Bunker Hill

description of Charles Lee’s blasphemous recruitment efforts (pp. 514–15). Nathanael Greene in a letter of December 10, 1775, to Samuel Ward tells of the Connecticut soldiers leaving “in shoals” (
PNG
, 1:160). William Gordon in his “Apr. 6, 1776, Letter to Samuel Wilson” writes of it being “the cast of New Englanders . . . to quit the service . . . when the time is expired” (p. 360). Nathanael Greene writes in a November 29, 1775, letter of the “infamous desertion” of the New England soldiers, and in a letter of December 18, 1775, of Washington’s unrealistic expectations regarding the provincial army he inherited (
PNG
, 1:154, 163–64). Artemas Ward’s letter defending the New Englanders from the criticisms of those “from the southward” is cited by Clifford Shipton in his biography of Ward in
SHG
, 12:335–36. Douglas Southall Freeman in
George Washington
faults Washington for having “devoted too much of his own time to ‘paper work’ ” during the siege and not enough time involving himself in the even more vital recruitment process; given his experience twenty years before in Virginia, it was clear Washington “knew how to make an army out of a congeries of jealous colonial contingents”; therefore he was guilty of a “failure to exercise the full functions of a command-in-chief” while in Cambridge in the fall of 1775 (4:69). Joseph Warren seems to have been guilty of the opposite extreme during the spring of 1775, when the time he spent with the army prevented him from keeping up with the paperwork associated with the Committee of Safety and the Provincial Congress.
    Washington writes of giving “most general satisfaction” and of making “my conduct coincide with the wishes of mankind” in a December 15, 1775, letter to Joseph Reed in
PGW
, 2:551–52, and in a January 14, 1776, letter, also to Reed, in
PGW
, 3:87. In a February 10, 1776, letter to Reed
(
PGW
, 3:288), Washington reveals, “I have never entertained an idea of an accommodation since I heard of the measures which were adopted in consequences of the Bunkers Hill fight,” meaning that he had resigned himself to war back in the fall. This is borne out by Jeremy Belknap’s October 19, 1775, observation in his journal that “
independence
was become a favorite point in the army” (p. 78). Nathanael Greene’s December 20, 1775, letter speaking of “a declaration of independence” is in
PNG
, p. 167. J. L. Bell discusses Washington’s decision to reverse himself on the issue of allowing free blacks to serve in the army in
Washington’s Headquarters
, pp. 272–76. George Quintal Jr., in
Patriots of Color
,
pp. 170–80, cites the petition concerning Salem Poor. As Quintal states, attributing the character and skills of a gentleman officer to an African American was “extraordinary”; Quintal also includes a copy of Poor’s manumission document; in addition, he cites a tradition from Andover that Poor shot General Abercromby (as opposed to Pitcairn). J. L. Bell in
Washington’s Headquarters
cites the claim by Samuel Swett that Poor shot Major Pitcairn, p. 280. The December 22 resolve from the Continental Congress that Washington could attack Boston “notwithstanding the town . . . be destroyed,” is in a footnote in
PGW
, 2:590. Washington did not receive this resolve until early January (as he states in his January 4, 1776, letter to John Hancock in
PGW
, 3:18), but he was clearly operating in anticipation of a congressional blessing to attack Boston when he decided to reverse himself on the issue of free African Americans in the army. On December 31, 1775, Washington wrote to John Hancock and the Continental Congress that “it has been represented to me that the free negroes who have served in this army are very much dissatisfied at being discarded—as it is to be apprehended, that they may seek employ in the ministerial army—I have presumed to depart from the resolution respecting them, and have given license for their being enlisted, if this is disproved of by Congress, I will put a stop to it” (
PGW
, 2:623).
    Chapter Twelve— The Clap of Thunder
    My account of the raising of the Union flag on Prospect Hill is based largely on Peter Ansoff’s “The Flag on Prospect Hill,” which debunks the legend that Washington raised the horizontally striped Continental Colors on January 1, 1776, on Prospect Hill. As Ansoff writes, the Union Jack had become “a symbol of resistance to