retreat under an incessant and galling fire of small-arms. By means of his field-pieces and musketry, however, he was able to keep the assailants at a respectful distance. The colonists were under no authority; but ran across the fields from one place to another, taking their station at the points from which they could fire on the troops with most safety and effect. Numbers of them, becoming weary of the pursuit, retired from the contest; but their place was supplied by new comers; so that, although not more than four or five hundred of the provincials were actually engaged at any one time, yet the conflict was continued without intermission, till the troops, in a state of great exhaustion, reached Bunker's Hill, a little after sunset, with only two or three rounds of cartridges each, although they had thirty-six in the morning.[1] The loss of the British in this unfortunate expedition, was, sixtyfive killed, one hundred and eighty wounded, and twenty-eight made prisoners. Of the Americans engaged in the battle, fifty were killed, and thirty-four wounded.
Truly may it be said, in the words of Washington, in a letter in which he speaks of the necessity the British troops were under, to give way before the aroused people of Massachusetts,—"If the retreat had not been as precipitate as it was. and God knows it could not well have been more so, the ministerial troops must have surrendered, or been totally cut off."
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER II.
I.—AN ASSOCIATION,
SIGNED BY EIGHTY-NINE MEMBERS OF THE LATE HOUSE OF BURGESSES.
We, his majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the late representatives of the good people of this country, having been deprived, by the sudden interposition of the executive part of this government, from giving our countrymen the advice we wished to convey to them, in a legislative capacity, find ourselves under the hard necessity of adopting tins, the only method we have left, of pointing out to our countrymen such measures as, in our opinion, are best fitted to secure our dear rights and liberty from destruction, by the heavy hand of power now lifted against North America. With much grief we find, that our dutiful applications to Great Britain for the security of our just, ancient, and constitutional rights, have been not only disregarded; but that a determined system is formed and pressed, for reducing the inhabitants of British America to slavery, by subjecting them to the payment of taxes, imposed without the consent of the people or their representatives ; and that, in pursuit of this system, we find an act of the British Parliament, lately passed, for stopping the harbor and commerce of the town of Boston, in our sister colony of Massachusetts Bay, until the people
- ↑ See "History of the United States," in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, vol. i., p. 124.
