Washington? Jefferson? Samuel Adams? John Hancock? All these men figured prominently in our country’s independence. There are others, however, whose contribution was very important, but are not remembered in the same context as those above. One such individual was Dr. Joseph Warren.
Background: Joseph Warren was born on a farm in Roxbury, Massachusetts, June 11, 1741. He attended the Roxbury Latin School as a youth and graduated from Harvard in 1759. He studied medicine with Dr. James Lloyd in Boston and became one of the town’s most prominent physicians. Married with four children, he was considered by those who knew him to be an affable person who was well known and liked.
French and Indian War: From 1754 to 1763 the French and British colonies in North America fought a territorial war that included armies from each parent country. The British won the war, but their treasury was depleted as a result. Parliament and the King’s administration chose to apply taxes to the North American colonists to restore the lost financial health. However, the American colonists were the least able to pay, and consequently tensions between the colonists and parent country grew into arguments, disputes, protests, and violence. This underlying tension existed in all American colonies, but was most acute in Massachusetts. Dr. Warren treated and later performed an autopsy on eleven year old Christopher Seider, in February, 1770, after he was shot and killed by a loyalist who was confronted by a mob in one of Boston’s civil unrests.
Interest in Politics: During this same time frame Dr. Warren became involved with politics and got to know early revolutionaries John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and other members of the Sons of Liberty, a revolutionary movement. Together with Samuel Adams, Dr. Warren formed the Boston Committee of Correspondence, an underground revolutionary information group, that provided information and revolutionary rhetoric in the area. The Committee of Correspondence assembled a report on the Boston Massacre in March, 1770, spelling out as many facts as were known. Dr. Warren twice delivered orations in commemoration of the Massacre, including once after the British sent 4,000 extra troops to occupy Boston.
Suffolk Resolves: In opposition to the Massachusetts Government Act, that revoked key portions of the provincial charter, the various Committees of Correspondence in Massachusetts met in a convention and resolved that all counties should close their court systems rather than comply with the act. Suffolk County (Boston) did not close its courts, but Dr. Warren drafted and introduced the Suffolk Resolves, that were adopted by the leaders of Suffolk, County, Massachusetts in September, 1774. A few weeks later the Suffolk Resolves were endorsed by the Continental Congress. The Suffolk Resolves declared that all colonists should boycott British imports, ignore Parliamentary coercive laws such as the Massachusetts Government Act, refuse to pay taxes until the Act was repealed, support a colonial government until the Intolerable Acts were also repealed, and encourage each colony to raise its own militia. These were the first documents to promote across the board noncompliance with British authority in North America.
Intelligence Network: Dr. Warren developed an intelligence network in and around Boston, that amongst other things, provided the information he used to conclude that the British Army intended to march on Concord Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775, and destroy a weapons and ammunition repository there. He further discovered that the army intended to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who needed to be warned. He sent Paul Revere and William Dawes to ride on horseback through the countryside to warn the militias, as well as Adams and Hancock, to mobilize to meet the British threat. In the ensuing battle of Lexington and Concord, a major colonist victory, Dr. Warren narrowly escaped death as a musket shot zipped through his wig.
Siege of Boston: Dr. Warren took the lead in creating the Massachusetts colony’s Provincial Congress in 1775. As the head of the Provincial Congress, he recruited and organized the militia to carry out the Siege of Boston, and negotiated with General Thomas Gage on the British Army’s exit from the area. The siege was designed to bottle up the British Army by preventing them from moving out of the area over land. The Provincial Congress appointed him a major general of the Massachusetts Militia. However, before the Battle of Bunker Hill, he deferred to experienced commanders, General Israel Putnam and Colonel William Prescott, and decided to serve in the battle as a private. When the British Army made their third attack up Breed’s Hill after two disastrous charges, Dr. Warren tried to rally the militia who were running out of ammunition. He was shot it the head by Francis Lord Rawdon, an officer in the British Army who later became Governor General of India. It’s believed that Lord Rawdon recognized Dr. Warren as a revolutionary leader before killing him.
Conclusions: There were numerous early leaders of the American Revolution, some of them like Dr. Warren with stories behind their activities, while others remain unsung altogether. Lord Rawdon considered Dr. Warren as “the greatest incendiary in all America.” British General Thomas Gage said that Dr. Warren’s death was equal to the death of 500 men. Abigail Adams wrote, “Not all the havoc and devastation they have made has wounded me like the death of Warren.” Loyalist Peter Oliver said in 1782, had Dr. Warren lived, George Washington would have been “an obscurity.” Military historian Ethan Rafuse wrote, “No man, with the possible exception of Samuel Adams, did so much to bring about the rise of a movement powerful enough to lead the people of Massachusetts to revolution.”
Fourteen states have a Warren County. Nine cities and thirty other townships are named after him. Five ships in the Continental and the U.S. Navy were named in his honor.
Sources: Wikipedia.
Britannica.
American Heritage, Men of the Revolution: 1. Dr. Joseph Warren, Richard M. Ketchum, August, 1971, Vol. 22, Issue 5.
Revolutionary War Journal, Lord Rawdon in America, May 28, 2013.
The History Channel.
New England Historical Society.
Interesting David. I knew some of the Warren history, but you filled in gaps. My ancestors moved to Rutherford County, NC from what was Bute County, VA. in 1799. Bute County was named for a British governor and was renamed Warren County after the revolution. .