June 1775 (Dr JOSEPH WARREN) Contemporary Manuscript Copy An Oration for Major-General Joseph Warren

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Early American History Auctions - December 20...

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Dec 20, 2025

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  American Revolution
  (Dr. JOSEPH WARREN) Contemporary Manuscript "Eulogium sacred to the memory of the late Major General Warren who fell June 1775 fighting against the ministerial army at Boston."
  c. June 1775 (Dr. JOSEPH WARREN), Manuscript Period Document, either the Author's Original Draft or a Contemporary 4 1/2 Pages of the Eulogium Oration for Major-General Joseph Warren, Killed at Bunker Hill, this lot includes a Color Photocopy of the actual Pennsylvania Magazine "Monthly Intelligence" pages reporting this full Eulogy as published in the June 1775 issue, Very Fine.
  This historic Manuscript is possibly the original author's draft as it displays a number of small corrections, and if written at Boston this "Oration" would have been sent by express rider to be timely for its publication, which actual color photocopies of the June 1775 issue pages are provided, having this text. As stated in the reports text, the author in not named, likely in fear of being discovered as a Patriot by the British. The June 1775 Pennsylvania Magazine header reads, in part:
  "A Gentleman of the city has favored us with the following.
  An EULOGIUM Sacred to the memory of the late Major-General WARREN who fell June 17th, 1775 fighting against the ministerial army at Boston."
  Major-General Joseph Warren Eulogy Oration being a Contemporary Period Manuscript handwritten in rich brown ink on "F L" watermarked laid period paper. There are four contiguous page measuring about 7.25" wide x 12.25" tall with an additional page with the short conclusion measuring 5.25" tall x 8" wide, having a flourish indicating the conclusion. Each portion has tiny pinpoint dots creating the Initials "WBE" & "WP" (unknown), and there is a 3rd page edge piece 1" x .75" missing, affecting just a few words. It reads, in very small part:
  "An Oration" --- When an amiable man with a promising family of children perishes in the bloom of life, every friend to humanity must thare in the distress which such a calamity occasions in the circle of his acquaintances. This distress is heightened when we hear that the virtues of the man were blended with the exalted qualities of a patriot. We rise in our expressions of grief, when we are told that he possessed Not only the zeal of a patriot, - but the wisdom, - the integrity and the eloquence of a senator... "
  Dr. Joseph Warren died a martyr in the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. To the enemy, "his death was worth the death of 500 men", at least according to British General Thomas Gage. Warren was one of the key leaders of the Patriot movement. So passionate was Warren's dedication to the cause of liberty that he told his mother in the weeks before the battle, "Where danger is, dear mother, there must your son be. Now is no time for any of American's children to shrink from any hazard. I will set her free or die."
  When the British took the field and began burying the dead, they put the body of Warren in a mass grave. His remains were later uncovered and identified by Paul Revere, who was able to identify him by the false set of teeth he had fashioned for him. His body was moved to several different burial grounds, but his final resting place was found in 1855 in his family's plot at Forest Hill's Cemetery in Boston.
  We ship what we sell.
  A Eulogy for Joseph Warren, who died at the Battle of Bunker Hill, that was actually published in the "Monthly Intelligence" section of the Pennsylvania Magazine (or American Monthly Magazine) for June 1775. This section also reported on the progress of the American Revolutionary War and included news and often engravings of battles.
  Joseph Warren was born June 11, 1741, in Roxbury, Mass., a prosperous farmer's son. After graduating from Harvard he practiced medicine and surgery in Boston. Marrying an heiress helped him acquire a stellar list of clients, including John Adams and his family. He once saved 7-year-old John Quincy Adams' finger from amputation.
  Warren also had Tory British Loyalist patients: the children of Thomas Hutchinson, British Gen. Thomas Gage and his wife Margaret. Some believe Joseph Warren had an affair with Margaret Gage after his own wife died. She may have tipped him off about the British plans to raid Concord on April 19th, 1775 and arrest Hancock and Adams.
  Joseph Warren was gregarious, charming and a powerful speaker who enlisted in the Patriot cause. He played a leading role in the fight for Independence, joining Sam Adams and John Hancock in the Sons of Liberty. In 1775, he won election as President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. In addition to practicing medicine in Boston, he gave speeches, wrote newspaper essays, and authored the "Suffolk Resolves" a bold declaration of resistance to British authority.
  As a good friend of Paul Revere, he enlisted Revere and William Dawes to take their famous midnight ride the night of April 18th, 1775. On the day of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Joseph Warren sneaked out of Boston and led militia in harassing the British returning to the city. A musket ball struck his wig, nearly killing him. That's when he told his mother he wouldn't shrink from danger. Warren returned to Boston, where he organized soldiers for the siege of Boston and negotiated with Gage.
  On June 13th. 1775, colonial leaders learned the British planned to send troops to take the unoccupied hills surrounding the besieged city. That night, 1,200 colonial troops stealthily occupied Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill, on which they built an earthworks overnight. Warren showed up the next day and asked General Israel Putnam where the heaviest fighting would be. Commissioned a Major General in the Massachusetts militia, he insisted on fighting as a private because he had no military experience.
  During the battle on June 17th he fought behind the earthworks until the patriots exhausted their ammunition. He stayed there to give the militia time to escape while the British made their final assault. A British officer recognized him and shot him in the head. Joseph Warren died instantly.
  The British stripped his body and stabbed it beyond recognition, then threw him into a shallow grave with another patriot killed in the battle. Paul Revere later identified his body, it has been said by Warren's dental work. The next day his friend James Warren (no relation) wrote a letter to his wife, Mercy Otis Warren, about the battle and Joseph Warren's death. The British, he wrote,
  "...are reinforced but have not Advanced, so things remain at present as they were we have killed many men & have killed & wounded about [six] hundred by the best accounts I can get. Among the first of which to our inexpressible Grief is my Friend Doctor Warren who was killd. it is supposed in the Lines on the Hill at Charlestown in a Manner more Glorious to himself than the fate of Wolf on the plains of Abraham. Many other officers are wounded and some killd. it is Impossible to describe the Confusion in this place, Women & Children flying into the Country, armed Men Going to the field, and wounded Men returning from there fill the Streets."
  Of Joseph Warren, military historian Ethan Rafuse wrote, "No man, with the possible exception of Samuel Adams, did so much to bring about the rise of a movement powerful enough to lead the people of Massachusetts to revolution."
  From the: Ethan Rafuse, New England Historical Society.
  
  
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