June 17.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

BUNKER HILL BATTLE.

JUNE 17, 1775.

WARD determined, if possible, to avoid a general action. Apprehending that, if re-enforcements should leave 1775. his camp, the main attack of the British would be made upon Cambridge, he refused to impair his strength at head-quarters; but he ordered the New Hampshire regiments of Stark, stationed at Medford, and of Reed, near Charlestown Neck, to march to Prescott's support.

When word was brought that the British were actually landing in Charlestown, the general regarded it as a feint, and still refused to change his plan. But the zeal of individuals admitted of no control. The welcome intelligence that the British had actually sallied out of Boston thrilled through men, who were "waiting impatiently to avenge the blood of their murdered countrymen." Owing to the want of activity in Ward, who did not leave his house during the whole day, all method was wanting; but, while the bells were ringing and the drums beating to arms, officers who had longed for the opportunity of meeting the British in battle, soldiers who clung to the officers of their choice with constancy, set off for the scene of battle, hardly knowing themselves whether they were countenanced by the general, or the committee of safety, or the council of war; or moved by the same impetuous enthusiasm which had brought them forth on the nineteenth of April, and which held" an honorable death in the field for the liberties of all America preferable to an ignominious slavery."

The veteran Seth Pomeroy, of Northampton, an old man

1775.

of seventy, once second in rank in the Massachusetts army, but now postponed to younger men, heedless of the slight, was roused by the continuance of the cannon- June 17. ade, and rode to Charlestown Neck; there, thoughtful for his horse, which was a borrowed one, he shouldered his fowling-piece, marched over on foot, and amidst loud cheers of welcome took a place at the rail-fence.

Joseph Warren, after discharging his duty in the committee of safety, resolved to take part in the battle. He was entreated by Elbridge Gerry not thus to expose his life. "It is pleasant and becoming to die for one's country," was his answer. Three days before, he had been elected a provincial major-general. He knew the defects of the American camp, the danger of the intrenched party, and how the character of his countrymen and the interests of mankind hung in suspense on the conduct of that day. About two o'clock, he crossed Bunker Hill, unattended, and with a musket in his hand. He stood for a short time near a cannon at the rail-fence in conversation with Putnam, who was ready to receive his orders; but Warren declined to assume authority, and passed on to the redoubt, which was expected to be the chief point of attack. As soon as he arrived there, Prescott proposed that he should take the command; but he answered as he had done to Putnam: "I come as a volunteer, to learn from a soldier of experience;" and in choosing his station he looked only for the place of greatest danger and importance.

Of the men of Essex who formed Little's regiment, full a hundred and twenty-five hastened to the aid of Prescott; Worcester and Middlesex furnished more than seventy from Brewer's regiment, and with them the prudent and fearless William Buckminster, of Barré, their lieutenantcolonel. From the same counties came above fifty more, under John Nixon, of Sudbury. Willard Moore, of Paxton, a man of superior endowments, led on about forty of Worcester county; from the regiment of Whitcomb, of Lancaster, there appeared at least fifty privates, but with no higher officers than captains. Not more than six light field-pieces were brought upon the ground; but, from de

fective conduct and want of ammunition, even these were scarcely used. A few shot were thrown from two or three of them, as if to mark the contrast with the heavy and incessant cannonade of the British.

1775. At the rail-fence there were, as yet, but the ConJune 17. necticut men, whom Prescott had detached. The two field-pieces had been deserted by the artillerymen. After the British had landed, and just before they advanced, a party of New Hampshire levies arrived, conducted by Colonel John Stark, who, next to Prescott, brought the largest number of men into the field. When they came to the isthmus, which was raked by cannon, Dearborn, one of his captains who walked by his side, advised a quick step. "Dearborn," replied Stark," one fresh man in action is worth ten fatigued ones;" and he marched leisurely across Charlestown Neck, through the galling fire. Of quick perception and resolute, the rugged trapper was as calm as though he had been hunting in his native woods. At a glance upon the beach along Mystic River, "I saw there," he related, "the way so plain that the enemy could not miss it." While some of his men continued the line of defence by still weaving grass between the rails, others, at his bidding, leaped down the bank, and with stones from adjacent walls, on the instant, threw up a breast work to the water's edge. Behind this, in the most exposed station that could have been selected, where a covered boat, musket proof, carrying a heavy piece of cannon, if it had been towed up the channel, could have taken them on the side and instantly dislodged them, he posted triple ranks of his men; the rest knelt or lay down. The time allowed him no opportunity of consulting with Prescott; they fought independently; Prescott to defend the redoubt, Knowlton and Stark, with Reed's regiment, to protect its flank. These are all who arrived before the beginning of the attack; and not more than a hundred and fifty others of various regiments, led by different officers or driven by their own zeal, reached the battle-ground before the retreat. From first to last, Putnam took an active interest in the expedition; and the appointment of Prescott to its command was made with his concurrence. Without

interfering with that command, he was now planning additional works on Bunker Hill, now mingling with the Connecticut troops at the rail-fence, now threatening officers or men who seemed to him dilatory or timid, now at Cambridge in person or again by message, earnestly demanding re-enforcements, ever busily engaged in aiding and encouraging, here and there, as the case required. After the first landing of the British, he sent orders by his son to the Connecticut forces at Cambridge, "that they must all meet and march immediately to Bunker Hill to oppose the enemy." Chester and his company ran for their arms and ammunition, and marched with such alacrity that they reached the battle-ground before the day was decided.

While the camp at Cambridge was the scene of 1775. so much confusion, Howe caused refreshments to June 17. be distributed abundantly among his troops. The reenforcements which he had demanded arrived, consisting of several more companies of light infantry and grenadiers, the forty-seventh regiment, and a battalion of marines. "The whole," wrote Gage, "made a body of something above two thousand men ; ""about two thousand men and two battalions to re-enforce him," wrote Burgoyne; near upon three thousand," thought very accurate observers, and a corps of five regiments, one battalion, and twenty flank companies, more than seventy companies, must, after all allowances, be reckoned at two thousand five hundred men, or more. It comprised the chief strength of the army.

Not till the news reached Cambridge of this second landing at Charlestown was Ward relieved from the apprehension that the main body of the British would interpose themselves between Charlestown and Cambridge. Persuaded of the security of the camp, and roused by the earnest entreaties of Devens, of Charlestown, himself a member of the committee of safety, Ward consented to order re-enforcements, among them his own regiment; but it was too late. The whole number of Americans in the battle, including all such as crossed the causeway seasonably to take part in the fight, according to the most solemn assurances of the officers who were in the action, to the

testimony of eye-witnesses, to contemporary inquirers, and to the carefully considered judgment of Washington, did not exceed one thousand five hundred men.

1775.

Nor should history forget to record that, as in the army at Cambridge, so also in this gallant band, the free negroes of the colony had their representatives; for the right of free negroes to bear arms in the public defence was, June 17, at that day, as little disputed in New England as their other rights. They took their place not in a separate corps, but in the ranks with the white man; and their names may be read on the pension rolls of the country, side by side with those of other soldiers of the revolution.

Two days after the expedition to Concord, Gage had threatened that, if the Americans should occupy Charlestown heights, the town should be burnt. Its inhabitants, however, had always been willing that the threat should be disregarded. The time for the holocaust was now come. Pretending that his flanking parties were annoyed from houses in the village, Howe sent a boat over with a request to Clinton and Burgoyne to burn it. The order was immediately obeyed by a discharge of shells from Copp's Hill. The inflammable buildings caught in an instant, and a party of men landed and spread the fire; but, from a sudden shifting of the wind, the movements of the British were not covered by the smoke of the conflagration.

At half past two o'clock, or a very little later, General Howe, not confining his attack to the left wing alone, advanced to a simultaneous assault on the whole front from the redoubt to Mystic River. In Burgoyne's opinion, "his disposition was soldier-like and perfect." Of the two columns which were put in motion, the one was led by Pigot against the redoubt; the other by Howe himself against the flank, which seemed protected by nothing but a fence of rails and hay easy to be scrambled over, when the left of Prescott would be turned, and he would be forced to surrender on finding the enemy in his rear.

As they began to march, the dazzling lustre of a summer's sun was reflected from their burnished armor; the battery on Copp's Hill, from which Clinton and Burgoyne were