But for the Battle of Bunker Hill, we might have a capital city, a towering monument and countless avenues, streets and boulevards named . . . Warren.
In "Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, a Revolution," Nathaniel Philbrick places Joseph Warren, a 33-year-old Boston physician, at the very center of the rebellious patriot activity that culminated in the bloody battle of 1775, igniting the American Revolution and War of Independence.
Warren, absent from most school history books and largely forgotten by the general public, was a charismatic leader who, first under the guidance of Samuel Adams, emerged as the leader the patriots needed.
"Whereas Samuel Adams was part political boss, part ideologue," Philbrick writes, "Warren, close to two decades younger, possessed a swashbuckling personal magnetism."
He was on his way to being a major player in the Revolution and beyond. Indeed, Philbrick wonders whether George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, would have been "an obscurity" if Warren had not died a hero's death at Bunker Hill.
Philbrick, a winner of the National Book Award in 2000 for "In the Heart of the Sea," offers these surprising revelations and others in "Bunker Hill," a comprehensive and absorbing account of a battle that, according to Philbrick, is "a critical turning point in the story of how a rebellion born in the streets of Boston became a countrywide war for independence."
Philbrick marks the origin of patriotic fervor to 1676, when the Massachusetts governor "boldly insisted that the laws enacted by the colony's legislature superseded those even of Parliament."
Into the next century, outrage over the Stamp Act in 1765, the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the Tea Act in 1773, and Great Britain's attempts to quell an ungovernable populace by enforcing the Coercive Acts in 1774, fueled the revolutionary flame, sparking the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord and the combat at Bunker Hill in 1775.
Extraordinary events produce extraordinary individuals, and Philbrick's portrayals are remarkably penetrating and vivid. Principal actors in the briskly paced drama -- Sam Adams ("the guru of the patriotic cause"), John Hancock ("had a talent for the deftly delivered stab in the back"), Paul Revere ("the peripatetic silversmith"), and Washington ("no one looked better on a horse") -- are fully fleshed out. British generals Thomas Gage and William Howe earn equally compelling characterizations.
Philbrick brings much more to the narrative of Bunker Hill than can be reviewed here, including discerning reflections on the French and Indian War, the loyalists, vigilantism, slavery, military stratagems and the city of Boston itself -- its history and topography. Nor does Philbrick avoid graphically describing the brutality and ugliness of armed engagement.
Given the scale of the story, Philbrick, confirming his standing as one of America's pre-eminent historians, somehow manages to address all the essential components in a concise, readable style.
Although the British claimed victory at Bunker Hill, their losses were so devastating that the Colonial side gained enough confidence and resolve to carry the lessons learned and valor displayed toward what would be American independence. Philbrick does not disguise his admiration for the intrepid patriots or for the momentous occasion that was Bunker Hill.
Near the end of his work, he quotes Thomas Paine: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand."Mark Hodermarsky teaches English at St. Ignatius High School.