Bunker Hill

Sullivan said that “winter gives a more favorable opportunity,” while Charles Lee claimed that he was “not sufficiently acquainted with the men to judge—therefore thinks it too great a risk.”
    At the end of October, after a nearly week-long summit with the congressional committee, during which guidelines were drawn up for creating a more “regular” continental army (one of which required that even free African Americans be excluded), Washington formally asked for guidance on the all-important issue of attacking Boston: “The general wishes to know how far it may be deemed proper and advisable to avail himself of the season to destroy the troops who propose to winter in Boston by a bombardment, when the harbor is blocked up, or in other words whether the loss of the town and the property therein are to be so considered.”
    Franklin and the other committee members decided that this was “a matter of too much consequence to be determined by them” and that they must first “refer it to the Honorable Congress.” For now, Washington would have to wait.
    In the meantime, his predecessor General Artemas Ward was of the opinion that instead of attacking Boston, Washington should be more concerned with the strategic importance of Dorchester Heights. As early as August 25, Ward advised, “We . . . ought carefully to consider what steps may be taken, consistent with prudence and safety should an enemy in part gain such an ascendency. . . . I beg Your Excellency to give me some instructions relative to my duty in that case.” It was a theme Ward would return to in the months ahead.
    —
    By the end of October, Washington was facing a new and completely unexpected crisis. Evidence had come forward that Benjamin Church, the controversial head of the army’s medical corps, was a British spy. In September, Church’s mistress confessed that the coded letter she had unsuccessfully attempted to deliver to British authorities in Newport, Rhode Island, had been authored by Church. The letter, written in cipher, had been quickly decoded. It was hardly the kind of document one would have expected from a spy. Instead of revealing any secrets, it overstated the strength of Washington’s army in a way that seemed helpful to the Continental cause. According to Church, he had written the letter “to impress the enemy with a strong idea of our strength and situation . . . and in hopes of effecting some speedy accommodation of the present dispute.” He wasn’t a traitor, he insisted; instead, he was using his loyalist family connections (the letter had been addressed to his brother-in-law in Boston) to bring about peace.
    A court-martial found him guilty “of holding a criminal correspondence with the enemy.” Unfortunately, the Continental Congress had not yet contemplated the possibility of treason, and the worst punishment a court-martial could inflict was a whipping and expulsion from the service—hardly a sufficient sentence, given the nature of the crime. But was Church truly guilty of treason? According to Massachusetts law, treason was defined as a crime against the king, and no one claimed that anything Church had done had been intended to undermine George III. Massachusetts might be in a state of armed rebellion, but even the most ardent patriots still claimed loyalty to their sovereign; that’s why Washington referred to his adversaries as the “ministerial” (as opposed to king’s) troops. To find Church guilty of treason was, in effect, to declare independence. And no one, at this point, was willing to do that. This meant that there was no legitimate way to punish Church for his crime. Indeed, under the law as currently written, Church, the spy, was the most loyal patriot of them all.
    He spent the following weeks confined to his quarters in a house on Tory Row (where he carved “B. Church, Jr.” in a closet door). Finally, on October 27, he was brought before the House of Representatives in Watertown. “The galleries being opened upon the occasion,” he wrote in his own account of the proceedings, “were thronged with a numerous collection of people of all ranks, to attend so novel and important a trial.”
    For years Church had been at the forefront of the patriot movement. To think that a man of his standing and obvious abilities (even Washington admitted that Church had already done much to overhaul the army’s hospitals) was capable of betraying everything that he claimed to stand