116 Chapter 4 The American Revolution
On June 17, the British tried to dislodge Continentals from fortified (and concealed) positions atop Breed’s Hill in Charlestown. Note the British
cannon batteries on the shore in Boston, lobbing shells into Charlestown. When colonists brought a cannon from Ticonderoga and placed it on
hills commanding Boston, the British had no choice but to leave the city.
Source: Winthrop Chandler, The Battle of Bunker Hill(detail), c. 1776–1777. Oil on Canvas, 34-^7 ⁄ 8 53-^5 ⁄ 8 ". Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gardner Richardson (1982.281). Courtesy of
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Reproduced with permission. © 2002 Museum of Fine Arts Boston. All rights reserved.
Continental Congress dispatched one last plea to the
king (the Olive Branch Petition), but this was a sop to
the moderates. Immediately thereafter it adopted the
Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up
Arms, which condemned everything the British had
done since 1763. Americans were “a people attacked by
unprovoked enemies”; the time had come to choose
between “submission” to “tyranny” and “resistance by
force.” The Congress then ordered an attack on Canada
and created committees to seek foreign aid and to buy
munitions abroad. It authorized the outfitting of a navy
under Commodore Esek Hopkins of Rhode Island.
The Great Declaration
The Congress (and the bulk of the people) still hung
back from a break with the Crown. To declare for
independence would be to burn the last bridge, to
become traitors in the eyes of the mother country.
Aside from the word’s ugly associations, everyone
knew what happened to traitors when their efforts
failed. It was sobering to think of casting off every-
thing that being English meant: love of the king, the
traditions of a great nation, pride in the power of a
mighty empire. “Where shall we find another
Britain?” John Dickinson had asked at the time of the
Townshend Acts crisis. “Torn from the body to which
we are united by religion, liberty, laws, affections,
relation, language and commerce, we must bleed at
every vein.”
Then, too, rebellion might end in horrors worse
than submission to British tyranny. The disturbances
following the Stamp Act and the Tea Act had
revealed an alarming fact about American society.
The organizers of those protests, mostly persons of
wealth and status, had thought in terms of “ordered
resistance.” They countenanced violence only as a
means of forcing the British authorities to pay atten-
tion to their complaints. But protest meetings and
mob actions had brought thousands of ordinary citi-
zens into the struggle for local self-government.
Some of the upper-class leaders among the Patriots,