By Paul Carrier
Educated Americans have at least a broad understanding of what transpired during the misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill. On June 17, 1775, British troops suffered heavy casualties before they finally captured Breed’s Hill (and nearby Bunker Hill) outside Boston during their third assault. The Pyrrhic victory provided a moral boost for the defending colonial forces, who stood their ground until they ran out of ammunition.
There is, of course, far more to the story than that, as National Book Award winner Nathaniel Philbrick explains in Bunker Hill. This splendid but misleadingly titled account takes a long view by also examining events that preceded the battle and the ensuing siege of Boston, which finally ended when British troops evacuated the city in March 1776. It’s a more comprehensive approach than viewing the battle in a vacuum, without regard to what came before, or what followed afterward.
In the process, the author of In the Heart of the Sea, Mayflower and other books on American history conveys a vivid sense of time and place, thanks to his mastery of the historical record; the strength of his narrative; his keen analytical skill; and his reliance on remarkable, and remarkably telling, anecdotes.
Philbrick’s take is a welcome corrective that highlights the contributions of lesser-known American patriots whose role is often ignored or downplayed. Chief among them is Dr. Joseph Warren, a Boston physician and major general in the Massachusetts provincial army who died at Bunker Hill, only days after his 34th birthday. Warren plays a leading role in Bunker Hill, and justifiably so. If Warren, a born leader, had survived, loyalist Peter Oliver said after the war, George Washington would have been “an obscurity.”
“Dr. Joseph Warren is one of the great unsung heroes of the American Revolution,” Philbrick says in an interview released by his publisher, Viking. “John Adams, John Hancock, and Sam Adams had gone to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, leaving Warren, just thirty-three, to lead the on-the-ground revolution in Massachusetts. As a member of the Committee of Safety, he ordered Paul Revere to alert the countryside that British troops were headed for Concord. As President of the Provincial Congress, he oversaw the creation of an army and was eventually named a major general. He was eloquent and charismatic, and if he hadn’t been killed during the last moments of the fighting at Bunker Hill, he might have been one of the Founding Fathers we revere today.”
But Warren is far from the only memorable character in Bunker Hill. In addition to such relatively well-known patriots as William Prescott, Israel Putnam, John Stark and assorted British generals, readers meet more obscure notables, including American Gen. Artemas Ward, the provincial army’s first leader; Warren’s fiancée, Mercy Scollay; ill-fated patriot lawyer Josiah Quincy Jr.; and duplicitous “patriot” Dr. Benjamin Church, a British spy.
As grand and glorious as the start of the American Revolution was, Philbrick explains that assorted oddities and interesting tidbits were part of the mix as well.
When patriots dumped tea into Boston Harbor in 1773, for example, the tide was out, so boys scampered across the mudflats and tried to scatter the tea with their hands and feet. Provincial marksmen who dogged the British column as it marched back to Boston from Concord in April 1775 found it easy to target British officers because their coats were made with a longer-lasting crimson dye than those of the rank-and-file soldiers, so the officers' coats were not faded.
Details such as these provide a you-are-there feel, but Philbrick’s history is far more than a collection of compelling yarns. His battle narratives are mesmerizing, all the more so because he analyzes the deficiencies, screwups and internal rivalries that plagued both camps. Philbrick notes that, in the spring of 1775, leading patriots in Massachusetts feared their own army might stage a coup because the colony’s provisional government was weak and disorganized. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, the three provincial commanders - Prescott, Putnam and Stark - acted independently, without any real coordination or oversight. The British, of course, were better trained and organized, but their fleet in Boston Harbor was undermanned and poorly led.
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| Dr. Joseph Warren |
But Warren is far from the only memorable character in Bunker Hill. In addition to such relatively well-known patriots as William Prescott, Israel Putnam, John Stark and assorted British generals, readers meet more obscure notables, including American Gen. Artemas Ward, the provincial army’s first leader; Warren’s fiancée, Mercy Scollay; ill-fated patriot lawyer Josiah Quincy Jr.; and duplicitous “patriot” Dr. Benjamin Church, a British spy.
As grand and glorious as the start of the American Revolution was, Philbrick explains that assorted oddities and interesting tidbits were part of the mix as well.
When patriots dumped tea into Boston Harbor in 1773, for example, the tide was out, so boys scampered across the mudflats and tried to scatter the tea with their hands and feet. Provincial marksmen who dogged the British column as it marched back to Boston from Concord in April 1775 found it easy to target British officers because their coats were made with a longer-lasting crimson dye than those of the rank-and-file soldiers, so the officers' coats were not faded.
Details such as these provide a you-are-there feel, but Philbrick’s history is far more than a collection of compelling yarns. His battle narratives are mesmerizing, all the more so because he analyzes the deficiencies, screwups and internal rivalries that plagued both camps. Philbrick notes that, in the spring of 1775, leading patriots in Massachusetts feared their own army might stage a coup because the colony’s provisional government was weak and disorganized. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, the three provincial commanders - Prescott, Putnam and Stark - acted independently, without any real coordination or oversight. The British, of course, were better trained and organized, but their fleet in Boston Harbor was undermanned and poorly led.
For some unknown reason, provincial soldiers who were ordered to fortify Bunker Hill in June 1775 headed for nearby Breed’s Hill instead, making them more vulnerable to a British assault. The poorly designed patriot redoubt on Breed’s Hill initially did not include embrasures for cannon. And when the patriots decided to seek reinforcements, an officer had to walk more than three miles to the provincial army’s headquarters in Cambridge to request help, because none of the patriots on Breed’s Hill had a horse. As for the British, they lacked a solid grasp of the topography of Breed’s Hill, due to inadequate reconnaissance, and many of their cannons had the wrong size cannonballs.
Once he began his research, Philbrick said in that Viking interview, “I quickly realized that the truth about what happened to the inhabitants of Boston during the two and a half years between the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 and the evacuation of the British troops in March 1776 was much more complex, disturbing, inspiring, and just plain interesting than I could have ever imagined.”
Just plain interesting, indeed. During the assault on Breed’s Hill, Philbrick tells us, British Gen. William Howe led his troops into battle accompanied by a servant who carried a bottle of wine for him. Amazingly, the undeniably brave Howe survived the patriots’ blistering fire. But the wine did not.
Once he began his research, Philbrick said in that Viking interview, “I quickly realized that the truth about what happened to the inhabitants of Boston during the two and a half years between the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 and the evacuation of the British troops in March 1776 was much more complex, disturbing, inspiring, and just plain interesting than I could have ever imagined.”
Just plain interesting, indeed. During the assault on Breed’s Hill, Philbrick tells us, British Gen. William Howe led his troops into battle accompanied by a servant who carried a bottle of wine for him. Amazingly, the undeniably brave Howe survived the patriots’ blistering fire. But the wine did not.
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| The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, by John Trumbull |
