Bunker Hill

Dartmouth appended the recently passed (on June 2, 1774) Quartering Act. On the Quebec Act, see chapter 6, “The Problem of Quebec,” in Peter Thomas’s
Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution
, pp. 88–117. John Andrews describes how Parliament’s punitive acts “encouraged the sons of freedom to persevere . . . and confirmed the lukewarm that were staggering” in an August 25 letter; he tells how “every denomination of people” disapproved of Lord North in an August 11 letter; both in LJA, pp. 347, 341. Thomas Young’s August 19, 1774, letter to Samuel Adams about the huge volume of correspondence being received by the committee is cited by Richard Frothingham in
LJW
, p. 343.
    Joseph Warren’s reference to the “glorious stands” appears in the October 7, 1765, issue of the
Boston Gazette
under the byline “B. W.” Following up on an identification provided by Warren’s contemporary Harbottle Dorr, Warren biographer John Cary finds “stylistic characteristics” that confirm the piece as Warren’s, especially the “inordinate number of imperative sentences charging the people to action,” in
Joseph Warren
, p. 43. Frothingham in
LJW
, p. 405, reprints Warren’s “A Song of Liberty,” which was sung to the tune of “The British Grenadier.”
The loyalist Peter Oliver in
OPAR
claims that Warren’s earlier financial problems were solved by marrying “a tolerable sum of money; he also took administration on part of a gentleman’s estate which he appropriated to his own use” (p. 128). This is a reference to Warren’s curious role as court-appointed administrator of the estate of the merchant Nathaniel Wheelwright, whose bankruptcy in 1765 proved the financial undoing of many Boston merchants, including John Scollay, father to Mercy. Wheelwright left Boston and died of yellow fever in Guadeloupe in 1766, and in 1767, Warren became administrator of the Wheelwright estate; see J. L. Bell, “A Bankruptcy in Boston, 1765,”
Massachusetts Banker
, fourth quarter, 2008, pp. 14, 16, 18, 23. Peter Oliver also makes the claim that by 1774, Warren’s devotion to the patriot cause “had reduced his finances to a very low ebb. He was now forced to strike any bold stroke that offered” (
OPAR
, p. 128). According to Edward Warren, in
Life of John Warren
, p. 33, Joseph Warren “was of a free and liberal disposition, and never acquired any rigid notions of economy”; Edward Warren also describes Joseph Warren’s copartnership with James Latham, “surgeon in the King’s or 8th Regiment of foot” to erect a smallpox hospital at Point Shirley in Chelsea
(p. 21), adding, “It is certainly curious to see Joseph Warren at this time, July 1774, forming a partnership for 21 years with a surgeon in his majesty’s regiment of foot. . . . It is very certain that [he did not have] any idea or wish at this time for a separation from the mother country” (pp. 40–41). In a letter written to John Hancock on May 21, 1776, Mercy Scollay refers to Warren’s partnership in the hospital as a possible source of income for his now orphaned children, who “might be benefited by their father’s part of the profits” (at CHS). Joseph Warren insists “that nothing is more foreign from our hearts than a spirit of rebellion” in an early June letter to Charles Thompson cited by Richard Frothingham in
LJW
, p. 332. Mercy Scollay’s sister Priscilla and her husband, Thomas Melvill, were destined to become the grandparents of the novelist Herman Melville, whose father added a final
e
to the family name.
    John Andrews writes of the financial help Samuel Adams received to prepare him for the Continental Congress and the departure of the delegates in the entries for August 10 and 11 in LJA, pp. 339–40. On Charles Lee and his visit to Boston in August 1774, see John Richard Alden’s
General Charles Lee, Traitor or Patriot?
pp. 1–60. Samuel Adams Drake in
Old Boston Taverns
writes that the young George Washington stayed at the Cromwell’s Head Tavern in Boston, the same place where decades later Charles Lee stayed (pp. 44–45). Lee’s August 6, 1774, letter to Gage is in
PIR
, 1:593–95. William Cutter writes of the legendary exploits of Israel Putnam in
The Life of Israel Putnam
, pp. 33–127. Alden in
General Charles Lee
cites Thomas Young’s letter to Samuel Adams about Lee’s discussions with British officers and his leave-taking from Boston (p. 59).
    John Andrews