June 17, 1775, was considered for generations of Americans after the date an “ignominious defeat.” The colonists had executed a brilliant stealth maneuver. Overnight, they had erected fortifications on a hill across the Charles River from Boston and had taken the British forces under Generals Gage and Howe by surprise. A battle ensued; in the end, the Americans fled.
If that were all there was to the Battle of Bunker Hill, the sense of shame that followed among American patriots would have been the final verdict. But gradually, Americans turned that defeat into a victory of sorts. The British won a hill; the Americans demolished the confidence of an occupying army.
Bunker Hill showed once again that the yeomen farmers of New England could stand up against trained British soldiers. The British lost 226 men killed and 828 wounded, “almost half the attacking force,” in the words of the historian Thomas J. Fleming. The Americans lost 140 dead and 271 wounded. Even at the time, not all of the American observers saw this as a fiasco. General Nathanael Greene declared, “I wish we could sell them another hill at the same price.”
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In the twenty-four years that I lived in Boston, I made numerous trips to the top of the John Hancock building, which had a room-sized diorama of the battle with a recorded narrator. It showed in tiny colored lights the movement of troops on both sides and evoked a vivid account of the battle, ending, as I recall, with Greene’s real estate proposal. John Hancock shut down this display after 9/11—lest Al Qaeda claim it as high ground. At least that’s what I think happened. In any case, one of the most popular tourist sites in Boston disappeared with the same suddenness that the American redoubt appeared on June 17.
What made Bunker Hill so significant was that it taught the British forces to be timid in their confrontations with the colonials. The British attempted a frontal assault on the American position on Breed’s Hill—not Bunker Hill, which lay further away. They had marched carrying their gear through high grass and surmounting fence rails and other obstacles, all under heavy fire from the Americans. General Howe learned a lesson that British observers wished he hadn’t. As commander in chief for the next two years, he refused to order his troops to make frontal assaults on American positions. When Howe hesitated, Washington engineered speedy retreats that kept the Continental Army intact and in play, despite its relative weakness.
Bunker Hill bequeathed us Valley Forge, where Howe could have finished the American Revolution in one blow if he had not feared that the wily Continental Army might be trying to sell him a valley this time instead of a hill.
The Americans “lost” Bunker Hill essentially because they ran out of gunpowder and bullets. Some historians think they also erred in building their fortification on Breed’s Hill, which was lower than Bunker Hill and closer to Boston. That decision put them within range of the British artillery, which proved deadlier than British soldiers. But other historians argue that Major General Israel Putnam, who chose Breed’s Hill, did so deliberately to draw the British out for a decisive battle.
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If General Howe learned from the battle to be wary of American farmers with guns, General Putnam learned that when all else fails, escape. Putnam went on to serve as one of four major generals who reported to Commander-in-Chief George Washington and worked with Washington in the successful liberation of Boston in March 1776.
The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought at the instigation of Putnam and others on the Committee on Safety. They had received intelligence that General Gage intended to break out of Boston on June 18 to attack the colonists in the outlying area and to fortify the Charlestown Peninsula. Putnam’s idea was to get there first.
War often entails surprise attacks and clever adversaries. We are watching this play out now in the war between Israel and Iran. There is no deep parallel in this instance, but perhaps we should recall Putnam’s—supposed—order to the Americans on Breed’s Hill: “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”
“Don’t fire”
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Image: “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill” by John Trumbull on Wikipedia
