By Henry B. Carrington, U.S.A., Ll.D.
Author of The Battles of the American Revolution.
[(a) The occupation of Charlestown Heights on the night of June 16, 1775, was of strategic value, however transient, equalizing the relations of the parties opposed, and projecting its force and fire into the entire struggle for American Independence. (Pages 290-302.)
(b)The Siege of Boston, which followed, gave to the freshly organized Continental army that discipline, that instruction in military engineering, and that contact with a well-trained enemy which prepared it for immediate operations at New York and in New Jersey. (Pages 37-44.)
(c) The occupation and defence of New York and Brooklyn, so promptly made, was also an immediate strategic necessity, fully warranted by the existing conditions, although alike temporary. (Pages 34-161.)]
An exhaustless theme may be so outlined that fairly stated data will suggest the possibilities beyond.
Waterloo is incidentally related to the crowning laurels of Wellington; but, primarily, to the downfall of Napoleon, while rarely to the assured growth of genuine popular liberty.
No battle during the American Rebellion of 1861-65 was so really decisive as was the first battle of Bull's Run. As that Federal failure enforced the issue which freed four millions of people from slavery, and had its sequence and culmination, through great struggle, in a perpetuated Union, so did the battle of Bunker Hill open wide the breach between Great Britain and the Colonies, and render American Independence inevitable.
The repulse of Howe at Breed's Hill practically ejected him from Boston, enforced his halt before Brooklyn, delayed him at White Plains, explained his hesitation at Bound Brook, near Somerset Court-House, in 1777, as well as his sluggishness after the battle of Brandywine, and equally induced his inaction at Philadelphia, in 1778.
[pg 291]
