ght of one day.

The simple narrative has been the subject of much discussion. Its
details have been shaped and colored, with supreme regard for the
special claims of preferred candidates for distinction, until a plain
consideration of the issue then made, from a purely military point of
view, as introductory to a detail of the battle itself, cannot be barren
of interest to the readers of a Magazine which treats largely of the
local history of Massachusetts.

The city of Boston was girdled by rapidly increasing earthworks. These
were wholly defensive, to resist assault from the British garrison, and
not, at first, as cover for a regular siege approach against the Island
Post. They soon became a direct agency to force the garrison to look to
the sea alone for supplies or retreat.

Open war against Great Britain began with this environment of Boston.
The partially organized militia responded promptly to call.

The vivifying force of the struggle through Concord, Lexington, and West
Cambridge (Arlington now), had so quickened the rapidly augmenting body
of patriots, that they demanded offensive action and grew impatient for
results. Having dropped fear of British troops, as such, they held a
strong purpose to achieve that complete deliverance which their earnest
resistance foreshadowed.

Lexington and Concord were, therefore, the exponents of that daring
which made the occupation and resistance of Breed's Hill possible. The
fancied invincibility of British discipline went down before the rifles
of farmers; but the quickening sentiment, which gave nerve to the arm,
steadiness to the heart, and force to the blow, was one of those
historic expressions of human will and faith, which, under deep sense of
wrong incurred and rights imperilled, overmasters discipline, and has
the method of an inspired madness. The moral force of the energizing
passion became overwhelming and supreme. No troops in the world, under
similar conditions, could have resisted the movement.

The opposing forces did not alike estimate the issue, or the relations
of the parties in interest. The troops sent forth to collect or destroy
arms, rightfully in the hands of their countrymen, and not to engage an
enemy, were under an involuntary restraint, which stripped them of real
fitness to meet armed men, who were already on fire with the conviction
that the representatives of national force were employed to destroy
national life.

The ostensible theory