Nathaniel Philbrick. Bunker Hill. New York: Viking, 2013. Print.

Do not be misled by the title. Bunker Hill is about the beginnings of the American Revolution in the Boston area. It is divided into nearly equal thirds.

The first third of Bunker Hill is about the events leading up to the battle. It begins, after a little background (e.g., the 1761 Writs of Assistance), with the arrival of occupying troops to Boston in 1768. It reminds us that the American Revolution was not a Rousseauvian romantic re-structuring of society, but a genuine attempt to regain the governments and rights that had gradually been taken away. We are reminded of the 1676 Massachusetts constitution. I was reminded of Ben Franklin’s reaction to a British Lord’s view of the king in 1757.

Bunker Hill includes the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the March on Salem, Lexington, Concord, Paul Revere, and Chelsea Creek. If the reader has never heard of these things, this is a good place to start. Philbrick makes these events come alive and helps us understand both sides.

The provincials (Philbrick’s preferred term) of Massachusetts began meeting secretly in a ruling body outside of Boston after the King closed the legislature and set up martial law. Philbrick records some of the deliberations. The provincials did not keep written records of the meetings to help avoid any English reprisals. We only know about them because in the 1930s the correspondence of General Gage, the military governor, was rediscovered. A spy had passed the deliberations on to him. (For a detailed history of the independent Massachusetts legislatures and county conventions see Ray Raphael’s The First American Revolution.)

While Bunker Hill tells us a lot about many of the patriot leaders like John and Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, Israel Putnam, Artemas Ward, William Prescott, Henry Knox, and others, it devotes more of the first two thirds of the book to Dr. Joseph Warren. He seemed to be everywhere, and he was the leader that nearly everyone in Boston, including the British hierarchy, respected. John Quincy Adams, seven years old in 1775, would recall the doctor fondly for saving his right hand through his medical skills. At least one person who lived in Boston during the siege and observed both sides said that if Warren had lived, Washington would have been “an obscurity.” (248)

The details concerning the politics and the fighting before Bunker Hill really show us how the British occupiers and New England “Yankees” came to such an impasse.

I had never made the connection that the British General Hugh Percy, who led one of the units to Concord and back in April 1775, was the 31-year-old Duke of Northumberland and a direct descendant of Hotspur and the rebels of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I. Because I grew up in a small suburb of Boston (still semi-rural at the time), I recognized family names of many of the provincials in Bunker Hill. Most of the schools in our town were named after Revolutionary War soldiers who had lived there—some appear in this book. The book also mentions Nathaniel Ames of Dedham, Massachusetts, a key figure in Charles Slack’s book reviewed here recently.

Philbrick notes that many of the most capable provincial soldiers like Washington and Putnam were veterans of the French and Indian War. They knew about fighting in their own territory, and that is likely a major cause of the English underestimating the opposition. Henry Knox was too young to have fought in that war, but as a bookseller he had read many military manuals and would prove to be an effective engineer and artilleryman.

The middle third or so of the book is about the actual Battle of Bunker Hill. It notes the actions leading up to the attack, Gage’s decision to fight the militias camped in Charlestown, and how it took three attacks for the British regulars to take the hills. We are reminded the actual battle took place on Breed’s Hill. Bunker Hill was the taller hill that overlooked it.

We are told how New Hampshire’s John Stark, a veteran of Rogers’ Rangers, and Connecticut’s Thomas Knowlton built fortifications and led men on the provincial left that completely prevented the elite Welsh Fusiliers from making a flank attack. Philbrick also reconstructs as best he can the death of Dr. Warren—shot in the head at close range by an officer’s pistol.

The last third of the book, then, describes the siege of Boston. Though the British won Charlestown and Bunker Hill in this battle, they had so many casualties that they could go no farther. They also had burned most of the houses in Charlestown, so there was not much left for their martial law to rule over.

A few weeks after Bunker Hill, George Washington arrived in Cambridge with a commission to organize an army under the auspices of the Continental Congress. Washington, Ward, and others would construct siege fortifications surrounding Boston and Charlestown. Back then both towns were on peninsulas that had very narrow necks connecting them to the mainland. By early winter provincial privateers had successfully kept even most shipping out of Boston Harbor.

Colonel Knox ably transported sixty-odd British cannon from Fort Ticonderoga in New York to Dorchester Heights, a third peninsula south of Boston overlooking the city at such a height that artillery from Boston could not reach it. The whole time Washington wanted to attack Boston, but his other generals who were mostly New Englanders did not want to see Boston destroyed. Besides, even Washington admitted that they were low on gunpowder.

On the evening of March 4 into the morning of March 5, 1776, Knox, Quartermaster Thomas Mifflin, French and Indian War veteran John Thomas, and 800 soldiers constructed a fort with cannon on Dorchester Heights. The British in Boston could not believe what they saw when they awoke the next morning. One British officer wrote that it was “and expedition equal to that of the Genii belonging to Aladdin’s wonderful lamp.” (280) General Howe thought the provincials did more in one night “than his whole army would have done in six months.” (280) The British estimated that the Continental Army must have had 15 to 20 thousand men just to build the fort.

Though this reviewer never knew the details, he knew enough of Boston tradition to know that this was the beginning of the end for England in Boston. They were suffering. They were nearly completely cut off by land and sea. Sunday, March 17, 1776, is celebrated to this day not only as St. Patrick’s Day (Philbrick tells us that there were enough Irish Protestants in Boston to celebrate this holiday since 1737) but also as Evacuation Day.

In passing, Philbrick notes that while Washington was in Massachusetts, Phillis Wheatley wrote her poem “To His Excellency George Washington” and mailed it to him. (“Your Excellency” was the standard way to address generals.) Washington let a lot of personal correspondence unopened for months. When he finally read her poem in February of 1776, he wrote back complimenting her and telling her that if she were ever near his headquarters, “I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the muses.” (278)

There is a very moving epilogue, just a few pages, that tells of June 17, 1843, when the Bunker Hill Monument was dedicated. We see it from the perspective of a now-aged John Quincy Adams who had heard the fighting from his home in Quincy when he was seven and could now hear the pomp and circumstance from the same vantage point.

The Battle of Bunker Hill’s casualty list was high. The Americans had 115 killed and 305 wounded. General Howe would say of Dr. Warren’s death, “This victim was worth five hundred of their men.” Philbrick notes that this is “high praise indeed.” (230) Of the 2,200 British regulars involved, 1,054 had been killed or wounded. General Howe would write, “The success is too dearly bought.” (230) It would be the bloodiest battle of the entire Revolutionary War—and independence had not even been declared!

Several people over the years had recommended books by Nathaniel Philbrick to me. I believe his The Mayflower was the last book my father read (on tape, by then he was unable to hold books for any length of time) before he passed away, a patriot to the end. Bunker Hill was so well done in so many way, I am sure that it will not be the not be the last book by him that I will read, God willing.