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Historical Context:On the night of June 16, 1775, provincial soldiers used the cover of darkness to fortify the hills overlooking the town of Charlestown and the City of Boston. When British warships discovered the sudden appearance of earthworks on Breed’s Hill near daybreak of June 17, 1775 they opened fire. Meanwhile, the army in Boston prepared for a general assault to drive the rebels away. As artillery fire tore up the ground around them, the provincial soldiers frantically finished their earthen redoubt and awaited the British assault that would surely come. By 2:00 pm around 1,500 British Regular soldiers crossed the harbor in boats and landed in the open countryside outside Charlestown. By that point the British artillery bombardment had set many buildings in Charlestown ablaze, choking the air with thick plumes of smoke. From their foothold on the peninsula, the Regulars launched multiple assaults against the entrenched militia soldiers beyond the town. In wave after wave of carnage the British attacked the provincial redoubts losing hundreds of men killed and wounded each time. When provincial powder supplies ran low at the redoubt on Breed’s Hill, a final redcoat assault carried the works and spurred horrific hand to hand combat. In the melee provincial soldiers killed British Marine Major. John Pitcairn, and the Regulars killed provincial officer Dr. Joseph Warren. In total, over 1000 British soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured with nearly 450 militia the same. Known today as the battle of Bunker Hill, this engagement marked a turning point where the idea of reconciliation between England and her America colonies shrank into non-existence. Following the horrific bloodshed of Bunker Hill, both the British Regular soldiers and the Massachusetts Army settled in for a long siege. Questions swirled around the idea of what came next. Neither side had anticipated such carnage and for many it seemed like the point of no return had been reached. Daily life for the soldiers on the siege lines was marked by tedious military protocol and sporadic artillery fire. In Concord and the surrounding countryside, provincial agents moved a steady stream of goods into Cambridge for use by the growing rebellion. The stockpiles of supplies Gage sought to destroy on April 19 now fulfilled their purpose; however, they would not be enough, and the army soon faced shortages. As days turned into weeks the clear need for military reorganization and a proper chain of supply became more apparent. As a “Grand New England Army” took shape outside of Boston, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia decided to adopt the army and commit to support what was happening in Massachusetts. They appointed the Virginian George Washington to assume command and reform the body of militia soldiers surrounding Boston. On July 2, 1775 Washington arrived in Cambridge to establish his headquarters and begin the process of restructuring. In short time Washington appointed senior officers, introduced a new system of military discipline, and established the Continental Army. In its initial stages, Washington barred the men of color who had already taken up arms in the provincial army from enlistment in his restructured army. Following petition from those men and many others, Washington rescinded his orders and the Continental Army became a racially integrated fighting force. Desperate for supplies by late summer 1775, Congress set agents across North America looking for goods. In early August, Patriot sympathizers in the British Colony of Bermuda developed a daring plan. Although small, Bermuda served as a critical shipping port for the East Cost of America. Surrounded by treacherous reefs, skilled pilots guided merchant ships to ports across the island where a 1691 law required a small tax of each visiting vessel in currency or gunpowder. Thus, by 1775, Bermuda boasted a large supply of gunpowder in the port city of St. George’s. A tantalizing target, the patriot sympathizers developed a plan to liberate the powder. On the night of August 14, 1775 a group of men clambered onto the powder house roof where they gained access to the stores and opened the doors from the inside. As quietly as possible, the group moved 126 kegs of powder through the streets of St. George’s to a small cove known as Tobacco Bay. From the water's edge the men ferried the powder in long boats to an American ship, Lady Catherine, waiting just offshore. This stunning raid ultimately provided powder for patriot operations across the east coast but also proved a symbolic victory in the race for military supplies to support the siege of Boston. Although goods poured into the siege lines from across the globe, the strain on those living in the greater Boston area became incredibly high. With their husbands, sons, and brothers off at war, many Women stepped into the critical role of supporting both their families and the war effort. Many families from towns within the siege lines fled to the safety of the countryside where they discovered a general crisis. The Provincial Congress sought to impose order on this chaotic reality and assigned quotas for how many refugee families each town in the interior must take in and provide for. In Boston, the British garrison and loyal civilians suffered immensely from lack of food, disease, and want of firewood. With the threat of death by starvation and exposure growing during the cold months, the garrison in Boston turned to drastic measures such as pulling down buildings to use for firewood. Over the winter, Washington frequently clashed with his officers concerning plans for the coming spring. Through much deliberation a course of action slowly developed. Between November 1775 and February 1776 Boston local, Colonel Henry Knox completed the perilous task of moving the heavy artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga to Cambridge. Traversing hundreds of miles through rough terrain, the operation was dangerous, but the artillery train ultimately arrived intact. With the larger caliber guns in place, Knox’s artillery began a bombardment of Boston on the night of March 2, 1776. Although the artillery fire did little to definitively destroy the British positions, it signaled a dramatic upgrade of armament in the Continental camp. To compound his victory, Washington initiated a dramatic operation on Dorchester Heights, south of Boston. Again, under cover of darkness on March 5, 1776 thousands of provincial forces converged on Dorchester heights where they heavily fortified the position using a system of pre-fabricated defenses. As darkness obscured their movements, the Continental forces shuffled the timbers and fascines into position, followed by the heavy guns of Knox’s train. When the sun arose, the British command in Boston realized the Patriots’ heavy guns could now attack their warships anchored offshore. An immediate barrage from the British vessels revealed their inability to reach the American defenses and thus posed an immense threat to the British hold on Boston harbor. In their hour of desperation, the British planned an assault of Dorchester Heights, similar to that of Bunker Hill the previous June. When a sudden storm ravaged the British fleet and rendered the assault unthinkable, the severity of the situation set in for General Howe, now commanding the British garrison. After much deliberation, Howe issued a proclamation for a general withdrawal. Over the next week, his soldiers loaded tons of supplies onto the ships and destroyed what goods could not be removed from Boston during the evacuation. On March 17, 1776, The British fleet of 120 ships departed Boston with more than 11,000 soldiers, sailors, and civilians including many loyalist families. As the Warships vacated the harbor, General George Washington wearily eyed the city. Hearing rumors of smallpox outbreaks in the city and fearing the possibility of British efforts to infect the victorious continental army, Washington deployed a special force of inoculated soldiers to clear the city before the rest of the army converged. Although Washington’s forces had driven the British garrison from Boston, this major victory only signaled the beginning of a broader conflict. News soon arrived of a larger British fleet rendezvousing with Howe’s in Canada. Fearing the British intended to attack New York, Washington wasted no time refitting his army and preparing to march south. On April 4, 1776, the Continental Army marched out of Boston, headed for New York City where the next major phase of the American war was slated to begin. When the armies departed Boston, the long road to recovery began in Massachusetts. The city and countryside were in a state of decay, but now many of the militia soldiers who rushed to fight on April 19, 1775 returned home. During the following months, Massachusetts put itself back together, while small occurrences reminded the population of the dangerous world they now inhabited. In June, a warship filled with British regular soldiers sailed into Boston Harbor, unaware of the evacuation some months prior. Unfortunately for those soldiers, their experience in North America started with captivity. Interestingly, the Massachusetts government moved some of the captured British soldiers to the Concord town jail where they joined a handful of men languishing in captivity from over a year prior on April 19, 1775. As the Boston campaign came to a close, major political movements were underway in North America. Following a year of war and carnage with no peaceful resolution in sight, the second Continental Congress, proposed a resolution on May 10, 1776 recommending the colonial governments reorganize in favor of independence. Through bloodshed, hardship, and disillusionment some united colonies now moved toward independence. On July 2, 1776 with news of the victory in Boston, and Washington’s endeavor to protect New York under way, the Continental Congress approved the Lee Resolution for independence. On July 4, 1776, the same congress approved their formal explanation via the United States Declaration of Independence. This decision to declare independence had wide reaching and world changing implications. In the spaces outside of independence hall the people of these 13 colonies grappled with the implications. For people of color, women, and indigenous Americans the path to equality remained clouded and barred by the very people who had declared freedom and liberty for all. Still, more than 7 years of bloodshed loomed on the horizon, for at the very moment congress approved the Declaration, a British invasion fleet consisting of 30,000 Regular soldiers and German auxiliaries were landing unopposed on Staten Island in New York city. Frothingham, Richard. History of the Siege of Boston: And of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Also an Account of the Bunker Hill Monument. With Illustrative Documents. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1873.
Hannigan, John, Ph.D.. Patriots of Color in Massachusetts, Minute Man National Historical Park, August 2014 Patriots of Color in Massachusetts (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov) Maier, Pauline. American scripture : making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1998. Royster, Charles. A Revolutionary People At War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Wright, Robert K.. The Continental Army. Washington DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1983. Quintal, George. Patriots of Color: "a Peculiar Beauty and Merit": African Americans and Native Americans at Battle Road & Bunker Hill. Boston: Division of Cultural Resources, Boston National Historical Park, 2004. Events & Programs:250th commemoration events June 17, 2025- July 4, 2026.Check Back Soon for more programs and details!The Battle of Bunker Hill
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Last updated: May 1, 2025