David McCullough: The Story of 1776—The Year of Our Birth

On this episode of Our American Stories, bestselling historian and two-time Pulitzer winner David McCullough is the author of 1776. In this masterful book, he tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence—beginning in 1775.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love telling stories about history here on this show.
And all of our history stories are sponsored by the
great folks at Hillsdale College, where you can go to
learn all the things that are beautiful in life and
all the things that are good in life. And if

(00:30):
you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you
with their free and terrific online courses. Up next, best
selling historian and two time Pulitzer winner, the late David McCullough.
He's the author of seventeen seventy six. In this master work,
he tells the intensely human story of those who marched
with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration

(00:53):
of Independence. He starts the book in the beginning of
seventeen seventy five. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Washington's own total count of letters just written in this
eighteen month period totals nearly a thousand. For while this
very self controlled, the very model of a leader acting
as a leader in his presence before the troops, always

(01:22):
never revealing doubt, uncertainty, or what was going on in
the inner side of him. In his privacy, and particularly
late at night when he was sleepless, he would pour
out his innermost feelings in a way that is immensely
human and very revealing. He was often full of despair,
often full of doubt, very often full of self pity,

(01:45):
and who was to blame him? I'll read you one example.
This was written the night of January fourteenth, late at
night in his headquarters outside of Boston. The reflection upon
my situation in that of this army produces many an
uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep.

(02:06):
I have often thought how much happier I should have
been if, instead of accepting of a command under such circumstances,
I'd taken my musket upon my shoulders and entered the ranks.
Or if I could have justified the measure to posterity
and my own conscience had retired to the back country
and lived in a wigwam. If I shall be able

(02:27):
to rise superior to these and many other difficulties which
might be enumerated, I shall most religiously believe that the
finger of Providence is in it. He's afraid he's going
to fail. He wishes he didn't have the burden of
this impossible command. And he had told the Congress that

(02:48):
he was not up to the command, that he was
not sufficient for the job, and he meant it, but
he also knew that he was more up to it
than anybody else. And he also showed up in Congress
in his uniform indicating he was available. When he spoke

(03:10):
to Congress, he said, if circumstances go against me and
this doesn't work, remember I warned you now. Congress picked
George Washington not because he was a brilliant general or
he had a great war record. He didn't. He'd served
gallantly courageously in the French and Indian War, but he

(03:33):
had been out of military life for more than fifteen years,
and he had no great record as a tactician or strategist.
They picked George Washington because they knew him as a man,
They knew him as a fellow member of the Continental Congress,
and they liked him. They trusted him, They knew his character,
they knew his integrity, and they made one of the

(03:55):
best decisions any Congress ever made in choosing him to
be the commander. When we start up adding up the
miracles of the creation of our country. George Washington is
one of them. He would serve through the entire war,
and the only other general officers who would serve through

(04:15):
the entire war were Green and Knox, these two young
New Englanders, whom he spotted right at the start. Despite
the fact that he didn't like New Englanders, he overcame
that bias. He thought they were dirty, he thought they
were rude, and he thought they had this intolerable notion
that they could decide things for themselves, like only serving

(04:38):
if they could elect their own officers. And often the
officers got elected by requiring little or no discipline or
insisting on any kind of punishment for those who broke
the rules. But he overcame that bias, and as it
turned out, those two men were the best he had,
and they would serve the entire length of the war

(04:59):
with him. Now, the fourteenth of January, the night that
he wrote these despairing letters, was probably as low a
pointed as he'd ever known in his life. There was
not enough gunpowder, there was not enough money. He had
to replace virtually his entire army, because as of December

(05:21):
thirty first, an entire army had been free to go home.
Their enlistments were up and most of them went home.
So he had to replace that army with new, greener
in listees in the face of the enemy, without the
enemy knowing that he had no gunpowder, had an even
greener and less experienced army taking the place of the

(05:43):
army that had moved out, and they had no money
to pay them, and winter was setting in. They didn't
have adequate clothes or adequate barracks, and so forth. He
really felt, honestly that no commander had ever been put
into a tougher position. Four days later, on January eighteenth,
the whole situation changed. It changed because young Henry Knox

(06:07):
had come to him in November with an idea. Now
this is an extremely interesting situation for two reasons. First
of all, that a young minor officer in the army
could go directly to the commander in chief with an idea.
That wouldn't have happened in the British Army. And it

(06:28):
wasn't just the young man could go from a low
rank to the top to convey this idea, but that
the idea could get to the to the commander in chief.
So it's the opportunity of the individual and the opportunity
for ideas, two very powerful American themes all along in
our whole history.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
And you've been listening to David McCullough telling the story
of seventeen seventy six and the months leading up to
that important year. It's in a way one of my
favorite books of his is the Biography of a Year.
But my Goodness Washington, who's a central figure. And also
that that part about good ideas getting to the top
and how they could not have happened with the British Army.

(07:08):
And this has a lot to do with freedom and
free enterprise and looking for the best ideas to come
up rather than filter from the top down. When we
come back, more of the story of seventeen seventy six
and its author, David McCullough. Here on Our American Stories.

(07:29):
This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the
show where America is the star and the American people,
and we do it all from the heart of the
South Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't do this show
without you. Our shows will always be free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear consider making a tax deductible donation to our

(07:50):
American Stories. Go to our American Stories dot com. Give
a little, give a lot. That's our American Stories dot com.
And we continue with our American Stories and with wood

(08:13):
surprise winning David McCullough, the late David McCullough, and his
book seventeen seventy six. He made this speech at the
National Archives in Washington, DC.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
The idea was to go to Taykwonderoga at the southernmost
end of Lake Champlain, and fetch the great guns that
were there, cannon and mortar, and haul them nearly three
hundred miles back to Boston in the dead of winter,
down the Hudson Valley bar as Albany, crossing the Hudson

(08:48):
and then taking him over the Berkshire Mountains. And it
was all virtually wilderness, very few roads. Again, I repeat,
in the dead of winter. Washington liked the idea immediately
and immediately said to Knox, you're in charge. And he
did it phenomenal. This bookseller from Boston, never been out

(09:14):
of Boston, never attempted anything of the kind. He was better,
assuming authorized to spend a thousand, no more than a
thousand dollars and he could take one man with him.
So he took his younger brother who was nineteen twenty
five year old bookseller and a nineteen year old kid,
and they set off to bring back the guns from Tykwonderoga.

(09:35):
It's like something in a myth, and it worked. Now
how they did it, well, you'll have to read my book.
And what happened, Well, what happened in one night with

(09:55):
massive use of manpower and oxen, nearly a thousand they
put those guns on top of Dorchester Heights and the
British woke up the next morning March fifth, looked up
and saw what had happened and realized they had to
get out. They were right under those guns, well within range,

(10:17):
as were their ships in the harbor, which maybe even
more important. If the ships were knocked out, they had
no way to escape. So a quiet, unofficial, secret deal
was made. The Americans agreed they would not bombard British
troops in Boston or the ships in the harbor, and

(10:39):
that the British would be free to leave without any
attack on the part of the Americans if the British
agreed not to burn the city of Boston, which they
were well ready to do so. On March seventeenth, the
British sailed away Evacuation Day, which in Boston often celebrated

(11:01):
for another reason, and that rather reason is a good one,
but it often eclipses what evacuation Day is about. It
was an immensely important event because we had bested them
with sheer manpower, ingenuity, and the capacity to do things.
We couldn't march very well, we couldn't drill very well.

(11:23):
We couldn't fire muskets as rapidly as could the British.
We weren't really very good soldiers at all, unruly bush leaguers,
farmers in from the fields. But we bested them. We'd
shamed them, and it filled us with pride and unfortunately
more confidence in ourselves than we should have. What followed

(11:47):
was Washington then moved to New York to defend New
York against the return of the British, which was expected
to come about almost any time. Didn't happen until the
end of June first part of July, and the British
sailed in in such force as to dazzle anyone who
saw it. Over four hundred ships, thirty two thousand troops

(12:08):
that was more troops than the entire population of Philadelphia,
which was the largest city in the country at the time.
Determined to take New York, Washington decided on his own
that he would defend New York, that he had to
defend New York for political reasons. It was a political decision.
Washington was a political general, very important, important in the

(12:31):
sense that he understood how the system worked, which was
that he wasn't the boss. Congress was boss. And it
was a mistake. We couldn't possibly defend New York. We
had no ships to stop the British from bringing their fleet,
their biggest ships up into the Hudson or smaller warships

(12:52):
up into the East River. Two ships had more canon
power than all the canon we had on all of
New York. And he faced the British for the first
time in the Battle of Brooklyn. Battle of Brooklyn was
an enormous battle covered six miles. There were forty thousand
people involved, and Washington UH proved quite inept in his

(13:18):
first attempt to command a battle. The British out smarted us,
outflanked us, out fought us. UH. They killed over three hundred,
really four hundred American soldiers They took a thousand of
our men captive prisoners, and three of our generals, and
left Washington trapped there on Brooklyn Heights if they could

(13:41):
possibly bring their ships up into the East River, which
they were unable to do because of the direction of
the wind. If the wind had been in a different
direction the night of August twenty ninth, seventeen seventy six,
we'd all be sipping tea and referring to our flat
in New York and singing God, Praise the Queen. I

(14:03):
think it would have been over because nine thousand men,
including their commander in chief, would have had no escape.
As it was, because they couldn't bring those ships up.
Washington attempted a night withdrawal from Brooklyn. It was the
dunkirk of the Revolutionary War, a phenomenal accomplishment, given that
he had dispirited, defeated troops who were soaking wet, had

(14:25):
had very little sleep, were cold, and they'd never done
anything like it before. The hardest military maneuver is almost
as hard as any military maneuver of all, is to
organize orderly withdrawal in the face of overwhelming enemy force.
They did it at night across the East River, no

(14:46):
running lights, and again providence, the hand of God entered
in and exactly the point when it looked like the
river was too rough because of the northeast wind for
our little makeshift flotilla to take them start taking the
men across. Suddenly the wind dropped like the parting of
the Red Sea, and the boat started over. When morning

(15:09):
came and there were several thousand men who had still
not gotten off, and the whole thing was going to
be revealed to the British that we were trying to
escape under their very noses, a providential fog came in
and covered the entire Brooklyn side of the East River,
fog so dense that people couldn't see six yards ahead
of them, and there was no fog whatsoever over on

(15:31):
the Brooklyn side. They got nine thousand men, all their equipment,
horses and cannon, off of Brooklyn across the East River,
which isn't a river at all, but a tidal, straight
and very treacherous currents even in the best of conditions,
without the loss of a single man. But it wasn't
just providence or chance or the hand of God. It

(15:54):
was the skill of those mariners manning the boats under
the command of a man named John Glover. They were
mostly all from the north shore of Boston, Marblehead, Gloucester,
and such places. And they performed in a way that
few men have ever performed their profession, what they knew

(16:14):
better with larger consequences riding on their ability. There were
times when most of those boats, because they were so
loaded down, the water was only a matter of inches
below the gunnells. It was a phenomenal feat of navigation, seamanship.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
And you're listening to the late David McCullough, two time
Pulitzer Prize winner, author of seventeen seventy six, giving us
a master class of storytelling and dragging us through what
Washington and the troops faced as they tried to withdraw
from Brooklyn. Nine thousand men the dunkirk of the Revolutionary War,

(16:56):
and that is aptly stated. And that East River been
to New York. You know that that's not a river.
What that is is a It's like a roaring canyon
of water that just rips and rips the tide. You
can see that water moving. It's fierce, and not a
single life was lost. Nine thousand men, their equipment, the horses, everything. Providence,

(17:21):
no doubt played a part. The way David McCullough described
that fog setting in just remarkable, and of course the
talent involved across the board. When we come back more
of this remarkable story, the Story of the Founding of
our Nation the year seventeen seventy six, a biography essentially

(17:42):
of that year by the great and late David McCullough.
The storytelling continues here on our American stories, and we

(18:08):
continue with our American stories and with two time pulled
surprise winner David McCullough, the late David McCullough, and he's
the author of seventeen seventy six, the book that he's
describing at this remarkable talk he gave at the National Archives.
Let's take you back there, and let's pick up where

(18:28):
we last left off.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
One defeat then followed another Kip Spee who turned into
a route. When the British invaded Manhattan, Washington lost his
self control for one of the few times in his
whole career, struck out with his riding crop, trying to
stop those who were running like rabbits, throwing off their
knapsacks and hats, dropping their muskets in order to run

(18:52):
faster away from the oncoming enemy. Washington, on a big horse,
kept charging forward, getting closer and closer to the enemy
and his anger. He was in such a rage that
Nathaniel Greene called it almost suicidal. So close did he
get to the enemy. And it was only because two
of his staff managed to get a hold of the
bridle of the horse that they got him off the field.

(19:15):
If Washington had been killed, then if Washington had been
captured at Brooklyn, it would have been over. He would
be called the indispensable man later on. I don't think
that's an overstatement. There was nobody really with the stature,
with the capacity for leadership for all of his mistakes,

(19:37):
to take his place. He then made another grievous performance
with the assault on Mount was Wash Fort Washington, which
stood on the highest promontory at the north end of
the island of Manhattan, right where George Washington Bridge comes
in today. His problem there was indecision. He couldn't decide

(19:57):
what to do, so he made no decision at all.
General Green told him he thought the port could be held.
Green was wrong. The fort fell. They lost another three
thousand taken prisoner. More canon, more material, and from that
point on began the Long March, the Long Retreat across
New Jersey. At one point, as the march got closer

(20:20):
to Pennsylvania, the enlistments of two thousand men came up,
and two thousand men said that's it for us and
went home. Don't picture all these soldiers as heroes. They
had been deserting by the hundreds all through the campaign.
After every defeat, people gave up and left. Many defected,
went over to the enemy. We forget that. But some

(20:44):
didn't leave, Some stayed with him, Some would follow him anywhere.
Washington was a leader. He wasn't a brilliant intellectual, he
wasn't a spectacular speaker, he wasn't a brilliant general. He
was the leader, and people would follow him, and some

(21:06):
would follow him through hell. Three thousand of them stayed
with him. It's all. There were three thousand men all
that stood in the way of the end of the
revolution and any hope that the great words, the great
ideals of the Declaration of Independence would mean anything more

(21:26):
than words on paper. And so when we celebrate our
fourth of July, we shouldn't just think of those people
who were at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the people portrayed
by John Trumbull in the painting of July fourth, seventeen
seventy six and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

(21:51):
Part of our problem is that we tend to see
those figures from the eighteenth century as not quite real,
like figures in a costume pageant, in their silks and
their powdered hair, and their sort of posed statesmanlike positions.
This is another side of the story. This is another

(22:14):
kind of American, another kind of patriot, another kind of hero.
Those three thousand men when they finally succeeded in putting
the Delaware between them and the oncoming British army. In
other words, they crossed the Delaware at night to get
over to the Pennsylvania side and destroyed all the remaining
boats on the New Jersey side so the British couldn't follow.

(22:36):
Immediately after, Charles Wilson Peel, the Great Philadelphia Peter was
part of a militia unit that had turned out to
bring some support for Washington, and he walked among those
troops the morning after their crossing, and he wrote in
his diary that he had never seen such miserable human
beings in all of his life. They were all in rags,

(23:00):
They were half starved, they had no winter clothing. They
were covered with dirt and signs of disease. And he
saw one man, that he describes in the diary is
the most wretched mortal he'd ever laid eyes on. He said,
the man was so dirty you could hardly see his
color of his skin. He had nothing, he was naked

(23:22):
except for what they called a blanket coat. His hair
was long and filthy, hanging down over his shoulders, and
his face was covered with sores. And then a few
minutes later he realized the man was his own brother.
So those are some of the people we need to remember.

(23:46):
They stayed there on the Pennsylvania side of the river,
sort of taking stock. And the only conclusion that any
rational person could have come to, and most did, as
had the British has had the great majority of American citizens,
is that the war was over and we had lost.

(24:07):
But fortunately Washington chose not to see it that way.
He admitted in one of these private letters, in which
he is so very honest and forthcoming, that the game
is about up. So when all hopes gone, he did
what you have to sometimes do under those conditions, he attacked.

(24:29):
He crossed the Delaware at Maconkie's Ferry up to the north.
He crossed, as we all know, with ice, ice cakes
in the river. And no he probably wasn't standing up
in the boat. And know the famous painting is filled
with inaccuracies, but you know it doesn't matter, because the
painting conveys the drama, the magnitude, the importance of that

(24:51):
event which would turn history, would change the course of
the war, changed the course of American history and consequently
change world history. And as tough and as demanding as
the crossing was again managed by John Glover and his
Marblehead Mariners, the worst part of the night was the

(25:13):
march to the south, down the east side of the
river to strike at Trenton. The wind was howling, It
was another northeaster. It was a blinding snow, sleet, hail.
Heaven knows what the wind shill factor was. And they
marched nine miles through the night. Men with no winter clothes.

(25:35):
They're in rags. Many of them have no shoes. Their
feet are wrapped in rags. And yes they did some
of them leave bloody footprints in the snow. They were
so cold on that nine mile march. The two men
froze to death on the march, to give a rough
idea of how terribly difficult it was, the suffering they endured,

(26:00):
and the next morning no sleep, marching all night, nine
miles through the dark, they struck a Trenton with a
passion such as which they had never shown.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
And you're listening to David McCullough tell one of the
greatest stories ever told about the foundation and formation of
our country. And it happened in that year, and it
happened in that moment, and it was real life men,
not guys walking around thinking about the future, and not
people knowing what the future would bring. They were living

(26:32):
in the present. And my goodness, what Washington faced, deserters,
bad weather, retreating pretty much filled now with self doubt,
knowing in the end that almost all was lost. And
so what do you do at that moment? You attack?
And my goodness, what an attack it was. Crossing the Delaware.

(26:55):
We've seen the pictures, but my goodness, this description brutal.
As tough as the crossing was, the worst part of
the night was that long march south nine miles, to
be precise, when we come back. This remarkable story continues
as only David McCullough can his talk at the National Archives,

(27:17):
Late David McCullough's storytelling continues here on our American stories,
and we continue with our American stories and with two

(27:40):
time Pulitzer winner, the late David McCullough, and he's talking
about his book seventeen seventy six. Go to Amazon or
wherever you pick up your books and buy seventeen seventy six.
It's essentially the biography of a year eighteen months technically,
but to understand seventeen seventy six year had to understand

(28:02):
the eight months before. Let's pick up now where we
last left off.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
They tore out of the fields and woods above Trenton
out of this blinding blizzard early in the morning, and
it was all over in about forty five minutes. It
wasn't a big battle. It wasn't a great sort of
stagy eighteenth century battle as Brooklyn had been. It was
a fierce house to house combat and we won decisively,

(28:32):
and that meant worlds because we'd never beat them at fighting,
and we'd beaten them. And we turned around a few
days later again in the Bold Night March and early
morning attack and struck at Princeton and won there too.
But it was the victory at Trenton after crossing the

(28:55):
Delaware Christmas night that changed the war because of its
psychological effect, its impact on the morale of the army,
and its impact on the morale of the country. The
words spread like wildfire that we had won, we had
won a fight with the British Empire, and maybe even
equally satisfying, we had beaten the Hessians, who were the

(29:18):
most despised of those we were fighting. I don't think
I don't think we sufficiently understand the history of our
own country, and I don't think we sufficiently respect the
history of our own country. I think we know we
live in a very interesting country, and certainly we do.

(29:40):
We also have a very interesting history, and unlike most
people most countries, we know when we were born, and
they called the Declaration of Independence our birth certificate. Nathaniel
Greene later called George Washington the deliverer of his nation,
which I think is very apt. I want to close

(30:04):
with a scene that to me is as moving as
anything in the whole story, and I'll try to sketch
it as quickly and I hope as effectively as possible.
On December thirty first, seventeen seventy six, the last day
of the year, again the entire army was free to

(30:25):
go home. All their enlistments were up, and Washington was
desperate to get men to re enlist. He dreaded having
to do what he'd done the previous December of putting
together a whole new, even greener army, and so on
December thirty first, he called the men out into formation, and,

(30:47):
without any authority to do so, standing in front of
them on his horse, resplendent in his magnificent uniform, he
said that they would sign on for another six months.
He would see to it that they received a bounty
of ten dollars. He had no authority whatever from the

(31:07):
Congress to do that, but as he wrote to Robert
Morris quite bluntly, I thought it no time to stand
on trifles. One of the soldiers would remember his regiment
being called out, and his Excellency, as Washington was called,

(31:28):
astride on the big horse, addressing them in what the
soldier called the most affectionate manner. The great majority of
these men were New Englanders. They had been with him
from the start, served much longer than anybody, and they
had no illusions about what they were being expected to
do if they signed on again. Those willing to stay

(31:53):
were asked to step forward. The drums rolled, and no
one moved. Minutes passed, no one moved, and then Washington
turned on his horse and rode away from them, his
back to them, and then he stopped and turned and

(32:18):
came back again and spoke to them a second time.
And here's what he said, My brave fellows, you have
done all I asked you to do, and more than
could be reasonably expected. But your country is at stake,
your wives, your houses, and all you hold dear. You

(32:39):
have worn yourself out with fatigues and hardships, but we
know not how to spare you. If you will consent
to stay one month longer, you will render that service
to the cause of liberty and to your country, which
you can probably never do under any other circumstance. Again,

(33:00):
the drums rolled, and this time the men began stepping forward.
God Almighty, wrote Nathaniel Greene, inclined their hearts to listen
to the proposal, and they engaged anew. What's so interesting
there is that It's a perfect example of what was
so great about Washington. He would not give up. He

(33:21):
speaks to them once, they don't react. He speaks to
them a second time, and they do react. The first time,
he's offering them some pay, which he knows they desperately
need to support their families, support themselves. Realistic, it's not
just offering the money. It's realistic. He understands that patriotism

(33:46):
only will go so far for people who have been
through hell. But then the second time he does appeal
directly to what Lincoln might call their better angels, and
it works. And I wonder if any of you are
struck by something that has struck me about that speech,

(34:09):
the line, if you will consent to stay one month longer,
you will render that service to the cause of liberty
and to your country, which you can probably never do
under any other circumstance. You have a great chance, a
great opportunity that others don't have. Isn't that so like

(34:32):
the paymous speech in Henry the Fifth, we few, we
happy few, and gentlemen in England now abed shall think
themselves accursed that they were not here. Same idea, same idea,
this story again from Shakespeare. The good man will teach

(34:55):
his son this story is something we should teach our
sons and daughters, and grandsons and granddaughters. Congress meantime, had
fled taken off from Philadelphia, terrified that the British were
going to attack and take Philadelphia, and they had abdicated

(35:18):
all their control over Washington and made him virtually a dictator.
This is very little known by most people. They'd say,
we're going You're in charge. And in their letter transmitting
this new resolution, they said, happy it is for this

(35:39):
country that the general of their forces can safely be
entrusted with the most unlimited power, and neither personal security, liberty,
nor property be in the least degree endangered thereby. But
even more interesting is what he wrote to them. Instead
of thinking myself freed from all civil obligations by this
mark of the members of Congress, I shall constantly bear

(36:04):
in mind that as the sword was the last resort
for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to
be the first thing laid aside when those liberties are
firmly established. And he was, as I think we all know,
as good as he as his word. He went before
Congress when the war finally ended and gave back his command.

(36:25):
No conquering general had ever done that. This magnificent moment
in our history is memorialized, commemorated in a fine painting
that hangs in the rotunda of the Capitol, again by
John Trumbull. When George the Third was told after the
war had ended by the painter Benjamin West, who was

(36:49):
the court painter to the Crown, and who lived in London,
and who was an American who'd been living there since
well before the war. When George the Third was told
by Benjamin West that Washington would probably do this, George
the Third said, if he does that, he will be
the greatest man in the world. I don't think that

(37:14):
there's a much more powerful story than the story of
our origins, and I hope that none of us ever
will ever think of them again as figures in a
costume pageant.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to the
late David McCullough, two time Pooled Surprize winner, and he
was giving this address at the National Archives about his
book seventeen seventy six. Go to Amazon with the usual
suspects and pick it up. And as always, all of
our history segments are brought to us by the great

(37:49):
folks at Hillsdale College. By the way, take their Constitution
one on one course. It's terrific. I learn more in
that course than I did in three years at the
University of Virginia. Lost goal. We know when we were
born as a country, and we were born and birthed
in seventeen seventy six, the story of this great country,

(38:09):
David mccullus, seventeen seventy six. Here on our American stories.