What's she gonna do? Brother? When Jeff Townsend Media runs wild on you. America Stories. Alright, alright, alright, this is Jeff Townsending. You're training into another episode of America's Stories. Last week we left off diving into how the Revolutionary War started, and of course by we, I mean my good friends Luke and Jack. Luke is kind of the professor leading us through some of this educational experience here, and Jack is just chilling in a hot tub podcasting guys, And yeah, he's living it up. That's where I do my podcasting. It's inside of a hot tub. Yeah, he actually has the cover on too, which is really weird. Yeah, there's no water, it's just inside a hot too. So the last week we ended with the Boston massacre and the hand the handstamp act. It wasn't the hand I made that up, but it might go down as that. I mean, I mean technically it is. Technically. Can I get a trademark on that? Yeah? I think so. So we talked about the fallout of that obviously. Okay, there was a trial. They were found not guilty of I don't know how you'd phrase it today, murder, but manslaughter. Their punishment was they branded there, I must said something else. They branded their hand and we left off on the tension in the both sides. Yes, So that took place in seventeen seventy March of seventeen seventy in u seventeen seventy three. By this point most of the Townshend Act has been repealed. They were like, all right, this taxation isn't working again, we all repeal it. We're try again with a different tactic. So they decided, all right, we'll pull the army back out. Yeah, we'll try to cool things off. But they weighed three more years to get rid of them. But they were down there like slowly ramping it down. They got rid of all the taxes on all their goods except one idol t T was the only one they had to at tax at this point. The reason why they had to tax Tea was they were trying to bail out the British East India company. It was going under lots of debts at this point, and they need to bail out. And you might think that seems kind of crazy to base your entire thing around saving this one random company. It happened to be gigantic if you never realized how big the British East India Company was. It had its own standing army of two hundred and thirty thousand men. It was twice the size of the British Regular Army. It had fleets upon fleets of ships too, and employed a large portion of the British economy. So they had to save it. Were they trying to Okay, so they're gonna weever, this is gonna go with tax? What was the implementations at home? But they did they try to tax at home? How is there? How were they handling the tea at home? They were specifically taxing people importing the goods. And since the British Islands, England itself is where the East India Company headquarters was, it technically was the exporter. And so the different colonies of the British this is where it kind of goes a little bit against there or you know, I was talking about last week when they're saying it's all British Land. It's all British land until it comes to taxes. If you're importing something to your land from other from the main central hub of the British Empire, you have to pay the import tax. And at this point the one they were taxing everyone one was tea. They kind of had a great little like racket. Guy. I guess you caught right because it was set up all you know. They take over a place, set them up as a colony, or set up a different colony, and then have them import goods and then tax those goods. And so it was like a constant stream of taking over places and then taxing those places. I got a random question, so how are the French on the outside looking at like what are what are they thinking during this time? Like obviously come out of the war. Are they rooting for them rebels in America? Are they? I mean, what do you know? French were We're definitely getting to trying to get the American popists rise up suddenly at first and then overtly later. They definitely wanted to weaken the British Empire. They were also doing it in other colonies too. Basically, the French hated the British. They wanted to really hurt them back, and they their history with them for all times constant warfare almost yeah. So yeah, they were definitely fro Americans revolting and in seventeen seventy three with tea being taxed. The US colonists whatever, the colonies did not want this tea, so they said, we're not buying it. You could send it back, and the governor in Boston was like, I can't send it back because I'm pretty sure you're going to take me out of position if they do, and I will be ruined. So he was like, no, it stays in the harbor. You guys are buying this tea. And so for a good little while it just sat there in the harbor and uh, these you know, these trade galleons filled with tea. Nobody knew what to do. So the British Navy blockaded and said, if you don't buy this tea, you aren't getting anything. That's a That's what I think about is the you know, if you're you're if let's say you owned a ship or you're you know, you work for a company ownership and you're just trying to dok. You know, you have nothing to do with any of this. You're just you're just trying to dock and you can't dock because there's another ship there. That then that alone was causing trouble. But then obviously the fact that trade without being completely blockaded at least in Boston over to this t ship mint Again. This seems like a repeating pattern they were seeing over and over again. This is how the British. We're going to behave you what We're going to import goods you didn't want them too bad, You're going to buy them, and you're going to pay more and more taxes on them. And it just becomes like this heavy handed pressure, over and over and over again. It seemed would be probably be viewed as almost every four of trade at that point, because you know so much of it was done overseas that you know, blockading a port would be like strangling a town. The Sun Deliberty had a meeting about it or around this time, and they were trying to discuss what to do, and Sam Adams was kind of coaching civility. He was trying to figure out a way out of this without causing to a show. But the meeting got away from him and people started rioting, and they decided we're going to get rid of that tea once and for all. At this point they all left the meeting and they dressed in a dress look like mohawk Indians They chose this for two reasons. One they didn't want anyone to be able to say who it was it was there that night, and the other was it was symbolic that they were no longer British citizens and that they were going to identify with the American continent. At this point, they made their way to the harbor in the cover of night, in broke on board on all these ships, and they did was a non violent thing. They actually never hurt anyone involved. And they did break one lot, but the next day one of them went back and fixed it, and they threw all of the tea into the harbor. The total amount of that tea is in today's dollars. Who was about two million dollars with the tea. That's a lot of tea. How to take them a little while to do that? How many people were doing it, like, that's a lot of tea to dump? Hell? I think I heard at one point it was thirty men, but I you know, it's the number kind of fluctuates with time. It's hard to say how many were there, but yeah, they worked over time to do it. Well. Does make you wonder I just saying that, you know, well, Sam Adams trying to be a voice of reason with these sons of liberty, and uh yeah, even after they got on board, through through all the tea out they still fix that lock. So I almost wonder if you know, John, I had almost had some kind of effect on Sam by that point as far as like being more reasonable. God damn it, Sam, you got to go back there and fix that lock. Doesn't seem very noble when you've dumped out two million larger than teeth exactly. It seems insulting stressing the stuff like this is a noble act, this lock. Yeah, it was like why million dollars? This was with some some amount of guilt in there, mind be like, well I can I can't, I can't love with the one. They felt bad about the destruction of that ship Captain's property, not so much the East India companies and British property. And actually this actually is one reason why this was extra galling to the British Parliament. At this point, most members of the British Parliament actually owned shares in the British in East India company. Each of them had about a million dollars in today's dollars worth of shares, so they take definitely wanted that money. Yeah, and so they immediately retaliated with you know, stricter laws, like what was what were those stricter laws. They're going to tax their p now like the v Tax or they called it the Coercives Act, where they were going to do more than just like strongly suggest things happen. They were being forced now. So this is when they totally blockaded the harbors. Only their ships could get through without being gunned down. So they're like, they're not doing the UN approach anymore. We strongly. They then dismissed all talent councils and replaced them entirely with British officials. But they also if the current governor, the governer of the governor and had Thomas Gage, the military advisor there, take over everything. Then they decided they would never wanted to a chance a new trial in Boston in case another Boston massacre happened. So every single British official nowhere, if they were a military or whatever, it was no longer legal to try them in the United States or what would become the United States. You had to be tried in England. So that would they assumed at this point it's going too far. They'll never get a fair trial, so we just won't let them do a trial anymore. This was followed by one more coercive act. The British soldiers normally would build like encampments in the in the woods and like I kind of like live in like a little shanty towns. So they would build yeah, look like like campgrounds. Yeah. Yeah, Well, they decided to enforce a law that required every unoccupied building it was owned by somebody, you had to let the British soldiers stay there, and then you had to feed them. So people of means, people who had large estates and stuff like that, sudden they found that they had to pay directly to house and feed British soldiers. That's worse than taxes. It's actually in the Declaration of Independence it specifically mentions the Quartering Act as one of the major reasons. And then the third right in the Bill of Rights that we have now says that the army can never be forcibly quartered in the property of the UAH. So that just shows you how pissed off it made people. Yeah, it really got to people. This was like when the people who were you know, very wealthy who didn't have as hard a time pain like these taxes up to this point then never really felt as much as like the common person did. Suddenly they are now feeling it, and so everyone is coming together. That's uh, I guess every one of these steps you can almost look at it be like. And then the British pissed the Americans off by doing this. It was like one thing after another that they just kept pissing everyone off. At any point, had anyone let off the gas backed up and just said, you know, we're done, it would have fizzled out. But it just kept going and going. It's it's also years of frustration for the British as well, right, I mean, they've just been because like nothing's working. Can form just just follow the follow the process, and it's not happening exactly. So the next thing that pissed off the Americans, this one was the big one. This is the big one because this actually leads into the actual war. In April seventeen seventy five, Thomas Gage knows that between the sons of Liberty, you know, l rallying up more people, these wealthy landowners, you know, stockpiling weapons and other things like that, that scenes are not looking good. He knows that if he doesn't stop something, it's going to go from bad to oh my god, we're on fire. And so he decides he's going to have to capture John Hancock and Samuel Adams. He's got to take them out because they won't stop, you know, protesting, they won't stop getting people angry. But decided he was going to launch an expeditionary force to seize him the sons of Sons Liberty they could find and all the weapons and gunpowder and everything that was being stockpiled in Concord. They knew sam Adams was in lex Lexington, and so they Patriots knew they were coming. They knew that that the British were got to come for them. They just didn't know which route they were gonna take. And this is like you know the whole one if by land, two if by sea thing, right, Yeah, everyone's kind of heard that. But so there was a Paul Revere knew a a sexton a church and knew that he was definitely on their side and he would be able to light a fire and like the steeple saying yea or two lights would be if the British were coming by sea and if it was by land, and so when he found out, because he found out for people nearby, Paul Revere led himself some gossip, didn't he He did. He was all in on everything going on. He was technically what you can almost consider the earliest spy master. He knew a lot of people who knew other people, and so he was definitely, you know, uh connected. So he got that sexton to like the thing, and he lit two beacons saying they were coming from the sea the next day, and that's when they set out on the famous midnight ride. Now it wasn't just him he started it. He met up with some other sons of Liberty, and by the end of it all, there were more than fifty horse riders riding throughout the entire county going to different areas where militiamen were being prepared, had been prepared in secret. They knew that they had to be ready at a minute's notice. They were the minutemen. Yeah, that's how that comes along, the minute men. So it says this is the whole famous the British airtcum mean the retishy I mean, actually there's a little bit debate there, I believe because so many people still some people still consider those to be British citizens. What he was actually saying it was the regulars are coming, according to some historians right now, but it's so much her sound to say the British are coming. And that's where it knows. Every one knows the British a coming. And it's possibly also had you know, they already had their own terms, like you know, when when they're saying British, they're referring to the British army, especially considering that they have been occupations for the past several years, for multiple years that yeah, you see redcoats or you see the British Army, you might just refer to them as the British. That's pretty telling too though, right like you're going to call them the British. Yeah, that means that we're not the British at that point as far as they're concerned. All told, Thomas Gage brought seven hundred British regulars to get Sam Adams and John Hancock and then too said some of them to go to Concord to get the guns. Well, they show up in Lexington and when they got there there was seventy seven militiamen. They are stand in there and saying that you cannot take them. No one knows exactly who opened fire first, kind of much the bust of Masaker. No one knows why that first shot was fired. That first shot at Lexington is now known as the shot heard round the world because it's the first shot of the official war. They started shooting each other and seven militiamen died. Almost the exact same time, a group of the British soldiers were going to Concord and they get there and there's no guns left. There's like a few left, the no one near the amount they're supposed to be there. So they got tipped off. Yeah, they tipped off. They knew ahead of time to move those guns, and so they set fire to the storehouse because that's what they're supposed to do to get rid of the last few guns. Anyway, wind kicked up weird. They wasn't supposed to catch anything else on fire, but the wind kicked up and it caught up nearby building on fire and they were trying to put it out, but it looked like the British were just torching the whole town. At this point, everyone was you know, came out and droves and this point two thousand Minutemen show up and they start blasting and charging. So the British soldiers at Concord retreated back to Lexington and then they're followed by those minutemen by retrieve you mean walking, yeah, run whatever. All this is all on foot. That's what blows my mind. Yeah, all on foot. Yeah, and then they chased them all the way back to the ships that they came over on to go back to Boston. By the end of it, seventy three British were dead and one hundred and seventy four wounded. And this told the British army that the Americans know how to fight, and on top of that, they have the will to fight. They're not going to back down anymore. That's that's a That's a Tom Petty song, isn't it. Yeah, well back down. I think he based it off of the battle Lexington and Concord, he did. That's what I we just we just discovered something really significant on this poduct. Absolutely you heard it here first and got to listen to some Tom Petty. Actually this oh yeah, it's always good time for Tom Petty. This was, you know, the official start. Now the war is on. There's nothing that could stop it. All these bad events that could have stopped it could have been you know, we could still actually be a British you know, protectorate at this point he had someone just said let's not do it, but they did, and now the stage is set for one of the greatest wars in the history of mankind, the one that will totally change the perspective of the invincible British Army, changes the history of the colonies to change them into a war forged nation, and on top of that, it changes how wars are bought. Many too many times, the wars are not fought the same way after a major American war because of various industrializations and things like that. This war is actually one of the first wars to involve rifled barrels. Before then, it was all smooth bore muskets. There were some American sharpshooters who were the first to use rifled barrels so that the bullet spins and it's more accurate on the way out. Long range. Yeah, yeah, you always hear stories about how the range was so increased because of this. This is also the start of major spy operations. I always said the spies operations started already. It gets insignificantly more so. And some things are invented during this war that don't see fruition for a long time, but submarines. Wow, things change and the world is completely changed because of avoidable acts. And that's kind of how everything happens. Completely avoidable acts happen, and how the outcome is something that cannot be calculated. This is a where mel Gibson comes into lays the mel Gibson Uh. They called the mel Gibson defense. I think some some of the some of the armis not some mel Gibson uh, not the mel Gibson voicemail. But this is the mel Gibson fighting style, fighting style you see deplicted in the Patriots, So as you refer to that, Luke, a lot of this different change in the way for the wars will be fought happens here. Yeah. It's a tremendous uh stories involved in the It's the revolutionary war in and of itself, but the lead up to it is interesting. It's like it's chaotic at how random things happen and this is the outcome. Yeah. I also think that the start of the Revolutionary War is kind of the perfect companion piece to the our first episode of you know, July four celebrations. So yeah, it's really interesting to go over, you know, the beginning of the Revolutionary War and the events that led up to it. Yeah, so to some things up here for this episode. We we didn't like the taxation. Paul Revere rode on a horse said, the regulars are coming, which met the British. We prepared ourselves, We ready to fight. We hid some weapons, and the militia is ready to go. Did I sum it up? Yeah? At thirty seconds, every which sums it up at thirty seconds, Yeah, that's the Revolutionary War, and thirty seconds the beginning to the Revolutionary War, right at the beginning. Yeah, that's a good any point. Obviously, I don't know what episode comes next, but man, we're on a roll here at this Revolutionary War, which we are because I know Luke's favor is the Civil War. Mind's actually the War of eighteen twelve, but the Revolutionary is my second, the Sols my third. So I love this topic, I definitely. I mean I like the Revolutionary War. Two some of the war I don't know something about it is so bleak that I shoy reading about it. But yeah, it's a it's definitely a very interested out. I like trains, so well, that's a guy. I guess that was a big part of it. It was a part of Uh, we'll go ahead and wrap this episode up. Sorry, can't here over the laughter here our social media manager Jack the worst social media manager ever this week because I can remember the email, clearly can't remember the He clearly can't remember the email. Tell us what everything when you get this email? America stories Pod at gmail dot com. We do have a Twitter account and I'm going to look it up since your failing is the sostal media. Andrew It's America story Pod on Twitter at America's story Pod. Yeah, and uh, there's lots of different subjects to cover uh through for American Stories. Um, you know if you contact us on Twitter and how many suggestions for us for certainly like that as well that we have plenty of stories already kind of cooking up in our brains. Do you enjoy trains? So what I mean, what do you enjoy? People? Let us know which is everybody enjoys trains. I'm gonna make that posts. Jack loves trains. It's exciting. It makes sense with the Civil War. There's a train war. Yeah. Eventually we're going to get to ULSS Grant, which is uh Jack's twinter ye. Yes, yeah, we'll get to talk about Jack's other favorite guy, John Brown. John Brown. Oh, how did we go another? How do we go an episode without mentioning John Brown? He should be mentioned in every episode moving forward, Jack, that's another job to make sure John Brown gets mentioned in every episode. Something you put him in like our logo somewhere. I don't know. I think we can. I certainly. Yeah, that's a challenge accepted there. I like that. We still will have a John Brown T shirt one day, don't We don't know who owns the right to Minister Brown. Well, we negotiate the public domain. John Brown's in the public domain. Well I better get us out of this episode where we get us in trouble. All right, Well, yeah, thanks for listening to America Stories. We'll be back, I say next week. It's actually a bi weekly podcast. I think maybe we can release episodes weekly when we want too. We can do whatever we want. It's a podcasting. That's that's the best thing about podcasting. It's a free, free country. It's a John Brown go John Brown, go crazy. You can do whatever you want. And until then I'll be doing whatever i want. They'll be doing whatever they want. You'll be doing whatever you want. Keep being you and keep being great. You got the kind of face everybody knows. Run around man, fluid snoop, go into your hair and you like it. Finding the road and you do that's wrong. People got a thing for the dangers, find it inside. Do best to us, takeing what they wrong. Like you said to someone must do the best we can. Someone must do the best. Yeah, Jeff Townsend, media sees you. Good night. And the question is do I stay here? Will you be back? Are you gonna come back? Will you be back? Are you coming back
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