The Charlie Kirk Show - The First Time Democrats Tried To Steal An Election

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Tennessee Kirk Show.

00:00:01.000 Patrick K. O'Donnell, a very well-respected historian, joins the program here.

00:00:08.000 Check it out and his book, Unvanquished, that is Unvanquished.

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00:00:47.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

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00:01:45.000 They are counting on your surrender.

00:01:50.000 If you give up, they win.

00:01:52.000 But what if we look back and we realize we were just inches away from victory and that's when we decided to give up.

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00:03:08.000 Joining us this hour is a very important author, Patrick K. O'Donnell, author of The Unvanquished, The Untold Story of Lincoln Special Forces, The Manhunt for Mosby's Rangers, and the Shadow War that forged America's Special Operations.

00:03:23.000 Patrick K. O'Donnell is the author.

00:03:25.000 Patrick, welcome to the program.

00:03:26.000 It's great to be with you, Charlie.

00:03:28.000 So, Patrick, tell us about all your new book.

00:03:31.000 This is my 13th book, Charlie, and all 13 of the books that I've ever written have always found me in one way or another.

00:03:36.000 And this is certainly the case with this book.

00:03:38.000 I was driving around Northern Virginia, and I found a sign, a roadside sign that said the Grapewood Farm Engagement.

00:03:45.000 And I was like, what on earth is that?

00:03:48.000 It turns out that that was where John Singleton Mosby, who was one of the main characters in my book, who led a band of partisan rangers, ambushed a train with a mountain howitzer, and they blew it up.

00:04:00.000 And the story is really compelling because within that story, they were pursued by hundreds of Union cavalrymen and included within it was also a foreign volunteer who had fought in the Crimean War.

00:04:13.000 He was mortally wounded and killed and was buried nearby.

00:04:18.000 And that was just sort of the beginning of my journey with this book.

00:04:22.000 The second sign that I found was a sign from a guy by the name of Jack Stery.

00:04:28.000 And what's interesting about this is nearly every world Civil War story has been told, except for the one that I told in the unvanquished, and that's on Lincoln's Special Forces or the Jesse Scouts.

00:04:40.000 And Jack Stery was a Jesse scout, and that was a Union commando that dressed as a Confederate.

00:04:46.000 And in the battle, right before the battle of the Second Battle of Manassas, he was trying to lead General Hood down the wrong road.

00:04:53.000 And this is near the Plains, Virginia.

00:04:55.000 Most of this Civil War history, you can literally drive to in Loudoun County and Prince William County, Fairfax County.

00:05:02.000 These places still exist.

00:05:03.000 And at the Plains, there's a little sign next to this front porch restaurant that I found that is the final resting place where Jack Stery had his last words.

00:05:13.000 He was literally hanged by the Confederates after he spent 45 minutes trying to convince General Hood to go down the wrong road, where they were supposedly retreating.

00:05:23.000 But instead, they were needed at the Second Battle of Manassas, but he gave his life.

00:05:28.000 Interestingly enough, when they widened the road in 1960, they found Jack's body.

00:05:33.000 And this book is about untold stories.

00:05:37.000 It's about Americans that do extraordinary things.

00:05:42.000 It's about personal agency.

00:05:44.000 It's about a smaller story that tells a larger story about the Civil War.

00:05:48.000 It's also about the story of irregular warfare and special operations.

00:05:52.000 You know, why does that matter?

00:05:53.000 Our lives are being constantly influenced by it.

00:05:56.000 All we have to do is look at the Middle East to know that.

00:05:59.000 But also, it's not about just ambushing wagon trains and going after locomotives.

00:06:06.000 It's about election interference.

00:06:08.000 It's about influencing the press operations.

00:06:11.000 It's about ballot fraud, first ballots, mail-in ballots, 1864.

00:06:15.000 So to let the Union soldiers vote in the field.

00:06:19.000 And, you know, interestingly enough, there's a fraud scheme that I uncovered in The Unvanquished, where the Democrats tried to steal the election of 1864.

00:06:30.000 Well, election appearance in 1864?

00:06:32.000 Tell us more about that.

00:06:33.000 I think that is awfully applicable to what we're living through right now.

00:06:37.000 There's amazingly interesting.

00:06:40.000 This book is about the union commandos that went after the South's most dangerous men.

00:06:48.000 And those included John Singleton Mosby's Rangers, but also another shadowy group that's never really been told.

00:06:54.000 Their story has never been told.

00:06:55.000 And that's the Confederate Secret Service.

00:06:58.000 And the Confederate Secret Service was 100 years ahead of its time in what it was doing.

00:07:03.000 In the spring of 1864, Jefferson Davis gave the Confederate Secret Service a million dollars in gold, which was an absolutely enormous sum of money to go to Canada and then set up influence operations in Canada. 0.58

00:07:17.000 But also, it was a department of dirty tricks.

00:07:20.000 They were terrorizing the North with different things, but it was also influencing the election of 1864. 0.63

00:07:28.000 And they recognized that the rising part of the Democrat Party in 1864 was the peace movement known as the Copperhead Movement.

00:07:38.000 And this was millions strong.

00:07:41.000 And within this movement were something called the Sons of Liberty and other small splinter groups.

00:07:48.000 And they directly influenced these men through the gold that they had.

00:07:55.000 In fact, the leader of this movement was a disgraced Ohio congressman by the name of Clement Laird Valandium.

00:08:03.000 And he was disgraced by Lincoln by he was put into exile into Canada because he was pro-Confederacy.

00:08:10.000 And literally, but he was the main spring of the Democrat Party in 1864.

00:08:17.000 And the Confederate Secret Service, literally, it was one of their agents.

00:08:21.000 They were plying him with gold.

00:08:23.000 And it would be the plan, for instance, I mean, one of the great coups was the campaign platform of 1864 for the Democratic Party was partially written by the Confederate Secret Service.

00:08:35.000 And that campaign platform involved an armistice, which would bring the war to negotiations and potentially an end.

00:08:44.000 And they recognized that if the South was able to, if there was an armistice, it would be exceptionally hard to restart the war.

00:08:53.000 And in that sense, the South may gain its independence.

00:08:58.000 But, you know, within this, there's also some incredible operations that they launched to influence the press directly.

00:09:06.000 Most of the press, the Civil War was an incredibly unpopular war.

00:09:10.000 And especially in 1864, it wasn't going well for the North at all.

00:09:15.000 Most of Grant's offenses had stalled.

00:09:18.000 There were hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of casualties.

00:09:21.000 Desertions, there was upwards of over 250,000 desertions in the Union Army alone from the beginning of the war.

00:09:30.000 And it was considered, you know, some of the things, the phrases we hear today, the forever war.

00:09:35.000 And this was talked about then.

00:09:37.000 And I wrote a great article on Fox that aired on Saturday and Sunday about how this election interference or influence operations of the press almost cost Lincoln its reelection in 1864.

00:09:49.000 So they plied Northern newspapers, which were sympathetic towards the South with money to write articles about the forever war and how it was to erode northern morale.

00:10:01.000 And it was partially, it was very successful.

00:10:03.000 And one of their greatest coups was a phony peace campaign where they had a they basically had a peace conference, which was only there to draw Lincoln out and to make him publicly state that the war could only, that they would only win the war by conquest.

00:10:25.000 There would be no negotiations and that slavery had to be abolished.

00:10:29.000 In the summer of 1864, that had a detrimental effect on the entire voting population at the time in the North.

00:10:38.000 It was not looked at very fondly.

00:10:40.000 I want to ask you a question that applies to something happening in Ukraine.

00:10:44.000 Can you talk about, just really quickly, Lincoln having an election in the midst of a war?

00:10:50.000 What went into that decision?

00:10:52.000 And was that unusual?

00:10:54.000 Because, I mean, you're country's tearing apart and there still was an election.

00:10:57.000 Just tease that out for a minute.

00:10:58.000 I really want to dive into that.

00:10:59.000 I find it fascinating.

00:11:00.000 This is absolutely critical that people understand this.

00:11:04.000 Lincoln went all out in the sense that he believed in democracy.

00:11:10.000 And he was in the summer of 1864, Washington, D.C. was almost invaded by Jubal Early's army.

00:11:17.000 The Democrats were on the rise, but he still insisted on an election, a free and fair election, which is an extraordinary step.

00:11:24.000 And I think that that's, it's, it's a real example of our democracy in action.

00:11:32.000 And yeah, that's that's I see that's definitely a problem if you look at um you know places like Ukraine, which aren't necessarily you know going by that type of democratic example.

00:11:44.000 Hey, this is Charlie Kirk, and I know a lot of you have been suffering under the Biden economy.

00:11:48.000 Recently, school loan payments have been reinstated, and for many, it's adding thousands to their monthly expenses.

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00:11:56.000 They really helped me through a tough, tough situation recently.

00:11:59.000 They've been excellent, they're ethical, they're just really great people, they're followers of Jesus Christ, and our worldviews are the same.

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00:12:12.000 In fact, one of our team members said, Charlie, is it time to me to own a home?

00:12:15.000 I sat down, I went to the numbers.

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00:12:17.000 Honestly, enough renting.

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00:12:53.000 So check it out right now, andrewandTodd.com.

00:12:58.000 I just say this is so important.

00:13:00.000 I love our guest here.

00:13:02.000 I love history.

00:13:03.000 I wish I had more time to study it.

00:13:04.000 I mean, I try to read a fair amount, but there's only so much that one can read.

00:13:09.000 I'm a lot of biblical history right now.

00:13:12.000 That's my focus.

00:13:14.000 The Unvanquished is the book, The Untold Story of Lincoln Special Forces Manhunt for Mosby Rangers and the Shadow War that Forge America Special Operations by Patrick K. O'Donnell.

00:13:22.000 So, Patrick, take some time here.

00:13:24.000 Just set the table.

00:13:27.000 What was Lincoln's decision-making process?

00:13:31.000 The country is falling apart.

00:13:34.000 It is literally a civil war.

00:13:36.000 And he says we're still going to have an election.

00:13:40.000 Yeah, I'll take you back in time.

00:13:42.000 I'll take our guests back in time to the summer of 1864.

00:13:46.000 Jubal Early and his army of Confederates, 15,000 strong, about 12,000 strong, go after the capital of the United States.

00:13:56.000 And they are at the gates of the Capitol.

00:13:59.000 At Fort Stevens, for instance, which is on Georgia Avenue, they march down Georgia Avenue, and there are hardly any Americans in the entrenchments in Washington, D.C.

00:14:11.000 They had all been removed to Petersburg, where there's a siege going on with Robert E. Lee's army.

00:14:16.000 And they're on the march.

00:14:18.000 And at this, you know, at the right moment, the Sixth Corps jumps off of the boat.

00:14:23.000 These are the Union Sixth Corps, jumps off of boats at the Washington Navy Yard and literally is marching towards Fort Stevens.

00:14:30.000 And it, you know, saves the Capitol at the nick of time.

00:14:33.000 Had Jubal Early gone in maybe a couple hours earlier, Washington would have been sacked or burned.

00:14:40.000 And this is the stage that's going on in the summer of 1864.

00:14:44.000 It's a disaster for Lincoln.

00:14:46.000 You know, he tells his cabinet, you don't think I'm going to be beat?

00:14:50.000 I know I'm going to be beat.

00:14:51.000 And then he does something that's really extraordinary, Charlie.

00:14:55.000 It's called the blind memorandum.

00:14:57.000 And he takes, he writes a memo that says that he will have an election and that he will also basically participate with the president-elect, who is George McClellan, who's the Democrat at the time.

00:15:12.000 And then he takes the memo, puts it in an envelope, and he doesn't tell his cabinet members what is in the envelope, but makes them all sign it and agree to its contents.

00:15:23.000 That is democracy in action.

00:15:25.000 You know, at the most, you know, the depths of despair, Lincoln still, you know, is believes in the Republic and believes in a fair vote that's out there.

00:15:35.000 I just think that's so incredibly important, and it's a lesson that you shall not forsake your core principles just because there's a war going on.

00:15:47.000 Who is Mosby?

00:15:48.000 Tell us.

00:15:50.000 John Singleton Mosby is one of the most extraordinary Americans out there.

00:15:56.000 He is the origin or pioneer of modern American guerrilla warfare.

00:16:01.000 He's a 28-year-old, five-foot-seven, kind of lanky guy that is brilliant.

00:16:07.000 He's a lawyer.

00:16:08.000 He nearly kills somebody in a fight with a pistol in his days as a law student.

00:16:14.000 And then he begins the war as a cavalryman with Jeb Stewart.

00:16:18.000 He has this incredible ride that he's the tactical reconnaissance for.

00:16:22.000 And then he sort of tells Jeb Stewart, Hey, I want to have an opportunity to form a guerrilla force.

00:16:29.000 And Jeb Stewart gives him one guy with a club foot and says, Go at it.

00:16:34.000 And you can create your own guerrilla warfare force in Northern Virginia.

00:16:39.000 It doesn't go well for Mosby at all.

00:16:41.000 He's rounded up at a train station, literally with his pants down.

00:16:45.000 His pistols are on his horse.

00:16:47.000 And he's taken to a union prison camp or prison.

00:16:53.000 And several months later, he's exchanged, but he makes lemons out of lemonade.

00:16:56.000 It's a really amazing story.

00:16:58.000 As he is being exchanged for a union officer, this is part of a prisoner exchange.

00:17:04.000 He's riding down the James River on a steamboat and he sees all kinds of Union reinforcements that are gearing up for battle.

00:17:13.000 And he realizes that McClellan is going to make a massive push.

00:17:18.000 And this is actionable intelligence, strategic level intelligence.

00:17:22.000 And he recognizes what's going to happen.

00:17:24.000 And as soon as he gets off the boat near Richmond, he rides immediately towards General Lee's headquarters.

00:17:30.000 And suddenly, this lowly lieutenant shows up and he's all dusty and he's exhausted.

00:17:37.000 He's thirsty.

00:17:38.000 But he tells Lee that he has vital information that will potentially change the course of the campaign.

00:17:45.000 And, you know, Lee is initially suspicious of who this guy is, but he listens and he recognizes that there's somebody really that's an important person here.

00:17:53.000 And this information literally changes the course of the Battle of Cedar Mountain, which the Confederacy wins thanks to Mosby's intelligence.

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00:19:08.000 The book is called Unvanquished.

00:19:11.000 I want to just make sure you're about to make an argument that was about Mosby.

00:19:18.000 Patrick, please continue.

00:19:19.000 Mosby then reforms.

00:19:22.000 He's given another opportunity after this disastrous first encounter chance of being a partisan ranger.

00:19:30.000 And this occurs in the winter of 1862 at a place called Oakham Manor.

00:19:36.000 And these places, what's so cool about it, is you can literally drive around Loudoun County in these mansions and the skirmish sites, all of them are there.

00:19:45.000 I've got the maps in the books that allow you actually to go visit these places.

00:19:49.000 But in the winter of 62, he meets with Jeff Stewart and he says, okay, you've got six men and you can go try it again.

00:19:57.000 John Singleton Mosby takes those six men and turns them into a thousand.

00:20:01.000 And those thousand men will then tie up tens of thousands of Union soldiers.

00:20:06.000 They ambush wagon trains.

00:20:08.000 They go after locomotives.

00:20:10.000 They take out bridges.

00:20:11.000 They go after high-value targets, including, it's an incredible story, they literally penetrate deep into Union lines at Fairfax Courthouse, and they literally capture a general, only 60 men strong.

00:20:24.000 They capture a general within the midst of this huge cavalry encampment near Centerville and then Fairfax.

00:20:30.000 They infiltrate out.

00:20:32.000 And, you know, it's an incredible story.

00:20:34.000 They go in, he goes into the general and the general and he says to the general who's sleeping, you know, do you know who John Singleton Mosby is?

00:20:42.000 And the general kind of, you know, is a very sleep, he's, you know, sleep deprived.

00:20:46.000 He wakes up and he goes, Yeah, have you caught him?

00:20:49.000 No, he has caught you.

00:20:52.000 And he literally captures this guy and then they ride back to Mosby's encampment.

00:20:58.000 And this is just the beginning of an amazingly epic story.

00:21:02.000 And after the war, it's quite fascinating.

00:21:05.000 Mosby is hunted by the Union, hunted by men that I write about in my book, the Jesse Scouts.

00:21:11.000 But he's hunted.

00:21:12.000 And, you know, after the war is over, he's still harassed constantly.

00:21:16.000 And Mrs. Mosby writes a letter to General Grant, you know, asking if he just sort of let my husband alone.

00:21:23.000 And Grant, you know, acquiesces to that demand and asks for an audience.

00:21:28.000 And he meets Grant near the White House, and these two men become best friends.

00:21:33.000 John Singleton Mosby then becomes a Republican and literally is the campaign manager for General for President Grant later on in Virginia.

00:21:44.000 And one of my favorite sayings in the book is: you know, they ask Mosby what it's like to be a Republican.

00:21:50.000 And he goes, Hell is being a Republican in Virginia.

00:21:54.000 And he's literally shot at and almost assassinated.

00:21:58.000 So let me ask you, Patrick, there's so many angles we could go here.

00:22:01.000 And I think one is applicable.

00:22:03.000 If you turn on MSNBC, granted, if you have a drinking game and the word is insurrection, you'll have to be admitted to a hospital for a liver transplant because they say it 10 or 12 times a day: insurrection, insurrection.

00:22:16.000 What does an actual insurrection look like versus what we, you know, the live-action role play thing that we saw in 2020?

00:22:25.000 Can you walk us through where?

00:22:27.000 Because there was a great reaction after the Civil War in the United States Constitution, the 14th Amendment, to talk about that idea of insurrection or rebellion.

00:22:36.000 Compare and contrast what a legitimate insurrection against the government looks like.

00:22:40.000 Well, for one, the unvanquished actually has an it uncovers an untold insurrection that was plotted by the Confederate Secret Service in the summer of 1864.

00:22:53.000 The Sons of Liberty, otherwise they were the main participants of the Copperhead movement, were, you know, they had these guys were a secret society.

00:23:04.000 They had, they were armed to the teeth by the Confederate Secret Service.

00:23:09.000 They were given pistols and rifles.

00:23:11.000 You know, boxes would show up that were titled Bibles when in fact they were pistols or colts or even rifles.

00:23:18.000 And in the summer of 1864, right around the election of the Democrat election of 1864, which ironically was in Chicago in 1864, there was a plan by the Secret Service to create an insurrection.

00:23:35.000 This was one of the great fears that Lincoln had.

00:23:37.000 It was called the fire in the rear.

00:23:38.000 In this movement, there were hundreds of thousands strong.

00:23:41.000 They were armed to the teeth with weapons, but they got cold feet.

00:23:47.000 And they got cold feet because of the political influence operations that the Secret Service had performed with the press.

00:23:54.000 They literally believed that they could win at the ballot box versus an armed insurrection.

00:24:00.000 But an insurrection is obviously one that involves arms and weapons.

00:24:05.000 And, you know, this is something that, you know, the Civil War is known for its grand battles that are out there, but it's also an insurrection or an insurgency.

00:24:18.000 And that's one of the things that had the South utilized guerrilla warfare that John Singleton Mosby and the Confederate Secret Service had pioneered to a greater effect, it would have been one of the greatest thing, you know, the greatest insurgencies to ever quell in history.

00:24:34.000 An insurgency in the 20th and 21st century is almost impossible to defeat if it has the support of the population.

00:24:42.000 That is a known fact.

00:24:44.000 And the South had completely supported its soldiers in the field.

00:24:49.000 And this book has some very, very powerful themes of tenets of special operations, but it has another very important theme, and that is the theme of forgiveness.

00:25:00.000 And that is a theme that comes about at Appomattox, where General Lee and General Grant do something that's really quite extraordinary.

00:25:10.000 Lee disobeys a direct order to conduct Mosby-style guerrilla warfare and go into the mountains and basically fight to the end.

00:25:20.000 And this would have been almost impossible to extinguish.

00:25:24.000 But he realizes that America has a better path.

00:25:28.000 And Grant, to his credit, recognizes that he treats Lee with respect.

00:25:33.000 Instead of rounding these men up like they're the SS or something, they're given, they're paroled.

00:25:40.000 Their rifles are taken away from them, but they're allowed to keep their sidearms and swords, and they're allowed to disperse and go back to their homes.

00:25:47.000 And this sets the tone for the reconciliation that begins at Appomattox.

00:25:53.000 And then the other Confederate armies that are still in the field, hundreds of thousands strong, literally they follow suit, but it takes months afterwards.

00:26:02.000 So Patrick, the idea of a civil war is talking about a lot, being talked about a lot in this country right now.

00:26:11.000 What can we learn from Lincoln to heal our divides and to try to prevent that?

00:26:17.000 What character attributes, what actions did he take?

00:26:23.000 What can we learn from this era to prevent it?

00:26:25.000 Because the Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in American history.

00:26:29.000 It's something we never want to repeat.

00:26:31.000 And I think the statesmanship is the thing that we can learn from the forgiveness, the forgiving of men.

00:26:40.000 I mean, at Appomattox, they set aside their differences and they acted, and Lee in particular acts in the best interest of a future America.

00:26:52.000 All of his men say, you should go into the hills and we should fight it out to the end.

00:26:58.000 And Lee says, no, I'm not going to do it.

00:27:01.000 I'm going to disobey Jefferson Davis's direct order.

00:27:05.000 And then to Grant's credit, he's not rounding these men up like they're some sort of, you know, they're truly just traitors.

00:27:14.000 He recognizes that these are fellow Americans and that the healing process begins there.

00:27:20.000 And I think, you know, that's an important thing today: that we're all fellow Americans.

00:27:25.000 The things that bind us together are freedom and liberty.

00:27:28.000 It's not some sort of, you know, this woke culture and all the other things that are going on.

00:27:34.000 It's freedom and liberty that were founded at the revolution that changed the world.

00:27:38.000 It's the idea of America that is so powerful that will literally collapse empires, you know, after 1775 and 1776.

00:27:48.000 And going forward, it's those that, you know, our ideals of freedom and liberty, which still resonate today more than ever.

00:27:56.000 That is exactly right.

00:27:58.000 And the path to not repeat another civil war is going to require statesmanship and is going to require a ruling class that actually cares about this country.

00:28:12.000 One of the ways I actually think we get closer to such conflict is when you take down the statues of people that might have been involved in the Confederacy.

00:28:21.000 Can you speak to that?

00:28:23.000 And for example, they're trying to re-they've been trying to rename Washington and Lee for quite some time, as you well know, in Virginia.

00:28:30.000 They've been going after Robert E. Lee.

00:28:32.000 What is your reaction to this push, this continual activistic push to rename military bases to take down statues of people that might have been involved in the Confederacy or even taking out statues of Lincoln?

00:28:45.000 Your reaction?

00:28:46.000 Four or five years ago, the Pentagon officially issued a statement saying that they were opposed to renaming the bases because they were part of the healing process.

00:28:57.000 And that was absolutely correct.

00:29:00.000 This is, you know, what we have now is a, you know, you're taking a wrecking ball to history.

00:29:06.000 And you know what?

00:29:07.000 History isn't a pleasant thing.

00:29:10.000 And the fact that, you know, we're not trying to necessarily glorify the Confederacy, but it's important to have some of these things there so that people ask questions about what occurred in 1861 through 1865.

00:29:24.000 And I think that that's why it's very important to preserve them.

00:29:28.000 I don't agree with renaming or taking down statues.

00:29:32.000 I believe in providing context for these things.

00:29:38.000 I think that's very important to preserve our history because right now our history is under attack and under assault.

00:29:44.000 And our history is part of what makes us Americans.

00:29:49.000 It's part of the greatness of America.

00:29:52.000 It's that history that is American exceptionalism that's all over, you know, all over the almost 220, 250 years that we've been here.

00:30:04.000 So let me just ask you, Robert E. Lee, would you say he was a great man?

00:30:08.000 I think that he became a great man because of not what he did in the field.

00:30:14.000 He was a great general.

00:30:15.000 I mean, he was one of the best, but it's what he didn't do.

00:30:18.000 And that is that he didn't, he disobeyed a direct order from Jefferson Davis and surrendered his army versus going into the field and actually conducting guerrilla warfare, which logically was the right thing to do from a military standpoint.

00:30:33.000 And it would have potentially worked.

00:30:35.000 I mean, in the sense that it would definitely prolonged the South many, many years, because I mean, people don't realize that the Union had occupied hardly any of the South, even in 1865.

00:30:48.000 There was no, they never had enough soldiers to literally occupy the entire South.

00:30:56.000 And this was a major problem.

00:30:58.000 But it was Robert E. Lee that disobeys that order and changes America.

00:31:03.000 America's trajectory to becoming a superpower then becomes realized.

00:31:08.000 Instead of a divided country, we then become united again.

00:31:12.000 And that's it puts us on an amazing path.

00:31:16.000 You are a historian and an excellent one.

00:31:18.000 What is one or two or three things about the Civil War that you've learned that you wish America knew that could be helpful for the time of which we are in?

00:31:30.000 The book that I wrote will always surprise me.

00:31:36.000 This book puts you in the saddle of these men.

00:31:41.000 It's not a high-level view of the Civil War.

00:31:45.000 It's very much, it takes a conflict that's hundreds of thousands, millions of men and women fighting this epic civil war, and it brings it down to a very, very human level.

00:31:57.000 I mean, there was an incredible review in the Wall Street Journal the other day, the just epic review of the book, and there's many on Amazon and Barnes ⁇ Noble.

00:32:08.000 But it's about this epic conflict, but it's also about bringing it down to a very human level.

00:32:15.000 The scout or the guerrilla ranger that was fighting.

00:32:20.000 And within that is a sense of humanity that I didn't really expect to find.

00:32:26.000 I mean, this is a brutal, absolutely brutal and cutthroat war.

00:32:30.000 I mean, it rages in places like West Virginia and Appalachia, where it's brother against brother, family against family, next door neighbor against neighbor.

00:32:39.000 But there's also a sense of humanity that pervades where people recognize one another as fellow human beings and they rise above.

00:32:50.000 And, you know, and it's our better angels and so to speak as Americans in many cases on both sides that I found just striking and fascinating.

00:33:00.000 I think that's amazing.

00:33:01.000 Patrick, excellent work.

00:33:03.000 And just one more time, the book Unvanquished, How Can People Find It?

00:33:07.000 Is it out?

00:33:08.000 And then also just mention your other books.

00:33:10.000 You have a portfolio of impressive literature.

00:33:12.000 This is my 13th book.

00:33:12.000 Thank you.

00:33:14.000 I'm at Combat Historian on Twitter and Getter.

00:33:17.000 My website is my name, patrickkodonal.com.

00:33:20.000 It's this, Unvanquish was a huge bestseller the first week it came out.

00:33:24.000 It still is.

00:33:25.000 It's already in its third printing, and it's Amazon's book of the month for history.

00:33:30.000 It can be found at the front of the store at Barnes and Noble.

00:33:34.000 And, you know, it's right there at Amazon.com and continues to be a bestseller.

00:33:40.000 But you can get a hold of me on Getter or on Twitter.

00:33:44.000 And I have a bunch of signings and I had some really amazing signings at Appomattox where I met many of our incredible listeners and viewers and had a chance to interact with them and find out what they thought of the book.

00:33:59.000 And yes, I've written 13 books, three on the Revolutionary War.

00:34:03.000 I've got a third one that'll be coming out on the 250th anniversary, but also seven or eight on World War II, one on World War I in Korea.

00:34:13.000 And they all have the central theme of how a small group of Americans or individuals can literally change the course of history through their agency.

00:34:21.000 And this happens over and over.

00:34:23.000 Every generation, you know, these are dark times, but every generation, they rise to the top, a small group of people to change and bend and shape history.

00:34:35.000 Excellent work.

00:34:36.000 Patrick, thank you so much.

00:34:37.000 And God bless you.

00:34:38.000 Thank you.

00:34:39.000 God bless you too.

00:34:40.000 It was an honor to be on your show, Charlie.

00:34:42.000 Thank you.

00:34:43.000 I mean that.

00:34:43.000 Come back.

00:34:44.000 Thank you.

00:34:47.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:48.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:51.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:34:52.000 God bless.

00:34:56.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - May 23, 2024

The First Time Democrats Tried To Steal An Election

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