Joseph Warren was an an active and vocal opponent of British colonial policies prior to the American Revolution.
Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1741, and educated at Harvard, Warren was a prominent Boston physician. Despite his comfortable lifestyle, Warren began criticizing British rule in 1767, when he authored a series of essays published in the Boston Gazette. Joseph Warren was one of the first members selected to the Boston Committee of Correspondence in 1772, and he was well known among Bostonians for orations he delivered in commemoration of the Boston Massacre in 1772 and 1775. When Parliament enacted the Coercive Acts in 1774, Warren authored the Suffolk Resolves, a stinging response that was passed by a unanimous vote of the extralegal Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and also endorsed by the First Continental Congress. Warren actively participated in the Battle of Concord on April 19, 1775. On June 14, 1775 Massachusetts Provincial Congress commissioned Joseph Warren as second general in command of Massachusetts forces. Despite his commission, Warren volunteered to serve on the front line during the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he was mortally wounded on June 17. His untimely death was a significant loss to the American independence movement.