Bunker
Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick
(Viking, 2013, 416 pages, $32.95) successfully fills a gap between
Philbrick's own fine book Mayflower
and books like David McCoullough's 1776 Ron
Chernow's fine biography of George Washington by describing in detail
the events surrounding the Battle of Bunker Hill and the siege of
Boston during the period 1774 to 1776. Philbrick draws a direct line
from the Mayflower Pilgrims he detailed in his earlier book through
150 years of increasing freedom, wealth, and independence to become
the unruly and independent crowd know as the patriots and the
Founding Fathers. He shows the colonists of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony as resentful of reasonable taxes assessed by Parliament to pay
for administrative costs of maintaining their colony and details the
increasing resentment leading to anger and violence ginned up by John
Adams, Sam Adams, Joseph Warren and others. The parallels (and
differences) between the efforts of the Patriots of Massachusetts and
the today's latter day Tea Party are obvious, placing those of the
eighteenth century in a better light.
As
Britain seeks to control the colonists and pay for the expense of
governing them, the colonists engage in a series of town meetings at
Fanueil Hall and in all the New England colonies that define and
refine the meaning of being an American as it emerged in their
concept of shared decision making and consensus development. The book
emphasizes how the culture of the town meeting affected both civil
and military decision making in helping to forge the American
character. They were seeking their own independence without
recognizing the goal. The similarities to today's Tea Party are too
obvious, as the colonist's leaders use the Stamp Act and the Port
Act as “opportunities to to exploit” local anger at Britain
rather than as problems amenable to a reasonable solution. As the
colonists become increasingly aware of their sense of isolation from
Britain along with differences that have developed between them and
the mother country over the past century and a half,their anger
increases and their determination to resist reaches new levels. The
Boston Massacre becomes a symbol of the increasing tension and
violence in the situation.
The
events detailed in Bunker
Hill concentrate
on three seminal events which occurred after the occupation of Boston
by the British in 1774, the British expedition to seek to eliminate
supposed stores of gunpowder in Concord leading to the battles of
Lexington and Concord, their Pyrrhic victory at Bunker Hill in 1775,
and the Siege of Boston under the newly appointed commander of the
Patriot army, George Washington in 1775. Philbrick relies on
contemporary accounts, diaries of both British and American
participants, and other extensive research in his riveting account.
He details the importance of the lesser known Dr. Joseph Warren, who
might have emerged as a political and leadership rival of Washington,
had he not been killed at Bunker Hill. Warren's balanced view and
mature understanding of both the Patriots and the British helped
avoid war for a time and then helped engage in the early hostilities
as they became inevitable.
As the
redcoats approached Lexington, the militia assembled, Philbrick says,
not to oppose the Stamp Act or other legislation, but to assure their
freedom. “It was a sense of promise that made the militiaman's
resolve to oppose these troops all the more powerful.” However, he
continues, it must be remembered that the freedoms that inspired them
were for people just like them, as loyalists, though born and
nurtured in America, were not heeded. His descriptions of the massed
British troops marching in their red coats and the Patriot minute men
fighting guerrilla style from behind stone walls during the British
retreat to Boston confirm the mythology we have all grown up with.
The
descriptions are vivid. The text reads with a narrative style that's
lively and suspense filled, even when the reader knows the outcomes.
The history laden characters (Hancock, Warren, both John and Sam
Adams, Gates, and, later, Washington) all take on human form.
Post-holing history provides the kind of detail that brings it to
life when the reader is ready. This book becomes more meaningful with
a solid background in the biographies of George Washington and John
Adams as well as the broader reading in more superficial overviews of
the flow of the revolution and the development of America. After 150
years of living an independent British life, the colonists had
developed a society relying more on competence than on birthright.
After generations spent defeating the Indians and subduing the land,
they had become independent in spirit, a spirit which was ready to
spend the next eight years establishing full independence and begin
to occupy and exploit the entire continent which they had become
heirs to.
While
the Battle of Bunker Hill, which actually centered by mistake on
Breed's Hill and poor leadership, a short but crucial distance away,
represented a British victory, it proved to be a Pyrrhic one, as they
were never able afterwards to sally out of Boston successfully.
British casualties were large and the psychological effect they
suffered was even greater as they realized that they were fighting
their own countrymen on foreign soil. The Battle of Bunker Hill
convinced the British that they must eventually abandon Boston for
New York or further south and invade the colonies should they hope to
salvage them. Before George Washington arrived as the new commander
of the colonists, the British had decided to leave.
The
appointment of George Washington as commander in chief represented a
changeover from a relatively local insurrection to the development of
a national cause uniting the various colonies. Washington's
well-documented disdain for the New Englanders is balanced in this
account by the understanding that they were not easily persuaded to
accept the command of a leader who looked so much like the people
they were seeking to defeat. Washington's development as a leader,
his ability to control his own strong, previously almost
ungovernable, emotions, in order to marshal the talents of the New
England leadership and soldiery were crucial to his later leadership
at Valley Forge, Trenton, and onward. The siege of Boston and the
building of breast works on Dorchester Heights inevitably drove the
British from the city and led to the next steps in a war that might
have been won sooner had sufficient gunpowder been available for them
to defeat the British in New England.
Nathaniel Philbrick
Nathaniel
Philbrick's account of the events surrounding the Battle of Bunker
Hill provides an essential linchpin for understanding the development
of the American Revolution in a context of a growing sense of the
colonist's vision of themselves as a separate people. It is highly
readable with a narrative style that draws the reader forward while
never sacrificing accuracy. Bunker
Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution
by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking, 2013, 416 pages, $32.95) is fully
annotated, deeply researched, taughtly written. A fine book. I
received Bunker Hill from the publisher as an electronic galley
through Edelweiss.
