The Whites of Their Eyes: Bunker Hill, the First American Army, and the Emergence of George Washington

Drawingupon new research and scholarship, historian Paul Lockhart, author of thecritically acclaimed Revolutionary War biography The Drillmaster of ValleyForge, offers a penetrating reassessment of the first major engagement ofthe American Revolution. In the tradition of David McCullough’s 1776,Lockhart illuminates the Battle of Bunker Hill as a crucial event in thecreation of an American identity, dexterously interweaving the story of thispivotal pitched battle with two other momentous narratives: the creation ofAmerica’s first army, and the rise of the man who led it, George Washington. |

Paul Lockhart combines military and political history to offer a major reassessment of one of the most famous battles in American history.

One hot June afternoon in 1775, on the gentle slopes of a hill near Boston, Massachusetts, a small band of ordinary Americans—frightened but fiercely determined—dared to stand up to a superior British force. The clash would be immortalized as the Battle of Bunker Hill: the first real engagement of the American Revolution and one of the most famous battles in our history.But Bunker Hill was not the battle that we have been taught to believe it was.

Revisiting old evidence and drawing on new research, historian Paul Lockhart, author of The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, shows that Bunker Hill was a clumsy engagement pitting one inexperienced army against another. Lockhart tells the rest of the story, too: how a mob of armed civilians became America's first army; how George Washington set aside his comfortable patrician life to take command of the veterans of Bunker Hill; and how the forgotten heroes of 1775—though overshadowed by themore famous Founding Fathers—kept the notion of American liberty alive, and thus made independence possible.

“A persuasive argument that the fighting at Breed’s Hill—the true location of the conflict—is the real watershed of the period. . . . Lockhart is right about this: Bunker Hill was a dividing line. Before the battle, reconciliation was possible. Afterward it was inconceivable—and independence was all but inevitable.” - Boston Globe

“Refreshing. . . . the author’s smooth narrative of the fighting presents Bunker Hill as a public event that crowds of civilians witnessed like an act onstage. This nicely written and carefully researched book offers exciting new insights on the Revolutionary War.” - Edward G. Lengel, Historynet.com