The day after George Washington was made Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, Joseph Warren was made a Major General. He had been serving President of the revolutionary Massachusetts Provincial Congress, the highest position in that colony’s revolutionary government.
Three days later on June 17th 1775, Warren would be brutally killed and mutilated by the British at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
A progenitor of Declaration of Independence and radical member of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, Warren had sent William Dawes and Paul Revere on their “midnight rides,” and led attacks on the British retreating from Lexington and Concord. Throughout the Siege of Boston, Warren recruited Patriots and negotiated with British General Thomas Gage. He was among the most-well known Patriots in the city of Boston.
At his arrival at Bunker Hill, Warren refused command offered by the more experienced Israel Putnam and took a place among the volunteers on Breed’s Hill. There, he also refused command from Colonel William Prescott, and was greeted by the cheers of the soldiers he joined in the redoubt.
During a third British assault, the Patriots began to run out of ammunition (the reason for the famous “whites of his eyes” quote) and the battle devolved into brutal hand-to-hand combat. In the last seconds of the affray, while covering his fellow volunteers down the road to Cambridge, Warren was shot through the face and killed instantly .
More than half of the British officer corps was decimated that day and the Battle of Bunker Hill produced the most casualties of any other battle in throughout the Revolutionary War. In total, 1,465 were killed or wounded that day, including 411 Patriots – more than half of all the Americans killed and wounded during military engagements in 1775.
(The deadliest battle of the American Revolution was the Battle of Camden in 1780, where 1,050 Patriots, and 314 British were killed or wounded. In 1777, both the Battle of Germantown and the Battle of Brandywine saw over 1,000 causalities each.)
Warren wore an officer’s uniform making him conspicuous that day and two primary source accounts from British soldiers say Warren was beheaded on the battlefield and others report that his corpse was horribly mutilated. He was stripped of personal possessions, including a family Bible, and dumped nearly naked into a shallow ditch where his body remained with another Patriot soldier for nine months.
In April of 1776, following the British evacuation of Boston, many still could not believe that someone as high-ranking and important to the Revolutionary cause had not only participated in the front lines, but been killed – some believed he was captured.
Joseph Warren’s brother John was given permission by Washington, to exhume his brother’s body, which was identified by a piece of silver wire that was fixed into two false teeth and by a missing fingernail. This is one of the first known examples of the use of forensic dentistry in in the history of the United States.
Joseph Warren was laid to rest in the Old Granary Burial Ground after an elaborate Masonic ceremony at King’s Chapel in Boston. About 50 years later his nephew, Dr. John Collins Warren, had his body removed to an underground crypt at St. Paul’s Chapel.
In 1855, during the height of the Rural Cemetery Movement, his body was moved again, but not before a daguerreotype image was taken of his skull, showing the musket ball hole. Analysis suggest Warren may have been shot at close range by a pistol carried by a British officer.
Joseph Warren’s remains now lay in an urn in a large underground crypt in Forest Hill Cemetery in Jamaica Plains.
Joseph Warren Book & Podcast
The latest Lake George Battlefield Moments podcast is the second of a two-part interview with historian Christian Di Spigna, author of Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero (Crown, 2018).
This week’s podcast host Bruce Venter speaks with the author on Warren’s death on the battlefield and what happened to his body afterward. Di Spigna is a founder of the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to his life and legacy.
Di Spigna’s book is one of only a few biographies of one of the most important early Revolutionaries – the President of the revolutionary Massachusetts Provincial Congress – who died at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
You can listen to the first part of the podcast about Warren’s life before Bunker Hill here.
Part two, about the death of Joseph Warren, is available here.
The Lake George Battlefield Moments podcast is produced by the Lake George Battlefield Park Alliance, a friends group supporting the Lake George Battlefield Park Historic District in Lake George, Warren County, NY. All of the Lake George Battlefield Park Alliance’s podcasts can be accessed through their YouTube channel.
Book Purchases made through this Amazon link support the New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State. See more new books HERE.
Listen to more history podcasts here.
Read more about Dr. Joseph Warren.
Illustration: The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull (1786).
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