how did the Provincials, as the British called the Americans, regard
the situation? They saw clearly and without glamour the deadly nature of
the struggle upon which they had entered and the strength of the opposing
army against which they must measure their own strength.

The people of Massachusetts for miles around Boston were now in a state of
great excitement. Farmers, mechanics, men in all walks of life flocked to
the army, and within a few days the Americans, sixteen thousand strong,
were surrounding the British in Boston.

While the people of Massachusetts were in the midst of these stirring
scenes, an event of deep meaning to all the colonies was taking place in
Philadelphia. Here the Continental Congress, coming together for the
second time, was making plans for carrying on the war by voting money for
war purposes and by making George Washington commander-in-chief of the
Continental army, of which the troops around Boston were the beginning.
Thus did the colonies recognize that war had come and that they must stand
together in the fight.

[Illustration: President Langdon, the President of Harvard College,
Praying for the Bunker Hill Entrenching Party on Cambridge Common Just
Before Their Departure.]

Meantime more British troops, under the command of General Howe, arrived
in Boston, making an army of ten thousand men. Believing they could be
forced to leave the town by cannon planted on Bunker Hill, the Americans
decided to occupy it.

On the night of June 16, therefore, shortly before midnight, twelve
hundred Americans marched quietly from Cambridge and, advancing to Breed's
Hill, which was nearer Boston than Bunker Hill, began to throw up
breastworks.

[Illustration: Prescott at Bunker Hill.]

They worked hard all night, and by early morning had made good headway.
The British, on awaking, were greatly surprised to see what had been done.
They turned the fire of their war vessels upon the Americans, who,
however, kept right on with their work.

General Howe, now in command of the British army, thought it would be easy
enough to drive off the "rebels." So about three o'clock in the afternoon
he made an assault upon their works.

The British soldiers, burdened with heavy knapsacks, and suffering from
the heat of a summer sun, had to march through tall grass reaching above
their knees and to climb many fences.

Behind their breastworks the Americans watched the scarlet ranks coming
nearer and nearer.