XXXVIII. 1775. June. CHAP that in their opinion, Dorchester heights should be fortified; and they recommended unanimously to establish a post on Bunker Hill. Ward, who was bound to comply with the instructions of his superiors, proceeded to execute the advice. The decision was so sudden, that no fit preparation could be made. The nearly total want of ammunition rendered the service desperately daring; in searching for an officer suited to such an enterprise, the choice fell on William Prescott, of Pepperell, colonel of a regiment from the northwest of Middlesex, who himself was solicitous to assume the perilous June duty; and on the very next evening after the vote of the committee of safety, a night and day only in advance of the purpose of Gage, a brigade of one thousand men was placed under his command. 16. Soon after sunset, the party composed of three hundred of his own regiment, detachments from those of Frye and of Bridge, and two hundred men of Connecticut, under the gallant Thomas Knowlton, of Ashford, were ordered to parade on Cambridge common. They were a body of husbandmen, not in uniform, bearing for the most part no other arms than fowling pieces which had no bayonets, and carrying in horns and pouches their stinted supply of powder and bullets. Langdon, the president of Harvard college, who was one of the chaplains to the army, prayed with them fervently; then, as the late darkness of the midsummer evening closed in, they marched for Charlestown in the face of the proclamation, issued only four days before, by which all persons taken in arms against their sovereign, were threatened under martial law with death by the cord as rebels and traitors. Pres XXXVIII. cott and his party were the first to give the menace CHAP a defiance. For himself, he was resolved "never to be taken alive." 1775. June 16. When with hushed voices and silent tread, they and the wagons laden with intrenching tools had passed the narrow isthmus, Prescott called around him Richard Gridley, an experienced engineer, and the field officers, to select the exact spot for their earth works. The committee of safety had proposed Bunker Hill; but Prescott had "received orders to march to Breed's Hill." Heedless of personal danger, he obeyed the orders as he understood them; and with the ready assent of his self-devoted companions, who were bent on straitening the English to the utmost, it was upon the eminence nearest Boston, and best suited to annoy the town and the shipping in the harbor, that under the light of the stars the engineer drew the lines of a redoubt of nearly eight rods square. The bells of Boston had struck twelve June before the first sod was thrown up. Then every man of the thousand seized in his turn the pickaxe and spade, and they plied their tools with such expedition, that the parapet soon assumed form, and height, and capacity for defence. "We shall keep our ground," thus Prescott related that he silently revolved his position, "if some screen, however slight, can be completed before discovery." The Lively lay in the ferry, between Boston and Charlestown, and a little to the eastward were moored the Falcon, and the Somerset, a ship of the line; the veteran not only set a watch to patrol the shore, but bending his ear to catch every sound, twice repaired to the margin of the water, where he heard the drowsy 17. XXXVIII CHAP. sentinels from the decks of the men of war still cry: "All is well." Putnam also during the night came June among the men of Connecticut on the hill; but he assumed no command over the detachment. 1775. 17. The few hours that remained of darkness hurried away, but not till the line of circumvallation was already closed. As day dawned, the seamen were roused to action, and every one in Boston was startled from slumber by the cannon of the Lively playing upon the redoubt. Citizens of the town, and British officers, and tory refugees, the kindred of the insurgents, crowded to gaze with wonder and surprise at the small fortress of earth freshly thrown up, and "the rebels," who were still plainly seen at their toil. A battery of heavy guns was forthwith mounted on Copp's Hill, which was directly opposite, at a distance of but twelve hundred yards, and an incessant shower of shot and bombs was rained upon the works; but Prescott, whom Gridley had forsaken, calmly considered how he could best continue his line of defence. At the foot of the hill on the north was a slough, beyond which an elevated tongue of land, having few trees, covered chiefly with grass, and intersected by fences, stretched away to the Mystic. Without the aid of an engineer, Prescott himself extended his line from the east side of the redoubt northerly for about twenty rods towards the bottom of the hill; but the men were prevented from completing it "by the intolerable fire of the enemy." Still the cannonade from the battery and shipping could not dislodge them, though it was a severe trial to raw soldiers, unaccustomed to the noise of artillery. Early in the XXXVIII. 17. day, a private was killed and buried. To inspire CHAP. confidence, Prescott mounted the parapet and walked 1775. leisurely backwards and forwards, examining the June works and giving directions to the officers. One of his captains, perceiving his motive, imitated his example. From Boston, Gage with his telescope descried the commander of the party. "Will he fight?" asked the general of Willard, Prescott's brother-inlaw, late a mandamus councillor, who was at his side. "To the last drop of his blood," answered Willard. As the British generals saw that every hour gave fresh strength to the intrenchments of the Americans, by nine o'clock they deemed it necessary to alter the plan previously agreed upon, and to make the attack immediately on the side that could be soonest reached. Had they landed troops at the isthmus as they might have done, the detachment on Breed's Hill would have had no chances of escape or relief. The day was exceedingly hot, one of the hottest of the season. After their fatigues through the night, the American partisans might all have pleaded their unfitness for action; some left the post, and the field officers, Bridge and Brickett, being indisposed, could render their commander but little service. Yet Prescott was dismayed neither by fatigue, nor desertion. "Let us never consent to being relieved," said he to his own regiment, and to all who remained; "these are the works of our hands, to us be the honor of defending them." He consented to despatch repeated messengers for reënforcements and provisions; but at the hour of noon no assistance had appeared. His men had toiled all the night long, had broken their fast only with what they had brought XXXVIII. 1775. June 17. CHAP. in their knapsacks the evening before, had, under a burning sky, without shade, amidst a storm of shot and shells, continued their labor all the morning, and were now preparing for a desperate encounter with a vastly superior force; yet no refreshments were sent them, and during the whole day they received not even a cup of cold water, nor so much as a single gill of powder. The agony of suspense was now the greater, because no more work could be done in the trenches; the tools were piled up in the rear, and the men were waiting, unemployed, till the fighting should begin. The second messenger from Prescott, on his way to the head-quarters at Cambridge, was met by Putnam, who was hastening to Charlestown. The brigadier seems to have been justly impressed with the conviction, that the successful defence of the peninsula not only required reënforcements, but that intrenchments should be thrown up on the summit of Bunker Hill. He, therefore, rode up to the redoubt on Breed's Hill, where he did not appear again during the whole day, and asked of Prescott, "that the intrenching tools might be sent off." It was done, but of the large party who took them away, few returned; and the want of a sufficient force, and the rapid succession of events, left Putnam no leisure to fortify the crown of the higher hill. Far different was the scene in Boston. To finished and abundant equipments of every kind, the British troops, though in number hardly more than five thousand effective men, added experience and exact discipline. Taking advantage of high water, the Glasgow sloop of war and two floating batteries had |