Bunker Hill

Winslow Deming writes of her departure from Boston in a journal she addressed to her niece at MHS. She describes Boston as a “city of destruction” in her April 20, 1775, entry, in which she recounts how she and her two friends left the city and spent the night in Roxbury. Hannah Winthrop tells of her travels with her husband John in an undated letter to Mercy Otis Warren, pp. 29–31. David McClure writes of “the dreadful trophies of war” in his
Diary
, pp. 155–61. Deacon Tudor tells of the rumor “that if the soldiers came out again they would burn, kill, and destroy,” in the April 20, 1775, entry in his
Diary
. Jeremy Lister describes his return to Boston after the march back from Concord in his
Narrative
, pp. 33–35. Admiral Graves recounts how he suggested that Gage allow him to cannonade Charlestown and Roxbury in his
Narrative
in
NDAR
, 1:193. Timothy Pickering writes about his April 20 meeting in Cambridge with militia officers and members of the Committee of Safety in an April 26, 1775, letter in Octavius Pickering,
The Life of Timothy Pickering
, 1:80–82, and in a June 26, 1807, letter cited in Allen French’s
FYAR
, in which Pickering states, “I had no previous information of the plans of
patriotism
or
ambition
(and I now believe the latter was as powerful a stimulus as the former) of the
leaders
in the intended revolution” (pp. 26–27). Frothingham cites Joseph Warren’s April 20, 1775, circular letter in which he claims, “Our all is at stake,” as well as his April 20, 1775, letter to Gage, in
LJW
, pp. 466–67.
    Charles Martyn describes Artemas Ward’s arrival in Cambridge in his biography of the general, pp. 89–90. For information on General John Thomas, I have relied on Charles Coffin’s
Life and Services of Major General John Thomas
, pp. 3–8. On recruitment in Massachusetts during the French and Indian wars, see Fred Anderson,
A People’s Army
, pp. 39–48. The resolution that the recruitment of enslaved African Americans reflected “dishonor on this colony” is in the May 20, 1775, minutes of the Committee of Safety,
JEPC
, p. 553. Joseph Tinker Buckingham in
Specimens of Newspaper Literature
, vol. 2, tells of how Benjamin Russell and his classmates found themselves marooned in Cambridge and how they attached themselves to the officers of the provincial army (p. 4). Paul Revere relates the conversation that followed Benjamin Church’s announcement that he had decided to pay a visit to Boston, as well as how Church pointed out the stain of blood on his stockings, in “A Letter . . . to the Corresponding Secretary,” pp. 110–11. Lysander Salmon Richards in his
History of Marshfield
tells of the wine closet Nesbitt Balfour built in the cellar of the Thomas house during the winter of 1775 (pp. 117–18). Allen French provides a detailed account of the militia’s tentative and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to prevent Balfour’s detachment from escaping from Marshfield in
FYAR
, pp. 28–30. My thanks to J. L. Bell in a personal communication for pointing out that Isaac Bissell’s first name was changed to Israel as the result of a copyist’s mistake as the message about the fighting at Lexington was carried from town to town. For an account of Bissell’s ride from Boston to New York and the spread of news of the fighting at Lexington throughout the colonies, see John Schiede, “The Lexington Alarm,” pp. 47–50, 62–75. For the activities of the Provincial Congress on April 22 and 23, 1775, see
JEPC
, pp. 147–50.
    On Gage’s negotiations with the town and the April 27 surrender of thousands of firearms on the part of the Boston residents as well as the loyalists’ insistence that the agreement not be honored, see Frothingham’s
History of the Siege of Boston
(
HSOB
), pp. 94–96. John Andrews tells of his decision to stay in Boston despite his wife’s decision to flee in an April 24, 1775, letter in LJA, pp. 405–6. Andrew Eliot writes of his intention to stay in Boston in a May 31, 1775, letter at MHS, in which he also writes of the “grass growing in the public walks and streets”; Eliot writes of “more than nine thousand” Bostonians having left the city in a June 19, 1775, letter to Isaac Smith, in MHS
Proceedings
, 1878, p. 287. Peter Oliver describes the town as “a perfect skeleton” in
OPAR
, p. 124. By March 1776 the British army in Boston had reached 8,906 men, including officers: see
DAR
10:246. An April 25, 1775,