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Dec. 25, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
48:59
Episode 4150: A WarRoom Special 2024: Combat History of Christmas
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patrick k odonnel
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patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
- Good morning and Merry Christmas.
I'm Patrick K. O'Donnell and I'm hosting today The Combat History of Christmas Through America's Eyes.
It's something that Stephen K. Band and I have done for over 15 years.
I've been a historian for 26 years, written 14 books, And been on dozens of radio, TV shows, hundreds, thousands of them actually.
But this is my favorite show that we do annually.
Steve's traveling today, so I'm hosting the show.
And we're going to take you back in time into the most important inflection points in the combat history of the United States that happens to be at Christmas time.
It's here that, in many cases, history changes and turns on the actions of individuals, individual agencies Changes history.
And I'm going to take you through several periods of time where this change was dramatic.
These were inflection points in history.
And it will be focused today on the individuals and the actions that they performed.
In many cases, this is some untold stories or little-known stories that we're going to focus on that you haven't heard on the War Room.
And the first individual that I'd like to talk about is Henry Harrison Young, who's the leader of Sheridan Scouts.
And I want to take you back in time to Christmas, 1864. The lines were stalemated at Petersburg.
Many things weren't moving in the front, but things were very active and hot in and around Loudoun County, and specifically the border area in West Virginia.
And it's here that Mosby's Rangers are very active, inherits what's left of what's known as the Jesse Scouts.
Mosby's Rangers just demolished an entire hunter-killer team that was part of the Jesse Scouts.
These were men that were actively pursuing John Singleton Mosby and his Rangers.
An entire company of men was annihilated.
At a place called Meyerstown or Cablestown, that old Cablestown.
And what was left were some of the men that Henry Harrison Young had to put together Sheridan Scouts with.
And this is an epic story.
Harrison Young, Henry Harrison Young, is really one of the great untold, unsung heroes of the American Civil War.
He begins the war in 1861 at Bull Run and is immediately drawn to battle.
He's extremely heroic.
He actually kind of has this sense of thrill in battle and craves it.
He is not a man.
He's completely fearless.
In the saddle and in battle.
And he rescues a man, for instance, at the Battle of St. Mary's Heights at Fredericksburg, rides into battle in the middle of a massive maelstrom of lead and cannon fire, and picks up a man that's gravely wounded and takes him, carries him off the battlefield, and does this multiple times.
But in 1864, he finds himself being tapped to lead the scouts, and This guy is extraordinary.
He is a chameleon that is a shapeshifter.
He wears a Confederate uniform at times to go behind the lines.
He'll wear civilian clothes.
He'll act as a peddler even.
And, you know, one of my favorite stories with Young is that he is able to impersonate anybody.
And the Confederates are still, in 1864, very actively recruiting soldiers because they desperately need them.
And in the Shenandoah Valley, he goes to a recruiting station and impersonates a young soldier that, you know, wants to join the Confederate army.
And a Confederate sergeant recruits him into the Confederate army.
And he's asked to show up the next day and join the army.
And he literally shows up the next day with a company of his men and captures that Confederate sergeant at Pistol Point.
He goes after high-value targets, but he has to somehow mold his men into a combat fighting force.
And it's Christmas, it's right around Christmas Day that he puts them on an impossible mission To really, to forge unit cohesion.
And he arms his 50, 80-so men who are in Confederate uniform.
These are Jesse Scouts.
And this story is chronicled in my new best-selling book called The Unvanquished.
And what he does is the impossible.
If you go to the area around Strasbourg, there's a place called The Back Road.
It's literally called The Back Road.
That's the title of the road.
And it's here, on the back road, in and around the trees, that Henry Harrison Young knows that Confederate cavalry always kind of moves in this area and on a patrol.
And he positions his men behind a series of trees to ambush them.
And it's not just a small group of men that he's going after.
He literally takes on an entire Confederate cavalry battalion, hundreds of men strong.
He arms his men with the Spencer carbine.
This is a repeating carbine.
After you pull the trigger, a bullet will fire.
Unlike a regular muzzle-loading action, you can fire up to 20 rounds or more a minute with these weapons.
They were kind of the machine gun of the Civil War in many ways.
They're also armed with Colt pistols.
To the teeth they're armed, and they are behind the trees and they wait.
For that right opportunity right at Christmas time, and they pounce and they attack.
And they basically disrupt this entire Confederate cavalry battalion, which is then set running to the hills.
And it's just one of the actions that Henry Young and Sheridan scouts become kind of renowned for.
They use this sort of terror or psychological warfare against their enemy to basically show up at any time this element of surprise and then stealth and then they kill and then they disappear or vanish.
And this is something that is a hallmark of today's special operators.
Harrison Young, Henry Young, Welds these men into a very cohesive unit.
This is called Lincoln Special Forces in the Unvanquished or the Jesse Scouts or otherwise known as Sheridan Scouts.
They literally lead his army in battle at multiple points.
And it's really an extraordinary story.
They capture multiple high-level targets.
Including Harry Gilmore, who's a partisan alongside John Singleton Mosby.
And they capture him in the Shenandoah Valley in a midnight raid.
And it's an extraordinary story.
I have a great article in Breitbart that records that.
The capture of Gilmore.
But also the capture of Captain Stumpf.
And this guy's nickname was Stump's Arsenal because he was a Confederate that was so armed to the teeth, he would literally have five or six pistols and a carbine at all times on his body.
And he was rounded up along with Gilmore by Young's men and captured.
But what made Stump unique was he had killed in cold blood a number of the Jesse Scouts.
And they said to Stump, We will give you an opportunity for your life.
And that opportunity was, we'll give you 15 paces or so on your horse, and we will allow you the potential to escape.
And that's exactly what they did.
They allowed Stump, you know, several seconds to run on his horse, and then the men were such excellent shots with the pistol that he was taken down.
And the men continued to lead Sheridan's army in battle, and they would play a very crucial role at the battle campaign, the final campaign at Appomattox.
It would be the Jesse Scouts under Young that Would determine the weak points in the line at a place called Five Forks, which is the most, in some ways, one of the most decisive battles of the American Civil War.
They determined the weak points in the line at Pickett's Line, and it would be here that, with the Jesse Scouts at his side, that General Sheridan literally charged the line single-handedly and broke it.
And this precipitated General Lee's retreat by about two or three weeks.
They were planning on leaving the lines at Petersburg, but now they were forced to leave because they had been outflanked.
And as they were being outflanked, it would be the Jesse Scouts that would pursue them.
You know, the Scouts were made up of just really fascinating individuals.
One of them was a guy by the name of Woodson, who was a former Confederate I'm sorry, he was insulted by the Confederates.
And as a result, he killed his captain by the insult.
And he had to flee Confederate lines and then offered his services as a Jesse Scout.
And he would receive the Medal of Honor near Five Forks for capturing a Confederate battle flag and helping capture General Berenger, who was a Confederate general at the time, along with Young.
They pursued Lee's retreating army, and it's here that they may have played a very decisive role in the entire war by leading Lee's supply trains in the wrong direction.
Instead of when their first rodney pointed at a place called Amelia Courthouse, they got, instead of food and supplies, they received a bunch of uniforms and caissons for wagons.
It was exactly what they didn't need, and it's rumored and possible.
There's evidence that it was Young's men that misdirected the food trains to the right source.
And from there, they capture the supply trains at Appomattox.
And this is a decisive blow because General Lee's army is starving and they are, you know, very desperate for supplies.
The key here, though, is that Henry Young then spends another winter or another Christmas in Mexico.
And Mexico is really One of the great untold stories of the American Civil War because at the time it was occupied by Emperor Maximilian and there were 40,000 troops down there at the time and it would be a regular warfare special operations that would thwart them and it would be General Sheridan and his 50 or so Jesse Scouts that were led by Henry Young That were arming the resistance down there and basically creating
what we now see as regular warfare today.
These men were really true commandos and they were working with the Mexican guerrilla forces that were down there arming them, blowing up bridges, destroying French outposts.
And it's here that Henry Young and many of the Jesse Scouts Mysteriously disappear.
And they are never heard or seen again.
And it's unknown exactly what, you know, where they went.
There was likely a cover-up in terms of his actions down there because his duties were unofficial.
Covert operations, if you will.
And, you know, this is a true unsung hero, along with many of the other men that were Jesse Scouts.
They would receive seven medals of honor during the Civil War for their valor and actions.
But he would never return home.
And it was a very solemn time for his mother.
The book actually ends with his mother's story.
And every year after his capture, after that Christmas, she would wait for him.
He would write every month to her just to keep her informed, to keep her aware of their relationship was that close and special.
But every time that a stagecoach Would come into Providence, Rhode Island.
She would wait for her son that never returned home.
And those were many long Christmases without her son.
And many of the Jesse Scouts faced the same trial and hardship that the families faced.
missing their loved ones, which covert warriors of today, you know, we've seen that over and over in Vietnam in particular, where special operators go behind the lines and never return home for Christmas.
I'm Patrick O'Donnell, and I'm hosting the combat history of Christmas This has been an annual tradition that we've had on the War Room for almost 15 years.
Steve Bannon and I. This is really one of my favorite shows that I've done.
What I'd like to talk about now is the continuing with the American Civil War, the great adversary of Henry Young and many other Jesse Scouts was John Singleton Mosby.
And Mosby was a Confederate partisan and really arguably the In many ways, the organizer of American Modern Special Operations Forces, his ideas and principles begin on Christmas.
And it's Christmas 1862, specifically in Middleburg, Virginia, at a place called Oakham Manor.
And one thing that's amazing about these stories is you can still visit Oakham And visit Middleburg and Loudoun County, where many of the actions that I'm talking about, you can go there.
You can visit these places and feel the history and walk the ground.
At Oakham, that wintery Christmas day, he approached his boss, Jeb Stewart, who's the leader of the Confederate cavalry, with a specific request.
If he could have A small band of men to create a partisan group to attack the Union supply lines in and around Middleburg and Loudoun and Prince William counties.
His request was granted and he was given about six men.
And that is the origin in many ways of modern special operations forces.
These six men would then grow into nearly a thousand.
And they would tie down 30,000 to 40,000 Union troops over the course of the American Civil War.
They would ambush supply trains.
They would blow up bridges.
They would capture Union generals and do, in many cases, the impossible.
And Mosby was behind all of this.
And it was his vision and leadership.
He was only about 5'7", kind of a wiry guy that was a law student that had kind of a bit of a hot head initially.
He literally, he was accosted and insulted and pulled a pistol on one of his fellow law students and nearly killed him, which put him in jail for several months.
But at the beginning of the American Civil War, he was initially very reticent to secession.
Didn't really believe in slavery, but fought for his state like many other members of the South.
And his beginnings are extraordinary.
He's a scout within the Confederate Army, leads one of Stuart's long cavalry rides around Richmond, which is epic and legendary.
He's known for gathering intelligence.
This isn't his first time as a potential partisan leader.
Stewart gives him the opportunity several months earlier, and he's given only one man this time with a club foot.
And, you know, John Singleton Mosby's days as a partisan are very numbered.
He travels to a train station and literally a union company of cavalry surround him and his horse along with a club-footed individual, and he is taken into captivity.
In the middle of 1862, he is quickly imprisoned at a federal prison and languishes there for several months until there's a prisoner exchange.
And this is where John Singleton Mosby really shines.
He makes lemons out of lemonade and literally, in the exchange, he's able to create We're good to
around initially and through that information along with his kind of keen eye where he's able to sort of see some of the units in and around the area.
He's able to determine that the Union Army is going to attack and wear, which is really extraordinary and miraculous.
So after he gets off the boat, he immediately goes to General Robert E. Lee.
And he arrives at Robert E. Lee's headquarters in Richmond, this kind of lowly lieutenant.
And they initially kind of We're very skeptical of what Mosby could bring to the table or offer because he's just a lieutenant.
But he remembers sort of the ride around Richmond with Stuart and some of Mosby's other exploits and listens to him.
And this actually literally changes the course of the Battle of Cedar Mountain, which Mosby provides and furnishes actionable strategic level intelligence to Lee through his efforts.
Going back to 1863 now, Mosby is very active within the area in and around Middleburg.
And he pulls off one of his greatest exploits by capturing General Stoughton in Fairfax City itself.
And this is one of the great special operations stories of all time to capture a high-value target.
The key to it is a deserter from the 5th New York Cavalry, a guy by the name of Yankee Ames, who deserts to Mosby and to the Mosby line.
He doesn't like the Emancipation Proclamation.
He feels he's being lied to for why he's fighting.
He's not fighting for the Union, per se.
And he joins Mosby.
He shows up unexpectedly.
And Mosby believes that Yankee Ames is telling the truth.
And he's given an opportunity to then get a horse.
And he has to go back into Union lines to Centerville, where there's a massive Union encampment, and steal a horse with another Ranger.
And they are successful in that.
And it's big Yankee Ames that is put in the very front line.
The vanguard on the raid to Fairfax to capture Stoughton.
And he understands the call signs and the signals, and they ride in a raging snowstorm and sleet and hail.
And they're in, in some cases, they're in Union uniform or in rain jackets in most cases with their Confederate uniforms underneath them.
And they ride into Fairfax and they They basically—they seize anybody that they can—that could potentially alert any of the guards, and then they continue to Stoughton's residence, and they knock on the door, go in, and the general is sleeping at the time, and Mosby wakes him up.
And says sort of these immortal worlds, do you know who John Singleton Mosby is?
And the general says back to Mosby, have you captured him yet?
No, it is he who has captured you.
And he's brought into captivity and Mosby scrolls on the fireplace, I am Mosby.
Just sort of a psychological bit of terror to let people know his calling card, who he is.
And They then go back through the lines with the general in tow.
They have a number of raids and amazing actions that the Rangers are part of, and one of them is at In and Around Christmas.
And this is the battle for Loudoun Heights, as it's called.
And right around Christmas, Cole's Cavalry, which is a Union outfit that is made up of Marylanders, Pennsylvanians, and other loyalists to the Union cause, form a cavalry unit.
And they are based in Loudoun Heights.
And it's here that they then conduct forays into Mosby's Confederacy, which is in and around Middleburg and Warrington and other areas.
And they lead an entire unit into Mosby's Confederacy.
Mosby has his men shadow them, provide kind of a psychological terror, just to let them know that they're there.
And as they shadow them, they pounce and destroy This entire force of about almost 200 Union cavalrymen.
They're surrounded and attacked.
One man, the leader of the group, is able to, Hunter, is able to escape on foot 40 miles to Loudoun Heights.
It's then that Mosby determines that they are going to destroy the Coles cavalry on Union Heights.
And he organizes over 100 men.
To attack this nest of Union cavalry.
And in the middle of a snowstorm, they mount up and they move towards Loudoun Heights.
And it's, you know, an interesting figure sort of emerges here.
A guy by the name of Frank Stringfellow, who is somebody that is in through the Unvanquished multiple times.
He's 94 pounds.
Sometimes dresses in drag to literally act as a spy to elicit information.
And it's here he finds a weak spot in the Union lines and they attack.
They move through over 40 miles of territory in the dead of night with freezing rain and sleet and snow.
And they creep up to this Union encampment.
And it's Stringfellow that initially attacks Before he's supposed to.
And he lets out a shout and it alerts the camp.
And many men are wounded from the attack.
This is an article I also wrote in Breitbart, I'm a Breitbart historian in many ways, called Trimps and Snow.
And many men are killed or gravely wounded.
And the Rangers, the Coles Cavalry has standing orders to shoot anyone on horseback.
One of the men that is Gravely wounded is a guy by the name of Paxton.
And Paxton, there's an amazing story.
Paxton, his family saved a Union cavalryman and nursed him back to health and then brought him back to Union Alliance.
And they had a standing agreement that if Paxton was ever wounded, they would save him.
And he called that Union cavalryman forward and they gave him Even though he was gravely wounded and allowed him the dignity to die with respect.
And this is what The Unvanquished is about.
It's the hidden war of the American Civil War that you haven't seen.
unidentified
Good morning and Merry Christmas.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
I'm Patrick K. O'Donnell and I'm hosting our annual Combat History of Christmas.
And we are now talking about the American Civil War and many of the actions of individuals that are in the inflection points of history.
John Singleton Mosby being one of them, who was a great partisan or guerrilla leader, arguably one of America's greatest guerrilla leaders in modern history, that changes the course of history with only six men and forms an entire guerrilla group that ties down 30 to 40 thousand Union troops over the course of the war.
He pioneers the tactics And techniques that we now see in modern special operations forces.
And one of my favorite Christmas stories of Mosby is his multiple escapes and woundings.
He was a man that was only 5'7", about 127 pounds or so, but escaped death constantly and escaped Union dragnets.
And one of those actions was in and around Christmas at a place called Lakeland.
And this house, like many of the others in the Unvanquished, are still there.
You can visit these places.
And Lakeland at the time, he was riding back from a wedding in his finest clothes.
He had an ostrich plumed hat and a cape.
And he was coming back from a wedding in the middle of a snowstorm.
And they stopped at Lakeland for dinner.
And it's here that they're eating dinner.
And suddenly the house is surrounded by over 100 Union cavalrymen.
And they storm the house.
Mosby puts his hands up.
And then all of a sudden a shot comes through the window and hits him right in the stomach, right near the heart.
And he is pushed down and then there's an ensuing melee within the room and the lights are kind of put out.
And they then, the Union officers that are there, then sort of come, you know, basically are able to sort of sort things out.
In the meantime, Mosby realizes that he's probably about to be not only dead or killed from this mortal wound, but also captured.
Somehow, he has the presence of mind to take his coat off, which has two stars on it representing his rank, and moves it slightly off to the left near another room and hides it.
He then goes back on the floor and they capture him and A doctor comes and they sense, they see where his wound is and they say it's in his heart.
And it's a mortal wound.
And Mosby is the presence of mind to almost laugh because he realizes that his heart is up a little higher.
It didn't pierce his heart, but he still thinks he's mortally wounded.
And he lays there, they take off his pants and his boots.
And they pronounce that he is a, you know, mortally wounded soldier.
And then they start to ask the room who this guy is.
And the daughter of the room says, we've never seen him before.
He just showed up for dinner.
And it's one of the great lies of the Civil War.
They literally believe it.
And they leave this guy on the floor bleeding to death.
And Mosby is gravely wounded.
He recognizes that he somehow survived this brush of death and miraculously gets up and moves to the other room.
And his guests are absolutely astounded.
They then put him in a number of blankets and he's moved to a safe house.
And the Union cavalry then come back looking for their quarry because they think that they may have They may have killed Mosby, and he's gone.
He just disappears.
He's the Grey Ghost.
And the Grey Ghost then makes his way towards Richmond.
The newspapers are all ablaze that this guy, Mosby, was killed.
And my favorite anecdote from one of the newspapers is the devil takes care of his own, as Mosby is somehow Survives just another one of these mortal, what would have been a mortal wound for pretty much anybody else.
And then gets back on, you know, in his command and leads his men throughout the rest of the American Civil War, where they do really extraordinary things.
The story then is, you know, it shifts a little bit back in time.
To where the Jesse Scouts form for one of their first raids, which is in and around Christmas.
But this is 1863, and it's West Virginia, which is a cauldron of partisan activity.
It's here that guerrilla groups are formed on both sides, and it's the Jesse Scouts that are formed to hunt them.
The book is about Several Jesse Scouts, including a group under the command of Richard Blazer, who's in Ohioan.
He's really from my home state and one of the great unsung heroes of the American Civil War.
Richard Blazer was a riverboat captain right before the Civil War.
He transported supplies up and down the Ohio River near Gallipolis, Ohio, which was his hometown.
And at the start of the Civil War, he is an officer in the Union Army, and he's tapped to hunt gorillas because he's got this innate sense of finding people.
By the way, I always visit the graves, if I can, of the individuals that I write about.
I also walk the ground of all the individuals, the stories and the battles that I write about.
And I spend Years in the archives piecing together the stories of these men to give you an accurate narrative history.
It's nonfiction that many reviewers have said read like fiction.
It puts you there.
But it's all based on fact.
And one of the things I did is I went to Richard Blazer's grave to find him.
And I went there Assuming that it would be a small cemetery.
And I went to Mount Hill Cemetery, Galpolis, which is a beautiful cemetery.
It overlooks the Ohio River.
But it has, I got there and there were literally thousands upon thousands of tombstones and graves for these people.
And I immediately went to where I thought would be a directory.
There wasn't one.
But I knew that I would find him.
And I just prayed.
Within maybe 10 minutes, I found Richard Blazer's final resting place.
Blazer, as I mentioned, was part of Blazer's Independent Scouts, and he leads these scouts by leading the Army.
And one of those, one of these raids was in and around West Virginia, where they were trying to take out the Southern Railroad that bordered West Virginia and Virginia.
This is a Maine lifeline or artery.
And Avril's Raid, or Christmas Raid, took place in the winter of 1863. Background on that is the Confederate Army under General Longstreet, who had been basically loaned to the south near Chattanooga, where they have an amazing battle at Chickamauga.
He's then coming back towards Robert E. Lee, and they surround Knoxville This is an epic story behind the lines where these men have to
march and ride 400 miles To various depots that are in southern Virginia.
It's through the mountains.
It's through the sleet and rain.
In many cases, it's so rugged and treacherous that they're wearing out the horses.
The area is such difficult terrain and they have to walk in many cases.
But it's also an area that is infested with the Confederate forces.
And the Confederates, it's the Jesse Scouts that lead these men.
They're able to do some amazing things.
They're able to seize some bridges ahead of time by impersonating Confederates and allowing the Admiral's raiding force to cross before they're able to burn the bridges.
But the Confederates know what's going on and they send out Six different commands, thousands of Confederates to annihilate General Avril.
And it's the Jesse Scouts that have to somehow weave their way through all of this.
One of my favorite stories is they're deep behind the lines and it's near Christmas time and they need to find another crossing point.
There's rivers everywhere.
And they literally enlist, they try to enlist the services of a doctor that's there.
And Avril puts a pistol to this guy's head.
First, he initially says, we'll hire you for $500.
And they said, no, there's no way because my family's going to be known as a traitor.
I won't do it.
And then they put a pistol to his head.
Avril put a pistol to his head and said, you need to lead us out of here.
If you don't, I'll kill you.
And he gave him one minute to respond and basically put a stopwatch, his watch out.
The doctor complied.
And they were able to thread their way through southern lines to captivity.
But there's an epic story of how one of those commands, the 14th Pennsylvania is trapped by one of the bridges, which is The Confederates burn and they're stuck on the wrong side of the river.
They have to ford the river.
Amazing stories of resilience.
And somehow this group has to then trudge another hundreds of miles through all these Confederates that are following them and the mountains.
And they make this epic march That is truly extraordinary.
And as they make their way back towards the Union camp, they are somehow expected to pay for their uniforms and the shoes that they utilized.
It's one of the most extraordinary stories that I found in the book.
They had done this extraordinary thing.
Many of these men were like the veterans of the Battle of the Bulge that I interviewed.
They had frostbite.
Their uniforms were rags after all this, traversing all these mountains.
And somehow, the Union Army was expecting them to pay for new uniforms and shoes.
And it's here that Avril interceded and was able to get the government to not do their typical policy.
But this is a Christmas story for the ages.
It's about human endurance.
It's about individuals that do the impossible.
And in the next segments, we're going to go back in time to our founding, to our greatest story, the story of the American Revolution, the story of the Revolutionary War, where our founders do the impossible They go against the greatest army and navy in the world at the time, and they somehow prevail.
But they also create the greatest ideas in world history.
Our ideas of freedom and liberty, which resonate today and have changed the course of history, have changed empires and are more important today now than ever.
I'm Patrick K. O'Donnell, and I'm hosting the Combat History of Christmas.
It's our annual tradition that we've done for almost 15 years, Stephen K. Bannon and I. And we're gonna go back in time to A topic that we've never discussed on the War Room, the Forgotten Christmas of 1775. And this is really an epic story in many ways.
Our first units within the United States Army were rifle companies.
The American long arm, known as the Pennsylvania long arm rifle, would change history.
It was about nine pounds But it could shoot farther than any other rifle in the world at the time.
And it was a weapon that was a circumstance of its environment, and that would be the American frontier, where Americans and rugged individuals had to fend off Native Americans, had to shoot wild game.
And this rifle, which has its origins at the beginning of the 1700s, It's in America, and it's unique because it can shoot about 100 yards more than its European counterparts, which have their origins in Switzerland and Germany.
But it's these rifle companies that are the foundation of the United States Army, and they answer the call shortly after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and they make their way up to Boston.
And it's in and around the siege lines that the rifle companies play a major role in keeping British heads down and then taking off British heads by their sniping ability.
And the British fear this weapon tremendously.
There's a fascinating story of how one of these Pennsylvania companies has a mutiny because rifle companies are specialized men.
They are able to shoot at a target 200 yards away, in many cases the size of a small plate.
Many of these guys can shoot an eye out on a squirrel.
They were extremely rugged individuals from the frontier and in many cases very undisciplined individuals.
They didn't have the same discipline requirements as the regular army or militia in and around the siege and they could do what they want.
In one case they literally won company mutinies And what that does is it leads them with a ticket to Canada.
And an epic Christmas in 1775. And that story is incredible.
They have to go through nearly 400 miles of Maine wilderness to get to Quebec and Canada to somehow to take the capital city of Quebec City.
And they are under the command of Benedict Arnold, who leads them through the wilds of Maine and the rivers.
And to get there, they have to basically go through whitewater rapids, they have to ford multiple waterfalls, and they have to take all their provisions with them.
As they get up to Maine, They are given these crude rafts which are made out of, in many cases, wood that's still green.
And when they hit the water they expand and many of these rafts fall apart as they're going through this white water or the water.
And it's an epic, epic story of endurance and survival.
Months in the Maine wilderness, weeks in the Maine wilderness, And these men are constantly under the potential attack from the British as well as hostile Native Americans.
But they also have to deal with starvation because there's never enough provisions around.
And as this journey through these rivers and mountains train, there's snow.
The men are starving.
They're literally eating the buckles or the belts that they have in their cartridge boxes.
They're boiling them because they don't have enough food.
And it's an incredible story of survival.
And it's Arnold and Daniel Morgan and the Pennsylvanians and Virginians And other members of the Continental Army that have to make this epic trek towards Canada.
In the Canadian border area, it's Arnold that is able to get a number of cattle and livestock to his men.
And they literally have this kind of orgy of food where they literally eat some of the cattle nearly as they're alive.
Which causes many of these men, which had not eaten for days, to literally die from what they had eaten.
They then make their way up to Quebec City and they are understrength.
They don't have artillery for a proper siege, but they siege Quebec and they wait for the ultimate opportunity, which is a nor'easter that occurs right after Christmas.
And it's a massive snowstorm, and they attack in that snowstorm to the city gates.
And this story is one for the ages.
They literally come within a hair's breadth of taking Quebec.
There's two different wings that assault from two different sides.
And on the western side, it's General Montgomery that's leading the attack.
And they make their way towards a sort of a crude roadblock, which is manned by a number of troops, including a there's a there's a British sailor that's brought off of a ship who's drunk at the time.
And they see the approaching this force of led by Montgomery of hundreds of men.
And he says to them, they're ordered to retreat.
They just decide to flee the area.
He said to the people around him, I'm going to fire my cannon one last time.
And he touches off the cannon.
And it's a lucky shot.
The grave shot literally hits General Montgomery in the forehead and kills him, which has a tremendously negative effect on the entire attack.
That entire wing then retreats, and it's Daniel Morgan and his men.
That assault on the opposite side and they make their way through various barricades against all odds and are this close to seizing Quebec and taking Canada for the United States.
It's an incredible story of human endurance and it's a story that is important because As Americans, we often like to look at the victories, but this is a situation where it was a defeat, but it was a victory of human endurance and courage that is something that we can look back at now.
It's so important in today's age, which is one of the most turbulent times in our history.
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