Attack was the last thing in British minds. As the rear guard of Royal Marines passed over Charlestown Neck, Lord Percy looked at his watch and noted that the hour was past seven o'clock. His men were utterly exhausted. The grenadiers and light infantry had not slept for two days. Some had marched forty miles in twenty-one hours. Most had been under hostile fire for eight hours. The soldiers sank gratefully to the soggy ground on the heights above Charlestown, and fell instantly asleep. One British officer, unconscious of the irony, noted that their refuge was a place called Bunker Hill.

The Provincial Congress recommended that one quarter of the militia should be organized in "minute companies," ready to march "at the shortest notice." Special groups of that sort had existed in New England since the mid 17th-century. In 1645, militia commanders throughout Massachusetts were ordered "to make choice of thirty soldiers of their companies in ye hundred, who shall be ready at half an hour's warning." On the eve of King Philip's War in 1675, the Suffolk and Middlesex regiments were required to "be ready to march on a moment's warning, to prevent such danger as may seem to threaten us." When the French wars began after 1689, and New England settlements were attacked by winter raiding parties, the Massachusetts legislature created special units of "snowshoe men," each to "provide himself with a good pair of snowshoes, one pair of moggisons (sic) and one hatchet," and to "hold themselves ready to march on the shortest warning." These were roving patrols of frontier guards. To support them other unites were ordered in 1711 and 1743 to be "in readiness at a minute's warning." During the French and Indian War, militia companies that mustered for the Crown Point campaign of 1756, called themselves "minutemen." When the Provincial Congress advised the founding of minute companies, it was building on a long tradition.

Most town expected individual militiamen to supply their own weapons, and acted only to arm those who were unable to arm themselves. Newton's town meeting made special provision to arm its paupers at public expense: "Voted, that the Selectmen use their best discretion in providing fire-arms for the poor of the Town, who are unable to provide for themselves." Not many societies in the 18th century would have dared to distribute weapons to their proletariat. At the same time, the rich applied the New England habit of philanthropy to an unaccustomed cause. The town meeting in Newton also noted that "John Pigeon presented to the town two field pieces, which were accepted, and the thanks of the town given him."

Gage later come to agree with Percy. He wrote to Dartmouth on June 25, The Rebels are not the despicable rabble too many have supposed them to be, and I find it owing to a military spirit encouraged amongst them for a few years past, joined with an uncommon degree of zeal and enthusiasm that they are otherwise...In all their wars against the French they never showed so much conduct, attention and perseverance as they do now."