Bunker Hill

1776, council of war are in
PGW
, 3:320–22. William Gordon’s account of how Ward opposed Washington’s proposal with a counterproposal to take Dorchester Heights is in his
History
, 2:24–25. Horatio Gates’s notes on the meeting are reprinted in a footnote in
PGW
, 3:323. William Heath recounts how he opposed Washington’s proposal to attack Boston in the event Howe decided to attack the fortifications on Dorchester Heights in his
Memoir
, p. 31. The “Plan for Attacking Boston” drawn up by Putnam, Sullivan, Greene, and Gates is in
PGW
, 3:332–33. Washington’s February 26, 1776, letter to Joseph Reed complaining of the council of war’s rejection of his original proposal to attack Boston and his hope that the British “will be so kind as to come out to us” once he occupies Dorchester Heights is in
PGW
, 3:370. Washington’s February 18, 1776, letter to John Hancock in which he admits that “the irksomeness of my situation” may have put too much “to hazard” is in
PGW
, 3:335–36. Nathanael Greene’s summation of what an attack on Boston might accomplish can be found in
PNG
, 1:194. Rufus Putnam describes how he came up with the idea of using chandeliers to build a fortification atop Dorchester Heights in his
Memoirs
, pp. 54–58. Although Putnam claims the book he borrowed from Heath was John Muller’s
Field Engineer
, it was, in all probability, Muller’s
Attack and Defenses of Fortified Places
, which contains both a definition and a picture of a chandelier in its early pages, which is not true of his
Field Engineer
, which is a translation of a work by M. le Chevalier De Clairac. Rufus Putnam’s early proposal of creating a stone and timber blind along Dorchester Neck is described in his February 11, 1776, letter to Washington, in
PGW
, 3:295–98.
    Heath writes of how William Davis was responsible for the idea of filling barrels with earth for rolling down onto the attacking British in his
Memoirs
, p. 33. William Gordon writes of the building of the forty-five bateaux and two floating batteries and of Quartermaster Mifflin’s proposal to occupy Dorchester Heights on March 4, the day before the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, in his
History
, 2:25. Washington writes to Ward about the desertion of the “rascally rifleman” in a February 27, 1776, letter in
PGW
, 3:384. Washington’s February 27, 1776, “General Order” is in
PGW
, 3:379–80. He writes to Joseph Reed of stumbling upon Phillis Wheatley’s poem of praise in his pile of correspondence in a February 10, 1776, letter to Joseph Reed in
PGW
, 3:290. Washington’s February 28, 1776, letter to Wheatley is in
PGW
, 3:387. Washington’s February 28, 1776, letter to Burwell Bassett about using his lands along the Ohio as a possible “asylum” is in
PGW
, 3:386.
    Archibald Robertson writes of the number of rebel “shot and shells” fired on the night of March 2, 1776, in his
Diary
, p. 73. Heath records in his diary entry for March 2 that the American cannons split because they “were not properly bedded, as the ground was hard frozen” (
Memoir
,
p. 32). Samuel Webb records in a March 4 journal entry that “some conjecture ’tis want of knowledge in the bombardiers, some one thing and some another, but ’tis hinted—treachery, if the latter I hope it may come to light” (
Correspondence and Journals
, p. 134). Frothingham reprints Knox’s tally of the total number of shot and shell fired by his artillery regiment on the night of March 4: “Lamb’s Dam [in Roxbury]: five 13-inch shells, six 10-inch shells; 42 24-pound shot, 38 18-pound shot; Lechmere’s Point: 32 24-pound shot, 14 18-pound shot; two 10-inch shells; Cobble Hill: 18 18-pound shot; total: 144 shot, 13 shells” (
HSOB
, p. 298). Douglas Southall Freeman in
George Washington
, 4:34, cites the reference to seeing as many as seven shells “in the air at the same instant” on the night of March 4. Abigail Adams writes of the roar of the cannons on the night of March 4 in a letter to her husband John started on March 2, in
Adams Family Correspondence
, vol. 1, edited by L. H. Butterfield, pp. 354–55. Samuel Webb records hearing “the cries of poor women and children” in a March 5 journal entry in
Correspondence
, p. 134. Archibald Robertson writes of the British casualties inflicted by the American cannonade in a March 4 entry in his
Diary
, p. 73. A March 4, 1776, letter from a British officer in
LAR
includes the statement that “it