On this day in 1775, a few hundred farmers picked up shovels and quietly decided to dare the British Empire to do something about it.
The siege of Boston had settled into a tense standoff. The Americans had the British bottled up in the city, but everyone knew the redcoats were planning to break out and seize the high ground on the surrounding peninsulas. On June 15, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety made the call. They would not wait to be attacked. They would seize the heights of the Charlestown peninsula first, and General Israel Putnam was ordered to fortify Bunker Hill.
What happened next was either a mistake or a stroke of audacity, historians still argue about it. Under cover of darkness on the night of June 16, the men marched onto the peninsula and, instead of digging in on Bunker Hill as ordered, they pushed forward and built their redoubt on Breed's Hill, closer to Boston and closer to the British guns. With picks and shovels, working in near silence so the enemy would not hear them, a thousand amateurs threw up an earthen fort in a single night.
When the sun rose on June 17, British officers looking across the water could not believe their eyes. Overnight, rebels they had dismissed as a rabble had fortified a hill staring straight down at the king's army.
The British attacked that afternoon. The battle that followed, misnamed Bunker Hill though most of the fighting was on Breed's Hill, became the bloodiest day of the entire war for the British. The Americans lost the ground but inflicted staggering casualties, and the legend of the order "do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes" was born.
It all started with a decision made on this day, and a long night of digging.