Wounds Too Deep

17 June 1775. The redoubt fortifying Breed’s Hill–not terribly far from the taller Bunker’s Hill–proved permeable to the advancing waves of better trained, better equipped British regulars. The British took Breed’s Hill, but paid a high price in men and perhaps an even higher price in emboldening colonial militia, who inflicted more than double the losses they sustained. ‘Bunker Hill’ was a point of no return for the colonies and Great Britain, but has often been returned to in memory and memorialization, typically as an opportunity for rededication to the ideals embodied in the colonists’ will to fight at Breed’s Hill. The legacy of ‘Bunker Hill’ was soon hammered out in letters, poetry, and art that mingled achievement and loss, an alloy perfected in the exaltation of the “godlike” hero-martyr Dr. General Joseph Warren.   

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Transcript

SM 3:3 Wounds Too Deep

Intro

This month we consider the struggle to reconcile possibility and its loss in untimely death.  

In the evening of April 28, 1775, the 62-ton schooner Quero departed Salem, Massachusetts. It carried an intelligence packet consisting of the April 25th edition of the Essex Gazette, an open letter to the British public penned by Boston radical Dr. Joseph Warren, instructions to the Massachusetts colony agent in London, and a folio of sworn depositions taken from eyewitnesses to and participants in April 19th firefights at Lexington & Concord. Only 24 hours before Quero set sail, the mastermind behind the intelligence packet, Dr. Joseph Warren, wrote to Arthur Lee of Stratford, who, unknown to Warren, was the only agent left to Massachusetts in London following senior agent Benjamin Franklin’s abrupt departure in March. Thus it fell to Arthur to use the intelligence packet aboard Quero to break the news of the ‘shot heard round the world’ to the British public, which he did in a special extra edition of the London Evening Post on May 28, 1775. The letter Warren wrote specifically to Arthur on the day before Quero sailed reported an untimely death that surely moved Arthur.    

Cambridge, April 27, 1775.

MY DEAR SIR: Our friend Quincy just lived to come on shore to die in his own Country; he expired yesterday morning. His virtues rendered him dear, and his abilities useful to his Country.

Warren is referring to Harvard-educated Josiah Quincy Jr., a lawyer by trade, who in late January took ill “with a fever and spasms” while in England. This was an end-stage evolution of the tuberculosis from which he’d suffered since he was a teenager. Quincy sat co-counsel to John Adams in the successful 1770 defense of the British regulars charged with murder in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Like Adams and Warren, Quincy was a staunch advocate of the American cause against British overreach, and wrote: “In defence of our civil and religious rights, we dare oppose the world.” His radical politics were tempered by commitment to the British constitution–so while he fiercely opposed the Stamp Act, he denounced as unjustified the mob violence and vandalism that accompanied popular protests in Boston. Despite his aversion to extremism in pursuit of civil liberties, Quincy’s spirited writings attracted the attention of Boston’s patriot leaders and he became a trusted voice for the patriot movement. He was closely allied with members of executive revolutionary bodies, and sat with Sam Adams, Joseph Warren on the Boston Committee of Correspondence and with the two Adams, Warren, and Hancock on the Committee of Safety. On 28 September 1774, Quincy sailed for England on a confidential mission to counteract loyalist spin on events in Massachusetts, distortions being spread by loyalist authorities like Thomas Hutchinson and Peter Oliver. Quincy also intended to break bread with influential sympathizers, Opposition politicians and London radicals, who might be willing to wield some of their influence on behalf of the beleaguered colony. He relied in part on Americans like Sheriff of London William Lee and colony agent Arthur Lee, both of Stratford, to help him network with British “friends of liberty” like Colonel Isaac Barré, Lord Shelburne, and Catherine Macaulay, among others. Quincy also met with government big wigs like Prime Minister Lord North (November 19). Quincy could not have known that a mere 24 hours before his meeting with North, North had received this notice from the King: the New England governments are in a state of rebellion, blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent. In England, Quincy vacillated between boycotts in pursuit of concessions and conciliation (Benjamin Franklin’s stance) and revolution (the stance of the Lees). As Quincy sailed home for Massachusetts, his health dipping, he could not know of the shots fired at Lexington and Concord on April 19, and on the April 21st Quincy confided to his journal that the voyage home would put an end to my Being–and so it did: Josiah Quincy, Jr., died 5 days later in sight of Gloucester, MA. He was 31 years old. On May 4, Abigail Adams wrote to John of Quincy’s death, and lamented that, he wrote in minuts which he left behind that he had matters of consequence intrusted with him, which for want of a confident must die with him. What intelligence he carried we do not know. Dr. Warren lamented the man, whose death he regarded as a premature loss of talent and ability for the patriot cause. In his letter to Arthur Lee, he did not tarry on that loss, but soon pivoted to the urgency of the crisis afoot in Massachusetts, a crisis shaped by the punitive Intolerable Acts of 1774 and compounded by the blood spilled at Lexington & Concord. 

 The wicked measures of the Administration have at length brought matters to a crisis. I think it probable that this rage of the people, excited by the most clear view of the cursed designs of the Administration, and the barbarous effusion of the blood of their countrymen, will lead them to attack General Gage, and burn the ships in the harbour.

Lord Chatham and our friends must make up the breach immediately, or never. If any thing terrible takes place, it will not do to talk of calling the Colonies to account for it; but it must be attributed to the true cause — the unheard-of provocation given to this people. They will never talk of accommodation until the present Ministry are entirely removed. You may depend the Colonies will sooner suffer depopulation than come into any measures with them.

The next news from England must be conciliatory, or the connexion between us ends, however fatal the consequences may be. Prudence may yet alleviate the misfortunes, and calm the convulsions into which the Empire is thrown, by the madness of the present Administration. May God Almighty direct you. If any thing is proposed which may be for the honour and safety of Great Britain and these Colonies, my utmost efforts will not be wanting to effect a reconciliation. I am, in the utmost haste, surrounded by fifteen or twenty thousand men, your most obedient servant,

JOS˙ WARREN.

Already in February, Dr. Warren had written to Arthur, I am of the opinion, that, if once General Gage should lead his troops into the country, with design to enforce the late Acts of Parliament, Great Britain may take her leave, at least of the New-England colonies, and, if I mistake not, of all America. Warren imagined here the fatal consequences of a British military expedition into the Massachusetts interior, which seems prophetic in light of the firefights at Lexington & Concord 2 months later. Warren’s April 27th letter to Arthur reiterates just what he said in February, that for the “friends of liberty” in Great Britain the time to intervene decisively is now or never–this is the proverbial knife’s edge on which the relationship between Great Britain and New England was balanced after the ‘shot heard round the world’: the next news … must be conciliatory, or the connection between us ends, however fatal. 

In addition to building a thriving medical practice, Dr. Joseph Warren was involved in every major resistance effort in and around Boston for the better part of a decade, from grassroots street protests to organized revolutionary governance to principal authorship of the Suffolk Resolves, which was endorsed by the First Continental Congress and dictated a posture of active resistance to Parliament’s Intolerable Acts. In May 1775 Warren was elected to preside over the 2nd Massachusetts Provincial Congress, an outlaw body of the revolutionary government. The Continental Congress appointed Dr. Warren Major General in the Continental Army on June 14, 3 days before the battle of Breed’s Hill, popularly known as Bunker Hill, the first pitched battle of the American Revolution. Dr. General Warren was then a 34-year old widower with four children aged between two and ten. On June 17, six days after his 34th birthday, having refused formal command in recognition of General Prescott’s experienced leadership, and content to fight side by side with rank and file troops (or so the legend goes), Dr. General Warren manned a redoubt atop Breed’s Hill, adjacent to Bunker Hill in Charlestown. During the British assault on the redoubt, Warren took a bullet beneath his left eye, which exited the rear of his head, and instantaneously claimed his life. 

Warren’s death resounded hundreds and thousands of times in newspapers, personal correspondence, in art, and in poetry. In a letter to John Adams on June 18, Abigail Adams grieved, Great is our Loss, to which she added two days later: I wish I could contradict the report of the Doctors Death, but tis a lamentable Truth, and the tears of multitudes pay tribute to his memory. Those favorite lines [of] Collin continually sound in my Ears: How sleep the Brave who sink to rest, By all their Countrys wishes blest? On July 7, 1775, John Adams received this assessment of the Battle of Bunker Hill from his former law clerk, now officer in the Massachusetts militia: what would cloud any Satisfaction we might otherwise take is the Loss of that Great and good Man Major General Warren. Regardless of himself his whole Soul seemd to be fill’d with the Greatness of the cause he was engaged in … He is now gone, and closes an illustrious Life, with all the Glory those can acquire who bleed and die for the preservation of the Rights of their Country and Mankind. His glory was immortalized and death romanticized in several oil paintings by soldier and artist John Trumbull, present at Bunker Hill and best known for 4 paintings that now adorn the rotunda at the US capitol. Against a blackening smoke-filled sky and a chaotic tableau of dead and dying men, Joseph Warren (clad all in white) has collapsed to the ground. A fellow American cradling the fallen General’s head and a British officer simultaneously deflect a bayonet strike launched at the expiring Warren by a British grenadier, the bloodlust of war momentarily ebbing in recognition of a profound shared loss and in recognition of greatness of spirit. A 1775 broadside reflected on the death of this Caesar of the age: We sore lament both one and all, In Sackcloth let us mourn, Brave General WARREN’s hapless Fate And weep upon his Urn. My trembling Hand, my aking Heart, O! How it throbs this Day! His Loss is felt in ev’ry Part Of vast America. In Richard Emmon’s dramatic poem, The Battle of Bunker Hill; or, The Temple of Liberty (1839), Warren dies a martyr for liberty: Thus Warren fell with all his honors green, In ruins, yet with dignity serene; And mothers with a tear upon their cheek, Will teach their lisping babes, his name, the first to speak. As Prescott contemplates the fallen Warren, through his tears he pleads: Here let me slumber —’tis a boon I crave–To sleep with Warren, what a deathless grave! Warren is no longer a mere man but a poetic cipher for the eternal value of patriotic sacrifice. An elegy printed in Watertown in 1775 poetically entertained the idea of reclaiming Warren from death, but steeled itself against such an idea: No, Rather let thy Great Example fire / Each gen’rous Breast to emulate thy fame, / And thy Vast, Unbounded Height aspire, / To catch a spark from thy Celestial Flame. Another Elegy published on July 3, 1775 opened: Sure, godlike Warren, on thy natal hour / Some star propitious shed its brightest power. And yet he was a man, his death a rupture in the life of his children (later adopted by his brother John), his family and friends, and his community and country. Warren was an immensely talented leader, whose gifts were too numerous for their loss not to be felt. Abigail Adams again: Danger they say makes people valiant. Hitherto I have been distress’d, but not dismayed. I have felt for my Country and her Sons, I have bled with them, and for them. Not all the havoc and devastation they have made, has wounded me like the death of Warren. We wanted him in the Senate, we want him in his profession, we want him in the field. We mourn for the citizen, the senator, the physician and the Warrior. In a June 28 letter to his wife Betsy, Samuel Adams expressed the sentiments of many: The Death of our truly amiable and worthy Friend Dr Warren is greatly afflicting. The Language of Friendship is, how shall we resign him! But it is our Duty to submit to the Dispensations of Heaven, "Whose Ways are ever gracious, ever just." He fell in the glorious Struggle for the publick Liberty. In late June [29], Richard Henry Lee wrote from Philadelphia to George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he had gone to assume his position as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental armies: Nothing material has occurred since you left this place, except the imperfect accounts we have of the Charlesto[w]n battle, which upon the whole seems to have nothing unfavorable to our great cause, but the loss of Dr. Warren. To an infant Country, it is loss indeed, to be deprived of wise, virtuous, and brave citizens. When Arthur Lee imagined standing down from public service abroad and returning to live among folks with whom he’d been joined in common cause, he added: Would to God that we could number Warren among them, and that it had been permitted him to see the beauties of that fabric, which he labored with so much zeal and ability to rear [To Samuel Adams, November 1777]. So may lives cut short, so much promise snuffed out on all sides, and while the death of Joseph Warren was neither the first fruits of war’s terrible harvest nor the final gleaning, that death seemed to gather up and express with powerful focus the chaotic horror of war and the search for meaning and memory in the face of loss. So it was that John Adams could not but speak of Warren when he wrote a note of consolation to a grieving father, Josiah Quincy Sr., on July 29: 

We jointly lament the loss of a Quincy, and a Warren; two characters, as great in proportion to their age, as any that I have ever known in America.  Our country mourns the loss of both, and sincerely sympathises with the feelings of the mother of the one, and the father of the other.  They were both my intimate friends, with whom I lived and conversed, with pleasure and advantage.  I was animated by them, in the painful, dangerous course, of opposition to the oppressions brought upon our Country; and the loss of them, has wounded me too deeply, to be easily healed.  Dulce, et decorum est pro Patria mori.

The ways of Heaven are dark and intricate; but you may remember the words, which many years ago you and I, fondly admired, and which upon many occasions I have found advantage in recollecting.

Why should I grieve, – when grieving I must bear.

And take with guilt, – what guiltless I might share?

John Adams

Adams speaks here both to the consolation of patriotic sacrifice, Dulce, et decorum est pro Patria mori (‘Tis sweet and fitting to die for Country), but also appeals to the Stoic philosophy of Cleanthes of Assos in the translation of Viscount Bolingbroke to suggest that grief and guilt are inevitable parts of the nature of things, and so it adds to our pain to suppose ourselves immune from the natural order or to seek to reject or escape that order. The final word on the relationship of loss to possibility I give to Josiah Quincy, Jr., who, several years before his own death at the age of 31, eulogized a friend prematurely dead at the age of 28–his borrowed words from Henry VIII Act III Scene 2 might applies to so many thousands who did live to enjoy the possibilities of the new world they helped to create:    

This is the state of man;—to day he puts forth

The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,

And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,

And when ‘tis thought —— full surely

His greatness is a ripening, nips his root.

Outro

Cover art: Annotated version of a 1775 engraving by Paul Revere depicting the Battle of Bunker Hill. Held in an anymous private collection and reproduced at the Boston Battery Wharf Maritime Museum.

Sound effects courtesy of Pixabay

Music is William Ross Chernoff's "In Shadows"

AI voices courtesy of easy-peasy.ai or Play.ht (except Dr. Steffey)

© Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey, 2025