Battle of Bunker Hill

On June 17, 1775, New England militia under William Prescott, Israel Putnam, and Joseph Warren fought British regulars commanded by General Thomas Gage and General William Howe on Breed's Hill outside Boston, Massachusetts. Prescott's men threw up earthworks overnight after the Battles of Lexington and Concord had trapped the British army inside Boston. Howe finally carried the redoubt only after two costly assaults failed and the American defenders ran short of powder, but Joseph Warren fell in the fighting and the British suffered more than a thousand casualties.

The battle intensified the crisis that followed Lexington by showing that provincial militia could stand against British regulars in open combat. News from Breed's Hill reached the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia just as delegates debated whether to seek reconciliation with George III or prepare for a long war. The bloodshed also hardened opinion in Massachusetts, because Thomas Gage had won the ground yet proved that British control of Boston would require a far larger military effort.

Bunker Hill directly shaped George Washington's command when he arrived at Cambridge in July 1775 to organize the Continental Army around Boston. The battle also influenced British strategy in the Saratoga campaign and later southern campaigns by warning London that the war in North America would not end with a single demonstration of force.