Within the city of Boston lies one of our nation’s oldest and most sacred repositories of American history—the Old Granary Burial Ground.
For centuries, it has honored the revolutionary actions that gave birth to our nation, and the heroes responsible who fought them. People like Dr. Joseph Warren, one of our nation’s earliest revolutionaries, least-known rebel activist, and America’s first martyr for freedom.
On June 11, 1741, Joseph Warren was born, into a successful farming family in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
In adulthood, Warren rose above his family’s station to become a well-known and highly respected physician ….. then fate intervened.
By his mid-twenties, Warren’s growing family and bustling medical practice enhanced his reputation as a caring and talented, charismatic leader within the community.
But following the Seven Year’s war as Britain faced financial catastrophe, King George the III altered the course of world history when he authorized the Stamp and Townsend Acts … stoking colonists’ fear over additional burdensome taxes and unjust control by the British government
The Stamp and Townshend Acts evoked outrage throughout the colonies and birthed the now famous rebellious phrase, “No taxation without representation!”
Determined to fight the yoke of parliamentarian oppression,
Dr. Warren penned a series of vitriolic articles under the pseudonym “A True Patriot”.
The articles so angered the royal governor, that he attempted to charge Warren and his publishers with libel, but the courts dismissed the charges.
Doctor Warren’s anger continued to fester along with his revolutionary compatriot, Samuel Adams.
The cauldron of brewing tensions in Boston spilled over on the faithful night of March 5th 1770, when a group of angered colonists clashed with British soldiers in an event recorded as “The Boston Massacre”.
The seeds of the American Revolution were taking root, and Dr. Warren would become one of its most active and dangerous revolutionary insurgents.
As was one of the leading figures who helped to plan and orchestrate the Boston Tea Party, Warren’s growing reputation as a radical made him a main target of the Crown.
In 1775, fearing all-out rebellion, General Thomas Gage dispatched 700 British regulars to Lexington and Concord, hoping to catch the colonists by surprise and seize their stores of weapons and munitions.
Unbeknownst to General Gage, Dr. Warren—who stood at the helm of an intricate patriot spy network—had learned of this plan in advance and dispatched several midnight riders to alarm the countryside that the regulars were on the march.
Two of those nightriders, Paul Revere and William Dawes rode their mission into the chronicle’s pages of American history.
Revere had put a signal in place as to how the Regulars would travel. Illuminated lanterns were to be hung in the top window of Old North Church’s belltower—the tallest building in Boston—to alert patriots across the Charles River, "one if by land, two if by sea".
In the dark, frigid morning of April 19th, British Regulars marched towards Lexington and Concord confident they would successfully complete their mission with no resistance from the provincial militias.
Instead, the British troops encountered determined minutemen from hamlets across Massachusetts who refused to give up anything … including the ground upon which they stood.
When learning of the conflict in Lexington that killed 8 patriots, Warren, not content to sit behind a desk, immediately left his home and headed to the battlefield, determined to help fight in the rebellion … that had grown into a revolution!
He would never see his home, or family again.
Dr. Warren was almost killed that day when a British musket ball grazed his head…the “aura of invincibility” began to envelop the growing legend surrounding “The Ghost Soldier”.
History never recorded who fired the first shot that fateful morning, but what we do know is that the shot was “heard around the world.”
The mighty British Empire had been beaten that day by what they considered a rag tag bunch of cowardly militia. The Revolutionary War had begun, and Dr. Warren was leading the charge!
As the British returned from Concord to their Boston headquarters, Doctor Warren’s organized and well-trained Minutemen regularly attacked the British rear guard, inflicting heavy casualties.
Dr. Warren’s radical resistance inspired his compatriots. His effective arsenal of pen, sword, and scalpel led to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress commissioning him a Major General.
With British troops occupying Boston, Warren wrote to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia pleading them to appoint a general to lead a national army. Congress answered the call and weeks later George Washington was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the new Continental Army
In June of that same year, in hopes of ousting the British troops stationed there, American militia laid siege to the town of Boston.
When the Massachusetts Provincial Congress learned that the British were planning to fortify the high ground at Dorchester Heights, 1200 colonial forces led by Colonel William Prescott, occupied Breed’s Hill (which history has mistakenly called “Bunker Hill”) and began building fortifications throughout the night to thwart the Crown’s anticipated attack.
Hearing of the pending conflict, Doctor Warren immediately made his way to the battlefield. Upon his arrival, the Commanding officers ---General Israel Putnam, and Colonel Prescott asked newly commissioned “Major General Warren” to assume full command of the battle.
Warren, declined stating he came only as a volunteer to share in the fate of his patriot brothers and asked to be placed wherever the fighting would be most dangerous.
At morning’s first light, British regulars discovered that the provincial forces had fortified Breed’s Hill—effectively blocking their advance to their objective, the high ground at Dorchester Heights.
Still reeling over the humiliating defeat at Lexington and Concord, General Gage, believing the militia forces were no match for the Crown’s troops, began mounting his attack expecting to easily rout the Provincial Army. He was wrong!
Gage and his officers had grossly underestimated the effect “The Ghost Soldier’s” presence at Breed’s (Bunker) Hill would have on the Provincial Army.
Gage’s soldiers were decimated on the first assault up Breed’s Hill. Warren had instructed his men to target the British officers, inflicting severe casualties within the British ranks. On the second assault charge, Warren and his patriot brothers once again repelled the advancing forces, devastating their lines.
Crown soldiers were ordered to make a bayonet charge for the third assault and with all their might and rage mounted Breed’s Hill.
With their commanding officers dropping around them, suddenly the rapid succession of patriot musket fired sputtered to a halt …. the patriots had run out of ammunition allowing the British troops to penetrate the fortified lines and overrun the provincials.
Encouraging his men to hold the line, the battle descended into a blood rage. Warren quickly realized that if they did not retreat, they would all be slaughtered.
At that moment Warren, the doctor, father of four, son of liberty, patriot insurgent and major general, ordered his men to retreat as he stood--sword in hand fighting to cover his brothers, knowing that every minute he could delay his attackers, enhanced the chances of his men’s survival.
In the last seconds of battle, Warren was shot through the face and died instantly.
Webster defines a “martyr” as someone willing to sacrifice their life, for something in which they believe.
“The Ghost Soldier of Bunker Hill” paid the ultimate price defending the ideals of freedom and liberty in the first pitched battle of the American Revolution, which produced more casualties than any other battle throughout the entire Revolutionary War.
As a leader of men, Warren saved the lives of his fellow soldiers in a display of legendary self-sacrifice and courage making Dr. Joseph Warren truly one of America’s first ‘Martyrs of Freedom.”
His exploits at what came to be known as, “The Battle of Bunker Hill”, has helped to obscure his contributions to the cause of American independence overshadowing a decade of resistance activities.
Because of his courage and exploits, the British came to consider Warren one of the Colony’s most dangerous and radical revolutionaries.
Upon learning of his death, British General William Howe declared that Warren's death was worth 500 of his bravest troops, while another British Royal official claimed that had Warren lived, the name George Washington would have been an obscurity.
Afraid his “heroic courage would live on beyond his death by inspiring those who would follow him”, British soldiers mutilated his corpse, stripped it of its clothing, bayoneted it until unrecognizable, and then shoved him into a shallow ditch.
Nine months after his death, his body one of the most migratory of all the founders, was exhumed by his brothers who identified Warren's remains by artificial tooth that had been wired in his mouth.
After a Masonic funeral, his body was placed in the Old Granary Burying Ground where it remained for 50 years, until re-buried in an underground vault in Saint Paul's Church, before moving it to his final resting place in 1856 at his family's tomb in Forest Hill Cemetery.
“The Ghost Soldier of Bunker Hill’s” example of self-sacrifice, and passionate convictions proved instrumental in having “David” once again challenge “Goliath” on the battlefield!
For more than a decade, Warren’s vehement resistance activities against oppressive beautiful British policies, ultimately drove 13 colonies to declare American Independence … without him there would most likely have been no United States of America.
A statue of Dr. Joseph Warren marks the consecrated ground his spirit still defends.