Omaha daily bee., 1903-06-15
RALLYINC POINT
Anniversary Of the Battle Of Bunker Hill to
Be Celebrated.
LIBERTY BELL AMONG THE VISITORS
story OF n Contest That Made 'the
lock Of Time strike n wOrld-Re-
sounding Note, Marking the
Birth of a Mighty NntiOn."

R
In spirit at least the country at large
will Join Boston In celebrating next
Wednesday the 12sth anniversary OF the
battle Of Bunker Hill. Liberty bell, which
pealed forth the Declaration OF Independ-
enEe 127 years ago and put a capital F on
the Fourth of July, will be brought from
Philadelphia to increase the patriotic tone
Of the occasion. Patriotic fervor and fire.
works will bloom on Bunker Hill, and there
will be other doings calculated to stir the
ardor OF the elders and fire the heart of
young America.
AS long as the republic lives, as long
as liberty has an abiding place in the hui
man heart, the battle of Bunker Hill.
fought June II, 1875, will remain an in
spEing chapter of Freedoms history. lone
of the old, old stories of which the world
will never weary says a writer in Les
lies Weekly, rs the tale of how a little
band Of American farmers and woodsmen
fought the first great battle for American
liberty and Independence on the crest of
bunker Hill. Like the heroic struggle of
Leonidas and his spartans at Thermopylae,
like Arnold winkelreid before the Aus
TRANS at Sempach. so did the gallant War
rem and the intrepid Prescott that June
day, upon the heights overlooking Boston,
win for themselves and for their no less
gallant and stalwart followers a crown of
imperishable glory. Although the day may
come in the not distant f~uture-and it can
not come too s~oon-when war shall cease
throughout the earth and the sword shall
flash and the cannon roar no longer in the
awful tragedy of battle, mankind will never
cease to look with awe. reverence and ad-
miration upon such deeds as were per-
formed that day, when a handful OF men
fresh from their homes and hresides and
all unschooled to hostile action, withstood
a veteran army and beat 1t back again and
again with awful slaughter.
who shall add anything new to the
story of that e%yentful conflict, that pivotal
point in the evolution of nations and peo-
pies toward the higher and truer life of
freedom and equality, that epoch-making
event upon which the searchlights of his
tory have been playing for a century? Has
not every schoolboy learned and told the
tale, waved the sword of Bunker HILL
and rehearsed in tremulous accents the
glorious death-song which the poet has put
in the mouth of the patriot Warren:
Stand! The grounds your own, my braves,
VIII We give 1t up to slaves?
Hope We mercy still?
Desperate and Bloody.
Measured by every standard, both Of the
famous battles preceding It and of those
which have since taken place, the conflict
on Bunker Hill was a desperate and bloody
one. While not more than an hour waf
spent In actual fighting the British loss ir
killed and wounded was 1854, or more thar
one third of the whole force engaged, in,
Guiding an unusually large proportion OF
officers. The American loss was 40, about
one fourth of the number in action. On tn,
British side, one company came out Of tn,
battle with only five of it's number left un
hurt. Every officer on General Howe's stat
was cut down, and only ono survived hi
wounds. The oldest soldiers in the British
army. veterans of many a hard-fough
field in other lands, declared that they haC
never seen the like. The regulars o
France, they asserted, were less formid
able than the militia OF New England
Vergennes. the French minister of foreign
AFFAIRS, exclaimed that with two more sucl
victories England would have no army lef
in America. To the English people gen
orally the fighting capacity Of the c~olonist
as shown on this occasion came as a shoe
Of surprise not unlike that to which the,
were treated In the early stages OF the lat
Boer war, when. at Maagersfontein Co
lenso and Spion Kop. they saw their vetera,
columns turned back in disastrous an,
bloody defeat before a comparative hand
full Of valiant burghers OF the veldt. II wa
the same lesson now as then, on the heirb
above Boston harbor-a mass OF trained an
disciplined soldiery going TO pieces befor
the calm, desperate. heroic resistance Of
few men fighting on ground Of their owI
choosing and in a cause on which they ha,
4 etc EnA oil NAaA 81. M
Compared with Other Battles.
THE battle of Quebec. which won half
continent did not cost the lives Of so man
British officers as this at Bunker Hi
which gained nothing but a place OF on
oampment. Had the losses on both side
been the same proportionately. such tire
mendous battles as those OF later days 4
our own land, at Antletam. Cold Harbo
and Gettysburg, would have counted thei
slain and wounded by the hundred thou
sands instead of ten thousands. The awfr
effect of the American fire on Bunke
Hill slope was a striking testimony to tn
GOODNESS, the intrepidity and the skiIle
craftsmanship of Prescott's little BAN
the result of years OF unconscious prepars
ton in the rough school of frontier III,
, with its ever present peril of savage beast
and still more savage men. 1t is the DELFT
crate opinion Of one of the most Garrett
students OF this conflict that. had tn
Americans been properly supplied wit
powder, Howe could no more have take
Bunker Hill han Burnside could hay
taken the heights of Fredericksburg.
"The best description of the battle Z
Bunker Hill itself is to be found In IN
letters OF provincial officers and soldier
! preserved in the appendix to Richar
ENAlAH 49, CAA-. 49,
e quoted in Higginson's history. The d,
: scrintlon Of raw soldiers e alwaun nn.