Such were some of the outstanding deeds of the day.  But these were the deeds of men and the deeds of men always have an inward significance.  In distant Philadelphia, on this very day, the Continental Congress had chosen as the Commander of their Army, General George Washington, a man whose clear vision looked into the realities of things and did not falter.  On his way to the front four days later, dispatches reached him of the battle.  He revealed the meaning of the day with, one question, “Did the militia fight?” Learning how those heroic men fought, he said, “Then the liberties of the Country are safe.”  No greater commentary has ever been made on the significance of Bunker Hill.

We read events by what goes before and after.  We think of Bunker Hill as the first real battle for independence, the prelude to the Revolution.  Yet these were both after-thoughts.  Independence Day was still more than a year away and then eight years from accomplishment.  The Revolution cannot be said to have become established until the adoption of the Federal Constitution.  No, on this June day, these were not the conscious objects sought.  They were contending for the liberties of the country, they were not yet bent on establishing a new nation nor on recognizing that relationship between men which the modern world calls democracy.  They were maintaining well their traditions, these sons of Londonderry, lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray, and these sons of the Puritans, whom Macaulay tells us humbly abased themselves in the dust before the Lord, but hesitated not to set their foot upon the neck of their king.

It is the moral quality of the day that abides.  It was the purpose of those plain garbed men behind the parapet that told whether they were savages bent on plunder, living under the law of the jungle, or sons of the morning bearing the light of civilization.  The glorious revolution of 1688 was fading from memory.  The English Government of that day rested upon privilege and corruption at the base, surmounted by a king bent on despotism, but fortunately too weak to accomplish any design either of good or ill.  An empire still outwardly sound was rotting at the core.  The privilege which had found Great Britain so complacent sought to establish itself over the Colonies.  The purpose of the patriots was resistance to tyranny.  Pitt and Burke and Lord Camden in England recognized this, and, loving liberty, approved the course of the Colonies.  The Tories here, loving privilege, approved the course of the Royal Government.  Bunker Hill meant that the Colonies would save themselves and saving themselves save the mother country for liberty.  The war was not inevitable.  Perhaps wars are never inevitable.  But the conflict between freedom and privilege was inevitable.  That it broke out in America rather than in England was accidental.  Liberty, the rights of man against tyranny, the rights of kings, was in the air.  One side must give way.  There might have been a peaceful settlement by timely concessions such as the Reform Bill of England some fifty years later, or the Japanese reforms of our own times, but wanting that a collision was inevitable.  Lacking a Bunker Hill there had been another Dunbar.