How History Unfolds on Paper: Important Americana from the Eric C. Caren Collection, Part X

Dunlap's Pennsylvania Packet or, The General Advertiser
Philadelphia: Printed by John Dunlap, Monday, June 26, 1775. Vol. IV, Numb. 192. Folio. 4 pp. Printed newspaper in four columns. Creasing from old folds; edges untrimmed; scattered foxing; paper loss and chips in right margin; bottom margin heavily creased.

Featuring British General Thomas Gage's infamous June 12 Proclamation offering amnesty to "all persons who shall forthwith lay down their arms, and return to the duties of peaceable subjects, excepting only from the benefit of such pardon, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose offences are of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment."

Gage's message was ghostwritten by British Lieutenant General John Burgoyne, but it backfired, as Loyalists did not flock to the British side, and the message's patronizing tone rallied Patriot militiamen, who subsequently surrounded Boston to drive out the British, culminating in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Further printed is Captain Elijah Hide's stirring firsthand account of Bunker Hill. He begins, "On Friday night, the 16th inst. fifteen hundred of the Provincials went to Bunker's Hill, in order to intrench there...when two thousand Regulars marched out of Boston, landed in Charlestown, and plundering it of all its valuable effects, set fire to it...then dividing their army, part of it marched up in the front of the provincial intrenchment and began to attack." He goes on to report that as the Regulars inched closer, "Capt. Nolton gave orders to the men not to fire until the enemy were got within fifteen rods, and then not till the word was given." After two hours of fighting Hide reports the suspected casualties, including that, "Dr. Warren is undoubtedly among the slain."

On the third page is reported that on the morning of the 26th, Generals George Washington and Charles Lee had left Philadelphia to take command of the newly-established Continental Army, in Massachusetts. Washington was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army only six days prior to this publication. Printed on the last page is a report from June 21st, of Washington making his first inspection of the 2,000 soldiers in Philadelphia.