The museum dedicated to the memory of Dr Joseph Warren proposed by our county historical society here in namesake Warren County, NY has not and will not come to fruition.
County leaders refused to fund a whole museum dedicated to a man who never set foot within a hundred miles or more of our region. I didn’t think it was a great idea. I’m not a big proponent of the Great Man Theory of history, the idea that heroic figures drive history one way or another, and Dr Warren is considered, with some reason, to be a great man. An intellect, a leader, an inspiration, a heroic figure who died fairly young with a musket ball right between the eyes at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775.
He was 34 years old. The British buried him in a mass grave but his body was later exhumed and was identified by Paul Revere by the dentures Revere had made him.
Warren was the eldest son of Joseph Warren who died after falling out of an apple tree. He married Elizabeth Hooten who had a considerable dowry, which made her a very good marriage prospect for a young man, and he fathered 4 children with her. She died in 1773 at a young age.
Warren attended Harvard and he was right in the thick of the radical element around Boston in the years leading to the Revolution. He was left in charge when Sam Adams and John Hancock were away at the Continental Congress meetings. He was the one who gave orders to Revere and Dawes to make their midnight ride warning that the British were coming. And he died because he refused to assert his position as an officer at Bunker Hill instead serving as an ordinary infantryman with the regular old working stiffs of Boston and a number of Black and Native American slaves to boot. That decision got him shot, did I mention, right between the eyeballs? It is the stuff of legend. What great heroism! We should all look to Warren as an example to aspire to.
As an aside I’d like to point out that it seems extra unfair to send your Black and Native American slaves to risk their lives in battle for the “freedom” of their masters, but they were not Great Men and we don’t know a lot about them because of that.
Anyway, I can imagine some non Great Man themed museums that might be worth building with bed tax money.
How about the colonial fruit tree museum? As we know fruit trees figured prominently in the eventual founding of our nation. Dr Warren’s dad fell out of one and died, George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, and Johnny Appleseed opened the lands of Native Americans for settlers by planting apple trees to come settle by.
Or the museum of American patriot dentures? In colonial times people’s teeth just fell out of their heads at very young ages. The Great Men were able to afford dentures and they went on to found our nation. The poor people, slaves, and indentured servants (indentured? See what I did there) had to gum their gruel and never made anything of themselves. Warren had dentures before he was 34. George Washington is famous for having dentures, tho I have no idea when he first got them. He was already an old man of 43 when the Continental Congress named him commander of the colonial army. People forget that the life expectancy at the time was about 40 years. It was a hard life what with falling out of apple trees, losing your teeth, getting shot between the eyes, and (on the women’s side) bearing a bunch of children without modern medical care.
Speaking of the ladies, why not a museum dedicated to the women of the colonies? Behind many of the Great Men were the women who had basically no rights of their own but brought large dowry’s to a marriage allowing the Great Man to buy powdered wigs, rouge, and silk stockings so that he could present himself as a great man in public and be admired for his masculinity and have his portrait painted for posterity and for the kids he left behind after he fell out of a tree or was shot between the eyes to remember their pa.
Another aside here, when Warren died his 4 young children were orphaned, their mother having died in 1773. I don’t know what happened to the dowry money from their mom but Benedict Arnold, of all people, provided a trust of $500 to care for the kids until they were adults and he petitioned the congress to provide an officer’s pension. Arnold eventually turned out to be a traitor, of course, but before that he was a Great Man, and he seemed like a decent sort, too. In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling maybe there will be an effort to excuse his selling of classified documents to the enemy. Potentially the drawing detailing the fortifications at West Point were his personal intellectual property and in light of recent court decisions it might be argued he had every right to sell them to the highest bidder.
I know I already said that I didn’t think it was a great idea to dedicate a whole museum to Dr Joseph Warren here in Warren County, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is something to be learned from the life of a pretty great guy cut short by a bullet between the eyes. Surely it made an impression on his friends, guys like Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, Henry Knox, Benedict Arnold … and others who knew of him by reputation at the very least likely including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton (another guy who took a bullet) and pretty much the whole list of founding fathers. When they got together many years later to write the Constitution it had to be in the back of their minds that men, even Great Men, could drop dead at any moment. They could fall out of a tree or be shot in a duel - you thought I was going to say ‘right between the eyes,’ but I didn’t - or they could just get sick and the leeches didn’t remove the evil humors. So they wrote down, right there in the Constitution, a plan for succession of leadership in the event that a President of the new United States died in office. They were well aware that Great Men were dime a dozen. A dollar could get you more Great Men than could serve as President in a whole lifetime. Think about all the great founding fathers who never became president, including Dr Warren.
It’s a darn good thing the founders created a line of succession because we’ve needed it 8 times so far. About 1 in every 6 of our presidents died in office. At least 2 others came very close to dying, Ronald Reagan after being shot (but not in the head), and most recently Donald Trump who very nearly died of Covid. Wilson might as well have died and examples like him and FDR made people consider that there needed to be a way to replace a president who was incapacitated physically or mentally, so they came up with the 25th Amendment to replace a president who could no longer cut the mustard.
With the exception of Andrew Johnson who replaced Abe Lincoln (guy who took a bullet to the head) all of the other Great Men who replaced the elected Great Man did a respectable job in office. Some, like Teddy Roosevelt (shot once but survived it), Lyndon Johnson (replaced a guy who took a bullet to the head), and even Harry Truman did a pretty good job. It turns out that Great Men are pretty much always dime a dozen though it might be a bit more expensive accounting for inflation. Kids these days will look at you like you’re weird if you talk to them about penny candy, for instance. Recently in our history we’ve had some innovations allowing even women to be Great Men. Think of that! Our pool of Great Men is even bigger than it was at the time the Constitution was signed. Imagine if a bunch of dopey men who might fall out of an apple tree at any moment could be Great Men, how amazing might a woman be as a Great Man?
It all almost seems like it isn’t a matter of Great Men divinely suited to high office that makes our country great. As if we ditched the whole concept of religion in government along with King George III. Maybe it is a matter of a reasonably well considered plan for a government that works to some extent even if the biggest narcissistic criminal dope somehow attains the presidency. Once, anyway.
It’s almost as if the leader isn’t the most important person in government. Like at Bunker Hill. It wasn’t all about the leaders there, it was about the people who stood shoulder to shoulder, and even if a Great Man fell the rest went on whether they were carpenters or farmers or blacksmiths or even slaves. I mean, sure, the colonials basically lost that battle but it was more out of lack of powder and ammunition, let’s not get sidetracked on silly details. I’m trying to make a point here.
So in the end I think I will support a concept of the Joseph Warren Museum of Totally Replaceable Great Men who Could Die on January 22nd and I’d Be Totally Fine With It. Or the Joseph Warren Museum of Totally Replaceable Great Men who Step Aside at the Convention and are Replaced By Someone Else and We All Get Behind That Person for the Good of the Nation. Or maybe it could be the Joseph Warren Museum of There is One Guy Totally Unfit for Office and Pretty Much Anyone Else Could Step In and Save the Fucking Country so Stop Being Goddamned Babies - I took a Bullet for You Right Between the Eyes, Don’t Let Me Down Now.
The museum is likely to need a very large sign, but there’s plenty of bed tax money available.
Great idea!!
I don't desire to be shot between the eyes, but it could happen if a second civil war comes to pass. I have a great grandfather who fell out of a second story hotel window in Oconomowoc WI, when working for the Barnum and Bailey circus. (I think about that pretty often.) I had an aunt who spent years trying to prove that we were descendants of Dr. Joseph Warren, because we had a lot of Warrens in my Mother's family who were early settlers in eastern Iowa, and every generation had a medical doctor. Turned out they were from Delaware, with no info on how they got there, but probably from the Midlands in England. Let's have a museum for Elise Stefanik. If she turns out to be a great woman, we will be ready for that; if she disappears from history, it will be good for all who follow us to know who and what she was.