American losses totaled over The first true battle of the Revolutionary War was to prove the bloodiest of the entire conflict. Though the British had achieved their aim in capturing the hill, it was a truly Pyrrhic victory. William Howe, who lost every member of his staff as well as the bottle of wine his servant carried into battle.
Badly depleted, the besieged British abandoned plans to seize another high point near the city and ultimately evacuated Boston. The battle also demonstrated American resolve and dispelled hopes that the rebels might relent without a protracted conflict.
The intimate ferocity of this face-to-face combat is even more striking today, in an era of drones, tanks and long-range missiles. At the Bunker Hill Museum, Philbrick studies a diorama of the battle alongside Patrick Jennings, a park ranger who served as an infantryman and combat historian for the U.
Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. The writer Parson Weems invented this incident decades later, along with other fictions such as George Washington chopping down a cherry tree. One colonel did tell his men to wait until they could see the splash guards—called half-gaiters—that British soldiers wore around their calves.
The Bunker Hill Monument also has an odd history. The cornerstone was laid in , with Daniel Webster addressing a crowd of , Backers built one of the first railways in the nation to tote eight-ton granite blocks from a quarry south of Boston.
But money ran out. The monument was finally dedicated in , with the now-aged Daniel Webster returning to speak again. But today the obelisk stands amid renovated townhouses, and the small park surrounding it is popular with exercise classes and leisure-seekers. Joseph Warren. The physician led the rebel underground and became major general of the colonial army in the lead-up to Bunker Hill. Before leaving Charlestown, Philbrick seeks out one other site.
But what of the hill that originally bore that name? Intense hand-to-hand fighting occurs inside the fortification. The British are victorious but at a cost. John Pitcairn, the officer despised for allegedly ordering his men to fire on patriots during the battle of Lexington and Concord weeks earlier.
Patriot casualties are less than half of the British total. Though defeated, the Patriots are not demoralized. Those who choose to stay and keep the British bottled up in Boston become the nucleus of the Continental Army. The task of transforming the mob into a fighting force falls on the shoulders of Virginian George Washington, who assumes command in Cambridge, Massachusetts, within two weeks of the erroneously named Battle of Bunker Hill.
No one knows why they chose a position on the lower hill, but that is where the militias constructed their fort in Charlestown before the battle on June Confusion about the name of the hill where the battle occurred goes back to the battle itself. A detailed map of the battle prepared by British Army Lt. Page further compounded the problem by reversing the names of the two hills. Fifty years after the battle, the Marquis De Lafayette set the cornerstone of what would become a lasting monument and tribute to the memory of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
It took more than 17 years to complete the foot granite obelisk that now stands at the top of Breed's Hill, marking the site where patriot forces constructed an earthen fort prior to the British attack.
There is much lore and contradictory anecdotal material about the death of Maj. John Pitcairn at Bunker Hill, but no air-tight evidence about who actually fired the fatal shot—or shots—that killed him.
His death was celebrated by the patriots, who vilified him for ordering his Redcoats to fire on the Lexington militia during the Battle of Lexington and Concord, so there was great interest in discovering the hero responsible for his demise.
In , Dr. Bell, writing in the Journal of the American Revolution , cites the above sources when considering the Salem issue, but he also includes British versions of the account, which differ from those by Americans. Writing only four days after the battle, Lt. Among the heroic African American soldiers fighting with the Americans at the Battle of Bunker Hill, one or more may have fired on Pitcairn.
Or maybe none did. John Trumbull. Close Video. Massachusetts Jun 17, How it ended British victory. In context By early tensions between Britain and her colonies had escalated.
Before the Battle The sheer number of militiamen gathered on the hills outside of Boston deeply troubles Gen. Colonel William Prescott and General Israel Putnam were the ranking officers in the expedition to Charlestown, however Prescott, being from Massachusetts, commanded the majority of the men. For generations many have argued over who ultimately chose where to fortify a position on the lower, more centrally located hill known today as "Breed's Hill," rather than the higher prominence known today as "Bunker Hill.
At dawn, lookouts on British warship and sentries in Boston quickly noticed the new redoubt constructed within cannon-range of the North End of Boston. Early cannon-fire upon the fortification quickly awoke the town and countryside.
By mid-morning, General Gage had decided to assemble troops and mount an attack to clear this threat. While a cannonade from both British ships and Copp's Hill began to bombard the area of the redoubt, Prescott ordered his men to continue to expand the fort and dig in for an eventual assault. As the day progressed, units received conflicting orders whether to stay or reinforce the men under Prescott.
Because Charlestown was a peninsula, it was very risky to send too many men to a place that could easily be cut off by a successful British attack. Yet with some 2, British solders, officers, and Marines assembling in Boston for transport to Charlestown, Prescott's numbers dwindled from men fleeing the scene under the cannonade. By midday, the first wave of British boats landed British solders. They assembled out of musket range and awaited the second wave of troops.
General William Howe was given command of the field by Gage, and it appears that he anticipated sending his force in two thrusts: One force would advance on the redoubt as a feint, a second would march to the right through an open pasture and flank, surround, and crush the resistance inside the redoubt.
The tall grass in the area, however, covered up many of the hazards and obstacles that faced Howe's men in the flanking attack. Furthermore, desperately needed Colonial reinforcements were soon arriving under the command of New Hampshire Colonel John Stark. Rather than send his men into the redoubt with Prescott, Stark led his command of roughly men to a fence in a downhill pasture to Prescott's left. This put Stark's men at the opposite end of the very same pasture Howe hoped to exploit in the flanking attack.
Join Ranger Patrick for our concluding installment in our three-part series about the Battle of Bunker Hill and its aftermath. Learn about how the British were eventually forced to evacuate Boston on March 17th, By early afternoon Howe felt he had enough men to launch his assault.
As the British forces began their advance, the cannonade from Copp's Hill and British warships ceased. In line formation, the two wings had to negotiate fences and other obstacles as they slowly neared the Provincial line.
The men from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire were ordered to hold their fire until the enemy drew so close that their musket fire would have its most devastating effect. It was at this time, legend claims, that one of the commanding officers from the colonies ordered: "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes! The musket fire proved devastating when the advancing British came into range.
The pasture that was supposed to be the avenue for a flanking attack became a pen of slaughter. On the hill, fire from both the redoubt and from buildings at the edge of the abandoned settlement of Charlestown harassed the feint attack as well. At one point Prescott ordered his men to cease fire.
Uncertain whether the colonists had fled the redoubt, British units marched closer, only to receive another heavy volley of fire. Meanwhile, British gunners trained their cannon on the abandoned town and set the buildings ablaze with red-hot heated cannonballs to drive out skirmishers at the edge of town. Howe was forced to order a withdrawal when all momentum was lost. After regrouping his forces and incorporating reinforcements, a final assault marched to the left of the redoubt rather than the right.
As the British forces increased pressure upon the redoubt, men inside were exhausted and running desperately low on ammunition. As British soldiers and Marines mounted the walls, they engaged with bayonets in a bloody melee inside the redoubt.
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