This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people.

Little has been known about one of the most important figures in early American history,

Dr. Joseph Warren, an architect of the colonial rebellion, yet after his death, his life and legend

faded. Here to tell the story is Jeffrey McKenna, author of Saving Dr. Warren,

a true patriot. Let's take a listen. Dr. Joseph Warren was involved so early in the struggle

for our freedoms that at that point it was just the fact that these colonists had come over

at great sacrifice to be here on the American continent

and that they had come here specifically for freedoms religious freedoms and so Dr. Joseph

Warren was adamant that those freedoms could not be encroached on and that they needed to be

respected and that they just needed to be treated like English citizens.

And that was the big issue is that the crown was not treating them equal to English citizens.

And Dr. Warren was in the forefront of saying, that's not what our forefathers came over here for.

And they sacrificed a lot to come over here and to build

what we have and we cannot allow that to just be taken away. And so that was why he was so adamant

in getting in the early, early stages of the American Revolution. There had been a major event that had taken place in the United States that would have affected everybody, including Dr. Joseph Warren.

He was a little young, so he didn't actually engage in the fighting, but it was the French and Indian War that took place.

And the Crown, England, invested a lot of money in protecting the colonists during the

French and Indian war and so the crown wanted to receive money's back and so they imposed taxes

that the Americans were not used to paying and the stamp act was maybe the first act that really got everybody upset and excited

because there was going to be a tax on anything that required a certain stamp and that was all

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