November 22, 2023 • 35 mins
The American Revolution did not only lead to the birth of the United States as its own nation, but set the tone for the creation of what would soon become the Free World as many other countries followed suit with roads to their own independence. Sadly, however, political tones controlling the public education system and academia have either failed to teach or purposely minimized the true importance of the Revolutionary War. Historian Jack Warren, Jr. talks with host Chris Cordani on Book Spectrum about the war, its beginnings, the players (famous and not-so-well-known) and why it should be emphasized more to younger generations today and moving forward with his new book: Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution
The book provides a profound look into British America, the Revolutionary War, the birth of a new nation, what freedom truly means, and how the events of the past hold significant importance even in modern society.
Freedom delves deep into what planted the seeds for revolution, the Revolutionary War, important figures, and the ideals that the new nation was built upon. Accompanied by a vast collection of full-color reproductions of paintings of the colonies, people, battles, and maps, as well as a multitude of quotes from America’s founding fathers, Freedom is accurate, detailed, and all-encompassing.
For more informatoin on Freedom: Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution - The American Revolution Institute
About Jack D. Warren, Jr.: Jack Duane Warren, Jr., is a native of Washington, D.C., whose work focuses on the enduring achievements of the American Revolution. He attended the University of Mississippi and Brown University. He is married to his wife, Janet, and they have three grown children. He has been studying and reflecting on American history since he learned to read. He considers himself a historian of American public life—much more than just politics and governance.Jack Warren has been actively involved in historic preservation and in how the places we preserve are presented. He was one of the leaders in the successful effort to preserve the site of George Washington’s childhood home from development to securing its designation as a National Historic Landmark. He also helped preserve the house where Washington lived in Barbados and was involved in the successful effort to save a large and critical part of the Princeton battlefield, including the land over which Washington personally led the charge that resulted in his first great battlefield victory over British troops. During the summer of 2020, he sat beside a statue of George Washington to talk to protestors about why we have honored Washington and ought to honor him still—Washington challenged a world that was grotesquely unfree and laid the foundations of free society—while protecting the statue from vandalization.
The book provides a profound look into British America, the Revolutionary War, the birth of a new nation, what freedom truly means, and how the events of the past hold significant importance even in modern society.
Freedom delves deep into what planted the seeds for revolution, the Revolutionary War, important figures, and the ideals that the new nation was built upon. Accompanied by a vast collection of full-color reproductions of paintings of the colonies, people, battles, and maps, as well as a multitude of quotes from America’s founding fathers, Freedom is accurate, detailed, and all-encompassing.
For more informatoin on Freedom: Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution - The American Revolution Institute
About Jack D. Warren, Jr.: Jack Duane Warren, Jr., is a native of Washington, D.C., whose work focuses on the enduring achievements of the American Revolution. He attended the University of Mississippi and Brown University. He is married to his wife, Janet, and they have three grown children. He has been studying and reflecting on American history since he learned to read. He considers himself a historian of American public life—much more than just politics and governance.Jack Warren has been actively involved in historic preservation and in how the places we preserve are presented. He was one of the leaders in the successful effort to preserve the site of George Washington’s childhood home from development to securing its designation as a National Historic Landmark. He also helped preserve the house where Washington lived in Barbados and was involved in the successful effort to save a large and critical part of the Princeton battlefield, including the land over which Washington personally led the charge that resulted in his first great battlefield victory over British troops. During the summer of 2020, he sat beside a statue of George Washington to talk to protestors about why we have honored Washington and ought to honor him still—Washington challenged a world that was grotesquely unfree and laid the foundations of free society—while protecting the statue from vandalization.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Book Spectrum. I'm ChrisGordana, your host. This is where
we talk to not necessarily seasoned unthorsall the time, but we do have
some. We like to talk topeople who write books from varied professions across
the spectrum. I have one suchwriter right now. History seems to have
been lost in today's youth. Inpopular culture. It's been minimized and not
(00:21):
a new thing. From Howard Zinn'soversimplification of his revisionist history on forward.
The erasure of facts in favor ofpolitics has become a threat to the nation's
very existence and unity. It's likepeople don't even understand how important the Revolutionary
War was anymore. Well, Ihave a remedy for that. With me
(00:42):
is Jack Warren Jr. His bookFreedom, The Enduring Importance of the American
Revolution takes a serious look at itsplace not only in American history, but
in that of the world. Welcometo Book Spectrum, Jack Warren Jr.
Delighted to be with you. Ilike the book. I'm a Revolutionary War
guide. Funny thing though, it'sthe Civil War that's attracted many of those
(01:04):
reenactors and penisinates people who what wecall Civil War buffs. We don't generally
see that with the Revolutionary War somuch. Why might that be from your
perspective as an historian jective, Well, people of the Civil War generation are
more like us. They were moreromantic, they were more individualistic. Their
(01:30):
letters, their diaries speak to usin a way that those from the eighteenth
century don't because they talk a lotabout themselves and their feelings, and people
in the eighteenth century were much moreguarded with those things and so they don't
give them to us as much.So the passion of the Civil War comes
through in the record. Also,the Civil War was photographed, and we
(01:53):
can see people of that generation andthey look like us. Lutionary War is
known to us visually only through paintingsand prints, and often people look old
and stodgy. The styles are different, you know, men with powdered wigs
and funny clothes. They don't seemto be much like us. And so
(02:16):
it doesn't you know, it doesn'tresonate with people as much as it ought
to, and that I hope toensure that it does in the future.
And here I thought it was thecool point of beards they had during the
Civil War. I actually actually tooka picture next to the guy who played
ap Hill in the Rob Maxwell theRon Maxwell movies about the Civil Wars,
(02:37):
so he was pretty cool. He'sa real historian. A lot of the
historians got to be in the movie, which is pretty pretty interesting the movies,
I should say. Anyway, let'sget to this though. What is
spare you to create this introspective intothe Revolutionary War? Well, there are
I will confess a fair number ofgeneral histories of the American Revolution, But
(02:58):
in our generation, appreciation understanding ofthe Revolution and its long term consequences for
American history and for us today hasbeen slipping away. Part of it is
what you talked about at the top. You know, there's an increasing politicization
of our history. Also, wehave an inclination, understandable but in some
(03:19):
ways unfortunate, of making ourselves therhetorical judges of people in the past and
deciding if they didn't share our standardsabout everything, then they are worthy of
our respect. What I'm trying toachieve in this book is first understanding of
what the Revolution achieved, and thenappreciation for the enduring importance of those achievements
(03:42):
in the way they shape our livestoday. America is one of the probably
the first really free society, ifyou will, or a lot of monarchies
at the time. Before that,there were fiefdoms, there were some dictatorships,
mainly monarchies, though, and somekind of able leadership here and there
in certain corners of the world.How did the American Revolution, again,
(04:06):
as an historian, from your perspective, lay the foundation not only for us,
but for free societies around the world. Well, you've hit on the
critical importance of the American Revolution.Before the American Revolution, I'll go a
little farther than you did. Beforethe American Revolution, no one was free,
at least in the way we understandfreedom. Everyone in the world was
(04:30):
the subject of some kind of monarch. They may have been a czar,
an emperor, a chief. Whateverthey were, they ruled by some kind
of hereditary right or some or theywere the instrument of an oligarchy or an
autocracy. Freedom in all of itsrich variety, which is what I try
(04:50):
to sketch in this book, freedomwas in many ways first realized, first
invented, really by the American revolutionaries. Now, the ideas of free society
are very old. They go backto antiquity, and scholars and philosophers were
writing about them in the seventeenth andeighteenth century. But there's a big difference
(05:11):
between what you know, philosophers andcoffeehouse radicals talk about, you know,
when they're sitting in a cafe inEurope or over their desks writing books,
and people actually fighting to realize thoseprinciples and then making them the basis of
a new kind of public life.And that's what the Revolution did, and
ever since, the ideas of freedom, the idea of republican government, representative
(05:38):
government which supports and it reflects theinterests of ordinary people, have been spreading
around the world. At the timeof the American Revolution, Roussou, the
great French philosopher, said, mankindwas made to be free, but everywhere
he is in chains. The Revolutionbegan the process of shedding those chains.
(06:00):
But there are still billions of peoplein this world who don't live in free
societies. And so the ideas ofthe American Revolution need to be remembered,
renewed, appreciated, understood, perpetuatedby Americans in order to continue to be
a living representative of the ideals offree people. I want to get into
(06:24):
free societies and modern thought today.But first let's delve into the book again.
And I have with me Jack WarrenJunior. The book is Freedom,
the Enduring Importance of the American Revolution. We know the big guys, We
know your Washington's, the Franklins ofthe world, the Henry's, and people
like that. What I like aboutthis book is it also deals into some
(06:44):
of the lesser known guys and ladieswho helped shape the revolution. Let's talk
about some of them. Well,that's what I think may sets my perspective
on the Revolution. Apart from alot of narrative historians who've written about the
American Revolution, I regard the AmericanRevolution and treated in this book as a
(07:05):
vast popular movement. It involves theaspirations, the hopes and dreams of ordinary
people from all walks of American life, of women, of indentured servants,
of slaves, of poor people whohope that the revolution will be and provide
(07:26):
them with opportunities to improve the qualityof the life for themselves and their families.
And I focus as you go throughthe narrative, I focus on specific
individuals who illustrate that concept. Theseare people who didn't necessarily you know,
they didn't read John Locke or Montesquieu. They weren't sophisticated thinkers, but they
knew what they hoped for for themselves, and they saw the revolution as offering
(07:50):
them the possibility of a better lifefor them and for their children. Not
all American societies, when we're colonials, when they moved into the New World,
were actually free. I don't considerthe Puritans were looking for freedom of
religion, but I don't consider thema free society. That Jamestown settlement was
more in that vein. But whenthe colonies kind of moved to thirteen here
(08:15):
and there were different kind of therewere different people, different weather conditions,
different I mean, obviously there weredifferences between the rural and again, for
lack of a better term, urbansettings at the time. How did those
people get together and find a commoninterest to fight against the king? In
hindsight, it looks, you know, everything in hindsight that happens looks like
(08:39):
it's ordained. But the American colonies, the British colonies that participate in the
revolution, which is only some ofthe British colonies in the Americas from Georgia
to Maine, which was then apart of Massachusetts in a vast you know
space, varied people who don'tually didn'tactually at the time of the Revolution trade
(09:05):
a great deal with one another.A merchant in Charleston or Savannah was far
more likely to have regular communication withmerchants in London or Bristol in England than
with somebody in Boston or New York. What brought these disparate colonies together was
the anxiety the crisis that developed inthe seventeen sixties and early seventeen seventies as
(09:33):
Britain, the British Ministry, theBritish government sought to impose more regulation,
more regularity, more taxation on theAmerican colonies. They shared anxiety about these
developments, and it brought them together. In the book, there's a story
(09:54):
of some of your listeners will knowthis one. Although it's not the Boston
Tea or the Boston massacre. It'snot the most famous incident. Have killed
three people. I love that.Well, no no, no, no,
no, no, no, I'mjoking I joke about that. I
know it was. It was ahorrible shooting. Let me get you a
look. There were fifteen thousand peoplein Boston at the time of the Boston
(10:18):
massacre, if a an army killedthe same proportion of people in Washington,
d C. Today, three hundredpeople would be shot down. That is
the One of the things that deceivesus about the American Revolution is the intimate
(10:39):
scale. Boston, Massachusetts was oneof the biggest towns in colonial America.
Fifteen thousand people. That's that's barelya town on the highway that you're going
to notice today. This was asmall, intimate, face to face society.
And so yeah, a party ofsoldiers shoots down several civilians in a
(11:01):
small in a small town like thatis a massacre. And you know that's
not propaganda. This was an extraordinaryevent. But you got me off off
track, all right. I know, I like the off track thing.
I want to pull you off trackone more time because I did want to
discuss some of the lesser known types, and a lot of them happened to
(11:22):
have been in George Washington's setup ofor his spine network. Basically, I
was always fascinated with Washington's setup ofthe early spy networks infiltrating the let's just
say, infiltrating the British leadership.If you will Well, Washington had let
me set the setting the bigger picture. And we can't know who all of
(11:45):
them are, by the way,not even Asian three fifty five. Yeah,
no, no, we and wenever will. But Washington, you
know, was we faced with anoverwhelming task the the British Army, which
was not, by the way,the largest or most powerful army of the
age. The French army was muchlarger and better supplied than the British army.
(12:07):
But the British did have the mostpowerful navy in the world, which
really mattered to the American colony sincealmost all the American colonists live within one
hundred miles of the sea, veryclose to navigable water. But the largest
navy in the world was a hugethreat to the American colonies, and Washington's
(12:28):
army didn't have basic supplies. Americadidn't produce enough gunpowder. It certainly couldn't
produce guns on a scale that wereneeded by an army Washington didn't. He
didn't have an existing army to leanback on, no navy, but he
did have the advantage that the warwas being fought in his own backyard.
(12:50):
It was being fought in America,and Americans could be recruited to spy on
the British to supply intelligence to WashingtonArmy in Washington very carefully created his own
spy network to bring in the intelligenceabout what the British were doing where that
(13:11):
what their next move would be.And of course that's the that's the enormous
advantage when you have when you're fightingon your home tours. That's the home
field advantage, if you will,was one of the only ones we had.
Another thing about the book, andI'm a map guy, this book
did pack. You did pack thebook with what one hundred and seventy something
paintings and maps. Yeah, yeah, they helped tell the entire story because
(13:35):
look again I'm an old map kindof guy. But the fact is the
the edage is a picture shows thethousand words type thing. But again,
you were saying the Civil War hadits advantages with the pictures and everything else.
The Revolutionary War didn't. You didn'thave the paintings and you did have
maps that did tell an interesting story. You do, and it's actually one
(13:58):
of the great eras of photography.And the maps are beautiful. A lot
of them are drawn from the collectionof the Society of the Cincinnati, which
is a has a great library dealingwith the art of war in the age
of the American Revolution. These arecontemporary maps, not modern maps, so
the kind of maps that people atthe time were looking at, including generals,
(14:20):
looking at them to plan, youknow, plan their campaigns. So
I wanted to draw the reader asmuch as possible into an age when we
don't have photographs, and obviously wedon't have video and film. We can't
to imagine it. We need tobe able to see it, and so
the book is richly illustrated in thatway. We also pull in portraits,
(14:43):
we hope unexpected ones of you know, the no Gilbert Stewart portrait of George
Washington in this book. But thereare a lot of paintings of Washington,
of his officers, of contemporaries,watercolors, of ordinary people of the French
and the Hessians. And so it'sintended to be a visual introduction to the
(15:09):
surviving record of the American Revolution.I hope we've achieved that. With me
is Jack Warren Junior. He isthe author of Freedom, The Enduring Importance
of the American Revolution. I'm ChrisCordini, your host, this is book
spectrum. Let's get to the AmericanRevolution and modern days today. Interestingly,
(15:31):
free societies are criticized by the Americanleft and the likes of those in the
World Economic Forum. Perhaps those arethe very types of people against whom the
entire free world needs to revolt.Having said that, though, there seems
to be a sort of power grabamongst the political elite, or at least
a move amongst them and the culturallyfashionable, if you will, to try
(15:56):
to lessen the impacts of free societyis and maybe make them less free.
That's my observation. What's yours?Well, might far off here? I
guess that's the question I'm asking,And then then we'll get into what the
American Revolution of Why this is veryimportant when it comes to putting it into
perspectives here, Well, you're nottoo far off. We need to have
(16:22):
a continuous civil dialogue about what freedomis and what the proper role of government
in American society, in societies allover the world is the main thing that
the American Revolution achieved was independence,not just independence for the United States,
although obviously it achieved that, butpersonal independence, it autonomy. People wanted
(16:49):
to be free of the imposition ofaristocrats, of monarchs, and of governments.
Freedom involves liberty, and liberty isthe absence of restraint, restraint by
government, response, restraint by otherswho want to impose their way of thinking
(17:11):
on you. So liberty was fundamentalto the revolution. Natural and civil rights
are are, but also responsible citizenshipto the degree that we are called upon
to participate in public life and ingovernment, we have an equal share in
it as citizens. The Revolution wasin many ways a revolution against government.
(17:37):
People in the eighteenth century were youknow, there were citizens. They weren't
citizens, they were subjects of monarchs. They wanted to be citizens, they
wanted to be free and independent citizens. And I know that that today the
you know, the famous rattlesnake flagwith its motto don't tread on Me,
has become politicized as a symbol ofsome far right extreme but in fact that
(18:00):
idea now the funny thing. Thefunny thing is, I would even say
it hasn't really been It's almost likeit's being used by people on the other
side to make them it's basically asymbol of freedom. It's a symbol of
independence. And I think I've seenpeople from moderate too far the right use
the flag, but I do wantto say that it seems to be demonized
(18:22):
nowadays, and the very concept ofthe idea of freedom in some factions here
has been demonized and turn it againstand flag into something it really Isn't I
agree with you about that, becauseit to me, it symbolizes the fundamental
claim of the American Revolution, whichis the is the absence of restraint within
the bounds necessary in civil society andthe fulfillment of our natural rights. We
(18:49):
need to have a constant public dialogueabout what are natural rights. That is
one of the rights that inherre inall people everywhere, not in America.
But if their natural rights, ifthey're the rights of man, or rights
of mankind, or rights of humanbeings, they apply to everyone everywhere.
They're not dependent on what civil societyyou happen to live in. And then
(19:11):
there are civil rights that are rightsthat are peculiar to the particular public life
of a society, and they willvary somewhat from society to society. If
we're going to have a responsible,intelligent dialogue in this country and everywhere about
(19:33):
what public policy should be, youneed to have a constant conception of what
is a natural right, say,the right to religious freedom, which almost
all philosophers and Greek, the rightof conscience, the right to worship as
you wish is a natural right versuscivil rights. Who votes and when under
(19:56):
what circumstances, And we're not havingthose I feel civil dialogues that we need
to have. So, for example, we're having today we sometimes get impassioned
arguments, but not enough dialogue aboutnon citizen voting, which is something which
(20:17):
is being has been proposed and adoptedin some jurisdictions in this country. Is
that consistent with the basic principles ofthe American Revolution, of our national carriage,
of our history. We need tohave that kind of conversation. And
one of the purposes of this bookis to remind people what the fundamental ideals
(20:40):
established by the American Revolution are.The revolutionary leaders themselves, people the revolutionary
generation, expected us to evolve andto change over time. They didn't expect
us always to be concerned what theiroriginal ideas were and to be slavishly obedient
to them. They wanted us tobe creative thinkers, but within the bounds
(21:03):
of the basic principles of independence,liberty, equality, natural civil rights,
responsible citizenship. They built the foundation, but we need to have a constant
conversation within those boundaries. The freesocieties have actually grown over the years,
although there's something to be said fora lot of people who seem to be
(21:27):
more comfortable in an authoritarian society.And I'm not talking about the Kim Jung
ill and Kim Jung un North Koreatype societies, but there are people who
stand for let's say, the Sovietold Soviet society. There are some people
who really want to bring that sortof thinking back into the world stage,
(21:49):
if you will. There seem tobe a lot of schools of thought when
it comes to that sort of thing. However, one thing I do note
is that over the last three hundredyears, monarchy or what had really fallen
out of fashion except in some veryvery small circles anymore, whether it be
more authoritarian societies or less authoritarian likethe more free societies, monarchy may have
(22:11):
faded, but a vast proportion ofthe people of world live under tyrannical governments,
governments that deny them fundamental freedoms.And Chris, anyone in the free
world who has some kind of nostalgicyearning for Soviet style communism socialism. They
(22:34):
simply don't understand they most of themnever lived under that. But I see
what you're saying, how vicious thosetyrannies were. The twentieth century produced some
of the most vicious tyrannies in worldhistory. There were autocratic governments. We
don't want to live under them,but those are being whitewashed too. We
talked about the American Revolution being whitewashedand pushed away. Think about it this
(22:56):
way. They have more authoritarian societieslike MAO and Stalin. What they did,
and it's sort of what some factionsof American powerful here are doing as
well. They erased their nation's historiesto enhance their own agendas here in the
US, where again, not tothe extent that maw and Stellin we're able
(23:17):
to do that, but we're seeinga washing away of history, including the
American Revolution, to push agendas andto create a less free nation and compliance
with some international factions if you will, And I don't have to mention them,
but what I can say is thisis getting dangerous because people don't realize
why Americans wanted to break free ofthe Revolution in your book, definitely,
(23:38):
I'm going to get back to thatagain. Jack Warren is my guest.
He's the author of Freedom, Theenduring importance of the American Revolution. It
set the tone for the idea thatpeople can govern themselves, whereas we're now
seeing again an internationally slight swing intothe idea that people shouldn't trusted to govern
(24:00):
themselves. This is where, again, your American Revolution has been kind of
taking a back seat to other thingsaround in our public school system. How
can we reverse this trend and makesure young Americans are properly taught factual history,
but mainly the importance of why wehad the American Revolution and its influence
(24:21):
on the entire New World now talkingabout the Canada, Mexico, and the
South American nations who also sought inwon independence. We're failing broadly across the
United States to teach history well.And this is not because we don't have
earnest and in many cases able historyteachers. But history has become increasingly politicized,
(24:45):
and so one has history written inthe academy from the left and very
less frequently from the right. Bothactually suffer from distortion because the authors are
seeking a advance a present political agenda. They have something they want to happen
today, and so they're going totell you a story about the past,
(25:10):
and particularly when it deals with theAmerican Revolution, something which will get you
to reject the American Revolution, todespise the nation's origins. And for example,
I mean, let's you know,if you've been tuned into the news
in the last few years, here, you know this. The American Revolutionary
generation did not abolish slavery. Manyof the leading leaders of the American Revolution
(25:37):
were slave owners and slavers. Andfor many people this means that whatever else
they stood for has no merit.They are to be rejected out of hand.
What I'm trying to do in thisbook is to explain, to begin
with, in the middle of theeighteenth century, no one, no one
was free. People were Everybody livedout their life on a kind of scale
(26:03):
of degrees of freedom. The wellto do, the tiniest percentage of society
enjoyed more freedom than others, althoughthey were all subjects of some kind of
monarchy. And then you had women, all of whom were disfranchised and unable
to participate in civil life. Oftiny percentage of people. Even in Britain,
which was regarded in the middle ofthe eighteenth century as the freest society
(26:26):
in the world. Even in Britainonly a tiny percentage of people could vote,
and even of those people who couldvote that the practical effect of their
votes was nil because frequently elections forsame members of parliament they had one candidate
to vote for. You know,the idea of a representative legislature elected on
(26:52):
democratic principles is it was talked aboutin the eighteenth century in Britain and elsewhere,
but we invented it. The firstlegislature in the world actually based on
account of the number of people wholived in a country with representation divided among
them on some kind of equal basison a national scale, was in the
(27:14):
United States. I mean, thisis a basic idea which free societies have
adopted everywhere. And the revolution isthis moment when the world is offered an
alternative, an alternative of personal independence, national independence in a world of empires.
(27:36):
We often forget that the United Statesis the first great nation in the
world to break away from modern colonialdependence and assert its independence. You know,
it rejects the tyranny of empire.And adopts principles of free society,
liberty, equality, natural and civilrights, and responsible participatories citizenship. Those
(28:00):
are new ideas, and those ideasare fundamental to the preservation of free societies
in the world today. Yes,there are a lot of people who think
that the world has become too complicatedfor free society, that we need an
autocracy of experts, an authoritary stateruling us benevolently, of course, but
(28:23):
will take care of all of thedifficulties that require people smarter than you and
me. I don't believe it.I don't think you believe it. I
don't think your listeners believe that.I think free people, educated people engaging
in civil dialogue can come up withthe best solutions to the problems that we
(28:47):
face. And we face challenges likeevery generation, and free society is the
answer to those things, not autocracy. Autocracy leads to tyranny and human misery,
and it has everywhere in the worldfor all time. And anyone who
promotes autocratic ideas is nuts. Maybethat's a problem. We have a lot
(29:07):
of nuts people here, a lotof crazies out there, if you will,
and they've been given the microphone thanksto the Internet. But again that's
a difference. Wait a minute,I'm one of those too, but I'm
crazy. I'm crazy in a differentdirection. I'm a crazy that lakes us
history and appreciates a free society.We're the crazies now, apparently according to
some of these people. But againthat's a rant for some other day and
(29:27):
another interview. I would like toask you, though, what is what
are? Maybe? And again wediscussed a lot of is What's the one
key thing you want? Maybe ayoung reader? A young reader is somebody
who didn't get taught much about therevolution to take away from this book that
the Revolution was the achievement of peoplelike them. Too much we focus on
(29:53):
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and JohnAdams, but they were order people,
people of every race, people ofevery religion, people of every age.
For a young person, I wantthem to know that the army that won
our independence was an army of teenagers. As a matter of fact, It's
(30:15):
funny. When I was in firstgrade, we learned about Nathan Hale.
But the only thing we learned aboutNathan Hale is he said, I regret
I have but one life to givefor my country. Before he was hung,
was a he was a star spyfor a while, and he's just
barely graduated from college. He wastwenty one when he was hung. That's
right, That's where I was going. Yes, and Lafayette, who is,
(30:38):
you know, a major general ofthe Continental Army, French idealist who
comes to America and comes from avery wealthy family. So Congress pays attention.
He was made a major general inthe United States Army and the Continental
Army at the age of nineteen.Now, I'm absolutely certain that George Washington
when he heard that Continental Congress hadappointed this ninetheen year old a major general,
(31:02):
he shook his head. But thenhe met laugh Aette. He commanded
Lafayette. Laugh Aette came to him, and it became clear that laugh Atte
wanted nothing more than to be aservant to Washington, to fight for the
freedom of the United States, whichhe believed was the beginning of the establishment
of freedom all over the world.He was an impassioned idealist, and Washington
(31:26):
came to love him like a son. They were very close to one another,
and Washington himself, I'm time thinkingabout your your young reader. You
know, they see a painting ofGeorge Washington, and that what it looks
like. He's an old man,because a lot of the portraits of this
period are written, are painted whenpeople are rich and old, and so
(31:51):
a lot of the portraits we havein Washington are of an old manner.
There he's in his sixties, whichis old in the eighteenth century. And
of course he's got he's got powderedhair, and that makes him look even
older. That was a cool haircutof the time. So, but George
Washington took command of the Continental Armyat the age of forty two. I
know to a teenager, that's goingto sound like, well, he was
an old guy, but he reallywasn't. He commanded an army of young
(32:15):
men. A lot of the ordinarysoldiers of Continental Army were teenagers. And
I mean this, The Revolution wasan achievement of the young. Yes,
there were some old guys like BenjaminFranklin or Stephen Hopkins, the elderly statesman
from Rhne Island, but this wasa you know, a dynamic movement driven
(32:38):
by the aspirations of ordinary people,and many of them young people. Jack
Warren, thank you for being withus on book Spectrum once again. The
book is titled Freedom, The EnduringImportance of the American Revolution. Before we
Go though Jack, The book isbacked by the American Revolution Institute of the
Society of the Cincinnati tell us abit about that. Well. The Society
(33:00):
of the Cincinnati was established at thevery end of the American Revolutionary War by
the officers of George Washington's army.They wanted to create an organization which would
perpetuate the ideals for which they hadfought. And of course they came from
all over what was then the UnitedStates, from Georgia to Massachusetts, New
(33:24):
Hampshire. They had come together incommon cause to fight this war. But
when they were going home at theend of the war, they would have
no reason to get together again unlessthey created an organization to draw them together.
And so they created the nation's firstVeterans organization for officers of the Continent
Army, and they would meet everythree years inter national convention. They would
(33:46):
have a chance to get back togetherwith one another and reminisce like veterans will
do. But they had a biggerpurpose too. They wanted to perpetuate the
memory of the American Revolution and itsideal. And in twenty fourteen. I
was the executive director of the Societyof the Cincinnati for many years, and
(34:06):
we created the American Revolution Institute tohelp carry out the mission, which was
really the mission was really formulated withthe birth of the Society in seventeen eighty
three, to perpetuate forever the memoryof this vast event is the way they
described it through which they had livedand in its ideals. And the American
(34:28):
Revolution Institute conducts research, library programs, museum programs, public tours, anything
that it can do to perpetuate inthe popular mind the memory of the American
Revolution. As a wonderful headquarters indowntown Washington, DC. And I was
privileged to be the founding director ofthe American Revolution Institute, which is why
(34:50):
you see their name under mine onthe cover of Freedom. Jack Larren,
thanks again for joining us, andagain where cans our listener find your website
where they can find more information aboutyou in the book. Well, you
can learn more about the book onthe website of the American Revolution Institute,
which is conveniently American Revolutioninstitute dot org. I'll run together, or the website
(35:15):
of Lions Press, which is thepublisher of the book. L yo NS
and you can buy the book atall of the usual online applets. It's
also for saling bookstores Barnesandoble, dotCommamazon dot Com. Of course, the
book is widely available and it's actseems to be doing very well. Thank
(35:38):
you again, Jack Warren for beingwith us, and thank you for listening
to Book Spectrum. I'm Chris Cordeny. I remember keep turning those pages.
Welcome to Book Spectrum. I'm ChrisGordana, your host. This is where
we talk to not necessarily seasoned unthorsall the time, but we do have
some. We like to talk topeople who write books from varied professions across
the spectrum. I have one suchwriter right now. History seems to have
been lost in today's youth. Inpopular culture. It's been minimized and not
(00:21):
a new thing. From Howard Zinn'soversimplification of his revisionist history on forward.
The erasure of facts in favor ofpolitics has become a threat to the nation's
very existence and unity. It's likepeople don't even understand how important the Revolutionary
War was anymore. Well, Ihave a remedy for that. With me
(00:42):
is Jack Warren Jr. His bookFreedom, The Enduring Importance of the American
Revolution takes a serious look at itsplace not only in American history, but
in that of the world. Welcometo Book Spectrum, Jack Warren Jr.
Delighted to be with you. Ilike the book. I'm a Revolutionary War
guide. Funny thing though, it'sthe Civil War that's attracted many of those
(01:04):
reenactors and penisinates people who what wecall Civil War buffs. We don't generally
see that with the Revolutionary War somuch. Why might that be from your
perspective as an historian jective, Well, people of the Civil War generation are
more like us. They were moreromantic, they were more individualistic. Their
(01:30):
letters, their diaries speak to usin a way that those from the eighteenth
century don't because they talk a lotabout themselves and their feelings, and people
in the eighteenth century were much moreguarded with those things and so they don't
give them to us as much.So the passion of the Civil War comes
through in the record. Also,the Civil War was photographed, and we
(01:53):
can see people of that generation andthey look like us. Lutionary War is
known to us visually only through paintingsand prints, and often people look old
and stodgy. The styles are different, you know, men with powdered wigs
and funny clothes. They don't seemto be much like us. And so
(02:16):
it doesn't you know, it doesn'tresonate with people as much as it ought
to, and that I hope toensure that it does in the future.
And here I thought it was thecool point of beards they had during the
Civil War. I actually actually tooka picture next to the guy who played
ap Hill in the Rob Maxwell theRon Maxwell movies about the Civil Wars,
(02:37):
so he was pretty cool. He'sa real historian. A lot of the
historians got to be in the movie, which is pretty pretty interesting the movies,
I should say. Anyway, let'sget to this though. What is
spare you to create this introspective intothe Revolutionary War? Well, there are
I will confess a fair number ofgeneral histories of the American Revolution, But
(02:58):
in our generation, appreciation understanding ofthe Revolution and its long term consequences for
American history and for us today hasbeen slipping away. Part of it is
what you talked about at the top. You know, there's an increasing politicization
of our history. Also, wehave an inclination, understandable but in some
(03:19):
ways unfortunate, of making ourselves therhetorical judges of people in the past and
deciding if they didn't share our standardsabout everything, then they are worthy of
our respect. What I'm trying toachieve in this book is first understanding of
what the Revolution achieved, and thenappreciation for the enduring importance of those achievements
(03:42):
in the way they shape our livestoday. America is one of the probably
the first really free society, ifyou will, or a lot of monarchies
at the time. Before that,there were fiefdoms, there were some dictatorships,
mainly monarchies, though, and somekind of able leadership here and there
in certain corners of the world.How did the American Revolution, again,
(04:06):
as an historian, from your perspective, lay the foundation not only for us,
but for free societies around the world. Well, you've hit on the
critical importance of the American Revolution.Before the American Revolution, I'll go a
little farther than you did. Beforethe American Revolution, no one was free,
at least in the way we understandfreedom. Everyone in the world was
(04:30):
the subject of some kind of monarch. They may have been a czar,
an emperor, a chief. Whateverthey were, they ruled by some kind
of hereditary right or some or theywere the instrument of an oligarchy or an
autocracy. Freedom in all of itsrich variety, which is what I try
(04:50):
to sketch in this book, freedomwas in many ways first realized, first
invented, really by the American revolutionaries. Now, the ideas of free society
are very old. They go backto antiquity, and scholars and philosophers were
writing about them in the seventeenth andeighteenth century. But there's a big difference
(05:11):
between what you know, philosophers andcoffeehouse radicals talk about, you know,
when they're sitting in a cafe inEurope or over their desks writing books,
and people actually fighting to realize thoseprinciples and then making them the basis of
a new kind of public life.And that's what the Revolution did, and
ever since, the ideas of freedom, the idea of republican government, representative
(05:38):
government which supports and it reflects theinterests of ordinary people, have been spreading
around the world. At the timeof the American Revolution, Roussou, the
great French philosopher, said, mankindwas made to be free, but everywhere
he is in chains. The Revolutionbegan the process of shedding those chains.
(06:00):
But there are still billions of peoplein this world who don't live in free
societies. And so the ideas ofthe American Revolution need to be remembered,
renewed, appreciated, understood, perpetuatedby Americans in order to continue to be
a living representative of the ideals offree people. I want to get into
(06:24):
free societies and modern thought today.But first let's delve into the book again.
And I have with me Jack WarrenJunior. The book is Freedom,
the Enduring Importance of the American Revolution. We know the big guys, We
know your Washington's, the Franklins ofthe world, the Henry's, and people
like that. What I like aboutthis book is it also deals into some
(06:44):
of the lesser known guys and ladieswho helped shape the revolution. Let's talk
about some of them. Well,that's what I think may sets my perspective
on the Revolution. Apart from alot of narrative historians who've written about the
American Revolution, I regard the AmericanRevolution and treated in this book as a
(07:05):
vast popular movement. It involves theaspirations, the hopes and dreams of ordinary
people from all walks of American life, of women, of indentured servants,
of slaves, of poor people whohope that the revolution will be and provide
(07:26):
them with opportunities to improve the qualityof the life for themselves and their families.
And I focus as you go throughthe narrative, I focus on specific
individuals who illustrate that concept. Theseare people who didn't necessarily you know,
they didn't read John Locke or Montesquieu. They weren't sophisticated thinkers, but they
knew what they hoped for for themselves, and they saw the revolution as offering
(07:50):
them the possibility of a better lifefor them and for their children. Not
all American societies, when we're colonials, when they moved into the New World,
were actually free. I don't considerthe Puritans were looking for freedom of
religion, but I don't consider thema free society. That Jamestown settlement was
more in that vein. But whenthe colonies kind of moved to thirteen here
(08:15):
and there were different kind of therewere different people, different weather conditions,
different I mean, obviously there weredifferences between the rural and again, for
lack of a better term, urbansettings at the time. How did those
people get together and find a commoninterest to fight against the king? In
hindsight, it looks, you know, everything in hindsight that happens looks like
(08:39):
it's ordained. But the American colonies, the British colonies that participate in the
revolution, which is only some ofthe British colonies in the Americas from Georgia
to Maine, which was then apart of Massachusetts in a vast you know
space, varied people who don'tually didn'tactually at the time of the Revolution trade
(09:05):
a great deal with one another.A merchant in Charleston or Savannah was far
more likely to have regular communication withmerchants in London or Bristol in England than
with somebody in Boston or New York. What brought these disparate colonies together was
the anxiety the crisis that developed inthe seventeen sixties and early seventeen seventies as
(09:33):
Britain, the British Ministry, theBritish government sought to impose more regulation,
more regularity, more taxation on theAmerican colonies. They shared anxiety about these
developments, and it brought them together. In the book, there's a story
(09:54):
of some of your listeners will knowthis one. Although it's not the Boston
Tea or the Boston massacre. It'snot the most famous incident. Have killed
three people. I love that.Well, no no, no, no,
no, no, no, I'mjoking I joke about that. I
know it was. It was ahorrible shooting. Let me get you a
look. There were fifteen thousand peoplein Boston at the time of the Boston
(10:18):
massacre, if a an army killedthe same proportion of people in Washington,
d C. Today, three hundredpeople would be shot down. That is
the One of the things that deceivesus about the American Revolution is the intimate
(10:39):
scale. Boston, Massachusetts was oneof the biggest towns in colonial America.
Fifteen thousand people. That's that's barelya town on the highway that you're going
to notice today. This was asmall, intimate, face to face society.
And so yeah, a party ofsoldiers shoots down several civilians in a
(11:01):
small in a small town like thatis a massacre. And you know that's
not propaganda. This was an extraordinaryevent. But you got me off off
track, all right. I know, I like the off track thing.
I want to pull you off trackone more time because I did want to
discuss some of the lesser known types, and a lot of them happened to
(11:22):
have been in George Washington's setup ofor his spine network. Basically, I
was always fascinated with Washington's setup ofthe early spy networks infiltrating the let's just
say, infiltrating the British leadership.If you will Well, Washington had let
me set the setting the bigger picture. And we can't know who all of
(11:45):
them are, by the way,not even Asian three fifty five. Yeah,
no, no, we and wenever will. But Washington, you
know, was we faced with anoverwhelming task the the British Army, which
was not, by the way,the largest or most powerful army of the
age. The French army was muchlarger and better supplied than the British army.
(12:07):
But the British did have the mostpowerful navy in the world, which
really mattered to the American colony sincealmost all the American colonists live within one
hundred miles of the sea, veryclose to navigable water. But the largest
navy in the world was a hugethreat to the American colonies, and Washington's
(12:28):
army didn't have basic supplies. Americadidn't produce enough gunpowder. It certainly couldn't
produce guns on a scale that wereneeded by an army Washington didn't. He
didn't have an existing army to leanback on, no navy, but he
did have the advantage that the warwas being fought in his own backyard.
(12:50):
It was being fought in America,and Americans could be recruited to spy on
the British to supply intelligence to WashingtonArmy in Washington very carefully created his own
spy network to bring in the intelligenceabout what the British were doing where that
(13:11):
what their next move would be.And of course that's the that's the enormous
advantage when you have when you're fightingon your home tours. That's the home
field advantage, if you will,was one of the only ones we had.
Another thing about the book, andI'm a map guy, this book
did pack. You did pack thebook with what one hundred and seventy something
paintings and maps. Yeah, yeah, they helped tell the entire story because
(13:35):
look again I'm an old map kindof guy. But the fact is the
the edage is a picture shows thethousand words type thing. But again,
you were saying the Civil War hadits advantages with the pictures and everything else.
The Revolutionary War didn't. You didn'thave the paintings and you did have
maps that did tell an interesting story. You do, and it's actually one
(13:58):
of the great eras of photography.And the maps are beautiful. A lot
of them are drawn from the collectionof the Society of the Cincinnati, which
is a has a great library dealingwith the art of war in the age
of the American Revolution. These arecontemporary maps, not modern maps, so
the kind of maps that people atthe time were looking at, including generals,
(14:20):
looking at them to plan, youknow, plan their campaigns. So
I wanted to draw the reader asmuch as possible into an age when we
don't have photographs, and obviously wedon't have video and film. We can't
to imagine it. We need tobe able to see it, and so
the book is richly illustrated in thatway. We also pull in portraits,
(14:43):
we hope unexpected ones of you know, the no Gilbert Stewart portrait of George
Washington in this book. But thereare a lot of paintings of Washington,
of his officers, of contemporaries,watercolors, of ordinary people of the French
and the Hessians. And so it'sintended to be a visual introduction to the
(15:09):
surviving record of the American Revolution.I hope we've achieved that. With me
is Jack Warren Junior. He isthe author of Freedom, The Enduring Importance
of the American Revolution. I'm ChrisCordini, your host, this is book
spectrum. Let's get to the AmericanRevolution and modern days today. Interestingly,
(15:31):
free societies are criticized by the Americanleft and the likes of those in the
World Economic Forum. Perhaps those arethe very types of people against whom the
entire free world needs to revolt.Having said that, though, there seems
to be a sort of power grabamongst the political elite, or at least
a move amongst them and the culturallyfashionable, if you will, to try
(15:56):
to lessen the impacts of free societyis and maybe make them less free.
That's my observation. What's yours?Well, might far off here? I
guess that's the question I'm asking,And then then we'll get into what the
American Revolution of Why this is veryimportant when it comes to putting it into
perspectives here, Well, you're nottoo far off. We need to have
(16:22):
a continuous civil dialogue about what freedomis and what the proper role of government
in American society, in societies allover the world is the main thing that
the American Revolution achieved was independence,not just independence for the United States,
although obviously it achieved that, butpersonal independence, it autonomy. People wanted
(16:49):
to be free of the imposition ofaristocrats, of monarchs, and of governments.
Freedom involves liberty, and liberty isthe absence of restraint, restraint by
government, response, restraint by otherswho want to impose their way of thinking
(17:11):
on you. So liberty was fundamentalto the revolution. Natural and civil rights
are are, but also responsible citizenshipto the degree that we are called upon
to participate in public life and ingovernment, we have an equal share in
it as citizens. The Revolution wasin many ways a revolution against government.
(17:37):
People in the eighteenth century were youknow, there were citizens. They weren't
citizens, they were subjects of monarchs. They wanted to be citizens, they
wanted to be free and independent citizens. And I know that that today the
you know, the famous rattlesnake flagwith its motto don't tread on Me,
has become politicized as a symbol ofsome far right extreme but in fact that
(18:00):
idea now the funny thing. Thefunny thing is, I would even say
it hasn't really been It's almost likeit's being used by people on the other
side to make them it's basically asymbol of freedom. It's a symbol of
independence. And I think I've seenpeople from moderate too far the right use
the flag, but I do wantto say that it seems to be demonized
(18:22):
nowadays, and the very concept ofthe idea of freedom in some factions here
has been demonized and turn it againstand flag into something it really Isn't I
agree with you about that, becauseit to me, it symbolizes the fundamental
claim of the American Revolution, whichis the is the absence of restraint within
the bounds necessary in civil society andthe fulfillment of our natural rights. We
(18:49):
need to have a constant public dialogueabout what are natural rights. That is
one of the rights that inherre inall people everywhere, not in America.
But if their natural rights, ifthey're the rights of man, or rights
of mankind, or rights of humanbeings, they apply to everyone everywhere.
They're not dependent on what civil societyyou happen to live in. And then
(19:11):
there are civil rights that are rightsthat are peculiar to the particular public life
of a society, and they willvary somewhat from society to society. If
we're going to have a responsible,intelligent dialogue in this country and everywhere about
(19:33):
what public policy should be, youneed to have a constant conception of what
is a natural right, say,the right to religious freedom, which almost
all philosophers and Greek, the rightof conscience, the right to worship as
you wish is a natural right versuscivil rights. Who votes and when under
(19:56):
what circumstances, And we're not havingthose I feel civil dialogues that we need
to have. So, for example, we're having today we sometimes get impassioned
arguments, but not enough dialogue aboutnon citizen voting, which is something which
(20:17):
is being has been proposed and adoptedin some jurisdictions in this country. Is
that consistent with the basic principles ofthe American Revolution, of our national carriage,
of our history. We need tohave that kind of conversation. And
one of the purposes of this bookis to remind people what the fundamental ideals
(20:40):
established by the American Revolution are.The revolutionary leaders themselves, people the revolutionary
generation, expected us to evolve andto change over time. They didn't expect
us always to be concerned what theiroriginal ideas were and to be slavishly obedient
to them. They wanted us tobe creative thinkers, but within the bounds
(21:03):
of the basic principles of independence,liberty, equality, natural civil rights,
responsible citizenship. They built the foundation, but we need to have a constant
conversation within those boundaries. The freesocieties have actually grown over the years,
although there's something to be said fora lot of people who seem to be
(21:27):
more comfortable in an authoritarian society.And I'm not talking about the Kim Jung
ill and Kim Jung un North Koreatype societies, but there are people who
stand for let's say, the Sovietold Soviet society. There are some people
who really want to bring that sortof thinking back into the world stage,
(21:49):
if you will. There seem tobe a lot of schools of thought when
it comes to that sort of thing. However, one thing I do note
is that over the last three hundredyears, monarchy or what had really fallen
out of fashion except in some veryvery small circles anymore, whether it be
more authoritarian societies or less authoritarian likethe more free societies, monarchy may have
(22:11):
faded, but a vast proportion ofthe people of world live under tyrannical governments,
governments that deny them fundamental freedoms.And Chris, anyone in the free
world who has some kind of nostalgicyearning for Soviet style communism socialism. They
(22:34):
simply don't understand they most of themnever lived under that. But I see
what you're saying, how vicious thosetyrannies were. The twentieth century produced some
of the most vicious tyrannies in worldhistory. There were autocratic governments. We
don't want to live under them,but those are being whitewashed too. We
talked about the American Revolution being whitewashedand pushed away. Think about it this
(22:56):
way. They have more authoritarian societieslike MAO and Stalin. What they did,
and it's sort of what some factionsof American powerful here are doing as
well. They erased their nation's historiesto enhance their own agendas here in the
US, where again, not tothe extent that maw and Stellin we're able
(23:17):
to do that, but we're seeinga washing away of history, including the
American Revolution, to push agendas andto create a less free nation and compliance
with some international factions if you will, And I don't have to mention them,
but what I can say is thisis getting dangerous because people don't realize
why Americans wanted to break free ofthe Revolution in your book, definitely,
(23:38):
I'm going to get back to thatagain. Jack Warren is my guest.
He's the author of Freedom, Theenduring importance of the American Revolution. It
set the tone for the idea thatpeople can govern themselves, whereas we're now
seeing again an internationally slight swing intothe idea that people shouldn't trusted to govern
(24:00):
themselves. This is where, again, your American Revolution has been kind of
taking a back seat to other thingsaround in our public school system. How
can we reverse this trend and makesure young Americans are properly taught factual history,
but mainly the importance of why wehad the American Revolution and its influence
(24:21):
on the entire New World now talkingabout the Canada, Mexico, and the
South American nations who also sought inwon independence. We're failing broadly across the
United States to teach history well.And this is not because we don't have
earnest and in many cases able historyteachers. But history has become increasingly politicized,
(24:45):
and so one has history written inthe academy from the left and very
less frequently from the right. Bothactually suffer from distortion because the authors are
seeking a advance a present political agenda. They have something they want to happen
today, and so they're going totell you a story about the past,
(25:10):
and particularly when it deals with theAmerican Revolution, something which will get you
to reject the American Revolution, todespise the nation's origins. And for example,
I mean, let's you know,if you've been tuned into the news
in the last few years, here, you know this. The American Revolutionary
generation did not abolish slavery. Manyof the leading leaders of the American Revolution
(25:37):
were slave owners and slavers. Andfor many people this means that whatever else
they stood for has no merit.They are to be rejected out of hand.
What I'm trying to do in thisbook is to explain, to begin
with, in the middle of theeighteenth century, no one, no one
was free. People were Everybody livedout their life on a kind of scale
(26:03):
of degrees of freedom. The wellto do, the tiniest percentage of society
enjoyed more freedom than others, althoughthey were all subjects of some kind of
monarchy. And then you had women, all of whom were disfranchised and unable
to participate in civil life. Oftiny percentage of people. Even in Britain,
which was regarded in the middle ofthe eighteenth century as the freest society
(26:26):
in the world. Even in Britainonly a tiny percentage of people could vote,
and even of those people who couldvote that the practical effect of their
votes was nil because frequently elections forsame members of parliament they had one candidate
to vote for. You know,the idea of a representative legislature elected on
(26:52):
democratic principles is it was talked aboutin the eighteenth century in Britain and elsewhere,
but we invented it. The firstlegislature in the world actually based on
account of the number of people wholived in a country with representation divided among
them on some kind of equal basison a national scale, was in the
(27:14):
United States. I mean, thisis a basic idea which free societies have
adopted everywhere. And the revolution isthis moment when the world is offered an
alternative, an alternative of personal independence, national independence in a world of empires.
(27:36):
We often forget that the United Statesis the first great nation in the
world to break away from modern colonialdependence and assert its independence. You know,
it rejects the tyranny of empire.And adopts principles of free society,
liberty, equality, natural and civilrights, and responsible participatories citizenship. Those
(28:00):
are new ideas, and those ideasare fundamental to the preservation of free societies
in the world today. Yes,there are a lot of people who think
that the world has become too complicatedfor free society, that we need an
autocracy of experts, an authoritary stateruling us benevolently, of course, but
(28:23):
will take care of all of thedifficulties that require people smarter than you and
me. I don't believe it.I don't think you believe it. I
don't think your listeners believe that.I think free people, educated people engaging
in civil dialogue can come up withthe best solutions to the problems that we
(28:47):
face. And we face challenges likeevery generation, and free society is the
answer to those things, not autocracy. Autocracy leads to tyranny and human misery,
and it has everywhere in the worldfor all time. And anyone who
promotes autocratic ideas is nuts. Maybethat's a problem. We have a lot
(29:07):
of nuts people here, a lotof crazies out there, if you will,
and they've been given the microphone thanksto the Internet. But again that's
a difference. Wait a minute,I'm one of those too, but I'm
crazy. I'm crazy in a differentdirection. I'm a crazy that lakes us
history and appreciates a free society.We're the crazies now, apparently according to
some of these people. But againthat's a rant for some other day and
(29:27):
another interview. I would like toask you, though, what is what
are? Maybe? And again wediscussed a lot of is What's the one
key thing you want? Maybe ayoung reader? A young reader is somebody
who didn't get taught much about therevolution to take away from this book that
the Revolution was the achievement of peoplelike them. Too much we focus on
(29:53):
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and JohnAdams, but they were order people,
people of every race, people ofevery religion, people of every age.
For a young person, I wantthem to know that the army that won
our independence was an army of teenagers. As a matter of fact, It's
(30:15):
funny. When I was in firstgrade, we learned about Nathan Hale.
But the only thing we learned aboutNathan Hale is he said, I regret
I have but one life to givefor my country. Before he was hung,
was a he was a star spyfor a while, and he's just
barely graduated from college. He wastwenty one when he was hung. That's
right, That's where I was going. Yes, and Lafayette, who is,
(30:38):
you know, a major general ofthe Continental Army, French idealist who
comes to America and comes from avery wealthy family. So Congress pays attention.
He was made a major general inthe United States Army and the Continental
Army at the age of nineteen.Now, I'm absolutely certain that George Washington
when he heard that Continental Congress hadappointed this ninetheen year old a major general,
(31:02):
he shook his head. But thenhe met laugh Aette. He commanded
Lafayette. Laugh Aette came to him, and it became clear that laugh Atte
wanted nothing more than to be aservant to Washington, to fight for the
freedom of the United States, whichhe believed was the beginning of the establishment
of freedom all over the world.He was an impassioned idealist, and Washington
(31:26):
came to love him like a son. They were very close to one another,
and Washington himself, I'm time thinkingabout your your young reader. You
know, they see a painting ofGeorge Washington, and that what it looks
like. He's an old man,because a lot of the portraits of this
period are written, are painted whenpeople are rich and old, and so
(31:51):
a lot of the portraits we havein Washington are of an old manner.
There he's in his sixties, whichis old in the eighteenth century. And
of course he's got he's got powderedhair, and that makes him look even
older. That was a cool haircutof the time. So, but George
Washington took command of the Continental Armyat the age of forty two. I
know to a teenager, that's goingto sound like, well, he was
an old guy, but he reallywasn't. He commanded an army of young
(32:15):
men. A lot of the ordinarysoldiers of Continental Army were teenagers. And
I mean this, The Revolution wasan achievement of the young. Yes,
there were some old guys like BenjaminFranklin or Stephen Hopkins, the elderly statesman
from Rhne Island, but this wasa you know, a dynamic movement driven
(32:38):
by the aspirations of ordinary people,and many of them young people. Jack
Warren, thank you for being withus on book Spectrum once again. The
book is titled Freedom, The EnduringImportance of the American Revolution. Before we
Go though Jack, The book isbacked by the American Revolution Institute of the
Society of the Cincinnati tell us abit about that. Well. The Society
(33:00):
of the Cincinnati was established at thevery end of the American Revolutionary War by
the officers of George Washington's army.They wanted to create an organization which would
perpetuate the ideals for which they hadfought. And of course they came from
all over what was then the UnitedStates, from Georgia to Massachusetts, New
(33:24):
Hampshire. They had come together incommon cause to fight this war. But
when they were going home at theend of the war, they would have
no reason to get together again unlessthey created an organization to draw them together.
And so they created the nation's firstVeterans organization for officers of the Continent
Army, and they would meet everythree years inter national convention. They would
(33:46):
have a chance to get back togetherwith one another and reminisce like veterans will
do. But they had a biggerpurpose too. They wanted to perpetuate the
memory of the American Revolution and itsideal. And in twenty fourteen. I
was the executive director of the Societyof the Cincinnati for many years, and
(34:06):
we created the American Revolution Institute tohelp carry out the mission, which was
really the mission was really formulated withthe birth of the Society in seventeen eighty
three, to perpetuate forever the memoryof this vast event is the way they
described it through which they had livedand in its ideals. And the American
(34:28):
Revolution Institute conducts research, library programs, museum programs, public tours, anything
that it can do to perpetuate inthe popular mind the memory of the American
Revolution. As a wonderful headquarters indowntown Washington, DC. And I was
privileged to be the founding director ofthe American Revolution Institute, which is why
(34:50):
you see their name under mine onthe cover of Freedom. Jack Larren,
thanks again for joining us, andagain where cans our listener find your website
where they can find more information aboutyou in the book. Well, you
can learn more about the book onthe website of the American Revolution Institute,
which is conveniently American Revolutioninstitute dot org. I'll run together, or the website
(35:15):
of Lions Press, which is thepublisher of the book. L yo NS
and you can buy the book atall of the usual online applets. It's
also for saling bookstores Barnesandoble, dotCommamazon dot Com. Of course, the
book is widely available and it's actseems to be doing very well. Thank
(35:38):
you again, Jack Warren for beingwith us, and thank you for listening
to Book Spectrum. I'm Chris Cordeny. I remember keep turning those pages.
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