Today is the 250th anniversary of what is known as the Battle of Bunker Hill just north of Charlestown, Massachusetts. The night before the battle, the Americans had built breastworks and placed cannon on the heights of Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill overlooking the Boston Harbor and Boston, itself, threatening the British warships in the harbor and army stationed in Boston.
General Gage could not allow such a strategic advantage to the Americans and immediately ordered an assault.
Government troop casualties were 1054 (226 dead), consisting disproportionately of officers. Among the British dead was Major Pitcairn, who had led the British troops in the battle at Lexington that started the revolution less than two months earlier.
The only reason for the defeat was that the militia ran out of ammunition, allowing the third British assault on the redoubt at Breed’s Hill to prevail. American losses were 450 (140 killed). Among the dead was the irreplaceable Doctor Joseph Warren, intellectual leader and author of the Suffolk Resolves which outlined the reasons for the resistance to British tyranny.
Note that this battle was fought and lead entirely by Massachusetts militia. The Colonial Army had just been authorized by the Continental Congress three days before, and I am pretty sure that no one in Massachusetts was yet aware of that action when the battle was fought.
An order issued (probably by Militia General Israel Putnam) during the battle became famous:
"Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!"
Although technically a defeat for the American militia, British General Clinton wrote: "A few more such victories would have shortly put an end to British dominion in America."
The British became cautious about venturing out of Boston after Bunker Hill, and when the following spring, the cannon provided by Henry Knox was placed by General Washington on Dorchester Heights, producing a similar strategic advantage that had precipitated Bunker Hill, the British withdraw from Boston, never to return.
