WARREN, Joseph, American patriot: b. Roxbury, Mass., 11 June 1741; d. Charlestown, Mass., 17 June 1775. He was graduated from Harvard in 1759, studied medicine with Dr.
James Lloyd of Boston, entered the practice of his profession in 1764, and front the time of the Stamp Act (q.v.) (1765) cceatributed to the press. On the occasion of the Townshend reve nue acts (see TOWNSHEND, CHARLES, 1725-67), imposing duties on paper, glass and tea, legaliz ing writs of assistance and forming a board of customs, Warren printed in the Boston Gazette over the signature °A True Patriot,* a letter which caused Governor Francis Bernard to at tempt the prosecution of the publishers on the ground that the artkle tended to bring the royal government into contempt. The attorney-gen eral began proceedings, but the grand jury re fused to find a bill. In 1770 Warren was one of the committee of safety appointed after the 'Boston Massacre° of 5 March, and in 1772 he pronounced the memorial oration at the anni versary of that event. With Samuel Adams (q.v.) and James Otis (q.v.) he was recorded in November 1772 as a member of the first committee of correspondence, and during the next two years busily co-operated with Adams. When the latter left Boston, 10 Aug. 1774, to attend the meeting of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, Warren became the leading figure in Massachusetts political movements. When the towns of Suffolk County assembled in convention at Milton, 9 Sept. 1774, Warren read a set of resolutions, drawn up by himself and since lcnown as the °Suffolk resolves? which declared that a Icing who has violated the chartered rights of subjects forfeits their allegiance; that the °Regulating act? which had deprived Massachusetts without a previous no tice and without a hearing of most important rights and liberties, was null and void; and directed tax-collectors to refuse to pay the moneys collected to Gates' treasurer, warned Gates that if patriots were arrested for political reasons royal officers would be held as hostages and counseled the towns to choose their own officers of militia. After the meeting of the
Provincial Congress in October 1774, Warren was chairman of the committee of safety for collecting military stores and organizing a mih tia, and on 5 March 1775 delivered his second oration on the anniversary of the %as:3=e? Tie was unanimously elected president of the Provincial Congress at its Watertown meeting, 31 May, being thus made chief executive under the provisional governtnent. On 14 June he was chosen second major-general of Massachusetts forces, and on 17 June went to Bunker (Breed's) Hill, where he told Putnam and Prescott that he had come to serve as a volunteer aide. At the final conflict near Prescott's redoubt he was shot and killed. Webster's apostrophe to him in the