The Battle of Bunker Hill
This continues my series marking the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution. Previously was The Growing War and the Continental Congress, on 10 May 1775; next is From Petition to Independence, on 28 June 1775.
This week in 1775 - June 17th - the Patriots and Redcoats fought their biggest battle yet: the Battle of Bunker Hill. The Redcoats won the field, but at dreadful cost of life. This pyrrhic victory sealed the Patriots' determination, and showed everyone the American colonies could only be brought back by war.
After the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19th, the militias from across New England flocked around Boston to besiege General Gage and the British regulars. For two months afterward the siege dragged on, with some minor skirmishing on islands and coastlines near Boston Harbor. As the Patriot General Israel Putnam said in May, "the army wished to be employed, and the country was growing dissatisfied at the inactivity of it."
The New England army besieging Boston was ill-trained for stand-up battles. They were still militia. At Lexington and Concord, they had done excellently in skirmishes - but they hadn't yet fought a stand-up battle. What's more, they were desperately short of gunpowder. Artemas Ward, General of the Massachusetts militia, and Joseph Warren, President of their Provincial Congress, both knew how unprepared the army was.
But by June 15th, Warren and Ward finally agreed the army needed to fortify Bunker Hill, protecting Charlestown Neck and the road to their headquarters in Cambridge.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress had on the 14th organized the army around Boston as the Continental Army, and nominated George Washington of Virginia to command them. Congress wanted to promote colonial unity by appointing someone from outside New England, and once that was decided, Washington was the logical choice. He was a staunch Patriot who was probably the most famous military leader in the colonies thanks to his commanding the Virginia Regiment in the French and Indian War.
But, word of these decisions had not yet reached Boston, so it was Warren and Ward and their advisors who themselves decided (on the 15th) to fortify Bunker Hill (on the evening of the 16th).
This was fortuitous timing. The British General Gage had just then given orders to seize Charlestown himself. The town itself had long since been evacuated, but it was en route to Cambridge, where the Patriot army had its headquarters. Gage’s plan was that his troops would seize Charlestown and Bunker Hill at the base of Charlestown peninsula (as well as the Dorchester Heights south of Boston), and then the Redcoats would march on to Cambridge and scatter the Patriots. This was ordered to happen on Sunday, June 18th.
The Patriots didn't have any idea of this plan - but fortuitously, they preempted it. They moved to fortify Bunker Hill on the evening of the 16th, before Gage's plan was in motion, forcing battle on their own timing.
On the evening of Friday June 16th, about a thousand Patriot soldiers under the command of Colonel William Prescott marched out to Charlestown Neck, with orders to occupy and fortify Bunker Hill overnight before dawn would let the Redcoats see what they were doing.
But in fact, they marched past Bunker Hill (around 10 PM) all the way to Breed's Hill (around midnight)1. Breed's Hill was much farther east, overlooking abandoned Charlestown itself. It was more exposed to gunfire from the Royal Navy in Boston Harbor, and also much more threatening to the Navy and Boston itself. Fortifying Breed's Hill would clearly provoke a response from the Redcoats, which hadn't been part of the Patriots' initial plan. But, Prescott and his men began building a fort there.
We don't know why. Neither Colonel Prescott nor General Putnam (who was also there on the march though not formally commanding) explained how it was decided, and both of them were experienced officers acclaimed for their service in the French and Indian War. Historians are inclined to blame Putnam due to how he'd wanted the siege to be more aggressive, but that's just a guess. Regardless, the fort was built on Breed's Hill. It was the first of many blunders in this battle.
The fort was about as simple a structure as could be designed - earthen walls with wood reinforcements, the two longest of which stretched about 132 feet. They had four hours before dawn would reveal them... or in fact, less than that: their digging had been heard by the Redcoats overnight.
Incomprehensibly, General Howe declined to attack the Patriots while they were at work. He insisted on waiting to see what the dawn would reveal.
What it revealed was more delay.
The Royal Navy started to bombard the Patriot fortifications - killing several soldiers, but doing so little damage the Patriots were still able to keep strengthening their earthworks. Meanwhile, Gage and his officers eventually decided to attack it in the afternoon. General Howe, one of Gage’s subordinates, would lead the attack.
In the meantime, at 9 AM, Colonel Prescott sent a messenger to General Ward in Cambridge, embarrassedly explaining he'd built a fort on Breed's Hill not Bunker Hill, and asking for reinforcements, gunpowder, and water. They were short on all three. The messenger needed to walk, as they lacked horses.
When the messenger arrived in Cambridge around 10 AM, he found confusion. Massachusetts was horrendously short on gunpowder, especially after the attack on Fort Ticonderoga had used two hundred pounds of it. Only 32 barrels (800 pounds) were left in all Massachusetts.
To add to the confusion, President Joseph Warren was absent. The previous evening, he'd frightened some of his colleagues by saying he wanted to join the army on Bunker Hill. But then - later that evening - he'd had to retire to bed sick with a headache. We don't know where he was the morning of the 17th - quite possibly still sleeping off his headache - but he wasn't there to help decide a response.
Finally, they eventually did send more men, who would arrive in the mid-afternoon just before the battle; and more gunpowder, which would be held up at Bunker Hill and never actually arrive in the battle on Breed's Hill.
Also in mid-afternoon, Joseph Warren - without informing his colleagues - secretly set off to join the army himself.
The first attack on Breed's Hill2 came in early afternoon. It did little; it was mostly chaos on both sides.
There was then a lull before the second assault - or, a lull at the fortifications; the British bombardment set fire to abandoned Charlestown.
Reinforcements arrived for both sides - for the Redcoats, from Boston; for the Patriots, the militia from Cambridge who'd set out that morning.
Also arriving was President Joseph Warren. Putnam and Prescott both invited him to take command; after all, he was President of the Provincial Congress, chair of the Committee of Safety, and recently-commissioned Major General of the brand-new Continental Army. But, citing his inexperience, he refused and insisted he was only there to fight as a private soldier.
As the second assault came, the Patriots' Colonel Stark positioned a rock fifty yards away and ordered his men not to shoot till the Redcoats were that close. ("Till you can see the whites of their eyes," as popular legend would put it.) With powder so dear, every shot had to count. And it did. They gave "a continued sheet of fire," with every Redcoat in the lead dropping to the ground time and time again until (as Stark put it later) "the dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold."
To the west, the death wasn't so uniform - but "our men were intent on cutting down every officer," as one Patriot said. As Howe advanced, every member of his staff by his side was either dead or wounded. He was stunned; as he admitted to a friend later, "there was a moment I have never felt before."
Desperately, Howe decided on one final third assault, in columns, with more close artillery support. He led it himself, and somehow survived.
The artillery drove the Patriots off their breastworks and let the Redcoats gain just enough footing. And that - and the Patriots' desperate powder shortage - made the difference. Not till the Redcoats were within fifteen yards did the Patriots fire. "Of all the actions he had been in this was the hottest," one officer said to Major Pitcairn - just before Pitcairn himself was shot dead. He had survived Lexington and Concord, only to die in this second larger battle.
And finally, as the late afternoon wore on - and the Redcoats kept coming, shielded in their columns - the Patriots ran out of powder. They started hurling down stones, but they were not enough. Prescott finally ordered the retreat, and - now armed solely with swords and clubs - they broke and ran. Prescott himself was one of the last to leave Breed's Hill alive.
Left there was President Joseph Warren: killed while covering the Patriots' retreat with "coolness and conduct which did honor". He would be mourned by his countrymen, and become a symbol for all those who had died in the battle. His talents would also be sorely wanted in the future; Howe, on hearing of his death, said he "was worth five hundred of their men."
The Patriots mourned Warren, but their response to the battle was sharply split. Some in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress called the battle a failure, since they had been driven from the battlefield in defeat; others insisted it "has been of infinite service to us." This debate would persist for months, holding back any further attacks on the Redcoats in Boston.
George Washington, newly "General and Commander in chief of the Army of the United Colonies", had immediately left for Cambridge to take up his command. When he heard about the Battle of Bunker Hill en route, he immediately asked if "the provincials stood the British fire"; assured they had, he responded, "Then the liberties of our country are safe."
The soldiers themselves were "elated with conquest" as they retreated. General Nathaniel Greene of Rhode Island wrote "I wish we could sell them another hill at the same price."
There were so many dead that Gage forbade Boston churchbells to ring for funerals. The troops on Breed's Hill stayed there, digging a new elaborate fort; but Gage would never again dare attack the Patriot lines or make any motion3. He would simply sit in Boston, until finally sailing to England that October, leaving his command to Howe - who would also sit in Boston until eventually evacuating the city under threat of a Patriot attack.
The Battle of Bunker Hill had convinced Gage, and the British ministry, that they couldn't defeat the Revolution with a few battles. They needed to mount a large-scale invasion of America. And for that, Boston wasn't a good place to start. They would need a new strategy.
The geography of Charlestown has significantly changed due to nineteenth-century landfill. Charlestown is now a neighborhood in Boston; Charlestown Neck is around modern Sullivan Square (and no longer a neck); Bunker Hill is near modern St. Martin Street, and Breed’s Hill is the site of the Bunker Hill Monument.
I'm not aware why the battle was named after Bunker Hill, despite being fought on Breed’s Hill. Perhaps it was because that was both armies' intended original objective.
This included never taking the Dorchester Heights, the second part of Gage’s original plan. Significantly, they remained unoccupied until Washington fortified them in early 1776.
Thanks for this. I don't know if you heard, but I was listening to Ken Burns with Rogan, and Burns has almost finished a documentary on the Revolutionary War. Due out in November. I will be watching some TV again.