All Episodes
Previous Next
July 4, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
48:56
Episode 3732: WarRoom Independence Day Special
Participants
Main voices
p
patrick k odonnel
21:14
s
steve bannon
16:31
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
unidentified
That was just altogether unexpected.
Not only a declaration of our independence, but...
of the rights of all men.
This is well said, sir.
Very, very well said.
The Christian king of Great Britain has waged cruel war against human nature itself in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere.
Yes, you lay the evils of slavery at the feet of the king, but you say nothing of slavery itself, sir.
Surely, if the trade is outlawed but ownership is not, then those unfortunate negroes still in servitude will become a more lucrative commodity.
Well, that's not what I intended, Dr. Franklin.
Slavery is an abomination and must be loudly proclaimed as such, but I own that neither I nor any man has any immediate solution to the problem.
Oh, but it is no matter.
The issue before us is independence and not emancipation.
Dr. Franklin, this document is... Something our friends in the Congress will debate, but I would be very surprised if they will countenance an attack on slavery.
No.
We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal, etc.
Sacred and undeniable.
Smacks of the pulpit.
Does it?
These truths are self-evident, are they not?
Perhaps.
Self-evident, then.
Self-evident?
So have I.
So have I.
Do not mistake me, sir.
I...
I share your sentiment.
Every single word was precisely chosen.
I assure you of that, Dr Franklin.
Yes, but yours will not be the only hand in this document.
It cannot be.
They will try to mangle it, and they may succeed.
There may be expressions which I would not have inserted if I had drawn it up, but I will defend every word of it.
Well, it's what I believe.
This is a marvelous invention, Mr. Jefferson.
Yes, I went through a number of variations.
This is by far the most successful.
Simplest is always the best.
It's two seats, and the top one swivels on rollers made from the window sash pulleys.
Oh, most ingenious.
Lift up your hands, ye heroes, and swear with proud disdain, the wretch that a wooden snare you shall spread his net in vain.
Should Europe empty, all her force will meet them in array, and fight and shout and shout and fight for free America.
We let fair freedom hither and lo, the desert smiled.
A paradise of pleasure was opened in the wild.
Your harvest, bold Americans, no power shall snatch away.
Preserve, preserve, preserve your rights in a free America.
We're torn from a world of tyrants beneath this western sky.
We've formed a new dominion, a land of liberty.
The world shall own we're free men here and such will ever be.
Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah, huzzah for free America.
Some future day shall crown us the masters of the main.
Our fleet shall speak in thunder to England, France, and Spain.
Nations o'er the ocean's spread shall tremble and obey The Prince who rules by freedom's laws in North America
Okay, welcome.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's Thursday, 4th of July, the 4th of July in the year of our Lord 2024.
Not a better time to talk about liberty.
Of course, the open there.
Is the magnificent HBO, I guess it was special, series, John Adams.
It's hard to believe.
I think that's over 14 years old, 16.
If you have not watched or you have not watched it with your children, make sure you get a chance to.
It's just extraordinary.
And the music that we use a lot and we do Revolutionary War, Civil War is Diane Tarras.
You go on her site, you put on YouTube or her site, I can't recommend more highly to order her Songs of the Revolution and Songs of the Civil War.
She does a ton of Americana.
Just magnificent stuff.
The greatest combat historian we've got of his generation, Patrick K. O'Donnell, joins us.
Just like that's Tom Wilkerson, who just recently passed away.
He's playing Dr. Benjamin Franklin.
He's a magnificent, extraordinary actor.
You probably remember him as General Cornwallis.
Lord Cornwallis and the Patriot, there he's playing Dr. Franklin, and he lays out our show today.
The first part's going to be about independence, and the second part will be a little bit about emancipation, what he was saying and giving some wise guidance.
We've got to get independent first.
Before we can deal with the slavery issue, or we'll never be able to get to this.
Patrick K. O'Donnell, your thoughts as we open up?
We're going to talk about the combat history around the Fourth of July and our independence, the second part of the show.
We're going to get into also what people forget.
A lot of people forget is that the great battle that really decided our, I shouldn't say decided because a lot came after, but changed the direction of the war between the states, the Civil War, the Battle of
Gettysburg and Vicksburg, both on the 3 July of 1863. Patrick K. O'Donnell joins us.
Your thoughts, sir?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
It's an honor to be here, Steve. And it's always a sacred time on the 4th of July
to talk about the greatest generation. And that greatest generation was our founding generation
because of what they had to go against.
the greatest army at the time, the greatest Navy at the time,
and even a civil war among fellow Americans.
But it was their ideals of freedom and liberty, the idea of America,
which will change the world as we know it.
And it continues to change the world.
This is what we're really all about.
And it is formed at this time.
Let me go back a little bit further, though, to the 7.
And we're, I'm gonna take our listeners.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, hang on, hang on.
I want, I want, I want to do this, but here's the reason.
I want people to understand something.
In the Revolution, Civil War, these were fights.
These were determined on the battlefield in, in political gatherings of conferences and British commons, um, in the halls of Congress in the, in the Civil War.
But To pull it down, these were hard-fought kinetic wars.
And you had a tremendous philosophy and debate and negotiations.
You had all of that.
But you must look at it because So many people forgot.
And look, I love the fact of you're at the beach.
You know, the Jaws movie was about the Fourth of July weekend.
You're going to baseball double hitters, hot dogs, the backyard barbecue, all of it.
But in so many people, particularly younger generations, I think, well, hey, they came out and, you know, negotiated this great thing and wrote this great document.
It spoke to all mankind, as Dr. Franklin and John Adams are telling are telling, you know, Thomas Jefferson there.
But hey, that was kind of in the, that's kind of close to the railhead.
You had things that led up to it and what drove it, and then they had this negotiation, declared the independence.
But then you had, what, six, seven, eight years of a fight.
And in the middle of that fight, we're fighting a revolution against an imperial power.
Oh, by the way, we're also fighting an eternal civil war against ourselves between the Tories that were here and the patriots.
And the one third in the middle of kind of said, yeah, I'll see how this is coming out.
And this is what Modern America is.
With that as a table setter, Patrick K. O'Donnell, take us back to 1769, sir.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, I mean, Steve, the kinetic war or the battles led the political situation.
And this would span years of war.
America is made by war.
And it's a miracle, absolute miracle, that we achieved independence against the greatest power at the time.
But in many ways, it begins many years before the American Revolution.
And I'll take you, the listeners, back to 1769.
And we're on board a small packet ship called the Pit Packet.
And it's a merchant ship from Marblehead, Massachusetts, and they're returning from Spain with a cargo of salt.
And they're just going on their way, but suddenly a Royal Frigate pulls up alongside them and it's not a friendly visit.
They are there to kidnap everybody on board and impress them in the Royal Navy.
The Royal Navy is the largest Navy at the time, it's the most powerful, but they're in constant need of men to man their ships, the hundreds of ships that they have.
And they're not only They're not willing to pay him, they're willing to just kidnap people to do it.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
As a naval officer in my beloved Royal Navy that was basically the forerunner of the American Navy.
They're doing press gangs and they're stopping ships and pressing sailors because there ain't a lot of people volunteering for this.
And the reason they're not volunteering is just not to pay.
This was one of the greatest institutions man's ever created.
It basically was the foundational element of an amazing empire.
And the institution itself is extraordinary, what it accomplished, etc.
But man, oh man, you want to talk about the lived experience not being the best?
unidentified
Patrick K. O'Donnell, why did they have to press gang them off of other ships?
Because it was a life of service, too.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
You weren't allowed to leave, and you were paid a pittance.
It wasn't quite slavery, but it was darn near close to it.
So can you imagine, you're being boarded by the Royal Navy, and it's here that we have one of the first instances where Americans fight back.
There's a British officer in his boarding party that boards a pit packet, and interestingly enough, a sack of salt spills out in front, of the two groups that sort of are on the top of the deck of the ship.
And Michael Corbett, who is a tough Massachusetts sailor, takes his foot and rubs it across the salt and makes a line and says, if you cross it, you are a dead man to the British officer.
And the British officer is not at all dissuaded.
In fact, he takes a little bit of snuff and just nonchalantly crosses that line.
And he receives a harpoon to the neck as a result.
And then the men then fight back with hatchets and whatever else they have.
And it's a bit of a bloodbath.
Corbett slays the officer, but eventually they're just overwhelmed by the massive number of Royal Navy sailors there, and they press them on the ship.
But it's John Adams, who is America's really first super lawyer, that defends Michael Corbett and the crew, and he gets them all.
Later, it's atrocities like this that build up over time.
And the next one is the Boston Massacre.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
On the Boston Massacre Adams comes in and defends the British soldiers, does he not?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
He does, and he gets those British soldiers off as well in a trial.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's increasing, it's increasing.
Let's go back to the Corps because this story is not told enough.
The British officer, the Royal Navy, they're not in the business of taking a lot of lip from somebody.
Okay, that's not how it rolls.
They're the Royal Navy and you're not.
And so when he nonchalantly crosses the line, because it's like, it's gentleman's honor.
You're like some deckhand, you're insulting me.
He takes a harpoon to the neck.
Okay, a harpoon to the neck.
This is what Franklin said about Americans.
He says, we're not British anymore.
We've created something here in this new experience that's different.
It's rougher.
It's got more grit.
It is, it's, but we're different.
Americans are different than the British.
Right there you saw it with the harpoon to the neck.
unidentified
I think that's grit and stick-to-itiveness.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Although they got slaughtered shortly thereafter and pressed.
Press gang.
Okay, short commercial break.
Patrick K. O'Donnell, the author of the new bestseller, Unvanquished, about our own Civil War.
We'll join us after a short commercial break.
unidentified
Lift up your hands, ye heroes, and swear with proud disdain.
The wretch that a wooden snare, you shall spread his net in vain.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Okay, welcome back.
So, Patrick, we got the Boston Massacre.
The tensions are increasing, are they not, sir?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
Atrocity after another.
And then 1773 hits, and another thing that is fascinating and sort of a repeat of history, if you will, a smallpox epidemic hits Marblehead and the northern colonies and other places.
And it's here that the divisions are even wider between those that are patriots, if you will, and those that are loyal to the crown.
And it's interesting, the Patriots, under John Glover and other men of Marblehead, come up with a fairly novel solution.
They decide to create a vaccination center where they inoculate people on a place called Cat Island.
And this doesn't go over well with the The loyalists in the area, they initially decide to invest in the hospital jointly, but then they see it as a wedge issue and a potential to politically divide the town.
Things are not going well.
There's a little bit of an outbreak from the island, so what they do is they get about 15 or 20 men And they row across the Marblehead Bay and they torch Cat Island and the facility, the hospital that's there.
And there's people inside.
I mean, you talk about political violence, very, very severe.
Luckily, nobody dies.
The place goes up in flames.
The investors lose thousands of pounds of their money, sterling, that they used to buy this thing.
And then what happens next is they turn to the law to try to take care of the perpetrators.
But what happens is a massive mob, the loyalists have control of the mob in this situation where a thousand
people assault the jail where these men were held with crowbars and axes and free them and then
the patriots in the town, their homes are surrounded by a massive mob.
And it's here that one of the great figures in the Indispensables, John Glover, who is
one of the true unsung heroes of the American Revolution, sort of has one of his finest
moments.
He has a four pound cannon.
You can own cannons, by the way, before the American Revolution.
And he had to have them to protect the ships.
So he rolled a four-pound cannon into the foyer of his home.
And as the mob surrounded it, he ordered men in the home to thrust open the door.
And he was there with a lighted torch and a cannon next to him.
And it was more or less, get off my lawn moment.
And, uh, through his forceful words, he was able to disperse the mob that was about to assault him and his home.
But this is just sort of another example of the grit of these patriots.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
And the thing is that the British, particularly with expeditionary forces, I mean, the whole Lexington and Concord started with troops in Boston that had to go and get to the arsenal, just like Harper's Ferry.
That was really one of the kickoff moments with John Brown in the Civil War.
Arsenals are important.
Because the government's got weapons in arsenal, they got powder and shot in arsenals, and you can't make this stuff easily, and you can't transport it.
So in these central locations, whether it's Harper Ferry at that time, right up the Potomac from Washington, D.C., or whether it's in Lexington and Concord, people want to take control of those arsenals, do they not, sir?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
It's about power and control, but it's also about a political revolution that sweeps the colonies in 1774.
It's our ideals of liberty and freedom.
Elbridge Gerry, for instance, who's one of the founders, who's a member of the Indispensables, who's a congressman eventually from Marblehead, Is instrumental along with his mentor Samuel Adams in coming up with our ideals of freedom and liberty, which are groundbreaking for the time in this political movement is sweeping the times.
It's this at this moment.
The General Gage and the Crown are threatened.
Their authority is threatened.
Their power and control is threatened.
And they realize that the colonies have guns, but they don't have the crucial element, which is gunpowder.
And interestingly enough, There was arsenals that produced gunpowder during the French and Indian War, but they decided to outsource it because it was cheaper to India.
So production in the colonies had practically ceased to exist, and gunpowder was exceptionally scarce.
And it was this weak point, this Achilles tendon, Achilles heel, that General Gage seized upon.
He wanted to seize all of the gunpowder that he could, And it becomes... Lexington and Concord is the last step of several arsenal raids that occurred months prior to that, where the Crown was stealing or seizing any gunpowder that the colonists had, because they knew that if Americans were not armed, they could easily be annihilated, just like they had done to all the other elements of the British Empire that ever had rose up against them.
And so they were seizing powder at all of the arsenals.
Somerville Powder Raid being a massive one in September 1774, which creates a massive uprising.
10,000 people descend upon Boston itself, and the Crown is absolutely alarmed.
And things kind of continue forward to Fort William and Mary in December 1774, where arguably the first shots of the Revolutionary War are fired.
The crown has a massive fort there.
There are hundreds of barrels of powder.
There are about 200 cannon of various sorts.
And the colonists seized the fort.
And it's here that there are about five or six loyalist offenders.
And Americans in there that are loyal to the crown that try to defend it against overwhelming odds, fire some shots, and eventually they seize the powder.
But this all leads up to Lexington and Concord, as you mentioned.
And it's a gauge that has perfect information as to where the Americans are assembling powder supplies and weapons.
And they're at Lexington and Concord.
And it's April.
1775 and they send a surgical strike to seize those munitions and cannon and it does not go well.
There's, you know, the first shots are fired at Lexington and it's to this day we do not know who fired the first shot.
unidentified
But the Americans, as you pointed out... Hold it.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Misinformation.
Misinformation coming from the committees of correspondence, which is nothing but the war room at the time.
The shots came from the British, right?
The British go through great lengths to say it wasn't them.
Because remember, it's very important in war, whether that is the Revolutionary War, to say at the At Lexington, at the green there, the British fired first.
It's very important for the Union to say, and Lincoln to say, the South fired first, the Fort Sumner.
It's very important in the, if you look at our three turnings, it's very important in World War II at Pearl Harbor to say the Japanese fired first.
There's a commonality.
You want to have a moral justification for the nastiness that's about to come.
Is it not correct?
That's true.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
That's absolutely true.
And then you've got a situation where these founders were also lawyers.
And they wisely, after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, as they bring out in The Indispensables, it's the Marbleheaders that are in charge of gathering signed affidavits from not only the members of the militia that were either wounded in the process, but also British soldiers.
And they construct the narrative.
And it's the narrative that is crucial.
They also have to get the narrative across the Atlantic, which they do with the fastest ships that they can.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
And it's a bombshell.
unidentified
It's changing the world.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Let's go back to one of the most American of all, when Franklin would say in these debates later in Independence Hall, when they would say, well, we're British subjects.
You know, Dickinson and others from Pennsylvania said, we're at the beginning stages of the greatest empire in the world.
You see what Clive and these guys are doing in India.
Why do we want to get out of this?
We want to get in it even more.
And maybe we have a parliament here, or maybe we get proportional representation, but we shouldn't leave.
We're Englishmen.
And Franklin makes this big case that we're not English anymore.
This country is so different.
It's so, it's so, it's so massive that what these wildernesses are, the Indians themselves are a whole different type of both friend sometimes, an ally, and also a foe.
That's different.
The most American part of the early stages of the Revolutionary War Gage, the British Army is pound for pound the best professional army in the world, just like the Royal Navy was the best, but they're pound for pound.
When they suck them out to Lexington and Concord, it's the trip back that you have the true American form of guerrilla warfare and insurgent warfare.
Tell us about that, the trip back with this, quite frankly, this amazing British regulars They were cut to pieces over the time they actually got back to Cambridge, were they not, sir?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
They were.
This is called Battle Road for a reason.
And it was a bloody gauntlet that the 750 or so British soldiers that were part of this expedition to seize the weapons and gunpowder had to endure.
And it was a bloodbath.
And as you mentioned, Steve, the men that were the militia, which were thousands strong, had massively, they called it an alarm,
they massively assembled and they then flanked the road and hid behind rocks and other
trees, obstructions, and then basically pelted this British expeditionary force that had
gone to seize the power with everything they had.
And it was a, you know, a fight for survival.
As this was happening, though, the British were also, you know, raiding people's homes.
And there was a lot of, you know, sort of back and forth here and there on that that was very bloody.
And, you know, the one home, for instance, was...
unidentified
We're going to take a short commercial break.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
One thing about reading Patrick A. O'Donnell's books about this time, The Indispensables and Washington Immortals, and other histories, is the absolute brutality of the American Revolution.
You can't separate them.
And you have to understand, you have to immerse yourself in that, to understand what the fight for liberty and freedom entailed.
unidentified
Short break.
I remind Mr. Rutledge and Mr. Duane that blood has been shed.
Massachusetts blood.
While we debate, our militia is left without munitions, without arms, without even the slightest encouragement.
Dickens into Pennsylvania.
One colony cannot be allowed to take its sister colonies headlong into the maelstrom of war.
Parliament will be eager to call a halt to hostilities, as are we.
They will seek conciliation.
We must offer them an olive branch.
I move this assembly consider a humble and dutiful petition be dispatched to his majesty, one that includes a plain statement that the colony desires immediate negotiation and accommodation of these unhappy disputes, and that we are willing to enter into measures To achieve that reconciliation.
Second!
Mr. Dickinson.
The time for negotiation is past.
The actions of the British Army at Lexington and Concord speak plainly enough.
If we wish to regain our natural-born rights as Englishmen, then we must fight for them.
I have looked for our rights in the laws of nature and can find them only in the laws of political society.
I have looked for our rights in the constitution of the English government and found them there!
Our rights have been violated, Mr Adams.
That is beyond dispute.
We must provide a plan to convince Parliament to restore those rights.
Do we wish to become aliens to the mother country?
No!
No, gentlemen.
We must come to terms with the mother country.
No doubt the same s**t which carries forth our list of grievances will bring back their redress.
Mr. Dickinson.
My wife and young children live on the main road to Boston, fewer than five miles from the full might of the British Empire.
Should they sit and wait for Gage and his savages to rob them of their home, their possessions, their very lives?
No, sir.
Powder and artillery are the surest and most infallible conciliatory measures we can adopt.
If you exclude the possibility of peace, Mr. Adams, then I tell you now, you will have blood on your hands!
And I tell you, Mr. Dickinson, that to hold out an olive branch to Britain is a measure of gross imbecility!
If you New England men continue to oppose our measures of reconciliation, you will leave us no choice but to break off from you entirely and carry on the opposition in our own way!
You hear?
I sit in judgment on no man's religion, Mr. Dickinson.
But your Quaker sensibilities do us a gross disservice.
It is one thing to turn the other cheek, but to lie down on the ground like a snake and crawl toward the seat of power in abject surrender... Well, that is quite another thing, sir.
And I have no stomach for it, sir.
No stomach at all!
We will exhaust all peaceful approaches, Mr. Adams.
And we will do it with or without the approbation of you and your Boston insurrectionists!
Hear, hear!
Mr. Dickinson's motion to send an olive branch petition to His Majesty has been made and seconded.
We shall proceed to a vote.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Wow, did Dickinson call Adams and the Boston and the Patriots there insurrectionists?
unidentified
Whoa!
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I don't know if he ran that by Jamie Raskin first or not.
Patrick carried down the power of this film and I strongly recommend everybody Watch the series, John Adams, and have your children watch it, is that the intensity of these debates is extraordinary.
The movie is 1776.
The musical actually, I think, does an excellent job, too.
But this actually goes a couple of steps farther.
And you see right there, this is why everything has been portrayed.
I think some of the history books, it looks like it was a debating society.
This was about life or death.
They were talking about an imperial power.
That had, in the way they enforced their imperial power, was by the finest navy in the history of mankind.
And a professional army that was pound for pound as good as anything the Germans or the French could put forward.
And Gage, you just heard right there, General Gage is called a barbarian.
And basically his soldiers are called terrorists.
This was a war to the knife.
And there were people like Dickinson and others that thought you could argue this through, you could use legal terms, you could use, you know, they petitioned the king and he came back.
To Dickinson's credit, when he resigned, he would not sign the declaration.
And after he lost the fight, I believe he went and volunteered for the Continental Army as a volunteer.
But this was the heart of it.
The heart of it is that this was going to be a fight.
You weren't going to argue this away.
You weren't going to debate this away.
There were no courts that you were going to win this.
You were going to have to fight for this.
Patrick K. O'Donnell, thoughts?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
Absolutely.
In fact, there was a rebellion in Ireland near this time, and the Crown was absolutely barbaric on how they squashed it.
They would draw and quarter people that were insurrectionists, and death was the solution.
They also had a situation where there was collective punishment.
For instance, after the Boston Tea Party, there was the Boston Port Act, where they closed the entire port, throwing thousands of men out of work.
And then they installed royal judges in the courts, which the colonists had been more or less
on their own electing judges for over 150 years up until this point.
So they knew that things were being stacked up against them.
And it was one thing after another.
And then it breaks with the powder alarms, where they start to seize the gunpowder, which the men, you know, the colonists knew that they had plenty of weapons, but not enough gunpowder.
And gunpowder would become a scarcity in the Indispensables.
I actually make that a character because it leads to just a variety of things that occur in different paths that we take.
as an army, but also it forms the creation of the Navy for the, for the continental Navy
unidentified
with Washington's frigates.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
The siege of Boston, and particularly the defense of Bunker and Breeds Hill, the British
knew by then that number one, we were great guerrilla fighters and great kind of insurgents,
could fight an insurgency.
But we also had the ability, although not perfect because the Continental Army wasn't
particularly trained, to stand up toe to toe to the best of them in a fight.
That's when they realized.
Then you had independence.
I want to make sure we get all this in, is that at the same time, and the British now,
and in commons, they're having these intense fights too.
There are a lot of people in Commons that are saying, look, we either got to give them their freedom or let's cut the best deal possible.
We're not going to... The beginnings in Commons, in British Commons, of people talking very much like the Vietnam War.
A lot of people saying this is, you know, it's too far away.
How are we going to defend this?
It's just going to suck up all our resources trying to do this.
Talk to me about where you're having this intense debate, and we're going to get to the actual vote here in a while, as you get this intense debate leading up to the Declaration of Independence from the Continental Congress.
In England, They're already prepared.
I mean, the Declaration of Independence is fine, and yes, that crossed the line, and it's much bigger in American history than it is in British.
They didn't need a signed document.
That group right there had already petitioned the king to, hey, maybe you haven't focused on this, or maybe you have bad advisors, but here's, we're Englishmen, this is just what we want.
And what he sent back was so brutal, so dismissive, that the British, and what they did is get the largest, and correct me if I'm wrong, From the best Navy in the history of mankind, they set up the largest expeditionary force ever to send, not to Boston.
They said the linchpin of this thing is New York City, and New York City was not that big at the time.
They weren't going to Philadelphia.
They weren't going to Boston.
They say, we're going to cut this thing in half.
We're going to take New York City, and we're going to take the Hudson River and the Hudson Valley.
We're going to cut off the bacillus.
We're going to cut off the problem we got in New England from the rest of America, and we'll settle this afterwards.
Already, where they were sending, the size and scale of the Armada and the British Expeditionary Force, they were going to send to America.
Not to negotiate, not to have a debating society, not to go to a courthouse and put down some writ.
They had done it.
They had had it.
They tried with the Patriots.
The Patriots were determined to win.
They sent over the most massive Expeditionary Force, I think, in mankind's history at that time.
Patrick K. O'Donnell.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
It was.
They assembled the largest force that they possibly could.
The bulk of the British Army was assigned to this force, and they knew that they didn't have enough numbers, so they basically leased German troops from the princes of Prussia and Hesse, the areas of what's now Germany, because they would basically loan out their troops for money.
And these were the Hessians.
And there were over 10,000 of these men that were assembled to create a massive force, a sledgehammer, to crush the colonists.
And this is the summer of 1776 that is in New York City, as you mentioned.
New York City is a hive of loyalists.
There's also the governor of the time is a loyalist.
He flees to a massive ship in New York Harbor.
It's a 74-gun battleship, if you will, of its time.
And it's from his lair that he plots different schemes.
And he's, you know, within this mix before the expedition actually arrives, Washington's guard or the lifeguard is influenced by Governor Tryon and his men to basically have a decapitation mission and assassinate Washington.
And I bring that out in The Indispensables.
Which in many ways is a largely unknown story.
The lifeguard was a, you know, a picked force of about a hundred or so men that came from various regiments.
Washington, you know, examined each one of these guys as a picked man.
Some of them, though, were actually former British soldiers, including a guy by the name of Hickey and another guy by the name of Green, who was a drummer.
They kind of meet up in a tavern With one of these conspirators who's a gunsmith by the name of Forbes.
And they begin, Forbes has a plot to infiltrate His Excellency's guard, the lifeguard.
And they recruit about eight men.
And what happens next is sort of accidental.
They're about to spring this plot as this massive expeditionary force of a thousand, you know,
hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men are arriving in New York Harbor.
It's at this point that they're about to spring the plot, but Hickey, who's one of the lifeguard members,
passes off some bad bills at their counterfeit, and he's arrested, and he's put in jail.
And it's here that America's first counterintelligence force,
if you will, is formed.
It's called the Committee of the Intestine or the Committee of Conspiracies.
They have a man that rats on Hickey that there's this plot that's going on,
so they send in...
him back to find out what is exactly happening, and they uncover this entire massive plot, and they squash it literally a day or so before this massive armada arrives, saving Washington.
And it's at that point, though, that they execute the first American, James Hickey, and the fleet and the Empire is there to crush the rebellion.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Okay, hang on.
They come into New York Harbor.
We're taking a short commercial break.
You've heard of Thermopylae and you've heard of Dunkirk.
We're about to learn you up on the American Thermopylae in the American Dunkirk.
They took place on Long Island and I think within 30 or 45 days of each other.
A stunning story on the fight for American liberty and freedom.
next in a word.
unidentified
The desert smiled. A paradise of pleasure was opened in the wild. Your heart...
Lift up your hands ye heroes and swear with proud disdain.
Okay.
Thermopylae and Dunkirk.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Both delivered, and I correct myself, within a couple of days of each other.
Patrick A. O'Donnell, the expedition, some of it actually landed in June, but the bulk of it lands at the end of July.
But they were coming whether they signed a document or not, right?
They had all the provocation they wanted, and quite frankly, they said, we had a belly full of this.
This is, this is the crowns and we don't want to hear any lip.
Okay?
And we're going to send over the largest expeditionary force in the largest armada ever.
They land and then things lead, they land in Long Island and then towards the end of August, they start rolling.
Talk to me about the Battle of Long Island.
And people should understand, from the time they land, To essentially Christmas night, you know, for five months until Christmas night with Crossing the Delaware.
This is one continual quote-unquote strategic retreat or Americans getting beaten down.
But the bravery and valor are unbelievable and to me, This is where you see the beginning of really the incredible genius of George Washington.
The ability to hold this small Continental Army together with defeat after defeat after defeat after defeat.
Late August of 1776, the ink ain't even dry on the Declaration of Independence.
It's been signed about six weeks beforehand.
Walk me through the battle, sir.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
The Continental Army is in Brooklyn, about half of it is in Brooklyn, and the other half is in Manhattan.
It's indefensible, really.
They don't know where the British are going to land, but they land the bulk of their forces at Gravesend Bay at Long Island.
And they sit there for a couple days.
It's American riflemen that sort of pepper at this force.
And then it's on the night of August 26th that things start to go in motion.
And the army is a raid.
A lot of it is about three or four thousand men are on the heights of Guanas.
This is now current day Greenwood Cemetery.
Right in front of one of the gates of Greenwood Cemetery was something called the Red Lion Inn.
And it's here that there was a watermelon patch in the back of the Red Wine Inn, and it's the scouts from the British Army that seized these watermelons, and, you know, they want to get a real freshman or whatever, and it's the American riflemen from Hans Rifleman's Corps that pepper them with lead.
But this is a sort of a diversion, if you will.
The main force at this time under General Howe and Cornwallis is marching a flanking maneuver around the heights of Gowanus to surround it.
And as the night unfolds, the Americans, specifically the Marylanders and Washington's Immortals, who are in a nearby house, a stone house called the Becht House, that's where their camp is located, then the alarm is sounded Around two or three in the morning, and the bulk of these forces go down towards Greenwood Cemetery, which now is called Battle Hill, and these men take up positions, and initially they appear to repulse the British under General Grant, but Grant is only a sort of a holding force, a diversion, as the hammer
is coming around in a flanking maneuver under Cornwallis.
And it's, you know, in the morning as they are, you know, engaging between the British, that they realize in their utter horror that they are being flanked and surrounded.
So they literally have to fight for their lives back to their position, which is near this stone house.
And the entire, you know, a third of the American army is about to be cut off and annihilated.
And it's here that the American Thermopylae, Washington's Immortals, men of honor, family, and fortune, from the finest families of the South in Maryland, specifically Maryland itself, and then many in Baltimore, they formed the first company in Baltimore in 1774 to defend their brothers in Boston.
Because of the Boston Port Act, things that are occurring there.
And it's here that they make arguably one of the most important stands in American history.
They are outnumbered by 10, 20 or more to one.
And they form up in ranks because they know that the American army is about to be annihilated.
They form up in ranks and attack or loss.
And it's Washington's Immortals that save the army.
They make a number of bayonet charges.
They're eventually referred to as the Bayonets of the Revolution or Washington's Immortals or the Immortal 400 because of the stand that they make.
They make a number of charges and they're being literally cut to pieces by thousands of Hessian soldiers and Highland Grenadiers which are near the house.
But these stands Force the British to not unite the wings of their army and also create a gap that allows the rest of the army to escape to a series of fortifications.
Mordecai Gist, who's in command of the Marylanders, and about nine men escape.
256 men are lost and unaccounted for.
The book You know, all the stories that I've ever written have found me in one way or another.
This book found me when I found the old sign that said, Yearly, 256 Continental Soldiers, Maryland Heroes.
The bodies of these men are buried somewhere in either New York, or in some cases, they were captured.
On floating and then imprisoned on floating prisoner of war camp ships and their bodies were tossed overboard.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
What we know of the American Thermopylae, they held this, the British officer of the American army could escape to then have their Dunkirk.
unidentified
It was an hour more precious in their history than any other.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
An hour more precious.
And if they hadn't have done it, In the reward for that, for their fellow Americans, they are buried in an unmarked grave in somewhere we think underneath a parking lot or a tavern in Brooklyn.
We don't even know the exact location of it.
The American Thermopylae, some of the greatest heroes in the history of this country who gave all in late August of 1776.
They're not the guys praised.
You don't see the movies about them.
You don't see the books written about them, except for the Washingtons and morals.
That's why Patrick O'Donnell is such a special guy.
This story is absolutely stunning, and we're going to tell you a lot.
You haven't.
This is the very beginning.
This is your art.
You're basically in the first week of real concentrated combat.
It was a go on for year after year after year after year.
You have your freedom.
Because people fought for it.
You have your freedom not because a bunch of lawyers negotiated it.
You had your freedom because the American people put the muscle and the sacrifice to back up that document.
The Declaration of Independence was covered in blood.
Because the British said, OK, you've got a very lovely document.
Here's what it means to us.
We're sending an armada and an expeditionary force, and we're going to crush you.
Only standing up to that.
And remember what Washington told us.
It ain't over until you quit.
By not quitting, we won.
Short 90-second break.
▲
Export Selection