XXXVIII. 1775. 17. been moored, where their guns raked the isthmus of CHAP. Charlestown. Between the hours of twelve and one, by order of General Gage, boats and barges, manned June by oars, all plainly visible to Prescott and his men, bore over the unruffled sheet of water from Long Wharf to Moulton's Point in Charlestown, the fifth, the thirty-eighth, the forty-third, and the fifty-second regiments of infantry, with ten companies of grenadiers, ten of light infantry, and a proportion of field artillery, in all about two thousand men. They were commanded by Major General Howe, who was assisted by Brigadier General Pigot. It was noticed that Percy, pleading illness, let his regiment go without him. The British landed under cover of the shipping, on the outward side of the peninsula, near the Mystic, with a view to outflank the American party, surround them, and make prisoners of the whole detachment. The way along the banks of the river to Prescott's rear lay open; he had remaining with him but about seven or eight hundred men, worn with toil and watching and hunger; he knew not how many were coming against him; his flank was unprotected; he saw no signs of reënforcements; the enemy had the opportunity to surround and crush his little band. "Never were men placed in a more dangerous position." But Howe, who was of a sluggish temperament, halted on the first rising ground, and sent back for more troops. The delay cost him dear. When Prescott perceived the British begin to land on the point east by north from the fort, he made the best disposition of his scanty force, ordering the train of artillery with two field pieces, and the CHAP. Connecticut forces under Knowlton, "to go and oppose them." XXXVIII. 1775. June 17. At about two hundred yards in the rear of the still unfinished breastwork, a fence of posts with two rails, set in a low stone wall, extended for about three hundred yards or more towards the Mystic. The mowers had but the day before passed over the meadows, and the grass lay on the ground in cocks and windrows. There the men of Connecticut, in pursuance of Prescott's order, took their station. Nature had provided "something of a breastwork," or a ditch had been dug many years before. They grounded arms and made a slight fortification against musket balls by interweaving the newly mown grass between the rails, and by carrying forward a post and rail fence alongside of the first, and piling the fresh hay between the two. But the line of defence was still very far from complete. Nearer the water the bank was smooth and without obstruction, declining gently for sixty or eighty yards, where it fell off abruptly. Between the rail fence and the unfinished breastwork, the space was open and remained so; the slough at the foot of the hill guarded a part of the distance; nearly a hundred yards were left almost wholly unprotected. Brooks, afterwards governor of Massachusetts, one of Prescott's messengers, had no mode of reaching head-quarters but on foot. Having performed the long walk, he found the general anxious and perplexed. Ward saw very clearly the imprudence of risking a battle for which the army was totally unprepared. To the committee of safety which was in session, the committee of supplies expressed its con XXXVIII. 1775. 17. cern at the "expenditure of powder;" "any great CHAP consumption by cannon might be ruinous; " and it is a fact that the Americans-with companies incom- June plete in number, enlisted chiefly within six weeks, commanded, many of them, by officers unfit, ignorant, and untried, gathered from four separate colonies, with no reciprocal subordination but from courtesy and opinion-after collecting all the ammunition that could be obtained north of the Delaware, had in the magazine for an army, engaged in a siege and preparing for a fight, no more than twenty-seven half barrels of powder, with a gift from Connecticut of thirty-six half barrels more. CHAPTER XXXIX. BUNKER HILL BATTLE. XXXIX JUNE 17, 1775. CHAP WARD determined, if possible, to avoid a general action. Apprehending that, if reinforcements should 1775 leave his camp, the main attack of the British would June 17. 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 here the character of New England shone out in its brightest lustre. 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 was confusion; but while the bells were ringing and the drums XXXIX 1775. June. beating to arms, officers who had longed for the op- CHAP. portunity 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 17. 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 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 cannonade, 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 also, 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 majorgeneral. He knew perfectly well 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 |