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Dec. 25, 2023 - Bannon's War Room

48:13

Episode 3271: The Combat History Of Christmas

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patrick k odonnel

20:24

steve bannon

21:18

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unidentified		O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here,
		until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
		♪ Be gone, thou ruler shall come to earth, or is it not over? ♪ ♪ ♪ O come, thou day-spring, come and cheer our spirits by thy advent here. ♪
		O come, thou day-spring, come and cheer our spirits by thy advent here.
		♪ Disturbs the gloaming clouds of night, and death's dark shadows move to flight. ♪ ♪ Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, or is it not over? ♪
		♪ ♪ O come, thou Key of David, come and open wide the heavenly door. ♪ ♪ O may saints know thee that means of power, and hosts
		of earth in excelling. ♪ ♪ Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, or is it not over? ♪ Welcome.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		It's Monday, 25 December in the year of our Lord 2023.
		It is Christmas Day, and we are honored to do a tradition.
		We started back at Breitbart Radio, I don't know, a decade ago.
		We've had our colleague and friend I believe the best combat historian of his generation, Patrick K. O'Donnell, will join us every year.
		For the Combat History of Christmas, what we try to do is make sure everybody's aware that in this holiest of seasons for the Christian faith, in one of the most joyous seasons, obviously, for everyone in the Judeo-Christian West with Hanukkah and then the celebratory, you know, joys of Santa Claus and all of that for the little kids that
		There have been many times in American history, in fact, pivot points in American history have come during this Christmas season in brutal winter conditions oftentimes.
		Patrick K. O'Donnell joins us.
		Patrick, why is it?
		Is it because people have gone on the offensive?
		What is it about, you know, when we talk about, as we'll get to, the Christmas night in Trenton that really turned the American Revolution, or we talk about the Battle of the Bulge, or the Chosin Reservoir, or all other of these, and this new episode we're going to talk about coming from your book, The Unvanquished.
		The book will be out over Memorial Day this year.
		What is it about the Christmas season, I guess, in winter in many aspects that caused major combat to happen?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		The United States is nearing 250 years, Steve.
		And Christmas, in many cases, when America is at war, has been a great inflection point.
		Either America has gone on the attack, that being the Revolutionary War, or our enemies have attacked us.
		And as you mentioned, Weather often plays a huge factor in this.
		Weather covers or screens offensive moves, and this is often when the enemy or the United States is struck during our conflicts over the last 250 years.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Um, and these, uh, in these times have been, I mean, we're talking about some of the most brutal battles in American history, Battle of the Bulge, uh, Caught Unawares, Tristan Reservoir.
		Right.
		A lot of reasons for that, but we're talking about the, the level of, um, of intensity of combat has been pretty, pretty amazing.
		Has it not?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		It's been incredible.
		Um, in, in all the, uh, conflicts that America has been involved in, The level of intensity in combat has been exceptional.
		And that is certainly the case with the Civil War, which I think is some of the most brutal combat that we faced.
		And, you know, if we go back, for instance, to the winter slash autumn of 1863, it's here that the Confederates earlier win a great battle at Chickamauga down in Tennessee on the Georgia border.
		And they surround the vital town of Chattanooga with their forces.
		But Missionary Ridge takes place, and they break that siege, and a new siege takes place at Knoxville.
		And it's here that a raid has to take pressure off of that siege.
		And that is part of the one episode, a Christmas kind of raid, if you will, that involves the forthcoming book that I've written, The Unvanquished.
		Which is on Lincoln Special Forces, otherwise known as Jesse Scouts.
		And these were just exceptional men that were, in many cases, only 18 or 19 years old.
		Young boys that had to volunteer for hazardous duty.
		And they had no idea, in many cases, what that was.
		But after they volunteered, they raised their hand, they volunteered, they were given a Confederate uniform as Union soldiers.
		And then had to do some of the most hazardous duty of the entire Civil War.
		And most of these men never came home.
		They would receive seven medals of honor.
		This is an untold story.
		And they would lead the armies in war, but also they would fight the South's most dangerous men.
		And this included John Singleton Mosby and many other incredible partisan rangers, as well as Confederate Secret Service.
		But on this raid here, uh, to, to, to relieve the pressure on Knoxville.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Well, hey, before, before we get to the raid, I want to, I want to give the dude, I've got a honor to get an early copy.
		Um, in fact, it's, it's, it's the proof copy.
		It's you guys haven't gone, I guess, final, uh, final, uh, print.
		This'll be out.
		I want to make sure the unvanquished, let me get a full thing here.
		So honored to show this for the first time.
		Uh, it will be out right before Memorial Day.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		It'll be out on May 7th, Steve, and thank you so much for... You were the first person to break the news on this book, you know, about a year ago.
		You mentioned it very briefly, but it's a very special book.
		I've been working on this book for six years, and it is a true untold story that America in 1941 had no special operations forces, and it would be Wild Bill Donovan that would look back on these men As well as the Confederate forces under John Singleton Mosby and the Confederate Secret Service to forge our special forces, which would become the U.S.
		Army Green Berets and others.
		And it would change the course of history.
		And I mean, why is it relevant?
		I mean, special operations, covert operations are what we see today in this world.
		And it begins in earnest with our first modern war, which is the Civil War.
		And it's these men that have...
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		You know, Bolton just used this the other day in this talk about insurrection.
		He made the case that, you know, a lot of this thing that's happening in Colorado and the discussion around insurrection, that the lawmakers, you know, the secession move and the insurrection, there were 620,000, what, casualties.
		And not even counting civilian casualties.
		This was a brutal war.
		A lot of the untold stories- It's actually even higher.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		There's so much written out.
		Yes, you're right.
		It was absolutely brutal.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		There's a hundred, but it's actually higher.
		But that's what I want to ask you.
		You haven't done a big book on the Civil War yet.
		Is this your first big Civil War book?
		You've covered so many other conflicts.
		And how did you get, how did you get the idea?
		Well, I'll be through your research, because this is why people are so fascinated when they read your books.
		They're so heavily researched.
		First person accounts that come out of diaries and journals.
		Your books are popular because they read like novels.
		Right, with these characters that, quite frankly, nobody's ever heard of until you write them up.
		So walk us through your process.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		Process is, I've been interested in the Civil War since I was about three or four or five years old.
		It's been a minor obsession.
		It's been one of the wars that I've focused on.
		But I was driving around northern Virginia, and I ran across the roadside sign.
		And there are two roadside signs.
		One was the final hanging place of one of these scouts.
		His name is Jack Stary.
		And it's in the Plains, Virginia.
		And it's 1862.
		And Jack is in a Confederate uniform.
		And he is trying to guide General Hood's forces down the wrong road at the Second Battle of Manassas, which would have changed the course of history.
		And he is out guiding them.
		And trying to convince them to go down this road.
		And they spend about an hour trying to interrogate this guy, trying to figure out who he was when he's in fact one of Lincoln's special forces.
		And he's trying to guide them down the wrong road.
		And they basically unmask this individual.
		And they hang him near this spot of this sign.
		And in 1960s when they were widening the road, they found Jack's body as well as the confederate that he had killed.
		who was a dispatch writer.
		Just an incredible story.
		And it was there that I found, I wanted to know more.
		Who were these men?
		And then it turns out that it had never been written up as a full book.
		And they had led, they had led the Union Army to victory in multiple battles.
		But within that story is the men that they had to fight against, which were some of the most incredible, dangerous men of the South that were just, In many cases, just formidable.
		Greatest partisan forces in the war were John Singleton Mosby, who begins with only a handful of men and then grows his partisan force to over a thousand.
		They ambush wagon trains, they derail steam locomotives, and they harass the Union relentlessly.
		And pretty much anything that goes into Mosby's confederacy Which is this area in Northern Virginia, which is in and around Middleburg, Warrington, and Loudoun County.
		It remains untouched.
		And they tie down tens of thousands of forces.
		But within this story is also the story of influence operations that the Confederacy had launched to change the course of the election.
		And it's a lot of stuff that we see today.
		It's not just about Supply and wagon trains, but it's also about influencing people and influence operations.
		And, uh, even the first ballots, for instance, uh, mail-in ballots become part of the civil war.
		And, um, there's an entire fraud case, which involved tens of thousands of ballots for the Democratic candidate at that time, which is, I bring out in this book.
		So it's, uh, it's an epic story.
		Of seven medals of honor, men that basically do everything to win the war.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Okay, amazing.
		The new book's The Unvanquished.
		It'll come out in May.
		You always do the Memorial Day special with us.
		The audience loves it.
		Patrick K. O'Donnell.
		We're going to come back, we're going to get into this Christmas raid by, was it, the official title is Jesse Scouts?
		Is that what they're called?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		They were called Jesse Scouts and then they changed the name over time based on the commander.
		It'd be Averill Scouts or it'd be Sheridan Scouts.
		But they were, the heart of these men begin as Jesse Scouts and they were named after John Fremont's wife, Jesse Fremont, in her honor.
		And as one quote said, she was a better man than even her husband.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		She's one of the most remarkable women.
		She and Custer's wife were the two firebrands.
		Amazing.
		Hang on, man.
		This country has got some guys.
		Yeah, he was the first Republican.
		He was in 1856.
		Okay, short commercial break.
		We're here on Combat History at Christmas.
		We do every year with Patrick K. O'Donnell.
		We're going to talk about some of the great battles that our patriots waged during the Christmas season and oftentimes on Christmas Day.
		I want to thank the team who put together this great, great, great music that's going to be with us all day.
		Short commercial break.
		back with Patrick A. O'Donnell in a moment.
unidentified		I'm going to sing a little bit of the song.
		I'm going to sing a little bit of the song.
		The honeybears are blossom, Christ, why is the living flower?
		And may His voice, Jesus Christ, to me a sweet Savior.
		O the rising of the sun, the running of the deer, the bling of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir.
		The honeybears are blossom, Christ, why is the living flower?
		And may His voice, Jesus Christ, to me a sweet Savior.
		O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Okay, welcome back.
		Christmas day.
		I hope you're having a terrific Christmas.
		If you're watching or listening, I really appreciate it.
		Get a cup of Warpath coffee at warpath.coffee and slash war room.
		Enjoy yourself.
		That's how we start the day.
		You even need to get jacked up even on a mellow Christmas day.
		You got a big day ahead of you, right?
		So for those of you who didn't go to midnight mass or evening services yesterday, coming back from church services, we welcome you on Christmas Day.
		We do this as a traditional honor to honor patriots, to honor our country on Christmas Day.
		The combat history of Christmas, American patriots at war during the Christmas season and oftentimes on Christmas Day.
		You know, Jesse Fremont is one of my favorite.
		The Fremonts are one of my favorite couples in American history, and particularly that age of the Old West and really the rise of America as a world power.
		Her father was Thomas Hart Benton, who arguably, I think for Missouri, one of the most powerful senators in the United States Senate in the run-up to the Civil War.
		Her husband, the great pathfinder, John C. Fremont, was actually, Lincoln was not the first Republican nominee.
		It was John C. Fremont.
		Fremont ran in 1856.
		Lincoln took the nomination away from Seward and Chase and Fremont in 1860, kind of out of nowhere, really a surprise candidate, although he was kind of the, I think the ones that abolitionists trusted the most, although he was not a fire-breathing abolitionists.
		There's a story, Patrick O'Donnell, that when Fremont actually, as the military, he was the senior general in the West at the beginning of the Civil War.
		He actually put out a proclamation that freed the slaves in Missouri and in territories under his control, which is exactly what they didn't want to have happen.
		They're trying to keep the border states of Kentucky and Delaware, Maryland, and particularly Missouri, which had had a lot of partisan ranger Fighting, you know, bloody Kansas and all that.
		So, you know, Lincoln sent him a direct telegram and kind of put him on notice.
		Hey, you know, I'm the commander in chief.
		You got to run this by me.
		And he put his wife, Jesse Benton Fremont, on a train to deliver his response.
		She gets to the White House, or she gets to the Union Station, they take her to the Willard Hotel, and I think it's midnight or one o'clock in the morning, you know, it's like taking the red eye.
		It took multiple days to get there.
		And she sent a message immediately from the Willard, which was obviously very dialed into the White House, to the White House that she was there.
		And Lincoln, I think it was Hay, the young secretary, John Hay, sent a message to her, come immediately to the White House, because Lincoln needed to hear this response from Fremont.
		And, um, you know, she gets there and it's got, I don't know, it's one o'clock in the morning.
		She gets there and she gives the letter.
		I don't think the letter exactly was what President Lincoln was, you know, thinking, you know, wanted to see.
		And he's kind of reading it.
		And I think he asked her a question or he looked up, he did something and she just, she just on a full board, fuselage, boom, hit him.
		Letting him know, in her opinion, you know, he was not half the man her husband was, and quite frankly, he was kind of a clown, and he was the great, Fremont was the great pathfinder, the leader, and he needed to start, he needed to start, he needed to start listening to Fremont.
		Lincoln cut the conversation off pretty quickly, and basically told, hey, get her out of town, get her back to the Willard, but get her on the next train back to Missouri.
		And then he relieved Fremont for cause, I think, 48 hours later.
		So she was not shy about taking on the powers that be.
		She'd been raised by one of the most powerful people in Washington and was not beyond telling somebody what they could do with it.
		So it's quite fascinating that the Rangers, that the Scouts were named in her honor.
		How did that happen?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		The scouts begin in Missouri in that cauldron of brother against brother, this, you know, inner rivalry between, you know, people next door neighbors who are fighting each other.
		And Fremont is put in there along with the men that he has, and he raises a series of scouts, and they are named in Jesse's honor.
		The first commander of the scouts is a guy by the name of Carpenter.
		And this is really made for a movie, Steve.
		The Carpenter is kind of, he's just full of it in many cases.
		He's anti-slave.
		He claims that he was on the John Brown riot raid and then escaped through a culvert.
		He's a crack shot.
		He wears velvet everywhere, gold chains, even though he's a scout and wears a Confederate uniform.
		He dresses as a woman in one of the missions to get the plans at Fort Donaldson.
		Um, but he's also a guy that will steal anything that's not nailed down.
		And, um, this, this creates a little bit of a reputation for the scouts.
		And it's a reputation that's not, uh, something that's, that the army likes and they eventually cashier him out and the scouts are broken up.
		And, uh, but a core of these men remain and they go with General Milroy's command.
		And then it goes to a guy by the name of Avril, who we are now at 1864, as I mentioned, and there's this raid that needs to take place to relieve pressure on Knoxville.
		And Avril has this core of men who are crack shots.
		That wear Confederate uniforms and they have to lead his force of about 2,000 men down the backside of West Virginia, the east side of West Virginia, to Salem, Virginia, which is outside of Roanoke today, to take out the rail hub and rail stations and trestles that are part of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, which will supply Longstreet down in Knoxville.
		and also potentially relieve his forces.
		And these men have basically a death march across this most rugged terrain in West Virginia.
		And it's in December.
		There's snow everywhere.
		The horses, the shoes go off.
		It is an incredible series of endurances that these men have to go through.
		And it's the scouts that are out front.
		And Avril takes what was then sort of like the machine gun of the Civil War, The Spencer Carbine, which is something you could basically fire as quickly as you pull the lever back and pull the trigger.
		These men were armed with Spencer Carbines, as well as Colt, Army Colt pistols.
		Both the weapons that I have in my hand were carried by men in the book that I wrote about.
		Hang on a second, I just want to make sure I get the time right.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		This was the fall of 1863, so this was Christmas 1863 or Christmas 1864?
		I think it's Christmas 1863.
		make sure I get the time right. This was the fall of 1863 so this was Christmas 1863 or Christmas 1864. I think it's Christmas 1863. Christmas 1863, yes. And into New Year's 1864.
		Now, the Spencer Carbines and the Colt, Army Colts, they were only, correct me if I'm wrong, they were only given to the most elite troops, right?
		Because the Spencer Carbine was just coming into full manufacture, and the Army Colt was the best precision weapon, handgun at the time.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		In terms of the Colt, that was given to many men as a sidearm.
		But it would be the Calvary, and especially the Scouts, as well as John Singleton Mosby, who would carry these along with the Navy.
		The Army Colt was a .44 caliber pistol.
		The Navy was a .36.
		But it was all about speed and basically attacking the enemy quickly.
		And they would use pistols on horseback.
		Much of this book is just action-packed.
		It's guys on horseback getting in ambushes.
		But yes, the more elite Union units would have the Spencer, which I tell the story of the Spencer in the book as well.
		It's Lincoln himself that tests Spencer with the Spencer's designer.
		They go out of the White House, and the Washington Monument is currently being under construction, and they pull out a target, and they give Abe Lincoln a Spencer, and he's able to hit several bullseye with the Spencer.
		And I mean, it would have changed the war if they had put it in the hands of most Union soldiers, but it was a situation where they didn't have enough ammunition in most cases.
		The demands that it would have taken to arm over a million men with a Spencer carbine were too high at that time.
unidentified		Various things that occurred.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		We're going to go to break here in about a minute or so, at 90 seconds.
		I've spent many Christmases down at Salem.
		I've got a family down there.
		I'm from Richmond and Norfolk, but I spent a lot of time in Salem, particularly over Christmas.
		Those are not mountains.
		Coming out of West Virginia and Western Virginia, down to that railroad center in Salem and in Roanoke, that's not someplace you want to be out traveling a lot.
		on foot or on horseback over Christmas.
		What was so important?
		Why was the urgency that you would send troops, particularly elite troops, into that type of a journey?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		The urgency is that Knoxville is about to fall, and they need to cut the supply line, the Virginia-Tennessee Railroad, which runs through Salem, along with other points all the way down to Tennessee.
		And the plan is to act as a diversion, to basically cut the supply line, maybe cut the ability for the Confederacy to remove Longstreet from down there, or supply him, but also act as a distraction, to draw troops away from that front to deal with this new threat.
		And this new threat creates a massive response from the Confederates.
		Six commands of Confederates on horseback, largely, then go after Avril and these scouts.
		And it is a brutal march through the mountains, as you mentioned.
		But they also have to evade constantly the Confederates, which are on their tail.
		After they destroy the railroad, they then have to escape.
		And it's the scouts that do some amazing things, Steve.
		They run into, for instance, an enemy scout.
		Uh, good.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		I tell you, hang on.
		Hang on.
		Let's get some Christmas music in.
		We're going to come back right after a short break.
		Patrick A. O'Donnell with Combat History at Christmas here in the War Room, our annual special.
		We're going to be back in a moment.
unidentified		Heather, please, I'm sorry.
		My wife loves this tabby.
		Younger, there's a new disease.
		me care. Underneath the mountain, right against the forest fence, my Saint has his fountain.
		Bring me flesh and bring me wine, bring me pine, logs, hither.
		Thou and I will see him die when we bear them thither.
		He shall come and forth they went, forth they went together through the woodwinds like the mace.
		O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.
		Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		A Christmas special, the Combat History of Christmas.
		Patrick K. O'Donnell has done this for us for many, many, many years.
		When did they actually get to the railroad line in Salem?
		Was it around Christmas Day?
		Put it in perspective of in the holiday season, because it's bitter cold.
		I mean, when you're in Salem, you're in the mountains right there, but there are much higher mountains right around it, and particularly the route they were coming.
		When did the battle actually take place?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		It's in the middle of December that this takes place.
		It's a little bit after December, a little middle of December, that they actually destroy the rails.
		They basically twist the railroad ties.
		They burn all the trestles.
		They burn any infrastructure that's in the depot.
		And then they have to get home.
		And they're over 200 miles away from their home base, which is near New Creek.
		It's in Maryland slash West Virginia, which is up near Cumberland, Maryland.
		And they have to somehow get back.
		And there's six commands of Confederates.
		There's thousands of Confederates that are swarming the area, and they have to get home.
		And there's a number of rivers that they have to cross to get home.
		But they're kind of lost in a sense.
		So General Averill orders the scouts to find somebody that knows them, that can take sort of across some of the rivers.
		And they found a roving physician who was kind of making his rounds to people.
		And Averill takes him, the scouts take him in, they bring him in front of Averill.
		And they say, and Averill says, You have five minutes to make a decision, and he brings out his watch, and he brings out his, probably his Colt Army, and says, I will kill you if you don't give me, you know, safe passage, and I'll give you $500 in gold as well as safe passage of your family if you comply.
		And the thing, the clock ticks down to around four and a half minutes, and then the doctor finally scums and agrees to sort of lead them across One of these bridges.
		And as the scouts get towards the bridge, one of these crucial bridges that they have to cross, the bridge is about to be fired.
		And the scouts literally intercept a Confederate rider, who's also a scout, but in their forces, with a message to burn the bridge.
		And they basically take the message and then are able to seize the bridge before it's burned and are able to cross.
		But in the process, part of Avril's command is left behind, the 14th Pennsylvania.
		They burn the bridge, and these men are escaping from Confederates, and it's an epic story.
		They have to cross, you know, part of the river near Covington, which is, you know, frozen.
		They ford it.
		Many men die in the process, and they're making their way back.
		Towards New Creek, which is about, you know, 200 miles away.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Before we get to Trenton, I want to talk just about the book.
		Avril, General Avril, look, I tell people, if you, there was a, the war in the East, particularly, not Mosby's Rangers, but particularly the two, the two bigger Army in Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac, whether under McClellan or under Grant,
		As intense as that combat was, much of it was by the terms of chivalry at the time and what was perceived, because remember the 19th century had a very different code of honor than modernity.
		Even in the huge battles of the armies of the West.
		But going on, and I think up to a third of the conflict in the Civil War, and particularly the one that was the nastiest, ugliest, with these partisan rangers.
		Missouri, bloody Kansas, being a kind of a precursor to what was to come.
		And this is one of the powers of Lee at the end, because the whole thing could have devolved to that unless Lee had surrendered and worked out a deal with Grant, and that's why they didn't want to go back to this kind of partisan warfare.
		But Missouri in particular, the border states overall, but Missouri in particular was a cauldron.
		A cauldron of the most brutal fighting, I think, in the nastiest fighting in the Civil War.
		Was it Quantrell's Raiders?
		This is where I think Jesse James and these guys came up from.
		You know, the bank robbers later on, who basically were Confederate partisans.
		You had the Red Legs.
		Have you ever seen the outlaw Josie Wales?
		It talks about the Union.
		General Averill is also one of the most controversial guys.
		He's no angel, right?
		Correct me if I'm wrong, wearing a confederate uniform as a union special forces operator or special operator, that's an immediate, in the rules of war at that time, you were immediately shot or hung.
		There was no trial, nothing.
		You're a dead man, correct?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		This is an immediate death sentence, if you're uncovered.
		And that's why these guys are so amazing, Steve.
		They had to talk their way out of countless situations, or shoot their way out of countless situations.
		Or they were dead men, like Jack Starry, who I had mentioned, who was killed at the plains in 1862.
		Many of these men were hanging from a rope during the war.
		That's why their story is untold.
		That's why the Unvanquished is really, in many ways, their story is extraordinary in how they changed the war.
		But equally interesting and extraordinary is the men that they had to fight.
		And as you mentioned, it's a miracle that the United States won the Civil War.
		If you really look at everything and how it... Oh no, no.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Even with the overwhelming equipment and manpower, just the vast territory they had to do.
		And that's why at the end, and Sherman told Lincoln this in the first 30 days of the war, 60 days of the war, he met with him.
		He had come from Louisiana, where I think it was LSU today, he was running the military academy.
		That was just starting.
		He came and he said, look, he was from Ohio.
		He was the younger brother of another powerful senator from the Midwest.
		Senator, I think it was John Sherman.
		And he had, Sherman put his brother in front, he's a West Point grad, put him in front of Lincoln and said, hey, this guy could get a general ship or something like that.
		And Lincoln asked him about his thoughts, and he said, let me be brutally frank, you have no idea what you're up against.
		He says, you're going to have to burn to the ground every major city in the South, and you're going to have to kill vast proportions of the civilian population, because these people will not quit.
		He says, you don't really understand how ornery and how cussed, the cussedness, the grit, the determination, and just the old-fashioned orneriness they are.
		He says, if you think we're going to do this with a couple of armies fighting each other, that's not the way this is going to end.
		And Lincoln basically told his guys, get him out of here.
		They sent him out west.
		And six months later, he's in an insane asylum.
		They put him in for a medical, had a medical breakdown, because he kept talking about how you had to go.
		And of course, it was obvious.
		In fact, one time, one of the viewers on the show in one of the chat rooms thought I was defending Sherman's march to the sea.
		I'm not defending it at all.
		But as a way to break the back of the Confederacy from that military tactic, he knew what he had to do.
		This was not about armies.
		This was about populations, and Columbia, South Carolina, Atlanta, Richmond, Virginia, my hometown, they burned them right to the ground.
		New Orleans, they took the torch to the enemy.
		So the book is fascinating.
		It's going to be huge.
		I want to go back to the Revolution.
		Because in the revolution, also, it started with militias at Lexington and Concord, and even beforehand, we just had the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
		It was militias or kind of organized gangs that fought guerrilla warfare.
		But when we decided that we had to stand up to the British, and the British really put the biggest expeditionary force they'd ever put in New York Harbor,
		Right after the Declaration of Independence, I keep telling people, hey, I know we celebrate the 4th of July, it's amazing, but that was a group of brilliant lawyers that wrote a divinely inspired document that inspired everybody and gave us the moral high ground, but the British were already sending an expeditionary force to say, hey, I saw the document, the document's lovely, but we had the British Army and the Royal Navy and we're going to put this down.
		And from that time they landed, I think in late August, all the way up to Christmas, it was one rolling defeat after the other.
		Your books have been amazing.
		Give us the preamble to Trenton and Christmas Night.
		Because your book showed the courage of the Americans fighting the first time as really organized units, right, with all these heroic stories.
		But in the Bravium, it's one, basically from August till they cross the Delaware to hide in Pennsylvania.
		It's six months of one continuous tactical defeat, Brother O'Donnell.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		This is a, as you mentioned, the British come and they're there to crush.
		And they crush everything in their path prior to that.
		Every insurrection that occurred in their empire, any little hiccup, was immediately stomped and crushed by a massive army and their massive navy.
		So this is a situation where it looks like mission impossible.
		And as you mentioned, beginning in August with the defeat at the Battle of Brooklyn, which is an epic disaster, it's the men that I write about in my books, Washington's Immortals, as well as the Indispensables that save the Army.
		First, the Immortals save the Army with an epic rear stand at Brooklyn, which buys the Army an hour more precious in our history than any other.
		And then it's the Indispensables, the Marblehead Men, that row the Army across the East River and save it by bringing it to Manhattan.
		But then from there, It's one defeat after another.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		But hang on, even to get there, I want to make sure, you document, and this is why I love your books and our audience does, you spend so many years in research, you get the journals, you have the conversations of first-person accounts.
		The American Thermopylae takes place now in an unmarked area of downtown Brooklyn.
		An American Dunkirk, with all these miracles that make it happen, right there where the Brooklyn Bridge is today, and you read how close This revolution could have collapsed.
		And at the very moment it's on the edge of collapse, it's not simply Washington and his staff like Hamilton and these guys that step up.
		It's ordinary men whose names are lost to history except for the fact that you went back and did it.
		The American Thermopylae with charge after charge in this near, I guess, this stone house near where downtown Brooklyn is today.
		And then the Dunkirk, American Dunkirk, The books that I've written are about personal agency.
		near where the Brooklyn Bridge is today, and both times they barely, you know, they barely hold or barely escape. And these hinges of history are about individuals. It's really about the deplorables, the average man who just sits there and does uncommon valor at these critical moments.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		The books that I've written are about personal agency. It's about a small group of individuals that change history. This happens over and over.
		The United States has been very, very blessed to produce extraordinary men and women that have changed history.
		And that's certainly the case with Washington's Immortals and the Indispensables, which they're part of, I argue, the greatest generation.
		The Revolutionary War generation, the founders are the greatest generation because they produce something more powerful than bullets or bayonets.
		It's the idea.
		The idea of freedom and liberty, which is more powerful than anything else in history.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Amazing.
		Patrick, hang on for a second.
		We're going to go to the run-up in Christmas night, right, of this, to really save this, Christmas night of 1776 with the revolution and the balance.
		General Washington crosses the Delaware in an amazing military operation on Christmas night.
		back in a moment with Patrick Kirdile.
unidentified		♪ Far and near, may God bless you and send you a happy new year.
		God bless the master of his house, the mistress of his home, and all the little children that round the table go.
		For it is Christmas time, and we travel far and near.
		♪ ♪ O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God...
		Come back.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Christmas Day 2023.
		Patrick, in your lead-up books, Washington's Immortals and the Indispensables, it is about human agency.
		It's one of the things we talk about on the show all the time.
		And that's why this audience, this War Room Posse, has become such a massive political force in the country, using their own agency, everyday men and women.
		What astonished me about the story about to tell us and we'll start here in this last block of the first hour continue on because it's a story that people have to understand about what this country is about.
		We went on a series.
		Of, I mean, catastrophic defeats with all this heroism and at the last second saving everything to make sure the army wasn't destroyed.
		Because the British idea at the time, and that's why they wanted to get out of Boston and these other places, is to destroy the Continental Army.
		They figured they could destroy the Continental Army and take out General Washington, that the whole thing was collapsed.
		And for six months, there's just one, we're one moment away from losing everything.
		And remember, they weren't getting a ton of support from Philadelphia.
		They couldn't pay them.
		They had a tough time paying them.
		There was all types of problems with logistics and ammunition and materiel, as we say.
		But they fought on.
		But then when they crossed the Delaware, immediately, what I love about the way you tell the story, They were immediately thinking about no more retreat, but how do we go on offense?
		How do we turn the tide?
		We need to get some momentum here.
		Or we understand the whole thing's going to fall apart.
		The South and the other places in New England are just going to lose faith that we can destroy.
		Because remember, one-third of the people were patriots and were with the cause of liberty.
		And throwing off tyranny.
		One-third were Tories.
		One-third of our own country were Americans.
		Kind of sided with the British and said, hey, we're Englishmen.
		We're part of the greatest empire that's going to even get greater when India comes into the fold.
		Why would we leave now?
		We've got the best deal in the world and it's only going to get better.
		Right?
		And you're going to have to live with the fact that, hey, the Commons is going to tell you what to do, but we can live with that because the economic benefits are going to be tremendous.
		Then a third, like everything else, and even today, a third are in the middle.
		That's just human nature.
		They're going to see how this plays out.
		And so with that, the thought is they're always on offense.
		And how do we get back on offense?
		Patrick K. O'Donnell.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼		This is, as you mentioned, Steve, this is an American Civil War, arguably.
		Our first Civil War.
		The country is very deeply divided politically between patriots, between those who were loyalists, and then, as you mentioned, those that were in the middle that would switch sides.
		My books are replete with people that literally jump sides three or four times.
		And it's the battles that change things.
		It changes people's trajectory on where they're going.
		But it's also about a core group of people that are so determined that hold it all together.
		But as you mentioned, it's the winter of 1776.
		It's called The Crisis by Thomas Paine, who writes an amazing pamphlet that captures the moment.
		There's massive political divisions.
		There is one defeat after another that Washington is suffering.
		And, oh, by the way, there is hyperinflation.
		Everything is more expensive.
		Does this sound a little bit familiar?
		Oh, it's actually 1776.
		But it's in this situation that Washington has to act and go on the offensive.
		And he knows it because the enlistments for the army are expiring December 15th and then later December 31st.
		This core army that he had in New York, which was about 20,000 strong, is now winnowing down to thousands of men.
		And he must act.
		Quickly.
		He has to strike a blow to change the course of the war.
		And that's at Trenton.
		And there's a bit of a problem, though.
		There's a river between Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Trenton where there's an outpost of Hessian allies with the British Army.
		And they have to take it out.
		They have to get across the river.
		And it's the Marblehead men that Washington, once again, the Indispensables, that he asked if the job could be done.
		And John Glover, who's the commander of the brigade, who was originally the commander of the Marblehead Regiment, the 14th Continental, says, don't worry, my boys can handle it.
		And that is a bit of an understatement in many ways, because it's a miracle that they were able to get across the river.
		Washington had a complex plan to take Trenton.
		He divided his army into multiple attacking forces and the two forces that attacked Trenton that were not under the command of the Marvel Entertainment.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼		Hang on a second.
		Hang on a second.
		This is going to take us through the break.
		Isn't that, and this is my point about risk mitigation, and remember Washington was under tremendous criticism.
		You had Horatio Gates, you had the guys that wanted Saratoga, you had different factions inside the Continental Congress.
		There was talk of relieving Washington because even as small as the Army was, they were saying, hey, how come we haven't had any real victories?
		How have we not even been able to stop the British?
		The only thing that's really stopped them, they stopped at the river.
		And come the spring, they'll be down in Philadelphia.
		They'll take in our first capital and this game will be over, right?
		So Washington was under tremendous pressure.
		Hang on a second.
		I tell you what, we're going to go to break.
		I want to answer that when we get back.
		Just the risk of splitting your army into three, when people, most people say, hey, you want to cross, the most dangerous thing you can do in warfare, I've been taught many times, is a forced crossing of a river At night, in winter, under combat conditions, right?
		So the question is, why did Washington even split his force up and not keep it together?
		Okay, we're going to take a short commercial break.
		We're going to come back.
		We got the second hour.
		We're also going to get to Christmas night in Trenton.
		We're going to talk about the Battle of the Bulge.
		We're going to go to the Chosin Reservoir, one of the greatest examples of the heroism and the grit of the United States Marine Corps.
		All of it.
		And enjoy some Christmas music on Christmas Day here in 2023.
		Be back with Patrick K. O'Donnell.
		the combat history of Christmas next.

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