d not seen--how this unique position
commanded both the city and the harbor--he knew that his opportunity had
come. He had no adequate cannon or siege guns, and the story of how
Henry Knox--afterward General Knox--obtained these from Ticonderoga and
brought them on, in the face of terrific difficulties of weather and
terrain, is one that for bravery and brains will never fail to thrill.
On the night of March 4, the Americans, keeping up a cannonading to
throw the British off guard, and to cover up the sound of the moving,
managed to get two thousand Continental troops and four hundred carts of
fascines and intrenching tools up on the hill. That same night, with the
aid of the moonlight, they threw up two redoubts--performing a task,
which, as Lord Howe exclaimed in dismay the following morning, was "more
in one night than my whole army could have done in a month."

The occupation of the heights was a magnificent _coup_. The moment the
British saw what had been done, they realized that they had lost the
fight. However, Lord Percy hurried to make an attack, but the weather
made it impossible, and by the time the weather cleared the Americans
were so strongly intrenched that it was futile to attack. Washington,
although having been granted permission by Congress to attack Boston,
wished to save the loyal city if possible. Therefore, he and Howe made
an agreement by which Howe was to evacuate and Washington was to refrain
from using his guns. After almost two weeks of preparation for
departure, on March 17 the British fleet, as the gilded letters on the
white marble panel tell us, in the words of Charles W. Eliot:

Carrying 11,000 effective men
And 1000 refugees
Dropped down to Nantasket Roads
And thenceforth
Boston was free
A strong British force
Had been expelled
From one of the United American colonies

The white marble panel, with its gold letters and the other inscriptions
on the hill, tell the whole story to whoever cares to read, only
omitting to mention that the thousand self-condemned Boston refugees who
sailed away with the British fleet were bound for Halifax, and that that
was the beginning of the opprobrious term: "Go to Halifax."

That the battle was won without bloodshed in no way minimizes the
verdict of history that "no single event had a greater general effect on
the course of the war than the