Bannon's War Room - July 04, 2024


Episode 3732： WarRoom Independence Day Special

Topics
slavery debate Hessians and British expeditionary force Battle of Long Island
Hosted by
Steve Bannon
Mentioned
Patrick K. O'Donnell Dickinson Benjamin Franklin Samuel Adams Michael Corbin James Hickey John Adams Cornwallis Greenwood Cemetery Steve Thomas Jefferson Jim Rickards John Glover Marblehead Englishmen Strategic Intelligence George Washington Tom Wilkin Hans Rifleman Mordecai Gist and 15 more
Episode 3729： Eve Of EU Election; Abolish Department Of Education Episode 3734： Victory In England

Episode Stats


Length

52 minutes

Words per minute

150.54

Word count

7,928

Sentence count

632

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of the show, Patrick K. O'Donnell talks about the Declaration of Independence and the War for Independence, and the impact it had on American history. He also discusses the Revolution and the Civil War.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This is something altogether unexpected, not only a declaration of our independence, but
00:00:22.520 of the rights of all men.
00:00:30.000 This is well said, sir, very, very well said.
00:00:38.180 The Christian king of Great Britain has waged cruel war against human nature itself in the 1.00
00:00:44.940 persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery 0.63
00:00:50.960 in another hemisphere.
00:00:52.520 Yes, you lay the evils of slavery at the feet of the king, but you say nothing of slavery
00:01:00.700 itself, sir.
00:01:01.700 Now, surely, if the trade is outlawed but ownership is not, then those unfortunate negroes still 1.00
00:01:08.580 in servitude will become a more lucrative commodity.
00:01:13.700 Well, that's not what I intended, Dr. Franklin.
00:01:21.500 Slavery is an abomination and must be loudly proclaimed as such, but I own that neither
00:01:25.720 I nor any man has any immediate solution to the problem.
00:01:29.880 Oh, but tis no matter, the issue before us is independence and not emancipation.
00:01:36.060 Oh, Dr. Franklin, this document is...
00:01:38.060 It's something, something our friends in the Congress will debate, but I would be very surprised
00:01:44.260 if they will countenance an attack on slavery.
00:01:47.060 No.
00:01:54.440 We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal, et cetera.
00:02:07.340 Sacred and undeniable.
00:02:11.740 It smacks of the pulpit.
00:02:12.740 Does it?
00:02:13.740 Ah.
00:02:14.740 These truths are self-evident, are they not?
00:02:28.740 Perhaps.
00:02:33.740 Self-evident, then.
00:02:38.740 Self-evident?
00:02:39.740 Self-evident.
00:02:46.740 Do not mistake me, sir.
00:02:49.740 I share your sentiment.
00:02:52.740 Every single word was precisely chosen.
00:02:56.740 I assure you of that, Dr. Franklin.
00:02:59.740 Yes, but yours will not be the only hand in this document.
00:03:04.740 It cannot be.
00:03:06.740 They will try to mangle it, and they may succeed.
00:03:09.740 There may be expressions which I would not have inserted if I had drawn it up, but I
00:03:15.740 will defend every word of it.
00:03:19.740 Well, that's what I believe.
00:03:26.740 This is a marvelous invention, Mr. Jefferson.
00:03:30.740 Yes, I went through a number of variations.
00:03:33.740 This is by far the most successful.
00:03:36.740 The simplest is always the best.
00:03:38.740 It's two seats, and the top one swivels on rollers made from the window sash pulleys.
00:03:46.740 Oh, most ingenious.
00:03:51.740 Lift up your hands, ye heroes, and swear with proud disdain.
00:03:57.740 The wretch that would ensnare you shall spread his net in vain.
00:04:03.740 Should Europe empty, all her force will meet them in array. 0.99
00:04:08.740 And fight, and shout, and shout, and fight for free America.
00:04:15.740 We led fair freedom hither, and lo, the desert smiled.
00:04:21.740 A paradise of pleasure was opened in the wild.
00:04:26.740 Your harvest, bold Americans, no power shall snatch away.
00:04:32.740 Preserve, preserve, preserve your rights in a free American hay.
00:04:38.740 Torn from a world of tyrants beneath this western sky.
00:04:44.740 We've formed a new dominion, a land of liberty.
00:04:50.740 The world shall own we're free even here, and such will ever be.
00:04:56.740 Huzzah, ha-huzzah, ha-huzzah, for free America.
00:05:02.740 Some future days shall crown us the masters of the main.
00:05:08.740 Our fleets shall speak in thunder to England, France, and Spain.
00:05:14.740 Nations o'er the ocean spread shall tremble and obey.
00:05:20.740 The prince who rules by freedom's laws in North America.
00:05:32.740 Okay, welcome.
00:05:33.740 It's Thursday, July, the 4th of July, in the year of our Lord, 2024.
00:05:37.740 Not a better time to talk about liberty.
00:05:38.740 Of course, the open there is the magnificent HBO, I guess it was special, series, John Adams.
00:05:47.740 It's hard to believe.
00:05:48.740 I think that's over 14 years old, 16.
00:05:50.740 If you have not watched it, you have not watched it with your children, make sure you get a chance to.
00:05:55.740 It's just extraordinary.
00:05:57.740 And the music that we use a lot, and we do Revolutionary War, Civil War, is Diane Taraz.
00:06:03.740 You go on her site, you put on YouTube or her site.
00:06:08.740 I can't recommend more highly to order her Songs of the Revolution and Songs of the Civil War.
00:06:14.740 She does a ton of Americana.
00:06:16.740 Just magnificent stuff.
00:06:17.740 The greatest combat historian we've got of his generation, Patrick K. O'Donnell, joins us.
00:06:23.740 Just like that's Tom Wilkerson, who just recently passed away.
00:06:28.740 He's playing Dr. Benjamin Franklin.
00:06:30.740 He's a magnificent, extraordinary actor.
00:06:32.740 You probably remember him as General Cornwallis, Lord Cornwallis in The Patriot.
00:06:37.740 There he's playing Dr. Franklin, and he lays out our show today.
00:06:44.740 The first part's going to be about independence, and the second part will be a little bit about emancipation,
00:06:49.740 what he was saying and giving some wise guidance.
00:06:52.740 We've got to get independent first before we can deal with the slavery issue, or we'll never be able to get to this.
00:06:58.740 Patrick K. O'Donnell, your thoughts as we open up.
00:07:00.740 We're going to talk about the combat history around the Fourth of July and our independence.
00:07:04.740 The second part of the show, we're going to get into also what people forget, a lot of people forget,
00:07:09.740 is that the great battle that really decided, or I shouldn't say decided because a lot came after,
00:07:14.740 but changed the direction of the war between the states, the Civil War, the battle at Gettysburg and at Vicksburg,
00:07:20.740 both on 3 July of 1863.
00:07:25.740 Patrick K. O'Donnell joins us.
00:07:27.740 Your thoughts, sir?
00:07:29.740 It's an honor to be here, Steve.
00:07:31.740 And it's always a sacred time on the Fourth of July to talk about the greatest generation,
00:07:40.740 and that greatest generation was our founding generation because of what they had to go against.
00:07:45.740 The greatest army at the time, the greatest navy at the time, and even a civil war among fellow Americans.
00:07:53.740 But it was their ideals of freedom and liberty, the idea of America, which will change the world as we know it.
00:08:02.740 And it continues to change the world.
00:08:04.740 This is what we're really all about.
00:08:06.740 And it is formed at this time.
00:08:09.740 Let me go back a little bit further, though, to 1769.
00:08:15.740 And I'm going to take our listeners on board.
00:08:19.740 Hang on.
00:08:20.740 Hang on.
00:08:21.740 I want to do this, but here's the reason.
00:08:23.740 I want people to understand something.
00:08:25.740 In the Revolution Civil War, these were fights.
00:08:28.740 These were determined on the battlefield in political gatherings of conferences and British commons, in the halls of Congress, in the Civil War.
00:08:38.740 But to pull it down, these were hard-fought kinetic wars.
00:08:45.740 And you had a tremendous philosophy and debate and negotiations.
00:08:51.740 You had all of that.
00:08:53.740 But you must look at it because so many people forgot.
00:08:57.740 And look, I love the fact of you're at the beach.
00:09:00.740 The Jaws movie was about the Fourth of July weekend.
00:09:03.740 You're going to baseball double hitters, hot dogs, the backyard barbecue, all of it.
00:09:09.740 But so many people, particularly the younger generation, they think, well, hey, they came out and negotiated this great thing and wrote this great document.
00:09:16.740 It spoke to all mankind, as Dr. Franklin and John Adams are telling Thomas Jefferson there.
00:09:24.740 But, hey, that was kind of in the – that's kind of close to the railhead.
00:09:28.740 You had things that led up to it and what drove it, and then they had this negotiation to declare the independence.
00:09:33.740 But then you had, what, six, seven, eight years of a fight.
00:09:37.740 And in the middle of that fight, we're fighting a revolution against an imperial power.
00:09:42.740 Oh, by the way, we're also fighting an eternal civil war against ourselves between the Tories that were here and the patriots.
00:09:49.740 And the one-third in the middle of kind of said, yeah, I'll see how this is coming out, and this is what modern America is.
00:09:55.740 With that as a table setter, Patrick K. O'Donnell, take us back to 1769, sir.
00:10:00.740 Yeah, I mean, Steve, the kinetic war or the battles led the political situation, and this would take – this would span years of war.
00:10:11.740 It's America – America is made by war, and it's a miracle, absolute miracle that we achieved independence the greatest – against the greatest power at the time.
00:10:22.740 But in many ways, it begins many years before the American Revolution.
00:10:28.740 And I'll take you – the listeners back to 1769, and we're on board a small packet ship called the Pit Packet.
00:10:37.740 And it's a merchant ship from Marblehead, Massachusetts, and they're returning from Spain with a cargo of salt.
00:10:44.740 And they're just going on their way, but suddenly a royal frigate pulls up alongside them, and it's not a friendly visit.
00:10:53.740 They are there to kidnap everybody on board and impress them in the Royal Navy.
00:10:59.740 The Royal Navy is the largest Navy at the time.
00:11:01.740 It's the most powerful, but they're in constant need of men to man their ships, the hundreds of ships that they have.
00:11:08.740 And they're not only – they're not willing to pay them, they're willing to just kidnap people to do it.
00:11:14.740 Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on.
00:11:16.740 Hang on as a naval officer and my beloved Royal Navy that was the – that was basically the forerunner of the American Navy.
00:11:23.740 They're doing press gangs, and they're stopping ships and pressing sailors because there ain't a lot of people volunteering for this.
00:11:30.740 And the reason they're not volunteering is just not to pay.
00:11:33.740 This was one of the greatest institutions man's ever created.
00:11:37.740 It basically was the foundational element of an amazing empire.
00:11:40.740 And the institution itself is extraordinary, what it accomplished, et cetera.
00:11:45.740 But man, oh man, you want to talk about the lived experience not being the best, Patrick K. O'Donnell.
00:11:52.740 Why did they have to press gang them off of other ships?
00:11:55.740 Because it was a life of service too. You weren't allowed to leave, and you were paid a pittance.
00:12:02.740 It wasn't quite slavery, but it was darn near close to it.
00:12:05.740 So can you imagine you're being boarded by the Royal Navy, and it's here that we have one of the first instances where Americans fight back.
00:12:15.740 There's a British officer in his boarding party that boards the pit packet, and interestingly enough, a sack of salt spills out in front of the two groups that sort of are on the top of the deck of the ship.
00:12:30.740 And Michael Corbett, who is a tough Massachusetts sailor, takes his foot and rubs it across the salt and makes a line and says, if you cross it, you are a dead man to the British officer.
00:12:44.740 And the British officer is not at all dissuaded.
00:12:48.740 In fact, he takes a little bit of snuff and just nonchalantly crosses that line, and he receives a harpoon to the neck as a result.
00:12:57.740 And then the men then fight back with hatchets and whatever else they have, and it's a bit of a bloodbath.
00:13:03.740 Corbett slays the officer, but eventually they're just overwhelmed by the massive number of Royal Navy sailors there, and they press them on the ship.
00:13:16.740 But it's John Adams, who is America's really first super lawyer that defends Michael Corbett and the crew, and he gets them all.
00:13:27.740 And later, it's atrocities like this that build up over time.
00:13:34.740 And the next one is the Boston Massacre.
00:13:39.740 When the Boston Massacre, Adams comes in and defends the British soldiers, does he not?
00:13:46.740 He does, and he gets those British soldiers off as well in a trial.
00:13:53.740 It's increasing.
00:13:55.740 It's increasing.
00:13:56.740 This one gets to Frank.
00:13:57.740 Let's go back to the Corbett because this story is not told enough.
00:14:00.740 The British officer, the Royal Navy, they're not in the business of taking a lot of lip from somebody.
00:14:06.740 Okay?
00:14:07.740 No, they're not.
00:14:08.740 They're the Royal Navy.
00:14:09.740 It's not.
00:14:10.740 They're the Royal Navy, and you're not.
00:14:11.740 And so when he nonchalantly crosses the line, because it's like it's a gentleman's honor.
00:14:16.740 You're like some deckhand.
00:14:17.740 You're insulting me. 1.00
00:14:18.740 He takes a harpoon to the neck. 0.99
00:14:20.740 Okay? 1.00
00:14:21.740 A harpoon to the neck. 0.99
00:14:23.740 This is what Franklin said about Americans. 0.96
00:14:26.740 He says, we're not British anymore.
00:14:28.740 We've created something here in this new experience that's different.
00:14:32.740 It's rougher.
00:14:33.740 It's got more grit.
00:14:35.740 But we're different.
00:14:38.740 Americans are different than the British. 1.00
00:14:41.740 Right there, you saw it with the harpoon to the neck.
00:14:43.740 I think that's grit and stick-to-itiveness, although they got slaughtered shortly thereafter
00:14:49.740 and impressed.
00:14:50.740 Press ganger.
00:14:51.740 Okay, short commercial break.
00:14:52.740 Patrick K. O'Donnell, the author of the new bestseller, Unvanquished, about our own Civil War.
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00:16:17.740 Lift up your hands, ye heroes, and swear with proud disdain.
00:16:26.740 The wretch that would ensnare you shall spread his net in vain.
00:16:30.740 Okay, welcome back.
00:16:32.740 So, Patrick, we got the Boston Massacre.
00:16:35.740 The tensions are increasing, are they not, sir?
00:16:44.740 Atrocity after another, and then 1773 hits.
00:16:49.740 And another thing that is, you know, fascinating and sort of a repeat of history, if you will,
00:16:54.740 a smallpox epidemic hits Marblehead and the Northern colonies and other places.
00:17:01.740 And it's here that the divisions are even wider between those that are patriots, if you will,
00:17:09.740 and those that are loyal to the crown.
00:17:11.740 And it's interesting, the patriots under John Glover and other men of Marblehead come up with a fairly novel solution.
00:17:19.740 They decide to create a vaccination center where they inoculate people on a place called Cat Island.
00:17:29.740 And this doesn't go over well with the loyalists in the area.
00:17:35.740 They initially decide to invest in the hospital jointly, but then they see it as a wedge issue,
00:17:41.740 and a potential to politically divide the town.
00:17:45.740 And things are not going well.
00:17:48.740 There's a little bit of an outbreak from the island.
00:17:51.740 So what they do is they get about 15 or 20 men, and they row across the Marblehead Bay,
00:17:59.740 and they torch Cat Island and the facility, the hospital that's there.
00:18:05.740 And there's people inside.
00:18:07.740 I mean, you talk about political violence, very, very severe.
00:18:11.740 Luckily, nobody dies.
00:18:13.740 The place goes up in flames.
00:18:15.740 The investors lose thousands of pounds of their money, sterling, that they use to buy this thing.
00:18:21.740 And then what happens next is they turn to the law to try to take care of the perpetrators.
00:18:26.740 But what happens is a massive mob, the loyalists have control of the mob in this situation,
00:18:32.740 where 1,000 people assault the jail where these men were held with crowbars and axes and free them.
00:18:39.740 And then the patriots in the town, their homes are surrounded by a massive mob.
00:18:45.740 And it's here that one of the great figures in The Indispensables, John Glover,
00:18:51.740 who is one of the true unsung heroes of the American Revolution, sort of has one of his finest moments.
00:18:58.740 He has a four-pound cannon.
00:19:01.740 You can own cannons, by the way, during or before the American Revolution.
00:19:05.740 And he had to have them to protect the ships.
00:19:08.740 So he rolled a four-pound cannon into the foyer of his home.
00:19:12.740 And as the mob surrounded it, he ordered men in the home to thrust open the door.
00:19:18.740 And he was there with a lighted torch and a cannon next to him.
00:19:22.740 And it was more or less get-off-my-lawn moment.
00:19:25.740 And through his forceful words, he was able to disperse the mob that was about to assault him in his home.
00:19:33.740 But this is just sort of another example of the grit of these patriots.
00:19:40.740 And the thing is that the British, particularly with expeditionary forces, I mean, they – the whole Lexington and Concord started with troops in Boston that had to go and get to the arsenal.
00:19:52.740 Just like Harper's Ferry, there's really one of the kickoff elements with John Brown in the Civil War.
00:19:57.740 Arsenals are important because the government's got weapons in arsenal.
00:20:02.740 They got powder and shot in arsenals.
00:20:04.740 And you can't make this stuff easily, and you can't transport it.
00:20:07.740 So in these central locations, whether it's Harper Ferry in – at that time right up the Potomac from Washington, D.C., or whether it's in Lexington and Concord, those – they want to – people want to take control of those arsenals.
00:20:24.740 Do they not, sir?
00:20:25.740 It's about power and control.
00:20:28.740 But it's also about a political revolution that sweeps the colonies in 1774.
00:20:36.740 It's our ideals of liberty and freedom.
00:20:39.740 Elbridge Gerry, for instance, who's one of the founders, who's a member of the Indispensables, who's a congressman eventually from Marblehead, is instrumental along with his mentor, Samuel Adams, in coming up with our ideals of freedom and liberty, which are groundbreaking for the time.
00:20:58.740 And this political movement is sweeping the times.
00:21:02.740 And it's at this moment that General Gage and the Crown are threatened.
00:21:07.740 Their authority is threatened.
00:21:09.740 Their power and control is threatened.
00:21:11.740 And they realize that the colonies have guns, but they don't have the crucial element, which is gunpowder.
00:21:18.740 And interestingly enough, there was arsenals that produced gunpowder during the French and Indian War, but they decided to outsource it because it was cheaper to India.
00:21:29.740 So production in the colonies had practically ceased to exist, and gunpowder was exceptionally scarce.
00:21:36.740 And it was this weak point, this Achilles tendon, Achilles heel, that General Gage seized upon.
00:21:43.740 He wanted to seize all of the gunpowder that he could.
00:21:47.740 And it becomes – Lexington and Concord is the last step of several arsenal raids that occurred months prior to that, where the Crown was stealing or seizing any gunpowder that the colonists had.
00:22:03.740 And they knew that if Americans were not armed, they could easily be annihilated, just like they had done to all of the other elements of the British Empire that ever had rose up against them. 0.65
00:22:17.740 And so they were seizing powder at all of the arsenals, the Somerville powder rate being a massive one in September 1774, which creates a massive uprising.
00:22:28.740 10,000 people descend upon Boston itself, and the Crown is absolutely alarmed.
00:22:34.740 And things kind of continue forward to Fort William and Mary in December 1774, where the first – arguably the first shots of the Revolutionary War are fired.
00:22:47.740 The Crown has a massive fort there.
00:22:49.740 There are hundreds of barrels of powder.
00:22:51.740 There are about 200 cannon of various sorts.
00:22:55.740 And the colonists seized the fort.
00:22:58.740 And it's here that there are about five or six loyalist defenders and Americans in there that are loyal to the Crown that try to defend it against overwhelming odds, fire some shots, and eventually they seize the powder.
00:23:11.740 But this all leads up to Lexington and Concord, as you mentioned.
00:23:14.740 And it's a gauge that has perfect information as to where the Americans are assembling powder supplies and weapons, and they're at Lexington and Concord.
00:23:25.740 And it's April 1775, and they send a surgical strike to seize those munitions and cannon.
00:23:37.740 And it does not go well.
00:23:40.740 There's – you know, the first shots are fired at Lexington.
00:23:44.740 And it's to this day we do not know who fired the first shot.
00:23:50.740 But the Americans –
00:23:52.740 But, you know –
00:23:53.740 As you pointed out –
00:23:54.740 Yeah.
00:23:55.740 Hold it.
00:23:56.740 Misinformation.
00:23:57.740 Misinformation coming from the committees of correspondence, which is nothing but the war room at the time.
00:24:02.740 The shots came from the British, right? 0.78
00:24:04.740 The British go to great lengths to say it wasn't them.
00:24:07.740 Because remember, it's very important in war, whether that is the Revolutionary War to say at Lexington, at the Green there, the British fired first.
00:24:18.740 It's very important for the Union to say in Lincoln to say the South fired first at Fort Sumner.
00:24:23.740 It's very important in the – if you look at our three turnings, it's very important in World War II at Pearl Harbor to say the Japanese fired first.
00:24:32.740 There's a commonality.
00:24:34.740 You want to have – you want to have a moral justification for the nastiness that's about to come.
00:24:39.740 Is it not correct, Patrick O'Donnell?
00:24:42.740 That's true.
00:24:43.740 That's absolutely true.
00:24:44.740 And then you've got a situation where these founders were also lawyers.
00:24:49.740 And they wisely – after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, as they bring out in The Indispensables, it's the marble headers that are in charge of gathering signed affidavits from not only the members of the militia that were either wounded during – in the process, but also British soldiers.
00:25:10.740 They construct the narrative, and they construct the narrative, and it's the narrative that is crucial.
00:25:16.740 They also have to get the narrative across the Atlantic, which they do with the fastest shift that they can.
00:25:22.740 And it's a bombshell.
00:25:24.740 It changes the world.
00:25:27.740 Let's go back to one of the most American of all – when Franklin would say in these debates later in Independence Hall when they would say, well, we're British subjects.
00:25:39.740 So Dickinson and others from Pennsylvania said we're at the beginning stages of the greatest empire in the world.
00:25:44.740 You see what they're – Clive and these guys are doing in India.
00:25:46.740 Why do we want to get out of this?
00:25:47.740 We want to get in it even more.
00:25:49.740 And maybe we have a parliament here or maybe we get proportional representation, but we shouldn't leave.
00:25:55.740 We're Englishmen.
00:25:56.740 And Franklin makes this big case that we're not English anymore.
00:25:59.740 This country is so different.
00:26:02.740 It's so massive that what these wildernesses are – the Indians themselves are a whole different type of both friend sometimes and ally and also a foe.
00:26:11.740 That's different.
00:26:12.740 The most American part of the early stages of the Revolutionary War is gauges – the British army is pound for pound the best professional army in the world just like the Royal Navy was the best.
00:26:24.740 But they're pound for pound.
00:26:25.740 When they suck them out to Lexington and Concord, it's the trip back that you have the true American form of guerrilla warfare and insurgent warfare.
00:26:35.740 Tell us about that.
00:26:36.740 The trip back with this – quite frankly, this amazing British regulars.
00:26:41.740 They were cut to pieces over the time they got back to – actually got back to Cambridge, were they not, sir?
00:26:47.740 They were.
00:26:48.740 This is called Battle Road for a reason, and it was a bloody gauntlet that the 750 or so British soldiers that were part of this expedition to seize the weapons and gunpowder had to endure.
00:27:03.740 And it was a bloodbath.
00:27:04.740 And as you mentioned, Steve, the men that were – the militia, which were thousands strong, had massively – they called it an alarm.
00:27:15.740 They had massively assembled, and they then flanked the road and hid behind rocks and other trees, obstructions, and then basically pelted this British expeditionary force that had gone to seize the powder with everything they had.
00:27:32.740 And it was a fight for survival.
00:27:34.740 As this was happening, though, the British were also raiding people's homes, and there was a lot of sort of back and forth here and there on that that was very bloody.
00:27:47.740 And the one home, for instance, was this bill of blood.
00:27:51.740 Let me – we're going to take a short commercial break.
00:27:55.740 One thing about reading Patrick O'Donnell's books about this time, The Indispensables and Washington Immortals, and other histories is the absolute brutality of the American Revolution.
00:28:09.740 You can't separate them, and you have to understand – you have to immerse yourself in that to understand what the fight for liberty and freedom entailed.
00:28:16.740 I want to warn you of a huge change that could be coming to our money and our bank accounts.
00:28:22.740 First, think back to 9-11, shortly after the government pushed through the Patriot Act.
00:28:26.740 This gave the government power to spy on innocent Americans by monitoring our phone and email and tracking our movement across the Internet.
00:28:34.740 Now, Jim Rickards, editor of the independent financial newsletter Strategic Intelligence and New York Times bestselling author, is warning about a coming event that could elevate this governmental surveillance to a terrifying new level.
00:28:48.740 In fact, some of the guests I've had on the war room believe that the government will soon expand their powers to track our every move.
00:28:55.740 If we say the wrong things on social media, donate to the wrong causes, buy firearms, or even vote MAGA, the government may be able to shut us out of our bank accounts.
00:29:06.740 I can't say for sure if this will happen, but it's an interesting and dire warning.
00:29:12.740 Fortunately, Jim Rickards, an American patriot and friend of mine, has made it his mission to educate us on what he believes is coming and how to protect yourself from the possibility of programmable money.
00:29:24.740 Watch Jim's warning video now before it's censored like I've been in the past.
00:29:30.740 Go to RickardsWarRoom.com.
00:29:32.740 That's RickardsWarRoom.com now to see the video.
00:29:36.740 I remind Mr. Rutledge and Mr. Dwayne that blood has been shed.
00:29:43.740 Massachusetts blood.
00:29:45.740 While we debate, our militia is left without munitions, without arms, without even the slightest encouragement.
00:29:54.740 Dickinson of Pennsylvania.
00:29:59.740 One colony cannot be allowed to take its sister colonies headlong into the maelstrom of war.
00:30:07.740 Amen!
00:30:09.740 Parliament will be eager to call a halt to hostilities, as are we.
00:30:14.740 They will seek conciliation. We must offer them an olive branch.
00:30:18.740 Yes!
00:30:20.740 I move this assembly, consider a humble and dutiful petition, be dispatched to his majesty.
00:30:27.740 One that includes a plain statement that the colony desires immediate negotiation and accommodation of these unhappy disputes.
00:30:36.740 And that we are willing to enter into measures to achieve that reconciliation.
00:30:43.740 Second.
00:30:45.740 Thank you.
00:30:46.740 Mr. Dickinson.
00:30:47.740 The time for negotiation is past.
00:30:54.740 The actions of the British Army at Lexington and Concord speak plainly enough.
00:31:00.740 If we wish to regain our natural-born rights as Englishmen, then we must fight for them.
00:31:08.740 I have looked for our rights in the laws of nature and can find them only in the laws of political society.
00:31:17.740 I have looked for our rights in the constitution of the English government and found them there.
00:31:23.740 Yes!
00:31:25.740 Our rights have been violated, Mr. Adams. That is beyond dispute.
00:31:33.740 We must provide a plan to convince Parliament to restore those rights.
00:31:38.740 Yes!
00:31:39.740 We wish to become aliens to the mother country. 1.00
00:31:41.740 No!
00:31:42.740 No!
00:31:43.740 No, gentlemen.
00:31:44.740 We must come to terms with the mother country.
00:31:47.740 No doubt the same s*** which carries forth our list of grievances will bring back their address. 0.86
00:31:54.740 Mr. Dickinson, my wife and young children live on the main road to Boston, fewer than five miles from the full might of the British Empire.
00:32:09.740 Should they sit and wait for Gage and his savages to rob them of their home, their possessions, their very lives?
00:32:18.740 No, sir.
00:32:19.740 Powder and artillery are the surest and most infallible conciliatory measures we can adopt.
00:32:28.740 If you exclude the possibility of peace, Mr. Adams, then I tell you no.
00:32:33.740 You will have blood on your hands.
00:32:35.740 Yes. 1.00
00:32:36.740 And I tell you, Mr. Dickinson, that to hold out an olive branch to Britain is a measure of gross imbecility.
00:32:43.740 If you New England men continue to oppose our measures of reconciliation, you will leave us no choice but to break off from you entirely and carry on the opposition in our own way.
00:32:56.740 Hear, hear.
00:32:57.740 I sit in judgment on no man's religion, Mr. Dickinson.
00:33:04.740 But your Quaker sensibilities do us a gross disservice. 1.00
00:33:10.740 It is one thing to turn the other cheek, but to lie down on the ground like a snake and crawl toward the seat of power in abject surrender.
00:33:20.740 Well, that is quite another thing, sir.
00:33:21.740 Mr. Adams.
00:33:22.740 And I have no stomach for us, sir.
00:33:23.740 Mr. Adams.
00:33:24.740 No stomach at all.
00:33:25.740 Hear, hear.
00:33:26.740 We will exhaust all peaceful approaches, Mr. Adams, and we will do it with or without the approbation of you and your Boston insurrectionists.
00:33:39.740 Hear, hear.
00:33:40.740 Mr. Dickinson's motion to send an olive branch petition to his majesty has been made and seconded.
00:33:48.740 We shall proceed to a vote.
00:33:51.740 Wow.
00:33:52.740 Did Dickinson call Adams and the Boston and the Patriots there insurrectionists?
00:33:57.740 Whoa.
00:33:58.740 I don't know if he ran that by Jamie Raskin first or not.
00:34:01.740 Patrick here, Don, the power of this film, and I strongly recommend everybody watch the series John Adams and have your children watch it, is that the intensity of these debates is extraordinary.
00:34:14.740 The movie is 1776.
00:34:15.740 The musical actually, I think, does an excellent job, too.
00:34:17.740 But this is actually goes a couple of steps farther.
00:34:20.740 And you see right there.
00:34:22.740 This is why everything has been portrayed.
00:34:24.740 I think some of the history books, it looks like it was a debating society.
00:34:27.740 This was about life or death.
00:34:29.740 They were talking about an imperial power that had in the way they enforce their imperial power was by the finest Navy in the history of mankind.
00:34:39.740 And a professional army that was pound for pound as as good as anything the Germans or the French could put forward.
00:34:47.740 And Gage, you just heard right there, General Gage is called a barbarian.
00:34:51.740 And it's basically his soldiers are called terrorists.
00:34:55.740 This was a war to the knife.
00:34:57.740 And there were people like Dickinson and others that thought you could argue this through.
00:35:02.740 You could use legal terms.
00:35:03.740 You could use, you know, they petitioned the king and he came back.
00:35:07.740 The Dickinson's credit when he resigned after the decade, he would not sign the declaration.
00:35:11.740 And after he lost the after he lost the fight, I believe he went and volunteered for the for the Continental Army as as as a volunteer.
00:35:19.740 But this was the heart of it.
00:35:21.740 The heart of it is that this was going to be a fight.
00:35:23.740 You weren't going to argue this away.
00:35:25.740 You weren't going to debate this away.
00:35:27.740 There were no courts that are going to win this.
00:35:29.740 You're going to have to fight for this.
00:35:31.740 Patrick K. O'Donnell thoughts.
00:35:33.740 Absolutely.
00:35:34.740 And in fact, in, you know, there was a rebellion in Ireland, you know, near this time.
00:35:42.740 And the crown was absolutely barbaric on how they they they squashed it.
00:35:47.740 And they would draw on quarter people that were insurrectionists.
00:35:51.740 And this is that death was the the solution.
00:35:56.740 They also had a situation where there was collective punishment, for instance, something after the Boston Tea Party.
00:36:03.740 There was the Boston Port Act where they closed the entire port, throwing thousands of men out of work.
00:36:09.740 And then they would then they installed royal judges in the courts, which the you know, the colonists had been more or less on their own electing judges, you know, for over 150 years up until this point.
00:36:23.740 So this they knew that, you know, things were being stacked up against them and it was one thing after another.
00:36:29.740 And then it breaks with the the powder alarms where they start to seize the gunpowder, which the men, you know, the colonists knew that they had plenty of weapons, but not enough gunpowder.
00:36:41.740 And gunpowder would become a scarcity in the indispensable to actually make that a character because it leads to just a variety of things that occur in different paths that we take as as an army.
00:36:54.740 But also it forms the creation of the Navy for the for the Continental Navy with Washington.
00:37:01.740 The the the the the the the siege of Boston and particularly the the defense of a bunker in Breeds Hill, the British knew that by then that, number one,
00:37:14.740 we were great guerrilla fighters and great kind of insurgents can fight an insurgency.
00:37:20.220 But we also had the ability, although not perfect, because the Continental Army wasn't particularly trained to stand up toe to toe to the best of them in a fight.
00:37:28.640 That's when they realized. Then you had independence.
00:37:31.640 I want to make sure we get all this in, is that at the same time in the British and in commons, they're having these intense fights, too.
00:37:38.440 There are a lot of people in commons that say, look, we either got to give them their freedom or let's cut the best deal possible.
00:37:43.240 We're not going to the beginnings in commons and British commons of people talking very much like the Vietnam War.
00:37:49.760 A lot of people saying this is, you know, it's too far away.
00:37:52.640 How are we going to defend this? It's just going to suck up all our resources trying to do this.
00:37:56.640 Talk to me about where you're having this intense debate and we're going to get to the actual vote here in a while.
00:38:02.560 As you get this intense debate leading up to the Declaration of Independence from the Continental Congress in England, they're already prepared.
00:38:12.800 I mean, the Declaration of Independence is fine. And yes, that crossed a line.
00:38:16.000 And it was it's much bigger in American history than it is in British.
00:38:20.820 They didn't need a signed document. They'd already that that group right there already petitioned the king to, hey, maybe you haven't focused on this or maybe you have bad advisers.
00:38:30.380 But here's where Englishmen, this is just we want. And what he sent back was so brutal, so dismissive that the British and what they did is get the largest.
00:38:38.940 And correct me if I'm wrong, from the best Navy in the history of mankind, they set up the largest expeditionary force ever to send not to Boston.
00:38:49.720 They said the linchpin of this thing is New York City and New York City was not that big at the time.
00:38:54.280 They weren't going to Philadelphia. They weren't going to Boston.
00:38:56.780 They say we're going to cut this thing in half. We're going to take New York City and we're going to take the Hudson River in the Hudson Valley.
00:39:03.620 We're going to cut off. We're going to cut off the the bacillus.
00:39:07.500 We're going to cut off the problem we got in New England from the rest of America. 0.99
00:39:11.640 And we'll settle this afterwards. But talk to me about already where they were sent the size and scale of the Armada and the British expeditionary force.
00:39:19.960 They were going to send to America not to negotiate, not to have a debating society, not to go to a courthouse and put down some writ.
00:39:27.520 They had done it. They had had it. They tried with the patriots. The patriots were determined to win.
00:39:33.180 They sent over the most massive expeditionary force, I think, in mankind's history at that time.
00:39:38.660 Patrick K. O'Donnell.
00:39:39.900 It was. It was a it was a giant. This was a they assembled the largest force that they possibly could.
00:39:47.660 The bulk of the British army was was assigned to this force and they knew that they didn't have enough numbers.
00:39:54.500 So they basically leased German troops from the princes of Prussia and Hessian, the areas of what's now Germany, because they would basically loan out their troops for money.
00:40:08.120 And these were the Hessians. And there were over 10,000 of these men that were assembled to create a massive force, a sledgehammer to crush the colonists. 0.87
00:40:20.300 And this is the summer of 1776 that is in New York City.
00:40:27.560 As you mentioned, New York City is a hive of loyalists.
00:40:31.620 There's also the governor of the time is a loyalist.
00:40:35.820 He flees to a massive ship in New York Harbor.
00:40:40.700 There's it's a 74 gun battleship, if you will, of its time.
00:40:44.200 And it's from his lair that he plots different schemes.
00:40:48.100 And he's, you know, within this mix, before the expedition actually arrives, Washington's guard or the lifeguard is influenced by Governor Tryon and his men to basically have a decapitation mission and assassinate Washington.
00:41:04.800 And I bring that out in The Indispensables, which is which in many ways is a largely unknown story.
00:41:13.200 The lifeguard was a, you know, a picked force of about 100 or so men that came from various regiments.
00:41:21.140 Washington, you know, examined each one of these gangs as a picked pick man.
00:41:26.100 And some of them, though, were actually former British soldiers, including a guy by the name of Hickey and another guy by the name of Green, who was a drummer.
00:41:34.560 They kind of meet up in a tavern with one of these conspirators who's a gunsmith by the name of Forbes.
00:41:40.160 And they begin.
00:41:41.940 Forbes has a plot to infiltrate his excellency's guard, the lifeguard.
00:41:47.340 And they they recruit about eight men.
00:41:49.720 And what happens next is sort of accidental.
00:41:52.160 Accidental, they're about to spring this plot as this massive expeditionary force of, you know, hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men are arriving in New York Harbor.
00:42:05.180 It's at this point that they're about to spring the plot.
00:42:07.800 But Hickey, who's one of the lifeguard members, passes off some bad bills.
00:42:13.840 They're counterfeit.
00:42:15.240 And he's arrested and he's put in jail.
00:42:18.480 And it's here that America's first counterintelligence force, if you will, is formed.
00:42:25.200 It's called the Committee of the Intestine or the Committee of Conspiracies. 0.51
00:42:30.120 They have a man that that rats on on Hickey that there's this plot that's going on.
00:42:35.820 So they send in him back to find out what is exactly happening.
00:42:40.500 And they uncover this entire massive plot and they squash it literally a day or so before this massive armada arrives, saving Washington.
00:42:51.640 And it's at that point, though, that they execute the first American, James Hickey.
00:42:56.800 And the fleet and the empire is there to crush the rebellion.
00:43:03.040 OK, hang on.
00:43:04.140 They come into New York Harbor.
00:43:05.360 We'll take a short commercial break.
00:43:06.660 You've heard of Thermopylae and you've heard of Dunkirk.
00:43:10.760 We're about to learn you up on the American Thermopylae and the American Dunkirk.
00:43:17.880 They took place on Long Island and I think within 30 or 45 days of each other.
00:43:23.520 A stunning story on the fight for American liberty and freedom.
00:43:27.920 Next in the world.
00:43:28.760 The desert smiled.
00:43:30.640 A paradise of pleasure was opened in the wild.
00:43:38.620 Lift up your hands, ye heroes, and swear with proud disdain.
00:43:43.860 OK. 0.98
00:43:44.400 The wretch that a woman stayed. 1.00
00:43:45.540 Thermopylae and Dunkirk.
00:43:47.460 Both delivered, and I correct myself, within a couple of days of each other.
00:43:51.460 Patrick O'Donnell, the expedition for summer actually landed in June, but the bulk of it lands at the end of July.
00:43:57.500 But they were coming whether they signed a document or not, right?
00:44:00.800 They had all the provocation they wanted, and quite frankly, they said we had a belly full of this.
00:44:06.280 This is the crowns, and we don't want to hear any lip, OK?
00:44:10.800 And we're going to send over the largest expeditionary force in the largest armada ever.
00:44:16.240 They land, and then things lead to—they land in Long Island, and then towards the end of August, they start rolling.
00:44:22.820 Talk to me about the Battle of Long Island.
00:44:24.640 And people should understand, from the time they land to essentially Christmas night, you know, for five months,
00:44:33.700 until Christmas night with crossing the Delaware, this is one continual, quote-unquote, strategic retreat
00:44:41.300 are Americans getting beaten down.
00:44:44.000 But the bravery and valor are unbelievable.
00:44:46.580 And to me, this is where you see the beginning of really the incredible genius of George Washington,
00:44:55.200 the ability to hold this small Continental Army together with defeat after defeat after defeat after late August of 1776.
00:45:05.620 The ink ain't even dry on the Declaration of Independence.
00:45:08.860 It's been signed about six weeks beforehand.
00:45:10.660 Walk me through the battle, sir.
00:45:11.720 The Continental Army is in Brooklyn.
00:45:16.080 About half of it is in Brooklyn, and the other half is in Manhattan.
00:45:20.120 It's indefensible, really.
00:45:22.060 They don't know where the British are going to land, but they land the bulk of their forces at Gravesend Bay at Long Island,
00:45:28.980 and they sit there for a couple days.
00:45:31.920 It's American riflemen that sort of pepper at this force.
00:45:34.580 And then it's on the night of August 26 that things start to go in motion.
00:45:40.460 And the Army is arrayed.
00:45:42.720 A lot of it is about 3,000 or 4,000 men are on the heights of Buonis.
00:45:46.260 This is now current-day Greenwood Cemetery.
00:45:49.020 Right in front of one of the gates of Greenwood Cemetery was something called the Red Lion Inn.
00:45:53.380 And it's here that there was a watermelon patch in the back of the Red Lion Inn.
00:45:57.520 And it's the scouts from the British Army that seized these watermelons, and they want to get a real refreshment or whatever.
00:46:07.720 And it's the American riflemen from Hans Rifleman's Corps that pepper them with lead.
00:46:14.500 But this is a sort of a diversion, if you will.
00:46:17.800 Well, the main force at this time under General Howe and Cornwallis is marching a flanking maneuver around the heights of Buonis to surround it.
00:46:29.660 And as the night unfolds, the Americans, specifically the Marylanders and Washington's immortals,
00:46:38.860 who are in a nearby house, a stone house called the Becht House, that's where their camp is located.
00:46:44.860 Then the alarm is sounded around 2 or 3 in the morning, and the bulk of these forces go down towards Greenwood Cemetery,
00:46:53.500 which now is called Battle Hill.
00:46:55.680 And these men take up positions, and initially they appear to repulse the British under General Grant.
00:47:03.040 But Grant is only a sort of a holding force, a diversion, as the hammer is coming around in a flanking maneuver under Cornwallis.
00:47:12.120 And it's in the morning as they are engaging between the British that they realize in their utter horror that they are being flanked and surrounded.
00:47:20.700 So they literally have to fight for their lives back to their position, which is near this stone house.
00:47:26.800 And the entire, you know, a third of the American army is about to be cut off and annihilated.
00:47:32.580 And it's here that the American Thermopylae, Washington's immortals, men of honor, family, and fortune,
00:47:41.660 from the finest families of the South in Maryland, specifically Maryland itself, and then many in Baltimore.
00:47:49.640 They formed the first company in Baltimore in 1774 to defend their brothers in Boston because of the Boston Port Act, things that are occurring there.
00:48:02.220 And it's here that they make arguably one of the most important stands in American history.
00:48:09.140 They are outnumbered by 10, 20, or more to one.
00:48:16.100 And they form up in ranks because they know that the American army is about to be annihilated.
00:48:23.760 They form up in ranks in an attack called Moss.
00:48:27.720 And it's Washington's immortals that saved the army.
00:48:31.380 They make a number of bayonet charges.
00:48:33.900 They're eventually referred to as the bayonets of the revolution or Washington's immortals.
00:48:39.140 Or the immortal 400, because of the stand that they make.
00:48:44.740 They make a number of charges, and they're being literally cut to pieces by thousands of Hessian soldiers and Highland grenadiers, which are near the house.
00:48:55.080 But these stands force the British to not unite the wings of their army and also create a gap that allows the rest of the army to escape to a series of fortifications.
00:49:07.540 Mordecai Gist, who's in command of the Marylanders, and about nine men escape.
00:49:15.040 256 men are lost and unaccounted for.
00:49:18.820 The book, you know, all of the stories that I've ever written have found me in one way or another.
00:49:23.560 And this book found me when I found the old sign that said,
00:49:25.880 The year lie, 256 continental soldiers, Maryland heroes.
00:49:30.420 The bodies of these men are buried somewhere in either New York or, in some cases, they were captured on floating and then imprisoned on floating prisoner of war camp ships.
00:49:42.480 But what we know of the American Thermopylae, they held this – the British office of the American army could escape to then have their Dunkirk.
00:49:56.580 What we know is that the bulk of them are –
00:49:59.240 An hour more precious.
00:50:02.560 And if they hadn't have done it, and the reward for that, for their fellow Americans, they are buried in an unmarked grave in somewhere, we think, underneath a parking lot or a tavern in Brooklyn.
00:50:15.420 We don't even know the exact location of it.
00:50:18.360 The American Thermopylae, some of the greatest heroes in the history of this country, who gave all in late August of 1776.
00:50:26.780 They're not the guys praised.
00:50:28.280 You don't see the movies about them.
00:50:29.440 You don't see the books written about them except for the Washingtons and mortals.
00:50:32.820 That's why Patrick O'Donnell is such a special guy.
00:50:35.320 This story is absolutely stunning.
00:50:37.260 And we're going to tell you a lot.
00:50:38.260 You haven't – this is the very beginning.
00:50:40.540 This is the – you're basically in the first week of real concentrated combat.
00:50:45.720 It was to go on for year after year after year after year.
00:50:49.300 You have your freedom because people fought for it.
00:50:52.320 You have your freedom not because a bunch of lawyers negotiated it.
00:50:56.100 You had your freedom because the American people put the muscle and the sacrifice to back up that document.
00:51:04.080 The Declaration of Independence was covered in blood because the British said, okay, you've got a very lovely document.
00:51:14.040 Here's what it means to us. 0.88
00:51:15.600 We're sending an armada and an expeditionary force, and we're going to crush you. 0.55
00:51:19.540 But only standing up to that and remember what Washington told us, it ain't over until you quit.
00:51:28.520 By not quitting, we won.
00:51:31.200 Short 90-second break.
00:51:32.400 Back for the second hour.
00:51:33.960 Your heart is bold.
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