Footnote 143: The Brookline fort was on Sewall's point, between Roxbury and Cambridge. It commanded the entrance to Charles river.[(Back)]
Footnote 144: The village and church of Dorchester was four miles from Boston. The heights of Dorchester are in what is now called South Boston.[(Back)]
Footnote 145: Joseph Willard, D.D., who was made president of Harvard college in December, 1781. He died in New Bedford, in 1804, at the age of sixty-four years.[(Back)]
Footnote 146: A nickname given to the British regulars, on account of their red suits. They were so called in England, as early as the time of Queen Anne.[(Back)]
Footnote 147: The large park, known as Boston Common, extended down to the water's edge, before the flats were filled in.[(Back)]
Footnote 148: About nine o'clock on Sunday morning, the 27th, the British opened a heavy cannonade from Bunker's hill (where they had built a strong redoubt), and from a ship and floating battery in Mystic river. The firing was directed upon the American works on Winter, Prospect, and Ploughed hills. They continued to bombard these works daily until the 10th of September.[(Back)]
Footnote 149: There was a famous tree in Boston, under which the patriots had often held meetings since the time of the stamp-act excitement. On that account it was called "Liberty-Tree." It was a noble elm, and stood at the corner of the present Washington and Essex streets. On the 31st of August, 1775, the British cut it down, with no apparent motive but the indulgence of petty spite. An eye-witness of the event says: "After a long spell of laughing and grinning, sweating, swearing, and foaming, with malice diabolical, they cut down a tree, because it bore the name of liberty." A tory soldier was killed by its fall. A poet of the day wrote:—
"A tory soldier, on its topmost limb—
The Genius of the Shade looked stern at him,
And marked him out that same hour to dine
Where unsnuffed lamps burn low at Pluto's shrine.
Then tripped his feet from off their cautious stand:
Pale turned the wretch—he spread each helpless hand,
But spread in vain—with headlong force he fell,
Nor stopped descending till he stopped in hell!" [(Back)]
Footnote 150: Colonel Jedediah Huntington, of Norwich, Connecticut. The British now seemed determined to make a general assault upon the besiegers, and a heavy cannonade was opened simultaneously upon the Americans at Roxbury and in the vicinity of Cambridge.[(Back)]
Footnote 151: They threw up a slight breastwork a little in advance of their lines on the neck, and not far from the George tavern.[(Back)]