Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to this special series of The Federalist
History Hour. I'm Hayden Daniel, editor at The Federalist. As always,
you can email the show at radio at Federalist dot com,
follow us on Twitter at Federalist, make sure to subscribe
wherever you download your podcasts, and of course the premium
version of our website as well. I'm joined today by
Breonna Lyman, correspondent at the Federalists. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: America's got a pretty big birthday coming up, the Big
fifty this July fourth, and the White House is pretty
busy working on a very special little celebration. I also
understand that you are busy onest a little special project
celebrating this nation's founding called count Down to Freedom, in
which you chronicle the events of the revolution from January
the first, seventeen seventy six to July fourth, seventeen seventy six,
when the founders signed the Declaration of Independence and leapt
out into the unknown and embarked America on this great
political experiment that we have been on for the last
two hundred and fifty years. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just it's been almost a month now, we're
coming up on that one month mark, and it's a
lot of fun. If you haven't already had a chance
to check it out, I encourage it. It's under two
minutes because I don't want to bog people down. I
know everyone has a busy life, but I think it's
really important as we head to July fourth to understand
just kind of reality. Not only were the founders facing,
but average colonists. Right, the entire movement would have been
unsuccessful and impossible if not for the average farmers and
tavern keepers and so forth and so forth who took
up arms and were willing to fight and give their
lives for the cause. And in order to give their
lives for the cause, they needed to be convinced. And Hayden,
I know you know this as well, but it wasn't
easy to convince all the colonists to pick up arms
against a country of which you know, they have family
living overseas. Maybe they were born overseas in Knye. Maybe
their parents were. There were a lot of ties and
similarities between the two people, so it was very difficult
to convince them to raise arms against one another.
Speaker 1: Yes, up to a third of the colonists remained loyal
to Britain, and many of them left after the Revolution,
mostly to hand it, but also to England as well.
And I think that's one of the really impressive things
about your series is that you not only take a
big macro look at the Revolution, as in big events
like Thomas Paine's common Sense you did that episode a
few days ago, or Benjamin Franklin's birthday, but you also
look at very small but still very important events that
happened to normal colonists that either pushed them towards loyalism
or pushed them towards the Patriot cause.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's like a and I really
enjoyed doing that. I love doing the research and digging
into it. For example, you know, I think it was
probably a week and a half ago there was an incident.
It might have actually been January eighth, there was an
incident in which colonists had wanted to go and basically
take back the remaining houses that had been left after
the British kind of you know, burned down the area
because they didn't want the British using the remaining wood
for firewood, and so they launched this like overnight little
expedition and managed to take captive a few British people
and burn the remaining wood down. And it's a funny
story because one no one hears of it, and two,
at the same time that the colonists were doing this,
the British were actually enjoying a play in Boston mocking
the Continental Army as being a bunch of, you know,
country bumpkins. Meanwhile, those country bumpkins were out there burning
down the firewood that they were dependent on. So it's
little stories like that that really helps out the the
big picture of what the colonists the militia were really
willing to do, into what lengths to secure their freedom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the British, definitely, especially the officers, definitely underestimated these
sort of rustic provincials that they thought the colonists were
and they sort of got rude awakening in instances like that.
What inspired you to start this series? I mean it's
a pretty big undertaking. Even if all the videos are
under two minutes, I mean, it's quite quite the project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can definitely to that. I'm currently working on
doing a new studio setup, so we're having some technical
difficulties folks. But honestly, there were there were two big things.
First and foremost, America's worth it. She's worth so much more,
you know. I think of all the brave men and
women who have sacrificed their lives and or they're just
their time to serve this country. And I'll be honest,
I think I'm too much of a whiss to to
put myself in that position. And I just wanted to
figure out a way that I could also honor America
in a way that you know, maybe some other people
also can't or would be interested in. So this was
hopefully my way of kind of giving back one to
cover what makes America so great and too, I just
have a lot of family history. I am a Mayflower descendant,
I have Revolutionary War Patriots direct ancestors. I'm related to
John Adams distantly. So this is my way of also
trying to remember the story that my ancestors live too.
I mean, they lived in Massachusetts, they experienced this firsthand.
Speaker 1: They were you know, Paul.
Speaker 2: Rever yours Midnight Ride, they were there kind of deal.
So it's just trying to give the right amount of
coverage to ordinary again colonists who are doing the extraordinary things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bit of a running gag amongst the
Federals about how many revolutionary figures that you're related to.
So how do you do the research for these episodes,
especially the ones that aren't that are stories that aren't
as well known.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. So obviously I'm fortunate enough
that there are a few big you know, the Burning
of Norfolk. I know a lot of people who watch
that episode were mad that I mispronounced it as Norfolk.
But I am from New York, and it's difficult for
my rs and l's like that. For example, the episode
that I'm hoping to get out today, if it does
not run into technical issues, is actually not even a
story that's really happened today, because some days there was
nothing like actually happening, right. There were no no proclamations,
no decrees, no big meetings. So it's about finding something
about what was happening for the colonists, And for the
colonists on a day like this, they were struggling. Those
who were remaining neutral, they were going to have to
pick aside. Right, there was no such thing as being
neutral pastal life. For it's seventeen seventy six, you were
a loyalist or you were a patriot, and so there
was a lot of stuff building up. So over the past.
You know, yesterday and tomorrow in seventeen seventy six, you're
going to start seeing reports popping up in local newspapers
in Pennsylvania and Virginia basically saying we cannot sit back.
Everybody like this is the time to fight for freedom.
You know, you're not fighting against your brothers in England.
You're fighting against the Parliament and the crown. You can
separate those two things. Your freedom is at state. And
it was a really tough decision for like you said,
you know about a third of the colonists living in America.
So for stories or days like this when it feels
a little slow, it's about putting yourself in an average
colonist's shoe.
Speaker 1: Yes, And it was not as how Miss Pain might say,
it was not time for fair weather soldiers at the time.
It would only get worse after seventeen seventy six. I mean,
the colonists went through all sorts of privations. I mean,
most people know about Washington's Army and Valley Forge, how
terribly they suffered during the winter there, but even just
normal colonists suffered quite a bit with the semi British blockade,
especially once they captured New York and Charleston, the two
major ports in the colonies, and Boston. But yeah, it
was lean times for the Revolution, but the Patriots stuck
it out and persevered. So has working on this series
giving you a greater appreciation for the Revolution?
Speaker 2: Oh, of course, I mean there's so many different things.
You know, for example, you just mentioned the blockade, and
blockades were very difficult, more I would argue for the
British than they were for the colonists at certain points
of the war. So in seventeen seventy six it was
actually more difficult I'd say for the British in Boston,
for example, right, because the Patriots had pretty much taken
control of most of everything except for Boston, but they
were doing blockades. When British ships were trying to bring
supplies up to Boston. They were actually running into trouble
around the you know, New Jersey and New York ports
by Patriots who were taking over these ships and saying
you're not going there, right, And you just think of
the sacrifice that so many of these men had made.
You know, it's freezing in New York right now, right,
but I have a really big warmth sweater and I'll
put a scarf on and gloves. A lot of these
men they didn't have those things right. Supplies were low.
Their shoes, you know, if they're marching miles and miles
and miles. Sometimes some shoes got warned and they didn't
even wear them. And they did this again. They did
it all, not even for themselves. A lot of them
understood they were signing up to possibly die, and yet
they still did it. But they were doing it for
their children and their grandchildren and people like you and
I today who enjoy, you know, the privileges that they
got for us so.
Speaker 1: Far, or even if you can give us a little
glimpse into the future, what are some of your favorite
stories and episodes that you looked into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one was like a little a little different.
So Benedict Arnold's birthday was last week, and of course
he's a trader. I'm not giving him props. But there
is one story from the revolution that I probably won't
be able to tell otherwise unless I tell it for
Benedict Arnold's birthday. Because it occurred a few years into
the war, but it took place in Tarrytown, New York.
And Benedict Arnold, by I think it was like seventeen
eighty one, he had been really slighted, okay, he had
been passed over for promotions. He also had a really
reckless spending habit, so he was accumulating a ton of
debt and he decided, you know what, I'm not sticking
it out with the Patriots. I Am going to side
and become a turncoat and go with the British. And
what was really dangerous is that Benedict Arnold controlled West Point, which,
for those of you who may not know, West Point
is the or was the colonial military fort. Now it's
obviously a military academy, and it's right on the Hudson
River in New York, which was a crucial waterway for
the Patriots, okay, and they had control of it right now,
or part of it at least, And Benedette Arnold was
planning on giving in a way to the British. So
one night in September he meets with Major John Andre
a British general, and he gives him plans about how
he's going to basically give the British control of West Point.
And he tells Major John Andre, cape, with these in
your boots and you know, go down to New York
City and bring these to your superiors. And Major John
Andre heads down to New York City and two or
three days later, he's about twenty miles from New York City,
so safety, and he accidentally ends up on a dirt
road in Terrytown where three militiamen are sitting under what
has been described as a tulip tree and they notice
the sky coming down and the Major John Andre had
seen one of the militiamen wearing a Hassian coat and
the guy was just cold. The Major John Andre thought, oh,
these must be, you know, people on my side. So
he goes, oh, I'm actually a British general, and the
Patriots go, well, we're not, and so they make him
step off his horse, they search him and they're like
all right, and they're just about to let him go
and suddenly one of the Patriots says, take your shoe off,
and Major John Andre takes a shoe off, and there
are those papers that he is going to bring to
the British, who basically say that Benedict Darnod was going
to hand over control of West Point, and those three patriots, right,
three average men who just signed up to be part
of the local militia, saved the revolution because had British
gained control of the Hudson River and West Point, that
would have been catastrophic. George Washington even said that these
three men have basically tried or have basically saved the
revolutionary cause. So it's stories like that where you don't
hear it enough, but you think of just one small mistake.
If they would have let John Andre go without checking
his boots, we may be talking about something different today.
Speaker 1: And it really underscores sort of the coincidences that play
a far larger role in American history and history in
general that we often really don't think about. What if
that patriot had not been wearing a Hessian coat and
Andre had lied and said, oh I'm with the Patriots,
and where they have just let him pass, or if
they had not been there at all, what would have happened.
It's just those little coincidences play a lot bigger part
in history in general than a lot of people really
give it credit for. And I also want to stress
just how strategically important West Point was in North America.
In general, the British had recognized that control of the
Hudson River was basically the key to winning the war.
I mean, if they could take control the entire Hudson,
they basically cut the colonies in half and then be
able to deal with each half independently. And that was
actually the aim of the British campaign Battle of Saratoga,
which many people believe is the real turning point of
the war. Coincidentally, Benedict Arnold was a commanding general of
the Patriot forces during that Patriot victory, and he was
winded in action and was a war hero. But he
then later blamed the commanding General Horatio Gates of like
stealing his glory. That's one of the reasons he eventually turncoat.
Speaker 2: Right right, and exactly you think of again, you just
you know, made a great point. Ben As Jarnal is
someone who very well would have been remembered as an
American hero after the war ended, but he just let
his Eco get in the way, and he basically died
a man. You know, I think he died actually over
in England. But you know, his legacy is that of
a Trader. It doesn't matter that he helped win at Saratoga.
It doesn't matter of all the good things he did.
What matters is he did one bad thing, and that
was defining.
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Speaker 1: Listen today, So what are some maybe some individual facts
that you maybe didn't know going in that you that
you've learned now and really sort of given you more
insight into the into the revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was the subject of my Friday episode. I
believe and I love Ben Franklin. I've read a lot
and I thought I knew him pretty well. But the
one thing I didn't realize is that his son William
actually had a big falling out with Benjamin Franklin over
the war. And I think that just goes to show
you the personal toll that it took on one again, families, neighbors,
but two even our greatest founders were willing to lose
their children over the cause. So William was the royal
governor of New Jersey, obviously you know who Ben Franklin is,
and William refused to become a Patriot, and Ben Franklin
and him were, you know, fighting about it. Then seventeen
seventy six comes around and William still doesn't want to budge,
and he gets arrested by Patriot forces and is thrown
in a jail, and Ben Franklin does nothing to get
his son out of jail. He actually lets his son
linger in jail for a long time. When William's wife
was on her deathbed, he had begged, you know, the
you know, Continental Congress to let him have an exception
to go see his wife. George Washington, I believe, even
wrote a letter kind of attesting like, all right, queen,
let this guy a least go see his wife. And
Ben Franklin did nothing, as his father to even say
I second this yor like yeah, is there anything I
can do? Can I speak to someone? Nothing, And when
they finally reconciled after the war, Ben Franklin said, you know,
this cousted me so much great pain losing you for
all those years, But I'm always your affectionate father. And
then they met in person a short while later and
Ben Franklin said to William, apologize, you were a trader
not only against you know, the colonies, but against your
own father. And William refused and they never spoke again.
Speaker 1: That really just shows again just how fractious war was,
which we don't hear about that much. I think we
usually think of the Civil War as the sort of
war between brothers and the war in which the families
are fractured and loyalty that are really tested. But as
your series is kind of revealed that that's also true
in the Revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean is it is literally neighbor versus neighbor.
And you know, one way to think about the Revolutionary
War is it was our revolution, but it was England's
civil war. That was a civil war for them, because
if things had gone their way, we would have eventually
reconciled to some degree. And you know, the King at
other points had said, you know, if we, if we
his October speech of seventeen seventy five, he said like,
if you put your arms down, now you know we're
gonna we're going to welcome you back into it, and
that would have been the end of a civil war.
It just so happened that we were able to win
and it turned into our revolution. But when you think
of it in the context of a civil war, it
really makes that, you know, brother brother, and neighbor vers
neighbor all the more real.
Speaker 1: And it's funny you refer to as the civil war
because during the English Civil War in the sixteen forties,
you basically see every single grievance the colonists bring up
in seventeen seventy five seventeen seventy six were also grievances
of Parliament to the king in the sixteen forties before
the English Civil War. I mean everything from taxation no
taxation without representation, to quartering of troops in normal citizens' homes.
Those were all grievances that Parliament had with the king
in the sixteen forties. And it's just a little both
tragic and a little humorous that they seemed to forget
all those rights that they fought and had this very
bloody civil war in the sixteen forties. For they seem
to forget all of those also apply to their fellow
Englishmen there in the colonies who which then leads to
the American Revolution. And during the English Civil or different
colonies took different sides too, so even then it was
a little bit of a battle between countrymen, like Maryland
was a royalist stronghold on New England was a parliamentarian stronghold.
So you see this kind of pattern throughout the English
colonial history of the Thirteen Colonies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And then you'd think that the Crown would
have learned from their mistakes in the sixteen hundreds, but
they obviously didn't. And in a newspaper that came out
on January twenty second, seventeen seventy six, that I've been
reading in the past few days, it was a speech
they had reprinted, a speech that was given in London
in September of seventeen seventy five from you know, Britons
who were basically sympathetic to a degree to the Patriot
cause by saying, look, they have tried everything, They've had
their grievances accumulate, they haven't been heard. No freeman can
live under such type of duress. And so you even
have again Britain understanding the cause of the patriots. And
it's also why the Patriots were making appeals to the
people of Britain, not just parliament right, but to the
average citizens in Britain saying like, hey, look like we
don't want to fight you guys, We're just upset about,
you know, our rights being trampled and taken away. Because
they also were trying to hope for some kind of
reconciliation with the Crown. And again not everybody, you know,
there were certain founders, you know Sam Adams, he absolutely
was not someone who was like, yeah, we can reconcile
this one. But you know, people like Ben Franklin, up
to a certain point, I think he believed reconciliation was possible.
I think some of the others definitely did, but you know,
the Crown made it unfeasible.
Speaker 1: Yes, you have radicals like Sam Adams who are sort
of gung ho from the beginning for just complete separation.
But I think if you look at most of the
founders and most of the people who lived in the
colonies in seventeen seventy four seventeen seventy five, before some
kind of the threshold of no return had been reached,
most of them would say that they may even prefer
to stay with England, and that they're just trying to
re establish their rights as Englishmen. Now that's a somewhat
healthy debate in the historical community when that kind of
transition happened from trying to re establish their what they
saw is their English natural English rights to we're just
going to be our own country and secure our own rights.
And of course it happened sometime before July fourth, seventeen
seventy six, obviously, but that was a very lively and
very very contentious debate in the Thirteen Colonies in the
in the lead up to ultimately independence, and it's still
a subject of debate exactly when that happened and when
public opinion kind of shifted towards independence rather than reconciliation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, there there obviously several events that
pushed people further, obviously Lexington and Concord. You know, the
shot heard around the world, the burning of Norfolk. That
was actually one of the grievances that the founders listed
in the declaration. There were what twenty five grievances, I
believe there were, but there were little, not little things,
but there were some big things, and then there were
some smaller things. However, that accumulated to the point where
colinists could not ignore the fact that the king was
willing to do whatever. And I think something interesting that
happened in January seventeen seventy six was the king hired
Hessian soldiers. And this had been done in previous wars,
but it hadn't been done to slaughter, you know, the
colonist right, it was always fighting another empire, and the
colonists saw that as really just an egregious display of
authority by the Crown because here he was hiring these
you know, foreign mercenaries to quite literally slaughter them because
these were trained killers. So you know, the colonists thought
they knew their enemy. They thought they knew it was
the British. But you know, twelve that and Hessian soldiers
were headed their way. Thomas Jefferson references in the Declaration
of Independence as well in the grievances. So there were
there were just a lot of things that pushed colonists further.
But again, like you said, a third of them still
never made that complete switch, and they did flee up
to you know, Nova Scotia and Canada. I unfortunately have
one loyalist in my family tree that I try to ignore,
but he fled to Nova Scotia as well.
Speaker 1: You might have to blame him more for being Canadian
than a loyalist, you know.
Speaker 2: And it's funny you say Canada think about Canadians today.
I mean, my god, did they miss out on the
opportunity of a lifetime Because the colonists had tried to
actually get Canada to join them in their fight against
England and they said no.
Speaker 1: There was a very small unit of Canadian volunteers who
did fight with the patriots. But yes, in general, Canadians
did not join the revolution, partly because Canada was one
of the reasons the revolution started. I mean, a large
portion of the land that the colonists wanted after the
end of the French and Indian War went to Canada,
like modern day Ohio, Indiana, Michigan. That was all allotted
to Canada and they were allowed to settle there, But
the thirteen colonies supposedly on the winning side of that
war were not allowed to settle there. Also because roughly
half of Canada's population in seventeen seventy five was French
and the French and the colonists did not get along
very well, so the French colonists in Canada decided they
would rather stick with the crown than with the angry
colonists who didn't like them very much. That is like the.
Speaker 2: Biggest fumble of the century. I don't know.
Speaker 1: We might be lucky that we don't have the Quebec
Qua in our country. Bad for Canada and maybe not
so bad for us.
Speaker 2: No, I agree, I agree it's good for us. I
wouldn't want the Canadians today. I don't think they understood.
And here's the thing. I don't think like they understand
freedom the way we do. I don't think any country
understands freedom the wey do, because you know, we are
a republic and at the end of the day, there's
no other successful republic anywhere in the world. They may
have adopted, you know, certain democratic values, but we're not
a democracy, right, And they may have adopted, you know,
the idea that all men are created equal as well,
but what underpins our understanding of equality is Christianity. You
don't see that in other countries where they say all
men are created equal. Right, What's underpinning it is simply
that you have you know, a mob majority saying yeah,
of course all men are created equal, but there's no
foundation to that truth for them. Right. So we are
the only country that could do what we've done because
of our Christian foundations.
Speaker 1: Very true, our Christian foundation, and I think importantly our
written constitution is I mean it's not so much today,
but that once upon a time Britain did have a
moral Christian foundation and they were largely on the same
track that we were, but they didn't have a written constitution.
So that opens up a lot of wiggle room and
a lot of room for maneuver that unsavory characters can
use to their political advantage, as we've seen in Britain,
to their absolute detriment in that country is just such
a mess right now, and it's largely because of their
lawed governmental system. I think we can say that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny too because you think about, you know,
at the time of the founding British England's lack a
written constitution, and when the founders were, you know, going
through the process of actually creating our system of government
after the war ended, you had a lot of people
including Richard Henry Lee, who on June seventh, seventeen seventy six,
would put forward a proclamation saying to the colonies, now
is the time to declare our independence, like it's now
or never. He voted against the Constitution because he worried
that it was a flawed document and that the states
would lose their power, they would lose rights they had,
It could be you know, effectively taken out of context,
so to speak. And so you had that infighting between
the founders for several years, and thank god they did
come up with the constitution. Thank god they put in
what they put in, because we see today how willing
Republicans and Democrats would be to strip us of certain
fundamental rights or at least, you know, severely restrict them.
Speaker 1: It doesn't stop the Democrats from trying, as we've seen
in that current Scotus case in Hawaii, about just trying
to like wholesale strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights.
But yes, that battle between the federalists and anti federalists
and anti constitutionalists, very fierce debate after the Revolution and
then really I mean, strains of that argument continue until
the Civil War. You know, whether state power is sovereign
over federal power or vice versa. And that's pretty decisively
settled by the Civil War.
Speaker 2: Right right, And I mean now we're kind of having
that same debate to a degree. You know, Minnesota's open
rebellion against the federal government. They're trying to pull I guess,
I guess like a nullification crisis of their own. But
that was settled, right, calcul literally lost in all crisis,
which I hate in you this is this is your
forte here. But you know, we're still having these debates, right,
There's still so many things that I wouldn't say necessarily
are unclear. I think they're clear. But you know, democrats
try to find workarounds. When you have an activist judiciary,
it's very easy to then affect those workarounds. But you know,
there's still a lot of people who are fighting the
constitution very much.
Speaker 1: So all those stories we hear from the revolution, and
all those stories of hardship and sacrifice really underscores why
we need to protect the constitution and the vision that
the founders had for nothing else to honor their legacy
and their sacrifice during the revolution. Speaking of sort of
the foundation of the country, especially the moral underpinning. Last year,
you participated in the very prestigious, provilious fellowship with the
Claremont Institute, and you let me see some of your
reading lists, and there's very interesting readings on there. Would
you like to describe sort of your time at the
fellowship and what kind of things that you read while
you were there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, First of all, for anybody who is you know,
in college or recent college grad or even you know,
mid to late twenties, if you have the opportunity to
become a fellow at Claremont, do it. I wish I
had done it.
Speaker 3: Earlier.
Speaker 2: I wish I could do every single year, but you
can only take the fellowship ones. But they have a
few fellowships. So I did the publiest fellowship that is
about a two and a half week program, and it
really grounds young thinkers in natural rights. And I think
so often, you know a lot of conservatives, even we're
taught conservative policies, and we read these things and we
hear the word rights or natural rights and we think, yeah,
that's that's very self evident. But there's so many people
I know who don't actually know what a natural right
is right, they don't understand where rights come from. And
so what Clairemont is really able to do is, first
of all, it starts you with some you know, Greek philosophy, right,
you learn about the philosophers, and then you see how
the founders rely on those philosophers and then also relying
on Christianity to come up with, you know, one, the
idea for independence, the justification for independence. We do the uh,
we go through the federalist papers, then we kind of
jump to probably the eighteen thirties, we start talking about
Calhoun and and then we obviously go over the Civil War,
and then we use everything that we learned, all these
new foundations, and we talk about the modern day, right,
we talk about what went wrong in our country, because
something has gone wrong, terribly wrong. But it's not that
it's a fault of the constitution. So Claremont's entire thing
is the founding was perfect, right, everything about the founding.
It may have been difficult at the time, but looking
back now, it was perfect. Any problem we have today
in America is not a result of the constitution being wrong,
or the founding generation getting wrong, or the system of
government being wrong. No, it's something else. So we're trying
to find that something else, and they're trying to teach
us to think about, you know, identifying what that's. Something
else is.
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Speaker 1: And I think it's very interesting you brought up Christianity
as a more underpinning of the founding because I don't
know if you've noticed this during your readings as well,
but whenever I read something from basically before nineteen hundred,
like biblical references are everywhere. They talk constantly about the
Bible and use Biblical justifications for their positions. Is astounding
to see it, given how religion has just basically just
been erased from our public discourse today over the last
few decades.
Speaker 2: Right, Right, and think about like Thomas Aquinas, Right, he
speaks a lot about something like eternal law, and he
says or he believes that God represents eternal law. Right,
because that's a combination of reason and revelation. Right, reason
leads to natural law. So all humans are endowed with
reason because God endows them with it, and they use
that and they use revelations in the Bible. Right, we
see common sense things in the Bible. Right, we see
a good moral foundation, and you combine those two things
and you're able to kind of get a really solid
framework for a functioning and healthy society. And what the
Founders saw is that Christianity or God, I should say,
God gives humans human rights or natural rights and reason
because God creates man in his image right, that comes
from Genesis. And so the reason that Christianity is so
important is because the Founders use that self evident truth
that all men are created equal because they are made
in God's image, and applied that to a structure of government,
which no one at that time had tried to do
at all.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's very interesting that it really is the only
original application of that of that idea. Like, as you said,
other republics have sort of poppied our system, but the
Founders are basically the only ones to establish it out
of whole cloth. Really, And during your fellowship, did you
you read all these things from the maws of the
Founders themselves? You read their writings, You read the writings
of the people in the eighteen thirties and forties during
the slavery debates, So you're reading primary source stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And again like that is that is the
best way to do it because you know, first of all,
everything of course is you know, slightly open to interpretation,
and if you read just one founding document, you can
easily take that out of context. And so Claremont does
a really good job of accumulating the right resources that
you're reading everything within the context of one another. Right,
You're not just getting random papers here or there. You're
they're building up to something bigger. And to go back
to how so many of our great statesmen constantly used religion,
or we're signaling to Christianity, you know, think of think
of Abraham Lincoln, right, think of the Gettysburg Address. Every
single line and that was not only deliberate, I know
it is what two hundred and seventy three words, but
every line and every word choice was deliberate. And there
were so many references to Christianity, right, you know, the
idea of you know, for score and you know that
is obviously a reference to seventeen seventy six. But also
like the Bible, you know, describes a human lifespan at
a certain point, and Lincoln is acknowledging that, like we
are reaching that lifespan is set in the Bible of
the country, Like are we going to you know, basically
like outlift this. And Mary Lincoln later said that her
husband was extremely religious heading to Gettysburg when he gave
the Gettysburg Address, And we see that in their documents,
and if you notice, that's what guided Lincoln through the
Civil War. That's what was the basis for all of
his decisions and for his position in the Civil War.
And so many of our politicians today they lack that
moral compass. And I think that's why we're partially in
the position we are in today because people don't have
that foundation to ground them.
Speaker 1: Not just our politician, a lot of our citizeny don't either,
I think, largely because they don't read those primary source documents.
They don't read the Bible either. Like public schooling does
a terrible job of exposing kids to primary source documents,
especially especially over the last decade and a half or
so with sort of the advent of Dei and things
that just totally throw anything made by a dead white
male out the window. But it's vital to read those
kind of things to even have a chance of understanding
the American founding and the American Revolution and American history
just as a whole. The struggle I think we have
with America two fifty overall, just kind of bring it
back to the subject of the interviewer.
Speaker 2: I was going to say with you know, with America
two fifty, this is a body of people who are
supposed to be celebrating America, and it is being run
by far left wing activists. For example, the woman who's
running in I'm drawing a name on a drawing a
blank on her name of course right now. But when
asked who her favorite founding father was, she said she
doesn't have one, right, she actually has favorite founding mothers.
There was no such thing as a founding. Abigail Adam
had been the closest thing we got to it. And
don't get me wrong, she was extremely inspirational for her husband,
let alone for other women. Right, this was this was
a powerhouse of a female. But at the end of
the day, she is not a founder in any sense
of the word.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: And it's insulting that you have people running America to
fifty who can't even recognize that because they're so deluded
by this, you know, warp gender ideology that you know,
masculinity is toxic. And think about all the great work
feminists did, women have done a lot of great things, right,
but so have men, right, and men have done different
things than women, like founding a country. And don't get
me wrong again, women were instrumental, you know, being the
backbone for their husbands, keeping care of the house and
the children, you know, tending to farms when their husbands
were off at war. No one's you know, die degrading
those important actions of them. But we should also be
able to acknowledge the founding fathers did something that nobody else,
male or female in other places, could do.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But it's important for people to remember that President Trump
has come up with a different organization called Freedom two
fifty and they are doing a much better job honoring
America's founding than America two fifties. So if you have
to choose between the two, remember Freedom two fifty is
the one to go to and to to subscribe to.
Speaker 1: Yes, and the Trump administration has a few big events planned.
I think the Garden of National Heroes is supposed to
be unveiled, I think close to or on July fourth,
twenty twenty six. And there's supposed to be a sort
of a national state fair. And it's kind of an
oxymoron there's supposed to be a big giant state fair.
I think they're thinking about it in Iowa that represents
every single state. And those are great ideas, And yes,
the Trump administration set up organization is at least ideologically
leagues better than the other option. But maybe my one
problem with it is that you kind of have to
look for it. Yeah, this might just be my personal experience,
but I don't think they've done particularly good job advertising
any of these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, I agree. I actually wasn't aware of
it until I was talking to a colleage of ours
and he was like, well, freedom to fifties a think,
And I think it's you know, it's obviously hard. President
Trump is a lot on his plate, so his administration,
so you know, freedom two fifty may not be top
of mine when you pressing issues happening here and now.
But that being said, you know, celebrating Americus two fifty
to me is probably the most important thing for the
entire year, because we should be celebrating American greatness and
reminding people of what does it actually mean to one
be American? Where do our rights actually come from? And
what are our freedoms?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And I think Freedom to fifty is doing a bus tour.
Secretary Duffy I think kicked it off. But they're going
to be visiting some cities and towns with like this
giant tractor trailer, I think, and they'll have exhibits in
that trailer that people can come see, and they'll stop
at school. So I think that's a really great way
to get people involved and kind of bring our important
Founding documents or images to people that may not be
able to travel to the museums in Washington.
Speaker 1: Yes, and this is such a great opportunity to sort
of expose people who again may not have ever been
exposed to any of the Founding documents or anything from
the Founding era. And it's a really great opportunity for
Trump to really sort of hound the message home about
who we are, where we come from, where we're going,
of course, and to really kind of cement his make
America Great Again initiative. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a I'm happy that the Trump
administration has the opportunity to claim the narrative on America
to fifty because if this was the Biden administration, we'd
see how it would play out. Because he appointed the
woman who's leading America to fifty. And she's a radical
left winger who said that she can't even say, you know,
she said she's a Mexican American. She has dual allegiances
to two entirely separate countries and cultures, you know. So
we want someone who's unequivocally and unapologetically one hundred percent
pro America and pro America only. So I hope the
Trump administration ramps up these two fifty efforts. I hope
other Americans take a bigger interest in their history right
because this is their history. And if you need an
easy way to do it, countdown to Freedom Monday through
Friday on my social media. That is the best place,
in my opinion, to get that daily dose of history.
Speaker 1: Neat it is. Thank you, Brianna so much for joining me.
You've been listening to this special series Federalist History Hour.
I'm hating Daniel editor at the Federalist. We'll be back
soon with more. Until then, the lovers of freedom and
anxious for the Frame