Larry Arnn and Wilfred McClay commemorate the Declaration of Independence's 250th anniversary, linking President Trump's restoration efforts to Lincoln and Washington while emphasizing natural law and consent of the governed. McClay details pivotal Revolutionary War moments: Paul Revere's messengers repelling General Gage at Lexington and Concord, colonial victories under Prescott and Stark at Bunker Hill, and Washington's daring Christmas crossing of the icy Delaware to defeat Hessians at Trenton. Inspired by Paine's "The American Crisis" and "Common Sense," the narrative underscores how reason and sacrifice secured America's moral high ground against British regulars. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
Remembering Lexington and Concord00:14:38
Thank you for joining us on tonight's episode of America's Mayor Live.
We're going to continue with the celebration of America's 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence with some very powerful videos put together by Hillsdale College in collaboration with the United States Department of Education, presented by the White House.
I am President of Hillsdale College and I am honored to welcome you to the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office
Building, part of the White House complex.
President Trump wishes to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year with an open heart.
The college is honored because it loves the Declaration of Independence.
Our oldest building was dedicated on the 4th of July in 1853.
Then, the president of the college at that time, who became known to Abraham Lincoln, Gave a speech in which he said, Freedom and learning go together, and ignorance and slavery go together.
One of the things we must do to commemorate anything, commemorate just means to remember together.
First, we have to know the thing.
And we can't remember it very well if we don't know it very well.
And so, part of the purpose of this series of lectures is to remember.
President Trump does this in part, I think, and I don't speak for him, but the word again is important.
Important to him.
He has a famous slogan that I will not repeat here, but everybody knows what it is.
And it ends with the word again.
He wants to do something again.
Something already been done.
He wants to see it happen again.
This places him somewhere near the politics of Abraham Lincoln, I think.
George Washington did something for the first time, extremely honorable, including the defense of the Declaration of Independence on battlefields.
Abraham Lincoln comes along.
Later, and he wants to restore all of that.
He took the view that that was a very hard thing to do, but it wasn't a new thing to do.
It was something that we should remember and commemorate.
In introducing this series, I want to begin by encouraging you to read the Declaration of Independence.
It's just over 1,300 words long.
It is one of the most consequential and beautiful political documents in all of history.
You should read it again and again.
You should memorize the beginning of it.
It's very beautiful.
It is grand and eternal and eloquent, and it proclaims the rights of us all.
It begins universally.
When in the course, that means any time.
One people, that means any people.
It refers to the laws of nature and of nature's God.
Those would be eternal laws, laws that we don't make, laws that are ever and forever.
The terms that decorates of independence mean that it's true now if it was true then.
And it means that if it's not true now, it was not true then.
It excludes any idea of a change in the fundamental conditions.
Absorb that and then go on to the next section.
The next section.
Raises some claims against the King of England that justify our revolution.
The particular claim is that he has violated his rightful powers by invading the authority of the legislature, which indicates separation of powers would be right, and that he has interfered with representation, our ability to elect our government, which means consent of the governed has been interfered with, and he's interfered with the judicial branch.
Separation of powers.
Consent of the governed, representation.
Those things are the very structure of the Constitution of the United States, later made to defend the principles and institutionalize the principles of the Declaration of Independence, according at least to those who wrote it and to later the very great Abraham Lincoln.
If you learn those things, it's a sort of guide to the understanding of American politics.
After the charges against the king comes a particular, also very beautiful, final section that becomes so particular it is confined at the end.
To the actual people in the room voting to approve the Declaration of Independence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
It starts out with all eternity, and it ends up with those people and that room and everything they have pledged to this eternal cause.
It becomes the American cause, the cause of our people, formed under principles of all people by a resolution they made.
Unto death to defend it.
That I think is the foundation stone of America right there.
In the course of the American Revolution, in April of 1775, in two villages in Massachusetts, a bunch of people, first about 70, then maybe 3,500, were called out to fire the shot heard around the world.
Several hundred British regulars were coming.
Down the road to seize an arms depot, and you might say, assert the might of the British Empire.
And they gathered to stop them.
And they did.
They were organized to do that.
Somehow it wasn't just individuals rising up, they had already bound together to cooperate.
It's a very stirring story.
And we have the marvelous Bill McClay, a colleague of mine, a historian, a tremendous teacher.
He's one of our best.
He's written many books.
He fell in love in history a long time ago after a classical education, and I can bend one of his books in particular to you.
I think the best one volume history of the United States ever written is called Land of Hope.
Listen to him and enjoy and think about your liberties and their structure and the Declaration of Independence.
This first lecture is about that shot heard around the world.
It was April 19th, 1775, and Bill McClay will tell us about it.
U.S.
ARMY Major Scott Smiley paid a high price serving our Nation.
Scott was leading his platoon in Iraq when a blast sent shrapnel through his eyes, leaving him blind and temporarily paralyzed.
Scott would become the first blind active duty military officer before medically retiring years later.
Thanks to friends like you, the Tunnel of the Towers Foundation gave Scott and his family a mortgage free, specially adapted smart home.
Show your support for America's heroes now.
Donate $11 a month to Tunnels and Towers at T2T.org.
Hello, my name is Wilfred McClay, and I teach history at Hillsdale College.
My assignment today is to relate the story of how the American Revolution began with the dramatic clashes between British regular troops and American militiamen in the New England towns of Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775, 250 years ago today.
The fuse of war was lit at last when orders from Britain reached the royal governor.
Of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, instructing him to move aggressively to stop the growing rebellion.
After careful deliberation, Gage decided he would march 700 red coated British troops to Concord, a town about 20 miles west of Boston, where they would seize a malicious supply depot that had been established by the Patriot forces.
The fact that such a depot had already been created is an indication of the extent.
To which the Patriot side of this conflict had organized and was preparing for conflict.
They were not an unorganized rabble.
Far from it, they knew that Gage was contemplating some sort of move, although they didn't know where or when exactly it would come until the operation was underway.
And they knew it was important to wait and make sure that the British fired the first shots so that the Patriots would be able to claim.
The high moral ground.
Samuel Adams put it this way back in March of 1775 Put your enemy in the wrong and keep him so.
This is a wise maxim in politics as well as in war, as indeed it was.
The success of Gage's operations depended on secrecy, surprise, and sound intelligence.
Thus, the words of historian David Hackett Fisher Gage would have to strike at the heart of the rebel movement and cripple it.
With quick, clean blows, preferably with as little bloodshed as possible.
But it didn't quite work out that way.
It was a disaster, instead, for the British.
In many ways, the outcome of Lexington and Concord provided the Patriots with a great public relations victory, putting the enemy firmly in the wrong and keeping him there.
Along the road to Concord was the town of Lexington, which was not an objective of Gage's troops, and yet, When the British arrived there at dawn, they encountered a group of 70 or so minute men gathered in the mist on the town common.
The men were there because they'd been warned by means of the famous midnight ride of Paul Revere, who was one of maybe as many as 60 messengers whom he'd help organize, tasked to inform the scattered militias in the area that the British regulars were coming from Boston, had crossed the Charles River at Cambridge.
And we're now heading west to Concord.
They came to Lexington upon an awkward confrontation.
After some taunting shouts and argument coming from both sides, the Patriot militiamen appeared to be beginning to withdraw.
And then a shot was fired, no one knows by whom, which led to the British opening fire on the assembled Patriots, killing eight of them.
It was more of a skirmish than a full throated battle.
But blood was shed on both sides and deaths on the Patriot side.
News spread quickly throughout the countryside of what was already being called the massacre at Lexington.
Then the British went on to Concord, where they encountered half empty storehouses, as the Patriots' excellent advance intelligence had indicated a move against Concord was coming, and they cleared out most of their arms and armaments and ammunition and burned the rest.
The regulars encountered stiff resistance.
From the gathered militia troops as they poured in from the countryside and fought bravely and shrewdly against the rather mechanical British.
The British lost 14 men in a fight at the Concord North Bridge, which the terrified regulars turned tail and ran for their lives, breaking discipline, disobeying their officers, and abandoning the wounded.
A disgraceful display.
The British began to retreat.
To Boston and would face deadly fire all along the route, bloody sniper fire.
They were outnumbered, outmaneuvered at every turn.
In the end, they limped back to Boston, having lost three times as many men as the Americans.
And so the war had begun.
And now a few words about historical memory, because that, after all, is why we're here.
To remember and to gain the value of remembering our own past.
Preserving Historical Memory Through Poetry00:03:10
Why is it so important to do that?
Much of what we remember Lexington and Concord for today flows from a single poem written in 1860 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The poem is called Paul Revere's Ride.
It used to be memorized by every school aged child in America.
It opens like This.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere on the 18th of April in 75.
Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year.
It's really such an infectious poem.
You catch it, it has the rhythm it has as a rhythm of drum taps.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
But why did Longfellow address the poem to children?
Surely children were not the only audience he had in mind, maybe not even the primary audience he had in mind.
No, but he's indicating something.
He's indicating that his poem is primarily meant as an expression of a precious memory, a memory of something that needs to be preserved, needs to be passed along to successive generations.
Lest it be lost.
The memory, in this case, of Paul Revere and his heroic deeds.
To be sure, the poem does not provide a fully accurate rendering of the events that took place in those days.
For that, I recommend you turn to David Hackett Fisher or other historians who have covered that territory.
But the poem does something different, it conveys the essential spiritual meaning of the events.
The legacy they had left with us, a meaning that we can and should and must make our own.
At a crucial moment in American history, the poem was composed in 1860.
On the cusp of our greatest national crisis and trial, the American Civil War, we were being called to look back by Longfellow, just as Abraham Lincoln urged Americans to heed the mystic chords of memory when he's inaugurated as president and to remember the spirit of 76 and their heroic forebears.
So Longfellow reminded them of a hero of Lexington and Concord.
On the very moment, When the nation was entering the great trial, the great crisis of revolution.
The poem concludes too with a haunting prediction that speaks to our moment as well.
A Tenuous Tipping Point in 177500:03:38
And let me close with that.
For born on the night wind of the past, through all our history to the last, in the hour of darkness and peril and need, the people will waken and listen to hear the hurrying hoofbeats of that steed and the midnight message of Paul Revere.
If Longfellow's right, the deeds of Lexington and Concord exemplified enduring qualities of the character of the American people that will continue to manifest themselves.
If we have the willingness to call on those memories, the capacity to respond to darkness with light, to peril with energy and determination, buoyed by the knowledge that others have done these things before us.
And in a sense, for us.
What was done before can be done again.
Thank you.
Are you ready for some action?
I'm ready for action.
Get the Elite TV plan only through the portal.
218 channels, and it's only $69.95 a month.
Wow.
Including your free portal.
That's cheaper than everyone else.
Your favorite sports, movies, news, even daytime dramas.
We're talking about.
ESPN, OAN, Newsmax, channels you can't get anymore in certain areas.
Compared to the competition, this is a way better deal.
Endless selection.
Not to mention all the free music channels.
There's over 700 premium and classic movies all ready to go.
Wow.
Plus, they got catch up TV that allows you to go back and watch what you've missed or want to watch again.
Cut your cable in half and get twice as much for free.
Way more channels for half the cost.
After the first year, the subscription then drops to $57.95 monthly, where you change or up.
Upgrade anytime.
Go to QUXNOW.com and get yours today.
Use promo code RUDY.
Act fast.
These deals are selling out.
The spring of 1775,
250 years ago, was a tenuous tipping point that could have gone either way.
After the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts wondered if it would stand alone.
Its legislature petitioned the Second Continental Congress to create a national army.
As the army now collecting from different colonies is for the general defense of the right of America, We would beg leave to suggest you're taking the regulation and general direction of it.
This was a bold step toward the unification of the 13 colonies into a national government.
The Battle of Bunker Hill Explained00:10:32
While it waited for an answer, Massachusetts appointed French and Indian War veteran Artemis Ward to command the growing assemblage of troops surrounding Boston.
His loosely organized command included regiments led by William Prescott from Massachusetts.
Israel Putnam from Connecticut, and John Stark from New Hampshire.
With little command and control structure, decisions were frequently reached by consensus or sometimes by force of personality.
Such was the case on whether to occupy Bunker Hill on the Charleston Peninsula that pointed like a dagger toward British occupied Boston.
Whoever controlled these heights controlled Boston.
But for weeks, both sides had left them unoccupied.
Finally, General Thomas Gage, the British commander, decided to act.
The British plan was to seize the hills at Dorchester to the south and then launch an assault against Bunker Hill.
The Dorchester attack was planned for the morning of June 18th without much concern as to what General Ward's troops might be doing in the interim.
For two days before this planned attack, at the urging of Prescott and Putnam, Ward agreed to fortify the Charleston Peninsula and its 110 foot high point of Bunker Hill.
Putnam, who was itching for an all out fight with the British, pushed for the construction of the main fortifications on a slightly lower knoll closer to Boston that would later be called Breed's Hill.
On the rebel side, Ward's soldiers were still less an army than a loose band of partisans, hardy in the cause, as one termed it.
Few had uniforms.
Most were in everyday work clothes.
All carried muskets brought from home.
Some of the weapons were older than the men who shouldered them.
Almost no one had bayonets.
The crude earthworks they dug on Breed's Hill were relatively small, about 130 feet square.
The main weakness was that its northern slopes fell gently toward the Mystic River, offering an avenue from which an attack could surround the position and cut it off.
When the British discovered the rebel position on the morning of June 17th, General Gage postponed his Dorchester plans and expedited his attack against Bunker Hill.
Cannon from Royal Navy ships in the Charles River and batteries atop Copse Hill in Boston pummeled the newly constructed rebel positions.
And General Gage ordered General William Howe to attack that very afternoon.
Watching from atop Copse Hill, General Gage handed his telescope to Abijah Willard, a loyalist who had sought safety in Boston, and asked if he recognized anyone among the rebels who might be in command.
Willard did.
William Prescott was a fellow soldier from the Colonial Wars, as well as his brother in law.
Will he fight? Gage demanded.
He could not answer for Prescott's men, Willard replied, but Prescott will fight you to the gates of hell.
Now came the stuff of legend Howe ordered 1,500 men to cross the Charles River.
They landed unopposed on the beach below Bunker Hill.
Prescott's men in their trenches were content to watch because they were short of gunpowder.
Howe formed his troops on a rise about 100 yards inland, but what he saw next gave him pause.
Colonel John Stark's 1st New Hampshire Regiment, about 400 men, had taken up positions behind a rail fence and a hastily erected stone barricade on the Mystic Beach, anchoring Prescott's vulnerable left flank.
Seeing this massing of rebel troops, Howe sent for reinforcements.
By the time they arrived, he had about 2,200 men in the field against likely half that number in the immediate vicinity.
For one fleeting moment, the difference between Lexington and what was about to occur below Bunker Hill stood in sharp relief.
This could not be called an accidental encounter.
As General Howe's troops advanced toward Prescott's and Stark's positions late on the afternoon of June 17, 1775, it was clear to any observer that the outcome would be a pitched battle.
As British troops advanced uphill in two long lines and in column against Stark's position, the bulk of the American line stood silent.
Keenly aware of its limited gunpowder.
Hold your fire, commanders reminded their men.
The quote, most associated with the Battle of Bunker Hill, is Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
Now, who said it, perhaps William Prescott, or how often it was repeated, is uncertain.
Another account claims that behind the stone barricade, John Stark admonished his men not to fire.
Until they could see the enemy's white colored gators.
Onward, then, Howe's regulars came.
At perhaps 50 yards, the command fire resounded, and the entire rebel line exploded with a thunderous roar.
The British troops staggered and fell back in disarray.
Howe ordered them to reform and move forward again.
Armchair strategists have faulted Howe for marching his troops directly up Bunker Hill.
But this fraudal maneuver was not Howe's initial intent.
He had placed great faith in his light infantry to turn the left end of the rebel line and create havoc along it.
After that, the heavy grenadier companies were to bulldoze through with fixed bayonets.
Eleven companies of light infantry, about 350 men, rushed headlong in a column of fours against the stone barricade, where Stark's New Hampshire men stood three deep.
Their first volley decimated the attacking column.
As other companies moved forward to take his place, they gained no more than a few yards before more volleys rent the air.
The British infantry struggled onward, but the New Hampshire lads stood firm as granite.
The grenadier companies on the slope above heard these musket volleys without seeing the results.
How indeed intended for the grenadiers to sweep through the rebel line and circle behind the trenches.
But as the light Infantry attack collapsed.
The grenadiers, too, were thwarted by concentrated fire.
After the second attack also failed, Howe ordered a third charge directly against the earthen fortifications.
By now, the rebels were dangerously low on gunpowder.
Many had withdrawn to the higher hilltop of Bunker Hill.
Prescott was down to about 150 men.
What ended resistance there? Was neither a lack of courage nor unstoppable British resolve, but rather a shortage of gunpowder.
The remaining defenders lost their lives to British bayonets.
By evening, the Charleston Peninsula was in British hands, but the rebels had fought a fighting withdrawal and established defensive lines.
On the British side, there was a dazed sense of disbelief.
The slopes were littered with red uniforms of the dead and dying.
General Howe was in denial.
He had won the field, but at a staggering cost.
The Battle of Bunker Hill was, his fellow General Henry Clinton opined, a dear bought victory.
Another such would have ruined us.
After Bunker Hill, there was no doubt that this was all out war.
Some suggest the military importance of Bunker Hill is overstated.
Yet American history has long celebrated it, and the public recognized it with the same reverence accorded to Yorktown, the Alamo, and Pearl Harbor.
If one counted only control of the battlefield, Bunker Hill was a British victory.
But for the rebel psyche of 1775, the battle was a huge morale boost.
As the first major clash between rebel forces and British regulars, Bunker Hill showed that those who would increasingly call themselves Americans could hold their own.
The American Revolution was not begun on Bunker Hill.
It certainly was not decided at Bunker Hill.
But the Battle of Bunker Hill proved that the fight for American independence and a new nation was truly begun in the American Spring of 1775.
Roasting Coffee for Independence Day00:02:18
Here we are, pretty much at the beginning of the process here at this pristine, I call it a laboratory.
It's not like a factory, it's like a hospital.
This is the beginning of the process for roasting.
Deep grain, very good quality.
Most people don't use this quality.
We deal with small farmers because they like to know who we're dealing with.
They give us the highest quality, all organic, non GMO.
You should know all Arabica beans.
No robusto, all Arabica.
They're going to go into the roaster and it'll get roasted for about 20 minutes or so.
Oh my goodness, look at these.
My goodness.
They're going to want to specially order these.
This is what goes into Rudy's coffee.
Hello, my name is Larry Arnn.
I'm the president of Hillsdale College, which is honored to be working with the White House to produce these videos in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the greatest political document in human history.
Our college was founded in honor of that document.
We encourage you to love it and to celebrate it.
And to celebrate it, you should learn about it.
We're going to talk about two things the meaning and the structure of the Declaration of Independence.
First question is what does it mean?
The Meaning of the Declaration00:08:58
Things have causes.
There's a classical account of the causes of things that include four.
The efficient cause means whoever made it.
The material cause means whatever it's made out of.
The formal cause means what does it look like and how does it operate.
And the final cause is what is it for?
What love produces it?
Declaration of Independence contains a lot of information about the formal cause of America in the middle, but its chief function is to provide the final cause of the country.
What is the country for?
And it begins very beautifully by explaining that.
It says that any time in history, any people in history have a right under the laws of nature and of nature's God to form a nation according to purposes that they adopt.
What are these laws of nature and nature's God?
What does that mean?
The Christian view is that God made nature, the classical view is that each being has a good, and the good and the being are the same thing.
Nature is full of things that are good, and it's wrong to violate the good of anything.
What do these laws say about people?
They say that they're all created equal.
Think what a remarkable thing it is for a people to adopt a standard like that as their purpose, as their governing purpose.
And we did that in opposition to a king who claimed that he was born to be our ruler, because he was better born than we are.
He was denying.
The proposition that all men are created equal.
If you recognize this principle of equality and you recognize it properly, it will give rise to the most amazing diversity and difference among people because it sets up a right of all of us to pursue our lives best we can.
Without impediment by kings and emperors, we said, in the laws of nature and nature's God, no one is born to rule anybody else.
That's beautiful.
And it sets up an agitation in the country, which goes on to this day, to always try to recognize those principles.
And that's the final cause of the United States of America.
Now, a word about the structure of the document.
It begins with this universal claim that we're all created equal and that nobody may rule us except by our consent.
And in the middle bit, they claim the king has done a bunch of bad stuff that justifies.
The revolution.
He took houses away from people and put troops in them.
That means they were dislodged.
They were driven out into the street.
He arrested people.
He put them on ships.
And the ships were not very comfortable.
They were in the hold of the ship.
Sometimes they sat around for weeks in the harbor.
And they were taken all the way to England.
Most of them had never been there before.
And they were put on trial in front of people who they never met before, not a jury of your peers.
This is the 25th paragraph.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He did kill people.
And then he'd talk about the mercenaries there.
Large armies of foreign mercenaries, those were the Hessians, to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely parallel in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.
But then that leads us to the second thing about this structure point.
And that was some of them are direct violations of the best method.
The founders argued the only sure method to keep the government from doing things like that to you, to its citizens, to anybody, right?
And those methods are they provide the organizing principle of the Constitution of the United States, they are representation.
You know, the Continental Congress that passed the Declaration of Independence.
Took great pains to be a representative body.
That is to say, they're not acting according to their own wills.
Somebody else, those who will be governed under this new government that they're creating, have appointed us to do this.
We are acting for them.
We have government by consent.
And they say that the king is interfering with the legislatures that they had had before.
He dissolved several of them and he prevented others of them from meeting.
And those are all in these charges here, right?
He has obstructed government by consent.
Then he's messed around with the judicial branch.
And that means that the legislature has to pass a law, and then the executive enforces only the laws that have been passed.
And then, when the law is applied upon any citizen, he has to be taken in front of a judge who's not dismissible by the legislature or the executive.
And then the judge.
Has to decide.
That's called the independent judiciary.
It's a terribly important thing.
So, the middle bit of the Declaration, these 28 paragraphs, is the second part of the structure of the Declaration of Independence.
And the third part is a formal legislative act that makes the nation.
It's passed by the Continental Congress.
I should mention that God appears four times in the Declaration of Independence.
He appears in the first sentence as the maker of the laws of nature and nature's God.
The legislator.
He appears in the beginning of the second paragraph as the endower of our rights as creator, the founder of everything.
The last paragraph is personal.
They refer to themselves for the first time.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States, the representatives of the United States, we, in general, Congress assembled.
And then they appeal to somebody to judge whether they're right.
And that person is not the King of England.
It's the supreme judge of the world, the judicial branch.
For the rectitude of our intentions, in other words, we swear we're doing what seems right and we ask God to judge.
In the name of the good people of these colonies, you can read it as a claim that the people of the colonies are good, you can read it as a claim that we're acting for the good ones.
Or you can read it as the claim we have to remember to be good because we are assuming this authority now.
Free and independent states that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved, and that as free and independent states they have full power to levy war.
Now we get to the hard thing.
Conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.
And then the beautiful last sentence.
This is where the executive branch comes in.
Because, see, now it's war.
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.
That's God as the executive branch.
We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Only in the hands of God would all the powers of government be combined.
Those men.
In that room, the same room where the Constitution would later be written by some of the same people, we mutually pledged to each other everything we've got.
We Americans today owe those people.
We should learn about them.
Thank you.
Here we are, pretty much at the beginning of the process here at this pristine, I call it a laboratory.
Washington's Bold Strike at Trenton00:15:46
It's not like a factory, it's like a hospital.
This is the beginning of the process for roasting.
Deep grain, very good quality.
Most people don't use this quality.
We deal with small farmers because they like to know who we're dealing with.
They give us the highest quality, all organic, non GMO.
You should know all Arabica beans.
No robusto.
All Arabica.
They're going to go into the roaster and it'll get roasted for about 20 minutes or so.
Oh my goodness.
Look at these.
My goodness.
You're going to want to specially order these.
This is what goes into Rudy's coffee.
By September of 1776,
the cause of independence looked bleak.
Though Washington had miraculously escaped the British after the Battle of Long Island, the defeat of the American army had been a humiliating rout.
Washington had made a number of mistakes, and some began to speak about replacing him, whether with General Charles Lee or with Horatio Gates.
And what followed in the next three months only confirmed.
This assessment.
The worst of it came on November 16th when American forces were defeated in the northern end of Manhattan at Fort Washington.
Washington ought to have abandoned Manhattan entirely, but for some reason he took the advice of Nathaniel Greene and left 5,000 men there.
From across the Hudson River, through his spyglass, Washington watched their awful defeat.
The Hessian mercenaries even bayoneted men to death.
Who were trying to surrender.
Knowing that the responsibility for it all fell on him was crushing.
And a number of his officers saw Washington so overwhelmed that he turned away and wept like a child.
Four days later, Washington's troops were chased from Fort Lee, New Jersey.
But at this point, Washington knew that he must fight differently.
And he would.
The plan going forward was to retreat with his remaining army south.
Through New Jersey, never allowing the British to engage them in a full and open fight in which the British would have the advantage.
It would be what Washington called a war of posts, in which he retreated and retreated, trying to wear out the British as he did so.
If Washington and his men continued to retreat successfully, they would eventually make it to the Delaware River, which formed the westernmost border of New Jersey.
They could then escape across the Delaware where they would effectively be safe, having the wide river between them and the British, and also being able to keep the British from advancing on Philadelphia.
So, if Washington had any hope of reversing the fortunes of his Continental Army, he had to do it in the next few weeks.
It really didn't seem like things could get worse.
That General Charles Lee, whom he had again and again begged to come to his aid with his 2,000 troops, had been captured by the British.
In fact, the British were so thrilled by this tremendous coup that General Howe decided it was time to call it a year and retire to winter quarters.
The situation was that Washington and his ragged troops were huddled in Pennsylvania, and General Charles Lee, whom the British feared far more as a general than they feared the beleaguered Washington, Was their captive.
So Cornwallis made plans to sail back to London to see his wife, and Howe went to New York, where he expected to spend the winter with his mistress.
A number of Hessian troops would, of course, be stationed in encampments along the Delaware on the New Jersey side just to keep an eye on Washington and his forces.
But the British thought that the campaign for 1776 was.
Over.
Washington was simply so defeated at this point that there was little reason to worry about him.
In the spring, the British could rouse themselves to end things finally, once and for all.
It was around this time of deepest desperation that Washington knew he must do something.
If he did nothing now, it really was essentially over for the cause of liberty and independence.
On December 31st, most of his men, having come to the end of their enlistment, would go home.
But what could Washington do?
He would first of all take advantage of the overconfidence of the British, who didn't dream he and his exhausted forces.
Would do anything dramatic at this point.
He'd also take advantage of the fact that, in their overconfidence, they had scattered their forces in a line along the river that was perhaps a little bit too thin.
For example, there were only 1,500 men at Trenton.
Over the past weeks, Thomas Paine, who was with Washington's army, began to write another essay.
This new one, titled The American Crisis, began with the famous lines These are the times that try men's souls.
The essay was so inspiring.
That Washington had it read aloud to all of his troops two days before the planned crossing of the Delaware.
The exact plan was, in fact, for three forces to cross the Delaware.
One force would cross many miles downstream to attack the Hessians who were stationed at Mount Holly in order to prevent them from coming to the aid of those he would be attacking in Trenton.
A second force would cross the river right at Trenton to hold the Assampink Bridge and prevent the Hessians from retreating.
And the third and largest force, with Washington and his generals Greene and Sullivan, would cross the river north at McConkie's Ferry.
The plan was to be across by midnight and then to march the nine miles to Trenton, where they would attack the Hessians at daybreak.
Wet and cold, they saw that it was higher than usual and choked all the way across by huge and jagged flows of ice.
Washington's full force was not assembled on the other side until 4 a.m., four hours past schedule, meaning that with nine miles to march, they would not get to Trenton until well after daylight, destroying the vital element of surprise.
The snowstorm continued as they marched, and it was so cold that two men froze to death.
En route.
It was nearly 8 a.m. by the time they finally arrived at Trenton.
The snowstorm was still raging, so the Hessians were not expecting anyone to attack.
When Washington gave Nathaniel Greene the order to do so, the Hessians standing guard were overwhelmed and quickly retreated into the town.
A few moments later, from another direction, General Sullivan's troops attacked.
The Hessians could not have been more surprised.
The idea that Washington Would with all these men have crossed the Delaware on Christmas night in a snowstorm and marched through the snowstorm nine miles to Trenton was simply inconceivable.
So the Hessians tumbled out of their barracks and desperately tried to marshal a defense.
But Henry Knox's artillery were stationed at the head of the two main streets and blasted cannon fire, clearing them immediately.
Onto the side streets.
Eventually, the Hessians desperately retreated to an apple orchard, but were finally surrounded.
Only an hour had passed, and it was all over.
In the end, the Hessians counted 112 casualties 22 killed and 90 wounded.
On the American side, only four were wounded and not a single life was lost in battle.
And the Americans had captured nearly 1,000 Hessian prisoners.
It was an astonishing victory.
The news spread quickly.
Those who had counted Washington out and who had counted the cause of liberty.
Out, he realized that his bold stroke, successfully executed despite monumental obstacles, had changed the momentum of the war as dramatically as possible.
Once more, the British knew that what they so assuredly believed was essentially finished was far from over.
And of course, when it finally would be over, seven years in the unimaginable future.
they would have lost, the war and the colonies both.
U.S. Army Major Scott Smiley paid a high price serving our nation.
Scott was leading his platoon in Iraq when a blast sent shrapnel through his eyes, leaving him blind and temporarily paralyzed.
Scott would become the first blind active duty military officer before medically retiring years later.
Thanks to friends like you, the Tunnel of the Towers Foundation gave Scott and his family a mortgage free, specially adapted smart home.
Show your support for America's heroes now.
Donate $11 a month to Tunnels and Towers at T2T.org.
By September of 1776, the cause of independence looked bleak.
Though Washington had miraculously escaped the British after the Battle of Long Island, the defeat of the American army had been a humiliating rout.
Washington had made a number of mistakes, and some began to speak about replacing him, whether with General Charles Lee or with Horatio Gates.
And what followed in the next three months only confirmed.
This assessment.
The worst of it came on November 16th when American forces were defeated in the northern end of Manhattan at Fort Washington.
Washington ought to have abandoned Manhattan entirely, but for some reason he took the advice of Nathaniel Greene and left 5,000 men there.
From across the Hudson River, through his spyglass, Washington watched their awful defeat.
The Hessian mercenaries even bayoneted men to death.
Death, who were trying to surrender.
Knowing that the responsibility for it all fell on him was crushing.
And a number of his officers saw Washington so overwhelmed that he turned away and wept like a child.
Four days later, Washington's troops were chased from Fort Lee, New Jersey.
But at this point, Washington knew that he must fight differently.
And he would.
The plan going forward was to retreat with his remaining army south.
Through New Jersey, never allowing the British to engage them in a full and open fight in which the British would have the advantage.
It would be what Washington called a war of posts, in which he retreated and retreated, trying to wear out the British as he did so.
If Washington and his men continued to retreat successfully, they would eventually make it to the Delaware River, which formed the westernmost border of New Jersey.
They could then escape across the Delaware where they would effectively be safe, having the wide river between them and the British, and also being able to keep the British from advancing on Philadelphia.
So, if Washington had any hope of reversing the fortunes of his Continental Army, he had to do it in the next few weeks.
It really didn't seem like things could get worse.
That General Charles Lee, whom he had again and again begged to come to his aid with his 2,000 troops, had been captured by the British.
In fact, the British were so thrilled by this tremendous coup that General Howe decided it was time to call it a year and retire to winter quarters.
The situation was that Washington and his ragged troops were huddled in Pennsylvania, and General Charles Lee, whom the British feared far more as a general than they feared the beleaguered Washington, Was their captive.
So Cornwallis made plans to sail back to London to see his wife, and Howe went to New York, where he expected to spend the winter with his mistress.
Turning the Tide Against Cornwallis00:08:34
A number of Hessian troops would, of course, be stationed in encampments along the Delaware on the New Jersey side just to keep an eye on Washington and his forces.
Over.
Washington was simply so defeated at this point that there was little reason to worry about him.
In the spring, the British could rouse themselves to end things finally, once and for all.
It was around this time of deepest desperation that Washington knew he must do something.
If he did nothing now, it really was essentially over for the cause of liberty and independence.
On December 31st, most of his men, having come to the end of their enlistment, would go home.
But what could Washington do?
He would, first of all, take advantage of the overconfidence of the British, who didn't dream he and his exhausted forces.
Would do anything dramatic at this point.
He'd also take advantage of the fact that, in their overconfidence, they had scattered their forces in a line along the river that was perhaps a little bit too thin.
For example, there were only 1,500 men at Trenton.
Over the past weeks, Thomas Paine, who was with Washington's army, began to write another essay.
This new one, titled The American Crisis, began with the famous lines These are the times that try men's souls.
The essay was so inspiring.
That Washington had it read aloud to all of his troops two days before the planned crossing of the Delaware.
The exact plan was, in fact, for three forces to cross the Delaware.
One force would cross many miles downstream to attack the Hessians who were stationed at Mount Holly in order to prevent them from coming to the aid of those he would be attacking in Trenton.
A second force would cross the river right at Trenton to hold the Assampink Bridge.
And prevent the Hessians from retreating.
And the third and largest force, with Washington and his generals Greene and Sullivan, would cross the river north at McConkie's Ferry.
The plan was to be across by midnight and then to march the nine miles to Trenton, where they would attack the Hessians at daybreak.
When they arrived at the river, wet and cold, they saw that it was higher than usual and choked all the way across by huge and jagged flows of ice.
Washington's full force was not assembled on the other side until 4 a.m., four hours past schedule, meaning that with nine miles to march, they would not get to Trenton until well after daylight, destroying the vital element of surprise.
The snowstorm continued as they marched, and it was so cold that two men froze to death en route.
It was nearly 8 a.m. by the time they finally arrived at Trenton.
The snowstorm was still raging.
So the Hessians were not expecting anyone to attack.
When Washington gave Nathaniel Greene the order to do so, the Hessians standing guard were overwhelmed and quickly retreated into the town.
A few moments later, from another direction, General Sullivan's troops attacked.
The Hessians could not have been more surprised.
The idea that Washington would, with all these men, have crossed the Delaware on Christmas night in a snowstorm and marched through the snowstorm nine miles to Trenton was simply Inconceivable.
So the Hessians tumbled out of their barracks and desperately tried to marshal a defense.
But Henry Knox's artillery were stationed at the head of the two main streets and blasted cannon fire, clearing them immediately.
The fighting moved onto the side streets.
Eventually, the Hessians desperately retreated to an apple orchard, but were finally surrounded.
Only an hour had passed, and it was all over.
In the end, the Hessians counted 112 casualties, 22 killed and 90 wounded.
On the American side, only four were wounded and not a single life was lost in battle.
And the Americans had captured nearly 1,000 Hessian prisoners.
It was an astonishing victory.
The news spread quickly.
Those who had counted Washington out and who had counted the cause of liberty.
Out, he realized that his bold stroke, successfully executed despite monumental obstacles, had changed the momentum of the war as dramatically as possible.
Once more, the British knew that what they so assuredly believed was essentially finished was far from over.
And of course, when it finally would be over, seven years in the unimaginable future.
they would have lost the war and the colonies both.
It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
There was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking that brought to us the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776.
One of the first American bestsellers in which Thomas Paine explained, by rational principles, the reason why these small colonies felt the necessity to separate from the Kingdom of Great Britain and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, for freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the ability to select the people who govern them.
And he explained it in ways that were understandable to all the people.
not just the elite.
Because the desire for freedom is universal.
The desire for freedom adheres in the human mind and it is part of the human soul.
This is exactly the time we should consult our history.
Look at what we've done in the past and see if we can't use it to help us now.
We understand that our founders created the greatest country in the history of the world.
The greatest democracy, the freest country.
A country that has taken more people out of poverty than any country in the world.
Ever.
All of us are so fortunate to be Americans.
But a great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self improve is because we're able to reason, we're able to talk, we're able to analyze.
We are able to apply our God given common sense.
So let's do it.
Five major battles between August and November of 1776.
The Continental Army was reduced to fewer than 5,000 men.
Inside a candle lit tent along the New York Harbor, following the catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Long Island, General Washington confronted a grim reality.
Surrounded, outnumbered, and outmaneuvered, he asked his officers for the unthinkable.
Do we have any other options?
Silence followed.
They all knew the truth only a miracle could save them.
In the months that followed, the mightiest military.