At fourteen, he entered Harvard University. His talents, perseverance, gentleness and courage, here gained him unrivalled popularity. That he did not acquire or preserve the regard of his fellow students by any base compliances with vice or disorder, the following incident shews.
Some of them had once resolved on some breach of the laws, which, from the sturdiness of his principles, they knew that young Warren would disapprove, and by his powerful influence probably prevent. They therefore met in an upper room of the college, to arrange their plans secretly; fastening the door against him. He found what they were about; and seeing the window of their room open, crept out, through a scuttle door, upon the roof—crawled to the eaves—and there, seizing a water-spout nearly rotten with age, he swung and slid down by it to the window, and unexpectedly sprang in amongst the conspirators. The spout, at the instant of his quitting it, fell with a crash to the ground, and was shivered to pieces. Only saying, in answer to the exclamations of astonishment that burst from his comrades, "it stayed up just long enough for my purpose," he commenced an expostulation against their intended misdemeanor, and succeeded in diverting them from it.
On leaving college, he studied medicine, and began to practise at the age of 23, just previously to a visit of the small pox to Boston, with those fearful ravages which usually attended its march, before the virtues of vaccination were known. Dr. Warren's judgment, tenderness, and skill, made him pre-eminently successful in treating the disease. And it is said, that his gentle and courteous deportment completely neutralized the usual tendency of such professional success, to enkindle the jealousy of his brethren. His mild features and winning smile, true indexes, for once, to the soul within, gained every heart; his knowledge and talents added respect to love. Thus, by the same qualities which had distinguished him at school and at college, did he acquire among his fellow townsmen an influence which no other man of his age and day possessed.
When the British Parliament and Crown began, in 1764, that course of unconstitutional legislation, which was destined, after eleven years of wordy war, to end in a war of blood, Dr. Warren was among the first to stand forth for the rights of America—to assert, and to labor in demonstrating to his countrymen, that the power to tax them (claiming, as they did, all the liberties of Englishmen) could not exist in a government of which no representatives of theirs formed a part. Fostered by him, and by others like him, the spirit of resistance to tyranny grew daily more strong. The inhabitants of the whole country, and especially of Boston, gave token after token of their fixed resolve, to spurn the chain which they saw preparing for them. In 1768, Col. Dalrymple with two royal regiments, reinforced afterwards by additional troops, entered that devoted town, with more than the usual "pomp and circumstance" of military bravado; and there remained in garrison, to repress what the king and ministry were pleased to call "the seditious temper" of the people. Never was attempt at restraint more impotent; nay, more suicidal. The curb, feebly and capriciously or unskilfully plied, served but to infuriate the noble animal it was meant to check and guide: and no wonder that the rider was at length unseated, and stretched in the dust. The New Englanders—we should rather say, the Americans—were too stubborn to be driven, and too shrewd to be circumvented. Every measure of tyranny, they met with an appropriate measure of resistance. Tea had been brought from India, to be the vehicle of unconstitutional taxation. They threw part of it into the sea; another part they hindered from being landed; and the remainder they excluded from use, by mutual pledges to "touch not, taste not" "the unclean thing." Judges were sent over to judge them—creatures of the king—the panders of ministerial oppression. The people would not suffer them to mount the judgment seat—closed the court houses—referred all their differences to arbitrators chosen by the parties—and even so far tamed the spirit of litigation and disorder, as to make tribunals of any sort in a great degree needless.2 Between the British troops and the Boston people, animosities soon ran high. The soldiers seized every opportunity to exasperate the people: the people assembled in mobs, to revenge themselves on the soldiers. Amidst these tumults, Dr. Warren repeatedly exposed his life to soothe and restrain his countrymen. His eloquent persuasions were generally successful. At first, the more violent would endeavor to repel him, and would clamor to drown his voice. "While they did this, he would stand calmly and look at them. His intrepidity, his commanding and animated countenance, and above all, their knowledge that he was on their side so far as it was right to be, would soon make them as eager to hear as he was to speak: and finally, they would disperse to their homes with perfect confidence that they could not do better than to leave their cause in such hands." Those who seek to restrain the excesses of contending factions, may always expect rough usage from both sides. Warren incurred the occasional displeasure of his own party; but he did not escape insult and outrage from the British. They often called him rebel, and threatened him with a rebel's doom. One day, on his way to Roxbury, to see his mother, he passed near several British officers, standing in the Neck, which joins the peninsula of Boston to the main land. Not far before him stood a gallows. One of the officers called out, "Go on, Warren, you will soon come to the gallows:" and the whole party laughed aloud. Walking directly up to them, he calmly asked, which of them had thus addressed him? Not one was bold enough to avow the insolence, and he left them, crest-fallen and ashamed.
2 We have grouped together here, the events of several years, in the rapidity of our narrative. The dependence of the judges for their salaries on the Crown, instead of on the Colonial Legislatures, (whence we date their meriting to be called creatures and panders,) began in 1772: and the tea was thrown into Boston Harbor, Dec. 16th, 1773.
Distinguished for his eloquence, our young physician was repeatedly called on to address the people, upon the great and soul-stirring topics of the times. Far the most interesting of these, was the Massacre of the Fifth of March. Our authoress has passed too slightly over this incident. Let us be a little more full.
Insults, recrimination, and outrage, between the soldiers and citizens, were at length, on the 5th of March, 1770, consummated, by the former's firing upon the latter in the streets of Boston, and killing five men—with circumstances shocking to humanity. After one of the slain (Mr. Gray,) had been shot through the body, and had fallen on the ground, a bayonet was pushed through his skull, and his brains fell out upon the pavement. This was the first bloodshed, consequent on the long festering irritations of the period. The officer (Capt. Preston) who gave the word "fire!" and six of the soldiers who had so fatally obeyed it, were in the ensuing October tried before a Boston jury: and, defended, in spite of obloquy, popular clamor, and the remonstrances of timid or prudent friends, by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., were even by that jury, acquitted. It grieves us that we cannot pause here, to bestow a merited tribute on the moral courage of the illustrious counsel who dared defend, on the steady justice of the tribunal that could acquit, and on the virtue and good sense of the multitude who, when the first paroxysm of natural excitement was over, could applaud that defence and approve that acquittal3—horrible as had been the deed—maddening as had been the antecedent circumstances. But though the killing happened not to be murder, (because the people had been the assailants,) still, the violent destruction of five human lives by an armed soldiery in the streets of a free and peaceful city, was too impressive an example of what mischiefs may come of standing armies and lawless government, to pass unimproved. It was determined to solemnize each anniversary of that day, by a public exposition of those mischiefs; by an oration, commemorative of the tragedy, and of those great principles, the disregard of which had led to its perpetration. Warren delivered two of these orations.4 His first was on the 5th of March, 1772. It is not contained in the little book now before us, but we have seen it elsewhere: and on reading it, no one need be surprised at its having well nigh urged the people, even at that early day, to forcible measures. Its masterly argumentation is equalled by its burning appeals to the passions. All the four first of these orations had wrought so powerfully upon the public mind, that the British officers declared there should be no more of them: and that whoever undertook to deliver another, should do so at the peril of life. This menace daunted others, but only roused Warren. Not wailing to be invited, he solicited the task of addressing the people; and prepared himself accordingly for the fifth anniversary of the massacre—1775. Meanwhile, the givings out of the officers, and the rumors among the populace, imported mortal hazard to him if he should persist. He persisted but the more resolutely. Early in the day, the Old South Meeting House—which, as the scene of these orations, deserves, better than Faneuil Hall, to be termed the cradle of liberty—was crowded to its very porch. Many a devoted friend of Warren's was there, determined to see him safely through, or to fall in his defence. British officers and soldiers filled the aisles, the pulpit steps, and even the pulpit. Thinking that if he pushed through them to his place, a pretext might be seized for some disturbance, which would take from him and his audience the desirable degree of calmness, he procured a ladder to be placed outside, and by it, climbed through the window into the pulpit, just as all were expecting his entrance at the door. The officers quailed and receded, at his sudden appearance and dauntless air: while he, far from sure that his first word would not be answered by a bayonet-thrust or a pistol-shot, addressed the silent, breathless multitude. His countenance was lighted up with more than its usual glow of patriotic enthusiasm: but every other face was pale; every auditor could distinctly hear the throbbings of his own heart. The speech is given at length in the appendix to the work under examination; from the original, as we may conjecture, which, in the orator's own hand writing, is now in the possession of his nephew, Dr. John C. Warren. The opening was brief and simple: but in it we discern that curbed energy, that impassioned moderation—une force contenue, une rèserve animée—so characteristic of a great mind, concentrating its powers for some gigantic effort: and as he passes on from the unaffected humility of his exordium "to the height of his great argument," we have bodily before our fancy's eye, a nobler personification of wisdom, courage, eloquence and virtue, than Homer has displayed in the form of Ulysses.
"MY EVER HONORED FELLOW CITIZENS,
"It is not without the most humiliating conviction of my want of ability, that I now appear before you; but the sense I have, of the obligation I am under to obey the calls of my country at all times, together with the animating recollection of your indulgence, exhibited upon so many occasions, has induced me once more, undeserving as I am, to throw myself upon that candor, which looks with kindness upon the feeblest efforts of an honest mind.
"You will not now expect the elegance, the learning, the fire, the enrapturing strains of eloquence, which captivated you when a Lovell, a Church, or a Hancock spake: but you will permit me to say, that with a sincerity equal to theirs, I mourn over my bleeding country: with them I weep at her distress, and with them, deeply resent the many injuries she has received from the hands of cruel and unreasonable men."