Spring 1775: The Battle of Bunker Hill – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

The Battle of Bunker Hill, 250 years ago this week, dropped the other shoe on the Thirteen Colonies’ march toward independence. In that spring of 1775, the first shots were fired with some uncertainty at Lexington and Concord on April 19. In May, the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia took steps necessary to any successful revolution: publicity to generate popular support, money to fund operations, and an army to defend its intentions.

To lead that army, the Congress selected George Washington of Virginia and dispatched him to Boston to command the growing assemblage of troops around Boston. Before Washington could arrive, however, the “other shoe,” or bookend, to the seminal events of that spring had occurred — a major battle that left no doubt this was to be an all-out fight for independence.

On the evening of June 16, 1775, rebel militia regiments led by William Prescott of Massachusetts fortified the Charlestown peninsula opposite Boston and its 110-foot highpoint of Bunker Hill.  Whoever controlled these heights, controlled Boston. When the British commander, General Thomas Gage, discovered the newly dug earthworks on the morning of June 17, he ordered General William Howe to cross the Charles River and attack Bunker Hill that very afternoon.

Howe ordered 1,500 men row across the Charles River, and they landed unopposed on the beach below Bunker Hill. Prescott’s men in the redoubt were content to watch because they were short of gunpowder. As Howe formed his troops on a rise about one hundred yards inland, he found a surprise. Colonel John Stark’s First New Hampshire Regiment — about 400 men — had taken up defensive positions behind a rail fence and a hastily erected stone barricade on the Mystic River beach, anchoring Prescott’s left flank.

Seeing this massing of troops, Howe sent for reinforcements. By the time they arrived, he had about 2,200 men in the field against likely half that number, and it was well after three in the afternoon. Here was the difference between the opening round at Lexington and what was about to occur below Bunker Hill: This could not be called an accidental encounter. When Howe’s troops advanced toward Prescott’s and Stark’s positions, it was clear to any observer that the outcome would be a pitched battle.

As the British troops advanced uphill in two long lines and in column against Stark’s position on the Mystic beach, the bulk of the American line remained silent, keenly aware of its limited gunpowder. At perhaps 50 yards, the command “Fire” resounded, and the entire rebel line exploded with a thunderous roar of musketry.

The British troops staggered and fell back in disarray. Howe had little choice but to order them to reform and move forward again, but this frontal maneuver had not been his initial intent. Howe had placed faith in his light infantry to turn the left end of the rebel line and then have his heavy grenadier companies bulldoze through with fixed bayonets.

Eleven companies of light infantry, about 350 men, rushed headlong in a column of fours against the stone barricade. The first rebel volley decimated this advance company. As the second company confidently moved forward to take its place, Stark’s New Hampshire men, stood strong as granite three deep and let loose another volley. As the light infantry attack collapsed, the grenadier troops on the hillside above were also stopped by steady fire.

After Howe’s second attack also failed, he ordered a third charge directly against the upper earthworks because Stark’s position clearly could not be breached. What ended resistance there was a shortage of gunpowder. After the redoubt was breached and its remaining defenders surrounded, it was over in seconds with a grisly bayoneting of those remaining.

On the British side, far from jubilation, there was a dazed sense of disbelief. The slope below the redoubt was littered with red uniforms of the dead and dying. General Howe was in a state of denial. He had won the field, but at a staggering cost.

In a letter to his superiors, General Gage was prophetic: “The trials we have had,” Gage confessed, “show that the Rebels are not the despicable Rabble too many have supposed them to be, and I find it owing to a Military Spirit … joined with an uncommon Zeal and Enthusiasm.”

After Bunker Hill, there was no doubt this was all-out war. If one counted only control of the battlefield, Bunker Hill was a British victory, but for the American psyche of 1775, the battle was a huge morale booster. As the first major clash between rebel forces and British regulars, Bunker Hill showed that those who would increasingly call themselves “American,” could hold their own.

The American Revolution was not begun at Bunker Hill; it certainly was not decided at Bunker Hill. But the Battle of Bunker Hill proved that the drive for independence and a new nation was truly begun in the American spring of 1775.

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Walter R. Borneman, from American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution.