February 1, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, little has been known of one of the most important figures in early American history, Dr. Joseph Warren, an architect of the colonial rebellion, and a man who would have led the country as Washington or Jefferson did had he not been martyred at Bunker Hill in 1775. Warren was involved in almost every major insurrectionary act in the Boston area for a decade, yet after his death, his life and legend faded. Here to tell the story is Jeffrey McKenna, author of Saving Dr. Warren... ”A True Patriot”.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Little has been known about one of the most important
figures in early American history, doctor Joseph Warren, an architect
of the colonial rebellion, yet after his death, his life
and legend fated. Here to tell the story is Jeffrey McKenna,
(00:33):
author of Saving Doctor Warren a True Patriot. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Doctor Joseph Warne was involved so early in the struggle
for our freedoms that at that point it was just
the fact that these colonists had come over a great
sacrifice to be here on the American continent, and that
they had come here specifically for freedoms, religious freedoms, and
so doctor Joseph Warren was adamant that those freedom could
(01:00):
not be encroached on, and that they needed to be respected,
and that he just needed to be treated like English citizens.
And that was the big issue, is that the crown
was not treating them equal to English citizens. And doctor
Warren was in the forefront of saying, that's not what
our forefathers came over here for. And they sacrificed a
(01:22):
lot to come over here and to build what we have,
and we cannot allow that to just be taken away.
And so that was why he was so adamant in
getting In the early early stages of the American Revolution,
there had been a major event that had taken place
(01:42):
in the United States that it would affected everybody, including
doctor Joseph for and he was a little young, so
he didn't actually engage in the fighting. But it was
the French and Indian War that took place, and the
Crown England invested a lot of money in protecting the
colonists during the French and Indian War, and so the
Crown wanted to receive moneys back and so they imposed
(02:06):
taxes that the Americans were not used to paying. And
the Stamp Act was maybe the first act that really
got everybody upset and excited because there was going to
be a tax on anything that required a certain stamp,
and that was all legal documents and any kind of paperwork.
And Joseph Warren was involved with many of these early Americans,
(02:27):
particularly in Boston. So you have doctor Joseph Warren getting
first associated with James Otis and Samuel Adams and John
Hancock that you hear throughout history, Joseph Warren gets involved
in saying, you know what, wait a second, why is
the Crown imposing these taxes on us when we don't
have any representation in England. We need to be treated
(02:51):
like English citizens. And that became kind of the first
time when doctor Joseph Warren starts to get involved in
paul Is during the Stamp Act and the protest that
Boston in particular was doing the city of Boston. And
then Sam Adams spotted his talent, that talent that he had.
He was chrismatic, he was young, the people liked him,
(03:14):
and he was very fiery, and he could speak with
a lot of passion, and so sam Adams recruits him
and begins to bring him into the inner circle there
in the late seventeen sixties. That's when you get doctor
Warren starting to take a place within that circle of
patriots there in Boston, where he's writing articles, and of
(03:36):
course most of the articles being published anonymously because they
were treason as so to speak, when you're speaking against
the crown and publishing him under the pseudonym a true patriot, which.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I thought was such a cool term.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
So doctor Warren is getting involved slowly into this circle
of patriots that are going to become the ones that
are signing the Declaration of Independence, that are leading the
Boston Tea Party, and he is going to become, in
many respects, the leader of that revolutionary movement.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
In Boston in the seventeen seventies.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
So you have the taxes that those across all thirteen
colonies are paying, but particularly in Boston, you had individuals
like Sam Adams, James Otis, John Hancock that were taking
it particularly hard and they weren't going to allow it
to happen without a protest. And that's why Boston becomes
(04:32):
the hotbed. And it's within this environment that doctor Joseph Warren,
this young physician in his twenties, is influenced by these
amazing patriots, these amazing men Sam Adams, James Otis, John Hancock,
and he becomes very involved. He becomes involved with the
different taxes that had been imposed. He becomes involved in
(04:52):
the fact that we have the British regulars, the soldiers
that are actually staying and living in homes. They're not
particularly happy be about being there, and so they're not
they're grumpy and they're not being very friendly to the
citizens of Boston, and the citizens in Boston aren't being
very friendly to them, especially after almost eighteen months of
having them in their streets to enforce these taxes, and
(05:15):
so it becomes very heated. I mean, we are at
a position now in Boston where anything could just explode,
and it does on March fifth, seventeen seventy. You have
nothing less but an explosion, and it gets called the
Boston massacre. Now five people died. I am not certain
(05:38):
that constitutes a massacre. But March fifth, seventeen seventy, the regulars,
the British soldiers have been in Boston for almost eighteen months.
There is an altercation that takes place between a British
soldier and an apprentice in the streets of Boston. And
in that altercation, the apprentice gets hit pretty good upside.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
The head leaves a pretty good well and pretty good
mark well.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
He talks to some of the dock workers and some
of the other people there in Boston and they've had it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
That's the spark right there.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
They get them at that point in front of those regulars.
And we should mention here too, with respect to the
Boston massacre, there's something that often gets left out. There's
that altercation that happens the day of but prior to that,
within two weeks, prior to that, you have the death
of a ten year old boy. That boy's name was
(06:31):
Christopher Sider. Christopher Sider will die because a loyalist will
fire a gun blindly out of his house at the
patriots that are trying to confront him. And we're gonna
call on patriots because you know they're the patriots, are
the Boston Patriots, but they were individuals that were rallying
against the king. And this particular man in Boston, and
(06:54):
his name now escapes me, but he was running from them.
He was hiding in his home and they are outside
his door and he fires, and Christopher Sider will die
because of that.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And you're listening to author Jeffrey McKenna more of doctor
Joseph Warren's story. When we return here on Our American Stories,
Lee Habibe here the host of our American Stories. Every
(07:35):
day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across
this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our
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give a lot. Go to Alamericanstories dot com and give.
(08:09):
And we continue on our American Stories with our story
about founding father Doctor Joseph Warren. Our storyteller is Jeffrey McKenna,
author of Saving Doctor Warren, a True Patriot. We left
off with eleven year old liberty boy Christopher Sider, dying
at the hands of a Boston loyalist and local merchant
(08:30):
engaged in non importation agreements and trading in British goods.
Here again is Jeffrey McKenna.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Doctor Joseph Warren will be the physician that will take
out eleven pellets from his body as part of the
autopsy that has caused the folks in Boston to.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Just really be on edge.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Now you have the altercation with the apprentice. At that point,
those docs and those that consider themselves to be sons
of liberty, once they heard that that they were in
front of the English regulars. There is one particular Bostonian
by the name of Christmas Addicts who will not back
(09:14):
down He'll be in front of those regulars the entire time.
Christmas Addicts is an amazing individual because arguably his blood
is some.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Of the first blood that is spilled.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
And Christmas Addicts, who was a former enslaved African American,
and he is right in front of those regulars and
when the word fire.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
And to this day, you know it's argued whether it.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Was don't fire or fire, but the word is voiced,
the firing occurs, and Christmas Addicts in four other citizens
of Boston will lay dead in the streets of Boston.
And Sam Adams again, not to let a moment like
that disappear, he makes sure that every year on March fifth,
there's going to be a Boston massac her commemoration speech
(10:01):
and that's held at the Old South Meeting House every year.
Doctor Joseph Warren will speak in seventeen seventy two. Doctor
Warren will be the only one to speak twice in
seventeen seventy five. And that comes about because of the
extreme danger. I don't think you can emphasize that enough
(10:21):
to say extreme danger. If you think about March seventeen
seventy five April nineteenth, seventeen seventy five, we are gonna
have Lexington Concord monotomy, We're gonna have the beginning battles
of the American Revolution approximately one hundred days before then.
You're gonna have this commemoration speech. And the British had said, no,
(10:42):
you're not. We put up with it for four years,
we're not putting up with it anymore. And they were
adamant that the man that thinks that they're gonna get
up and give that speech and the old South Meeting House,
that man can plan on leaving the church with a
noose around his neck because we're done.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
And Warren said, I'll do.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
It, and they'll actually have him come up through the
back of the church through the third story window to
sneak in. But the story goes that one of the
lower officers was to come with an e and when
doctor Warren got to a point in the speech where
it was just really hitting the climax, he was to stand.
He was to throw the egg, and that was the
(11:22):
sign that he was to be apprehended, the speech was
to be over, and that everybody was.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
To clear out.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
That officer walking to the church with the egg tripped
and fell. The egg broke hurt, his leg never made it,
egg was never there. Speech was never stopped. At one
point another officer is like, why are we not stopping this?
He jumps up in the middle of the speech and
he starts to take musket balls, dropping him in his hand,
basically telling doctor Warren that's it, We're done. Doctor Joseph
(11:52):
Warren does not miss a beat in his speech. He's
wearing a full Roman toga giving this speech, and he
will walk down and he will just put a white
handkerchief of peace over the musket balls and then continue
his speech without ever missing a syllable.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
And the calmness and the way that.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
He did it, the British officers didn't apprehend him. And
he finished the speech in March of seventeen seventy five,
right before the battles that are gonna take place, that
are gonna be the shot heard round the world. After
the events of March fifth, seventeen seventy you have a
(12:36):
relative calm.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
But then again the British.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
The Parliament and the King are like, how can these
Americans get away with not paying, you know, more taxes?
And they decide this is how we're gonna do this.
We're gonna make it so easy on taxes. We had
that problem with the tax acts of the late seventeen
sixties that led to the Boston massacre of seventeen seventy.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
We're gonna be.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Real gentle here with these Americans. We've got this problem
in India. We have this huge surplus of tea. We're
gonna make it wonderful for the Americans. We're gonna be
able to provide this tea for them cheaper than they
could get anywhere else.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
We're going to impose just a small tax on the tea.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
It'll be very small, still much cheaper than they could
get the tea any other place. We are going to mandate, however,
that the tea has to be sold by our t commissioners,
those that we've selected, because we've got some people that
are doing a lot of good things in the colonies
and we want to make sure we reward them, because
that's just what you would do. And we're going to
(13:37):
impose that t act and have that be the way
that we'll be able to get some revenue from these colonies.
Because the English are just certain they won't have any
problems with this, because the tea will still be lower
priced than the other et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Well, the problem was, particularly for those in Boston.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Freedom, you were taking the liberties away again. You're imposing
a tax where we had no say with respect to
that tax. James Otis had been the one that had
coined no taxation without representation. And Warren was right there,
Doctor Joseph Warren was right there in those inner circles
as the young guy, he's in his twenties when all
(14:19):
of this is initially happening, and that became the impath
that will eventually lead to the Boston Tea Party, and
doctor Joseph Wren Paul Revere are intimately involved in that planning.
In fact, there was a little song that was penned
afterwards among the children and the folks there in Boston
(14:41):
and specifically mentioning two people by name, Joseph Warren and
Paul Revere, and they were there doing what needed to
be done, basically keeping the tea from coming into the
markets there in Boston, and they took matters into their
own hands, put it into the ocean, which of course
(15:02):
will eventually lead to just more hostilities. The Boston Tea
Party will lead to what the Americans are going to
call the intolerable acts. If you look at the Bill
of Rights, if you look at the first ten amendments
of the Constitution, you will see so many that are
stemming from the intolerable acts. Meaning what British said was
(15:22):
going to happen to Boston and Massachusetts the colony after
the Boston Tea Party. They basically did not allow them
to have meetings, They did not allow to have any
expression through the press. They made the soldiers have to
come in and live in their homes. They made it intolerable,
and they truly did thinking the British were thinking that
(15:43):
what the Parliament and the King were thinking that to
really scold the disobedient child that Massachusetts colonied, that the
other colonies would all take note and they would all
want to tow the line, and they would all want
to get in line them.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
It did just the opposite. It made the other twelve
calls and they say, are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
They really think they can do that to Massachusetts, They
can really do that to the harbors of Boston. They're
gonna close the harbors so no ships can come in
and out as part of these intolerable acts, and it
unified the thirteen colonies. That's when they have the first
Continental Congress, where they get together to say, if this
(16:23):
is what the King thinks he can do, we may
need to do something about this. And here's a part again,
Doctor Joseph Warren. He's back where the suffering is occurring.
He's back in Boston. He's in Sulfic County, that's the
county where Boston is located, and he pens. He organizes
the leaders to come together in Sulfic County and they
(16:46):
pen the Sulfic Resolves.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
And the Sulfic Resolves are classic.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Thomas Jefferson will use those as a foundation he and
John Adams when they are penning the Declaration of Independence
two years later.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
And you're listening to Jeffrey McKenna, author of Saving Doctor Warren,
a True Patriot and by the way, you can get
that at Amazon dot com or all of the usual
suspects wherever you buy your books. And what a story
you're hearing about a patriot you really never heard of.
And what we learn here is that after the stamp
back came the Boston Tea Party, in which, of course
(17:22):
Warren we just learned played a vital role along with
Paul Revere. And then well, then come the Intolerable Acts.
And when you read the Bill of Rights, there you'll
see from everything from the freedom of association to no
quartering of troops, his searches and seizures and so on.
So much of the Bill of Rights finds its birth
(17:44):
in what happened on the streets of Boston. When we
come back more of the story of doctor Joseph Warren
and our nation's birth. Here on our American stories, and
(18:08):
we continue with our American stories and the story of
doctor Joseph Warren. At the urging of King George II,
the British Parliament enacted five laws in seventeen seventy four.
The British referred to the legislation collectively as the Coercive
Acts or the Restraining Acts. The American colonists they called
those rules something different, the Intolerable Acts. In September of
(18:32):
seventeen seventy four, doctor Joseph Warren crafted a response to
the Coercive Acts by drafting a series of resolutions known
as the Suffolk Resolves. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams will
use these as a Foundation when they pen the Declaration
of Independence just two years later. Let's continue with our
story about founding father, doctor Joseph Warren, with our storyteller
(18:55):
Jeffrey McKenna, author of Saving Doctor Warren a True Patriot.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Joseph Warren will pen the Sulfic Resolves, send them by
Paul Revere, his trusted courier, to Philadelphia, and in the
Sulfic Resolves for the first time, it will say when
you have a leader, a king that imposes laws that
(19:21):
are intolerable and inappropriate in every way, you have the
right to take arms and oppose those laws. Fact was huge,
and in Philadelphia they passed the Sulfic Resolves saying US
(19:42):
thirteen colonies will follow that. And I always say this
whenever I talk about doctor Joseph Warren. His friends all
signed the Declaration of Independence. His roommate Elbridge Jerry will
sign it. John Hancock, he was super great friends with,
will sign with the biggest signature, John Adams, Sam Adams.
I will say doctor Warren signed the Declaration of Independence
(20:07):
the year before on the hill outside of Boston with
his blood. His friends all signed it with the pen
he signed it with his blood on Bunker Hill in.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Seventeen seventy five.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
The leading Patriots, Adams and Handcocked, they're out, They're not
in Boston, so you only have Warren. Warren is the
one that's the closest to the Sons of Liberty, those
that are on the docks and in the streets, and
the Sons of Liberty love them. Paul Revere is one
of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty, and Paul
Revere and Joseph Warren are the best of friends. Paul
Revere will actually name his son Joseph Warren Revere. Everybody
(20:47):
knows springtime is the time if the British are going
to do something, they're going to do it. They've got
enough spies, they've got enough going on that they're getting
this information. And yet doctor Joseph Warn is going to
make that call on April eighteenth. He's going to call
first William Dawes to his house, and he's gonna send
William Dawes out of Boston over the land so that
he could warn the militias that the British would be
(21:10):
marching to particularly warn Sam Adams and John Hancock in
Lexington that the British would be marching to try to
get to Concord to protect the arms that we had
in Concord. And so he sent William Dawes one way,
and he sends Paul Revere across the waterways and he
brings Paul Revere to his house.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
He gives them the instructions.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Paul Revere stops at the Old North Church to you know,
have the iconic lights. Doctor Warren informs him they're going
to be going out by water, and Paul tells them
have the two lanterns so they know across the bay
that they're coming by water, and then, you know, let's
get people notified. So there's been so much speculation. How
was Joseph Warren so sure of that decision? And nobody
(21:55):
knows for sure.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
We do know something though.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Margaret general gage is wife, was from New Jersey. She
was an American, and we have correspondence from her to
her husband basically saying, you know, be mindful of my people,
referring to Americans as her people. We also know Margaret
Gage continued to use doctor Warren as her personal physician.
(22:23):
Now that wouldn't seem that unusual, except things were hot
in Boston. Doctor Warren was clearly a patriot in every
sense of the word. And if you were a loyalist,
you just had to stop using him as your doctor.
I mean, all of his loyalist patients had stopped using him,
(22:44):
but not Margaret Gage.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
He had information.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Now how he got that information and how he was
so sure about that information remains a secret. One thing
we know that Margaret Gage was very loyal to her
people Americans too. She continue to use doctor Warren as
her physician during this time when all of his other
loyalist patients had stopped using him. And three after the
(23:09):
events of April nineteenth with Lexington Concord of Monotomy, General
Gage sends her to England to not be there anymore
because at some point somewhere, I think he knows that
critical element of surprise was lost on April eighteenth to nineteenth.
When they show up in Lexington Green and they see
those men there, that is devastating. They get to concord,
(23:33):
it's even worse because then you've got an organized group.
They actually turn back these just farmers and fathers turn
back the greatest military establishment in the world on the
planet at the Old North Bridge.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
They make them retreat, and once they start retreating.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
We are just on the road picking them off, hiding
in trees, dodging them, and they are just infuriated. Now
I'm telling a little bit of this story of April
nineteenth to get to something that I find fascinating.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Doctor Joseph Warren. He's been largely forgotten.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
The biggest battle of April nineteenth has been largely forgotten.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
The battle where he fought, the Battle.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Of Monotymy, was bigger than Lexington and Concord combined. Part
of our problem is that Monotomy gets forgotten because it
had a really weird name, and they changed it twice.
They at one point call it West Cambridge. Another point
now they're calling it Arlington. But Monotymy was where Joseph
(24:41):
Warren was, and he was in the thick of the battle,
and at one point a musketball raises his wig and
takes his hairpin out of his wig. He's so intense
and so involved in the fighting. On that first day
of fighting of the American Revolution. They get back to Boston.
(25:03):
They have really taken a bad it's been a bad,
bad day and they're in Boston and now you have
these militias that are just coming and coming and coming
from all of the different colonies. But the million dollar
question is who's governing them. These aren't trained soldiers. You
are going to end up with fifteen thousand militia men
(25:27):
outside of Boston. Now that number may not seem that significant,
but when you realize there were only fifteen thousand residents
in Boston at its height, before all of the turmoil,
it's as many people as ever lived in Boston are
now living in camps outside of Boston, and you have
to feed them, you have to control them so that
(25:49):
they don't cause disturbances and ruckus outside. You have a
terribly difficult task, and you've got to keep the Red
coats in. You're constantly monitoring what the British regulars might
be doing.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Who's doing all of that, Sam.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Adams and John Hancock A in the Continental Congress, it's
Joseph Warren. Joseph Warren was voted the president of the
Provincial Congress. He was the chairman of the Committee of Safety,
he was the chairman of the Committee of Correspondence. He's
the one sending letters saying bring him here. Once they
get here, he's the one in charge of managing them
because he's the chairman of the Committee of Safety, which
(26:26):
was actually the civilian military leader.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
And then he's.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Also the president of the provincial Congress, so he's the
one that's actually handling the civic duties of the regular
individuals that are saying, we don't want to be under
the control of the Boston governor anymore. So this is
an amazing period from April nineteenth until what is going
to become the largest battle in the American Revolution. Many
(26:51):
people don't recognize that Bunker Hill will have more casualties
than any of the other battles in the American Revolution,
and doctor Joseph Warren is the one coordinating that.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And you're listening to a heck of a story about
a true patriot and a name not known and not
heard often when talking about the American Revolution, and that's
doctor Joseph Warren. And what leadership we're hearing about, and
what courage that Paul Revere would name his son Joseph
Warren Revere. When we come back more of the story
(27:22):
of doctor Joseph Warren here on our American Stories, and
we returned to our American Stories and to Jeffrey McKenna,
author of Saving Doctor Warren a true patriot. We last
(27:45):
left off at Bunker Hill, the battle that will receive
the most casualties during the entire American Revolutionary War, and
founding father, doctor Joseph Warren, is the one coordinating that
battle for the American Patriot. Here again is Jeffrey McKennon.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
We have farmers and fathers that have gathered, and these
are great, great men and great wives.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
To send their men, and great families to send their brothers.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
But these guys are here.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
As volunteers and they're there to do something, and they
haven't really done anything. They show up a little in
April and maybe the beginning of May, and they're hanging around,
and they're hanging around, and now we're getting into June
and they're still really nothing happening, and they're saying to themselves,
if I don't get back to my farm, and if
(28:36):
I don't get to plant some crops, my family's not
going to be eating. And doctor Warren is seeing all
of that, and he and the Committee of Safety are saying,
we've got to do something. And the Committee of Safety,
with Joseph Warren in charge, make the decision we've got
to build a fort close enough to Boston that we
(28:58):
could shoot cannons into Boston. We've got to make it
so close that the British will engage us. Wow, that's
a big You've got a bunch of farmers and fathers.
These aren't army engineers, and they're gonna build a fort
in one night on a hill so close to Boston
that it's gonna make the British come out and confront them.
(29:19):
This is to say it's both is such an understatement.
I mean, just the courage that these guys all had
to have. The British go to bed one night. They
go to bed on June sixteenth with no fort outside
of Boston. They wake up in the morning of June
seventeenth and there's a fort and they're like, what is
(29:39):
going on? And the Committee of Safety is meeting and
Joseph Warren says, I'm gonna be there tomorrow. And they
have an uproar in the committee. They say, you've got Prescott,
You've got Israel, Putnam, you've got great colonels.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
That are there.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Generals, don't go there. You're gonna be a commission general.
They just commissioned in Philadelphia. He said, the men are
gonna need to know that we believe in this enough
to be there. They take his roommate, Elbridg's Jerry, who
becomes famous for Jerry Mandarin and Elbridg Jerry will eventually
be a vice president, but elbrid Jerry will sign the
(30:17):
Declaration of Independence. And he was Joseph Warren's roommate at Harvard,
so he was super close. And the Committee of Safety says,
you guard his room tonight. You make sure in the
morning he does not go to that hill outside of Boston,
and so Elbridg Jerry literally is there with Joseph Warren.
Joseph Warren sleeps and sleeps and sleeps, and Elbert Jerry
(30:39):
thinks he's good, he's done. He kind of goes to
take a break. Warren wakes up, puts on his fanciest clothes.
They didn't have uniforms, so he puts on his fanciest
silk shirt pants. He's gonna look the part of, you know,
a distinguished leader. He grabs the gun and grabs the
sword and he marches to brethe Till. They end up
(31:00):
building the fort on Braids Hill, supposed to have been
Bunker Hill. Reidtill was a little bit closer, that's it,
but it gets the name Bunker Hill. But they build
the fort there in one night, and so the British.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Just pour boat after boat after boat.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
They send them from Boston over that to the day
to Charles Town and they're getting off and they're getting
off and they're getting off, and here you have these
Americans watching garrison after garrison coming and they're thinking.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Whose idea was this.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
All of a sudden, Joseph Warren appears on the hill
and basically announces to everybody on the hill, I'm here
and I'm here.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
To fight with you.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
And Prescott's ready to give command. He's a colonel, he
knows that Joseph Warren is going to be a general.
He's surprised that Joseph Warren is there, and he says,
command is yours. And Joseph Warren makes a speech loud
enough for everybody to hear. No, I have not received
my commission yet. I have come to fight with the
greatest men on this continent, and I will fight shoulder
to shoulder with them in this are cause of freedom
(32:06):
and liberty. And that makes Bunker Hill. Because the British
march and march and march up that hill, and you've
got the iconic statement, that greatest military phrase, right, don't
fire till you see the lights of their eyes, because
we had limited ammunition. If every bullet we shot hit
one of those red coats, but you know that we're
(32:28):
pouring off of the boat, we still wouldn't have enough bullets,
you know, I mean, we knew we were in trouble
with respect to our ammunition.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
And then the word.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Fire and we just boom blast them and they retreat again.
The greatest military force on the planet retreats, and they
do it again a second time. Now they're having to
call over their buddies that are on the ground in
their red coats, and they get right up to the
floor on the second way, and again we fire, and
(32:59):
they retreat a second time.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
And on the third time, we knew that we just
didn't have ammunition.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
There literally are accounts of rocks that were pulled out
of the British soldiers because we fired rocks. And so
doctor Warren was involved to the end in an organized
retreat and as he's doing that, an officer leveled his
firearmed and fired, and that takes the life of doctor
Joseph worn Joseph for Worn's death was tragic. Abigail Adams
(33:29):
when she reports to her beloved husband John, we've got
amazing correspondence between the two of them, and John's in Philadelphia,
and she writes her and John Quincy Adams, he's a
young boy.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I believe he was like nine years old. He is
on the.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Hill watching the Battle of Bunker Hill with his mom,
about nine miles away. They can see it over the bay,
they can see the smoke. But she will write the
letter to John Adams about Bunker Hill, and she will say,
of all of the terrible things, the worst was the
death of doctor Warren, and how much we need him
in the halls of Congress, on the fields a battle,
(34:05):
to help heal the wounded. He is needed in so
many ways, and he's gone.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Well.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
It was a devastating loss for the Americans, but General
Gage had had a devastating loss.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
For the British.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
And when he's looking at that devastating loss, he's trying
to find something here, you know, besides, we just got
this hill after losing all of these men, and so
he rights back. When he learns that Joseph Warren died
on that hill, he rights back, saying, yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
We lost a lot of men.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, the Americans didn't lose as many, but they lost
doctor Warren. And his debt is worth five hundred men.
Why with somebody like doctor Joseph Warren at age thirty four,
having barely turned thirty four, four young children, a beautiful,
(34:58):
wonderful fiance that would have loved to have raised the kids,
loved to have been his companion in this struggle for independence?
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Why did he sacrifice so much?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
I mean, he gives his life when he doesn't even
know that we're going to be a country.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
He signs the.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Declaration of Independence with his blood, not with a pen,
a year before on the battlefields of Bunker Hill.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
So why does he do that?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
In modern history, we have an amazing speech by President
Reagan in nineteen eighty one in his first inaugural address,
and he goes on to quote doctor Joseph Warren's March
seventeen seventy five speech, saying these words in nineteen eighty one,
on the eve.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
Of our struggle for independence, a man who might have
been one of the greatest among the founding fathers, doctor
Joseph Warren, President of the Massachusetts Congress, said to his
fellow Americans, our country is in day, but not to
be despaired of. On you depend the fortunes of America.
(36:07):
You are to decide the important question which upon which
rests the happiness and the liberty of millions yet unborn,
act worthy of yourselves.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
And to end with one other quote from President Reagan, it.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
Is time I said to that we ask ourselves if
we still know the freedoms that were intended for us,
for the founding fathers, and if we will pass on
to these young people the freedoms we knew in our youth.
Because freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.
(36:48):
This is the recurrent challenge, the one from which we
cannot shrink.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
The memory of Joseph Warren does us that.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
And a terrific job on the editing, storytelling and production
by our own Greg Hengler. And what a terrific piece
of storytelling by author Jeffrey McKenna. And he's the author
of Saving Doctor Warren, a true Patriot Again, go to
Amazon or wherever you buy your books. It's an important
piece of American history. And remember the table was set
(37:25):
good part of the country was with a loyalist, A
good part of the country was with the patriots. A
good part of the country was hiding under the kitchen table,
hoping everything would pass. But it took men like Warren
to do the fighting, to step into the breach, and
he paid the ultimate price. And indeed he signed, of course,
the precursor to the Declaration of Independence. The Suffolk resolved
(37:47):
a year before Jefferson penned, and our founders signed well.
In the end, the death warrants for those men and
the freedom Document for this country. The story of doctor
Joseph Warn, a true patriot. Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Little has been known about one of the most important
figures in early American history, doctor Joseph Warren, an architect
of the colonial rebellion, yet after his death, his life
and legend fated. Here to tell the story is Jeffrey McKenna,
(00:33):
author of Saving Doctor Warren a True Patriot. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Doctor Joseph Warne was involved so early in the struggle
for our freedoms that at that point it was just
the fact that these colonists had come over a great
sacrifice to be here on the American continent, and that
they had come here specifically for freedoms, religious freedoms, and
so doctor Joseph Warren was adamant that those freedom could
(01:00):
not be encroached on, and that they needed to be respected,
and that he just needed to be treated like English citizens.
And that was the big issue, is that the crown
was not treating them equal to English citizens. And doctor
Warren was in the forefront of saying, that's not what
our forefathers came over here for. And they sacrificed a
(01:22):
lot to come over here and to build what we have,
and we cannot allow that to just be taken away.
And so that was why he was so adamant in
getting In the early early stages of the American Revolution,
there had been a major event that had taken place
(01:42):
in the United States that it would affected everybody, including
doctor Joseph for and he was a little young, so
he didn't actually engage in the fighting. But it was
the French and Indian War that took place, and the
Crown England invested a lot of money in protecting the
colonists during the French and Indian War, and so the
Crown wanted to receive moneys back and so they imposed
(02:06):
taxes that the Americans were not used to paying. And
the Stamp Act was maybe the first act that really
got everybody upset and excited because there was going to
be a tax on anything that required a certain stamp,
and that was all legal documents and any kind of paperwork.
And Joseph Warren was involved with many of these early Americans,
(02:27):
particularly in Boston. So you have doctor Joseph Warren getting
first associated with James Otis and Samuel Adams and John
Hancock that you hear throughout history, Joseph Warren gets involved
in saying, you know what, wait a second, why is
the Crown imposing these taxes on us when we don't
have any representation in England. We need to be treated
(02:51):
like English citizens. And that became kind of the first
time when doctor Joseph Warren starts to get involved in
paul Is during the Stamp Act and the protest that
Boston in particular was doing the city of Boston. And
then Sam Adams spotted his talent, that talent that he had.
He was chrismatic, he was young, the people liked him,
(03:14):
and he was very fiery, and he could speak with
a lot of passion, and so sam Adams recruits him
and begins to bring him into the inner circle there
in the late seventeen sixties. That's when you get doctor
Warren starting to take a place within that circle of
patriots there in Boston, where he's writing articles, and of
(03:36):
course most of the articles being published anonymously because they
were treason as so to speak, when you're speaking against
the crown and publishing him under the pseudonym a true patriot, which.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I thought was such a cool term.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
So doctor Warren is getting involved slowly into this circle
of patriots that are going to become the ones that
are signing the Declaration of Independence, that are leading the
Boston Tea Party, and he is going to become, in
many respects, the leader of that revolutionary movement.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
In Boston in the seventeen seventies.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
So you have the taxes that those across all thirteen
colonies are paying, but particularly in Boston, you had individuals
like Sam Adams, James Otis, John Hancock that were taking
it particularly hard and they weren't going to allow it
to happen without a protest. And that's why Boston becomes
(04:32):
the hotbed. And it's within this environment that doctor Joseph Warren,
this young physician in his twenties, is influenced by these
amazing patriots, these amazing men Sam Adams, James Otis, John Hancock,
and he becomes very involved. He becomes involved with the
different taxes that had been imposed. He becomes involved in
(04:52):
the fact that we have the British regulars, the soldiers
that are actually staying and living in homes. They're not
particularly happy be about being there, and so they're not
they're grumpy and they're not being very friendly to the
citizens of Boston, and the citizens in Boston aren't being
very friendly to them, especially after almost eighteen months of
having them in their streets to enforce these taxes, and
(05:15):
so it becomes very heated. I mean, we are at
a position now in Boston where anything could just explode,
and it does on March fifth, seventeen seventy. You have
nothing less but an explosion, and it gets called the
Boston massacre. Now five people died. I am not certain
(05:38):
that constitutes a massacre. But March fifth, seventeen seventy, the regulars,
the British soldiers have been in Boston for almost eighteen months.
There is an altercation that takes place between a British
soldier and an apprentice in the streets of Boston. And
in that altercation, the apprentice gets hit pretty good upside.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
The head leaves a pretty good well and pretty good
mark well.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
He talks to some of the dock workers and some
of the other people there in Boston and they've had it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
That's the spark right there.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
They get them at that point in front of those regulars.
And we should mention here too, with respect to the
Boston massacre, there's something that often gets left out. There's
that altercation that happens the day of but prior to that,
within two weeks, prior to that, you have the death
of a ten year old boy. That boy's name was
(06:31):
Christopher Sider. Christopher Sider will die because a loyalist will
fire a gun blindly out of his house at the
patriots that are trying to confront him. And we're gonna
call on patriots because you know they're the patriots, are
the Boston Patriots, but they were individuals that were rallying
against the king. And this particular man in Boston, and
(06:54):
his name now escapes me, but he was running from them.
He was hiding in his home and they are outside
his door and he fires, and Christopher Sider will die
because of that.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And you're listening to author Jeffrey McKenna more of doctor
Joseph Warren's story. When we return here on Our American Stories,
Lee Habibe here the host of our American Stories. Every
(07:35):
day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across
this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our
stories are free to listen to, but they're not free
to make. If you love what you hear, go to
Auramericanstories dot com and click the donate button. Give a little,
give a lot. Go to Alamericanstories dot com and give.
(08:09):
And we continue on our American Stories with our story
about founding father Doctor Joseph Warren. Our storyteller is Jeffrey McKenna,
author of Saving Doctor Warren, a True Patriot. We left
off with eleven year old liberty boy Christopher Sider, dying
at the hands of a Boston loyalist and local merchant
(08:30):
engaged in non importation agreements and trading in British goods.
Here again is Jeffrey McKenna.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Doctor Joseph Warren will be the physician that will take
out eleven pellets from his body as part of the
autopsy that has caused the folks in Boston to.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Just really be on edge.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Now you have the altercation with the apprentice. At that point,
those docs and those that consider themselves to be sons
of liberty, once they heard that that they were in
front of the English regulars. There is one particular Bostonian
by the name of Christmas Addicts who will not back
(09:14):
down He'll be in front of those regulars the entire time.
Christmas Addicts is an amazing individual because arguably his blood
is some.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Of the first blood that is spilled.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
And Christmas Addicts, who was a former enslaved African American,
and he is right in front of those regulars and
when the word fire.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
And to this day, you know it's argued whether it.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Was don't fire or fire, but the word is voiced,
the firing occurs, and Christmas Addicts in four other citizens
of Boston will lay dead in the streets of Boston.
And Sam Adams again, not to let a moment like
that disappear, he makes sure that every year on March fifth,
there's going to be a Boston massac her commemoration speech
(10:01):
and that's held at the Old South Meeting House every year.
Doctor Joseph Warren will speak in seventeen seventy two. Doctor
Warren will be the only one to speak twice in
seventeen seventy five. And that comes about because of the
extreme danger. I don't think you can emphasize that enough
(10:21):
to say extreme danger. If you think about March seventeen
seventy five April nineteenth, seventeen seventy five, we are gonna
have Lexington Concord monotomy, We're gonna have the beginning battles
of the American Revolution approximately one hundred days before then.
You're gonna have this commemoration speech. And the British had said, no,
(10:42):
you're not. We put up with it for four years,
we're not putting up with it anymore. And they were
adamant that the man that thinks that they're gonna get
up and give that speech and the old South Meeting House,
that man can plan on leaving the church with a
noose around his neck because we're done.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
And Warren said, I'll do.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
It, and they'll actually have him come up through the
back of the church through the third story window to
sneak in. But the story goes that one of the
lower officers was to come with an e and when
doctor Warren got to a point in the speech where
it was just really hitting the climax, he was to stand.
He was to throw the egg, and that was the
(11:22):
sign that he was to be apprehended, the speech was
to be over, and that everybody was.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
To clear out.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
That officer walking to the church with the egg tripped
and fell. The egg broke hurt, his leg never made it,
egg was never there. Speech was never stopped. At one
point another officer is like, why are we not stopping this?
He jumps up in the middle of the speech and
he starts to take musket balls, dropping him in his hand,
basically telling doctor Warren that's it, We're done. Doctor Joseph
(11:52):
Warren does not miss a beat in his speech. He's
wearing a full Roman toga giving this speech, and he
will walk down and he will just put a white
handkerchief of peace over the musket balls and then continue
his speech without ever missing a syllable.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
And the calmness and the way that.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
He did it, the British officers didn't apprehend him. And
he finished the speech in March of seventeen seventy five,
right before the battles that are gonna take place, that
are gonna be the shot heard round the world. After
the events of March fifth, seventeen seventy you have a
(12:36):
relative calm.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
But then again the British.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
The Parliament and the King are like, how can these
Americans get away with not paying, you know, more taxes?
And they decide this is how we're gonna do this.
We're gonna make it so easy on taxes. We had
that problem with the tax acts of the late seventeen
sixties that led to the Boston massacre of seventeen seventy.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
We're gonna be.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Real gentle here with these Americans. We've got this problem
in India. We have this huge surplus of tea. We're
gonna make it wonderful for the Americans. We're gonna be
able to provide this tea for them cheaper than they
could get anywhere else.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
We're going to impose just a small tax on the tea.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
It'll be very small, still much cheaper than they could
get the tea any other place. We are going to mandate, however,
that the tea has to be sold by our t commissioners,
those that we've selected, because we've got some people that
are doing a lot of good things in the colonies
and we want to make sure we reward them, because
that's just what you would do. And we're going to
(13:37):
impose that t act and have that be the way
that we'll be able to get some revenue from these colonies.
Because the English are just certain they won't have any
problems with this, because the tea will still be lower
priced than the other et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Well, the problem was, particularly for those in Boston.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Freedom, you were taking the liberties away again. You're imposing
a tax where we had no say with respect to
that tax. James Otis had been the one that had
coined no taxation without representation. And Warren was right there,
Doctor Joseph Warren was right there in those inner circles
as the young guy, he's in his twenties when all
(14:19):
of this is initially happening, and that became the impath
that will eventually lead to the Boston Tea Party, and
doctor Joseph Wren Paul Revere are intimately involved in that planning.
In fact, there was a little song that was penned
afterwards among the children and the folks there in Boston
(14:41):
and specifically mentioning two people by name, Joseph Warren and
Paul Revere, and they were there doing what needed to
be done, basically keeping the tea from coming into the
markets there in Boston, and they took matters into their
own hands, put it into the ocean, which of course
(15:02):
will eventually lead to just more hostilities. The Boston Tea
Party will lead to what the Americans are going to
call the intolerable acts. If you look at the Bill
of Rights, if you look at the first ten amendments
of the Constitution, you will see so many that are
stemming from the intolerable acts. Meaning what British said was
(15:22):
going to happen to Boston and Massachusetts the colony after
the Boston Tea Party. They basically did not allow them
to have meetings, They did not allow to have any
expression through the press. They made the soldiers have to
come in and live in their homes. They made it intolerable,
and they truly did thinking the British were thinking that
(15:43):
what the Parliament and the King were thinking that to
really scold the disobedient child that Massachusetts colonied, that the
other colonies would all take note and they would all
want to tow the line, and they would all want
to get in line them.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
It did just the opposite. It made the other twelve
calls and they say, are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
They really think they can do that to Massachusetts, They
can really do that to the harbors of Boston. They're
gonna close the harbors so no ships can come in
and out as part of these intolerable acts, and it
unified the thirteen colonies. That's when they have the first
Continental Congress, where they get together to say, if this
(16:23):
is what the King thinks he can do, we may
need to do something about this. And here's a part again,
Doctor Joseph Warren. He's back where the suffering is occurring.
He's back in Boston. He's in Sulfic County, that's the
county where Boston is located, and he pens. He organizes
the leaders to come together in Sulfic County and they
(16:46):
pen the Sulfic Resolves.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
And the Sulfic Resolves are classic.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Thomas Jefferson will use those as a foundation he and
John Adams when they are penning the Declaration of Independence
two years later.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
And you're listening to Jeffrey McKenna, author of Saving Doctor Warren,
a True Patriot and by the way, you can get
that at Amazon dot com or all of the usual
suspects wherever you buy your books. And what a story
you're hearing about a patriot you really never heard of.
And what we learn here is that after the stamp
back came the Boston Tea Party, in which, of course
(17:22):
Warren we just learned played a vital role along with
Paul Revere. And then well, then come the Intolerable Acts.
And when you read the Bill of Rights, there you'll
see from everything from the freedom of association to no
quartering of troops, his searches and seizures and so on.
So much of the Bill of Rights finds its birth
(17:44):
in what happened on the streets of Boston. When we
come back more of the story of doctor Joseph Warren
and our nation's birth. Here on our American stories, and
(18:08):
we continue with our American stories and the story of
doctor Joseph Warren. At the urging of King George II,
the British Parliament enacted five laws in seventeen seventy four.
The British referred to the legislation collectively as the Coercive
Acts or the Restraining Acts. The American colonists they called
those rules something different, the Intolerable Acts. In September of
(18:32):
seventeen seventy four, doctor Joseph Warren crafted a response to
the Coercive Acts by drafting a series of resolutions known
as the Suffolk Resolves. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams will
use these as a Foundation when they pen the Declaration
of Independence just two years later. Let's continue with our
story about founding father, doctor Joseph Warren, with our storyteller
(18:55):
Jeffrey McKenna, author of Saving Doctor Warren a True Patriot.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Joseph Warren will pen the Sulfic Resolves, send them by
Paul Revere, his trusted courier, to Philadelphia, and in the
Sulfic Resolves for the first time, it will say when
you have a leader, a king that imposes laws that
(19:21):
are intolerable and inappropriate in every way, you have the
right to take arms and oppose those laws. Fact was huge,
and in Philadelphia they passed the Sulfic Resolves saying US
(19:42):
thirteen colonies will follow that. And I always say this
whenever I talk about doctor Joseph Warren. His friends all
signed the Declaration of Independence. His roommate Elbridge Jerry will
sign it. John Hancock, he was super great friends with,
will sign with the biggest signature, John Adams, Sam Adams.
I will say doctor Warren signed the Declaration of Independence
(20:07):
the year before on the hill outside of Boston with
his blood. His friends all signed it with the pen
he signed it with his blood on Bunker Hill in.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Seventeen seventy five.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
The leading Patriots, Adams and Handcocked, they're out, They're not
in Boston, so you only have Warren. Warren is the
one that's the closest to the Sons of Liberty, those
that are on the docks and in the streets, and
the Sons of Liberty love them. Paul Revere is one
of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty, and Paul
Revere and Joseph Warren are the best of friends. Paul
Revere will actually name his son Joseph Warren Revere. Everybody
(20:47):
knows springtime is the time if the British are going
to do something, they're going to do it. They've got
enough spies, they've got enough going on that they're getting
this information. And yet doctor Joseph Warn is going to
make that call on April eighteenth. He's going to call
first William Dawes to his house, and he's gonna send
William Dawes out of Boston over the land so that
he could warn the militias that the British would be
(21:10):
marching to particularly warn Sam Adams and John Hancock in
Lexington that the British would be marching to try to
get to Concord to protect the arms that we had
in Concord. And so he sent William Dawes one way,
and he sends Paul Revere across the waterways and he
brings Paul Revere to his house.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
He gives them the instructions.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Paul Revere stops at the Old North Church to you know,
have the iconic lights. Doctor Warren informs him they're going
to be going out by water, and Paul tells them
have the two lanterns so they know across the bay
that they're coming by water, and then, you know, let's
get people notified. So there's been so much speculation. How
was Joseph Warren so sure of that decision? And nobody
(21:55):
knows for sure.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
We do know something though.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Margaret general gage is wife, was from New Jersey. She
was an American, and we have correspondence from her to
her husband basically saying, you know, be mindful of my people,
referring to Americans as her people. We also know Margaret
Gage continued to use doctor Warren as her personal physician.
(22:23):
Now that wouldn't seem that unusual, except things were hot
in Boston. Doctor Warren was clearly a patriot in every
sense of the word. And if you were a loyalist,
you just had to stop using him as your doctor.
I mean, all of his loyalist patients had stopped using him,
(22:44):
but not Margaret Gage.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
He had information.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Now how he got that information and how he was
so sure about that information remains a secret. One thing
we know that Margaret Gage was very loyal to her
people Americans too. She continue to use doctor Warren as
her physician during this time when all of his other
loyalist patients had stopped using him. And three after the
(23:09):
events of April nineteenth with Lexington Concord of Monotomy, General
Gage sends her to England to not be there anymore
because at some point somewhere, I think he knows that
critical element of surprise was lost on April eighteenth to nineteenth.
When they show up in Lexington Green and they see
those men there, that is devastating. They get to concord,
(23:33):
it's even worse because then you've got an organized group.
They actually turn back these just farmers and fathers turn
back the greatest military establishment in the world on the
planet at the Old North Bridge.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
They make them retreat, and once they start retreating.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
We are just on the road picking them off, hiding
in trees, dodging them, and they are just infuriated. Now
I'm telling a little bit of this story of April
nineteenth to get to something that I find fascinating.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Doctor Joseph Warren. He's been largely forgotten.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
The biggest battle of April nineteenth has been largely forgotten.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
The battle where he fought, the Battle.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Of Monotymy, was bigger than Lexington and Concord combined. Part
of our problem is that Monotomy gets forgotten because it
had a really weird name, and they changed it twice.
They at one point call it West Cambridge. Another point
now they're calling it Arlington. But Monotymy was where Joseph
(24:41):
Warren was, and he was in the thick of the battle,
and at one point a musketball raises his wig and
takes his hairpin out of his wig. He's so intense
and so involved in the fighting. On that first day
of fighting of the American Revolution. They get back to Boston.
(25:03):
They have really taken a bad it's been a bad,
bad day and they're in Boston and now you have
these militias that are just coming and coming and coming
from all of the different colonies. But the million dollar
question is who's governing them. These aren't trained soldiers. You
are going to end up with fifteen thousand militia men
(25:27):
outside of Boston. Now that number may not seem that significant,
but when you realize there were only fifteen thousand residents
in Boston at its height, before all of the turmoil,
it's as many people as ever lived in Boston are
now living in camps outside of Boston, and you have
to feed them, you have to control them so that
(25:49):
they don't cause disturbances and ruckus outside. You have a
terribly difficult task, and you've got to keep the Red
coats in. You're constantly monitoring what the British regulars might
be doing.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Who's doing all of that, Sam.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Adams and John Hancock A in the Continental Congress, it's
Joseph Warren. Joseph Warren was voted the president of the
Provincial Congress. He was the chairman of the Committee of Safety,
he was the chairman of the Committee of Correspondence. He's
the one sending letters saying bring him here. Once they
get here, he's the one in charge of managing them
because he's the chairman of the Committee of Safety, which
(26:26):
was actually the civilian military leader.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
And then he's.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Also the president of the provincial Congress, so he's the
one that's actually handling the civic duties of the regular
individuals that are saying, we don't want to be under
the control of the Boston governor anymore. So this is
an amazing period from April nineteenth until what is going
to become the largest battle in the American Revolution. Many
(26:51):
people don't recognize that Bunker Hill will have more casualties
than any of the other battles in the American Revolution,
and doctor Joseph Warren is the one coordinating that.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And you're listening to a heck of a story about
a true patriot and a name not known and not
heard often when talking about the American Revolution, and that's
doctor Joseph Warren. And what leadership we're hearing about, and
what courage that Paul Revere would name his son Joseph
Warren Revere. When we come back more of the story
(27:22):
of doctor Joseph Warren here on our American Stories, and
we returned to our American Stories and to Jeffrey McKenna,
author of Saving Doctor Warren a true patriot. We last
(27:45):
left off at Bunker Hill, the battle that will receive
the most casualties during the entire American Revolutionary War, and
founding father, doctor Joseph Warren, is the one coordinating that
battle for the American Patriot. Here again is Jeffrey McKennon.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
We have farmers and fathers that have gathered, and these
are great, great men and great wives.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
To send their men, and great families to send their brothers.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
But these guys are here.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
As volunteers and they're there to do something, and they
haven't really done anything. They show up a little in
April and maybe the beginning of May, and they're hanging around,
and they're hanging around, and now we're getting into June
and they're still really nothing happening, and they're saying to themselves,
if I don't get back to my farm, and if
(28:36):
I don't get to plant some crops, my family's not
going to be eating. And doctor Warren is seeing all
of that, and he and the Committee of Safety are saying,
we've got to do something. And the Committee of Safety,
with Joseph Warren in charge, make the decision we've got
to build a fort close enough to Boston that we
(28:58):
could shoot cannons into Boston. We've got to make it
so close that the British will engage us. Wow, that's
a big You've got a bunch of farmers and fathers.
These aren't army engineers, and they're gonna build a fort
in one night on a hill so close to Boston
that it's gonna make the British come out and confront them.
(29:19):
This is to say it's both is such an understatement.
I mean, just the courage that these guys all had
to have. The British go to bed one night. They
go to bed on June sixteenth with no fort outside
of Boston. They wake up in the morning of June
seventeenth and there's a fort and they're like, what is
(29:39):
going on? And the Committee of Safety is meeting and
Joseph Warren says, I'm gonna be there tomorrow. And they
have an uproar in the committee. They say, you've got Prescott,
You've got Israel, Putnam, you've got great colonels.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
That are there.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Generals, don't go there. You're gonna be a commission general.
They just commissioned in Philadelphia. He said, the men are
gonna need to know that we believe in this enough
to be there. They take his roommate, Elbridg's Jerry, who
becomes famous for Jerry Mandarin and Elbridg Jerry will eventually
be a vice president, but elbrid Jerry will sign the
(30:17):
Declaration of Independence. And he was Joseph Warren's roommate at Harvard,
so he was super close. And the Committee of Safety says,
you guard his room tonight. You make sure in the
morning he does not go to that hill outside of Boston,
and so Elbridg Jerry literally is there with Joseph Warren.
Joseph Warren sleeps and sleeps and sleeps, and Elbert Jerry
(30:39):
thinks he's good, he's done. He kind of goes to
take a break. Warren wakes up, puts on his fanciest clothes.
They didn't have uniforms, so he puts on his fanciest
silk shirt pants. He's gonna look the part of, you know,
a distinguished leader. He grabs the gun and grabs the
sword and he marches to brethe Till. They end up
(31:00):
building the fort on Braids Hill, supposed to have been
Bunker Hill. Reidtill was a little bit closer, that's it,
but it gets the name Bunker Hill. But they build
the fort there in one night, and so the British.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Just pour boat after boat after boat.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
They send them from Boston over that to the day
to Charles Town and they're getting off and they're getting
off and they're getting off, and here you have these
Americans watching garrison after garrison coming and they're thinking.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Whose idea was this.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
All of a sudden, Joseph Warren appears on the hill
and basically announces to everybody on the hill, I'm here
and I'm here.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
To fight with you.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
And Prescott's ready to give command. He's a colonel, he
knows that Joseph Warren is going to be a general.
He's surprised that Joseph Warren is there, and he says,
command is yours. And Joseph Warren makes a speech loud
enough for everybody to hear. No, I have not received
my commission yet. I have come to fight with the
greatest men on this continent, and I will fight shoulder
to shoulder with them in this are cause of freedom
(32:06):
and liberty. And that makes Bunker Hill. Because the British
march and march and march up that hill, and you've
got the iconic statement, that greatest military phrase, right, don't
fire till you see the lights of their eyes, because
we had limited ammunition. If every bullet we shot hit
one of those red coats, but you know that we're
(32:28):
pouring off of the boat, we still wouldn't have enough bullets,
you know, I mean, we knew we were in trouble
with respect to our ammunition.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
And then the word.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Fire and we just boom blast them and they retreat again.
The greatest military force on the planet retreats, and they
do it again a second time. Now they're having to
call over their buddies that are on the ground in
their red coats, and they get right up to the
floor on the second way, and again we fire, and
(32:59):
they retreat a second time.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
And on the third time, we knew that we just
didn't have ammunition.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
There literally are accounts of rocks that were pulled out
of the British soldiers because we fired rocks. And so
doctor Warren was involved to the end in an organized
retreat and as he's doing that, an officer leveled his
firearmed and fired, and that takes the life of doctor
Joseph worn Joseph for Worn's death was tragic. Abigail Adams
(33:29):
when she reports to her beloved husband John, we've got
amazing correspondence between the two of them, and John's in Philadelphia,
and she writes her and John Quincy Adams, he's a
young boy.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I believe he was like nine years old. He is
on the.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Hill watching the Battle of Bunker Hill with his mom,
about nine miles away. They can see it over the bay,
they can see the smoke. But she will write the
letter to John Adams about Bunker Hill, and she will say,
of all of the terrible things, the worst was the
death of doctor Warren, and how much we need him
in the halls of Congress, on the fields a battle,
(34:05):
to help heal the wounded. He is needed in so
many ways, and he's gone.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Well.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
It was a devastating loss for the Americans, but General
Gage had had a devastating loss.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
For the British.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
And when he's looking at that devastating loss, he's trying
to find something here, you know, besides, we just got
this hill after losing all of these men, and so
he rights back. When he learns that Joseph Warren died
on that hill, he rights back, saying, yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
We lost a lot of men.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, the Americans didn't lose as many, but they lost
doctor Warren. And his debt is worth five hundred men.
Why with somebody like doctor Joseph Warren at age thirty four,
having barely turned thirty four, four young children, a beautiful,
(34:58):
wonderful fiance that would have loved to have raised the kids,
loved to have been his companion in this struggle for independence?
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Why did he sacrifice so much?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
I mean, he gives his life when he doesn't even
know that we're going to be a country.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
He signs the.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Declaration of Independence with his blood, not with a pen,
a year before on the battlefields of Bunker Hill.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
So why does he do that?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
In modern history, we have an amazing speech by President
Reagan in nineteen eighty one in his first inaugural address,
and he goes on to quote doctor Joseph Warren's March
seventeen seventy five speech, saying these words in nineteen eighty one,
on the eve.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
Of our struggle for independence, a man who might have
been one of the greatest among the founding fathers, doctor
Joseph Warren, President of the Massachusetts Congress, said to his
fellow Americans, our country is in day, but not to
be despaired of. On you depend the fortunes of America.
(36:07):
You are to decide the important question which upon which
rests the happiness and the liberty of millions yet unborn,
act worthy of yourselves.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
And to end with one other quote from President Reagan, it.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
Is time I said to that we ask ourselves if
we still know the freedoms that were intended for us,
for the founding fathers, and if we will pass on
to these young people the freedoms we knew in our youth.
Because freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.
(36:48):
This is the recurrent challenge, the one from which we
cannot shrink.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
The memory of Joseph Warren does us that.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
And a terrific job on the editing, storytelling and production
by our own Greg Hengler. And what a terrific piece
of storytelling by author Jeffrey McKenna. And he's the author
of Saving Doctor Warren, a true Patriot Again, go to
Amazon or wherever you buy your books. It's an important
piece of American history. And remember the table was set
(37:25):
good part of the country was with a loyalist, A
good part of the country was with the patriots. A
good part of the country was hiding under the kitchen table,
hoping everything would pass. But it took men like Warren
to do the fighting, to step into the breach, and
he paid the ultimate price. And indeed he signed, of course,
the precursor to the Declaration of Independence. The Suffolk resolved
(37:47):
a year before Jefferson penned, and our founders signed well.
In the end, the death warrants for those men and
the freedom Document for this country. The story of doctor
Joseph Warn, a true patriot. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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