Bunker Hill

remembered, “and they made a noble appearance in their red coats.”
    Unlike what had happened just a few hours before in Lexington, when in the dim light of dawn the troops had burst upon the green in a terrifying rush, the people of Concord had ample, if not too much, time to contemplate what these colorfully dressed soldiers were about. Definitive word of what had happened at Lexington had not yet reached Concord. Since the militiamen had been directed
not
to fire the first shot, there were to be several tense and agonizing hours to come as the militia’s leaders, full of hesitancy and indecision, tried to figure out what to do.
    —
    On a hill overlooking the town’s meetinghouse, which just the week before had been the temporary home of the Provincial Congress, stood most of Concord’s militia along with a group of civil, military, and religious leaders. Near this collection of elders was a liberty pole topped by a flag, which like the flag in Taunton may have read “Liberty and Union.” One of the youngest members of this distinguished group was the minister William Emerson, thirty-two. All winter and spring he had been encouraging the town’s residents to resist British attempts to limit their God-given liberties. “Let us stand our ground,” he insisted that morning. “If we die, let us die here!”
    Others, such as Colonel James Barrett, sixty-five, a veteran of the French and Indian War whose house on the other side of the Concord River was where many of the most critical military stores were now hidden, had less enthusiasm for forcing a confrontation. The debate continued even as the advance guard of militia that had been monitoring the British rushed into town with the regulars at their heels. Finally they decided to abandon their position beside the liberty pole and retreat with the town’s women and children across the North Bridge to the militias’ prearranged meeting place at Punkatasset Hill, about a mile from the town center, where they could monitor the British and yet be out of the regulars’ immediate reach.
    It irked them to watch as the soldiers marched into the almost empty town, cut down the liberty pole, and began searching for the cannons, ammunition, and other military equipment that Gage’s spies had reported to be hidden in the inhabitants’ homes. Most alarming for Colonel Barrett was the sight of seven companies of light infantrymen heading for the North Bridge in the direction of his farm. Once at the bridge, the commander of the British detachment, Captain Lawrence Parsons, left three companies to guard the crossing in anticipation of his eventual return as he pushed ahead with four companies toward the Barrett homestead, about two miles from the bridge. By that time Colonel Barrett had left Punkatasset Hill and was on his way to warn his wife and family that the regulars were coming.
    —
    The Barretts had spent the previous day and night preparing for this eventuality. Barrett’s fourteen-year-old grandson, James, had led a team of oxen towing a cart full of military supplies to a nearby swamp, where he and his companions hid the stores under pine boughs. South of the barn, others plowed up a thirty-foot-square section of field and, instead of sowing it with seed, laid muskets in the trenches. Some of the cannons were laid under a bed of sage; other pieces of artillery were buried beneath a mound of manure.
    As soon as he arrived that morning, Barrett encouraged his wife, Rebeckah, to flee. “No,” she replied. “I can’t live very long anyway, and I’d rather stay and see that they don’t burn down the house and barn.” While her husband returned to Punkatasset Hill by a back route through the woods, she and her family made some final preparations in anticipation of the soldiers’ arrival.
    —
    Captain Parsons was led to the Barrett farm by Ensign Henry DeBerniere, one of the two British spies that Gage had sent out that winter into the New England countryside. Upon meeting Mrs. Barrett, Parsons immediately realized that this was not going to be easy. She expected, she sternly informed him, that he and his men would “respect private property.” Once he assured her that this was the case, she proceeded to shadow his every move, repeatedly reminding him of his promise and in several instances providing enough of a distraction to steer his men away from hidden caches of bullets and other stores. By 8:00 a.m., they’d managed to find only a few wooden gun