A few days back, I missed mentioning D-Day the way I usually do, so I’ll try to make up for it by saying something about the famously misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill that occurred on June 18, 1775.
Actually, I’ll share several somethings about it, since it’s been on my mind lately…
- First, the easy one… this fight mostly occurred on nearby Breed’s Hill, not Bunker — although the Patriots did end up retreating over Bunker at the end of the battle.
- Second, I’ve mentioned that I’ve been helping the Relic Room with its frequent Noon Debrief free lectures, at the museum itself, and at Richland and Lexington County libraries. We’ve had some good military history programs, and lately we’ve been rewarded by growing crowds of attendees. Anyway, the latest one, just this past Friday, was about “Bunker Hill,” and it was delivered at Richland Library by our own inimitable Joe Long, curator of education at the museum. I had helped set it up, but missed this particular program. So I’m going to go back and watch it, which you can do at your convenience at this address. I hope you enjoy, and decide to come to a future program. Here’s some info about our next one, on July 11. You can also read about other recent programs at this address.
- This being the first year of the big Sestercentennial, you’ve probably already heard about South Carolina being the place where the most Revolutionary battles occurred. Of course, the Boston area had a little to do with it, with this battle being firm evidence of the fact. Today, the Boston Globe had a story touching on that, headlined “The Revolutionary War was more brutal than you probably learned in school.” This battle was a prominent example of them of that — for the Patriots, who were forced to give up their position on Breed’s Hill, but especially for the British, who “won” a particularly costly engagement. They suffered 1,054 casualties to the rebels’ 450, with a total of 226 killed compared to 115 American lives lost.
- Those numbers convinced Britain, the world’s greatest power, that this was going to be a real war, and would take a lot more to win than anyone had imagined. They were up against a determined enemy that wasn’t just trying to register a protest. The colonists famously waited (although scholars doubted anyone actually said it) until they saw the whites of the British regulars’ eyes, and shot to kill. This was more than a year before the Declaration of Independence.
- It also helped solidify resolve among American onlookers. The Washington Post ran a piece today by the historian Joseph Ellis, who has begun a series in the paper based on the correspondence between Abigail and John Adams. John was off doing his thing with the Continental Congress in Philadelpia (a year later he would convince his colleagues that independence was necessary). Abigail was home in Braintree (now Quincy), a few miles south of the battle in Charlestown, but she and eldest son John Quincy watched it from a height near their home, a good four-hour walk south of the fighting. They couldn’t see much from there, and they didn’t know until later that their family doctor Joseph Warren had been killed, shot between the eyes as the third wave of redcoats attacked, and the Americans had run out of ammunition. Abigail wrote to John that ““Our dear Friend Dr. Warren is no more… but fell gloriously fighting for his Country.” The thing her husband was debating in Philadelphia was intensely personal back home.
- I’ve been both to Quincy and Breed’s hill, where I saw the Bunker Hill monument. Seeing that obelisk from the banks of the Charles River, I had thought “not much of a hill…” I was wrong. On our last day in Boston, with my wife resting back at the B&B with back pain, I went to see the USS Constitution for a second time. When I had walked her decks long enough (not that I won’t go back if I get the chance), I looked up the hill and decided to climb it. I assure you there was plenty of hill for a July day, even in that mild Massachusetts summer.
After I had respectfully considered the battle site and descended back toward the Charles, I still had my mixed feelings about what happened up there. Y’all know I’m a pretty patriotic guy, and deeply love this country that is fading now before our eyes. Some of my post-Vietnam friends out there even see me as jingoistic, a war-monger. But I remain torn about those early events in Massachusetts, such as the “Boston Massacre,” the Tea Party, and those shots fired at Lexington and Concord some weeks before this battle. Well, more than torn. I’m unable to justify taking up arms against the duly consituted authority and shooting and killing draftees from Liverpool and such places because of a few unpopular taxes. King George had his faults like all of us, but he was no Hitler, or even a Saddam Hussein.
Being a Rule of Law guy, I feel differently about the war that continued after the Declaration. A definite course of separation had been decided upon after due process and prolonged deliberation. And if I’d been in Congress, I think I’d have been persuaded by Abigail’s husband. After all, he was a rule-of-law guy himself, who had even defended the soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre. He was nothing like his cousin Samuel. In fact, I don’t think anyone but John Adams could have convinced me.
And I can understand why Abigail felt as she did. After all, their friend the doctor would still have been alive if the Brits hadn’t insisted on taking that hill.
I admire the doctor’s courage. I’m just not sure I’d have been able to justify, at that particular point in time, before the Declaration. I really, really wish I felt differently, though.
It’s ironic, isn’t it? I have all these arguments with people who think our involvement in Vietnam, and later Iraq, are The Worst Things That Ever Happened and totally unjustified. I disagree almost completely with them, yet here I am, having all these doubts about the steps that led to the country I love so much….
In the summer of 2022, I visited the Bunker Hill monument, hiking up from the Navy Yard.
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By the way, this post bears a falsified date. I wrote most of it, and had the rest mapped out in my head on June 18, the anniversary. But I didn’t finish it until today. Just thought I’d let you know that. I just didn’t want to go back and rewrite all the time references…
Another thing: Don’t bother telling me that I’ve oversimplified the facts regarding the justifications for the Revolution. I was just trying to write about this dilemma I’ve been thinking about for years, and still get it said in less than 1,000 words. I failed to do that, but I came close.
So keep in mind that I’m not saying the Revolution was just about, say, a tax on tea. It was complicated, like everything else in history (which I keep saying).
And while I do ultimately draw a somewhat bright line, making different judgments about justification before and after the Declaration, I know it’s WAY more complicated than I’ve stated it. For instance, I don’t think there would have been a Declaration if a shooting war had not been going on during the preceding year. The fighting itself had pushed American minds farther away from the Mother Country, making thoughts of cutting the apron strings more viable. So maybe there’d have been no independence without Lexington and Concord, as disturbings as I find those incidents when I view them in isolation.
There are few actual bright lines in history. There are some, but not as many as we’d like there to be, when we look back and try to make sense of it all….