Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Washington writes of being “unable upon any principle to account” for the lack of response on the part of the British in a December 15, 1775, letter to Joseph Reed, in PGA, 2:553. According to Maldwyn Jones in “Sir William Howe: Conventional Strategist,” in George Washington’s Generals and Opponents, edited by George Billias, in keeping with common practice in Europe, “Howe closed his mind to the possibility of winter campaigns” (p. 49). I describe the Swamp Fight of 1675 in Mayflower, pp. 265–80. Howe’s relationship with Joshua Loring Jr.’s wife is described in Bellamy Partridge’s Sir Billy Howe, pp. 32–34. Maldwyn Jones in “Sir William Howe” cites the letter to Dartmouth in which Howe proposes that the British army “withdraw entirely . . . and leave the colonists to war with each other” and comments, “For a man newly appointed to put down the rebellion, this was an astonishing statement. . . . [A] situation in which he had both to conquer and to pacify appears to have made him uncertain what measure of coercion was to be used” (p. 50). Washington makes the assurances that “order and subordination in time will take place of confusion” in a December 5, 1775, letter to General Philip Schuyler in Albany, N.Y., who was experiencing his own reenlistment and discipline issues and was thinking about resigning, in PGW, 2:498. Washington complains of the unwillingness of the soldiers to serve with those from another colony in a November 8, 1775, letter to Joseph Reed in PGW, 2:335. Allen French in FYAR cites Simeon Lyman’s description of Charles Lee’s blasphemous recruitment efforts (pp. 514–15). Nathanael Greene in a letter of December 10, 1775, to Samuel Ward tells of the Connecticut soldiers leaving “in shoals” (PNG, 1:160). William Gordon in his “Apr. 6, 1776, Letter to Samuel Wilson” writes of it being “the cast of New Englanders . . . to quit the service . . . when the time is expired” (p. 360). Nathanael Greene writes in a November 29, 1775, letter of the “infamous desertion” of the New England soldiers, and in a letter of December 18, 1775, of Washington’s unrealistic expectations regarding the provincial army he inherited (PNG, 1:154, 163–64). Artemas Ward’s letter defending the New Englanders from the criticisms of those “from the southward” is cited by Clifford Shipton in his biography of Ward in SHG, 12:335–36. Douglas Southall Freeman in George Washington faults Washington for having “devoted too much of his own time to ‘paper work’ ” during the siege and not enough time involving himself in the even more vital recruitment process; given his experience twenty years before in Virginia, it was clear Washington “knew how to make an army out of a congeries of jealous colonial contingents”; therefore he was guilty of a “failure to exercise the full functions of a command-in-chief” while in Cambridge in the fall of 1775 (4:69). Joseph Warren seems to have been guilty of the opposite extreme during the spring of 1775, when the time he spent with the army prevented him from keeping up with the paperwork associated with the Committee of Safety and the Provincial Congress.

  Washington writes of giving “most general satisfaction” and of making “my conduct coincide with the wishes of mankind” in a December 15, 1775, letter to Joseph Reed in PGW, 2:551–52, and in a January 14, 1776, letter, also to Reed, in PGW, 3:87. In a February 10, 1776, letter to Reed (PGW, 3:288), Washington reveals, “I have never entertained an idea of an accommodation since I heard of the measures which were adopted in consequences of the Bunkers Hill fight,” meaning that he had resigned himself to war back in the fall. This is borne out by Jeremy Belknap’s October 19, 1775, observation in his journal that “independence was become a favorite point in the army” (p. 78). Nathanael Greene’s December 20, 1775, letter speaking of “a declaration of independence” is in PNG, p. 167. J. L. Bell discusses Washington’s decision to reverse himself on the issue of allowing free blacks to serve in the army in Washington’s Headquarters, pp. 272–76. George Quintal Jr., in Patriots of Color, pp. 170–80, cites the petition concerning Salem Poor. As Quintal states, attributing the character and skills of a gentleman officer to an African American was “extraordinary”; Quintal also includes a copy of Poor’s manumission document; in addition, he cites a tradition from Andover that Poor shot General Abercromby (as opposed to Pitcairn). J. L. Bell in Washington’s Headquarters cites the claim by Samuel Swett that Poor shot Major Pitcairn, p. 280. The December 22 resolve from the Continental Congress that Washington could attack Boston “notwithstanding the town . . . be destroyed,” is in a footnote in PGW, 2:590. Washington did not receive this resolve until early January (as he states in his January 4, 1776, letter to John Hancock in PGW, 3:18), but he was clearly operating in anticipation of a congressional blessing to attack Boston when he decided to reverse himself on the issue of free African Americans in the army. On December 31, 1775, Washington wrote to John Hancock and the Continental Congress that “it has been represented to me that the free negroes who have served in this army are very much dissatisfied at being discarded—as it is to be apprehended, that they may seek employ in the ministerial army—I have presumed to depart from the resolution respecting them, and have given license for their being enlisted, if this is disproved of by Congress, I will put a stop to it” (PGW, 2:623).

  Chapter Twelve—The Clap of Thunder

  My account of the raising of the Union flag on Prospect Hill is based largely on Peter Ansoff’s “The Flag on Prospect Hill,” which debunks the legend that Washington raised the horizontally striped Continental Colors on January 1, 1776, on Prospect Hill. As Ansoff writes, the Union Jack had become “a symbol of resistance to British policies” in the colonies (p. 78). Probably the best depiction of the fortifications at Boston Neck are in Lieutenant Page’s “A Plan of the town of Boston with entrenchments, etc.” Sir Thomas Hyde’s “A Plan of the Town of Boston and its Environs with the Lines, Batteries, and Encampments,” is also extremely helpful. Samuel Webb in a March 1 diary entry in Correspondence and Journals, p. 129, makes the claim that “even the strong fortifications of Gibraltar is said not to equal them, they have cut a canal through the Neck by which Boston is now an island, on the south and west sides they are strongly fortified by a chain of forts.” Washington writes of the events of the first of the year in a January 4, 1776, letter to Joseph Reed in PGW, in which he says that the broadsides of the speech were “sent out by the Boston gentry”; he also writes of the “farcical” belief on the part of the British soldiers that the Union flag had been raised “as a signal of submission” (3:23–25). Ansoff cites the report of an anonymous ship captain who claimed that the rebels burned a copy of the speech (pp. 84–85), as well as the report of British lieutenant William Carter, who wrote that the rebels “fired 13 guns and gave the like number of cheers” (p. 85).

  Richard Frothingham in HSOB provides an account of the interrupted performance of The Blockade of Boston (p. 27), as does Allen French in FYAR, p. 635. The performance is also described in letters written on January 15, and January 20, 1776, in which one correspondent reports how the audience “clapped prodigiously,” and the actors called out “to get the paint and smut off their faces” (LAR, pp. 255 and 259). William Gordon writes of how “the ridicule was turned upon themselves” in “Apr. 6, 1776, Letter to Samuel Wilson” (p. 361). Gordon writes of Knowlton’s mission crossing “the mill-dam upon the ice” to burn the buildings on the Charlestown peninsula in his History, 2:18. Washington writes that “all the generals upon earth should not have convinced me . . . of delaying an attack” in a January 14, 1776, letter to Joseph Reed in PGW, 3:90; in the same letter he writes of wishing he had retreated “to the backcountry and lived in a wigwam” rather than taken this command (p. 89). The minutes of the January 16, 1776, council of war in which it was decided that “a vigorous attempt” against the regulars in Boston should be attempted “as soon as practicable” is in PGW, 3:103–4.

  Henry Knox describes how he and his men “took a comfortable nap” around a roaring fire on Lake George in the December 10 entry of his Diary, the original copy of which is at the MHS. Knox’s December 17, 1775, letter to Washington in which he describes his efforts to secure for
ty-two “exceeding strong sleds” and his hope for “a fine fall of snow” is in PGW, 2:563–64. Knox writes of Schuyler’s refusal to pay the price the original manufacturer of the sleds demanded as well as of the snow being “too deep for the cannon to set out even if the sleds were ready” in a December 28, 1775, entry in his Diary, in which he also writes in a January 1–4 entry of “getting holes cut . . . in the river in order to strengthen ice.” According to an article in the February 20, 1915, Albany Evening Journal, “upward pressure on the ice would cause water to flow through the holes . . . [and] the clear water would freeze to add thickness to the ice.” Knox’s January 5, 1775, letter to Washington is in PGW, 3:29. Knox writes of the cannon breaking through the ice at Albany and of the eventual rescue of the “drowned cannon . . . , owing to the assistances [of] the good people of the city . . . in return for which we christened her The Albany,” in the January 7 and 8, 1776, entries of his Diary. The account of Knox’s experiences at Westfield is in John Becker, The Sexagenary: or Reminiscences of the American Revolution, pp. 34–35. J. L. Bell provides an excellent account of Knox’s ascendancy to colonel of the artillery regiment in Washington’s Headquarters, in which he cites Thomas Crafts’s December 16, 1775, letter of outrage (pp. 302–9).

  Jeduthan Baldwin writes of his efforts to build a fortification at Lechmere Point in his Diary, pp. 18–28, including his observation on February 13 that Washington “found a good bridge of ice to Boston.” The minutes of the February 16, 1776, council of war are in PGW, 3:320–22. William Gordon’s account of how Ward opposed Washington’s proposal with a counterproposal to take Dorchester Heights is in his History, 2:24–25. Horatio Gates’s notes on the meeting are reprinted in a footnote in PGW, 3:323. William Heath recounts how he opposed Washington’s proposal to attack Boston in the event Howe decided to attack the fortifications on Dorchester Heights in his Memoir, p. 31. The “Plan for Attacking Boston” drawn up by Putnam, Sullivan, Greene, and Gates is in PGW, 3:332–33. Washington’s February 26, 1776, letter to Joseph Reed complaining of the council of war’s rejection of his original proposal to attack Boston and his hope that the British “will be so kind as to come out to us” once he occupies Dorchester Heights is in PGW, 3:370. Washington’s February 18, 1776, letter to John Hancock in which he admits that “the irksomeness of my situation” may have put too much “to hazard” is in PGW, 3:335–36. Nathanael Greene’s summation of what an attack on Boston might accomplish can be found in PNG, 1:194. Rufus Putnam describes how he came up with the idea of using chandeliers to build a fortification atop Dorchester Heights in his Memoirs, pp. 54–58. Although Putnam claims the book he borrowed from Heath was John Muller’s Field Engineer, it was, in all probability, Muller’s Attack and Defenses of Fortified Places, which contains both a definition and a picture of a chandelier in its early pages, which is not true of his Field Engineer, which is a translation of a work by M. le Chevalier De Clairac. Rufus Putnam’s early proposal of creating a stone and timber blind along Dorchester Neck is described in his February 11, 1776, letter to Washington, in PGW, 3:295–98.

  Heath writes of how William Davis was responsible for the idea of filling barrels with earth for rolling down onto the attacking British in his Memoirs, p. 33. William Gordon writes of the building of the forty-five bateaux and two floating batteries and of Quartermaster Mifflin’s proposal to occupy Dorchester Heights on March 4, the day before the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, in his History, 2:25. Washington writes to Ward about the desertion of the “rascally rifleman” in a February 27, 1776, letter in PGW, 3:384. Washington’s February 27, 1776, “General Order” is in PGW, 3:379–80. He writes to Joseph Reed of stumbling upon Phillis Wheatley’s poem of praise in his pile of correspondence in a February 10, 1776, letter to Joseph Reed in PGW, 3:290. Washington’s February 28, 1776, letter to Wheatley is in PGW, 3:387. Washington’s February 28, 1776, letter to Burwell Bassett about using his lands along the Ohio as a possible “asylum” is in PGW, 3:386.

  Archibald Robertson writes of the number of rebel “shot and shells” fired on the night of March 2, 1776, in his Diary, p. 73. Heath records in his diary entry for March 2 that the American cannons split because they “were not properly bedded, as the ground was hard frozen” (Memoir, p. 32). Samuel Webb records in a March 4 journal entry that “some conjecture ’tis want of knowledge in the bombardiers, some one thing and some another, but ’tis hinted—treachery, if the latter I hope it may come to light” (Correspondence and Journals, p. 134). Frothingham reprints Knox’s tally of the total number of shot and shell fired by his artillery regiment on the night of March 4: “Lamb’s Dam [in Roxbury]: five 13-inch shells, six 10-inch shells; 42 24-pound shot, 38 18-pound shot; Lechmere’s Point: 32 24-pound shot, 14 18-pound shot; two 10-inch shells; Cobble Hill: 18 18-pound shot; total: 144 shot, 13 shells” (HSOB, p. 298). Douglas Southall Freeman in George Washington, 4:34, cites the reference to seeing as many as seven shells “in the air at the same instant” on the night of March 4. Abigail Adams writes of the roar of the cannons on the night of March 4 in a letter to her husband John started on March 2, in Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, edited by L. H. Butterfield, pp. 354–55. Samuel Webb records hearing “the cries of poor women and children” in a March 5 journal entry in Correspondence, p. 134. Archibald Robertson writes of the British casualties inflicted by the American cannonade in a March 4 entry in his Diary, p. 73. A March 4, 1776, letter from a British officer in LAR includes the statement that “it is agreed on all hands that their artillery officers are at least equal to our own” (p. 277).

  William Gordon describes the weather conditions (“hazy below the height . . . bright moonlight night above the hills”) in his History, 2:27; he records the fact that the wind carried the noise of the American advance onto Dorchester Heights “into the harbor between the town and the castle” in his “Apr. 6, 1776 Letter to Samuel Wilson,” p. 362. John Thomas describes how he led “3,000 picked men beside 360 ox teams” onto Dorchester Heights in a March 9 letter to his wife Hannah in Charles Coffin’s Life and Services of . . . Thomas, pp. 20–21; Coffin includes a brief note to Hannah, also written on March 9, in which Thomas reports that their ten-year-old son John “is well and in high spirits. He ran away from Oakeley privately, on Tuesday morning, and got by the sentries came to me on Dorchester Hills, where he has been most of the time since” (p. 21). William Gordon reports that General Thomas “told me that he pulled out his watch and found that by ten o’clock at night, they had got two forts . . . sufficient to defend them from small arms and grapeshot” in his “Apr. 6, 1776 Letter to Samuel Wilson,” pp. 362–63. Archibald Robertson records in the March 4 entry of his Diary that “about 10 o’clock Lt. Col. Campbell reported to Brig. Smith that the rebels were at work on Dorchester Heights” (p. 73). The reference to the works atop Dorchester Heights being raised “with an expedition equal to that of the genii belonging to Aladdin’s wonderful lamp” is in a letter from a British officer in LAR, p. 278. James Thacher in his Journal claims that due to the fog the American fort atop Dorchester Heights “loomed to great advantage” (p. 40). William Gordon’s account of Howe claiming the Americans had done more in a single night than “his whole army would have done in six months” can be found in his “Apr. 6, 1776 Letter to Samuel Wilson,” p. 363. Archibald Robertson’s estimate that it must have taken fifteen to twenty thousand men to erect the two forts is in his Diary, p. 74. Samuel Webb records the rumor that Howe had vowed to attack any fort built on Dorchester Heights even “if he was sure of losing two thirds of the army” in a March 1 entry in his Diary, p. 131.

  Thacher writes of the cannon balls “rolling and rebounding over the hill” in his Journal, p. 39. John Sullivan writes of how the British attempted to “elevate their cannons . . . by sinking the hinder wheels” in a March 15, 1776, letter to John Adams, in C. James Taylor, Founding Families. James Thacher writes of the spectators covering the hills of Dorchester in his Journal, p. 39. William Gordon describes t
he ease with which the Americans atop Dorchester Heights could see what was happening on the wharves of Boston “by the help of glasses” and how the spectators and soldiers “clapped their hands and wished for the expected attack” in his “Apr. 6, 1776 Letter to Samuel Wilson,” p. 363; Gordon also writes of how the regulars were “not hearty in the matter,” and how ladders were collected in anticipation of an attack on the American fort (pp. 364–65). Gordon writes of how Washington’s exhortation, “Remember it is the fifth of March,” was repeated along the lines in his History, 2:28. Gordon writes of the preparations in place for the amphibious assault on Boston in the event that the British attack Dorchester Heights in “Apr. 6, 1776 letter to Samuel Wilson,” p. 363. Thacher writes of leaving Dorchester Heights without having “to dress a single wound” in his Journal, p. 39. Archibald Robertson recounts the tense meetings that preceded Howe’s decision to abort the attack on Dorchester Heights as well as Howe’s March 6 meeting at 11:00 a.m. with his officers, announcing his decision to evacuate, in his Journal, pp. 74–75. Heath’s judgment that the combination of “almost a hurricane” and Howe’s decision to evacuate “saved the Americans when they would have destroyed themselves” is in his Memoirs, p. 33.