USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Old landmarks and historic fields of Middlesex > Part 7
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Commissions were issued by the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts before Bunker Hill, and these did not bear the king's name, but expressed the holders' appointment in the army raised for the defence of the colony. Some of the offi- cers engaged at Bunker Hill only received their commissions the day before the battle. The two Brewers were of these. Samuel Gerrish's regiment, which remained inactive on Bun- ker Hill during the engagement, Mr. Frothingham supposes was not commissioned ; but Gerrish had received his appoint- ment as colonel, and James Wesson was commissioned major on the 19th of May, 1775.
After the battle of the 17th of June the Provincial Congress recommended a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer to be observed, in which the Divine blessing is invoked "on our rightful sovereign, King George III."* The army chaplains continued to pray for the king until long after the arrival of General Washington, as we learn from Dr. Jeremy Belknap's account of his visit to the camps before Boston, in October, 1775, when he observed that the plan of independence was be- coming a favorite point in the army, and that it was offensive to pray for the king. Under the date of October 22d the good Doctor enters in his journal : -
"Preached all day in the meeting-house. After meeting I was again told by the chaplain that it was disagreeable to the generals to pray for the king. I answered that the same authority which appointed the generals had ordered the king to be prayed for at the late Continental Fast ; and, till that was revoked, I should think it my duty to do it. Dr. Appleton prayed in the afternoon, and mentioned the king with much affection. It is too assuming in the generals to find fault with it."
John Adams, in a letter to William Tudor, of April 24, 1776, says :- * Boston Gazette, July 3, 1775.
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"How is it possible for people to hear the crier of a court pro- nounce "God save the King !" and for jurors to swear well and truly to try an issue between our Sovereign Lord the King and a prisoner, or to keep his Majesty's secrets, in these days, I can't con- ceive. Don't the clergy pray that he may overcome and vanquish all his enemies yet ? What do they mean by his enemies ? Your army ?
" Have people no consciences, or do they look upon all oaths to be custom-house oaths ?" *
We have presented the foregoing examples in order to show by what slow degrees the idea of separation germinated in the minds of the colonists. Hostilities were begun to regain their constitutional liberties, just as the war of the Great Rebellion of 1861 was first waged solely in the view of establishing the authority of the Constitution and the laws. If "all history is a romance, unless it is studied as an example," we do not seem to have developed in a hundred years a greater grasp of national questions than those hard-thinking and hard-hitting colonists possessed.
The constitution of the Provincial army was modelled after that of the British. The general officers had regiments, as in the king's service. The regiments and companies were in number and strength similar to those of the regular troops. Thus we frequently meet with mention of the Honorable Gen- eral Ward's, Thomas's, or Heath's regiments. This custom lapsed upon the creation of a new army. In the British service the generals were addressed or spoken of as Mr. Howe or Mr. Clinton, except the general-in-chief, who was styled " His Ex- cellency." Our own army adopted this custom in so far as the commanding general was concerned ; but the subordinate gen- erals, many of whom had come from private life, were little in- clined to waive their military designation and continue plain Mister. It is still a rule of the English and American service to address a subaltern as Mr.
To return to the battle, - which was first called by our troops the " Battle of Charlestown," -it is worthy of remem-
* Mass. Hist. Collections, II. viii.
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brance that the orders to take possession of the hill were issued on the same day that Washington was officially notified of his appointment to command the army. He had scarcely proceeded twenty miles on the way to Cambridge, when he met the courier spurring in hot haste with the despatches to Congress
of the battle. The rider was stopped, and the General opened and read the despatch, while Lee, Schuyler, and the other gen- tlemen who attended him eagerly questioned the messenger. It was on this occasion that Washington, upon hearing that the militia had withstood the fire of the regulars, exclaimed, "Then the liberties of the country are safe !"
A variety of conflicting accounts have been given of the battle by eyewitnesses ; the narrators, as is usual, seeing only what passed in their own immediate vicinity. On the day of the evacuation of Boston by the British Major Wilkinson ac- companied Colonels Reed and Stark over the battle-ground, and the latter pointed out to him the various positions and described the parts played by the different actors. The vestiges of the post and rail fence on the left, and of the stone-wall Stark ordered "his boys " to throw up on the beach of the Mystic, were still plainly visible. It was before this deadly stone-wall where the British light-infantry attacked that John Winslow counted ninety-six dead bodies the next day after the battle. Stark told Wilkinson that "the dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold," and that he had forbidden his men to fire until the enemy reached a point he had marked in the bank, eight or ten rods distant from his line. With such marksmen as Stark's men were, every man covering his adversary, it is no wonder the head of the British column was shot in pieces, or that it drifted in mutilated fragments away from the horrible feu d'enfer.
Before the action, when some one asked him if the rebels would stand fire, General Gage replied, "Yes, if one John Stark is there ; for he is a brave fellow." Through his glass the General saw Prescott standing on the crest of the embank- ment. "Who is he ?" inquired the General of Councillor Willard, Prescott's brother-in-law. He was told. "Will he
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fight ?" demanded Gage. " To the last drop of blood in his veins !" replied Willard. Prescott wore, on this day, a single- breasted blue coat with facings turned up at the skirt, a top- wig and three-cornered hat.
The American field-hospital during the battle was fixed at the old Sun Tavern, on the north side of Bunker Hill. Dr. Eustis, Andrew Craigie, and others officiated there. Some of the wounded early in the engagement were, however, removed to the mainland. The same tavern was one of the places named by the Committee of Safety for granting permits to go into Boston in April, 1775.
The American prisoners were treated with extreme inhuman- ity. They were conveyed over to Long Wharf in Boston, and allowed to lie there all night without any care for their wounds, or other resting-place than the ground. The next day they were removed to Boston Jail, where several died before their final transfer to Halifax. General Washington earnestly en- deavored to mitigate the sufferings of these unfortunate men ; but the status of rebel prisoners had not yet been established, or a cartel of exchange arranged.
Both parties were exhausted by the battle. The Americans feared an immediate advance on Cambridge; the British, ap- prehending an assault from the fresh troops of the Americans, intrenched on the northern face of Bunker Hill, while the 52d regiment bivouacked, on the night of the 17th, in the main street of the town, so as to cover the mill-pond causeway and the approach over the Neck. Dr. Church, in his defence, says, " Your Honor well knows what was our situation after the action of Bunker Hill ; insomuch that it was generally believed, had the British troops been in a condition to pursue their success, they might have reached Cambridge with very little opposition."
The minority in Parliament were very severe in their remarks on the conduct of their troops at Lexington and Bunker Hill. Howe's forcing the lines thrown up by a handful of raw, undisciplined militia in the course of a summer's night was ludicrously compared to a Marlborough's victory at Blenheim.
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The death of Warren was the greatest loss the American cause sustained on that day. The spot where he fell, while lingering in a retreat his soul rebelled against, is marked by a stone in the northerly part of the monument grounds. The last words he was heard to utter were : " I am a dead man. Fight on, my brave fellows, for the salvation of your country." His remains were buried on the field, with such disregard of the claims of rank, as a man and a citizen, that only the -supposi- tion that Gage feared to place them in the hands of his (War- ren's) friends for political reasons can account for the indignity with which the body was treated. As for the Americans with whom he fought, it is not known that they made the least effort to obtain the remains. He died and received the burial of an American rebel, a name of which his descendants are not ashamed.
" No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet or in shroud we bound him, But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him."
When he entered the redoubt to which Putnam had directed him as the post of honor, Prescott addressed him, saying, “Dr. Warren, do you come here to take the command ?" "No, Colonel," replied the Doctor ; "but to give what assistance I can, and to let these damned rascals see" - pointing to the British troops -" that the Yankees will fight." This was the relation of Dr. Eustis, who was within the redoubt, to General Wilkinson. Eustis, afterwards governor of Massachu- setts, was a student with Warren, and had been commissioned surgeon of Gridley's regiment of artillery. After the battle he attended the wounded, and was placed in charge of the military hospital established at Rev. Samuel Cook's house at Menotomy, now Arlington.
The slaughter of British officers at Bunker Hill was terrible indeed. The bloodiest battles in which British soldiers had been engaged suffered by the comparison. Quebec and Min- den were no longer recollected with horror. Spendlove, Major of the 43d, who died of his wounds here, had been gazetted
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four times for wounds received in America ; namely, with Wolfe, on the Plains of Abraham, at the reduction of Mar- tinico, the taking of Havana, and at Bunker Hill. There is no doubt Pitcairn was singled out for his share in the Lexington battle ; his person was well known in the American ranks. Dearborn says he was on horseback, and the only mounted officer of the enemy on the field. Abercrombie, borne. away with a mortal hurt, begged his men not to kill his old friend Putnam. Each of these officers commanded battalions.
The effect on the new levies in England was marked. An officer who resigned, upon being asked the reason, replied, that he wanted to see a little more of the world. "Why don't . you go to America with the troops ?" said the querist. "You will then have an opportunity of seeing the world soon." " Yes," replied the officer, " the other world I believe I should very soon ; but as I am not tired of this, I do not choose to set out on my journey yet."
These celebrated heights were eventually cultivated, and pro- duced astonishing crops of hemp, etc., so that in this respect they followed in the train of the memorable Plains of Abra- ham, which Lord Dalhousie, when he was governor-general of Canada, ordered to be ploughed up and seeded in grain. This was laid hold of by the wits, who perpetrated the following epigram : -
" Some care for honor, others care for groats, - Here Wolfe reaped glory and Dalhousie oats."
The Freemasons have the honor of taking the initiative in a structure to commemorate the heroic death of their Grand- Master, Joseph Warren. In 1794 King Solomon's Lodge of Charlestown erected a Tuscan column of wood, elevated on a brick pedestal eight feet square, and surmounted by a gilded urn, bearing the age and initials of the illustrious dead, encircled with Masonic emblems. The whole height of the pillar was twenty-eight feet.
The face of the south side of the base bore the following inscription : -
4
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Erected, A. D. MDCCXCIV.
By King Solomon's Lodge of Freemasons. Constituted in Charlestown, 1783, In Memory of Major-General Joseph Warren, And his Associates, Who were slain on this memorable spot, June 17, 1775.
None but they who set a just value on the blessings of Liberty are worthy to enjoy her.
In vain we toiled ; in vain we fought ; we bled in vain ; if you, our off- spring, want valor to repel the assaults of her invaders.
Charlestown settled, 1628. Burnt, 1775. Rebuilt, 1776.
The enclosed land given by the Hon. James Russell.
This structure stood for about thirty years, but was in a state of ruinous dilapidation before the movement to raise on the spot its giant successor caused its disappearance. A beauti- ful model in marble of the first monument may still be seen within the present obelisk.
William Tudor of Boston, the accomplished scholar, was the first to draw public attention to the building of a memorial on Bunker Hill commensurate with the event it was intended to celebrate. He pursued the subject until the sympathies and co-operation of many distinguished citizens were secured. Dan- iel Webster was early enlisted in the cause, and he stated that it was in Thomas H. Perkins's house, in Boston, that William Tudor, William Sullivan, and George Blake adopted the first step towards raising a monument on Bunker Hill. Dr. John C. Warren, nephew of the General, purchased three acres of land lying on the hill, in November, 1822, thus preserving for the monument site an area that was about to be sold. A meeting of those friendly to the enterprise was held in the Merchants' Exchange, in Boston, in May, 1823, which resolved itself, under an act of incorporation passed June 7, 1823, into the Bunker Hill Monument Association. Governor John Brooks was the first president.
In 1824 Lafayette, then on his triumphal tour through
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the United States, paid a visit to the scene of the battle, and accepted an invitation to assist at the laying of the corner- stone on the ensuing anniversary. Meantime the directors were considering the plan for the monument. A committee for this object was formed of Messrs. Daniel Webster, Loammi Baldwin, George Ticknor, Gilbert Stuart, and Washington Allston, and some fifty plans appeared to compete for the offered premium. This committee, able as it was, did not make a decision ; but a new one, of which General H. A. S. Dearborn, Edward Everett, Seth Knowles, S. D. Harris, and Colonel T. H. Perkins were members, eventually made choice of the obelisk as the simplest, and at the same time the grand- est, form in which their ideal could be expressed.
It is stated that Horatio Greenough, then an undergraduate at Harvard, sent to the committee a design, with an essay, in which he advocated the obelisk with much power and feeling. The design finally adopted was Greenough's, modified by the taste and judgment of Colonel Baldwin. Solomon Willard, the architect, made the working plan.
The occasion of laying the corner-stone was made as im- posing as possible. The day was everything that could be desired. The military and civic bodies appeared to great advan- tage, while the presence of Lafayette gave an added éclat to the pageant. The streets of Boston were thronged with an immense multitude, and again Charlestown was invaded by an army with banners, but with more hospitable intent than the display of fifty years before had witnessed. Some forty sur- vivors of the battle appeared in the ranks of the procession. Their course was followed by the loudest acclamations, and the waving of many handkerchiefs wet with the tears of the gentler sex ; while many a manly eye could not refuse its tribute to a spectacle so touching as were these visible relics of the battle. One aged veteran stood up in the midst of the multitude, and exhibited the simple equipments he wore when a soldier of Prescott's Spartan band. Not Webster, not even the noble Frenchman, so moved the hearts of the people, as did these old men, with their white hairs, their bowed forms, and their venerable aspect.
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The ceremony of laying the corner-stone proceeded under the direction of King Solomon's Lodge; Mr. Webster, then president of the Monument Association, and the Marquis as- sisting. The plate, containing a long inscription, was depos- ited in its place, and the exercises were continued in a spacious amphitheatre erected on the northerly slope of the hill. Here Mr. Webster delivered his oration, and the day finished with a banquet on Bunker Hill. The corner-stone proved not to be deep enough to resist the action of frost, and it was therefore subsequently relaid. The box containing the inscription was eventually placed under the northeast angle of the monument.
The erection of the monument proceeded under continued difficulties, the work frequently halting for want of funds, until its completion on the morning of July 23, 1842, when the last stone was raised to its place. To the patriotic efforts of the ladies is due the final realization of the original design. The association had been compelled not only to sell off a por- tion of its land, but also to diminish the height of the obelisk ; but the proceeds of the fair conducted by the ladies in the hall of Quincy Market (Boston) realized $ 30,000, and the vote which had been adopted to consider the monument completed at one hundred and fifty-nine feet of altitude was rescinded.
The same great orator who had presided at the incipient stage of the structure addressed another vast audience on the day of dedication in 1843. But of the twoscore living rep- resentatives of the army of constitutional liberty there re- mained but eleven individuals to grace the occasion by their presence. They were, J. Johnson, N. Andrews, E. Dresser, .J. Cleveland, J. Smith, P. Bagley, R. Plaisted, E. Reynolds, J. Stephens, N. Porter, J. Harvey, and I. Hobbs.
Mr. Webster was himself on that day, and his apostrophe to the gigantic shaft was as grand and noble as the subject was lofty and sublime. Hawthorne, who certainly did not want for creative power, has declared that he never found his imagi- nation much excited in the presence of scenes of historic celebrity ; but this was not the experience of the hundred thousand spectators who stood beneath the majestic shaft, awed
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by the presence of those men who brought the extremes of our national existence together, and moved by the recollections which the theatre itself inspired.
Mr. Webster applied this test to his auditory when, waving his hand towards the towering structure, he said, " The power- ful speaker stands motionless before us." He was himself deeply moved. The sight of such an immense sea of upturned faces - he had never before addressed such a multitude - he afterwards spoke of as awful and oppressive. The applause from a hundred thousand throats surged in great waves around the orator, completing in his mind the parallel of Old Ocean.
Within the little building appropriated to the keeper is a marble statue of General Warren, in citizen's dress, by Dexter. The figure stands on a beautiful pedestal of verd-antique marble, the gift of the late Dr. J. C. Warren. The artist's conception was excellent in theory, but the peculiar pose of the head effectually prevents the features being seen by the spectator, except in profile, as the work is now placed. The statue, to be viewed to advantage, should be situated in the middle of a suitable apartment, or where it might have space enough to permit an understanding of the subject at a single coup d'œil. Copley's portrait, in Faneuil Hall, was the artist's study for the head. Mr. Dexter has been singularly successful in his studies from life, as well as ideal subjects. Colonel Thomas H. Perkins was the prime mover of the statue, and with John Welles, the two noble brothers Amos and Abbott Lawrence, and Samuel Apple- ton, contributed half the necessary funds.
We were not a little amused at a little outcropping of that species of flunkeyism in this place which we have hitherto sup- posed peculiar to our English cousins. The Prince of Wales and suite having visited the spot on the occasion of his sojourn in Boston, the autographs of "Albert Edward," " Newcastle," " Lyons," etc. were carefully removed from the visitors' book, and have been artistically framed, in connection with an account of the visit, in which the names of the gentlemen who were in- troduced to H. R. H. were not forgotten. We looked around in vain for any memento of the visit of a President of the United
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States such as is accorded to the heir presumptive of the British throne. The object of the structure being made known, the Prince is said to have remarked pleasantly, " It is time these old matters were forgotten." Nevertheless, we do not believe he will pull down the Nelson monument or the Wellington statue, when he comes to the throne of his ancestors.
A celebrated statesman of Europe, whom Cromwell named " the wise man of the Continent," once sent his son on a visit to foreign courts with only this admonition, " Go, my son, and see by what fools the world is governed." We do not say that such was Victoria's counsel to her eldest son, but we do affirm that it would not be altogether without significance in this nineteenth century. When shall we so conduct ourselves to- wards foreign dignitaries as to secure their respect and our own ?
" For you, young potentate o' W-, I tell your Highness fairly, Down pleasure's stream wi' swelling sails I'm tauld ye 're driving rarely ; But some day ye may gnaw your nails, An' curse your folly sairly, That e'er ye brak Diana's pales, Or rattl'd dice wi' Charlie."
The great Whig convention of September 10, 1840, during the Harrison campaign, brought a monstrous gathering to this spot. The speech of the occasion was made by Daniel Web- ster, but the exercises were brought to an abrupt close by a violent shower of rain. It was at this time Mr. Webster made his famous remark, "Any rain, gentlemen, but the reign of Martin Van Buren."
Since that time we have had, on Bunker Hill, Mason of Vir- ginia, - a man of " unbounded stomach," of whom Mr. Clay said, " He was never satisfied unless he had his mouth full of tobacco and his belly full of oysters," - and Davis in Faneuil Hall; but no Toombs has ever called the roll of his slaves here, and now, thanks to the teachings of temple and shaft ! not a manacle remains in all the land.
The obelisk is two hundred and twenty feet high, exceeding
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the London Monument built by Wren to commemorate the Great Fire, and sometimes stated to be the highest in the world, by eighteen feet. The shaft is composed of ninety courses of stone, of which six are in the foundation. The pinnacle consists of a single mass weighing two and a half tons, fitly crowning the greatest specimen of commemorative architecture America affords. The interior of the shaft is a hollow cone, ascended by a spiral staircase to the summit, where the visitor finds himself within a circular chamber, breathless, perhaps, with his fatiguing climb, but with an un- surpassed prospect of land and sea outspread before him.
" There architecture's noble pride Bids elegance and splendor rise ; Here Justice, from her native skies, High wields her balance and her rod ; There Learning, with his eagle eyes, Seeks Science in her coy abode."
Within this chamber are the two little brass cannon, Han- cock and Adams, taken out of Boston by stealth in September, 1775, and presented by Massachusetts to the Monument Associa- tion in 1825. While the London Monument and the Column Vendôme have been much affected by suicides, we do not remem- ber that such an attempt has ever been made from this shaft.
Of those who will be more prominently identified with Bun- ker Hill Monument, Amos Lawrence will be remembered as a benefactor, aiding it liberally with purse and earnest personal effort at a time when the friends of the project were almost overcome by their discouragements. He succeeded in obtain- ing the active co-operation of the Charitable Association, and, by his will, set apart a sum to complete the monument and secure the battle-field, - a provision his executors were not called upon to fulfil, as Mr. Lawrence lived to see the com- pletion of the memorial shaft in which he was so deeply interested.
Although the architect of many noble public edifices, the monument will doubtless be considered as Willard's chef d'œuvre. A nominal compensation was all he would accept
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