Bunker Hill

strategic abilities were marred by a nervous, often irascible temperament; he was, he admitted in a letter to a friend, “a shy bitch.”

John Burgoyne bragged about making “elbow room” for the British forces trapped in Boston; they were words he came to regret.

Dr. John Jeffries claimed that Joseph Warren offered him a position as the head of the provincial army’s medical corps, despite the fact that Jeffries was a self-proclaimed loyalist. After the Battle of Bunker Hill, he would identify Warren’s corpse.

Bostonians watch the Battle of Bunker Hill from the city’s rooftops in an engraving by Howard Pyle.

The British regulars storm the redoubt on Breed’s Hill in a panel from a modern cyclorama by the artist Leonard Kowalsky.

A 1775 satirical cartoon depicting the sufferings of a British regular during the Siege of Boston. As the drawing points out, the average soldier fighting in America was paid less than a chimney sweep back in London.

A 1776 British cartoon mocking the American soldiers who manned the entrenchments during the Siege of Boston. Each one wears a cap that reads “Death or Liberty.”

The discovery of this coded letter in September 1775 revealed Dr. Benjamin Church, head of the provincial army’s medical department, to be a British spy.

General Howe supervises the evacuation of Boston in March 1776.

A sketch by the British engineer Archibald Robertson of the burning of Castle William.

John Quincy Adams in 1843, the same year that the Bunker Hill Monument was completed. Adams was haunted by his memories of the battle he’d watched as a seven-year-old boy.

Acknowledgments
    Researcher and friend Michael Hill has been an immense help during the three years it took to write this book. I am indebted to the descendants of two historical personages who figure large in this narrative: Lord Nicholas Gage, who spoke with me over a glass of sherry at his ancestral home of Firle in Sussex, England, and Paul Revere Jr., with whom I had lunch at Spanky’s Clam Shack in Hyannis, Massachusetts. My thanks to Robert Pasley-Tyler in London and John Ross on Cape Cod for making the interviews possible. Thanks to writer Adam Nicolson for his insights into the British gentry. Peter Drummey at the Massachusetts Historical Society was extremely generous with his time and expertise; it was Peter who first told me that Dr. Samuel Forman was at work on a biography of Dr. Joseph Warren, and I have benefited greatly from Dr. Forman’s recently published book and the correspondence we have conducted over the course of several months. J. L. Bell’s blog
Boston 1775
has been a daily source of inspiration and research advice. Special thanks to Victor Mastone of the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources, Craig Brown of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Christopher Maio of the Department of Earth, Environmental and Ocean Sciences of the University of Massachusetts at Boston for sharing the results of their research into the Battle of Chelsea Creek and for the tour of East Boston. Ever since as editor of the
New England Quarterly
he published my first article of history, Professor William Fowler has provided me with essential advice and encouragement; many thanks, Bill, for all your help. Professor Paul Lockhardt’s writings about the Revolution include an important book about the Battle of Bunker Hill; many thanks, Paul, for your input. Former British Consul General of Boston Philip Budden helped me appreciate the British perspective on the events described in this book. Judge Hiller Zobel, author of the still-definitive
Boston Massacre
(1970), is, in addition to being a noted legal scholar and colonial historian, a master of the English language; thanks, Hiller, for making this a better book. William Gow Harrington spent many hours on my behalf at the Dedham Historical Society; his father, Peter Gow, has been reading my manuscripts for more than twenty-five years; thanks, Peter and Will. Elizabeth Mansfield provided a seemingly endless supply of research leads. Thanks to Emily Stover, Carolyn Paris, and Penny Scheerer, who accompanied my wife, Melissa, and me on a research sail to Statia, the Caribbean island from which revolutionary New Englanders secured Dutch tea and gunpowder; Penny (distantly related to militiaman Nathaniel Page of Bedford, Massachusetts) also directed me to information concerning the famous Bedford flag. Special