BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL. wrong I. PURPOSE OF THE BATTLE. BOSTON TO BE ENTERED. THE importance of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and to which it owes its national interest, is found in the fact that it was the opening of the Revolutionary War, which was the great incident of the terrible conflict. The movement, however, like that of Gen. Gage upon Concord, had an object, which, in both cases, became wholly subordinate to the issue. Boston had long been suffering by the presence of an army, and no arm had been raised for her relief. Gage, it was known, was determined to strike a blow upon the country, and was only waiting for re-enforcements, when JOHN HANCOCK, in his hurried letter from Worcester, on his way to Congress, on the 24th of April, 1775, gave both expression and direction to the patriotic feelings of the people in declaring that, "BOSTON MUST BE ENTERED. THE TROOPS ble, BUT OUR COUNTRY MUST BE SAVED. 6 RESUME OF HISTORY. II. RESUMÉ OF HISTORY. ARRIVAL OF GEN. GAGE. CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. Gen. Gage landed in Boston on the seventeenth day of May, 1774, and in exactly one month from that day, on the 17th of June, in the General Assembly, which, by order of the king, he had removed to Salem, Sam Adams shut the door in the face of his secretary; and then, manifesting the spirit of their great leader, the assembly deliberately proceeded to appoint a Continental Congress at Philadelphia, and elected delegates to represent the Province of Massachusetts Bay therein. The Port Bill went into operation on the first day of June; and in fourteen days after the people had feasted Gen. Gage in Faneuil Hall, and toasted the king, BOSTON WAS SHUT UP. The king had placed his foot upon the town. Gage had his military arm at her throat. The town could scarcely either move or breathe. It was full of troops and tribulation. Every vessel that could be moved had been sent out of the harbor; the wharves were empty; the storehouses empty; commerce was at an end. The trade of the town was crushed; mechanics and laborers were thrown out of employment; money almost ceased. to circulate, and became scarce with all classes of people. Provisions were soon in demand, and greatly increased in price, so that none but the wealthy could purchase them. And this condition of things-hardest to bear in its first imposition — existed in Boston on the 17th of June, 1774, when it may almost be said that one of her patriots called a Continental Congress, which another of them had only three months before publicly recommended. DEFEAT OF THE TORIES. 7 DEFEAT OF THE TORIES. The tories were exultant, and heaped abuse, denunciation, and falsehood upon the people in newspapers, letters, and pamphlets, both here and in England. "Our enemies," said Sam Adams, "are already holding up to the tradesmen their grim picture of misery, to induce them to yield to tyranny;" but they failed ignominiously. On the same 17th of June the Port-Act meeting was held in Faneuil Hall by adjournment (although such assemblages were prohibited to the people), while Adams and Hancock were at Salem. It was an anxious day for Warren, who wrote to Adams on the 15th, "I think your attendance can by no means be dispensed with." It was in this letter that Warren said to him, "the mistress we court is LIBERTY; and it is better to die than not to obtain her. If the timidity of some, and the treachery of others, in this town, does not ruin us, I think we shall be saved." The meeting was adjourned to the 27th, and then moved from Faneuil Hall to the Old South Church. Sam Adams was now in his place, notwithstanding which the persons to whom Warren referred were bold enough to propose a vote of censure upon the Committee of Correspondence, and its dissolution. Sam Adams left the chair, listened and spoke, and the next day (the meeting having adjourned to that time), the motion was rejected by an overwhelming vote, and the committee instructed to "persevere with their usual activity and firmness;" and, in addition to this, the people utterly refused "to pay for the tea." Admiral Graves arrived in July, and more troops; and arrests were talked of, — by the tories, of course, - but the committee of correspondence, as instructed by the meeting, determined upon their sessions, "unless prevented by brute force." Without losing sight of their cause, at this time, the leaders gave their attention to the poor, and afforded them relief, through the instrumentality of a Donation Committee. Two more of the oppressive and obnoxious acts of Parliament reached Boston. 8 CONDITION OF BOSTON. It may easily be perceived in the condition of things which we have so faintly described, what a state of excitement and anxiety the town was in; the ordeal it was undergoing; everything disrupted and broken; losses on one hand, want on the other; distress everywhere, even among the soldiers; gayety nowhere, not even in the Province House. There was suspicion and apprehension of the soldiers, whom nobody would countenance. The people hated them they were parading on the common or prowling about the town, while their officers were prancing their horses in the suburbs. There was nothing agreeable: Gage was afraid to remain at Salem; his mandamus councillors had been compelled to resign or escape into Boston, under the protection of the troops; to live on salt provisions or such sheep and cattle as the men-of-war's men could steal from the islands and shores of the harbor. Street brawls and quarrels with the soldiers, or among them, were of daily occurrence, and, in some parts of the town, there were pests and criminalities, too gross to name, and supposed to be inseparable from camp life in a populous town. CONDITION AND POSITION OF BOSTON. While in this condition of distress, poverty, and suffering, bearing the punishment which had been so often threatened upon her, the whole country, which was feeding her people from their abundance and their charity, WAS LOOKING TO HER IMDOMITABLE PATRIOTS FOR COURAGE, COUNCIL, AND ACTION. She was the object of wrath on one hand, and of commiseration and charity on the other; and yet the country looked to her for determination, firmness, and council. What she felt the country felt; what she held the country approved; what she suffered the country shared. Yet there she stood: hope in her heart, vitality in her blood, thought and resolution in her brain, having expended, as Franklin said, nineteen shillings in the pound rather than give up the right to spend the other POSITION OF BOSTON. 9 shilling as she pleased. South Carolina, expressing the feeling and uttering the voice of the country, sent her word, accompanied with two hundred tierces of rice for her poor; "For God's sake be firm and discreet at this time." And a month later (August, 1774), one of the small towns in Connecticut notified her that she "was held up as a spectacle to the whole world," and that "all Christendom is longing to see the event of the American contest." Prescott, who was soon to risk his life at Bunker Hill, expressing also as he did the voice and heart of the whole people, said to her, "We heartily sympathize with you, and are always ready to do all in our power for your support, comfort, and relief, knowing that Providence has placed you where you must bear the first shock." was Such was the condition, however degrading or disagreeable; and such was the POSITION, both HONORABLE AND GLORIOUS, of Boston, when the battle of Bunker Hill the first and necessary movement for her relief forced upon the ill-organized but patriotic army at Cambridge, by the acts and purposes of Gen. Gage. The condition of things described presented such a scene, as Washington said of another picture, in which he was an actor, "is not to be found in the pages of history." This state of things- not, however, without action and progress in the patriotic cause, by proceedings and events of the most thrilling character (the Provincial Congress and the conflict of the 19th of April among them) — had continued for a long year. There were added wrongs, deprivations, and embarrassments, enough to crush any other people less inured to the toils and hardships of life, all of which were bravely and firmly withstood. But all over the country the cause of Boston was the common cause of America." "And it came to pass," as the " Book of American Chronicles" has it, "that the New Yorkites, the Philadelphites, the Marylandites, the Virginites, the Carolinites, took pity on their brethren the Bostonites," and with their camels and asses and mules and oxen, sent supplies "by the hands of the Levites, and there was joy in the land." 66 |