[6] This sketch was made on the spot for Lord Rawdon, who was then
on Gage's staff. The spire in the foreground is that of the Old
West Church, where Jonathan Mayhew preached; it stood on the
site since occupied by Dr. Bartol's church on Cambridge Street,
now a branch of the Boston Public Library. Its position in the
picture shows that the sketcher stood on Beacon Hill, 138 feet
above the water. The first hill to the right of the spire, on
the further side of the river, is Bunker Hill, 110 feet high.
The summit of Breed's Hill, 62 feet high, where Prescott's
redoubt stood, is nearly hidden by the flames of burning
Charlestown. At a sale of the effects of the Marquis of
Hastings, descendant of Lord Rawdon, this sketch was bought by
my friend Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV
INDEPENDENCE
[Sidenote: Washington arrives in Cambridge]
On the 2d of July, 1775, after a journey of eleven days, General
Washington arrived in Cambridge from Philadelphia, and on the following
day, under the shade of the great elm-tree which still stands hard by
the Common, he took command of the Continental army, which as yet was
composed entirely of New Englanders. Of the 16,000 men engaged in the
siege of Boston, Massachusetts furnished 11,500, Connecticut 2,300, New
Hampshire 1,200, Rhode Island 1,000. These contingents were arrayed
under their local commanders, and under the local flags of their
respective commonwealths, though Artemas Ward of Massachusetts had by
courtesy exercised the chief command until the arrival of Washington.
During the month of July, Congress gave a more continental complexion
to the army by sending a reinforcement of 3,000 men from Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia, including the famous Daniel Morgan, with his
sturdy band of sharpshooters each man of whom, it was said, while
marching at double-quick, could cleave with his rifle-ball a squirrel at
a distance of three hundred yards. The summer of 1775 thus brought
together in Cambridge many officers whose names were soon to become
household words throughout the length and breadth of the land, and a
moment may be fitly spent in introducing them before we proceed with the
narrative of events.
[Sidenote: Daniel Morgan]
[Sidenote: Benedict Arnold]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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