CHARLESTOWN PENINSULA, 1775.
Sketched from a plan by Montresor, showing the redoubt erected by the British, after June 17, on the higher eminence of Bunker Hill. The original is in the library of Congress, where is a plan on a large scale of this principal redoubt.
The long list of general histories on the British side, detailing the events of the battle, begins with Murray's Impartial Hist. of the War (London, 1778; Newcastle, 1782), and is made up during the rest of that century by the Hist. of the War published at Dublin (1779-85); Hall's Civil War in America (1780); The Detail and Conduct of the Amer. War (1780); Andrews's Hist. of the War (1785, vol. i. 301,—quoted at length by Ryerson, Loyalists, i. 461); Stedman, Hist. Amer. War (London, 1794, vol. i. 125). The best of the later historians is Mahon (Hist. of England, vi.), who was forced to admit, when pressed upon the question, that the American claims of victory, which he says they have always held, appear only in the reports of later British tourists (vol. vi., App. xxix.). Lecky, in his brief account (England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 463), makes an intention of Gage to fortify the Charlestown and not the Dorchester heights the incentive to the American occupation of the former. Edw. Bernard's History of England (London) has a curious "View of the Attack on Bunker's Hill, with the burning of Charlestown."
Something confirmatory, rather than of original value, can be gained from the histories of various regiments which took part in the battle, as detailed in the series of Historical Records of such regiments.[574]
The battle almost immediately found commemoration in British ballads (Hist. Mag., ii. 58; v. 251; Hale's Hundred Years Ago, p. 7), and the slain were commemorated in elegiac verses, as in M. M. Robinson's To a young lady, on the death of her brother, slain in the late engagement at Boston (London, 1776). The same year there appeared at Philadelphia The Battle of Bunker's Hill, a dramatic piece in five acts, in heroic measure, by a gentleman of Maryland.
Note.—The references in the corner of this cut, too fine to be easily read in this reduced fac-simile, are as follows:—
"A A. First position, where the troops remained until reinforcements arrived.
B B. Second position.