Bunker Hill

Vincent Tentindo’s and Marylyn Jones’s
Battle of Chelsea Creek, May 27, 1775: Graves’ Misfortune
. Both studies contain extensive amounts of primary source material from contemporary diaries, letters, logs, and newspapers. See also
NDAR
, 1:544–46. Amos Farnsworth writes about his experiences during the skirmishes associated with the battle in the May 27, 1775, entry of his
Diary
, pp. 80–81. Charles Chauncy, in a July 8, 1775, letter to Richard Price, writes, “I heard General Putnam say, who had the command of our detachment, that the most of the time he and his men were fighting there was nothing between them and the fire of the enemy but pure air”; Tentindo and Jones,
Battle of Chelsea Creek
, p. 102. The account of the conversation among Putnam, Ward, and Joseph Warren after the Battle of Chelsea Creek is in “Colonel Daniel Putnam’s Letter Relative to the Battle of Bunker Hill and General Israel Putnam,” p. 285.
    Chapter Nine— The Redoubt
    My account of the
Quero
’s arrival in England is based on Robert Rantoul’s “The Cruise of the
Quero
,” which includes Walpole’s reference to John Derby as the “Accidental Captain,” as well as the letter referring to the “total confusion and consternation” of the ministers, along with Gibbon’s remarks on the incident, and Dartmouth’s frustrated letter to Gage,
pp. 4–30. I’ve also consulted James Phillips,
Salem in the Eighteenth Century
, pp. 367–69, and George Daughan,
If by Sea
, pp. 14–16. Richard Frothingham quotes the doggerel about the three British generals from
The Gentleman’s Magazine
in
HSOB
, p. 8. Frothingham quotes a contemporary newspaper report describing the meeting of the
Cerberus
and a packet bound for Newport during which Burgoyne made the comment about “elbowroom” in
HSOB
, p. 114. On Burgoyne I have consulted Edward De Fonblanque’s
Life and Correspondence
and George Athan Billias’s “John Burgoyne: Ambitious General,” in
George Washington’s Generals and Opponents
, edited by George Athan Billias, pp. 142–65; on Howe I have looked to Bellamy Partridge,
Sir Billy Howe
, pp. 1–25; Troyer Anderson,
The Command of the Howe Brothers
, pp. 42–84; Ira Gruber,
The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution
, pp. 3–71; and Maldwyn Jones, “Sir William Howe: Conventional Strategist” in
George Washington’s Generals and Opponents
, edited by George Athan Billias, pp. 39–50. On Clinton, I have consulted William Willcox’s
Portrait of a General
, pp. 40–50 (which contains Clinton’s description of himself as a “shy bitch”); and Willcox’s “Sir Henry Clinton: Paralysis of Command,” in
George Washington’s Generals and Opponents
, edited by George Athan Billias, pp. 73–76. Gage’s June 12, 1775, Proclamation (ghostwritten by Burgoyne) is in
PIR
, 4:2769–72; Gage’s letter of the same date to Lord Dartmouth, in which he explains that there is no longer any “prospect of any offers of accommodation,” is in
DAR
, 9:171. Burgoyne complains of the “vacuum” that surrounds him in a June 25 letter to Rochford in E. D. de Fonblanque,
Political and Military Episodes
,
p. 143. Howe’s June 12, 1775, letter to his brother Richard, in which he explains the plan to take Dorchester Heights, Charlestown, and ultimately Cambridge, is in
Proceedings of the Bunker Hill Monument Association
, 1907, pp. 112–17.
    The meeting between Joseph Warren and John Jeffries is described in a May 22, 1875, letter written by Jeffries’s son and “derived from statements of my father,” titled “A Tory Surgeon’s Experiences,” pp. 729–32. J. L. Bell, in the October 18, 2007, entry of his blog
Boston 1775
(http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2007/10/dr-joseph-warrens-body-first.html), expresses his doubts that the meeting between Warren and Jeffries ever happened—quite rightly describing Jeffries as a “slippery character” and pointing out that when Jeffries later returned to Boston after years away in England, it was useful to have been once sought after by Joseph Warren. I am inclined, however, to believe Jeffries’s account. Given Warren’s difficulties with Benjamin Church and his willingness to communicate directly with the supposed enemy (as attested to by his correspondence with Gage), as well as his obvious love of risk, this sounds like just the kind of thing he would have done when circumstances required him to find a surgeon general. Also, Jeffries’s account as reported by his