The Founding Father (You Don’t Know) Who Wrote His Name on the Declaration of Independence With His Blood

00:00:10
Speaker 1: 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, Dr. 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, author of Saving Dr. Warren, A True Patriot. Let’s take a listen.

00:00:38
Speaker 2: Dr. Joseph Warren 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 at great sacrifice to be here on the American continent, and that they had come here specifically for freedoms, religious freedoms. And so Dr. Joseph Warren was adamant that those freedoms could not be encroached upon, and that they needed to be respected, and that they just needed to be treated like English citizens. And that was the big issue: that the Crown was not treating them equal to English citizens. And Dr. Warren was in the forefront of saying, “That’s not what our forefathers came over here for.” And they sacrificed a 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 in the United States that it would affected everybody, including Dr. Joseph Warren, 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 monies back, and so they imposed 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, particularly in Boston. So you have Dr. 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 like English citizens.” And that became kind of the first time when Dr. Joseph Warren starts to get involved in politics 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 charismatic, he was young, the people liked him, 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 1760s. That’s when you get Dr. Warren starting to take a place within that circle of patriots there in Boston, where he’s writing articles, and of course most of the articles being published anonymously because they were treasonous, so to speak, when you’re speaking against the Crown and publishing them under the pseudonym “A True Patriot,” which,

00:03:47
Speaker 3: I thought was such a cool term.

00:03:49
Speaker 2: So Dr. 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

00:04:08
Speaker 3: in Boston in the 1770s.

00:04:12
Speaker 2: So you have the taxes that those across all 13 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 the hotbed. And it’s within this environment that Dr. Joseph Warren, this young physician in his 20s, 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 the fact that we have the British regulars, the soldiers that are actually staying and living in homes. They’re not particularly happy 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 18 months of having them in their streets to enforce these taxes. And 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 5, 1770. You have nothing less but an explosion, and it gets called the Boston Massacre. Now, five people died. I am not certain that constitutes a massacre. But March 5, 1770, the regulars, the British soldiers, have been in Boston for almost 18 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

00:06:00
Speaker 3: the head, leaves a pretty good welt and pretty good mark, well.

00:06:02
Speaker 2: He talks to some of the dock workers and some of the other people there in Boston, and they’ve had it.

00:06:08
Speaker 3: That’s the spark right there.

00:06:10
Speaker 2: 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 10-year-old boy. That boy’s name was Christopher Seider. Christopher Seider 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 going to call on patriots because, you know, they’re the patriots—they’re the Boston Patriots—but they were individuals that were rallying against the King. And this particular man in Boston—and 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 Seider will die because of that.

00:07:14
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to author Jeffrey McKenna. More of Dr. Joseph Warren’s story when we return here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every 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 OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we continue on Our American Stories with our story about Founding Father Dr. Joseph Warren. Our storyteller is Jeffrey McKenna, author of Saving Dr. Warren, A True Patriot. We left off with 11-year-old “Liberty Boy” Christopher Seider, dying at the hands of a Boston loyalist and local merchant engaged in non-importation agreements and trading in British goods. Here again is Jeffrey McKenna.

00:08:39
Speaker 2: Dr. Joseph Warren will be the physician that will take out 11 pellets from his body as part of the autopsy, that has caused the folks in Boston to

00:08:51
Speaker 3: just really be on edge.

00:08:53
Speaker 2: 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 they were in front of the English regulars. There is one particular Bostonian by the name of Crispus Attucks who will not back down. He’ll be in front of those regulars the entire time. Crispus Attucks is an amazing individual because arguably his blood is some

00:09:23
Speaker 3: of the first blood that is spilled.

00:09:25
Speaker 2: And Crispus Attucks, who was a former enslaved African American, and he is right in front of those regulars. And when the word “Fire!”

00:09:36
Speaker 3: And to this day, you know, it’s argued whether it

00:09:38
Speaker 2: was “don’t fire” or “fire,” but the word is voiced, the firing occurs, and Crispus Attucks and four other citizens of Boston will lie 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 5, there’s going to be a Boston Massacre commemoration speech, and that’s held at the Old South Meeting House every year. Dr. Joseph Warren will speak in 1772. Dr. Warren will be the only one to speak twice in 1775. And that comes about because of the extreme danger. I don’t think you can emphasize that enough, to say, “extreme danger.” If you think about March 1775, April 19, 1775, we are going to have Lexington and Concord—and Menotomy. We’re going to have the beginning battles of the American Revolution approximately 100 days before then. You’re going to have this commemoration speech. And the British had said, “No, 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 going to get up and give that speech in the Old South Meeting House, that man can plan on leaving the church with a noose around his neck because “we’re done.”

00:10:59
Speaker 3: And Warren said, “I’ll do.”

00:11:01
Speaker 2: 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 egg, and when Dr. 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 sign that he was to be apprehended, the speech was to be over, and that everybody was…

00:11:27
Speaker 3: to clear out.

00:11:28
Speaker 2: 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 them in his hand, basically telling Dr. Warren, “That’s it, we’re done.”

00:12:10
Speaker 3: And the calmness, and the way that

00:12:12
Speaker 2: he did it, the British officers didn’t apprehend him. And he finished the speech in March of 1775, right before the battles that are going to take place, that are going to be the “shot heard ’round the world.” After the events of March 5, 1770, you have a relative calm.

00:12:38
Speaker 3: But then again, the British…

00:12:40
Speaker 2: 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 going to do this. We’re going to make it so easy on taxes. We had that problem with the tax acts of the late 1760s that led to the Boston Massacre of 1770.”

00:12:58
Speaker 3: We’re going to be…

00:12:59
Speaker 2: real gentle here with these Americans. We’ve got this problem in India. We have this huge surplus of tea. We’re going to make it wonderful for the Americans. We’re going to be able to provide this tea for them cheaper than they could get anywhere else.

00:13:14
Speaker 3: We’re going to impose just a small tax on the tea.

00:13:17
Speaker 2: 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 tea 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 impose that Tea 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.

00:13:53
Speaker 3: Well, the problem was, particularly for those in Boston…

00:13:58
Speaker 2: 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; Dr. Joseph Warren was right there in those inner circles as the young guy—he’s in his 20s when all of this is initially happening—and that became the impetus that will eventually lead to the Boston Tea Party, and Dr. Joseph Warren and 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, 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, 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 10 amendments of the Constitution, you will see so many that are stemming from the Intolerable Acts. Meaning what the British said was 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 what the Parliament and the King were thinking, that to really scold the disobedient child, Massachusetts, the colony, that the other colonies would all take note and they would all want to toe the line, and they would all want to get in line.

00:15:57
Speaker 3: It did just the opposite. It made the other 12 colonies say, “Are you kidding?”

00:16:02
Speaker 2: They really think they can do that to Massachusetts? They can really do that to the harbors of Boston. They’re going to close the harbors so no ships can come in and out as part of these Intolerable Acts, and it unified the 13 colonies. That’s when they have the First Continental Congress, where they get together to say, “If this is what the King thinks he can do, we may need to do something about this.” And here’s a part again: Dr. Joseph Warren. He’s back where the suffering is occurring. He’s back in Boston. He’s in Suffolk County—that’s the county where Boston is located—and he pens. He organizes the leaders to come together in Suffolk County, and they pen the Suffolk Resolves.

00:16:48
Speaker 3: And the Suffolk Resolves are classic.

00:16:52
Speaker 2: Thomas Jefferson will use those as a foundation, he and John Adams, when they are penning the Declaration of Independence two years later.

00:17:00
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Jeffrey McKenna, author of Saving Dr. Warren, A True Patriot. And by the way, you can get that at Amazon.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 Act came the Boston Tea Party, in which, of course, 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, to searches and seizures, and so on. So much of the Bill of Rights finds its birth in what happened on the streets of Boston. When we come back, more of the story of Dr. Joseph Warren and our nation’s birth. Here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of Dr. Joseph Warren. At the urging of King George II, the British Parliament enacted five laws in 1774. 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 1774, Dr. 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 Dr. Joseph Warren, with our storyteller Jeffrey McKenna, author of Saving Dr. Warren, A True Patriot.

00:19:00
Speaker 2: Joseph Warren will pen the Suffolk Resolves, send them by Paul Revere, his trusted courier, to Philadelphia. And in the Suffolk Resolves, for the first time, it will say, “When you have a leader—a King—that imposes laws that 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 Suffolk