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Letter from Joseph Warren to Benjamin Franklin
April 26, 1775
Background
Dr. Joseph Warren was a remarkable figure of the Revolutionary era in many respects. He was a distinguished leader in medicine as well as political theorist, administrator, provocateur, and soldier among other things. He came from a New England middle-class family that had been in Massachusetts for more than a century prior to the American Revolution. His “American” upbringing showed in his Harvard education and his medical practice. In America, physicians, along with clergy and government officials, were seen to have a civic duty to protect the public welfare. Warren worked in public clinics in Boston caring for smallpox victims and administering vaccinations. During the 1763 smallpox epidemic, he opened an inoculation hospital that was so successful, his practice grew to include the wealthy of Boston as well as the poor, including such influential patients as John Adams, Thomas Hutchinson, Paul Revere, and William Dawes.
In September 1774, Dr. Warren penned the Suffolk Resolves, the most radical statement of resistance to the Intolerable Acts to that date. After Lexington and Concord, he was selected to lead the Provincial Congress, which made him executive leader of the Rebellion in the colony. Hoping to gain support for the American cause in Britain, he persuaded Congress to charter a packet to deliver speedily his account of the April 19th events to Benjamin Franklin in London. His letters arrived ahead of British General Thomas Gage’s account and were widely distributed by Franklin, garnering much attention and causing embarrassment to the British government.
Congress appointed Warren a major general on June 14, 1775. A few days later he joined the militia defending Breed’s Hill (better known as the Battle of Bunker Hill) and was killed during the final British assault.
In Provincial Congress Watertown, April 26th 1775 9
Sir
From the entire Confidence we Repose in your faithfulness & abilities we consider it the happiness of this Colony that the important trust of Agency for it in this day of unequaled Distress is devolved on your hands, and we doubt not your attachment to the cause of the liberties of mankind will make every Possible Exertion in our behalf A Pleasure to you– altho’ our circumstances will compell us Often to Interrupt your repose by Matters that will surely give you Pain. A Singular instance hereof is the Occasion of the present letter the Contents of this Packet will be our Apology for Troubling you with it from these you will see how & by whom we are at last Plunged into the horrors of a most unnatural war. Our enemies we are told have dispatched to G Britain a falacious account of the Tragedy they have began to Prevent the operation of which to the Publick injury we have engaged the vessel that conveys this to you as a Packit in the service of this Colony and we Request your assistance in Supplying Capt Derby who command her with such necessaries as he Shall Want on the credit of your Constituents in Massachusetts Bay. But we most ardently wish that the several papers herewith inclosed may be immediately printed and disperced thro’ every Town in England and especially communicated to the Lord Mayor, Alderman, & Common Council of the city of London that they may take such Order thereon as they may think Proper And we are confident your fidelity will make such improvement of them as Shall convince all who are not determined to be in everlasting blindness that it the united efforts of both Englands that must save either But that whatever price our Bretheren in the one may be pleased to put on their constitutional liberties we are authorized to assure you that the inhabitants of the other
with
with the greatest unanimity are inflexibly resolved to sell theirs only at the price of their lives.
Sign’d by order of the Provincial Congress To the Hon ble Benjamin Franklin, Esq At London Jos Warren Pres’t P TA true copy from the original minutesSaml Freeman Secr’y P T
Copy of Letter from the Congress of Mass
Benj Franklin Esq. dated 26 April 1775
read before Congress May 11.[1]