"So Boston was besieged; Prescott of Pepperell and his Middlesex minute-men kept watch over the entrance to that city. Gage was forced to fortify the town at all points, while the Americans talked of driving him and his troops into the sea.
"New Hampshire sent men under the command of John Stark, a noble fellow well known as brave, fearless, and worthy of all confidence.
"Israel Putnam was another, who, hearing the cry from Lexington, which reached him on the morning after the battle, while he was helping his hired men to build a stone wall on his farm, hurried thither without waiting to so much as change the check shirt he was wearing in the field; though first he roused the militia officers of the nearest towns.
"He reached Cambridge by sunrise the next morning, having ridden the same horse a hundred miles in eighteen hours. He was full of courage and love for his country, and hundreds had already chosen him for their leader.
"Benedict Arnold was still another who made haste to Boston to assist in the siege. By the 21st of April it was estimated that twenty thousand men were collected about that city.
"The battle of Bunker Hill, you will recollect, was not fought till the 17th of June. During all the intervening time the Americans had kept the British officers and their troops besieged in Boston, and they were beginning to be much ashamed of their confinement.
"The Americans had decided to throw up a breast-work across the road near Prospect Hill, and to fortify Bunker Hill as soon as a supply of powder and artillery could be obtained; but learning that Gage had planned to extend his lines north and south over Dorchester and Charlestown, and had fixed upon the eighteenth of June for so doing, they decided to anticipate his movement, and on the fifteenth of that month the Massachusetts Committee of Safety informed the Council of War that, in their opinion, Dorchester Heights should be fortified; and they recommended unanimously the establishing of a post on Bunker Hill.
"The choice of an officer to conduct the enterprise fell upon William Prescott, who was colonel of a regiment; and the next evening a brigade of a thousand men was put under his command.
"Soon after sunset they paraded on Cambridge Common. They were not in uniform as American troops would be in these days, nor had they such arms; for the most part they had fowling-pieces,—no bayonets to them,—and only a small supply of powder and bullets, which they carried in horns and pouches.