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| U.S. National Park Service |
I suspect that I am like a lot of us. I recognized the name and thought I remembered it had been important in our early history, but I did not really know what made it important. I wrongly assumed that we must have won. The New Englanders who fought in that battle were mostly a rag-tag collection of farmers, bringing their own weapons, led by men whose military experience had been largely in fighting with the British against the French.
The British had experienced leadership, but the soldiers themselves were not seasoned. To make their effectiveness even worse, they were ordered to march side by side in their heavy red uniforms while taking fire from the New Englanders. Their plan was to slaughter the Americans in close quarters as they struggled to load their muskets. British discipline failed, they did not follow orders, and they did not reach the colonists to slaughter them with their sabers. The British soldiers fled, stumbling over their own dead and wounded. Later, they returned and took the ground, but at a terrible sacrifice. The rag-tag Englanders did not win, but they showed they could stand against the British, despite their ragged clothing, limited ammunition, and fairly sketchy knowledge of military discipline.
Washington did not arrive until later, and ultimately the rag-tag nature of the soldiers was improved with discipline and training, but their stand at Bunker Hill reinforced the idea of independence, not merely demanding better treatment from the English. Until then, it was resentment about taxes, particularly 1: the stamp act: with taxes on paper, playing cards, and legal documents, 2: the tea act, giving the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea to the colonies, and 3: the sugar act, a tax on molasses as an example, --which brought more dissatisfaction in the Northern States than in the South.
Bunker Hill changed that. George Washington agreed to lead the Army, and gradually more of the Colonies began to accept the idea of Freedom. Washington demanded better military discipline, and few of the New Englanders who had led the farmers were made officers under Washington. Yet, the role they played is accurately respected for bringing the colonies together and igniting the idea that the Colonists could beat the English. In short, they kept the notion of American liberty alive, while those less certain gradually joined the cause of Freedom.
Prior to Bunker Hill, it was so-called radicals, who whispered the word of Freedom, but after Bunker Hill, the whispers spread, and voices grew. Without Bunker Hill, would America have found the courage to fight for freedom.?
Daniel Webster spoke at the laying of the cornerstone for the monument on Bunker Hill in 1825, and his words have warned the generations that followed. "There remains in us a great duty of defense and preservation...(and) may the country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever!"
Perhaps today is the right time to be reminded of his words.
