American Spring

by Walter R. Borneman

  There is some question about the ability of the Lively to elevate its guns high enough to reach the rebel works, but this is where Admiral Graves’s battery on Copp’s Hill became important. To the admiral’s chagrin, it was no longer under the navy’s direct command. Previous snickering aside, the army had come to realize how useful it might be against any force assembled in Charlestown or on the heights above the town. General Gage had prevailed upon Admiral Graves to turn its control over to the army. “Insensibly,” the admiral later complained, “it lost its original nickname, and instead thereof was called by the army from hence forward Copeshill Battery.”7

  By whatever name it was known, this battery, along with high-angled mortars on floating gun platforms in the river, poured a regular fire against the rebel works as dawn revealed the stark reality of Colonel Prescott’s situation. The Breed’s Hill position was every bit as exposed as he had feared. His right flank could be somewhat protected as long as skirmishers could be hidden in the outlying buildings of Charlestown. From there, they could harry infantry advancing directly up the slopes toward his position. His left flank, however, was entirely open, and Prescott set his men to work extending a breastwork from the redoubt northward for about one hundred yards. This led to the vicinity of some marshy ground that offered some impediment to attacking troops.

  While Prescott was thus occupied, Colonel Putnam seems to have spent a good deal of time reinforcing Bunker Hill and belatedly starting entrenchments along its crest. Historian Allen French suspects that the morning light showed Putnam the tenuous nature of the Breed’s Hill position and that Putnam was trying to redeem his error in urging Prescott to the forward position.8 This is certainly possible, but Putnam must surely have had a good idea of the limitations of Breed’s Hill from his Charlestown march a month earlier. Perhaps more likely is that Putnam had long planned the Breed’s Hill location as bait and intended that Prescott make an orderly retreat up Bunker Hill once the British had been lured out of Boston. It is even possible that Prescott initially agreed to this, which is why he went about the Breed’s Hill fortifications.

  But as the skies lightened and cannonballs continued to rain down, some of Prescott’s men indeed felt like sacrificial lambs. They found themselves “against Ships of the Line, and all Boston fortified against us.” Peter Brown, the company clerk in Prescott’s regiment, later wrote what many were thinking: “The danger we were in made us think there was treachery and that we were brought there to be all slain, and I must and will say that there was treachery, oversight or presumption in the Conduct of our Officers.”9

  Soon Brown was not the only one looking over his shoulder. Colonel Prescott was, too. The men from his regiment were standing firm, mostly out of loyalty to him, but troops from the other two regiments slowly began to melt away and make their way up to higher Bunker Hill. For a time, the British cannon fire stopped, and there was an eerie silence broken on the rebel side by the sound of picks and shovels throwing dirt ever higher. Then, about eleven, recalled Brown, the British cannons “began to fire as brisk as ever, which caus’d many of our young Country people to desert.”10

  There was also an ongoing tug-of-war between Prescott and Putnam. Prescott wanted to keep digging and strengthening his forward position. Putnam wanted tools and workers to improve the Bunker Hill crest. Prescott claimed that if men moved back with tools to assist Putnam, they would never return to the redoubt on Breed’s Hill, and he was right. In addition, there seemed to be no agreement—perhaps there was not even discussion—about what order of withdrawal might be undertaken when the British attacked. Having become invested in the Breed’s Hill redoubt and trenches, Prescott now seems to have become the stubborn one. With no senior officer to direct the larger scope of the battle and order Prescott and Putnam otherwise, their actions toward one another’s positions continued to be tentative: Prescott was not inclined to withdraw from Breed’s Hill, and Putnam was not rushing reinforcements to Prescott’s position to support him.11

  MEANWHILE, GENERAL GAGE AND HIS three major generals were having their own discussions about what should be done. There was complete agreement about one thing. Despite their own plans to attack Dorchester the next day, the rebels’ action in seizing the Charlestown heights had preempted that. “It therefore became necessary,” according to Burgoyne, “to alter our plan, and attack on [the Charlestown] side.”12 How to do it was another matter.

  Clinton’s reported plea for an attack at “day brake” was already out of the question—if, in fact, by “day brake” Clinton meant the morning of June 17, as has traditionally been assumed. But by the time Clinton conferred with Gage, Howe, and Burgoyne on the morning of the seventeenth, “day brake” that day had already passed. It may well be that by “tomorrow morning at day brake” Clinton really meant the morning of June 18, the date targeted for an assault on Dorchester. This would have kept assault preparations on schedule and given Clinton time to organize the additional logistics for the kind of enveloping attack he proposed.13

  His plan was to take five hundred men and land them at “the Jews burying ground where,” he said, he “would have been in perfect security and within half gun shot of the narrow neck of communication of the Rebels.” Exactly where this landing site was is uncertain. It is equally uncertain whether Clinton initially meant to land on the Charles or Mystic side of the Charlestown peninsula.

  However, if one assumes that “the Jews burying ground” was in some proximity to the Phipps Street Burying Ground, Clinton’s geography works from the Charles River side. His force would have been behind Prescott’s position on Breed’s Hill and about half a cannon shot from Charlestown Neck in the other direction via the millpond road. This is supported by Clinton’s further claim that his troops “marching through the town might have taken possession of the neck, and thus finished the affair.” Howe, meanwhile, would land with the main force at some point between Charlestown and Moulton’s Point and effect an enveloping, pincerlike movement. However, “my advice,” remembered Clinton, “was not attended to.”14

  Whether the objection to Clinton’s plan came from both Gage and Howe or Howe alone as the field commander is not certain. If it was Howe alone, he likely did not favor splitting his forces: Clinton’s troops would be in potential danger of being cut off and surrounded until they could effect a linkup. Or possibly Howe may have underestimated the rebel resolve and assumed that one frontal show of force was all that was needed to send the rebels fleeing.

  Instead of listening to Clinton, Howe planned to make a landing and an assault “as soon as the troops and boats could be got in readiness for that purpose.” And he meant to do it on that same day, regardless of what Clinton meant by “day brake.” This was clearly speeding up the timetable for the contemplated Dorchester assault the next day. Because the shore was very flat and the water quite shallow near Moulton’s Point, where Howe had judged it was “most proper to land,” it would be necessary to be ready to land with the next high tide—between two and three o’clock that afternoon.15

  Clinton may have been beside himself, but he made no outward objection. Howe might have landed his troops on the Charlestown wharves without regard to the tide and fought his way through the largely abandoned town against whatever skirmishers Prescott might have deployed. Landing there in force would also have put Howe in good position to sweep along the millpond road and cut off the rebel redoubt, as Clinton had proposed. But perhaps because of the tales of Menotomy, Howe decided to steer clear of Charlestown’s buildings and fight to the east, on the open ground, where European-style warfare was more effective.16

  Time would tell whether or not this was a mistake, but in order to accommodate this schedule, there was quite a flurry of activity that morning among Howe’s troops. The planned expedition against Dorchester had been calculated to keep men in the field at least several days before camp equipment could be landed. Howe did not alter this calculation even as the timetable was sped up and the target switched fr
om Dorchester to Charlestown. Consequently his troops were ordered to assemble “at Half after 11 o’clock, with their Arms, Ammunition, Blanketts and the provisions Ordered to be Cooked this Morning.” This meant that “the bread must be baked, the meat boiled, and the whole served out before the troops could parade.” More important, it also meant that they would be carrying considerable weight in their haversacks as they went ashore in heavy woolen uniforms in the heat of a midsummer’s day. It might have been more expeditious and prudent to dispatch an agile force to secure the field rather than make a march in grand formation with cumbersome packs, but that is what Howe ordered.17

  There is a tale that is perhaps apocryphal, but it nonetheless captures the mentality of the British high command concerning the rebels’ resolve. One of General Gage’s loyalist advisers was Abijah Willard, the former mandamus councilor late of Lancaster who had sought refuge in Boston immediately after the Lexington fight. Atop Copp’s Hill, Gage—or, as reports vary, perhaps it was Howe—handed his telescope to Willard and asked if he recognized anyone among the rebels on Breed’s Hill who might be in command. Willard did. On the hillside across the Charles River, easily recognizable in his floppy hat and loose white coat, stood Colonel William Prescott. He was not only Willard’s friend and fellow soldier from the colonial wars but also his brother-in-law. “Will he fight?” demanded Gage. Willard was not happy to make his reply. He could not answer for the colonel’s men, Willard said heavily, but “Prescott will fight you to the gates of hell!”18

  THERE WAS ANOTHER MAN AS determined as Colonel Prescott to be present on Breed’s Hill: Joseph Warren. Even in these very early days of the fledgling American nation, it was unusual for a man of Warren’s position to ride to the front. John Adams mused about taking the field, but had never done so in practice. John Hancock ranted about his thoughts of military glory, but Samuel Adams placed a restraining hand on his shoulder and steered him elsewhere. Samuel Adams himself was never inclined to the military side of matters—viewing them simply as necessary work to be done by others to fulfill his political agenda. Given all this, it was exceptional for the man who was president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and chairman of its committee of safety to take the field, but that is what Warren did.

  To be sure, Joseph Warren had always been quick to ride to the sound of the guns. He left Boston for Lexington and Concord early on the morning of April 19. He showed up on the shore after the Grape Island raid and tried to get into the Noddle’s Island fray. Just three days before the Bunker Hill battle, on June 14, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress voted to commission Warren a major general.19 Admittedly, the congress was awarding general officer commissions based almost as much on political skills as military prowess. Warren desperately wanted to be directly involved on the military side, so he used his political clout to obtain the commission.

  There is no better evidence of the esteem in which his fellow Massachusetts leaders held Joseph Warren than their having elected him president of the Provincial Congress in John Hancock’s stead. One might speculate that Warren lobbied for the major general commission out of a desire to retain strong civilian control over the budding military. Warren had in fact written to Samuel Adams just days before, worrying about this very issue. “The continent must strengthen and support with all its weight the civil authority here,” Warren urged Adams. “Otherwise… we shall very soon find ourselves involved in greater difficulties than you can well imagine.”20

  But that speculation seems to be a reach. As a major general, Warren would be part of the military establishment, and his inexperience would have been glaring. Warren was only thirty-four, had no military training, and was suddenly senior to grizzled veterans of the French and Indian War who were old enough to be his father—Putnam and Prescott among them. With this commission, Warren would be senior to all Massachusetts officers except Artemas Ward and John Thomas, a doctor and veteran militia officer. One may speculate that Warren got the number three position only with the expectation that he would function as an adjutant general to bring order out of the chaos until a continental commander could arrive. But if so, why did Warren show up in the front lines on Breed’s Hill and then fail to provide Prescott and Putnam—the latter still not likely to be impressed by a Massachusetts commission—with some overarching direction?

  By all accounts, Warren presided over a session of the Provincial Congress in Watertown until late on the evening of Friday, June 16. At some point, the session adjourned until eight o’clock the following morning, but Warren would not be there. He may have spent the night in Watertown or gone into Cambridge—the record is not clear—and if he did the latter, he may or may not have arrived in time to see Prescott’s column march off at dusk. What is abundantly clear, however, is that he declared his intention to share the coming peril with his countrymen. His good friend Elbridge Gerry, with whom he had boarded in Watertown, tried to dissuade him, but Warren could not be restrained.

  On the morning of the seventeenth, Warren stopped at General Ward’s headquarters in Cambridge, but the general was not in. Warren opened express messages from John Hancock in Philadelphia regarding progress on forming a Continental Army, and then, suffering from an acute headache, he collapsed on a bed to rest. A short time later, a horseman galloped up with news that the British were landing at Charlestown.

  As chairman of the Massachusetts committee of safety, Warren held civilian control over the Massachusetts military. But as a newly minted major general, he was junior to General Ward. Warren left Cambridge without seeing Ward or receiving any instructions, but in Ward’s absence, at both the civilian and military levels, there should have been no question of Warren’s authority. Yet upon his arrival at Bunker Hill in midafternoon, he did all he could to refrain from taking command. Supposedly Putnam recognized Warren’s recent commission and offered him command. Warren refused, claiming that his commission was not yet official. Instead, he asked Old Put where the hottest action was likely to be, and Putnam nodded down the slope toward Prescott’s redoubt on Breed’s Hill.

  Warren went there next and had a similar conversation with Prescott. Once again, if the story is to be believed, a seasoned colonel on the brink of battle offered to turn over his command to an inexperienced, shiny new major general half his age. And once again, Warren refused, citing his unofficial commission. And yet: Putnam and Prescott must have known the Provincial Congress had approved Warren’s commission on June 15 or they would never have offered Warren command. What “official” notice was lacking? Was Warren merely seeking an excuse not to be pushed to the forefront? It must have been an awkward situation for all concerned. Saying no more, Joseph Warren, wearing clothes more suited for presiding over a legislature than hunkering down in a newly dug trench, took up a position in Prescott’s redoubt. He would indeed be on the front line.21

  ON THE BRITISH SIDE, AFTER the bread was baked and the meat boiled, it was Major General William Howe who would be on the front lines. General Gage may or may not have put in an appearance on Copp’s Hill. There is some evidence that he had agreed among his generals that he would not venture from his headquarters at Province House in the event that the rebels tried simultaneously to force the Roxbury lines at Boston Neck. Lord Percy was in command there, and later Percy would say that nothing had happened on that front except “a pretty smart cannonade, wh[ich] we kept up from there upon Roxbury, in order to amuse the Rebels on that side.” This left Generals Burgoyne and Clinton to take up stations at the battery on Copp’s Hill and watch Howe’s troop movements.22

  If pageantry alone could win battles, Howe was the victor even before his first troops embarked from Boston. His order of battle called for the Fifth and Thirty-Eighth Regiments, along with the ten senior companies of grenadiers and light infantry, to depart from the Long Wharf. Once again, as at Lexington and Concord, these men would bear the brunt of the attack. The Forty-Third and Fifty-Second Regiments marched to the North Battery, just east of Copp’s Hill, to e
mbark from there. The remaining companies of grenadiers and light infantry, as well as the Forty-Seventh Regiment and Major Pitcairn’s First Battalion of Marines, were to be held in reserve and ready to embark as necessary. Three of these regiments comprised Brigadier General Robert Pigot’s Second Brigade, and Howe designated him second in command of the assault.23

  Because of the limited number of small boats, Howe landed his troops in two waves. Those 1,100 troops assembled at the Long Wharf went first. Once they were ashore on the Charlestown side near Moulton’s Point, the flotilla of wooden craft rowed the short distance back to the North Battery, and 450 additional men clambered into them for the second wave. Both landings were accomplished without opposition, mostly because the rebels were not inclined to waste precious gunpowder at long range or venture forward from the relative safety of their entrenchments and breastworks.

  Meanwhile, the sloops Lively, Glasgow, and Falcon paraded back and forth off the beachhead, spouting cannon fire. The Symmetry, an armed transport of shallow draft, joined this effort by cruising off the millpond and lobbing shells onto Charlestown Neck from the Charles River side. A smaller armed sloop and five floating batteries added their firepower to the bombardment, which, Howe reported, “they executed very effectually.”24 It evidently did not occur to Howe, however, that some of this firepower might be better positioned on the Mystic River side of Charlestown Neck—decidedly behind the rebel positions visible from Boston.

  Howe and Brigadier Pigot went ashore with the second wave, followed by some field artillery. They formed their troops in three lines on the rise of Moulton’s Hill, about one hundred yards inland from the beach. But now, as Howe watched his regiments dress their ranks, he saw something that gave him pause. From Moulton’s Hill, he got his first good look at the Mystic side of the Charlestown peninsula—the side that was not visible from Boston. The rebels had indeed been successful—over the course of one night and morning, and under sporadic fire—in pushing the breastworks on their left flank downhill from the redoubt. Beyond the marshy area, another defensive line ran down the slope toward the beach along the Mystic River. Howe couldn’t be certain, but it looked as though these were substantial works, part of which he would later call “cannon proof.”25 But there was more bad news.