Patrick K. ODonnell, a very well-respected historian joins the show to talk about his new book, Unvanquished, The Untold Story of Lincoln's Special Forces, The Manhunt for Mosby's Rangers, and the shadow war that forged America's Special Operations.
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00:03:08.000Joining 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.
00:03:28.000So, Patrick, tell us about all your new book.
00:03:31.000This 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.
00:03:36.000And this is certainly the case with this book.
00:03:38.000I was driving around Northern Virginia, and I found a sign, a roadside sign that said the Grapewood Farm Engagement.
00:03:45.000And I was like, what on earth is that?
00:03:48.000It 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.
00:04:00.000And 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.
00:04:13.000He was mortally wounded and killed and was buried nearby.
00:04:18.000And that was just sort of the beginning of my journey with this book.
00:04:22.000The second sign that I found was a sign from a guy by the name of Jack Stery.
00:04:28.000And 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.
00:04:40.000And Jack Stery was a Jesse scout, and that was a Union commando that dressed as a Confederate.
00:04:46.000And in the battle, right before the battle of the Second Battle of Manassas, he was trying to lead General Hood down the wrong road.
00:04:53.000And this is near the Plains, Virginia.
00:04:55.000Most of this Civil War history, you can literally drive to in Loudoun County and Prince William County, Fairfax County.
00:05:03.000And 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.
00:05:13.000He 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.
00:05:23.000But instead, they were needed at the Second Battle of Manassas, but he gave his life.
00:05:28.000Interestingly enough, when they widened the road in 1960, they found Jack's body.
00:05:33.000And this book is about untold stories.
00:05:37.000It's about Americans that do extraordinary things.
00:06:08.000It's about influencing the press operations.
00:06:11.000It's about ballot fraud, first ballots, mail-in ballots, 1864.
00:06:15.000So to let the Union soldiers vote in the field.
00:06:19.000And, 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.
00:06:55.000And that's the Confederate Secret Service.
00:06:58.000And the Confederate Secret Service was 100 years ahead of its time in what it was doing.
00:07:03.000In 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.
00:07:17.000But also, it was a department of dirty tricks.
00:07:20.000They were terrorizing the North with different things, but it was also influencing the election of 1864.
00:07:28.000And they recognized that the rising part of the Democrat Party in 1864 was the peace movement known as the Copperhead Movement.
00:08:23.000And 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.
00:08:35.000And that campaign platform involved an armistice, which would bring the war to negotiations and potentially an end.
00:08:44.000And they recognized that if the South was able to, if there was an armistice, it would be exceptionally hard to restart the war.
00:08:53.000And in that sense, the South may gain its independence.
00:08:58.000But, you know, within this, there's also some incredible operations that they launched to influence the press directly.
00:09:06.000Most of the press, the Civil War was an incredibly unpopular war.
00:09:10.000And especially in 1864, it wasn't going well for the North at all.
00:09:37.000And 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.
00:09:49.000So 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.
00:10:01.000And it was partially, it was very successful.
00:10:03.000And 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.
00:10:25.000There would be no negotiations and that slavery had to be abolished.
00:10:29.000In the summer of 1864, that had a detrimental effect on the entire voting population at the time in the North.
00:11:00.000This is absolutely critical that people understand this.
00:11:04.000Lincoln went all out in the sense that he believed in democracy.
00:11:10.000And he was in the summer of 1864, Washington, D.C. was almost invaded by Jubal Early's army.
00:11:17.000The Democrats were on the rise, but he still insisted on an election, a free and fair election, which is an extraordinary step.
00:11:24.000And I think that that's, it's, it's a real example of our democracy in action.
00:11:32.000And 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.
00:11:44.000Hey, this is Charlie Kirk, and I know a lot of you have been suffering under the Biden economy.
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00:13:14.000The 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.
00:13:42.000I'll take our guests back in time to the summer of 1864.
00:13:46.000Jubal Early and his army of Confederates, 15,000 strong, about 12,000 strong, go after the capital of the United States.
00:13:56.000And they are at the gates of the Capitol.
00:13:59.000At 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.
00:14:11.000They had all been removed to Petersburg, where there's a siege going on with Robert E. Lee's army.
00:14:57.000And 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.
00:15:12.000And 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.
00:15:25.000You 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.
00:15:35.000I 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.
00:17:38.000But he tells Lee that he has vital information that will potentially change the course of the campaign.
00:17:45.000And, 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.
00:17:53.000And 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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00:19:22.000He's given another opportunity after this disastrous first encounter chance of being a partisan ranger.
00:19:30.000And this occurs in the winter of 1862 at a place called Oakham Manor.
00:19:36.000And 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.
00:19:45.000I've got the maps in the books that allow you actually to go visit these places.
00:19:49.000But 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.
00:19:57.000John Singleton Mosby takes those six men and turns them into a thousand.
00:20:01.000And those thousand men will then tie up tens of thousands of Union soldiers.
00:20:11.000They 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.
00:20:24.000They capture a general within the midst of this huge cavalry encampment near Centerville and then Fairfax.
00:20:32.000And, you know, it's an incredible story.
00:20:34.000They 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?
00:20:42.000And the general kind of, you know, is a very sleep, he's, you know, sleep deprived.
00:20:46.000He wakes up and he goes, Yeah, have you caught him?
00:22:03.000If 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.
00:22:16.000What does an actual insurrection look like versus what we, you know, the live-action role play thing that we saw in 2020?
00:22:27.000Because 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.
00:22:36.000Compare and contrast what a legitimate insurrection against the government looks like.
00:22:40.000Well, 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.
00:22:53.000The Sons of Liberty, otherwise they were the main participants of the Copperhead movement, were, you know, they had these guys were a secret society.
00:23:04.000They had, they were armed to the teeth by the Confederate Secret Service.
00:23:11.000You know, boxes would show up that were titled Bibles when in fact they were pistols or colts or even rifles.
00:23:18.000And 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.
00:23:35.000This was one of the great fears that Lincoln had.
00:23:38.000In this movement, there were hundreds of thousands strong.
00:23:41.000They were armed to the teeth with weapons, but they got cold feet.
00:23:47.000And they got cold feet because of the political influence operations that the Secret Service had performed with the press.
00:23:54.000They literally believed that they could win at the ballot box versus an armed insurrection.
00:24:00.000But an insurrection is obviously one that involves arms and weapons.
00:24:05.000And, 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.
00:24:18.000And 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.
00:24:34.000An insurgency in the 20th and 21st century is almost impossible to defeat if it has the support of the population.
00:24:44.000And the South had completely supported its soldiers in the field.
00:24:49.000And 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.
00:25:00.000And that is a theme that comes about at Appomattox, where General Lee and General Grant do something that's really quite extraordinary.
00:25:10.000Lee disobeys a direct order to conduct Mosby-style guerrilla warfare and go into the mountains and basically fight to the end.
00:25:20.000And this would have been almost impossible to extinguish.
00:25:24.000But he realizes that America has a better path.
00:25:28.000And Grant, to his credit, recognizes that he treats Lee with respect.
00:25:33.000Instead of rounding these men up like they're the SS or something, they're given, they're paroled.
00:25:40.000Their 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.
00:25:47.000And this sets the tone for the reconciliation that begins at Appomattox.
00:25:53.000And then the other Confederate armies that are still in the field, hundreds of thousands strong, literally they follow suit, but it takes months afterwards.
00:26:02.000So Patrick, the idea of a civil war is talking about a lot, being talked about a lot in this country right now.
00:26:11.000What can we learn from Lincoln to heal our divides and to try to prevent that?
00:26:17.000What character attributes, what actions did he take?
00:26:23.000What can we learn from this era to prevent it?
00:26:25.000Because the Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in American history.
00:26:29.000It's something we never want to repeat.
00:26:31.000And I think the statesmanship is the thing that we can learn from the forgiveness, the forgiving of men.
00:26:40.000I mean, at Appomattox, they set aside their differences and they acted, and Lee in particular acts in the best interest of a future America.
00:26:52.000All of his men say, you should go into the hills and we should fight it out to the end.
00:26:58.000And Lee says, no, I'm not going to do it.
00:27:01.000I'm going to disobey Jefferson Davis's direct order.
00:27:05.000And 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.
00:27:14.000He recognizes that these are fellow Americans and that the healing process begins there.
00:27:20.000And I think, you know, that's an important thing today: that we're all fellow Americans.
00:27:25.000The things that bind us together are freedom and liberty.
00:27:28.000It's not some sort of, you know, this woke culture and all the other things that are going on.
00:27:34.000It's freedom and liberty that were founded at the revolution that changed the world.
00:27:38.000It's the idea of America that is so powerful that will literally collapse empires, you know, after 1775 and 1776.
00:27:48.000And going forward, it's those that, you know, our ideals of freedom and liberty, which still resonate today more than ever.
00:27:58.000And 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.
00:28:12.000One 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.
00:28:23.000And 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.
00:28:30.000They've been going after Robert E. Lee.
00:28:32.000What 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?
00:28:46.000Four 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.
00:29:10.000And 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.
00:29:24.000And I think that that's why it's very important to preserve them.
00:29:28.000I don't agree with renaming or taking down statues.
00:29:32.000I believe in providing context for these things.
00:29:38.000I think that's very important to preserve our history because right now our history is under attack and under assault.
00:29:44.000And our history is part of what makes us Americans.
00:29:49.000It's part of the greatness of America.
00:29:52.000It'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.
00:30:04.000So let me just ask you, Robert E. Lee, would you say he was a great man?
00:30:08.000I think that he became a great man because of not what he did in the field.
00:30:15.000I mean, he was one of the best, but it's what he didn't do.
00:30:18.000And 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.
00:30:35.000I 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.
00:30:48.000There was no, they never had enough soldiers to literally occupy the entire South.
00:30:58.000But it was Robert E. Lee that disobeys that order and changes America.
00:31:03.000America's trajectory to becoming a superpower then becomes realized.
00:31:08.000Instead of a divided country, we then become united again.
00:31:12.000And that's it puts us on an amazing path.
00:31:16.000You are a historian and an excellent one.
00:31:18.000What 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?
00:31:30.000The book that I wrote will always surprise me.
00:31:36.000This book puts you in the saddle of these men.
00:31:41.000It's not a high-level view of the Civil War.
00:31:45.000It'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.
00:31:57.000I 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.
00:32:08.000But it's about this epic conflict, but it's also about bringing it down to a very human level.
00:32:15.000The scout or the guerrilla ranger that was fighting.
00:32:20.000And within that is a sense of humanity that I didn't really expect to find.
00:32:26.000I mean, this is a brutal, absolutely brutal and cutthroat war.
00:32:30.000I mean, it rages in places like West Virginia and Appalachia, where it's brother against brother, family against family, next door neighbor against neighbor.
00:32:39.000But there's also a sense of humanity that pervades where people recognize one another as fellow human beings and they rise above.
00:32:50.000And, 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.
00:33:25.000It's already in its third printing, and it's Amazon's book of the month for history.
00:33:30.000It can be found at the front of the store at Barnes and Noble.
00:33:34.000And, you know, it's right there at Amazon.com and continues to be a bestseller.
00:33:40.000But you can get a hold of me on Getter or on Twitter.
00:33:44.000And 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.
00:33:59.000And yes, I've written 13 books, three on the Revolutionary War.
00:34:03.000I'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.
00:34:13.000And 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.
00:34:23.000Every 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.