American Spring

by Walter R. Borneman

  Of course, just about everyone within a hundred miles of Boston was well acquainted with the importance of those posts, even if to date both sides had been frozen in any attempt to occupy them. On the very day the New Hampshire warning was written, the Massachusetts committee of safety noted that “it is daily expected that General Gage will attack our Army now in the vicinity of Boston, in order to penetrate into the country” and warned that the army should therefore “be in every respect prepared for action.”40 And one of the officers of a New Hampshire regiment stationed near Cambridge wrote home that while “it is still times with the Regular Troops at present; we expect they will make a push for Bunker’s Hill or Dorchester Neck very soon.”41

  It was indeed obvious to any informed observer that something major was about to happen either in the direction of Dorchester or Charlestown or both. Despite this, one twenty-first-century writer pulled Margaret Gage into this matter, too, and claimed the rebels learned of the British plan because the general’s “American wife probably again leaked the information.”42 It makes great fiction, but it didn’t take spies or clandestine reports to confirm the obvious. Boston remained the leaky sieve of information it had always been, and with the town swelling with reinforcements something was going to happen.

  Like the British, the rebels had also recognized the importance of the hills above Charlestown and Dorchester, but except for Israel Putnam’s parade through Charlestown they had been as slow to act as General Gage. The first call for action came from a joint committee organized to reconnoiter “the Highlands in Cambridge and Charlestown.” On May 12, after its examination, the committee recommended erecting breastworks flanking the Cambridge-to-Charlestown road on the Cambridge side of the neck and building redoubts with “three or four nine-pounders planted there” atop Winter Hill on the Cambridge side of the neck and Bunker Hill on the Charlestown side of the neck. “A strong Redoubt raised on Bunker’s Hill” was calculated “to annoy the enemy coming out of Charlestown, also to annoy them going by water to Medford.” The report concluded with the prediction that “when these are finished, we apprehend the country will be safe from all sallies of the enemy in that quarter.”43

  The breastworks were soon erected—perhaps as part of Putnam’s “keep ’em busy” digging campaign—but the larger redoubts recommended on Winter Hill and Bunker Hill were not. In part this was attributable to limited time and resources, but there was also a difference of opinion about putting forces in an exposed forward position on Bunker Hill. The firebrands, including Putnam and Colonel William Prescott of Massachusetts, were all in favor and sought to provoke the British into coming out of Boston and fighting rather than settling in for a protracted siege.

  General Artemas Ward and Joseph Warren were among those who thought the army’s resources too limited to maintain so extended a post. With long-range military concerns in mind, Ward and Warren weren’t eager to bring on a general action until the colonial army might be better organized and supplied. For one thing, there never seemed to be enough gunpowder. Warren reportedly told Putnam that he thought the plan to build a redoubt on Bunker Hill was “a rash one.” Nevertheless, Warren vowed, “If the project be adopted, and the strife becomes hard, you must not be surprised to find me near you in the midst of it.”44

  This difference of opinion on the rebel side continued until June 15, by which time an avalanche of information signaled that Gage was preparing for imminent action. That day, as the full body of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress agreed to pay for the removal of the Harvard College library to the safety of Andover, its committee of safety issued direct orders about the heights at both Charlestown and Dorchester. Citing the “importance to the safety of this Colony, that possession of the hill called Bunker’s Hill, in Charlestown, be securely kept and defended,” the committee recommended that it be “maintained by sufficient force being posted there.” Of Dorchester Heights, the committee had less detailed knowledge, and it merely ordered officers to Roxbury to reconnoiter the situation there.45

  It has never been answered with absolute certainty whether the Charlestown action was simply a long-overdue rebel move to fortify Bunker Hill or an attempt to forestall the anticipated British move against Dorchester with a more ominous threat to Boston than seizing Dorchester Heights would have been. Charlestown was less than a mile from Boston’s North End and the Royal Navy ships in the Charles, whereas Dorchester Heights was a good two miles from Boston Harbor. The rebel decision was likely a combination of those goals—clear action on Charlestown and a distraction from Dorchester.

  There is a report by Artemas Ward’s principal biographer that the rebel general himself hurried to Bunker Hill about noon on June 16 with members of his staff.46 This may or may not have been the case, but the result of rebel reconnaissance was that Colonel William Prescott was given command of three regiments, several companies from Putnam’s Connecticut regiment, and an artillery company—a total force of about twelve hundred men—and ordered to march to Bunker Hill and construct fortifications. The march as well as the work was to be undertaken after dark so as not to alarm the British in Boston or on the ships in the Charles. Significantly, Ward also ordered that a relief party of a like number of men—three regiments and another two hundred of the Connecticut troops—be ready to march the following evening “with two days provisions and well equipped with arms and ammunition” to relieve Prescott’s command.47

  That evening, Friday, June 16, the bulk of Prescott’s command assembled in Cambridge. “We were orderd to parade at six ’o Clock,” a company clerk named Peter Brown later wrote to his mother, “with one days provision and Blankets ready for a March somewhere, but we knew not where but we readily and cheerfully obey’d.”48

  But there was no rush to march off immediately. The long midsummer evening would last another three hours, and it allowed ample time to view the assemblage. This was still less an army than a loose band of partisans “hearty in the cause,” as Peter Brown termed it. Few had uniforms; most were in everyday work clothes; all carried muskets they had brought from home. Some of the weapons dated from before the French and Indian War and were older than the men who shouldered them. Almost no one had bayonets. Picks, shovels, and other entrenching tools suggested a full night’s work.

  Reverend Samuel Langdon, the president of Harvard College, his library secure, offered a lengthy prayer over the assembled troops. Then, as the twilight finally turned murky, Colonel Prescott and two sergeants carrying lanterns led the column east out of town. That night, the fifes and drums would be silent. Secrecy was of the utmost importance.

  The column walked quietly over the wooden bridges that spanned several branches of Willis Creek and met the two hundred Connecticut men under the command of Captain Thomas Knowlton. Nearby stood the earthworks where Putnam had kept them busy digging and filling and digging. Might they be doing some more digging for Old Put? But onward Prescott and the two flickering lanterns led until they came to the crossroads at the western end of Charlestown Neck. As Prescott turned to the right, their destination suddenly became obvious to Private Brown and his comrades. The left-hand fork led back toward Winter Hill and Medford. The right-hand fork led east across the neck toward Bunker Hill.

  Chapter 23

  “The White of Their Gaiters”

  It is perplexing to stand on the heights of Charlestown almost two and a half centuries later and fully appreciate the geography at work there in 1775. So much changed as the peninsulas of both Boston and Charlestown swelled with landfills. The distance in 1775 between Copp’s Hill in northern Boston and the town wharves of Charlestown—essentially the route of the Charlestown ferry—was then about twelve hundred feet, slightly more than the distance it is today over the Charlestown Bridge.

  The Charlestown peninsula was almost a small-scale mirror image of Boston but with a narrow neck, low rolling hills, and an ever-expanding girth as one moved southeast from the neck to the point where the Charles River separated the peni
nsula from Boston. This ground was a little over a mile in length and varied in width from mere yards at the neck to roughly three-quarters of a mile between the Charlestown wharves and the Mystic River to the northeast.

  The neck, or isthmus, connecting Charlestown to the mainland was so low in elevation that it was occasionally awash at high tide. But just southeast of it on the Charlestown side, the ground rose to a series of hills that peaked and then stepped downhill toward Boston. The first of these was “a round, smooth hill” about 110 feet in height that sloped steeply toward the waters of the Mystic River to the northeast and a millpond off the Charles River to the southwest. This was Bunker Hill, and there was no question about its name. It was well documented in public records and readily recognized in common usage.

  From Bunker Hill, the spine of the ridge descended down the first step to a lower, broader hill. Its name was more problematic. While it would later be called Breed’s Hill, there is no evidence that the name was affixed to it in 1775. Some simply thought that it was part of Bunker Hill. Others called the hilltop and surrounding area by the names of the owners of the pastures into which it was divided. Neat and orderly, as was New England custom, these fields were partitioned by stone walls and rail fences that could be counted on to impede any line of advancing infantry. The easterly portions of these hills were used chiefly for hay fields and pasturing; the westerly portions contained orchards and gardens.

  The high point of this second hill rose sixty-two feet above sea level and divided brick kilns, clay pits, and some marshy ground on the Mystic River side from the core of Charlestown’s buildings on the Charles River side. Charlestown had about four hundred buildings and, before Lord Percy’s disruption on the evening of April 19, had been home to several thousand people. By June, however, with Admiral Graves’s guns staring at it across the water from Copp’s Hill, much of the town had been abandoned.

  The final step of high ground before one reached the saltwater estuaries was Moulton’s Hill, thirty-five feet tall and commanding the easternmost point of the peninsula above Moulton’s (sometimes reported as “Morton’s”) Point. The main road extended from the neck across the summit of Bunker Hill, around the eastern side of the as-yet-unnamed Breed’s Hill, and between it and Moulton’s Hill to reach the Charlestown wharves. Smaller roads ran from the Bunker-Breed saddle down to Charlestown proper and along the millpond between Charlestown and the neck. All in all, the Charlestown peninsula was a relatively compact area of irregular terrain, the shoreline of which was heavily impacted by the ebb and flow of the tides.1

  Whatever else might be said about nomenclature, it was clear to any trained observer that—as General Henry Clinton had noted within hours of his arrival in Boston—whoever controlled the heights of the Charlestown peninsula controlled much of Boston. Those parts of Boston not within cannon range from Charlestown’s heights, including the wharves on the seaward side, were within range from the heights at Dorchester to the south. Seize both these positions, and Boston was squeezed like a lemon.

  What followed became known to history as the Battle of Bunker Hill. Trivia buffs have long been quick to correct and say, ah, but it was fought on Breed’s Hill. But since the name Breed’s Hill was apparently not known in 1775, it seems correct to say that the Battle of Bunker Hill was indeed fought on the broader slopes of what everyone at the time thought was Bunker Hill. The crest at the center of the action only became known as Breed’s Hill shortly thereafter. Regardless of names, General Gage’s regulars and Colonel Prescott’s rebels were about to fight one of the most deadly battles of what would become a seven-year war.

  THE MOON WAS WANING THAT night, but it was only three days past full. It rose in the east and began to shed light on the hills above Charlestown. Colonel Prescott sent Captain John Nutting and a company from his regiment along the shore road past the millpond toward Charlestown. They were to act as an advance patrol and spread the alarm should they encounter any sign that the rebel movement across the neck had been detected.

  Prescott and the bulk of his men continued up the slopes of Bunker Hill and soon came to the rudimentary works that Captain Montresor had thrown up at Lord Percy’s direction on the evening of April 19. These were a start, and they might have been expanded. Admittedly, the works faced away from Charlestown, but they dominated all approaches to the neck and protected a backdoor exit from the peninsula to the Cambridge mainland. The other sides of the oval-shaped crest of Bunker Hill commanded the remainder of the peninsula as it sloped downhill toward Charlestown proper. Short of cannon fire against the neck from Royal Navy ships in the Mystic or Charles Rivers, there was no easy avenue by which these heights might be surrounded and cut off.

  But as in the question of whether or not to occupy these highest heights in the first place, there now occurred a heated debate about where to dig a defensive perimeter. The three men involved in the decision were Colonel William Prescott, Colonel Richard Gridley—a sixty-five-year-old engineer whose service went back to the 1745 campaign against Louisbourg—and Colonel Israel Putnam. A complete account of what happened among them will never be known. There is no surviving record in writing—no formal version and no scribbling in orderly books. Any piecing together of contemporary evidence was stymied in the generation or so after the battle by dueling descendants and supporters of both Prescott and Putnam.

  But this much can be surmised: Colonels Prescott and Gridley favored digging a redoubt and trench works on the crest of Bunker Hill. For Prescott, it was an easy decision: he was the one with the orders from General Ward, and they very plainly said, “Bunker Hill,” the location of which was not in doubt. Gridley, as an engineer, likely favored Bunker Hill for its commanding geography. Colonel Putnam, however, led the trio down the ridge toward the lower knoll, which was closer to Boston. According to the late historian Allen French, it lacked “every advantage of the higher hill” and “commanded neither the water nor its own wide and gentle flanks: troops could be marched around it, or sent in boats to land in its rear.”2 In other words, it was an exposed position from which there were tenuous avenues of retreat. Indeed, its only advantage appeared to be that even small cannons along its crest could threaten Boston and shipping in the Charles River. That, of course, was exactly what Putnam was after. Faced with such a challenge, General Gage and his army would have to come out and fight.

  Why Prescott and Gridley acceded to Putnam’s aggressive stance is a matter of debate. Putnam was nominally a brigadier general of Connecticut forces, but that carried little weight among Massachusetts men. Besides, Colonel Prescott, who was almost Putnam’s equal in military experience and age, if not quite in temperament, had been given command of the force. Putnam’s role was less formal. He may have wrangled Captain Knowlton’s two hundred men from his own Connecticut regiment into the expedition just so he had an excuse to tag along. In the end, however, Putnam’s force of personality prevailed. Gridley proceeded to lay out a redoubt and exterior lines on Breed’s Hill well below the Bunker Hill summit. About midnight, Prescott’s men began to dig.

  The redoubt dug on Breed’s Hill was relatively small—by one account about 130 feet on each of four sides. If it could be said to have a “front,” this was the side that projected outward in a V-shaped redan and faced directly toward the Charlestown ferry crossing and Copp’s Hill. This made sense if the redoubt’s most menacing feature was to be the cannons firing at Boston. It also presupposed that any counterattack would come directly from Charlestown. The construction did not, however, take into account the open slopes on the left, which dropped gently toward Moulton’s Hill and the Mystic River. (On higher Bunker Hill, these slopes were more precipitous and thus more easily defended.)3

  All through the short night, as his troops dug and dug, Prescott was nervous that sentries on board Royal Navy ships in the Charles would raise a cry of alarm. At one point, he may have ridden to the shore to listen, but there was no sound except the reassuring routine calls of “all’s well.” N
ear dawn, Prescott ordered Captain Nutting’s patrol to withdraw from the Charlestown road and join his other forces.

  Even if the sentries on Admiral Graves’s ships thought all was well, there was one sharp-eared individual in Boston who was not so sure. Just what Major General Henry Clinton was doing out and about in the late hours of June 16 is a matter of conjecture. According to Clinton’s notes, later found among his papers, “In the Evening of ye 16th I saw them at work, reported it to Genls Gage and Howe and advised a landing in two divisions at day brake.” Clinton claimed that Howe approved the plan, “but G Gage seemed to doubt their intention.”4

  Whether this encounter with Gage and Howe indeed happened that night or was simply Clinton’s way of disassociating himself from events after the fact is not known. Howe, without mentioning Clinton’s report, made a similar statement some days later and claimed “the Centrys on the Boston side had heard the Rebels at work all Night, without making any other report of it, except mentioning it in Conversation in the Morning.”5

  This left the first full-blown report of rebel activity above Charlestown to come from the guns of HMS Lively. The twenty-gun sloop was anchored in the middle of the Charles River, having recently replaced the Somerset at the Charlestown ferry station. The morning was moderate and fair. At 4:00 a.m., a lookout on the Lively heard sounds coming from the heights about half a mile away and, either by the light of the moon as it sank toward the west or by the first rays of the sun lighting the eastern horizon, he looked up to see fresh mounds of dirt heaped along the slope of Breed’s Hill. As the ship’s log succinctly recorded it, he “discover’d the Rebels throwing up a Redoubt on a Hill at the Back of the Charles Town. Began to fire upon them as did the Battery of Copps Hill.”6 Prescott heard the whistle of the Lively’s first nine-pound cannonball and knew for certain that he had been discovered.