Historic Mansions and Highways Around Boston; Being a New and REV. Ed. of Old Landmarks and Historic Fields of Middlesex. (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: r gray had laid, side, CHAPTER III. BUNKER HILL AND THE MONUMENT. " I'd better gone an' sair'd the King, At Bunker's Hill." Burns. June, 1875, was celebrated the centennial of the Battle of Bunker Hill. Never before did the tall shaft look down upon such a pageant. Fifty years elapsed since the corner-stone of the monument was in the presence of General Lafayette, Daniel Webster, and of many survivors of the battle. It is not idle sentimentality that has hallowed the spot. A hundred thousand brave men have fought the better because its traditions yet linger among us, and are still recounted around our firesides. Why is it that we can o'erleap the tremendous conflicts that have taken place since Bunker Hill, and still feel an undiminished P interest in that day? " It is not the battle, for it was fought without order on the American and without skill on the British; it is not the carnage, BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. for many fields have been more bloody in our own times. It is perhaps because the men of New England here cast their first defiance in the teeth of the trained bands of Old England; it is because it was an act of aggression, and showed that our sires were determined to fight and ready to die in their good cause. The battle was as astounding to British arrogance as it was destructive to British prestige; it cannot be doubted that the memory of that day followed Sir William Howe with blighting effect to the end of his military career. The story of the battle is so familiar that every schoolboy will tell you where the Provincials intrenched, and where the enemy landed; how many times the foe was borne back with slaughter, and how many fell. Here, across the river, is Copp's Hill, where Clinton and Burgoyne watched the varying fortunes of the ba...