Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  John Andrews writes of the financial help Samuel Adams received to prepare him for the Continental Congress and the departure of the delegates in the entries for August 10 and 11 in LJA, pp. 339–40. On Charles Lee and his visit to Boston in August 1774, see John Richard Alden’s General Charles Lee, Traitor or Patriot? pp. 1–60. Samuel Adams Drake in Old Boston Taverns writes that the young George Washington stayed at the Cromwell’s Head Tavern in Boston, the same place where decades later Charles Lee stayed (pp. 44–45). Lee’s August 6, 1774, letter to Gage is in PIR, 1:593–95. William Cutter writes of the legendary exploits of Israel Putnam in The Life of Israel Putnam, pp. 33–127. Alden in General Charles Lee cites Thomas Young’s letter to Samuel Adams about Lee’s discussions with British officers and his leave-taking from Boston (p. 59).

  John Andrews refers to the Government Act as “a blank piece of paper” while chronicling the news from the western portion of the province during August 1774 in LJA, pp. 343–49. Richard Brown also writes of the increasing political activity in the western counties that summer in Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts, pp. 212–20. Ray Raphael provides an excellent account of Massachusetts’s response to the Government Act during the summer and fall of 1774 in The First American Revolution, insisting that “it was the Massachusetts Government Act, not the Boston Port Act, which led common people throughout the colony to take decisive action” (p. 222). John Andrews writes of Daniel Leonard’s problems in Taunton and Gage’s standoff with the Salem Committee of Correspondence over the town meeting issue, as well as the town of Danvers’s outrageous challenge to his authority in the August 24, 25, 26, and 29 entries of LJA, pp. 346–48. Gage writes that “conciliating, moderation, reasoning [are] over” in a September 2, 1774, letter to Dartmouth; see Gage Correspondence, pp. 369–72. Robert Gross describes the divisions and resource challenges faced by the towns of Massachusetts in the first half of the eighteenth century and how resistance to Great Britain brought an unprecedented consensus to the region in The Minutemen and Their World, pp. 60–108. On Joseph Hawley’s role in the Northampton controversies in the aftermath of the Great Awakening, see Peter Shaw’s American Patriots and the Rituals of Revolution, pp. 131–52. Samuel Quincy’s June 1, 1774, letter to his brother Josiah is in Josiah Quincy’s Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy Junior, pp. 160–64. John Andrews’s description of Gage and his entourage near the common is in his letter of August 31, LJA, pp. 349–50.

  Chapter Four—The Alarm

  On the history of the militia system in New England, see Fred Anderson, A People’s Army, pp. 26–28. Peter Oliver writes of the Indian scalps “waving in the wind” and of “savage” being “convertible” in OPAR, pp. 132–33. John Adams and James Otis represented the Marblehead fisherman who harpooned a British officer; see Adams’s Diary, 1:348; see Hiller Zobel’s Boston Massacre for a detailed discussion of the case, pp. 113–31. David Hackett Fischer writes of New Englanders within twenty miles of the sea bringing their weapons with them to meeting every Sunday in Albion’s Seeds, p. 120. On the importance of gunpowder to the colonies see the chapter “The Value of Gunpowder” in Robert Richmond’s Powder Alarm 1774, pp. 37–45. The search for alternative supplies of gunpowder may have been why the patriot merchant John Winthrop Jr. (aka Joyce Junior) was reported to be “strolling in the West Indies” in the spring of 1775; see MHS Proceedings, 2nd ser., 12 (1897–98): 142. In addition to Richmond’s Powder Alarm, Patrick Johnston provides a helpful analysis of the importance of the Alarm to the events preceding Lexington and Concord in “Building to a Revolution: The Powder Alarm and Popular Mobilization of the New England Countryside, 1774–1775.”

  On William Brattle, see Clifford Shipton’s biographical essay in SHG, 7:10–23. John Andrews describes how by “chance or design” Brattle’s letter slipped from Gage’s pocket and the repercussions of the letter (which he quotes from) becoming public knowledge in a September 1 letter in LJA, pp. 350–51. Richmond reprints Brattle’s letter in Powder Alarm, pp. 51–52. John Andrews writes of the “conjectures” about the troop activity in the September 1 entry of LJA, p. 350. On the history of Ten Hills Farm, see C. S. Manegold’s Ten Hills Farm, pp. 3–101. Accounts of the British operation to take the powder from the Quarry Hill arsenal and what came to be called the Powder Alarm appear in the September 5, 1774, Boston Gazette and John Andrews’s September 1, 2, and 3 letters in LJA, pp. 350–53. Benjamin Hallowell’s September 5, 1774, letter to Grey Cooper, as well as Thomas Gage’s September 2, 1774, letter to Lord Dartmouth and Thomas Oliver’s September 3, 1774, letter to Dartmouth, are in DAR, 8:187–91, 179–82, 182–84. McNeil’s firsthand account of the Alarm is in Ezra Stiles’ Literary Diary, 1:476–83. Thomas Young’s September 4, 1774, letter to Samuel Adams is in the Adams Papers at the Manuscripts and Archives Division, NYPL, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Joseph Warren’s September 4, 1774, letter to Samuel Adams is reprinted in Frothingham’s LJW, pp. 355–57.

  Peter Oliver writes of Joseph Warren’s youth as “a bare legged milk boy to furnish the Boston market” (OPAR, p. 128). Joseph Warren’s youngest brother John was two years old at the time of their father’s death; John’s son Edward writes in The Life of John Warren, M.D., “The sight of his father’s body borne home to the house, made an impression upon his mind at this early age which was never effaced” (p. 4). Edward Warren even claims that “the fearful scene which he witnessed in childhood” later motivated John Warren to become a doctor (p. 12). Nathaniel Ames records three different performances of Cato “acted at Warren’s Cham[ber]”: on July 3, 1758; on July 6 (“to perfection”); and on July 14 (“Cato more perfect than before”); Ames, Diary, p. 14. Samuel Forman in DJW writes of Warren’s speculative involvement with the militia company at Harvard (pp. 40–41). J. P. Jewett in The Hundred Boston Orators, pp. 47–48, recounts the rainspout incident, as does Samuel Knapp in Biographical Sketches of Eminent Lawyers, Statesmen, and Men of Letters; Knapp claims he was told of the incident by “a spectator of this feat” who “related this fact to me in the college yard, nearly half a century afterwards, and the impression it made on his mind was so strong, that he seemed to feel the same emotion, as though it happened but an hour before” (pp. 107–8). Samuel Forman in DJW writes about the Spunkers and cites the November 17, 1773, letter of William Eustis (who was one of Joseph Warren’s apprentices) to John Warren, describing how he and fellow Spunkers competed with another group of medical students for the body of Levi Ames (pp. 35–36). Forman believes that Warren’s rainspout incident may have been related to his Spunkers activities; while I’m not sure the evidence warrants that specific speculation, I agree with Forman that Warren’s association with the Spunkers “suggests . . . a tolerance of illegality and secrecy, if such is in the service of a higher good” (p. 39). John Cary in Joseph Warren writes in detail about Warren’s activities during the 1764 smallpox epidemic (pp. 21–23); as does Forman, pp. 55–61, who also describes Warren’s activities with the masons (pp. 109–25). John Eliot in his Biographical Dictionary writes of how the North End Caucus was “guided by the prudence and skillful management of Dr. Warren”; he also writes of “the secret springs that moved the great wheels” (p. 472). See William Tudor, The Life of James Otis, for yet another account of Warren’s involvement in this secret political group (pp. 461–62). Samuel Knapp in Biographical Sketches of Eminent Lawyers, Statesmen, and Men of Letters writes of how Warren had “the wisdom to guide, and the power to charm”; he also writes that Warren “could discern the signs of the times, and mold the ductile materials to his will, and at the same time seem only to follow in the path of others” (p. 111).

  In a July 25, 1773, letter to Samuel Danforth, Benjamin Franklin writes of Danforth’s supposed discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone: “I rejoice . . . in your kind intentions of including me in the benefits of that inestimable stone, which curing all diseases (even old age itself) will enable us to see the future glorious state of our America. . . . I anticipate t
he jolly conversations we and twenty more of our friends may have in a hundred years hence on this subject,” Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 2 (London: Colburn, 1818), pp. 13–14. The pronunciation of Danforth as “Danfurt” is mentioned by Clifford Shipton in his biographical essay in SHG, 14:250. On Benjamin Hallowell, see Sandra Webber’s “Benjamin Hallowell Family and the Jamaica Plain House.” In addition to the previously cited letter to Grey Cooper, Hallowell describes being chased back to Boston in a detailed September 8, 1774, letter to Gage (PIR, 1:609–12). John Andrews relates that Hallowell, one of the two customs commissioners “born among ourselves,” was responsible for the unnecessarily harsh interpretation of the Boston Port Bill in an August 2 letter in LJA, pp. 336–37. On Thomas Oliver, see Clifford Shipton’s essay in SHG, 13:336–44. Joseph Warren writes of “the little matters in which we are engaged” in his September 4, 1774, letter to Samuel Adams in Frothingham’s LJW, p. 356; Frothingham also reprints Adams’s September 25, 1774, letter to Warren in which he refers to the suspicions concerning New England at the Continental Congress and the fear that Massachusetts wants “a total independency” (pp. 377–78).

  My account of the effect of the Powder Alarm and the Suffolk Resolves on the first Continental Congress in Philadelphia is based in large part on Edmund Cody Burnett, The Continental Congress, pp. 39–46, which cites the quotations from Silas Deane and John Adams. Jack Rakove writes insightfully about the Congress’s response to the Suffolk Resolves and the move toward moderation after their endorsement in The Beginnings of National Politics, pp. 45–49. The text of the Suffolk Resolves appears in PIR, 2:914–20. On Paul Revere’s role as “the Mercury of the American Revolution,” see David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, pp. 26–28; as Fischer states, Revere, whom a loyalist described as a patriot “ambassador,” was “less than an ambassador, but more than merely a messenger” (p. 28). John Andrews provides a day-by-day account of the measures Gage took to defend Boston from a possible incursion from the country that includes the anecdotes about the marksmen and giant from the country; Andrews also writes of the outflow of weapons and the stealing of cannons, both by land and water, and Gage’s frustrations with building barracks for his soldiers (LJA, pp. 355–74), and of the decision of Admiralty Court that the navy “had no right . . . to stop or molest any boats carrying merchandise,” in a November 21 letter (p. 386).

  Walter McDougall in Freedom Just Around the Corner writes of Americans being on average two inches taller than Europeans (p. 124). Vincent Kehoe in We Were There! points out that “there were few [among the regulars] who were old soldiers enough to be called veterans,” and that it had been more than twelve years since any of them had seen action (p. 9). Nathaniel Appleton recounts the conversation between two Louisbourg veterans about the fortifications on the Neck in a November 15, 1774, letter to Josiah Quincy Jr., in Memoir of Josiah Quincy Jr., pp. 202–3. As John Galvin writes in The Minute Men, the concept of the minuteman dated back to the French and Indian War (p. 33). The incident involving William Dawes, the cannon, and Joseph Warren was told by Dawes’s granddaughter and is in Henry Holland’s William Dawes and His Ride with Paul Revere, p. 37. William Tudor also speaks of the theft of two cannon from the gun house beside the common in The Life of James Otis, pp. 452–55. John Andrews chronicles the sufferings and death of large numbers of British soldiers, specifically commenting on how fatal the rum distilleries proved to be when used as barracks: “the smell of the lees in the cisterns added to their urine, has caused an infectious distemper among ’em, whereby two or three have dropped down dead of a day,” in LJA, pp. 389–93. Major John Pitcairn writes that rum “will destroy more of us than the Yankees will” in a March 4, 1775, letter to Lord Sandwich, printed in Naval Documents of the American Revolution (subsequently referred to as NDAR), edited by William Bell Clark, 1:125. Andrews writes of the execution of the soldier on the common and of how repeated whippings meant that “their ribs are laid quite bare,” as well as of the fieldpiece in the center of town “to be fired in case of a mutiny,” in LJA, pp. 357, 397, 393. Gage tells of his difficulties throughout the fall in letters to Dartmouth, which climax with his plea for an army of twenty thousand men in an October 20, 1774, communication in Correspondence, p. 383.

  Joseph Warren compares the delegates at the Provincial Congress to “an assembly of Spartans or ancient Romans” in a November 21, 1774, letter in Frothingham’s LJW, pp. 346–49. In an October 16, 1774, letter to Samuel Adams, John Pitts writes that he is “informed by a member of the congress that the Boston Committee are by far the most moderate men,” Samuel Adams Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, NYPL, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Joseph Warren’s letters to and from Samuel Adams, in which he seeks his advice about the best course to take that fall (and refers to being “rapacious for the intelligence”), are reprinted in Frothingham’s LJW, pp. 355–58, 375–78, 381–82. Forman in DJW writes of Warren witnessing Josiah Quincy Jr.’s last will and testament (p. 100). In his description of Dr. Thomas Young’s exit from Boston, Ray Raphael in Founders cites Young’s letter to Samuel Adams in which he describes his wife’s “terrors” (pp. 146–49). J. L. Bell outlines the shadowy circumstances surrounding William Molineux’s death in “A Bankruptcy in Boston, 1765,” in Massachusetts Banker, fourth quarter, 2008, p. 26. John Rowe describes Molineux as the “first leader of dirty matters” in an October 24 entry in his Diary, p. 286. In a letter of January 1, 1798, to “the Corresponding Secretary,” Paul Revere writes of his memories of Benjamin Church (pp. 106–12). John Boyle tells of the bells ringing in Boston to celebrate the return of the delegates from the Continental Congress on November 9, 1774, in his Journal, p. 381.

  Chapter Five—The Unnatural Contest

  On the taking of the powder and armaments at Portsmouth, see Elwin Page, “The King’s Powder, 1774,” pp. 83–92; Charles Parsons, “Capture of Fort William and Mary, December 14 and 15, 1774,” pp. 18–47; and Thomas Kehr’s “The Seizure of . . . Fort William and Henry,” http://nhssar.org/essays/FortConstitution.html. As David Hackett Fischer writes in Paul Revere’s Ride, “Revere’s intelligence was not entirely correct” (p. 54). Fischer rightly points out that the incident was an embarrassment to Gage. Ultimately, however, it may have worked in Gage’s favor in that the attack came to be perceived by many colonists as an overreaction given that Gage had not yet decided to send troops to Fort William and Mary. As Gage writes to Dartmouth on January 18, 1775, “We hear from New Hampshire that the people who were concerned in the rash action against Fort William and Mary . . . are terrified at what they have done, and only anxious to obtain pardon for their office” (Correspondence, p. 390). John Andrews writes of the extraction of Plymouth Rock in an October 6 letter in LJA, pp. 373–74; see also my Mayflower, pp. 350–51. William Hanna in A History of Taunton writes of how a flag with the slogan “Liberty and Union” was raised on a 112-foot liberty pole on Taunton Green on October 21, 1774, pp. 104–5. On Jesse Dunbar and the ox, see Justin Winsor’s History of Duxbury, pp. 123–46. Peter Oliver provides a stirring overview of the abuses suffered by the loyalists in the countryside in his OPAR, pp. 152–57. See also the article in Rivington’s Gazette, March 9, 1775. On Timothy Ruggles, see James Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts, pp. 225–29.

  For the Daniel Leonard–John Adams newspaper exchange during the winter of 1775, see Tracts of the American Revolution, edited by Merrill Jensen, pp. 277–349. Gage’s January 18, 1775, letter to Dartmouth is in Correspondence, p. 390; Gage writes of the encouraging developments in Marshfield in a January 27, 1775, letter, p. 391. Ray Raphael in The First American Revolution writes insightfully about the loss of momentum suffered by the patriots in the winter of 1775: “Once local Tories had been defeated, the patriots . . . began to show signs of division,” p. 187, and quotes from Ephraim Doolittle’s March 21, 1775, letter to John Hancock, p. 189. In a November 25, 1774, letter to Josiah Quincy Jr., James Lovell writes of h
ow the fortifications at the Neck have been whitewashed and how “’tis boasted they are as strong as those of Gibraltar,” in Memoir of Josiah Quincy, pp. 478–79. On Frederick Haldimand, see Alan French’s “General Haldimand in Boston,” MHS Proceedings, pp. 80–95. John Andrew provides a detailed account of Haldimand’s encounter with the coasting boys of Boston and Gage’s response in a January 29 letter in LJA, pp. 398–99. John Andrews reports that Gage’s own officers refer to him as “an old woman,” in a March 18 letter in LJA, p. 401; he writes of Gage’s coolness to the refugee loyalists in a November 19 letter, p. 386; he writes scathingly of the British marines in a December 30 letter, p. 392.