A declaration seeking life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness_美文

A declaration seeking life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

The British climbed the hill. The Americans fired. A second group of British soldiers climbed the hill. The Americans fired again. The third time, the British reached the top, but the Americans were gone. They had left because they had no more gunpowder.

Peter Drummey, a librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, reads part of a letter that a young soldier wrote to his mother.

"’I was in the fort when the enemy came in, jumped over the wall, and ran half a mile, where balls’ — that is, musket balls — ‘flew like hail stones, and cannon roared like thunder.’"

The British captured Breed's Hill. But Peter Drummey says the Americans still considered the battle a kind of victory.

"The paradox is, even though the American forces are defeated and forced off the hill, nevertheless the British casualties are so high it is at least a moral victory."

Even the young American soldier who fled the battle wrote to his mother that he would continue fighting for American independence.

"And in fact that's probably what the British learned from this battle. That they could capture this hill at great cost, but the New England countryside is full of hills and they couldn't capture them all back."

That battle also reduced whatever hope was left for a negotiated settlement. King George declared the colonies to be in open rebellion.

The American colonists fought several battles against British troops in seventeen seventy-five. Yet the colonies were still not ready to declare war. Then, the following year, the British decided to use Hessian soldiers to fight against the colonists. Hessians were mostly German mercenaries who fought for anyone who paid them. The colonists feared these soldiers and hated the British for using them.