As our first meeting in arms with the British was irregular so was our second. Bunker Hill was so much of a guerilla battle so far as we were concerned that it is disputed to this day whether Putnam or Prescott was in command. As a matter of fact there was nobody in particular in command. It was a voluntary sort of affair; and the description of it reads exactly like a Boer battle.
About fifteen hundred men, mostly farmers like the Boers, suddenly seized an important hill or kopje dangerously close to the British lines. They fortified themselves with breast works made of fence rails and hay in such a bucolic manner that all the regulars in Boston laughed. They could have been defeated very easily by sending a force on their flank and rear. But General Gage thought that would be ridiculous and unnecessary. A force of three thousand regulars could easily by a front attack sweep off these farmers, show them the uselessness of their methods, and possibly end the rebellion at once.
You know the rest. But it must be very shocking to a person of your views to remember that the old Queen Anne muskets, shot guns and duck guns which your forefathers in such bad taste and contrary to all military science, levelled over those fence rails and hay at your friends the British in beautiful uniforms, were loaded with buckshot, slugs, old nails, and bits of iron from the blacksmith shops. That was our Majuba Hill, our Spion Kop.
Let us move along still farther. The New England farmers for all the rest of the summer, autumn and following winter formed themselves into a most vulgar and absurd army and surrounded Boston, shutting in the British. The minds of those farmers were full almost to fanaticism of the principle of equality and the rights of man, "the levelling principles" as they were then called which now form the foundation of our American life. The officers among them were merely leaders and persuaders. It was not an uncommon sight to see a colonel shaving one of his own men. The men served a few weeks and then went home to get in the hay or see how their wives were getting on, and others came from the farms to take their places. In this way the army was kept up. Those who went home were very apt to take their powder and musket with them to shoot squirrels on the farm.