Joseph Warren | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Warren byJohn Singleton Copley, c. 1765 | |
| 2ndPresident of theMassachusetts Provincial Congress | |
| In office May 2, 1775 – June 17, 1775 | |
| Preceded by | John Hancock |
| Succeeded by | James Warren |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1741-06-11)June 11, 1741 Roxbury,Province of Massachusetts Bay,British America |
| Died | June 17, 1775(1775-06-17) (aged 34) Breed's Hill,Charlestown,Province of Massachusetts Bay, British America |
| Cause of death | Killed in action |
| Resting place | Forest Hills Cemetery |
| Spouse | |
| Relations | Mercy Scollay (fiancée) |
| Children | Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary, and Richard |
| Education | Roxbury Latin School |
| Alma mater | Harvard College (AB, AM) |
| Occupation | Physician |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Province of Massachusetts Bay United Colonies |
| Branch/service |  Massachusetts militia |
| Years of service | 1775 |
| Rank | Militiaman Major general |
| Battles/wars | |
Joseph Warren (June 11, 1741 – June 17, 1775), aFounding Father of the United States, was an Americanphysician who was one of the most important figures in thePatriot movement inBoston during the early days of theAmerican Revolution, eventually serving as President of the revolutionaryMassachusetts Provincial Congress. Warren enlistedPaul Revere andWilliam Dawes on April 18, 1775, to leave Boston and spread the alarm that the British garrison in Boston was setting out to raid the town ofConcord and arrest rebel leadersJohn Hancock andSamuel Adams. Warren participated in theBattles of Lexington and Concord the following day, the opening engagements of theAmerican Revolutionary War.[1]
Warren had been commissioned amajor general in the colony's militia shortly before the June 17, 1775Battle of Bunker Hill. Rather than exercise his rank, Warren chose to participate in the battle as aprivate soldier, and was killed in combat when British troops stormed theredoubt atopBreed's Hill. His death, immortalized inJohn Trumbull's painting,The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, June 17, 1775, galvanized the rebel forces. Warren has been memorialized in the naming of many towns, counties, streets, and other locations in the United States, by statues, and in numerous other ways.
Joseph Warren was born inRoxbury,Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Joseph and Mary (née Stevens) Warren. His father was a respected farmer who died in October 1755 when he fell off a ladder while gathering fruit in his orchard. After attending theRoxbury Latin School, Joseph enrolled inHarvard College, graduating in 1759,[2] and then taught for about a year at Roxbury Latin.[3] While teaching at Roxbury, Warren pursued postgraduate studies at Harvard, graduating with aMaster of Arts degree in 1763 after defending a thesis against the proposition that all disease was caused by obstruction of bodily vessels.[4][5] He married 18-year-old heiress Elizabeth Hooten on September 6, 1764. She died in 1773, leaving him with four children: Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary, and Richard.[6] Before his death in 1775, he was engaged to Mercy Scollay.[7]
While practicing medicine and surgery inBoston, he became involved in politics, associating withJohn Hancock,Samuel Adams, and other leaders of the broad movement labeledSons of Liberty. He was one of the leaders of Patriot activities during the Liberty Affair and facilitated an agreement with Hancock and government customs officials prior to the Boston demonstrations.[8]
Warren conducted an autopsy on the body of youngChristopher Seider in February 1770, and was a member of the Boston committee that assembled a report on the following month'sBoston Massacre. Earlier, in 1768, Royal officials tried to place his publishers Edes and Gill on trial for an incendiary newspaper essay Warren wrote under the pseudonymA True Patriot, but no local jury would indict them.[9]
In 1774, he authored the song "Free America," which was published in colonial newspapers. The poem was set to a traditional British tune, "The British Grenadiers."[10]
Warren owned at least one enslaved person. This unnamed man, formerly held by Joshua Green, helped Warren with his medical practice.[11][12]
As Boston's conflict with the royal government came to a head in 1773–1775, Warren was appointed to the BostonCommittee of Correspondence.[13] He twice delivered orations in commemoration of the Massacre, the second time in March 1775 while the town was occupied by army troops. Warren drafted theSuffolk Resolves, which were endorsed by theContinental Congress, to advocate resistance to Parliament'sCoercive Acts, which were otherwise known as the Intolerable Acts. He was appointed President of theMassachusetts Provincial Congress, the highest position in the revolutionary government.
In mid-April 1775, Warren andBenjamin Church were the two top members of the Committee of Correspondence left in Boston. On the afternoon of April 18, the British troops in the town mobilized for a long-planned raid on the nearby town of Concord, and already before nightfall word of mouth had spread knowledge of the mobilization widely within Boston. It had been known to rebel leadership for weeks that General Gage in Boston had plans to destroy munitions stored in Concord by the colonials, and it was also known that they would be taking a route through Lexington.
Unsupported stories[14] argue that Warren received additional information from a highly placed informant (usually claiming it was fromMargaret Kemble Gage, the wife of GeneralThomas Gage),[15] that the troops had orders to arrestSamuel Adams andJohn Hancock. However, there is little evidence of this as the troops apparently had no such orders. There is growing consensus in new scholarship that Mrs. Gage did not conspire against the British and that Warren needed no informant to deduce that the British were mobilizing.[16]
Regardless, Warren learned there was some British expedition likely to begin that night, and so sentWilliam Dawes andPaul Revere on their famous "midnight rides" to warn Hancock and Adams in Lexington.
Warren slipped out of Boston early on April 19, and during that day'sBattle of Lexington and Concord, he coordinated and led militia into the fight alongsideWilliam Heath as the British Army returned to Boston. When the enemy were returning from Concord, he was among the foremost in hanging upon their rear and assailing their flanks. During this fighting Warren was nearly killed, a musket ball striking part of his wig. When his mother saw him after the battle and heard of his escape, she entreated him with tears again not to risk life so precious. "Wherever danger is, dear mother," he answered, "there will your son be. Now is no time for one of America's children to shrink from the most hazardous duty; I will either set my country free, or shed my last drop of blood to make her so."[17] He then turned to recruiting and organizing soldiers for theSiege of Boston, promulgating the Patriots' version of events, and negotiating with Gen. Gage in his role as head of the Provincial Congress.
Warren was commissioned into theContinental Army at the rank ofmajor general by theSecond Continental Congress on June 14, 1775. Three days later, he arrived at Charlestown just before thebattle of Bunker Hill began and made his way to where Patriot militiamen were forming. Upon meeting GeneralIsrael Putnam, Warren asked where he thought the heaviest fighting would be; Putnam responded by pointing toBreed's Hill. Warren subsequently volunteered to join the militia at the rank ofprivate against the wishes of both Putnam and ColonelWilliam Prescott, both of whom unsuccessfully requested that he serve as their commander instead. Warren declined their request due the fact that Putnam and Prescott held more military experience.
During the early stages of the battle, Warren repeatedly stated that "These fellows say we won't fight! By Heaven, I hope I shall die up to my knees in blood!"[18] Defending the Patriot redoubt against two failed attacks by British troops, he kept firing his gun until running out of ammunition and waskilled in action during the third and final assault by British gunfire. The man who killed him was possibly LieutenantLord Rawdon, who personally recognized him, or by a British officer's servant, an account supported by a forensic analysis conducted in 2011.[19]
After the battle, Warren's body was stripped of his clothing, repeatedly bayoneted and then buried in a shallow ditch by British forces.[20] Captain Walter Laurie, who participated in thebattles of Lexington and Concord, later wrote that he "stuffed the scoundrel with another rebel into one hole, and there he and his seditious principles may remain."[21] American soldier Benjamin Hichborn subsequently wrote a letter toJohn Adams on December 10, 1775, claiming thatLieutenant James Drew, aRoyal Navy officer stationed onboard the sloopHMSScorpion, went to Breed's Hill "a day or two" after the battle and exhumed Warren's body, "spit in his face, jumped on his stomach, and at last cut off his head and committed every act of violence upon his body... In justice to the officers in general I must add, that they despised Drew for his Conduct."[20] Warren's body was exhumed again ten months after his death by his brothers andPaul Revere, who identified the remains by anartificial tooth Warren had installed in his jaw.[22] His body was interred in theGranary Burying Ground. In 1825, it was exhumed and reinterred inSt. Paul's Church inBoston before being moved one final time in 1855 to his family's vault inForest Hills Cemetery.
General Gage is rumored to have said that Warren's death was equal to the death of 500 ordinary colonials.[23] It encouraged the revolutionary cause because it was viewed by many Americans as an act ofmartyrdom.
At the time of Warren's death, his children were staying with his fiancée, Mercy Scollay, in Worcester as refugees from the Siege of Boston. She continued to look after them, gathering support for their education fromJohn Hancock,Samuel Adams,Mercy Otis Warren,Benedict Arnold, and even theContinental Congress.[citation needed] Joseph's youngest brother and apprentice in medicine,John Warren, served as a surgeon during theBattle of Bunker Hill and the rest of the war, and afterwards foundedHarvard Medical School and co-founded theMassachusetts Medical Society.
There are at least four statues of Joseph Warren on public display. Three are in Boston: one in the exhibit lodge adjacent to theBunker Hill Monument, another on the grounds of the Roxbury Latin School, and the third atop thepuddingstone at his grave site at the Forest Hills Cemetery (this statue was commissioned by the 6th Masonic District, and dedicated in a ceremony by the Grand Master of Masons in Massachusetts on October 22, 2016). The fourth is in a small park on the corner of Third and Pennsylvania avenues inWarren, Pennsylvania, a city, borough, and county all named after the general.
Fort Warren onGeorge's Island inBoston harbor, started in 1833, was named in his honor. In 1840, the first Warren School was built on Salem Street inCharlestown, Massachusetts near Bunker Hill. It relocated to School and Summer Streets in 1868, and later merged with the Prescott School to form theWarren-Prescott School.[24]
Fourteen states have aWarren County named after him. Additionally,Warren, Pennsylvania;Warren, Michigan;[25]Warren, New Jersey;Warrenton, Missouri;Warrenton, Virginia;[26]Warren, Maine;Warren, Massachusetts;Warrenton, North Carolina;Warren, Connecticut[27] and 30Warren Townships as well as Warrensville, Eldred Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania are also named in his honor.
TheNew York county ofWarren is named after him, but the town ofWarrensburg within that county is not; the town is in fact named after James Warren, a prominent early settler.[28]
The streets of Detroit, Michigan, were redesigned after the 1806 fire, based on thePierre L'Enfant Plan for Washington, D.C.; Warren Avenue in Detroit is named after Joseph Warren.[29]
Five ships in theContinental Navy andUnited States Navy were namedWarren in his honor.
Warren Square inSavannah, Georgia, is also named for him, as well as Warren Street inTrenton, New Jersey.[30]
Warren joined theFreemasons, being initiated in the St. Andrew's Lodge, and later became Past ProvincialGrand Master ofMassachusetts.[31][32]
Warren was a Scottish Freemason. He was a member of Lodge St Andrews, No.81, (Boston, Massachusetts), which held a Charter from theGrand Lodge of Scotland. The Lodge continues to meet in Boston under theGrand Lodge of Massachusetts. The date he joined the Lodge is not known but was during the period after the inauguration of the Lodge on St Andrew's Day, 30 November 1756 and 15 May 1769 when he is recorded in the Grand Lodge of Scotland's membership register as being the Master of the Lodge.[33]Paul Revere andWilliam Palfrey are also recorded, in the same entry, with Revere being named as Secretary of the Lodge.[34][35] Warren was appointed Grand Master of all Scottish Freemasonry in the 13 colonies by the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
He was appointedGrand Master of the newly establishedProvincial Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in that same year.[36][37] Upon his death, Joseph Webb became Acting Grand Master.
TheGrand Lodge of Massachusetts has an award in his name for Masons who have served the fraternity, the country, or humanity with distinction. It is the second-highest honor conferred by the Grand Lodge, surpassed by only the Henry Price medal. The Henry Price medal is usually awarded to those who served with distinction in the Grand Lodge, while the Joseph Warren medal may be conferred upon any Mason within the Grand jurisdiction.
Warren Lodge No. 32 of theGrand Lodge of New York is a historicMasonic lodge that meets inSchultzville, New York. It was founded in 1807 and named in memory of Joseph Warren.
Walter Coy portrayed Warren in the 1957 filmJohnny Tremain.[38] Warren also appeared in episodes 5 and 9 of the 2002 animated television showLiberty's Kids.
Ryan Eggold was cast as Warren in the 2015 miniseriesSons of Liberty.
Warren is featured in the song "Wildfire" by the bandMandolin Orange (renamedWatchhouse) on their 2016 albumBlindfaller.[39]
Joseph Warren is referenced in the A. W. Burns/George W. Hewitt song"America Shall Aye Be Free".
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