XXXIX June 17. CHAP. fence in conversation with Putnam, who declared a readiness to receive his orders; but Warren declined 1775. 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 Barre, their lieutenant colonel. From the same counties came above fifty more, led by John Nixon, of Sudbury. Willard Moore, of Paxton, a man of superior endowments, brought 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 defective 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 incesssant cannonade of the British. At the rail fence there were, as yet, but the Connecticut 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, XXXIX 1775. June 17 led on by Colonel John Stark, who, next to Prescott, CHAP. 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 cannon shot, which buzzed about them like hail. Of quickest perception, resolute in decision, 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 XXXIX June 17. CHAP, the expedition, and the appointment of Prescott to its command, was made with his concurrence. With1775. out in the least 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 by message, earnestly demanding reënforcements, 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 arrived at the battle ground before the day was decided. While the camp at Cambridge was the scene of so much confusion, Howe caused refreshments to be distributed abundantly among his troops. The reinforcements 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 reinforce 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. XXXIX June Not till the news reached Cambridge of this CHAP. second landing at Charlestown, was Ward relieved from the apprehension, that the main body of the British would interpose themselves between Charles- 17. town and Cambridge. Persuaded of the security of the camp, and roused by the earnest and eloquent entreaties of Devens, of Charlestown, himself a member of the committee of safety, Ward consented to order reinforcements; among them his own regiment, but it was too late. The whole number of Americans on the ground at that time, 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. 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, 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 massacre at Lexington, Gage had threatened, that if the Americans should occupy Charlestown heights, the town should be burned. Its inhabitants, however, had always been willing that the threat should be disregarded. The time for the VOL VII. 36 XXXIX June CHAP. holocaust was now come. Pretending that his flanking parties were annoyed from houses in the village, 1775. Howe sent a boat over with a request to Clinton and 17. 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 the sudden shifting of the wind, the movements of the assailants 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 soldierlike 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 watching every movement, kept up an incessant fire, which was seconded by the Falcon and the Lively, the Somerset and the two floating batteries; the town of Charlestown, consisting of five hundred edifices of wood, burst into a blaze; the steeple of its only church became a pyramid of fire; and the masts of the shipping, and the heights of the |