November 2022 – Salina B Baker

I wrote the short story “Act Worthy of Yourselves” that asks the question “What if Dr. Joseph Warren had survived Bunker Hill?” as part of the Historical Writers Forum anthology “Alternate Endings” because frankly, Dr. Joseph Warren is the love of my American Revolution life.

This young and largely forgotten patriot is an important character in the first book of my historical fantasy series, Angels and Patriots Book One: Sons of Liberty, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill. I’ve also have published non-fiction works about Warren including a short piece titled America’s First Martyr in the Military Writers Society of America’s 2021 anthology Untold Stories, numerous blog posts, and three audio clips for a website called Hear About Hear that provides audio clips for historic places. The three audio clips can be heard at Old South Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts, Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and King’s Chapel in Boston where Warren delivered two Boston Massacre Orations (1772 & 1775), was killed at age 34 at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, and the chapel where his funeral was held, respectively.

Warren was a Boston physician, Son of Liberty, politician, orator, masonic Grand Master, president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and a major general. He was a member of the Sons of Liberty, a group of political dissidents formed in Boston to protest King George III and Parliament’s taxation and control of colonial authority. Their protests against the Mother country’s sudden subjugation after more than a century of autonomy, proliferated in the America colonies in the 1760s. Some of their famous members were Paul Revere, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams. John Adams, a Massachusetts lawyer and politician was not a Son of Liberty, but he was a sympathizer.

It was Joseph Warren who sent Paul Revere, along with William Dawes, on that ride to warn the countryside that the British regulars were out of Boston and on the march looking for rebel munitions on the night of April 18, 1775. He was holding the rebellion together in Massachusetts during the spring of 1775 while Samuel Adams and John Hancock were hiding in Lexington for fear of being hanged by the British for treason.

Through the committees of the Provincial Congress, he tirelessly wrote letters to leaders of other colonies, rallying for the cause, asking for help, and pressing them for their responsibilities in the rebellion against Britain. He gathered militia, supplies, and directed the provincial army who conducted the siege of Boston on the British in that town after the first shots of the war were fired in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775.

His death at the Battle of Bunker Hill was widely lamented by his friends and patients such as Abigail Adams, John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, patriots who fought alongside Warren on that fateful day and as far reaching as Philadelphia and the southern colonies. His death, early in the war, served to leave him in obscurity. He deserves to be known for everything he did in the infancy of the American Revolution to promote freedom and liberty. So the questions is “what if Joseph Warren had survived Bunker Hill?” Where would he have stood among the American Founding Fathers, many of whom were his fellows long before the rest of the world had heard their names.

One last very important comment.

Under the tutelage and permission of the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation and their operations director J Hart (with whom I will be doing further work), I’m thrilled to announce that the foundation is producing a docudrama about Joseph Warren with a target release date of 2025. This is the trailer narrated by Christian di Spigna author of the biography Founding Martyr.

You can help preserve the legacy of Joseph Warren by supporting the Foundation, giving to the cause, and spreading the word. Huzzah!

www.djwf.org/the-trailer

My share of royalties will go to the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation an organization dedicated to educating the public about his life & contributions to the American Revolution.

I hope you enjoy my short story “Act Worthy of Yourselves” in our anthology as much as I enjoyed writing it! Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle. Click the cover to get your copy!

Authors:

Virginia Crow
Cathie Dunn
Sharon Bennett Connolly
Karen Heenan
Samantha Wilcoxson
Michael Ross
Salina B Baker
Elizabeth Corbett

I wrote my alternate ending about Abigail Adams and women’s suffrage after researching women’s rights and looking at the current storm on abortion rights with the overturn of Roe vs. Wade. When I was writing my first book, “Clouds of War”, I was surprised by the fact that most women couldn’t sign contracts, and lost control over the property as soon as they were married. In researching my as-yet-unpublished Revolutionary War novel, I discovered that in some colonies, women could vote before the signing of the US Constitution, but lost that right. That led me to look at where these laws depriving women of rights came from – and the answer was somewhat astonishing. It turns out that there was a barrister named William Blackstone in England, who spread the idea of “coverture” because he believed women were emotionally and intellectually unfit for politics, business, and most intellectual endeavors. Blackstone was an obscure lawyer who had lost his job and was not particularly adept at the law, but his book “Commentaries on the Laws of England” was particularly popular with men. It became a mantra of male dominance, without bothering to prove the points it contained.

In studying the Revolutionary War, I read many of the original letters and documents from Abigail and John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Mercy Otis Warren, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. I was impressed in particular with the logic, intellect, and writing of Abigail Adams. Thanks to her separation for months at a time from her husband, she wrote over two thousand letters. Though she requested that they be burned at her death, thankfully, someone did not follow that instruction, and we have a large collection of her thoughts and feelings during that period.

One letter, in particular, caught my attention, from Abigail to John, and his reply. She had just heard of the decision to declare independence from England, and being of sharp mind, immediately realized that the slate of laws was wiped clean, and they might begin afresh. She was excited at the prospect of equal rights for women, including the vote, and wrote to John that when they made the new laws, the men must “remember the ladies”. John effectively laughed at her and expressed many of the same opinions voiced in Blackstone’s book. In real life, while she was vexed, Abigail acted as the submissive wife of her time and culture, though voicing her indignation in letters both to John, Thomas Jefferson, and her friend Mercy Otis Warren. Reading Abigail’s displeasure led me to wonder – what if? What if she had rallied the other leading women, as well as the poor non-landowning farmer men, to demand the right to vote? How could she have leveraged it to make the men listen? What had the women done before as a group, and what had its effect been?

From there, the story “Remember the Ladies” practically wrote itself, primarily using Abigail’s own words. I hope you enjoy it.