Bunker Hill

of Warren’s brief April 10, 1775, letter about moving his family and personal effects to Worcester appeared in a lot description in a June 9, 1999, Christie’s auction cited by Samuel Forman in
DJW
, pp. 394–95. Robert Hanson in a note to
The Diary of Dr. Nathaniel Ames
records that Ames began billing Joseph Warren’s account on April 8, 1775 (p. 278). Daniel Leonard’s comparison of patriot leaders to a “false guide” who leads a traveler to the brink of an abyss first appeared in December 19, 1774, and is reprinted in
Tracts of the American Revolution
, edited by Merrill Jensen, p. 279. King George’s November 18, 1774, letter to Lord North insisting that “blows must decide” whether the American colonies “are to be subject to this country or independent” is in
CKG
, p. 153. As Peter Thomas writes in
Tea Party to Independence
, both sides read each other incorrectly when it came to the outbreak of the American Revolution: “Congress was bluffing, confident that Britain would again back down, as in 1766 and 1770. . . . This time Britain did not do so, and called the colonial bluff. . . . The War of Independence was not a heroic enterprise but the result of a political miscalculation” (pp. 174–75). John Andrews tells of General Percy’s praise of his wife’s drawing in an April 11, 1775, letter in LJA, p. 403. Percy writes of the weather in Boston in an April 8, 1775, letter in
Letters
, p. 49.
    The April 7, 9, 15, and 18, 1775, espionage reports addressed to General Gage appear in
PIR
, 3:1978–83. Allen French discusses the contents of these letters and the fact that they were written by an insider in the Provincial Congress (who was proven to be Benjamin Church by subsequent letters he wrote to Gage), as well as how the letters influenced the general’s decision making relative to the expedition to Concord, in
General Gage’s Informers
, pp. 18–33. Many historians cite an account by the British spy John Howe (
History of Middlesex County
, vol. 2, edited by D. Hamilton Hurd, pp. 579–84), who claimed to have advised Gage to send troops to Concord instead of Worcester, but I have doubts about the reliability of the Howe narrative and have therefore not cited it; see D. Michael Ryan’s argument that the Howe account is nothing but an “embellished ‘plagiarism’ ” in
Concord and the Dawn of Revolution
, p. 53. Admiral Samuel Graves writes of moving the
Somerset
“exactly in the ferry way between the two towns,” in his “Narrative” in
NDAR
, 1:179. Dartmouth’s January 27, 1775, letter to Gage is in
DAR
, 8:37–41. Allen French carefully analyzes Gage’s orders to Colonel Francis Smith, the originals of which (including an early draft) are at the Clements Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and concludes that “Gage did not plan to seize Hancock and Adams,” in
General Gage’s Secret Informers
, p. 33. Lieutenant Barker writes of Gage’s April 15 orders to the grenadiers and light infantry being “by way of a blind” in his
Diary
, p. 29. Paul Revere writes of how on the “Saturday night preceding the 19 April, about 12 o’clock at night, the boats belonging to the transports were all launched, and carried under the sterns of the men of war,” as well as other events preceding and including his famous ride to Lexington, in “A Letter . . . to the Corresponding Secretary,” pp. 106–10. Ellen Chase in
The Beginnings of the American Revolution
(
BAR
), vol. 2, lists the height of the steeple of Christ Church as 191 feet (p. 326). The detailed description of the military stores in Concord made on April 18, 1775, is in
PIR
, 3:1982–83.
    According to William Gordon, Warren learned of Gage’s expedition to Concord “by a mere accident . . . just in time to send messengers over the neck and across the ferry,” in his
History of the American Revolution
, p. 477; Gordon’s reference to “a daughter of liberty, unequally yoked in point of politics” (p. 476) is often cited as a possible reference to Margaret Gage as Warren’s informer; however, the unnamed female informant Gordon refers to sent a message not to Warren but to Samuel Adams—several days before April 19. Charles Stedman tells of Percy overhearing the townspeople gathered on Boston Common talking about the impending expedition to Concord in his
History of the American War
, 1:119. In an interview with me at the Gage estate in Firle, Sussex, in March 2011, Lord Nicholas Gage (a direct