American History Hit - The Battle of Bunker Hill

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

How did the British win the first major battle of the Revolutionary War? In this episode, Don is joined by Major Jonathan Bratten of the Maine Army National Guard.Together, they discuss the myths of the battle, the missteps of the British and what George Washington thought about it all.Edited by Aidan Lonergan, produced by Sophie Gee, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. June 17, 1775. The streets of Boston are unusually quiet this morning. Skittish locals mostly keep to their homes, doors barred. But other more intrepid residents, especially here in

Cops Hill, the highest point in Boston's north end, climb out of windows and onto their rooftops, eager for a vantage point. Poised on shingled pitches, leaning against brick chimneys, They'll have a front row seat for all the action about to unfold. Under the clear summer sky, these residents observe British naval ships on the Charles River, firing upon the rebels positioned behind a hastily constructed barricade. They gawk as the British troops disembark, marching in ranks uphill, an undulating mass of red in ordered formation until suddenly it's not. And so many of the British fall in heaps.

Their comrades regrouping then finally. finally engaging the American columnists in hand-to-hand combat. In the days and years to come, these Bostonians will describe what they saw. But they'll also report the smell of cannon and gunfire on the wind, the distant sounds of shouts and screams. This sensory experience of war will be the first for most New Englanders. In this, the first real battle of the American Revolution. The Battle of Bunker Hill.

Folks, welcome Don Wildman here. This is American History Hit. The Battle of Bunker Hill, 17th of June, 1775, is a critical moment of revolutionary history, confusing for so many. Let's straighten the few things out right away. One, the battle did not happen on Bunker Hill. It happened on a different hill entirely, nearby, Breeds Hill. It didn't really happen in Boston, per se, but across the river in the town of Charleston, which was a century later in 1874 annexed by Boston. The fabled oil supposedly shouted out in the heat of battle to American troops short on ammunition, Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes, was not actually said that day, though the Americans were trying to conserve resources, but all good armies do.

And that 221-foot obelisk erected to seemingly commemorate a great victory was not inspired by the Washington Monument. It was the other way around. And by the way, the Americans lost the battle. They didn't win it. Nonetheless, the Battle of Bunker Hill is indeed an important event, a moment of tremendous courage in valor, vital to understanding the determined early days of our war for independence. That is utterly true. And we'll discuss it all today with a man whose name really is, Jonathan Braden, author, historian, and major in the Maine National Guard. Greetings, sir, welcome. Thank you so much for having me on today. Really excited to be here. I'm really looking

forward to this. We've already corrected a few of the myths, okay? But let's understand why they even came to pass. Why was this battle of Bunker Hill so important and so famous that it became a fable? Yeah, I feel like you took half of my job, just myth-busting right away. It was great. Yeah, so there's so many misconceptions about this famous event. One, it's this first major battle after the actions of Lexington Concord, which everyone was sort of thinking was, hey, this is a fluke, will never happen again. Yeah, sure, the British were beaten, but that definitely won't happen. It is a major test of continental resolve. and of British resolve of will they continue on to fight a conflict rather than go to the

negotiating table? Talk about maybe some sort of reconciliation. Bunker Hill is really such a pivotal moment because after Bunker Hill, there's not a lot of going back. There are a few attempts made of, hey, maybe we could try to resolve this, but everyone knows that those are overtures that really aren't taken seriously. This is the point of no return. It's true. just the reading I did reminding myself of so much. One of the subtler points that's so interesting, at this point in the so-called war, we've had a skirmish, essentially a series of skirmishes

with Lexington and Concord. There is turning back at that point. And a lot of Americans, or so-called Americans at that point, are really thinking about, we want things to be like they were before 1760. You know, we want to have it be like it was before the taxations and the stamp act. All that stuff has come into play

that makes us feel like we need to revolt. had the Britishmen willing to turn back the clock, they'd be good with that. Bunker Hill marks a moment when they realize, oh, my gosh, they're serious about fighting us on this account. And so the whole scale tips, doesn't it? It does. And you can even see it inside the Continental Congress. So, you know, what's happening in the run-up to Bunker Hill, you know, June 14th, June 13th and 14th, Continental Congress is meeting in session and debating this idea of should we even have an army. Should we create this continental army? And this is a hot topic.

A whole bunch of people say, no, absolutely not. If we want to have any chance of reconciliation and peace, we can't have an army out there that is a continental army that is united. You know, this would really sink any chance of peace. So we really look at the actions of 1775 in the light of what happens in 1776. And we're going, oh, yeah, of course, everyone's driving for independence. No, right now there's a whole bunch of people who would really be chill if things would just go back to the status quo. Maybe we get some concessions out of Great Britain. But really, hey, we kind of like being part of the empire.

It's kind of cool. And then you've got some radicals are like, no, absolutely not. Like, we got to go. We got to take this thing real hard. And this is the situation entering the summer of 1775 with a bunch of people being like, what do we do? Where do we end up? And a lot of the action is forced by Benadier-Darnold, Ethan Allen, in May of 1775. They take those forts on Lake Champlain, which many Americans consider like, whoa, whoa, you went too far.

Like defending our homes, the Lexington and Concord is one thing, going and seizing installations from the British, absolutely not. So these are all the things that are sort of like informing the public sphere. And of course, across the colonies as well, there's this idea of, oh, maybe we should start training them. militia, maybe we need to start, you know, various ways of sort of solidifying the rebellion a little bit, but Bunker Hill and the actions that happen around Bunker Hill are what's going to cause a massive splash. Exactly. Well, it happens in mid-June, 75, as you said, but the revolution at this point is really just

centered on New England for all the reasons you've mentioned here. And importantly, the British think they can snuff out this rebellion right here and now. that's kind of their skin in this game. We can get rid of this thing by telling these New Englanders to take a hike. And that's why it's so important for what they do here. Why Bunker Hill? What was the, why this ground? Yeah, so I mean, it's, I think it's less the hill itself.

It's more the Charlestown Peninsula. And it's also the geography of the greater Boston area. So you have about 18 to 20,000 New England group surrounding Boston, attempting to lay siege to Boston. It's hard to lay siege to Boston when you don't really have a lot of artillery. Hard to lay siege to anything when you don't have a lot of artillery. But they're doing the best they can. They're cutting off the land access routes to Boston.

Then there's two. There's Boston Neck. And then there is the Charlestown Peninsula from where you can take a short boat ride over towards Boston. Also, the Charlestown, Peninsula overlooks sort of the inlet, the bay, where in sits a lot of the Royal Navy. So if you're going to try to lay siege to a place, and you've got a bunch of really amateur troops, this New England Army of Observation is mostly, you know, they're not the same troops that fall at Lexington and Conquer, they're not the alarm militia. They're sort of levied for 30 days, 60 days, some of them, to the end of the

year. And the British are trying to figure out exactly, hey, what do we do we do we do we let this sit, General Thomas Gage, the commander of British troops in North America, is sort of a little bit willing to let someone else make the decision and a couple of people arrive in the May-June time frame to sort of force that decision. Arriving of the Cerberus, which is sort of great, you know, the three-headed dog of myth. Well, it's got three generals on board. Oh, I see. You've got Henry Clinton and you've got John Burgoyne and William Howe. And they all have opinions, as you would imagine, about how the war should be fought in North America. They also bring reinforcements.

And they sort of bring with them the sense of urgency of like, hey, you cannot let the actions of Lexington and Concord go unpunished. We must do something so they come up with a plan. And this plan is essentially an attempt at a double envelopment of the colonial, the New England army of observation. And one of those routes is Charlestown, is through the Charlestown neck, British operational security being, about as solid as a leaky sieve as usual in Boston. The colonials find out about this and go, what if we stop this before it begins by doing something, fortifying something, and this is about as far as the plane goes.

Yeah, yeah. You know, we need to enter into their decision loop and take action before they essentially can destroy us. Well, they think it's strategy. This is all preemptive moves designed to sort of solidify their control of the town. You mentioned three leaders on the British side, all of whom are going to be operating from a boat, basically, right? I mean, where is the British Army at this point? A lot of the British Army is coming ashore at this point.

They're all packed into Boston. We've got about around 9,000 groups and a bunch of loyalist civilians. So that's another headache for gauge is I have to feed all of these people. I have to feed all these people and feed all my troops, and I can't go overland. So he does absolutely reliant on the Royal Navy, right? You've got three generals who are coming in and really coming up with this idea of you have to take action before the army starves, essentially. You can't keep supplying yourself on raiding the coastline. There's some raids that go well and some raids that don't go well that show that the colonists are really willing to fight.

But it's General William Howe, who's going to be the most aggressive one, who's going to come up with the plan of driving the colonists off this peninsula. Because what happens is the Americans, you have General Artemis Ward, who's the overall sort of, Mander, you have Richard Gridley, who is the colonial engineer, and William Prescott, who's a Massachusetts colonel, who get the mission from sort of the Council of Leaders in the Army of Observation to move on to the Charlestown Peninsula to fortify it during the night of June 16th. And this is the sort of problem that is going to present itself to the British Army. Got it. They can see what's coming. If they have it, they're going to put artillery up there. So we've got to take that hill. We've already mentioned the misnomer of this. Bunker Hill

versus Breed's Hill. One is larger than the other. It's Bunker Hill. That's one of the confusing things is why would they choose the smaller of the two hills? Because they choose Brees Hill, which is not too far away, but why not the bigger hill? Man, that's a great question. It's one that, like, historians love to argue about. If you go out there today, it's really hard, urban sprawl, right? But you can definitely see Bunker Hill, taller. You've gotten more distance from the Royal Navy, right? So you've got a little bit more standoff. You know, you kind of go there and you're like, well, why wouldn't you? Then you move like about half a mile forward and you're on Brees Hill slightly lower down. And man, you were exposed. You were right there. And part of the question

that everyone asks is, was this a deliberate thumb in the eye of the British? Was this a decision by Prescott and Gridley and Rufus Putnam from Connecticut of maybe we just try to make this as much of an obvious insult to the British as possible? Look, we moved out here under cover of night, and we built a fortress without you noticing, because they do. They move out during the night on June 16th, and they build this about nine foot by nine foot square redout, a small earthwork with earthen walls. And they put in positions for their few field guns. And so, yeah, when the British wake up in the morning of June 17th, there's a Royal Navy ship that sees it immediately opens fire. Admiral Samuel Graves of the British Navy actually tells them to try to sleep and it

tells him to shut up, stop firing because he's trying to sleep. And someone says, hey, the Americans have put guns on Charleston Peninsula and he goes, okay, never mind. Change my mind. Keep shooting. But it is that, you know, it presents this, it's very insulting. It's very obvious. And if you're in Boston, everyone can see it. Yeah, they worked really fast on that. Surprise the British, how quickly that whole barricade had been put up, right? Whole barricade put up in that you've got from just during the night, you suddenly have a fortified position because they don't just fortify, the Americans don't just fortify this square little fort, and they start fortifying the areas along it. So as the morning goes on,

right, and the Royal Navy is firing, some of it effective, some of it not. The British are trying to figure out what to do. And the Americans are like, okay, so what did we just do here? You know, how do we, where do we go from here? And they make the decision to continue fortifying around the Charlestown Peninsula. They put in fortifications that run to the left of the readout down towards the Mystic River and more troops arrive. So troops from Connecticut, troops from John Stark's New Hampshire Regiment come in to reinforce it. So you've got about 1,200 to 15. It's very hard to figure out numbers. Yeah. Because a lot of people are coming and going because the British are bombarding the whole area with the Royal Navy is caught it in a crossfire

and it's very difficult to move troops up to it without people getting hit. He's a raw troops. Someone goes down. The inclination to leave is very high. I would say so, yeah. Hard to organize any kind of effort under, you know, the Royal Navy shooting at you. It's amazing that they couldn't just take it out with one gunboat. That's what the Royal Navy is really hoping to do, right? You know, maybe we can reduce this fortification with gunfire. Yeah. Surprisingly, they can't.

I mean, there are casualties, you know, and it is demoralizing when, you know, one of your buddies loses their head when they're standing up on top of the readout or taking cover behind a wooden fence. Yeah. But what you have by late morning, mid-afternoon, or early afternoon, is you've got about 12 to 1,500 troops who are dug in. And now, for the British perspective, you have to do something about this. You know, they've only got a few field guns. They're not well-served, but something bigger up there.

And then what if they threaten the fleet? And now you're looking at what if they threaten my supply lines. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. So this count is going to go very quickly because the battle does as well. but I want to ask one more question if the audience will indulge me. Lexington and Concord was about those, in large part, about the ammunition supply chain, you know, these various raids that the British were doing to get the gunpowder and so forth. Have those supply chains been built in these two months since then?

Have the Americans really gotten themselves together in terms of how to do the siege? Oh, man, great question. And yes, there are stockpiles of ammunition of black powder and musket balls. Are they easily accessible and movable to resupply troops? No. And more importantly, is there a system of supply built into this new army of observation, this militia army? No, not really. And in fact, when Washington will come and take command after the battle, he's going to see the ammunition supply and go, oh, my God, I've got like nine shots per soldier. This is not great. And so this is going to be a thing that dogs the American

Army until really 1776, 77, the supplies of ammunition and gunpowder. So the initial troops who move out there are pretty well equipped with around 26 to 36 rounds per soldier. It's going to vary. But after you fire your basic load, as we call it today in the Army, you're kind of SOL. You're on your own there. Wow.

So on the British side, we've primarily got William Howell running the show. On the American side, we've got Prescott. One personality we should talk about a little bit, Joseph Warren. Where does he land of this? He was fundamental to the whole, you know, lights in the steeple with Paul Revere and all that. Yeah, Joseph Warren, major actor in the Massachusetts Committee of Safety for everything surrounding Lexington and Concord. Some historians posit, you know, he could have been a George Washington-like figure. I mean, he was really beloved by so many different people. And he does, he is commissioned as a general in the Massachusetts militia. But he shows up mid-late morning to the readout, the Ceprascott. And he shows up as a private soldier with a musket in hand and says, you know, put me where you need me. I'm here to serve not to try to give orders, which is indicative of his personality as well. He's a very giving person, a very open, loyal individual. And so you have this sort of remarkable guy who's been behind so many of the actions of moving this war towards, really towards conflict or moving the politics.

after moving the colonies towards independence, and now he's caught up in this battle scene as well. So this is what's sort of taking shape on the American side. There's no central leader on the American side. No one's driving this fight. Instead, you have leaders at each individual point. Prescott on the redoubt, Nulton along the fence line, and Stark down by the water. You're right. June 15, 16, all was the preparation for this, the fortification of that hill, the building of the barricade down towards the Mystic River. All of this is being observed by the British before they land their troops. All that happens on June 17th.

So let's talk about the action. What time of day does it begin? And what do we see first happen? So it's a hot June day around 75, 83 degrees, getting warmer throughout the day. And the British attack doesn't really kick off until around 2 or 3 p.m. Because they have to do an amphibious landing. They have to shuttle thousands of troops from Boston over towards Charlestown. Luckily, the Continentals don't have a lot.

lot of artillery, so the landing is mostly unopposed. And General Howe's plan is essentially to conduct a double envelopment. Everyone loves a double double envelopment ever since Canning. Everyone's trying to reproduce that. Never mind that the Carthaginians lost the war, but whatever, it's the tactic that everyone loves, right? It's a pincer move. It's a pincer movement, yes. So he's going to try to send his light infantry around to the right enveloping the left flank of the Americans along the Mystic River. he's going to send another body of troops under General Piggott to hit the American right through the town of Charlestown itself while he is going to then lead the main body, the grenadiers, the heavy hitters, right, the smashers right up the middle, and then

great victory all is over. British honor has been redeemed, and the threat to the Royal Navy is gone and the Americans are running away. So it'll work great, right? Yeah. So that's his plan. It lands everyone, gets them in position, immediately runs a deprive. Piggott comes back and says, hey, there's American skirmishers inside Charlestown.

They're peppering my men. I don't feel like it's safe to go forward. And how we'll give the order to the Royal Navy and his guns back in Boston to open fire on Charlestown with Red Hot Shot or Carcass Shot and set the town ablaze. So Charlestown becomes one of the early American towns to be torched in 1775. Several will follow. So that's sort of the first problem, right? And then the second problem is he sends his light infantry around the flank and they

run up against John Stark. John Stark is a wild figure. We could talk about him all day. He's a New Hampshire Ranger, right? Yes, yes, with massive experience from the Seven Years War. As you said, no one really says fire at the white of their eyes, but what he does is something very similar, but even more deadly. At around 30 yards out of his line, you know, the max, really the effective range of a smoothbore musket wielded by an irregular, he puts these birch bark stakes into the ground. And he's got his men behind a stone wall. They're in double line. And he tells his men, when you see the British gaiters go by these birch bark stakes, aim at the gaiters and fire. And the idea is, if you aiming low, the natural tendency of raw troops is to fire high. So if you aim low at the gators,

their leggings, you are probably by the natural drift of the musket, going to hit around center mass, right at that cross belt. And this is exactly what happened. So the first, the first British troops, these poor light infantry, also by the ones who bear the brunt of the fighting at Lexington and Conquer, they're about to have an even worse day two months later. They come around and the fourth, it's the fourth foot light company. They take 85% casualties. Wow. In the first minute. The light companies are decimated, this rolling fire, very accurate. They're taking World War I levels of casualties. In one company, there's only a sergeant and several privates left. And rapidly, How realizes that this plan of double envelopments not going to work. He still senses grenadiers

forward. The ground is rutted. It's got fences. It breaks up the formation. The day is hot. And his troops also stop to return fire rather than driving forward with the bayonet, which is the sort of heart and soul of 18th century tactics. They return fire when the colonists fire. It is accurate. It is heavy volleys. And all of a sudden, Howe realizes that, yeah, these guys can fight. They are going to fight. They're going to fight in open combat. They're not going to run away. And his first attack is driven back with heavy losses. He sort of resets everything, brys it again to very similar results to attacks with really nothing to show for it other than a really nasty butcher's bill.

And then General Clinton arrives with additional reinforcements. General Clinton's welcome to North America is coming off the boat and a guy going down right next to him. Literally, he himself is almost shot. Wow. And it's just this very like, oh, wow. Okay, this is combat. General Howe, in fact, in the second assault, is left standing at the end with none of his staff around him. They're all dead and wounded. It's sort of a miracle that he himself is left unscathed. And this is really, really important for people to remember if you're going to look at William Howe's career going forward in the revolution, is that he's going to be very reluctant to attack fortified positions after this. It's the third wave that they start to break through, right? And that's because Americans have begun to run out of their ammunition. I mean, that really did happen.

Run out of ammunition, and they are taking losses. You know, that Royal Navy gunfire, especially along the flanks, because, you know, this is an isthmus, and so you've got gunboats and floating batteries on other side that are sweeping that isthmus, then the neck. So trying to move across it. So trying to get reinforcements across, trying to get ammunition across, not for the faint of heart. Yeah. And ammunition is getting very low.

It finally devolves into a hand-to-hand battle. Which is where the regulars. have their supremacy. You know, what makes a regular soldier is that ability to take a bunch of casualties, close with the enemy, and then win in a bayonet fight. And that is something that the Americans are not prepared to do. One, they don't have the training. Two, they don't really have the bayonets. So how in Clinton, you know, they told their men drop their coats, drop their packs, go in light, urge them, you know, don't press on after the first volley. Their fire will slacken, just get into the redoubt, which is what happens. And so you have British troops converging from three sides at the

readout. Major Pitcairn, who we might remember as the second in command at Lexington Concord, he jumps on top of the readout. Four soldiers shoot at him, including one. It's always hard with all the myths and everything. But we do know that Salem Poor, who is a African-American man, shoots one of the shots that kills Pitcair. He's got to actually go on to serve in the Continental Army, receive his freedom for his service. It's very, very, very deadly for those who are jumping up on the parapet. But as you say, the Americans running out of ammunition, the volleys are ragged, very weak, and now the British just pour into the readout, and it's bayonet fighting, and Prescott orders his men, you know, save yourselves, get out of here as quickly as you can.

And this is where Joseph Warren falls. He is trying to fight with his small sword, literally a very small, almost ceremonial sword. He goes down with bayonet wounds. It's very sad because he was so well respected and well liked, even by the British, that when they found him there, it was like this act of massive betrayal. And his body was just, I think, something like 17 to 40 bayonet wounds when they recovered him. It was very tragic. You know, it shows the animosity of this civil war, really. Right. And so the British have taken the readout.

And the Americans have to fall back, mostly in a lot of confusion. John Stark sort of provides a rearguard action, and that ends it for the day. And it's a glorious victory for the British, right? Yeah, right. Except. Except. British troop casualties are estimated at over 1,000. And if you look at, you know, that's about a ninth of your force.

I'll be back with more American history after this short break. So that's 282 dead, 800 wounded. The Americans are about 100 dead, more than 100 dead. 300 wounded. It's a gigantic difference in the numbers of casualties. Massive. Yeah, gigantic. But it's even more so the perception of what they're against that we realize the British have taken this. It's a Pyrrhic victory is what you always see written about it. It's not a glorious day of triumph. It's a sobering experience of, oh, my Lord, this is what this is all about. It is also one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolution here in just second month of it.

The revolution, it goes on for eight years, but thankfully, you know, it's not as bloody as, say, the American Civil War or World War I or some of our later conflicts. Right. You know, the mortality rates are mostly due to disease that tear apart the armies. But Bunker Hill remains, even through all the way to the end, you look at the casualty numbers and you go, good God, this is, especially with the numbers of troops engaged, this is actually one of the most savage and bloody contests. And it does a few things, some good, some bad. One, it's a huge boost to American morale. It's this idea that, yes, we can stand and fight. So this combined with the creation of the Continental Army, it lends this idea that the

untrained soldier can defeat the British regular, which is something that Washington is going to be fighting against his entire tenure. He's like, look, yes, I got it. You had a good day. But in order to fight and win in open terrain, we need to be trained as regulars. This is going to be something that will dog the American army into the 19th century, the idea of, well, we untrained soldiers won at Bunker Hill. Well, that exception does not prove the rule. Yeah.

The other aspect for the British is sobering. The officer losses are incredibly heavy. For Gage, it's the last draw. He's like, I'm out. I'm going home. I can't handle this anymore. And now it's William Howe's problem. And William Howe is never again going to order a direct frontal assault on an American position.

He is always going to look for a flank. He is always going to look for some way to resolve the battle without immense casualties. And it's going to sort of set the tone for the war going forward, that the British do have this sort of wary respect now for the Americans, which definitely did not exist prior. It did not exist prior to Lexington and Concord. It didn't even exist after Lexington and Concord. The upshot of this will be the Dorchester Heights. When those cannon come later from Taekondorogo, Henry Knox makes his proud, you know,

cold weather journey with the can. And they set those up. One wonders why the lessons learned from Bunker Hill weren't, then, you know, let's grab all the hills around this town, because they don't. They don't. And part of that is just due to size. We look at Boston today, and the area looks small. We have to remember that that terrain and topography has changed massively. They filled in a lot of areas that were marsh or were water. So it's rather difficult to move troops around and not have them be in positions where they could be cut off. Yep. In fact, they take the top 20 or 30 feet off of Breed's Hill to go fill in some of that

area in Back Bay and then throw a big honkin monument on the top of Breeds Hill. Right. So Breeds Hill isn't even Breeds Hill anymore. It's a little shorter. So the topography, the terrain is all different. Washington doesn't have the troops to cover the entire area. And so putting troops on Dorchester Heights doesn't make any sense until you can actually put some cannon up there.

And when the cannon do arrive, they, they do. The masterful move another movement in the middle of the night. They have pre-made fortifications so that they sort of plop into position, put the guns behind it. British wake up and they go, oh my God, there's 18, 20, 24 pounders looking down on us. You know, how actually plans a frontal assault because they're desperate.

A storm comes in and it could have been Bunker Hill 2.0 if not for this storm. During the storm, How goes, wait a minute, what am I thinking? I can't throw away the British Army on this. I'm going to get decimated. We got to leave. There you go. Austin ain't worth it. If nothing else, that is the significance of the Battle of Bunker Hill,

is that later the siege has worked and the British take off. That's an episode we're definitely going to do later on about Knox's heroic. It's an extraordinary story about bringing those artillery in. I do want to talk about that monument, which is fascinating from several different angles. First of all, it was put up eventually in 1843. It's a gigantic monument. It's so outsized is the hill that it's on. It's really amazing. But it was part of this whole Egyptian movement that is happening in the world, this interest in the ancients. And so obelisks have become very meaningful because they've discovered them in Egypt and become very familiar with them. 1825 is the famous tour through the United States by Marquis de Lafayette. He has come to mark

50 years since the revolution. And this is one of his big stopping points, is Bunker Hill, because he recognizes the importance of it. And that's kind of what, starts this whole movement towards, hey, let's put a new monument. They had one up there for Warren, actually, but it wasn't really that glorious. So this is the beginning of really the monumental movement in America. It is, and it's also 18, the dedication in the 1840s is, it coincides with this idea of the new American nationalism movement and also a new southern nationalism movement. So during the events around, you know, the Massachusetts invites southern colonies to the Bunker Hill dedication, monument dedication. And a bunch of the states,

the southern states, go, why are we commemorating Bunker Hill? We should be commemorating Battle of Great Bridge in Virginia, which was the first, which happens December 1775. They say, that's the first American victory. Bunker Hill was a defeat. The real part of the revolution is actually in the South. And so you see these competing narratives, North and South, you know, both sides saying, we are the true inheritors of of the revolutionary legacy, never mind, Great Bridge was like four British companies versus like 2000 Americans, like nothing on the scale of Bunker Hill. But when you're creating a narrative, that doesn't always matter. The important thing to note is that the Bunker Hill monument forms

as part of, as you say, this monumentalization movement inside America that already is showing the fissures, is showing the cracks and the divide in the United States that are happening through the 1840s and 1850s because monuments are inherently political and they're about messaging. And always, always important to remember when someone starts talking about monuments and history. Right. Well, they build another even bigger mon, a bigger obelisk for George Washington later on, very much based, as I mentioned before, on what Bunker Hill was all about. And let's close out with Washington. So he arrives how long after the Bunker Hill battle. And where does it leave him? he's going to show up about three weeks later.

July 3rd arrives from Philadelphia, where he's received his commission as major general commanding of the Continental Army. And he shows up to Boston. I just feel bad for the guy. He shows up and you've got 18,000 New Englanders and he's a Virginian, and they could not be more different. They are much more egalitarian. They're this leveling idea.

Everyone's sort of equal in Washington. this Virginia planter. And he's like, why the hell are all, why are the enlisted soldiers calling the officers by the first names? Like, there's no discipline. It isn't even helped when his first compatriots from Virginia arrived. They're all from the western part of Virginia. All there, there's the riflemen, they drink, they fight.

There is as much of a headache to him as the New Englanders and the Marylanders. And he's going, God, how do I forge these quarrelsome people from across the colonies into one army how do I instill discipline puts his headquarters in near Cambridge and he tries to his first thought isn't even what do I do against the British? It's how do I keep this army intact? How do I keep it from dying of disease? Most of his general orders that are streaming out of his headquarters have to do with sanitation and hygiene. He has a great one of asking men to stop depositing excrement gratuitously around the landscape or something like it's a very flowery language. say, no, use the latrines. Otherwise, you're going to have disease and trying to safeguard

create supply lines, right? Safeguard the ammunition. It's a giant headache. I don't think he's slept for many weeks. And that's in the situation that he faces is much more, I must create an army before I can even think about doing anything against the British. And he very much, very much wants to do something against the British. He really wants to lead an assault against the British, push them out of Boston because he's got a whole bunch of people, you know, after a few weeks asking, well, why aren't you doing anything? Every new army commander ever. Why aren't you doing something? And he's going, well, I'm trying, I'm trying to get all everyone to stop fighting each other so we can fight the British.

Where is he living? Where is he operating from? He's at this beautiful, I'm trying to remember, it's the longfellow, it's a longfellow. There's so many longfellow houses, but it's a beautiful house that the Longfellow family will later own in Cambridge, a huge house where you can overlook, really, you can see Boston from it. He could go to the top of the house, look out, and see through a spyglass. He could probably see his opposite numbers. But most importantly, he can also see where most of his troops are. It's a very good visible position. It will be a long time before this siege is over. I mean, months and months passed before the Dorchester is equipped in the British leave. Almost a year.

And almost a year of fuming that he wants to do something, that he wants to attack. He comes up with all these attack plans. They try different stratagems, but their hands are bound by logistics. You can't commit to a major offensive when you've got nine rounds per soldier. Yeah, exactly. It's unfeasible. So he's fighting a lot of things. He's fighting the Continental Congress.

He's fighting the colonies. He's fighting his own soldiers. He's dealing with subordinates. He's got people like Benedict Arnold showing up and saying, hey, boss, I want to lead an invasion of Quebec through the main wilderness. Well, and that goes well, doesn't it? Can I please have 1,200 troops, which he gives him? He's trying to deal with, you know, quarrelsome subordinates who are trying to fight duels and

arguing over precedence. And I just feel for the man. Just what a headache. It's a chaotic year. But you started by saying, you know, 75 is always confused with 76. And it's really important to understand what happens in that first year, 75, if you're going to understand how things progress. rest from then. And this is doing me a big favor in figuring that out. So I thank you. Jonathan Bratton

is a major in the Maine National Guard. He's also an author and recommend the book, To the Last Man. It is a history of the Maine National Guard, 103rd Infantry Regiment during World War I. What's new on your horizon, Jonathan? So I've got a new workout that I've co-authored. It's called Opening Shots in the Colonies, talking about, well, you guessed it, exactly this topic. 1775. This comes from the Army Center of Military History. It is the first of, in their monographs covering the American Revolution. It's 13 different monographs, about half of which are out now. They're 80 pages each, so it's a very quick read. It's a very good primer for those seeking to learn, hey, what was this about? What were the major actions? I don't want to pick up a big book. You can access that

online at armyhistory.mille. And you can check out the Revolutionary War to 50th section of that website for a lot more great information on the Army in the American Revolution as we commemorate 250 years. I have a feeling we're talking again soon, Jonathan, and I'm glad for it. Thanks a lot. Real pleasure. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great.

But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.