty as well as his realization that “local sympathies could tear an army to shreds” (pp. 31–34, 44, 45).

  Washington writes of making “a pretty good slam” among the officers from Massachusetts in an August 29, 1775, letter to Richard Henry Lee in PGW, 1:373. William Emerson writes of the “great overturning in camp” in a July 7, 1775, letter contained in his Diary, p. 79. J. L. Bell in General George Washington’s Headquarters describes how Washington dealt with the difficulties created among his officers by the commissions granted by the Continental Congress in the chapter “Generals Old and New,” pp. 87–128; Bell provides an overview of how Washington went about reinventing the provincial army in the chapter “Remaking the Troops into a Continental Army,” pp. 219–59; see also his “Engineering a New Artillery Regiment,” pp. 287–314. Israel Trask’s account of Washington’s handling of the two combative riflemen is in John Dann, The Revolution Remembered, p. 409. John Sullivan’s August 5, 1775, letter in which he tells of Washington’s stunned reaction to the lack of gunpowder is in Thomas Amory’s John Sullivan, p. 16. Washington writes of how “no consideration upon earth should have induced me to accept this command” in a November 28, 1775, letter to Joseph Reed, in PGW, 2:449. Abigail Adams’s comment that if Washington wasn’t “one of the best-intentioned men . . . he might be a very dangerous one” is cited by Richard Brookhiser in George Washington, p. 115. On Washington’s efforts to create the beginnings of a navy, see James Nelson’s George Washington’s Secret Navy and Chester Hearn’s George Washington’s Schooners. Allen French provides an account of the beginnings of the Arnold campaign up the Kennebec River to Quebec in FYAR, pp. 431–35. On Washington’s advocacy of the young Nathanael Greene and the even younger Henry Knox, Ron Chernow in Washington writes of how his “meritocratic bent . . . clashed with his aristocratic background and grew more pronounced with time. With Greene and Knox, he encouraged two aspiring young men who bore psychological scars from their childhood” (p. 205).

  J. L. Bell describes the various ways that Bostonians, including the swimming barber Richard Carpenter, managed to get in and out of the city in Washington’s Headquarters, pp. 361–66. Joseph Tinker Buckingham in Specimens of Newspaper Literature recounts Benjamin Russell’s adventures in Cambridge during the Siege (2:4–5); see also Francis Baylies’s Eulogy on the Honorable Benjamin Russell, pp. 8–12. Mercy Scollay writes of how the death of Joseph Warren “rendered me for a time incapable of . . . feeling any animating sensations” in a May 21, 1776, letter to John Hancock at CHS. She writes of her “uncertain situation” and her distress at discovering that John Warren had sold his brother’s “every feather bed to General Washington” in an August 17, 1775, letter to Dr. Dix in Worcester, also at CHS. Samuel Forman was the first to identify Mercy Scollay as the probable author of “An Elegy, Occasioned by the Death of Major-General Joseph Warren,” which he reprints in DJW, pp. 376–78. Peter Oliver makes the claim that “Had [Warren] conquered, Washington had remained in obscurity” in OPAR, p. 128.

  On the history of siege warfare, I have consulted several books by Christopher Duffy—Siege Warfare, vols. 1 and 2, and Fire and Stone: The Science of Fortress Warfare, 1660–1860—as well as Paul Davis’s Besieged. Allen French in FYAR compares the taking of Plowed Hill to that of Breed’s Hill, “but better ordered,” p. 481. Peter Oliver describes the “idle business” of the siege in OPAR, p. 131. The description of the armies squinting at each other “like wild cats across a gutter” is in a December 4, 1775, letter in LAR, p. 231. Nathanael Greene mentions the spears that had been provided in lieu of bayonet-equipped muskets in a November 15, 1775, order: each regiment was to appoint thirty men “to stand ready to push the enemy off the breastwork if they should attempt to get over the parapet into the lines,” in PNG, 1:151. Washington mentions the many factors contributing to his proposal to attack in his September 8, 1775, “Circular to the General Officers,” in PGW, 1:432–34. The September 11, 1775, council of war decision that “it was not expedient to make the attempt at present at least” is in PGW, 1:450–51. The proceedings of October 18, 1775, are in PGW, 2:183–84. The minutes of the conference with the committee from the Continental Congress, in which Washington asks for advice about whether it is “advisable . . . to destroy the troops who propose to winter in Boston,” are in PGW, 2:190–203. Artemas Ward’s August 25, 1775, letter to Washington about Dorchester Heights is in PGW, 1:362–63. See Charles Martyn’s Artemas Ward for a discussion of Ward’s largely unacknowledged advocacy of the strategy that ultimately won the Siege and prevented “the hotheaded Virginian . . . [from] wrecking the careful work of Massachusetts patriots” through what would have surely been a disastrous attack on Boston (pp. 171–72).

  Benjamin Church’s October 3, 1775, letter to Washington, in which he claims he wrote the coded letter “to impress the enemy with a strong idea of our strength and situation,” is in PGW, 2:85–87. David Kiracofe discusses the philosophical dilemma of both the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Continental Congress when it came to dealing with Church in “Dr. Benjamin Church and the Dilemma of Treason in Revolutionary Massachusetts,” pp. 443–50. Church describes his appearance before the House in “Account of the Examination of Doctor Benjamin Church,” pp. 84–94. Clifford Shipton, in his biography of Church in SHG, recounts that when Church was confined in the Vassall House (a different house from Washington’s headquarters), he carved “B. Church, Jr.” in a closet door (12:390). Allen French in General Gage’s Informers provides a detailed account of the proceedings surrounding Church’s arrest and quotes John Adams’s comment, “Good God! What shall we say of human nature?” (p. 195). Kiracofe in his “Dilemma of Treason” writes of how Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams felt that a man’s personal sins “undermine the very bonds of society,” as well as the recognition among many patriots, including Samuel Adams, that Church’s infidelities were “notorious” (pp. 455–56). Church’s claim that his liberties had been violated by the House of Representatives is in his “Examination,” p. 87.

  Allen French in FYAR quotes the account of the “shocking spectacle” of the Bunker Hill survivors on the Charming Nancy, pp. 323–24. Gage writes of “taking the bull by the horns, attacking the enemy in their strong parts,” in his June 26, 1775, letter to Barrington in Correspondence, p. 687. In a November 26, 1775, letter to Dartmouth, Howe explains that he’ll have to delay the evacuation until at least the spring with the assurance that “we are not under the least apprehension of an attack” (DAR, 9:191). Boston is described as “the grave of England” in an August 18, 1775, letter in LAR, pp. 190–91, which describes as many as thirty bodies being “thrown into a trench at a time, like those of so many dogs.” An August 27, 1775, letter, also in LAR, asks the question, “Have you
forgot us?” (p. 205). Peter Thomas in Tea Party to Independence includes Edmund Burke’s reference to “the most astonishing market” and the fact that “war . . . is become a sort of substitute for commerce,” as well as the remark that were it not for the newspapers, the British people “would hardly know there was a civil war in America” (pp. 270–71). The Old North Meetinghouse, which was demolished and burned by the British, should not be confused with Christ Church of Paul Revere fame, which is often referred to today as “Old North.” In his Diary, Boston selectman Timothy Newall writes of the many old houses being burned for fuel as well as “the most savage manner” with which the regulars have turned the Old South Meetinghouse into “a riding school,” pp. 269–70. Allen French writes of Faneuil Hall’s transformation into a playhouse in FYAR, p. 537.

  My account of the confrontation between Benjamin Hallowell and Admiral Graves is based largely on French’s “The Hallowell-Graves Fisticuffs, 1775,” pp. 41–45. An August 19, 1775, letter in LAR, speaks of Graves’s “black eye,” p. 195; a December 13, 1775, letter, also in LAR, describes how Graves’s secretary extorted bribes for fishing permits, p. 238. Ezekiel Price writes of American whaleboat attacks on the Boston lighthouse in his diary on July 20, p. 198, and on July 31, p. 201. John Tilley cites Sandwich’s letter telling Graves that he “can never be censured for doing too much” in The British Navy and the American Revolution, p. 48. Allen French tells of the burning of Falmouth, Maine (and includes the reference to the town being “one flame”), in FYAR, p. 540–43; see also James Nelson’s George Washington’s Secret Navy, pp. 139–47. The outrage created by the burning of Falmouth was so extensive that the incident is even referred to in the catalogue of complaints contained in the Declaration of Independence. The comment that the British were “almost as much blocked up by the sea as we have been . . . by land” is in a December 4, 1775, letter in LAR, p. 231. For an account of John Manley’s capture of the Nancy, see James Nelson’s Washington’s Secret Navy, pp. 207–15. William Heath’s November 30, 1775, diary entry about the armaments taken with the Nancy is in his Memoirs, p. 24. The reference to Graves being a “curse upon the garrison” is in a December 13, 1775, letter in LAR, p. 237. The claim that Graves had been “cruelly used” is in a January 20 letter in LAR, p. 256. John Tilley agrees with this assessment in The British Navy and the American Revolution, claiming that “it is difficult to suggest how any other admiral could have done substantially better [than Graves]. The oafish performance of the North American Squadron was no more than a manifestation of a colossal ineptitude that the next five years were to expose throughout the British naval and military establishments” (p. 66).