Bunker Hill

is in his
Diary
, p. 37. Lieutenant Sutherland’s description of Percy’s brigade as “one of the best dispositions ever I saw” and of their “sanguine hopes” is in Kehoe, p. 144.
    Joseph Tinker Buckingham in
Specimens of Newspaper Literature
, vol. 2, tells of Benjamin Russell and his classmates at the Queen Street Writing School on April 19 and how they followed Percy’s brigade to Cambridge (pp. 2–3). William Gordon in his
History
, vol. 1, recounts the anecdote about Percy’s fifers playing “Yankee Doodle” and the boy’s teasing remark about the ballad “Chevy Chase” (p. 481). John Eliot in
Brief Biographical Sketches
tells how Warren’s “soul beat to arms” when he heard the news from Lexington (p. 473). Frothingham in
LJW
describes how Warren turned over his medical practice to Eustis, then took the ferry to Charlestown, on which he told a compatriot to “keep up a brave heart!” (pp. 456–57). Isaiah Thomas in
The History of Printing in America
says he accompanied Warren to Charlestown (p. 168). Frothingham relates an account from a Dr. Welch, who claimed to have accompanied Warren out of Charlestown, as well as how Warren drove off the two soldiers trying to steal a horse, in
LJW
, p. 457. William Heath tells of his military studies in his
Memoirs
, pp. 1–4. Samuel Knapp in
Sketches
writes of how Warren felt it was “indispensable” that he get sufficient military experience that “his reputation for bravery might be put beyond the possibility of suspicion” (p. 119).
    Cyrus Hamlin writes of Francis Faulkner’s youthful experiences on April 19 in
My Grandfather, Colonel Francis Faulkner
, pp. 5–6. In an April 28, 1775, letter in
AA4
, a regular tells of how the militiamen “ran to the woods like devils” when the British lit the houses on fire (2:440). Joseph Loring in
JEPC
lists “200 rods of stone wall thrown down” in an account of damages inflicted by the British troops (p. 686). Lieutenant Lister recounts his conversation with Smith on the night of April 18 in Kehoe, as well as how Smith later offered him his horse as the column left Lexington (pp. 115, 117–18). Lieutenant Barker’s description of Smith as a “fat heavy man” is in his
Diary
, p. 34. William Heath writes in his
Memoirs
of how he “assisted in forming a regiment, which had been broken by the shot from the British fieldpieces,” as well as how Joseph Warren “kept with him” throughout that afternoon and evening (pp. 7–8). General Percy writes of how the militiamen clustered around the column “like a moving circle” in an April 20, 1775, letter to General Harvey in his
Letters
, p. 52. The description of how the westerly wind created “such a cloud that blinded” the regulars yet left them “a plain mark for the militia” is in Box 1, Folder 1, U.S. Revolution Collection, 1754–1928, AAS. Lieutenant Mackenzie writes of the fire being as bad in the front of the column as it was in the rear in his
Diary
, p. 57. Lieutenant Lister describes how he used a horse as a shield in Kehoe, p. 118. A summary of Ensign Martin Hunter’s account of “men clinging in numbers [to the carriages of the fieldpieces] and tumbling off when the cannon halted to fire,” is in Kehoe, p. 150. John Galvin
writes of how “Heath’s firm grasp of the tactics of the skirmish line and his tendency to see any battle as a series of isolated little fights was just what the provincials needed” in
The Minute Men
,
p. 206. I find it interesting that, except for Heath’s own memoirs, there are virtually no contemporary accounts describing Heath’s leadership role during the afternoon of June 19; if a person is singled out, it’s inevitably Joseph Warren, but more as a charismatic cheerleader than a strategist or tactician. If anything, the fighting during Percy’s march from Lexington to Charlestown seems to have been even wilder and less controlled than it had been during Smith’s retreat from Concord, when all agreed the militiamen fought “with little or no military discipline and order.” Whatever leadership was being exerted on the side of the provincials was coming from the company captains with previous military experience in the French and Indian War, most of whom had little or no contact with General Heath—a point that Percy makes when he says in his
Letters
, “They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about” (p. 53).
    David Hackett Fischer in
Paul Revere’s Ride
writes