The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, 17 June 1775; 1786

The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, 17 June 1775; 1786
by
John Trumbull (1756—1843)

Oil on canvas; 65.1 x 95.6 cm (25 5/8 x 37 5/8 in). Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.

According to Joseph J. Ellis (Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence, 2013): Warren had bravely stood his ground at Bunker Hill until the redcoats overwhelmed his redoubt; he had been shot in the back of the head as he turned to escape, and then his dead body had been bayoneted by several British soldiers caught up in the heat of battle. The next day, an execution squad that was finishing of the American wounded made a point of decapitating Warren and displaying his head on a spit, thereby ensuring his martyrdom.

The unattractive truth was that the arrival of the provisional treaty ending the war in April 1783 made the Continental Army superfluous, and the sooner it disappeared, the better. Congress eventually voted to provide full pay for five years for officers in lieu of half pay for life, but doing so was a purely rhetorical exercise, since there was no money in the federal coffers to pay anyone. Even that meaningless commitment generated widespread criticism, especially in New England, where returning officers were greeted with newspaper editorials describing them as blood-beaked vultures feeding at the public trough. At least in retrospect, the dissolution of the Continental Army in the spring of 1783 was one of the most poignant scenes in American history, as the men who had stayed the course and won the war were ushered off without pay, with paper pensions and only grudging recognition of their service.

— Joseph J. Ellis
The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783—1789 (2015)