The Battle for Bunker Hill

Richard M. Ketchum

• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781787206205
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Boston, 1775: A town occupied by General Thomas Gage's redcoats and groaning with Tory refugees from the Massachusetts countryside. Besieged for two months by a rabble in arms, the British decided to break out of town. American spies discovered their plans, and on the night of June 16, 1775, a thousand rebels marched out onto Charlestown peninsula and began digging a redoubt (not on Bunker Hill, which they had been ordered to fortify, but on Breeds Hill, well within cannon shot of the British batteries and ships). At daybreak, HMS Lively began firing. It was the opening round of a battle that saw unbelievable heroism and tragic blunders on both sides (a battle that marked a point of no return for England and her colonies), the beginning of all-out war.
With impeccable scholarship, Richard M. Ketchum's 1962 book describes the historic setting and importance of the battle, analysing the character and motives, as well as the many blunders, of responsible leaders on both sides. He gives a detailed and fascinating depiction of the battle, recapturing in graphic style each witness account.

NOTES

The chapter notes that follow appear in narrative style since their purpose is not so much to document my sources as to comment on them, and to add information that I have found interesting, useful, entertaining, or of possible help to others.

Chapter I

Information on the voyage of the Cerberus comes from the ship’s log for this period (see the general note on the ships’ logs, with the Notes for Chapter V below). In a day of almost instantaneous communications, it requires some effort to realize that news of the fighting at Lexington and Concord on April 19 did not reach England until May 28. The Cerberus sailed from England on April 21, and on May 8 spoke a brig from Baltimore; but that vessel must have left Baltimore by April 23, at least three days before Israel Bissell, the postrider who carried the news south, arrived there. It is possible, of course, that those on board the Cerberus received the news when a Salem fishing schooner was encountered on May 23, but in all probability the first report of any consequence came with the meeting of the Otter on the morning of May 25. Frothingham, in his Siege of Boston, p. 114, quotes a contemporary newspaper to the effect that the news was received from “a packe” coming out of Boston Harbor. The only such meeting recorded in the Cerberus log is the one with the Otter.

In the same note, Frothingham relates the story of Burgoyne’s “elbowroom” remark. It is quite apparent that the phrase enjoyed a wide currency at the time; Gentleman Johnny struck a responsive chord, since a high percentage of letters written from Boston at this time make use of the expression. In satires of the period Burgoyne was always known as “Elbow Room,” and there was an ironic aftermath to the story. When Burgoyne returned to Boston in 1777 as a prisoner after his defeat at Saratoga, an old woman sitting on a shed above the crowd cried out in a shrill voice: “Make way, make way—the general’s coming! Give him elbowroom!”

The orders from Sandwich to Captain Chads of the Cerberus and to Admiral Graves are from Adm. 2/99, Orders & Instructions, 16 April 1774 to 28 June 1775.

Henry Clinton’s description of the crossing is in his letter of June 9, 1775, to the sisters of his late wife. The letter is in the Clinton Papers at the William L. Clements Library.

Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne—the three warriors who arrived on the Cerberus—are as much the stuff of psychology as of history. (A most interesting study, combining the methods of historian and psychologist, is “Sir Henry Clinton: A Psychological Exploration in History,” by Frederick Wyatt and William B. Willcox, in the William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. XVI, No. 1, January, 1959.) As Allen French wrote, “There are various critical stages in the American Revolution at which the proper action of these three men could have destroyed the patriot army and wrecked the rebel cause.” That each man failed at one or more crucial moments is one of the more fascinating “ifs” of the war, and has led some writers to conclude that the battle for Bunker Hill left an indelible mark upon all three, the memory of those grisly slopes affecting their decisions ever afterward. French’s First Year has a good description of the major generals and their activities in Boston. Belcher, Vol. II, pp. 142 ff., has some interesting commentary on William Howe—that “inert, pleasure-loving man”—and his brother; and Partridge’s book, Sir Billy Howe, is useful. Henry Clinton’s sensitivity is the subject of a witty and revealing essay in Murdock’s Bunker Hill.

The British commander-in-chief is in many respects a more appealing subject than any of the major generals, and Alden’s General Gage in America is an excellent, fair-minded study of the man who “stood between antagonistic forces, whose clash he could not avert.” Arthur Tourtellot discusses Gage’s temperament and problems sympathetically in William Diamond’s Drum, as do Allen French in The Day of Concord and Lexington, and Harold Murdock in The Nineteenth of April, 1775. For Gage’s earlier career Alden is especially good, and there is a fine account of Braddock’s defeat in McCardell’s excellent Ill-Starred General, (The latter book is also my source for that unsympathetic adage of the sailors: “A messmate before a shipmate...” etc.)

For information on eighteenth-century Boston, I relied heavily upon Justin Winsor’s Memorial History of Boston, an indispensable and endlessly interesting guide to the town and its inhabitants. Shurtleff’s Topographical and Historical Description of Boston is helpful but lacks the charm and style and depth of Winsor’s work. Esther Forbes’s Paul Revere contains some good descriptive material on the town at this period.

The eighteenth-century British footsoldier is described at some length in Belcher’s First American Civil War, in French’s First Year, and in Ward’s War of the Revolution and it is not a pretty picture. The plight of Boston’s loyalists is reflected in countless letters written at this time. Among the best are those of Anne Hulton, which appear in Letters of a Loyalist Lady and which show the gradually rising feelings of fear and resentment on the part of the King’s supporters. To the best of my knowledge, Richard Reeve’s illuminating letters have not been published before. They are in the County of Buckingham Record Office, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England, and are quoted by kind permission of the owner, Major-General Sir Richard G. H. Howard-Vyse, K.C.M.G. The letter quoted in this chapter is dated May 14, 1775.

Some of the material on the Lorings and their estate comes from the article “Jamaica Plain by Way of London,” by Eva-Phillips Boyd. One of the most interesting sidelights to that story is the “Acct. of Sundry Stores, farming utencils and household furniture” abandoned by the Lorings when they were forced to flee—a catalogue, including values, of what the well-appointed Massachusetts country estate contained.

The saga of Lady Frankland and her household effects may be traced in the proceedings of the Provincial Congress and the Committee of Safety, quoted in Force: IV: II: pp. 758, 791, 792, 810, and 811. Esther Forbes’s Paul Revere describes the lady’s origins as Agnes Surriage, as do French’s Siege of Boston and Tourtellot’s The Charles.

Burgoyne’s feelings regarding the situation in Boston are drawn from several of his letters to friends in England, some of which are reprinted in A Memorial of the American Patriots who fell at the Battle of Bunker Hill...Excerpts from others may be found in French’s First Year.

Chapter II

The warning from the New Hampshire Committee of Safety to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress regarding British plans to seize Dorchester Heights and Charlestown appears in Force: IV: II: p. 979. French’s First Year, p. 209, lists several American sources of information about British plans.

Joseph Warren’s letter to Arthur Lee appears in Frothingham’s Warren, p. 489.

The portents of trouble between England and the colonies may be found throughout the pages of Force: IV: II. I have selected only a few of the many such examples reported during the months prior to April 19, 1775.

An orderly discussion of those chaotic days after Lexington and Concord appears in French’s First Year, especially pp. 22 through 87. The author sheds much light on an extremely confusing subject—the composition of the various New England armies besieging Boston between April 19 and June 17—and my discussion of the military owes a great deal to French’s study.

The description of Ward is drawn from Martyn’s biography of the general. Until recently the only useful biography of Dr. Joseph Warren was that written by Richard Frothingham, and it was the source of most of my information on this neglected leader of the Revolution. John Cary has written a good modern study of Warren, but I was not aware of it until too late to be of much use. Warren and Samuel Adams were the most important revolutionary figures in Massachusetts, and of the two Warren is the more attractive personality—a dedicated man who stood at the top of his profession and who, at the same time, gave all he had of sincerity, honesty, and idealism to the Whig cause. His great popularity, combined with his tragic death at the age of thirty-four, succeeded in making him a near-legendary figure for many years; but the fact that he died too soon to participate in the forming of a new government has deprived him of a reputation today. He deserves much better.

Two recurring themes run through the proceedings of the Provincial Congress: the fear of a standing army and a growing reliance on the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. (Typical of both is this excerpt from the Provincial Congress letter of May 16 to the Continental Congress: “We tremble at having an army, although consisting of our own countrymen, established here without a civil power to provide for and control it”) The majority of references to these subjects, and to the whole desperate matter of clothing, powder, ammunition, weapons, money, and food for the army, are based on documents reproduced in Force: IV: II.

Some of the most interesting personalities involved in the siege were stationed over in Roxbury—among them John Thomas, Nathanael Greene, and that delightful diarist Samuel Haws—but regrettably none of these men figured significantly in the main events covered by this work. Haws, a minute man from Wrentham, kept a journal, and his wry, curiously spelled comments on camp life make entertaining reading. The journal, which runs only to February 1776, was printed in The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758–1775, compiled by Abraham Tomlinson. Useful information on Roxbury at the time of the siege appears in the Memorial History of Boston, Vols. II and III.

The quotations from Joseph Hodgkins come from a fine book on two Ipswich soldiers, This Glorious Cause, by Wade and Lively. These company officers turned out for the Lexington alarm, fought at Bunker Hill, and stayed with the Continental Army through the victory at Saratoga. They lived long enough to attend the fiftieth anniversary of the battle for Bunker Hill, and the papers that constitute their service records make fascinating and occasionally inspiring reading.

John Stark’s complaints are catalogued in a letter he wrote to the New Hampshire Congress, reproduced in Force: IV: II: p. 739.

French’s First Year has much valuable material on the interim skirmishes which occurred between April 19 and June 17. Lieutenant Barker’s comments on the Grape Island affair are in The British in Boston; Abigail Adams’s are from the Familiar Letters...; and Amos Farnsworth’s diary, published in the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 32:80, is quoted extensively in French’s First Year.

Material on Israel Putnam, “that Thunderbolt of War,” appears in all the books on Bunker Hill. Richard Reeve’s letter of May 14, 1775 contains his description of the Connecticut officer. Freeman’s Washington, Vols. III and IV, is also useful on Putnam.

The chain of events sparked by Gage’s Proclamation of June 12 is recorded in Force: IV: II: pp. 1352 ff, where the deliberations and decisions of the Provincial Congress are detailed.

Descriptions of the Hastings house appear in the Memorial History of Boston, Vol. III, p. 108, and in The Cambridge of 1776, edited by Arthur Gilman. Perhaps this is as good a place as any to record, for the unwary, that “The Diary of Dorothy Dudley,” which appears in this little book about Cambridge, is a spurious document. Gilman, in the preface to the second edition, states: “A second edition of this book being demanded, the editor embraces the opportunity to confess that ‘The Diary of Dorothy Dudley’ was written expressly for The Cambridge of 1776 by Miss [Mary William] Greely.”

In Dawson’s Historical Magazine for June, 1868, p. 322, there is a discussion of American plans to fortify Charlestown Heights in May—following a ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• I
• II
• III
• IV
• V
• VI
• A NOTE ON SOURCES
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER