And the city’s inhabitants were viciously divided. Nor was Boston a “cradle of liberty” one in five families, including those of leading patriots, owned slaves. One rise near Beacon Hill, known for its prostitutes, was marked on maps as “Mount Whoredom.” And though founded by Puritans, the city wasn’t puritanical. Boston was virtually an island, reachable by land only via a narrow neck. The Back Bay was still a bay and the South End was likewise underwater hills were later leveled to fill in almost 1,000 acres. Gazing out from the Bunker Hill Monument-not at charging redcoats but at skyscrapers and clotted traffic-he adds: “You also have to squint a lot and study old maps to imagine your way back into the 18th century.”īoston in 1775 was much smaller, hillier and more watery than it appears today. “ Johnny Tremain, Paul Revere’s Ride, today’s Tea Partiers-you have to tune all that out to get at the real story,” Philbrick says. In his new book, Bunker Hill, he revisits the beginnings of the American Revolution, a subject freighted with more myth, pride and politics than any other in our national narrative. He took on the Pilgrim landing in Mayflower and the Little Bighorn in The Last Stand. Which makes the 1775 battle a natural topic for Nathaniel Philbrick, an author drawn to iconic and misunderstood episodes in American history. In short, the nation’s memory of Bunker Hill is mostly bunk.

Most don’t realize it’s the rare American monument to an American defeat. The patriotic obelisk atop the hill also confuses visitors. “Don’t fire ’til you see the whites of their eyes.” Except, park rangers will quickly tell you, these words weren’t spoken here. “Site of the Battle of Bunker Hill.” Another plaque bears the famous order given American troops as the British charged up not-Bunker Hill.

The last stop on Boston’s Freedom Trail is a shrine to the fog of war.

Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick