Richard M. Ketchum - Decisive Day: The Battle for Bunker Hill

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CONTENTS

For my Mother and Father

The dayperhaps the decisive dayis come, on which the fate of America depends.

ABIGAIL ADAMS

Introduction

For a battle that proved to be so decisive it was a curious one, in that neither side at first claimed to have won a victory. It was not a particularly large engagement; there were, after all, only about twelve hundred Americans arrayed against twice that many British. Ironically, people could not even agree on a name for it at the time. Battles are usually called after the place where they occur, but there was such widespread uncertainty about the location of the action that some referred to it as the battle of Charlestown, some as Bunker Hill, still others as Breeds Hill.

For those who like to imagine the ultimate drama of war in picture-book terms, this was one of the few genuine setpieces of the Revolutionary Wara pitched battle in which the pride of the British army, after being rowed across a body of water in full view of the mesmerized citizenry of Boston, lined up as if on parade and marched in precise order up a hill to storm a fort by direct, frontal assault. It was a scene difficult for novelist or filmmaker to surpass in terms of sheer pageantry.

War demands a final reckoning in human terms, however, and the casualties at the Battle for Bunker Hill were altogether staggering. Nearly half of the scarlet-coated regulars who stormed the redoubt fell in the attack, more than a third of the American defenders were killed, wounded, or captured, and in these grim statistics lies the true significance of the matter.

Under cover of darkness on June 16, 1775, the rebels had constructed an earthen fort directly opposite British-held Boston, and when General Thomas Gage saw it the next morning he recognized it for what it wasa challenge that could not possibly be ignored. The engagement that ensued was, quite literally, a fight to the death, signifying once and for all that both sides meant businessmeant, in fact, to settle their differences through bloodshed instead of further talk. What occurred on the slopes of Breeds Hill differed substantially from the events of April 19, 1775, when British troops marched out into the countryside and were compelled to fall back in confusion from Lexington and Concord, pursued by bands of men who harried them, guerrilla-fashion, from the cover of trees and stone walls.

Two months separated Lexington and Concord from Bunker Hill, and during that period the rebellious Americans cobbled together an army of sortsnot a very well-organized or efficient one, to be sure, but an army nevertheless, and when several units marched from Cambridge to Charlestown peninsula on the night of June 16 they were the first of a long line of American expeditionary forces setting out to meet the foe in some sort of planned movement.

The Battle for Bunker Hill had a powerful effect on George IIIs government in London. Although further efforts would be made from time to time to reach a negotiated settlement with the Americans, those efforts were undertaken not in a spirit of conciliation, but as one enemy toward another. Bunker Hill, in other words, forced Great Britain to commit itself to war, and after the battle relationships between mother country and colonies were never the same again.

If the events of June 17 forced Britains hand, they had a profound effect on America as well. Here were thirteen ill-assorted colonies, each tied more closely to London than to each other, and because two small armies met head to head in mortal combat they found themselves at war with the nation to which they owed allegiance. Suddenly there was an imperative need for the untried Continental Congress to act, to take charge of eventsto behave, in fact, like a real governing body, supplying a fragile unity and direction where little or none had existed before. Equally suddenly, individual Americans discovered that they had to take a stand, to choose between one side and the other for better or for worse.

Bunker Hill became a ray of hope to Congress and the various colonies, not because they thought the New Englanders had won, but because they had survived. Taken together with Lexington and Concord, the engagement demonstrated that the British army was not invincible after all and that an aroused citizenry was capable of resisting trained professional soldiers in red coats.

The lesson of Bunker Hill was not lost on Britains military leaders. It is difficult to prove that a single battle affected the subsequent conduct of an army and its commanders, but the fact is that the British never again revealed quite the same aggressiveness after Bunker Hill. The recollection of the awful slaughter, where more British officers were killed than in any battle in memory, remained with General William Howe as long as he served in America. Not again did he risk a full-scale frontal assault on an entrenched rebel position.

None of these aftereffects was apparent to the men joined in battle in the fierce heat of June 17, 1775. Someone had ordered them to fight and most of themBritish and American alikedid so with unsurpassed ferocity and courage despite the miscalculations of their commanders. The story of that decisive day, as the historian Allen French realized, was a tale of great blunders heroically redeemed. Each side committed an unexplainable, inexcusable error in strategy; and each side paid in blood according to the magnitude of its mistake.

Dorset, Vermont

August 13, 1973

I. Our Elbows Must Be Eased

It had been a rough, unseasonable crossing. His Majestys Ship Cerberus was thirty-four days out of Spithead when a lookout sighted Cape Ann through the lifting fog at dawn on May 25. Two hours later, as the vessel worked her way up the tortuous channel into Boston harbor, past low, wooded islands that lay mysterious and velvety green in the veiled morning sunlight, the crew and several military passengers were on deck early, eager for their first glimpse of land.

Two days before, when the Cerberus spoke a Salem fishing schooner, there had been an ominous hint of trouble around Boston; so when His Majestys sloop Otter appeared out of the mist the men crowded to the rail and waited, silent and expectant, for any word she might carry. As the sloop came about and headed into the wind, a big, handsome man in the scarlet coat and epaulets of a British major general stepped to the quarterdeck rail of the warship, cupped his hands, and sang out impetuously: What news is there?

Across the water the Otters skipper put a speaking trumpet to his mouth. There had been fighting between rebels and General Gages troops, he shouted. More than a month ago. Nearly three hundred of the Kings soldiers killed, wounded, or missing. Now Boston was surrounded by ten thousand country people.

Only the slap of sails, the creaking of spars, and the rush of water against the two ships sides could be heard as the mans voice died away. Then the army officer called out again:

How many regulars in Boston?

About five thousand, came the reply.

Another moment of silence; then the big man swung round toward his companions with a smile and exclaimed, What! Ten thousand peasants keep five thousand Kings troops shut up? Well, let us get in, and well soon find elbowroom! A cheer went up aboard the man-o-war at that, and as the sloop fell astern, heading for blue water, the men returned to their duties laughing at General John Burgoynes little joke. He had a way of putting things, the general did; those rebels were for it when the Cerberus arrived.