[80] ‘I am too old to run,’ he said, and for the first time this historic spot was stained with the blood of the white man, where the old man died the death of a soldier and a gentleman. From that day till the end of the siege of Boston the spot where Somerville's first blood was shed became the very Mount Pisgah of the American line. Here for the first time after the first battle of the Revolution the officers of the Massachusetts forces were summoned. Here with the first guard mount of the Revolution on the evening that followed the Concord fight the siege of Boston began. Here, after the Pyrrhic victory of the English at Bunker Hill, came the men who retired only when the lack of powder left them without the means to fight. Here they made their stand and invited the further attack that never came. The scarlet tide that overflowed the crest of Charlestown paused before this barrier that since has never known upon its crest the flutter in triumph of an alien flag. The first flag to fly from the redoubt on Prospect Hill was not that of Massachusetts. Putnam had built the works, and Putnam, though a son of Massachusetts, hoisted on July 18, 1775, the flag not of his native but of his adopted state; the flag of the state which, except Massachusetts, contributed most to the Revolution. It was Connecticut's flag with its ‘Qui Transtulit Sustinet’ and the motto of all the revolutionists, ‘An Appeal to Heaven.’ Nor were all the troops that gathered here even from New England. Riflemen of Virginia and Pennsylvania and Maryland camped upon these slopes, and in this first serious contest of our country against a foreign enemy, as in the last, when we crossed the seas to fight a foreign foe, stood together not as Virginians or sons of Massachusetts, but as Americans united against the common enemy.
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[80] ‘I am too old to run,’ he said, and for the first time this historic spot was stained with the blood of the white man, where the old man died the death of a soldier and a gentleman. From that day till the end of the siege of Boston the spot where Somerville's first blood was shed became the very Mount Pisgah of the American line. Here for the first time after the first battle of the Revolution the officers of the Massachusetts forces were summoned. Here with the first guard mount of the Revolution on the evening that followed the Concord fight the siege of Boston began. Here, after the Pyrrhic victory of the English at Bunker Hill, came the men who retired only when the lack of powder left them without the means to fight. Here they made their stand and invited the further attack that never came. The scarlet tide that overflowed the crest of Charlestown paused before this barrier that since has never known upon its crest the flutter in triumph of an alien flag. The first flag to fly from the redoubt on Prospect Hill was not that of Massachusetts. Putnam had built the works, and Putnam, though a son of Massachusetts, hoisted on July 18, 1775, the flag not of his native but of his adopted state; the flag of the state which, except Massachusetts, contributed most to the Revolution. It was Connecticut's flag with its ‘Qui Transtulit Sustinet’ and the motto of all the revolutionists, ‘An Appeal to Heaven.’ Nor were all the troops that gathered here even from New England. Riflemen of Virginia and Pennsylvania and Maryland camped upon these slopes, and in this first serious contest of our country against a foreign enemy, as in the last, when we crossed the seas to fight a foreign foe, stood together not as Virginians or sons of Massachusetts, but as Americans united against the common enemy.
Somerville. Historical Society. , 1904.
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