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Chapter III - The Battle of Bunker Hill
and the Failure of British Strategy The Battle of Bunker Hill and the Failure of British Strategy
Two months after the battles of Lexington and Concord, the Americans and the British met in combat again on the outskirts of Boston. The colonial militia, which included men from nearby Connecticut and New Hampshire, had been trying to bottle up British forces in Boston Harbor. Some colonial regiments crawled in the dark over Bunker Hill to Breeds' Hill just below and began to construct a fortification. Dug in on Breed's Hill, they occupied a strategic position on a rocky outcrop from which they could lob shells across the Charles River at entrenched British troops.
On June 17, frustrated British Commander Gage ordered his troops to launch an all-out frontal assault against the colonial fortification. Covered by their navy's firepower, two hundred British troops in tight formation marched determinedly toward the craggy hill. The colonists waited patiently as the brightly uniformed British troops advanced. Scarcely hidden behind hastily prepared earthworks, the colonists held their fire against the British until they could "see the whites of their eyes." Through the blue haze of musket fire, they glimpsed fallen British bodies "as thick as sheep in a fold." As the panicked British troops retreated a resounding cheer rang out among the victorious patriots. Within half an hour, the British troops regrouped and attacked once more, only to retreat again. Refusing to surrendered British generals led yet another charge. When the remaining British troops fixed bayonets and wearily ran up Breeds' Hill, they were pummeled by a hail of stones, for the colonists were running out of gunpowder. Despite their tenacity, the Americans were overcome by this third assault and forced to retreat to higher ground on nearby Bunker Hill.
At a cost of 1,054 men, the British finally captured Breed's Hill, killing or capturing four hundred colonists in this fierce struggle which became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. "a dear bought victory," remarked British General Clinton, adding, "Another such would have ruined us." Ironically, on the very day the rag-tag colonial militia had been defeated in the first major battle of the American Revolution, an indecisive Continental Congress finally selected George Washington as general and commander-in-chief of the first Continental Army.
Why did these men fight in 1775? Perhaps the answer comes from a ninety-one year old veteran of Concord who was interviewed in 1827 about his experiences. He denied feeling any oppression from the Stamp Act, saying, "I never paid a penny for them." The tea tax didn't distress him either because, as he curtly remarked, "I never drank a drop of the stuff. The boys threw it overboard." When asked if he had been inspired by John Locke's writing on the "eternal principles of liberty," the ancient farmer replied, "Never heard of him." Finally, when the curious interviewer asked what he did mean in going to the fight, the crusty veteran responded: "Young man, what we meant in going for those redcoats was this. We always governed ourselves and we always meant to. They didn't think we should." The men who took up arms against the British on that warm spring day in 1775 fought not for lofty ideals or over the threat of taxation without representation, but because the British jeopardized their familiar way of life. The men who fought more than two-hundred years ago were truly "reluctant revolutionaries."
In spite of their reluctance, however, they eventually defeated the redcoats because British strategy relied on three major assumptions, all of which proved false. First, they concluded that farmers and other untrained fighters could not withstand the assaults of trained British regulars. Consequently, they sent only thirty-two thousand troops, seventy-three naval vessels, and thirteen thousand sailors to subdue the colonists. They vastly underestimated the colonists' commitment to armed resistance, for repeated defeats did not cause the unyielding patriots to renounce their struggle. Second, British leaders and army officials believed they were fighting a European-style war which relied on the capture of Major cities. However, though the British managed to take all the major ports, they could not halt commerce along the vast fifteen hundred miles of American coastline. Also, since less than five percent of the population lived in urban centers, the capture of cities did not affect the majority of colonists.
Finally, British leaders assumed that a clear-cut military victory would automatically bring allegiance from the colonies, never realizing that military victory would not guarantee political victory. Securing political power required something they could not obtain - oaths of allegiance to the Crown from thousands of colonists. The British also remained unaware that, instead of fighting a conventional war only military troops, they were up against a new kind of war, a modern struggle for liberation by the rebellious people of a future nation.
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