BUNKER HILL, BATTLE OF

BUNKER HILL, BATTLE OF. To force the British from Boston, on the night of 16 June 1775 the American militia besieging the town sent 1,200 men to seize Bunker Hill, on the peninsula of Charlestown. The detachment instead decided to build a small redoubt on Breed's Hill, which was closer to Boston but easily flanked. At day break, the British warships that were anchored in the Boston harbor opened an ineffective fire. To strengthen his left flank, Colonel William Prescott, commanding in the redoubt, built a rail fence stuffed with hay and manned the line with 2,000 men under Major General Israel Putnam. Meanwhile, under the command of Major General Sir William Howe, some 2,000 British infantry, with a few field guns, landed below the redoubt.

Early in the afternoon, Howe, along with Brigadier General Robert Pigot, led a simultaneous attack on the redoubt and the rail fence, which was bloodily repulsed by the provincials, chiefly New Hampshire men under Colonel John Stark. After another failed attempt to take these breastworks, Howe's third assault feinted against the fence and for the first time attacked the redoubt with bayonets. Prescott's troops, out of ammunition, were forced to retreat. The defenders of the fence covered the American retreat. After an engagement lasting less than two hours, the British were masters of the peninsula, but this victory came with heavy casualties. The British lost 1,054 men, while the Americans lost, in killed, wounded,

and captured, but 441. Although the engagement took place on Breed's Hill, it has come to be known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. At first regarded by the Americans as a defeat, Bunker Hill, because of the way the militia resisted regulars, came to be regarded as a moral victory.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Higginbotham, Don. The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763–1789. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Rev. ed., Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1983.

Ketchum, Richard M. The Battle for Bunker Hill. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962.

AllenFrench/a. r.

See alsoBoston, Siege of ; "Don't Fire Till You See the White of Their Eyes."