First, a bit of background, which will make this narrative a little easier to place. After the British defeat in the battle of Lexington-Concord on 19 April, 1775, the British in Boston were besieged on all sides by thousands of rebels. Boston was cut off on the north on the Charleston Neck on the Charleston peninsula and on the south, leading to Roxbury and Dorchester Heights, at the Boston Neck. Though, at a terrible cost, over a thousand dead, the British set up an outpost on Bunker Hill after the battle of that name on 17 June, 1775, the town's only relief was from the sea.
The American troops to the south of Boston, in the town of Roxbury, and around Jamaica Plain and Dorchester Heights, under the command of General Thomas, had not taken part in the Battle of Bunker Hill because they were committed to the defence of the commanding Dorchester Heights. Those soldiers who had were greeted with elation on their return to Cambridge, the rebel headquarters four miles northwest of Boston, more like victors than troops 'depressed with defeat.' The troops around Roxbury had not been ignored during the Bunker Hill attack, The British had shelled them vigorously, but they had not taken any real part in the action. [Margaret Wheeler Willard, Letters on the American Revolution, 1774-1776, Washington point, N.Y. 1968, p. 142.] A planned British attack on the three thousand odd troops there, expected after Bunker Hill, had been abandoned because the British simply did not have enough men to carry it out. [Ibid., p. 145.] perhaps it was this lack of opportunity for military glory that partly inspired these 'two beautiful young men, between 25 and 30 years of age ...' [Ibid., p. 152.] to undertake their suicidal mission. The provincial officer who recorded this event attributed the young men's mission to anger about a pompous and insulting proclamation written by General John Burgoyne, who considered himself a dab hand with a pen (he was a minor English playwright) for the British Commander-in-Chief. General Thomas Gage, which declared the Americans in rebellion. The day the proclamation was issued, the American rebels had it burnt by 'the common hangman at Cambridge,' [Ibid., pp. 149} Roxbury and Dorchester, though this was probably done more in insolence than rage.
The American source does not indicate whether their superior officers knew what they were about to do, or, if they did, whether they attempted to stop them. A report from the British lines of their action purportedly said the two young men had told the British soldiers at the outpost at Brown's House on the Boston Neck, just outside the British works on the Neck, '"the King's ministers had treated them as slaves, the King's officers had reported them as cowards, that they came to shew the falsity of both reports and the weakness of the proclamation, by sealing with their blood their firm belief in the justice of their cause, upon which they were ready immediately to appear before the presence of God."' [Ibid., pp. 152-153.] It is impossible to prove the young men did say this. The best that can be said about it is that it is entirely characteristic of the overblown revolutionary rhetoric of the time.
We do know that according to Lieutenant John Barker of the King's Own Regiment, who, though a bit tetchy at times, and occasionally careless with his dates, is generally a thoroughly reliable source, that probably on the nineteenth of June, [Ibid., p. 152] (recorded on the 23rd in Barker's diary) two days after Bunker Hill, 'two Men came in as far as Brown's House, when a Serjt. and a Party was sent to meet them, as it was thought they wanted to deliver themselves up, but when the party got near, the 2 men fired and run away, but were shot by the Party and their Arms brought in.' [The British in Boston. The Diary of Lt. John Barker, Cambridge, Mass, 1924, p. 63.]
The American account, a letter eventually published in the London Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, which usually supported the British parliamentary faction opposed to the Lord North ministry, gives a somewhat more detailed and bloodthirsty account. The young men 'fired and killed two of the enemy; they were immediately fired at again, and one was instantly killed and the other desperately wounded, but he told the King's troops he did not desire to live and demanded they should kill him also, which was soon complied with.' [Wheeler, op. cit., p.153.] Essentially, though it is not explicit, the American version accuses the British soldiers of committing a war crime, something that would have been immediately obvious to most of the Morning Post's readers. It is unclear from the sources if the young Americans pretended to surrender, then fired at the British soldiers coming to greet them. If they had behaved that way, it would have been considered a breach of the code of honour. But then again, the Regulars did not expect the rebels to behave honourably.
To place this in its context, claims of war atrocities flew thick and thin during the Boston campaign. The Americans were accused of scalping British soldiers: (they did not) ;of tarring and feathering loyalists and generally treating any suspected loyalists who fell into their hands with savagery (which they did, sometimes); the British were accused of desecrating the body of the revolutionary leader, Dr. John Warren, killed at Bunker Hill: (they probably did); of mistreating American prisoners kept in captivity in Boston after Bunker Hill (which they certainly did). The British too were deeply suspicious of rebel drafting of the Christianised Stockbridge Indians (though, in this instance, without good reason; they always behaved "honorably", that is according to the British code of honour, rather than the more horrific Indian one, during the Boston campaign). Despite their Christianisation, the British feared the Stockbridge Indians might fight with what they saw as Indian barbarity. [Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country:Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities, New York, 1995, pp. 91-92.}
In conclusion, the surprising thing about this incident is that two young men went on a suicide mission, inspired by their belief in American revolutionary ideals, knowing they would kill only two of the enemy at the most, knowing, in the words of their chronicler they had 'devoted themselves to death.' [Wheeler, op. cit., p. 152.] Barker says nothing of the impact of the young men's mission on the morale of his comrades, though this is not entirely surprising. Though he was rarely complimentary about the rebels, he tended to reserve most of his spleen for the shortcomings of his commanders. As to why the British soldiers shot the surviving American soldier, many in Boston were still angered by the carnage of Bunker Hill. Most had lost comrades. A war crime, or simply a sordid fact of war? I leave it to the reader to decide.
