Lost to Time

by Martin W. Sandler

  In April 1770, Parliament, in response to the furor caused by the Boston Massacre, repealed the Townshend Acts except for the tax it had imposed on the importation of tea. Warren, along with Samuel Adams, immediately saw in the retention of the tea tax another opportunity to let the British government know that any taxes would be vehemently opposed. But they also knew they had a problem. In order to aid one of England’s largest businesses, the East India Company, Parliament had eliminated the duties that British tea merchants had previously had to pay on the tea they shipped to America. For the colonists, the tea imported from England, the finest in the world, was now far less expensive than tea imported from other nations, even with the tax. And the colonists, like their British counterparts, loved their tea. The question with which Warren, Samuel Adams, and the other radical leaders were faced was simple. How many Americans were willing to put their outrage at the British taxation policies aside in order to buy superior tea at cheaper prices? Fearing that the answer was “a great many,” Warren and Adams came to the conclusion that the solution was to prevent the tea from landing. Otherwise, there would be buyers aplenty.

  In late November 1773, the North End Caucus, a Boston political club, took the initial steps in preventing the landing of the tea. A committee, headed by Warren, confronted the American tea consignees and demanded that they pledge not to land or pay duties on the tea. The agents refused. A series of confrontations with the agents who steadfastly refused to budge followed.

  In one of these confrontations, Warren, along with fellow Patriot William Molineux, led a group of followers to the warehouse where the tea consignees’ offices were located. Finding the door locked, Warren ordered that it be broken down. But even after he and his fellow Patriots entered and threatened the consignees with bodily harm, they remained steadfast. The tea, they insisted, would be unloaded.

  On November 28, 1773, the first of the tea ships, the Dartmouth, arrived. It did not take long for the vessel’s captain to realize that he had sailed into a hornet’s nest. Unwilling to become involved in the dispute, he made it known that he intended to take his ship back to England with the tea still aboard. Governor Hutchinson responded by ordering a blockade of Boston Harbor to prevent the Dartmouth from sailing.

  On December 16, eight thousand Bostonians gathered at the Old South Church, where they were informed of Hutchinson’s determination to have the tea brought ashore. At an appointed moment, Samuel Adams stood up and exclaimed, “Gentlemen, this meeting can do nothing more to save the country.” It was a signal. That evening a mob, thinly disguised as Indians, rowed over to the three ships that had now arrived, broke open more than 340 boxes of tea, and dumped it into the harbor. Informed of what had taken place, John Adams, who was out of town, declared,

  Last night three cargoes of Bohea Tea were emptied into the sea. This morning a man-of-war sails. This is the most magnificent moment of all. There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity, in this last effort of the Patriots that I greatly admire. . . . This destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important consequences, and, so lasting, that I can’t but consider it as an epoch of history.

  It is not known whether Warren was among the tea-dumping “Indians.” But given the events that were to quickly follow, it would be surprising if he were not. John Adams had been correct in his assessment of what became known as the Boston Tea Party. There would indeed be “important consequences,” particularly for Warren. From that moment on, he became nothing less than the most important figure in the movement toward full-scale revolution.

  THIS ILLUSTRATION OF “Americans throwing the Cargoes of the Tea Ships into the River, at Boston” is from The History of North America by W. D. Rev. Mr. Cooper, published in London in 1789.

  THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S REACTION to the “tea party” was predictably severe. It came in the form of a series of measures variously called the Intolerable Acts, the Punitive Acts, or the Coercive Acts by the colonists. Included was a measure that abolished all elections for councilors, judges, and other colonial officers in Massachusetts, making all those positions subject to the appointment of the king and his ministers. At the heart of the acts, however, was another measure that was, by far, the most punitive of all. Called the Boston Port Act, it closed the port of Boston to all ships, no matter their business, until restitution was made for the tea that had been dumped into the harbor.

  For many colonists, including many who had fervently hoped for a reconciliation with the mother county, it was the final straw. As historian D. W. Meinig wrote, “The British people of the Atlantic had become two peoples, separated by more than an ocean.” In the fall of 1774, delegates chosen from the various colonies met in Philadelphia “to concert a general and uniform place for the defense and preservation of our common rights.”

  The delegates to the Continental Congress were leaders from twelve of the thirteen colonies, including cousins John and Samuel Adams from Massachusetts, John Jay from New York, John Dickinson from Pennsylvania, and Richard Henry Lee, Peyton Randolph, Patrick Henry, and George Washington from Virginia. Warren was not a delegate. He had even more important work to do, for what he was about to accomplish would have the most profound effect on what the Continental Congress would achieve and on the future of the American colonies.

  On September 6, 1774, delegates from every town and district in Massachusetts’s Suffolk County gathered in the town of Milton, where Warren read them a set of resolutions he had written. Thereafter known as the Suffolk Resolves, the document that the delegates adopted called for nothing less than preparation for war with the mother country and the establishment of a government outside the royal system. One cannot read Warren’s preamble to his Resolves without seeing the roots of the Declaration of Independence, which was still some two years away:

  Whereas the power but not the justice, the vengeance but not the wisdom of Great Britain . . . now pursues us, their guiltless children, with unrelenting severity. . . . On the fortitude, on the wisdom and on the exertions of this important day, is suspended the fate of this new world, and of unborn millions. If a boundless extent of continent, swarming with millions, will tamely submit to live, move and have their being at the arbitrary will of a licentious minister, they basely yield to voluntary slavery, and future generations shall load their memories with incessant execrations. On the other hand, if we arrest the hand which would ransack our pockets, if we disarm the parricide which points the dagger to our bosoms, if we nobly defeat that fatal edict which proclaims a power to frame laws for us in all cases whatsoever, thereby entailing the endless and numberless curses of slavery upon us, our heirs and their heirs forever; if we successfully resist that unparalleled usurpation of unconstitutional power, whereby our capital is robbed of the means of life; whereby the streets of Boston are thronged with military executioners; whereby our coasts are lined and harbours crowded with ships of war; whereby the charter of the colony, that sacred barrier against the encroachments of tyranny, is mutilated and, in effect, annihilated; . . . whereby the unalienable and inestimable inheritance, which we derived from nature, the constitution of Britain, and the privileges warranted to us in the charter of the province, is totally wrecked, annulled, and vacated. . . .

  Warren’s Resolves then called for the citizens of Massachusetts to ignore the Intolerable Acts, boycott British imports, curtail exports, refuse to use British products, support a colonial Massachusetts government free of British authority, and raise a militia of their own. It was nothing less than a call to prepare for war and to establish a government outside the royal system. Most important, it became the blueprint for the First Continental Congress.

  Once the Suffolk Resolves were adopted, Revere, in one of the many rides he took long before the one that placed him in the history books, carried the Resolves to Philadelphia. There they were read aloud to the congress by the body’s president, Peyton Randolph. When he finished, the entire congress erupted into cheer
ing, surrounding the Massachusetts delegation with applause and congratulations. Every word of the Suffolk Resolves was then overwhelmingly adopted for all of the colonies. Because of Joseph Warren, a momentous step had been taken toward independence and the formation of a new nation.

  In England, reaction to the Suffolk Resolves and their adoption was profound. In Parliament, longtime critics of the government’s policies regarding the American colonies, such as the Whig statesmen William Pitt and Edmund Burke, were vocal in their praise for what Warren had accomplished. “For solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the General Congress at Philadelphia,” Pitt stated in a parliamentary speech in January 1775. “[The American colonists], who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence [will] die in defence of their rights as men,” he continued. Pitt then urged the king and his ministers to act “with a dignity becoming your exalted situation, make the first advances to concord, to peace and happiness. . . . There is,” Pitt concluded, “no time to be lost. . . . Nay, while I am now speaking,” he stated, “the decisive blow may be struck.” Two months later Burke echoed Pitt’s sentiments by reminding British authorities that “an Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery. . . . The question with me,” he said, “is, not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy.”

  THE COVER OF THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS JOURNAL features the emblem of the Congress: a Liberty Column supported by hands and arms representing the states, and the Magna Carta at its base. Around the emblem in Latin is the inscription HANC TUEMUR, HAC NITIMUR (roughly translated as “This we defend, by this we are protected.”).

  Their words fell on deaf ears. Hutchinson, now back in England, stated that Warren’s Resolves were “undoubtedly treasonable” and “more alarming than anything that had yet been done.” Lord Dartmouth, former secretary of state for the colonies, proclaimed Massachusetts as “plainly in a state of revolt or rebellion.” King George III agreed. “Blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent,” he wrote to his minister Lord North. In early February 1775, Parliament formally declared that Massachusetts was in a state of rebellion. With his Suffolk Resolves, Warren had created the spark to ignite a revolution.

  It became further ignited with the delivery of the fifth annual Boston Massacre oration. This time there was no question as to who would be called upon to make the speech. It had to be Warren, a man now as esteemed by his fellow Patriots as he was detested by the British government. As the day of the oration approached, with British forces prominently stationed throughout Boston, tensions were extremely high. They became even higher on March 6, 1775, the day of the speech, when the hordes of citizens filing into Old South Church were greeted with the sight of some three hundred British officers and soldiers, there, according to some observers, to frighten Warren into silence.

  They had chosen the wrong man to try to intimidate. Warren had prepared well for the event, not only in carefully crafting the speech he was about to deliver, but also in choosing his attire. He entered the hall dressed in a stark white free-flowing toga, the main garment of a freeborn Roman male, a garment as different in appearance from the stiff, tailored, bright red clothing of the British troops as could be imagined. It was an initial message that was not lost on a populace whose orators had so often reminded them of the virtues of ancient Rome.

  According to some accounts, as soon as Warren approached the spot from which he was to speak, there were “a few hisses from some of the officers.” One witness remembered that when one of the officers made a point of showing Warren his open palm, which contained several bullets, Warren silenced him by dropping a white handkerchief over the officer’s hand.

  Warren had heard reports that if his speech contained incendiary remarks concerning the events of March 5, 1770, his life would be in danger. From the beginning, his oration paid no heed to these threats. Speaking directly to the families of those slain in the “massacre,” he explained in the style now familiar to those who so often had heard him speak, “Let me lead the tender mother to weep over her beloved son—come widowed mourner, here satiate thy grief; behold thy murdered husband gasping on the ground, and to complete the pompous show of wretchedness, bring in each hand thy infant children to bewail their father’s fate.”

  As if this was not inflammatory enough, after stating that he never expected to see a British army in Boston after the massacre and declaring that Bostonians, knowing that “liberty is far dearer than life,” would never be intimidated by this show of force, Warren went much further than even his greatest admirers in the audience believed he would dare go, surrounded by the huge British military presence.

  The interest and safety of Britain, as well as the colonies, require that the wise measures, recommended by the . . . continental congress, be steadily pursued. . . . But if these pacific measures are ineffectual, and it appears that the only way to safety is through fields of blood, I know you will not turn your faces from your foes, but will, undauntedly, press forward, until tyranny is trodden under foot.

  Just as Warren finished his speech, the British 43rd Regiment appeared with their drums loudly beating outside the hall. At the same time, a number of the British officers and soldiers in the audience began derisively shouting “Fie, fie.” Many in the crowd mistook the cries for “Fire, fire,” and in the panic that followed, some, fearing that either the soldiers in the hall or those stationed outside were about to unload their weapons on them, jumped out the window. Others ran out into the street. Somehow, order was restored and no shots were fired. What easily could have been the beginning of the military aspect of the American Revolutionary War had been averted.

  But not for long. Back in October 1774, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had become the de facto government of Massachusetts, America’s first autonomous ruling body. First with Hancock as its head, and then with Warren as its president, it had assumed all powers to rule the province, collected taxes, bought supplies, and raised a militia. By the first week of April 1775, the British government had had enough. Newspapers in England prominently printed the news that by the tenth of the month an army of more that thirteen thousand troops would arrive in Boston, commanded by three major generals.

  On April 14, General Thomas Gage, the commander in chief of England’s American forces, received a letter from the British authorities informing him that the home government considered Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion and authorizing him to impose martial law. The main point of the letter was to inform Gage that a test should be made to determine if the colonials were really willing to fight a war. If there was to be a war, Gage was told, better that it be fought immediately rather than after the colonists had been given time to raise and equip a large army. It was the most critical time in Warren’s life. Now fully recognized as the leader of the revolutionary movement, he knew that he had to take quick action. Concerned that Hancock and Samuel Adams—having returned from the Continental Congress—would be arrested, Warren persuaded them to move into the home of a patriotic clergyman in Lexington, some eleven miles from Boston. Extra stores of ammunition were transported to Lexington in case of a British attack on Boston. At the same time, Warren set up a spy system, ordering a number of men, most notably Revere, to monitor British troop movements in and around the city.

  Meantime, Warren’s friends were deeply concerned about his own safety. Remarkably, throughout all of his political activities, writing, and speech giving, he had maintained his medical practice, even taking on students. When one of these students noticed a group of British soldiers standing watch over his mentor’s house, he begged Warren not to visit his patients that evening. Warren put a pistol in each of his pockets, ignored the soldier’s presence, and went off on his rounds.

  IT WAS THE
LAST TIME HE HAD THE LUXURY of tending his patients. On April 15, informed that ships preparing to carry British troops had appeared in the Charles River between Boston and Charlestown, Warren sent Revere off to Lexington to warn Adams and Hancock that it appeared that something imminent was about to happen. The next day some of the military stores were removed to Concord, some ten miles from Lexington.

  Something indeed was about to happen. On April 18, Warren was informed by one of his spies that the British were about to march to Lexington, capture Adams and Hancock, and destroy the supplies stored there. By nine in the evening, when the British troops had formed, Warren had sent William Dawes off to Lexington to warn Adams and Hancock that the British were on their way. At ten in the evening Warren summoned Revere to his house and sent him too off to Lexington, instructing him also to warn the militia in the area of the advancing troops. As they rode toward Lexington, both Revere and Dawes accidentally met Samuel Prescott, who was returning home after spending an evening with his fiancée. Revere and Dawes asked Prescott to join them on their mission. It was a fortuitous recruitment. Once they warned Adams, Hancock, and the militia in Lexington, Revere and Dawes intended to ride on to Concord. But after leaving Lexington, they were stopped by British officers. Only Prescott got through to Concord, where he spread the alarm. By arousing the militia, Warren, counseled by Samuel Adams, had deliberately created the occasion for war, a war not declared by the Continental Congress or made in concert with other American colonies, but one that he felt was both inevitable and necessary.

  The first British troops reached Lexington at dawn. As they approached the village green, they were shocked to find some seventy musket-bearing colonial militiamen lined up awaiting them. Immediately, the commanding officer ordered the colonials to thrown down their arms and disperse. The militiamen held on to their muskets but began to leave the green. It is not known who fired the shot that suddenly rang out, but it prompted a fusillade from the British troops. When the smoke cleared, eight colonials lay dead and ten were wounded.