Digging the Fortifications on Breed's Hill
Taking a Look at the Battle of Bunker Hill
On the 16th day of June, 1775, at night after roll call, I was furnished with a shovel and ordered to march. I was ordered to Bunker Hill, to use my shovel in throwing up a breastwork. I was compelled to labor till daylight. As soon as we were discovered, the British ships and batteries opened a tremendous fire upon us; this they continued till about ten o’clock in the day, when they began to cross Charlestown Ferry.
Here they landed their forces and soon after set fire to the town, then formed their troops and marched on toward us. As soon as they came within gun shot, they began to fire upon us, but our officers, thinking it best to reserve our fire, we withheld it until they came within four or five rods of us, when we were ordered to fire, which we did.1
It seems remarkable that just a couple of months after the people of Charlestown opened their doors and cared for the wounded soldiers stumbling back from Concord, that those same soldiers would light fire to Charlestown.
And yet, that is exactly what happened.
Isaac Glynn was only 14 years old in 1775.
Isaac Glynn is my 5th Great Grandfather, and one of the only ancestors I have more complete Revolutionary War records of. His account of the war I first encountered in the archives of the Vermont History Center. At the time I was just writing a paper for an undergrad class. But still, it intrigued me that I had ancestors who I could actually account for their movements during the war. And Isaac’s account above tallies with what the history books now say:
British troops made three assaults on the American works that June 17. The first two offensives were nearly identical: Redcoats converged on the New Englanders’ lines from three sides, marching in row upon orderly row in spite of the many fences and stone walls that lay hidden in the tall grass. […] To conserve gunpowder, the Americans had orders not to fire “'til you see the whites of their eyes”—orders which proved to be a stroke of genius. […] Row after row of redcoats fell, mowed down by the patriots’ guns. Some units lost three-quarters, even 90 percent of their men.2
Now, the “whites of their eyes” part may be mere legend. Isaac certainly does not reference it in his version of events:
Soon after, they formed again and renewed the attack; we did as before - reserved our fire till they came within six or seven rods of us, then showed them Yankee play and drove them back again. But they soon returned, and we, being destitute of ammunition, made use of cobblestones, and used them freely without number, but we were obliged to leave the ground.3
By the end of the battle, 1054 British soldiers were dead or wounded, with a high percentage of them being officers. The colonists seemed to be aiming for the higher ranks on purpose. “Bunker Hill was proclaimed a British victory, which technically it was. But in plain truth His Majesty’s forces, led by General Howe, had suffered more than 1,000 casualties in an appalling slaughter before gaining the high ground.”4
Bunker Hill, and the battles of Lexington and Concord before it, come out of a rather large misconception - particularly on the part of the Prime Minister, Lord North, and his allies in Parliament. They were under the impression that Boston, and Massachusetts for that matter, were the root cause of all of their issues. That the trouble was brewing out of Massachusetts, and that simply focusing on that one colony would calm matters.
[In 1774,] a confident Cabinet and Parliament had perceived the port of Boston and the province of Massachusetts as a radical, troublemaking, and vulnerable fringe of British North America. Teaching it a lesson would chasten the other colonies and get them back in line. […] However, the ensuing Battle of Boston—an appropriate way to clump the events between June 1774 and June 1775—was a five-step Patriot ladder to victory.5
Many accounts reviewing the American Revolution look at the British positioning in Boston as a tactical error. The British severely underestimated the support Boston would get from the other colonies. Go to Boston, strike fear in the hearts of the Massachusetts colonists, and stop the rebellion in its tracks. But the continual use of brutality as a strategy did not do the British any favors. Worse, Boston was surrounded by hills on all sides, making the city one of the worst choices for housing the army and the headquarters.
After the war was lost, the general’s chief engineer, Colonel John Montresor, drew up a list of reasons for the debacle. Right at the top, he placed what he called the “blunder in sending General Gage with four regiments to Boston.” Located a long way from the principal lines of communication, the town had no military value. Its side on a peninsula overlooked by high ground rendered it indefensible, and so it became nothing but a trap for the British army. Before he boarded HMS Lively, Gage should have pointed this out to politicians, but even if he had, it is unlikely that they would have listened.6
While there was about a two-month lull between 19 April and 16 June, from the Battle of Bunker Hill onward, the war begins to move much more quickly. “According to the U.S. Army’s Center for Military History, ‘on or before June 14, the Continental Congress, “secretly adopted” New England forces besieging Boston and New York forces guarding strategic positions; and openly on this day, Congress appointed [a] committee to draft regulations for new Continental Army and authorized addition of 10 companies of riflemen to be drawn from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.’”7 Around this time, they also looked to appoint a general for these forces. “John Adams, who backed George Washington, argued persuasively on his behalf; and when Thomas Johnson of Maryland nominated the Virginian on June 15, Washington was chosen unanimously.”8 George Washington arrived to take possession of the army in July of 1775. He “declared new rules and regulations in force, insisting on discipline, and he made his presence felt by reviewing the defenses on horseback almost daily.”9
While technically too young, Isaac sticks around. He stays in Cambridge after Bunker Hill, and “before my time with the minutemen had expired, I enlisted again under Captain John Brown, belonging to the continental troops. While I was stationed here, General Washington arrived and took possession of the American army.”10 Isaac’s official record puts his enlistment date at 1 January 1776.11
As we approach the 250th Anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, there are some events happening in Massachusetts to keep an eye out for, starting June 8th. You can visit https://www.bh250.org/ to learn more!
(Please note: the reenactment of Bunker Hill will be on June 21-22, 2025 in Gloucester at Stage Fort Park, not Charlestown.)
Isaac Glynn, A Soldier’s Story - a personal account of the Revolutionary War, edited for clarity by Patricia Ann Glynn.
Charles Bahne, The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail, Fourth Edition (Cambridge, MA: Newtowne Publishing, 2013), 73.
Isaac Glynn, A Soldier’s Story - a personal account of the Revolutionary War, edited for clarity by Patricia Ann Glynn.
David McCullough, 1776 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 8.
Kevin Phillips, 1775: A Good Year for Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 447-48.
Nick Bunker, An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 292.
Kevin Phillips, 1775: A Good Year for Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 245.
The War of the American Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1975), pp. 90-91.
Kevin Phillips, 1775: A Good Year for Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 245.
David McCullough, 1776 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 31.
Isaac Glynn, A Soldier’s Story - a personal account of the Revolutionary War, edited for clarity by Patricia Ann Glynn.
“That he enlisted for the term of one year about the 1st of Jan, 1776 in Massachusetts, into Capt Brown’s Company, Col Dorkey’s Regt with Commitment lien on the Continental Establishment and served the period out…”
Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrent Application File W. 17015, Isaac Glenney, Continental (Conn) Mass, NAID: 54680390, Record Group 15: Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Series: Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/54680390?contributionId=1f75ae5b-8934-4368-b143-2b26e3d96350&objectPage=6