Bunker Hill

about the differences between the scarlet uniforms of the British officers and the faded red coats of the rank and file (p. 122). Lieutenant Mackenzie writes of the effectiveness of the provincials who used their horses to ride ahead of the column and then wait in ambush in his
Diary
, p. 67. In my account I have resisted the temptation to describe the legendary activities of one Hezekiah Wyman, a long-haired old man on a white horse, who reputedly killed many a regular on that bloody afternoon, and who does not appear in the literature until the publication of a widely reprinted article titled “The White Horseman,” which first appeared in the August 22, 1835,
Boston Pearl and Literary Gazette
. See J. L. Bell’s series on the subject in his blog
Boston 1775
, which begins with his May 29, 2010, entry “Hunting for Hezekiah Wyman”; http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2010/05/hunting-for-hezekiah-wyman.html. If there was a miraculous warrior on a white horse that day, it was General Percy, whom even the understated Lieutenant Mackenzie described in his
Diary
as behaving “with great spirit throughout this affair and at the same time with great coolness” (p. 59). John Eliot in
Brief Biographical Sketches
describes Warren as “perhaps the most active man in the field” (p. 473). William Heath in his
Memoirs
tells of how “a musket ball came so near to the head of Dr. Warren, as to strike the pin out of the hair of his earlock” (p. 8). Samuel Knapp writes of how “the people were delighted with his cool, collected bravery” (p. 116).
    Thomas Thorp describes how the Acton militiamen “were putting powder (flour) on their hair” before heading out to Concord in a deposition appended to Josiah Adams’s
Letter to Lemuel Shattuck
, p. 15. J. W. Hanson in
History of Danvers
writes of Jotham Webb’s determination to “die in my best clothes” (p. 297; cited by
Ellen Chase in
BAR
, 3:128). Chase provides a useful synthesis of accounts from Hanson, Hurd’s
History of Middlesex County
, and other sources in
BAR
, 3:130–35. See also Samuel Abbot Smith’s
West Cambridge 1775
, in which he repeats Mrs. Russell’s claim that the south room was “almost ankle deep” in blood and describes the burial of the bodies “head to point,” pp. 37–39, 52. My summary of the other incidents that occurred in Menotomy is based on
BAR
, 3:122–24, 145–47, 157–59, and Smith’s
West Cambridge 1775
, pp. 34–37, 42–44. William Heath tells in his
Memoirs
how he had instructed the Watertown militia to go to Cambridge “to take up the planks, barricade the south end of the bridge, and there to take post; that, in case the British should, on their return, take that road to Boston, their retreat might be impeded” (p. 7). John Andrews writes of watching the progress of the British column down the Battle Road from the hills of Boston in an April 19, 1775, letter in LJA, p. 405. Jane Mecom in
The Letters of Benjamin Franklin and Jane Mecom
describes “the horror the town was in” on that day in a May 14, 1775, letter to her brother Benjamin Franklin (p. 154). The Reverend Samuel West’s description of watching the fighting from his house in Needham as he and his parishioners feared the worst, as well as his troubling portrayal of a once “mild and gentle” people turned “ferocious and cruel,” are available online at http://www2.needham.k12.ma.us/eliot/technology/lessons/primary_source/lex_con/memoir.htm. Samuel Abbot Smith recounts in
West Cambridge 1775
how the women gathered at the house of George Prentiss in Menotomy feared that the slave Ishmael had come “to kill us” (p. 50). J. H. Temple in
History of Framingham
describes the women’s fear of a slave revolt (p. 275). William Heath writes of how “the flashes of the muskets [were] very visible” as the British approached Charlestown; he also speculates that “their retreat would have been cut off” if Pickering and his men from Salem had marched with a little more fortitude, in his
Memoirs
,
pp. 8–9. Clifford Shipton provides an insightful sketch of Timothy Pickering Jr. in
SHG
, vol. 15, describing Pickering’s nearsightedness and the way the light reflected on his spectacles at night (pp. 453–54). Timothy Pickering writes of believing “that a pacification upon honorable terms is practicable” in an April 26, 1775, letter in Octavius Pickering,
The Life of Timothy Pickering
, 1:80–82.
    Chapter Eight— No Business but That of War
    Sarah