Not Your Father's Founders (26 page)

Cumberland County, Virginia
Late 1749 or early 1750–February 2, 1804
Where's Walton?

George Walton's parents died when he was an infant. (The exact year of his birth is unknown. Some sources list it as 1741, others as 1749. Either way, he was fairly young when he signed the document.) An uncle, who discouraged Walton from pursuing book learning, raised him. Nevertheless, the determined young man attended public schools in his native Virginia, and apprenticed as a carpenter. There was no better trade for building a nation, which Walton helped accomplish.

Most importantly, he was known for his anti-British politics and the pro-independence pamphlets he wrote. He had an impressive background in Georgia, where he had been elected to its Provincial Congress in 1775 and served as a member and president of the Committee of Intelligence. He was also a member and later president of the Council of Safety in 1775.

Still, he was unprepared for what he encountered when he arrived in Philadelphia. He was like the proverbial fish out of water compared to the better educated delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

There was so little coordination among the three Georgia delegates—Walton, Lyman Hall, and Button Gwinnett—that they traveled separately and arrived at different times. They almost did not arrive in time for the voting. Walton, Hall, and Gwinnett may have arrived in Philadelphia in the middle of the day, but they were completely in the dark about what was going on. The Congress was in no hurry to vet them. Even though Walton's selection as a delegate to the Congress was effective as of January 1776, he did not arrive in Philadelphia until late June. It was not until July 1 that the Secretary of the Congress approved his credentials certifying that he had been duly elected to Congress and had the right to serve. (Every delegate to the Congress had to present such credentials before they were seated and could participate on committees and vote.)

Walton, Hall, and Gwinnett put aside their differences in Philadelphia and eventually agreed with the delegates from the other colonies that signing the Declaration of Independence would be good for America. They caused a bit of consternation before the final vote.

As of July 2, 1776, most of the colonies were in accord with the Declaration of Independence as written, with a few minor differences. Neither Georgia nor South Carolina wanted the clause abolishing slavery included in it. The delegates from the two colonies succeeded in getting it removed. That opened the door to the ultimate signing of the declaration.

A copy of the Declaration of Independence arrived in Savannah, Georgia, on August 8, 1776. Archibald Bulloch, Georgia's president of the Council of Safety, read it to a happy gathering of citizens two days later. The three signers from Georgia were heroes to the patriots and traitors to the British. That could have cost Walton his life—but did not.

Walton stayed in Philadelphia until October 1777. He returned to Georgia to fight the British as a soldier. His militia unit became engaged along the state's borders, particularly near Florida, to protect the colony from Indians. Walton was in Savannah when the British attacked it in December 1778. He was wounded and taken prisoner. The British captured and held him for two years. Finally, they exchanged him for a British naval officer. Even though he had signed the Declaration of Independence, which technically made him a traitor to the British crown, the British did not hold it against him.

Walton was not about to let a wound and a two-year incarceration slow him down. Once the British released him, he roamed the backwoods of Georgia encouraging the residents to continue the fight. The exposure paid off handsomely for him. Walton was reelected to the Continental Congress, where he served from 1780–81.

After the war ended, Walton was in great demand. He served as a commissioner to negotiate a treaty with the Cherokees in Tennessee in 1783 and became the chief justice of Georgia from 1783–89. During that period he was also a member of the Augusta Board of Commissioners in 1784–85 and represented Georgia in the settlement of the boundary line between South Carolina and Georgia in 1786. There did not seem to be an end to political opportunities in Georgia for Walton.

Walton was selected as governor of Georgia in 1789 by the state assembly and was appointed the first judge of the Superior Courts of the eastern judicial circuit in 1790. Then, he was appointed in 1795 to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of James Jackson. He served for three months, from November 16, 1795, to February 20, 1796, when a successor was elected. George Walton was the last of the dysfunctional Georgia delegation to the Continental Congress to die. Dysfunctional they might have been, but they showed exceptional unity when they signed the Declaration of Independence together.

Roxbury, Massachusetts
June 11, 1741–June 17, 1775
An Incendiary Man

Warren was a serious student in his younger days. He studied at the elite Roxbury Latin School and Harvard, from which he graduated in 1759. Following graduation, he taught at Roxbury Latin for a year, then studied medicine. Politics and independence were always on his mind, however.

Warren drew British authorities' attention to himself as early as 1768, when they threatened to try his publishers, Edes and Gill, for printing a hostile newspaper essay he had written under his pseudonym, “A True Patriot.” But no local jury would indict. Later, in February 1770, a loyalist customs service agent named Ebenezer Richardson, who was being harassed by a group of young boys, fired shots into the crowd, killing the young Christopher Seider. That incident led to the Boston Massacre eleven days later, after which there was no turning back for the patriots.

Like so many of his fellow radicals, Warren was particularly incensed at the Intolerable Acts. In fairness, the British did not make the acts effective immediately. They gave the colonists an opportunity to accept them. Instead, the colonists grew more defiant. That defiance eventually cost Warren his life.

As the conflict between the British government and the patriots widened, Warren became more active in politics. His fellow agitators appointed him to the Boston Committee of Correspondence in 1773. He took his duties seriously. Twice in the 1773–75 timeframe he delivered speeches to commemorate the Boston Massacre. On the second occasion, in March 1775, he did so while Boston was teeming with British troops.

In addition to his duties on the Committee of Correspondence, Warren found time to draft the Suffolk Resolves, a prelude to the Declaration of Independence, which the Continental Congress ultimately endorsed.

Warren also served as president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which the patriots formed to bypass the British government's laws intended to strip them of self-rule. Ironically, the Congress ruled every community in Massachusetts except Boston, where most of the radicals lived. The British had too large a presence there.

Like so many of his compatriots, Warren put his life on the line as a politician and patriot. He took it one step farther than many of the other patriots. Warren also served in the military as a major general in the Massachusetts militia. Thus, when events spiraled out of control in April 1775, he was ready to sacrifice his life for the patriots' cause—which he did.

Warren was one of the last patriot leaders left in Boston in mid-1775. Many of them were en route to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia or hiding from the British in other towns. The British were determined to find them.

When the British sent a patrol to find and arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were “vacationing” in nearby Concord, Warren dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawes to alert the two men—an act that became legendary and was immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poem, “Paul Revere's Ride.”

On April 19, 1775, British and American troops clashed at Lexington and Concord in the first battles of the Revolutionary War. Warren volunteered to fight at the Battle of Bunker Hill as a private—even though he outranked Colonel William Prescott, who was in actual command.

Joseph Warren died at Bunker Hill as he had lived: heroically. The British did not accord him any respect after his death, though. After the battle, British soldiers stripped Warren's body of his clothing and bayoneted him until he was unrecognizable. Then they shoved his remains into a shallow ditch. His brothers and Paul Revere exhumed his body ten months later.

Abigail Adams lamented Warren's death. She wrote to John Adams on July 5, 1775, “We want him in the Senate; we want him in his profession; we want him in the field. We mourn for the citizen, the senator, the physician, and the warrior. May we have others raised up in his room.”