Elisha Rich

Elisha Rich (1740–1812) was a Baptist minister from Chelmsford, Massachusetts, who authored one of the earliest literary responses to the Revolutionary War. In late 1775, he composed "A Poem Upon the Bloody Engagement That Was Fought on Bunker's-Hill," which was published as a commercial broadside by printer Nathaniel Coverly. Written in twenty-six stanzas, the verse chronicles the British assault on Charlestown while framing the conflict as a divine warning to New Englanders. Notably, Rich used the poem to deliver a rare, early wartime anti-slavery message, explicitly arguing that the American colonies could not morally demand political liberty from Great Britain while continuing to enforce human slavery.