292
��Biniker Hill.
��[May,
��as his sluggishness after the battle of Brandywine, and equally induced his inaction at Philadelphia, in 1778.
Just as a similar resistance by Totle- ben at Sevastapol during the Crimean War prolonged that struggle for twelve months, so did the hastily constructed earthworks on Breed's Hill forewarn the assailants that every ridge might serve as a fortress, and every sand-hill become a cover, for a persistent and earnest foe.
Historical research and military criticism suggest few cases where so much has been realized by the efforts of a few men, in a few hours, during the shelter of one night, and by the light of one day.
The simple narrative has been the subject of much discussion. Its details have been shaped and colored, with supreme regard for the special claims of preferred candidates for distinc- tion, until a plain consideration of the issue then made, from a purely military point of view, as intro- ductory to a detail of the battle itself, cannot be barren of interest to the readers of a Magazine which treats largely of the local history of Massa- chusetts.
The city of Boston was girdled by rapidly increasing earthworks. These were wholly defensive, to resist assault from the British garrison, and not, at first, as cover for a regular siege ap- proach against the Island Post. They soon became a direct agency to force the garrison to look to the sea alone for supplies or retreat.
Open war against Great Britain be- gan with this environment of Boston. The partially organized militia respon- ded promptly to call.
The vivifying force of the struggle through Concord, Lexington, and West
��Cambridge (Arlington now), had so quickened the rapidly augmenting body of patriots, that they demanded offen- sive action and grew impatient for re- sults. Having dropped fear of British troops, as such, they held a strong pur- pose to achieve that complete deliver- ance which their earnest resistance foreshadowed.
Lexington and Concord were, there- fore, the exponents of that daring which made the occupation and resistance of Breed's Hill possible. The fancied in- vincibility of British discipline went down before the rifles of farmers ; but the quickening sentiment, which gave nerve to the arm, steadiness to the heart, and force to the blow, was one of those historic expressions of human will and faith, which, under deep sense of wrong incurred and rights imperilled, overmasters discipline, and has the method of an inspired madness. The moral force of the energizing passion became overwhelming and supreme. Nv) troops in the world, under similar conditions, could have resisted the movement.
The opposing forces did not alike estimate the issue, or the relations of the parties in interest. The troops sent forth to collect or destroy arms, rightfully in the hands of their country- men, and not to engage an enemy, were under an involuntary restraint, which stripped them of real fitness to meet armed men, who were already on fire with the conviction that the represen- tatives of national force were em- ployed to destroy national life.
The ostensible theory of the Crown was to reconcile the Colonies. The actual policy, and its physical demon- strations, repelled, and did not concil- iate. Military acts, easily done by the force in hand, were needlessly done.
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