Bunker Hill

all this precaution, we had no notice of [the regulars’] approach, till the brigade was actually in the town” (p. 4). Paul Revere recounts overhearing John Parker’s order to “let the troops pass by and don’t molest them, without they being first,” in a deposition taken April 24, 1775, in
Paul Revere’s Three Accounts of his Ride
, p. 22. Robert Douglass’s account of hearing a militiaman say, “There are so few of us, it would be folly to stand here” (to which Parker replied, “The first man who offers to run shall be shot down”), is in Ezra Ripley’s
A History of the Fight at Concord
, p. 52. John Robbins’s testimony that one of the British officers cried out, “Throw down your arms, ye villains, ye rebels,” is in
A Narrative of the Excursion and Ravages of the King’s Troops
, p. 8. Ezra Stiles records a secondhand description of Major Pitcairn’s activities at Lexington, in which Stiles recounts how Pitcairn “struck his . . . sword downwards with all earnestness as the signal to forbear or cease firing,” in his
Diary
, 1:604–5. Paul Revere describes “a continual roar of musketry,” in “A Letter . . . to the Corresponding Secretary” (p. 110). The testimonies of John and Ebenezer Monroe concerning what happened that morning, including how Joshua Simons was prepared to blow up the open cask of powder in the attic of the Lexington Meetinghouse with his gun, are in Phinney, pp. 35–37. The death of Jonathan Harrington is recounted in
BAR
, 2:370. In an October 8, 1775, letter to R. Donkin, Colonel Smith writes of how he prevented the regulars from attacking the provincials inside the buildings on Lexington Common, in Kehoe, pp. 75, 141–42. Lieutenant Barker writes in his
Diary
that the light infantrymen “were so wild they could hear no orders” (p. 32).
    John Galvin discusses the problems created by Gage’s decision to go with a “motley mixture of units”—specifically “a loose command structure” that required company commanders “to operate with new procedures under unfamiliar leaders”—in
The Minute Men
, p. 103.
Lieutenant Mackenzie in his
Diary
tells how Colonel Smith’s officers tried to convince him “to give up the idea of prosecuting his march and to return to Boston” (p. 63). William Heath’s criticism of the Lexington militia is in his
Memoirs
, p. 6. Harold Murdock in
The Nineteenth of April 1775
argues that Samuel Adams must have been the one pulling the strings at Lexington that morning (pp. 23–25), as does Arthur Bernon Tourtellot in
Lexington and Concord
(originally titled
William Diamond’s Drum
), 79, 112, 125–27. But as the testimony of William Munroe makes clear (in which he recounts Hancock’s insistence that “if I had my musket, I would never turn my back upon these troops”), it was Hancock they were listening to (Phinney, p. 34). See J. L. Bell’s May 19, 2008, entry, “Who Really Wanted to Fight at Lexington?” in his blog
Boston 1775
, http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2008/05/who-really-wanted-to-fight-at-lexington.html, for a balanced assessment of Adams’s and Hancock’s influence (if any) on what happened at Lexington Green. William Gordon recounts the exchange between Samuel Adams and John Hancock, in which Adams describes the day as “glorious,” in his
History
, 1:478–79. Hancock’s description of the Lexington militia being only “partially provided with arms, and those they had were in most miserable order” is in “Reminiscences by Gen. William Sumner,” p. 187.
    Chapter Seven— The Bridge
    Mary Hartwell’s account of the regulars passing her house on the way to Concord is in A. E. Brown’s
Beneath Old Roof Trees
, p. 221. Colonel Smith writes of how his column marched “with as much good order as ever troops observed in Britain or any friendly country,” in his October 8, 1775, letter to R. Donkin, cited in Vincent Kehoe,
We Were There!
p. 75. Thaddeus Blood’s account of the Concord fight is in the
Boston Daily Advertiser
, April 20, 1886 (subsequently referred to as his Narrative). D. Michael Ryan in
Concord and the Dawn of Revolution
cites an article in the July 16, 1888,
Boston Transcript
that tells of an Emerson family tradition that “an English banner with ‘Union and Liberty’ inscribed in white letters” flew from the Concord liberty pole (p. 71). Lemuel Shattuck in
A History of Concord
quotes Reverend Emerson as saying, “Let us stand our ground” (pp. 105–6). Ezra