The neck, or isthmus, connecting Charlestown to the mainland was so low in elevation that it was occasionally awash at high tide. But just southeast of it on the Charlestown side, the ground rose to a series of hills that peaked and then stepped downhill toward Boston. The first of these was “a round, smooth hill” about 110 feet in height that sloped steeply toward the waters of the Mystic River to the northeast and a millpond off the Charles River to the southwest. This was Bunker Hill, and there was no question about its name. It was well documented in public records and readily recognized in common usage.

From Bunker Hill, the spine of the ridge descended down the first step to a lower, broader hill. Its name was more problematic. While it would later be called Breed’s Hill, there is no evidence that the name was affixed to it in 1775. Some simply thought that it was part of Bunker Hill. Others called the hilltop and surrounding area by the names of the owners of the pastures into which it was divided. Neat and orderly, as was New England custom, these fields were partitioned by stone walls and rail fences that could be counted on to impede any line of advancing infantry. The easterly portions of these hills were used chiefly for hay fields and pasturing; the westerly portions contained orchards and gardens.

The high point of this second hill rose sixty-two feet above sea level and divided brick kilns, clay pits, and some marshy ground on the Mystic River side from the core of Charlestown’s buildings on the Charles River side. Charlestown had about four hundred buildings and, before Lord Percy’s disruption on the evening of April 19, had been home to several thousand people. By June, however, with Admiral Graves’s guns staring at it across the water from Copp’s Hill, much of the town had been abandoned.

The final step of high ground before one reached the saltwater estuaries was Moulton’s Hill, thirty-five feet tall and commanding the easternmost point of the peninsula above Moulton’s (sometimes reported as “Morton’s”) Point. The main road extended from the neck across the summit of Bunker Hill, around the eastern side of the as-yet-unnamed Breed’s Hill, and between it and Moulton’s Hill to reach the Charlestown wharves. Smaller roads ran from the Bunker-Breed saddle down to Charlestown proper and along the millpond between Charlestown and the neck. All in all, the Charlestown peninsula was a relatively compact area of irregular terrain, the shoreline of which was heavily impacted by the ebb and flow of the tides.¹

Whatever else might be said about nomenclature, it was clear to any trained observer that—as General Henry Clinton had noted within hours of his arrival in Boston—whoever controlled the heights of the Charlestown peninsula controlled much of Boston. Those parts of Boston not within cannon range from Charlestown’s heights, including the wharves on the seaward side, were within range from the heights at Dorchester to the south. Seize both these positions, and Boston was squeezed like a lemon.

What followed became known to history as the Battle of Bunker Hill. Trivia buffs have long been quick to correct and say, ah, but it was fought on Breed’s Hill. But since the name Breed’s Hill was apparently not known in 1775, it seems correct to say that the Battle of Bunker Hill was indeed fought on the broader slopes of what everyone at the time thought was Bunker Hill. The crest at the center of the action only became known as Breed’s Hill shortly thereafter. Regardless of names, General Gage’s regulars and Colonel Prescott’s rebels were about to fight one of the most deadly battles of what would become a seven-year war.

THE MOON WAS WANING THAT night, but it was only three days past full. It rose in the east and began to shed light on the hills above Charlestown. Colonel Prescott sent Captain John Nutting and a company from his regiment along the shore road past the millpond toward Charlestown. They were to act as an advance patrol and spread the alarm should they encounter any sign that the rebel movement across the neck had been detected.

Prescott and the bulk of his men continued up the slopes of Bunker Hill and soon came to the rudimentary works that Captain Montresor had thrown up at Lord Percy’s direction on the evening of April 19. These were a start, and they might have been expanded. Admittedly, the works faced away from Charlestown, but they dominated all approaches to the neck and protected a backdoor exit from the peninsula to the Cambridge mainland. The other sides of the oval-shaped crest of Bunker Hill commanded the remainder of the peninsula as it sloped downhill toward Charlestown proper. Short of cannon fire against the neck from Royal Navy ships in the Mystic or Charles Rivers, there was no easy avenue by which these heights might be surrounded and cut off.

But as in the question of whether or not to occupy these highest heights in the first place, there now occurred a heated debate about where to dig a defensive perimeter. The three men involved in the decision were Colonel William Prescott, Colonel Richard Gridley—a sixty-five-year-old engineer whose service went back to the 1745 campaign against Louisbourg—and Colonel Israel Putnam. A complete account of what happened among them will never be known. There is no surviving record in writing—no formal version and no scribbling in orderly books. Any piecing together of contemporary evidence was stymied in the generation or so after the battle by dueling descendants and supporters of both Prescott and Putnam.

But this much can be surmised: Colonels Prescott and Gridley favored digging a redoubt and trench works on the crest of Bunker Hill. For Prescott, it was an easy decision: he was the one with the orders from General Ward, and they very plainly said, “Bunker Hill,” the location of which was not in doubt. Gridley, as an engineer, likely favored Bunker Hill for its commanding geography. Colonel Putnam, however, led the trio down the ridge toward the lower knoll, which was closer to Boston. According to the late historian Allen French, it lacked “every advantage of the higher hill” and “commanded neither the water nor its own wide and gentle flanks: troops could be marched around it, or sent in boats to land in its rear.”² In other words, it was an exposed position from which there were tenuous avenues of retreat. Indeed, its only advantage appeared to be that even small cannons along its crest could threaten Boston and shipping in the Charles River. That, of course, was exactly what Putnam was after. Faced with such a challenge, General Gage and his army would have to come out and fight.

Why Prescott and Gridley acceded to Putnam’s aggressive stance is a matter of debate. Putnam was nominally a brigadier general of Connecticut forces, but that carried little weight among Massachusetts men. Besides, Colonel Prescott, who was almost Putnam’s equal in military experience and age, if not quite in temperament, had been given command of the force. Putnam’s role was less formal. He may have wrangled Captain Knowlton’s two hundred men from his own Connecticut regiment into the expedition just so he had an excuse to tag along. In the end, however, Putnam’s force of personality prevailed. Gridley proceeded to lay out a redoubt and exterior lines on Breed’s Hill well below the Bunker Hill summit. About midnight, Prescott’s men began to dig.

The redoubt dug on Breed’s Hill was relatively small—by one account about 130 feet on each of four sides. If it could be said to have a “front,” this was the side that projected outward in a V-shaped redan and faced directly toward the Charlestown ferry crossing and Copp’s Hill. This made sense if the redoubt’s most menacing feature was to be the cannons firing at Boston. It also presupposed that any counterattack would come directly from Charlestown. The construction did not, however, take into account the open slopes on the left, which dropped gently toward Moulton’s Hill and the Mystic River. (On higher Bunker Hill, these slopes were more precipitous and thus more easily defended.)³

All through the short night, as his troops dug and dug, Prescott was nervous that sentries on board Royal Navy ships in the Charles would raise a cry of alarm. At one point, he may have ridden to the shore to listen, but there was no sound except the reassuring routine calls of “all’s well.” Near dawn, Prescott ordered Captain Nutting’s patrol to withdraw from the Charlestown road and join his other forces.

Even if the sentries on Admiral Graves’s ships thought all was well, there was one sharp-eared individual in Boston who was not so sure. Just what Major General Henry Clinton was doing out and about in the late hours of June 16 is a matter of conjecture. According to Clinton’s notes, later found among his papers, “In the Evening of ye 16th I saw them at work, reported it to Genls Gage and Howe and advised a landing in two divisions at day brake.” Clinton claimed that Howe approved the plan, “but G Gage seemed to doubt their intention.”⁴

Whether this encounter with Gage and Howe indeed happened that night or was simply Clinton’s way of disassociating himself from events after the fact is not known. Howe, without mentioning Clinton’s report, made a similar statement some days later and claimed “the Centrys on the Boston side had heard the Rebels at work all Night, without making any other report of it, except mentioning it in Conversation in the Morning.”⁵

This left the first full-blown report of rebel activity above Charlestown to come from the guns of HMS Lively. The twenty-gun sloop was anchored in the middle of the Charles River, having recently replaced the Somerset at the Charlestown ferry station. The morning was moderate and fair. At 4:00 a.m., a lookout on the Lively heard sounds coming from the heights about half a mile away and, either by the light of the moon as it sank toward the west or by the first rays of the sun lighting the eastern horizon, he looked up to see fresh mounds of dirt heaped along the slope of Breed’s Hill. As the ship’s log succinctly recorded it, he “discover’d the Rebels throwing up a Redoubt on a Hill at the Back of the Charles Town. Began to fire upon them as did the Battery of Copps Hill.”⁶ Prescott heard the whistle of the Lively’s first nine-pound cannonball and knew for certain that he had been discovered.

There is some question about the ability of the Lively to elevate its guns high enough to reach the rebel works, but this is where Admiral Graves’s battery on Copp’s Hill became important. To the admiral’s chagrin, it was no longer under the navy’s direct command. Previous snickering aside, the army had come to realize how useful it might be against any force assembled in Charlestown or on the heights above the town. General Gage had prevailed upon Admiral Graves to turn its control over to the army. “Insensibly,” the admiral later complained, “it lost its original nickname, and instead thereof was called by the army from hence forward Copeshill Battery.”⁷

By whatever name it was known, this battery, along with high-angled mortars on floating gun platforms in the river, poured a regular fire against the rebel works as dawn revealed the stark reality of Colonel Prescott’s situation. The Breed’s Hill position was every bit as exposed as he had feared. His right flank could be somewhat protected as long as skirmishers could be hidden in the outlying buildings of Charlestown. From there, they could harry infantry advancing directly up the slopes toward his position. His left flank, however, was entirely open, and Prescott set his men to work extending a breastwork from the redoubt northward for about one hundred yards. This led to the vicinity of some marshy ground that offered some impediment to attacking troops.

While Prescott was thus occupied, Colonel Putnam seems to have spent a good deal of time reinforcing Bunker Hill and belatedly starting entrenchments along its crest. Historian Allen French suspects that the morning light showed Putnam the tenuous nature of the Breed’s Hill position and that Putnam was trying to redeem his error in urging Prescott to the forward position.⁸ This is certainly possible, but Putnam must surely have had a good idea of the limitations of Breed’s Hill from his Charlestown march a month earlier. Perhaps more likely is that Putnam had long planned the Breed’s Hill location as bait and intended that Prescott make an orderly retreat up Bunker Hill once the British had been lured out of Boston. It is even possible that Prescott initially agreed to this, which is why he went about the Breed’s Hill fortifications.

But as the skies lightened and cannonballs continued to rain down, some of Prescott’s men indeed felt like sacrificial lambs. They found themselves “against Ships of the Line, and all Boston fortified against us.” Peter Brown, the company clerk in Prescott’s regiment, later wrote what many were thinking: “The danger we were in made us think there was treachery and that we were brought there to be all slain, and I must and will say that there was treachery, oversight or presumption in the Conduct of our Officers.”⁹

Soon Brown was not the only one looking over his shoulder. Colonel Prescott was, too. The men from his regiment were standing firm, mostly out of loyalty to him, but troops from the other two regiments slowly began to melt away and make their way up to higher Bunker Hill. For a time, the British cannon fire stopped, and there was an eerie silence broken on the rebel side by the sound of picks and shovels throwing dirt ever higher. Then, about eleven, recalled Brown, the British cannons “began to fire as brisk as ever, which caus’d many of our young Country people to desert.”¹⁰

There was also an ongoing tug-of-war between Prescott and Putnam. Prescott wanted to keep digging and strengthening his forward position. Putnam wanted tools and workers to improve the Bunker Hill crest. Prescott claimed that if men moved back with tools to assist Putnam, they would never return to the redoubt on Breed’s Hill, and he was right. In addition, there seemed to be no agreement—perhaps there was not even discussion—about what order of withdrawal might be undertaken when the British attacked. Having become invested in the Breed’s Hill redoubt and trenches, Prescott now seems to have become the stubborn one. With no senior officer to direct the larger scope of the battle and order Prescott and Putnam otherwise, their actions toward one another’s positions continued to be tentative: Prescott was not inclined to withdraw from Breed’s Hill, and Putnam was not rushing reinforcements to Prescott’s position to support him.¹¹

MEANWHILE, GENERAL GAGE AND HIS three major generals were having their own discussions about what should be done. There was complete agreement about one thing. Despite their own plans to attack Dorchester the next day, the rebels’ action in seizing the Charlestown heights had preempted that. “It therefore became necessary,” according to Burgoyne, “to alter our plan, and attack on [the Charlestown] side.”¹² How to do it was another matter.

Clinton’s reported plea for an attack at “day brake” was already out of the question—if, in fact, by “day brake” Clinton meant the morning of June 17, as has traditionally been assumed. But by the time Clinton conferred with Gage, Howe, and Burgoyne on the morning of the seventeenth, “day brake” that day had already passed. It may well be that by “tomorrow morning at day brake” Clinton really meant the morning of June 18, the date targeted for an assault on Dorchester. This would have kept assault preparations on schedule and given Clinton time to organize the additional logistics for the kind of enveloping attack he proposed.¹³

His plan was to take five hundred men and land them at “the Jews burying ground where,” he said, he “would have been in perfect security and within half gun shot of the narrow neck of communication of the Rebels.” Exactly where this landing site was is uncertain. It is equally uncertain whether Clinton initially meant to land on the Charles or Mystic side of the Charlestown peninsula.

However, if one assumes that “the Jews burying ground” was in some proximity to the Phipps Street Burying Ground, Clinton’s geography works from the Charles River side. His force would have been behind Prescott’s position on Breed’s Hill and about half a cannon shot from Charlestown Neck in the other direction via the millpond road. This is supported by Clinton’s further claim that his troops “marching through the town might have taken possession of the neck, and thus finished the affair.” Howe, meanwhile, would land with the main force at some point between Charlestown and Moulton’s Point and effect an enveloping, pincerlike movement. However, “my advice,” remembered Clinton, “was not attended to.”¹⁴

Whether the objection to Clinton’s plan came from both Gage and Howe or Howe alone as the field commander is not certain. If it was Howe alone, he likely did not favor splitting his forces: Clinton’s troops would be in potential danger of being cut off and surrounded until they could effect a linkup. Or possibly Howe may have underestimated the rebel resolve and assumed that one frontal show of force was all that was needed to send the rebels fleeing.

Instead of listening to Clinton, Howe planned to make a landing and an assault “as soon as the troops and boats could be got in readiness for that purpose.” And he meant to do it on that same day, regardless of what Clinton meant by “day brake.” This was clearly speeding up the timetable for the contemplated Dorchester assault the next day. Because the shore was very flat and the water quite shallow near Moulton’s Point, where Howe had judged it was “most proper to land,” it would be necessary to be ready to land with the next high tide—between two and three o’clock that afternoon.¹⁵

Clinton may have been beside himself, but he made no outward objection. Howe might have landed his troops on the Charlestown wharves without regard to the tide and fought his way through the largely abandoned town against whatever skirmishers Prescott might have deployed. Landing there in force would also have put Howe in good position to sweep along the millpond road and cut off the rebel redoubt, as Clinton had proposed. But perhaps because of the tales of Menotomy, Howe decided to steer clear of Charlestown’s buildings and fight to the east, on the open ground, where European-style warfare was more effective.¹⁶

Time would tell whether or not this was a mistake, but in order to accommodate this schedule, there was quite a flurry of activity that morning among Howe’s troops. The planned expedition against Dorchester had been calculated to keep men in the field at least several days before camp equipment could be landed. Howe did not alter this calculation even as the timetable was sped up and the target switched from Dorchester to Charlestown. Consequently his troops were ordered to assemble “at Half after 11 o’clock, with their Arms, Ammunition, Blanketts and the provisions Ordered to be Cooked this Morning.” This meant that “the bread must be baked, the meat boiled, and the whole served out before the troops could parade.” More important, it also meant that they would be carrying considerable weight in their haversacks as they went ashore in heavy woolen uniforms in the heat of a midsummer’s day. It might have been more expeditious and prudent to dispatch an agile force to secure the field rather than make a march in grand formation with cumbersome packs, but that is what Howe ordered.¹⁷

There is a tale that is perhaps apocryphal, but it nonetheless captures the mentality of the British high command concerning the rebels’ resolve. One of General Gage’s loyalist advisers was Abijah Willard, the former mandamus councilor late of Lancaster who had sought refuge in Boston immediately after the Lexington fight. Atop Copp’s Hill, Gage—or, as reports vary, perhaps it was Howe—handed his telescope to Willard and asked if he recognized anyone among the rebels on Breed’s Hill who might be in command. Willard did. On the hillside across the Charles River, easily recognizable in his floppy hat and loose white coat, stood Colonel William Prescott. He was not only Willard’s friend and fellow soldier from the colonial wars but also his brother-in-law. “Will he fight?” demanded Gage. Willard was not happy to make his reply. He could not answer for the colonel’s men, Willard said heavily, but “Prescott will fight you to the gates of hell!”¹⁸

THERE WAS ANOTHER MAN AS determined as Colonel Prescott to be present on Breed’s Hill: Joseph Warren. Even in these very early days of the fledgling American nation, it was unusual for a man of Warren’s position to ride to the front. John Adams mused about taking the field, but had never done so in practice. John Hancock ranted about his thoughts of military glory, but Samuel Adams placed a restraining hand on his shoulder and steered him elsewhere. Samuel Adams himself was never inclined to the military side of matters—viewing them simply as necessary work to be done by others to fulfill his political agenda. Given all this, it was exceptional for the man who was president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and chairman of its committee of safety to take the field, but that is what Warren did.

To be sure, Joseph Warren had always been quick to ride to the sound of the guns. He left Boston for Lexington and Concord early on the morning of April 19. He showed up on the shore after the Grape Island raid and tried to get into the Noddle’s Island fray. Just three days before the Bunker Hill battle, on June 14, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress voted to commission Warren a major general.¹⁹ Admittedly, the congress was awarding general officer commissions based almost as much on political skills as military prowess. Warren desperately wanted to be directly involved on the military side, so he used his political clout to obtain the commission.

There is no better evidence of the esteem in which his fellow Massachusetts leaders held Joseph Warren than their having elected him president of the Provincial Congress in John Hancock’s stead. One might speculate that Warren lobbied for the major general commission out of a desire to retain strong civilian control over the budding military. Warren had in fact written to Samuel Adams just days before, worrying about this very issue. “The continent must strengthen and support with all its weight the civil authority here,” Warren urged Adams. “Otherwise… we shall very soon find ourselves involved in greater difficulties than you can well imagine.”²⁰

But that speculation seems to be a reach. As a major general, Warren would be part of the military establishment, and his inexperience would have been glaring. Warren was only thirty-four, had no military training, and was suddenly senior to grizzled veterans of the French and Indian War who were old enough to be his father—Putnam and Prescott among them. With this commission, Warren would be senior to all Massachusetts officers except Artemas Ward and John Thomas, a doctor and veteran militia officer. One may speculate that Warren got the number three position only with the expectation that he would function as an adjutant general to bring order out of the chaos until a continental commander could arrive. But if so, why did Warren show up in the front lines on Breed’s Hill and then fail to provide Prescott and Putnam—the latter still not likely to be impressed by a Massachusetts commission—with some overarching direction?

By all accounts, Warren presided over a session of the Provincial Congress in Watertown until late on the evening of Friday, June 16. At some point, the session adjourned until eight o’clock the following morning, but Warren would not be there. He may have spent the night in Watertown or gone into Cambridge—the record is not clear—and if he did the latter, he may or may not have arrived in time to see Prescott’s column march off at dusk. What is abundantly clear, however, is that he declared his intention to share the coming peril with his countrymen. His good friend Elbridge Gerry, with whom he had boarded in Watertown, tried to dissuade him, but Warren could not be restrained.

On the morning of the seventeenth, Warren stopped at General Ward’s headquarters in Cambridge, but the general was not in. Warren opened express messages from John Hancock in Philadelphia regarding progress on forming a Continental Army, and then, suffering from an acute headache, he collapsed on a bed to rest. A short time later, a horseman galloped up with news that the British were landing at Charlestown.

As chairman of the Massachusetts committee of safety, Warren held civilian control over the Massachusetts military. But as a newly minted major general, he was junior to General Ward. Warren left Cambridge without seeing Ward or receiving any instructions, but in Ward’s absence, at both the civilian and military levels, there should have been no question of Warren’s authority. Yet upon his arrival at Bunker Hill in midafternoon, he did all he could to refrain from taking command. Supposedly Putnam recognized Warren’s recent commission and offered him command. Warren refused, claiming that his commission was not yet official. Instead, he asked Old Put where the hottest action was likely to be, and Putnam nodded down the slope toward Prescott’s redoubt on Breed’s Hill.

Warren went there next and had a similar conversation with Prescott. Once again, if the story is to be believed, a seasoned colonel on the brink of battle offered to turn over his command to an inexperienced, shiny new major general half his age. And once again, Warren refused, citing his unofficial commission. And yet: Putnam and Prescott must have known the Provincial Congress had approved Warren’s commission on June 15 or they would never have offered Warren command. What “official” notice was lacking? Was Warren merely seeking an excuse not to be pushed to the forefront? It must have been an awkward situation for all concerned. Saying no more, Joseph Warren, wearing clothes more suited for presiding over a legislature than hunkering down in a newly dug trench, took up a position in Prescott’s redoubt. He would indeed be on the front line.²¹

ON THE BRITISH SIDE, AFTER the bread was baked and the meat boiled, it was Major General William Howe who would be on the front lines. General Gage may or may not have put in an appearance on Copp’s Hill. There is some evidence that he had agreed among his generals that he would not venture from his headquarters at Province House in the event that the rebels tried simultaneously to force the Roxbury lines at Boston Neck. Lord Percy was in command there, and later Percy would say that nothing had happened on that front except “a pretty smart cannonade, wh[ich] we kept up from there upon Roxbury, in order to amuse the Rebels on that side.” This left Generals Burgoyne and Clinton to take up stations at the battery on Copp’s Hill and watch Howe’s troop movements.²²

If pageantry alone could win battles, Howe was the victor even before his first troops embarked from Boston. His order of battle called for the Fifth and Thirty-Eighth Regiments, along with the ten senior companies of grenadiers and light infantry, to depart from the Long Wharf. Once again, as at Lexington and Concord, these men would bear the brunt of the attack. The Forty-Third and Fifty-Second Regiments marched to the North Battery, just east of Copp’s Hill, to embark from there. The remaining companies of grenadiers and light infantry, as well as the Forty-Seventh Regiment and Major Pitcairn’s First Battalion of Marines, were to be held in reserve and ready to embark as necessary. Three of these regiments comprised Brigadier General Robert Pigot’s Second Brigade, and Howe designated him second in command of the assault.²³

Because of the limited number of small boats, Howe landed his troops in two waves. Those 1,100 troops assembled at the Long Wharf went first. Once they were ashore on the Charlestown side near Moulton’s Point, the flotilla of wooden craft rowed the short distance back to the North Battery, and 450 additional men clambered into them for the second wave. Both landings were accomplished without opposition, mostly because the rebels were not inclined to waste precious gunpowder at long range or venture forward from the relative safety of their entrenchments and breastworks.

Meanwhile, the sloops Lively, Glasgow, and Falcon paraded back and forth off the beachhead, spouting cannon fire. The Symmetry, an armed transport of shallow draft, joined this effort by cruising off the millpond and lobbing shells onto Charlestown Neck from the Charles River side. A smaller armed sloop and five floating batteries added their firepower to the bombardment, which, Howe reported, “they executed very effectually.”²⁴ It evidently did not occur to Howe, however, that some of this firepower might be better positioned on the Mystic River side of Charlestown Neck—decidedly behind the rebel positions visible from Boston.

Howe and Brigadier Pigot went ashore with the second wave, followed by some field artillery. They formed their troops in three lines on the rise of Moulton’s Hill, about one hundred yards inland from the beach. But now, as Howe watched his regiments dress their ranks, he saw something that gave him pause. From Moulton’s Hill, he got his first good look at the Mystic side of the Charlestown peninsula—the side that was not visible from Boston. The rebels had indeed been successful—over the course of one night and morning, and under sporadic fire—in pushing the breastworks on their left flank downhill from the redoubt. Beyond the marshy area, another defensive line ran down the slope toward the beach along the Mystic River. Howe couldn’t be certain, but it looked as though these were substantial works, part of which he would later call “cannon proof.”²⁵ But there was more bad news.

From this vantage point, the general could also look past the rebel redoubt on Breed’s Hill to higher Bunker Hill and see quite a conglomeration of men. Howe had no way of knowing that Prescott and Putnam had not come up with much of a battle plan and that command and control was lacking. But what he saw was enough to give him pause. Colonel John Stark’s First New Hampshire Regiment—likely about four hundred men—was moving through the confusion and making its way down the slopes toward what Howe thought was an “earthwork” above the Mystic River. In truth, it was only a reinforced rail fence covered with newly mown hay to give it an earthy tone.

Stark’s regiment had been quartered in Medford, about four miles away, and had received its orders to march about ten o’clock that morning. Being as short of ammunition and powder as most units were, Stark formed his men in front of a temporary arsenal “where each man received a gill cup full of powder, fifteen balls and one flint.” Given the hodgepodge of firearms, “there were scarcely two muskets in a company of equal caliber,” and “it was necessary to reduce the size of the balls for many of them.”²⁶

By the time Stark led his companies to the Cambridge side of Charlestown Neck, he found two regiments halted and blocking the way because of the fire being poured on the neck by the Symmetry from across the millpond. Stark’s adjutant went forward and said to their commanders that “if they did not intend to move on, he [Colonel Stark] wished them to open and let our regiment pass.” This they gladly did.

Henry Dearborn, who would go on to less-than-glorious service throughout the Revolution and during the War of 1812, was then a captain commanding the advance company of Stark’s regiment as it started across the neck. Stark led the way at “a very deliberate pace,” despite the British cannon fire. Should they not quicken the march, Dearborn asked, in order that they might sooner get across the exposed ground? Stark, the French and Indian War veteran, looked over at Dearborn with steadied New Hampshire calm and replied, “ ‘Dearborn, one fresh man in action is worth ten fatigued ones’ and continued to advance in the same cool and collected manner.”²⁷

Stark found Putnam atop Bunker Hill, but as he looked down the slope toward Moulton’s Point, it was obvious what needed to be done. After “a short but animated address,” to which his men gave three cheers, Stark led his regiment into the gap between Captain Thomas Knowlton’s men at the rail fence and the Mystic River. A smaller New Hampshire regiment, commanded by Colonel James Reed, arrived at about the same time and joined the line. In this way, the vulnerable left side of the rebel line came to be reinforced with men as hard as New Hampshire granite.

But as Howe’s troops prepared to move forward, Stark saw one other weakness from his position at the fence. The rail fence ran down the slope toward a small bluff but then stopped where the slope dropped the last dozen feet to the beach. Even at high tide, there was ample passage at the base of the bluff for troops to flank the fence. Stark immediately directed several of his companies to pile stones between the base of the bluff and out into the water and to take up positions behind what became essentially a continuation of the rail fence.²⁸

Seeing this increasing array of firepower forming on the left of the rebel line, Howe may have wished that he had worked with Admiral Graves to deploy the navy differently and/or that he had heeded Clinton’s advice about a landing to the rear of the rebel line. He could see that a pounding from a ship or two in the Mystic, as the Symmetry was delivering off the millpond and as the Lively, Glasgow, and Falcon were engaged in on the Charles, might discourage Knowlton’s, Reed’s, and Stark’s men at the rail fence and the hastily erected stone wall. Howe ordered two floating batteries that were firing off the millpond to move around to the Mystic side, but time and tide were against them, and they never got into position.²⁹

Meanwhile, the left side of the British line, where Brigadier General Pigot was stationed as second in command, was coming under attack from rebel skirmishers firing from buildings in Charlestown. Pigot faced one of his regiments in that direction and returned ineffective volleys. Watching this harassment, Admiral Graves, who to his great credit “went ashore in person to be near General Howe,” now made the same suggestion to Howe that he had made to General Gage on the evening of April 19: burn Charlestown. Howe readily agreed, and the admiral signaled his ships as well as the Copp’s Hill battery to fire incendiary carcasses into the town. According to Graves, the town “was instantly set on fire in many places, and the Enemy quickly forced from that station.” It didn’t happen all that quickly, of course, and it is likely that some of Pigot’s men on the shore finished the task with torches. In any event, the result was that most of the rebel skirmishers withdrew from the burning buildings, and Pigot secured his left flank for the coming assault up the hill.³⁰

But Howe was clearly worried by the many signs of rebel activity. “From this appearance,” the general recalled, “as well as our observation that they were assembling with all the force they could collect, I applied to General Gage for a reinforcement of troops.”³¹ These were the remaining troops assembled at the North Battery—the companies of light infantry and grenadiers remaining in Boston, along with the Forty-Seventh Regiment and Pitcairn’s First Battalion of Marines.

By the time these reinforcements of the Forty-Seventh Regiment and the First Marines joined with those of the first and second waves, Howe had about 2,200 men in the field, divided between the right division, under his personal command, which would attempt to flank Breed’s Hill by going through Stark’s line at the rail fence, and Pigot’s left division, which would march straight up the hill against Prescott’s redoubt and principal earthworks.

Upon receiving these additional troops, Howe rearranged his command into two lines instead of the original three at Moulton’s Point and “began the attack by a sharp cannonade from our field pieces and two Howitzers.” In between the cannon blasts, Howe’s entire formation—the right side of which was spread out some five hundred yards in front of the rebel left at the rail fence—began a slow but steady advance, “frequently halting to give time for the artillery to fire.”³²

But the field artillery action that day proved a comedy of errors on both sides. Rather than cannonading the rebel positions from his initial deployment on Moulton’s Hill—which might well have proven that the rail fence was far from “cannon proof”—Howe ordered his meager artillery forward with his battle line. All that did was to stutter-step his advance and give the rebels more time to get into position to counter his thrust. Even then, the cannons bogged down in marshy ground on the rebel side of Moulton’s Hill. To add insult to injury, a snafu in the supply department resulted in twelve-pound balls being delivered to the six-pound fieldpieces, forcing them to fire grapeshot, which had to cease once the troop lines moved forward of their mired positions.

Rebel artillery didn’t fare much better. Four artillery pieces made their way to the crest of Breed’s Hill early that morning, but according to Peter Brown of Prescott’s regiment, “the Captn of which fir’d a few times [at Boston] then swung his Hat three times round to the enemy and ceas’d to fire.” By the time Howe’s troops started to land, these pieces were ordered to repulse the landing, but their commander, Captain John Callender, chose to withdraw to the safer heights of Bunker Hill instead.³³

There Callender encountered an enraged Colonel Putnam on horseback. What did Callender think he was doing? Old Put sputtered. Callender claimed he was out of powder cartridges, but Putnam quickly dismounted and examined the ammunition boxes to find that was a lie. Putnam ordered Callender to return with his guns to support Stark’s left flank. Callender himself quickly disappeared, but Putnam personally directed the redeployment of his cannons.³⁴

So onward Howe’s lines came. It was a pretty sight, but Howe, who had once led the way for General Wolfe’s troops onto the Plains of Abraham, should have remembered his mentor’s tactics: speed and by column were the operative words. There certainly was no speed to this advance, and rather than arrowlike columns, Howe had deployed most of his troops in long lines across the open ground. “If an intrenchment is to be attacked,” Wolfe had written in 1755, in a set of instructions to young officers, “the troops should move as quick as possible towards the place, not in a line, but in small firing columns of three or four platoons in depth.”³⁵

The only column in the attack was formed by Howe’s companies of light infantry that were sent along the beach against Stark’s men at the stone barricade. These nimble troops were to turn the end of the rebel line and press it with a pincerlike movement against the grenadier companies and the Fifth and Fifty-Second Regiments advancing up the open slope. Incredibly, the British had not loaded their muskets. This was to be a bayonet charge.

But except for the light infantry along the beach, there was no dash to the maneuver. “The intermediate space between the two armies,” Howe complained, “was cut by fences, formed of strong posts and close railing, very high, and which could not be broken readily.”³⁶

On the British left, Pigot was planning a similar encirclement. He had three companies of light infantry and three of grenadiers, along with the Thirty-Eighth, Forty-Third, and Forty-Seventh Regiments and the marine battalion led by Major Pitcairn. With his left flank skirting the burning buildings of Charlestown, Pigot intended to sweep up the hill and encircle the redoubt on the left while his center and right attacked it head-on.³⁷

By now it was well after three in the afternoon. An after-action report by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress termed the British advance “a very slow march towards our lines.”³⁸ General Clinton, still watching from Copp’s Hill, termed it “exceedingly soldierlike” and, whatever misgivings he may have had, nonetheless called Howe’s disposition “perfect.”³⁹

For one last fleeting moment, the difference between Lexington and Concord and what was about to occur below Bunker Hill stood in stark relief. This could not be called an accident or the result of a lack of intelligence by either side. As General Howe’s troops advanced toward Prescott’s and Stark’s positions late on the afternoon of June 17, 1775, it was very clear to any observer from Copp’s Hill to Cambridge that the outcome would be a pitched battle.

All afternoon, as Howe finessed his formations and moved his troops forward with all the speed of tentative pawns in a casual chess match, the bulk of the American line had remained silent. Rebel commanders, fully aware of their limited quantity of gunpowder, continually admonished their men to hold their fire and reminded them that when the order finally came, they were to aim low, a lesson learned from the errant volleys of the British regulars along the Concord road.

The famous line most associated with the Battle of Bunker Hill is, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” Who uttered it, if anyone did, is uncertain. The likely candidates are Israel Putnam, as he hurried Callender’s cannons into place, William Prescott, as he peered out from the redoubt into Pigot’s advancing lines, or John Stark, as he steadied his men along the rail fence. Given that the line was already somewhat of a military staple that originated in earlier European wars, all three men may have shouted some version of it.

According to James Wilkinson, who visited the battlefield as a young man a year later and who later still would become a scoundrel in the Burr conspiracy, Colonel Stark directed his men along the rail fence and behind the stone wall not to fire until they could see the enemy’s white-colored half gaiters. Given the terrain, this would have been at a distance of about fifty yards. “From this it would seem,” Wilkinson claimed, “that the often quoted order, ‘Don’t fire until you see the white of their eyes,’ was more nearly, ‘Don’t fire until you see the white of their gaiters.’ ”⁴⁰

As the rebels held their fire, onward the front line of Howe’s regulars came, resplendent in their red uniforms. Then, at perhaps fifty yards, the command to fire came, and the entire rebel line exploded with a roar of thunder and a profusion of smoke.