Bunker Hill

British policies” in the colonies (p. 78). Probably the best depiction of the fortifications at Boston Neck are in Lieutenant Page’s “A Plan of the town of Boston with entrenchments, etc.” Sir Thomas Hyde’s “A Plan of the Town of Boston and its Environs with the Lines, Batteries, and Encampments,” is also extremely helpful. Samuel Webb in a March 1 diary entry in
Correspondence and Journals
, p. 129, makes the claim that “even the strong fortifications of Gibraltar is said not to equal them, they have cut a canal through the Neck by which Boston is now an island, on the south and west sides they are strongly fortified by a chain of forts.” Washington writes of the events of the first of the year in a January 4, 1776, letter to Joseph Reed in
PGW
, in which he says that the broadsides of the speech were “sent out by the Boston gentry”; he also writes of the “farcical” belief on the part of the British soldiers that the Union flag had been raised “as a signal of submission” (3:23–25). Ansoff cites the report of an anonymous ship captain who claimed that the rebels burned a copy of the speech (pp. 84–85), as well as the report of British lieutenant William Carter, who wrote that the rebels “fired 13 guns and gave the like number of cheers” (p. 85).
    Richard Frothingham in
HSOB
provides an account of the interrupted performance of
The Blockade of Boston
(p. 27), as does Allen French in
FYAR
, p. 635. The performance is also described in letters written on January 15, and January 20, 1776, in which one correspondent reports how the audience “clapped prodigiously,” and the actors called out “to get the paint and smut off their faces” (
LAR
, pp. 255 and 259). William Gordon writes of how “the ridicule was turned upon themselves” in “Apr. 6, 1776, Letter to Samuel Wilson” (p. 361). Gordon writes of Knowlton’s mission crossing “the mill-dam upon the ice” to burn the buildings on the Charlestown peninsula in his
History
, 2:18. Washington writes that “all the generals upon earth should not have convinced me . . . of delaying an attack” in a January 14, 1776, letter to Joseph Reed in
PGW
, 3:90; in the same letter he writes of wishing he had retreated “to the backcountry and lived in a wigwam” rather than taken this command (p. 89). The minutes of the January 16, 1776, council of war in which it was decided that “a vigorous attempt” against the regulars in Boston should be attempted “as soon as practicable” is in
PGW
, 3:103–4.
    Henry Knox describes how he and his men “took a comfortable nap” around a roaring fire on Lake George in the December 10 entry of his
Diary
, the original copy of which is at the MHS. Knox’s December 17, 1775, letter to Washington in which he describes his efforts to secure forty-two “exceeding strong sleds” and his hope for “a fine fall of snow” is in
PGW
, 2:563–64. Knox writes of Schuyler’s refusal to pay the price the original manufacturer of the sleds demanded as well as of the snow being “too deep for the cannon to set out even if the sleds were ready” in a December 28, 1775, entry in his
Diary
, in which he also writes in a January 1–4 entry of “getting holes cut . . . in the river in order to strengthen ice.” According to an article in the February 20, 1915,
Albany Evening Journal
, “upward pressure on the ice would cause water to flow through the holes . . . [and] the clear water would freeze to add thickness to the ice.” Knox’s January 5, 1775, letter to Washington is in
PGW
, 3:29. Knox writes of the cannon breaking through the ice at Albany and of the eventual rescue of the “drowned cannon . . . , owing to the assistances [of] the good people of the city . . . in return for which we christened her The Albany,” in the January 7 and 8, 1776, entries of his
Diary.
The account of Knox’s experiences at Westfield is in John Becker,
The Sexagenary: or Reminiscences of the American Revolution
, pp. 34–35. J. L. Bell provides an excellent account of Knox’s ascendancy to colonel of the artillery regiment in
Washington’s Headquarters
, in which he cites Thomas Crafts’s December 16, 1775, letter of outrage (pp. 302–9).
    Jeduthan Baldwin writes of his efforts to build a fortification at Lechmere Point in his
Diary
, pp. 18–28, including his observation on February 13 that Washington “found a good bridge of ice to Boston.” The minutes of the February 16,