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August 1776: When Independence Had to Be Defended · Live to Shoot - Defending our 2nd Amendment Rights

• 0:15
  Sheep Podcast.
• 0:16
  I'm Jeff Dowdle, and I've been a licensed firearm dealer for the last 18 years.
• 0:19
  In this podcast, we talk about all things related to the Second Amendment, anything else going on in the world, a sports story, or anything else I might find interesting.
• 0:26
  So welcome, welcome, welcome.
• 0:27
  If you've been following us for any time, you know that we've been as we've, uh, this is the 250th, uh, anniversary of the birth of America.
• 0:36
  We've been going month by month, looking back exactly 250 years to see what was going on during the American Revolution.
• 0:42
  And even though we've passed July 4th, we're gonna keep going on.
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  I have found this as being a very interesting exercise, and we may go all the way through to the end of the revolution, month by month.
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  So now, we're turning the calendar to August of 1776.
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  So last month, we talked about July 1776, and that was the big one, the Declaration of Independence, the moment where the colonies formally told the British crown,"We're done.
• 1:06
  We're out." It was bold, it was historic, and it changed the trajectory of the entire world.
• 1:11
  But here's the thing, declaring independence is one thing, defending it is something else entirely, and August 1776 is where the reality hit the Continental Army like a freight train.
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  So let's set the scene.
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  It's early August.
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  The Declaration's been signed, it's been read, and aloud in towns and cities across the colonies.
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  George Washington had it read to his troops in New York.
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  Morale was high.
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  The idea of liberty was in the air.
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  But the British weren't just sitting around listening to speeches, they were assembling the largest expeditionary force in British history right off the coast of New York.
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  Now, think about that for a second.
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  We're talking about 400 ships, somewhere around 32,000 troops, including those Hessian mercenaries we talked about a few months back.
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  Admiral Lord Howe and General William Howe were in command, and they had one objective: crush the rebellion and make an example out of it.
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  New York was the strategic prize.
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  Whoever controlled New York, controlled the Hudson River, and whoever controlled the Hudson could split the colonies in two.
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  The British knew it, Washington knew it, everybody knew it.
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  Washington positioned his forces to defend New York.
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  He had roughly 20,000 men.
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  But let's be straight with you.
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  A large number of them were poorly trained militia, short on supplies, short on experience, and about to face the most powerful military on the planet.
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  That's the reality of what an armed citizenry looked like in August of 1776.
• 2:34
  These weren't professional soldiers for the most part.
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  These were farmers, shop, shopkeepers, tradesmen who'd picked up their muskets because they believed it became something larger and bigger than themselves.
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  Now here's where it gets interesting, and honestly, where it gets painful.
• 2:49
  On August twenty-seventh, seventeen seventy-six, the Battle of Brooklyn, also known as the Battle of Long Island, took place, and it was a disaster for Americans.
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  The British executed a brilliant flanking maneuver.
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  They came around the left of the American defenses through a pass that was barely guarded, the Jamaica Pass, and they caught the Continental Army almost completely off guard.
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  The Americans suffered roughly a thousand ca- casualties, killed, wounded, and captured.
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  The British lost fewer than four hundred.
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  Washington's army was pu-pushed back to Brooklyn Heights, pinned against the East River with the British closing in.
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  By all accounts, this should have been the end.
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  The British could have pressed the attack, wiped out Washington's army, captured the commanding general, and the Revolution might have been over before it really even got started.
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  But then something remarkable happened.
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  On the night of August twenty-ninth, Washington orchestrated one of the most impressive retreats in military history.
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  Under the cover of darkness, with a providential fog rolling in to conceal their movements, Washington evacuated roughly nine thousand troops across the East River to Manhattan.
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  They used every boat they could find, rowboats, fishing vessels, anything that would float, and by morning, the British woke up to find the Americans' position empty.
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  Washington had saved the army.
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  And so what does that mean for us?
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  Why does this matter two hundred and fifty years later?
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  First, August seventeen seventy-six teaches us that declaring your rights and actually defending them are two different things.
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  The Declaration of Independence was a statement of principle.
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  The Battle of Brooklyn was a statement of reality.
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  Freedom costs something.
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  It's messy, it's ugly, and sometimes you take a beating in the process, but you don't quit.
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  Second, look at who was doing the fighting.
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  This wasn't some elite special force.
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  This was an armed citizenry, regular people, people who had the right to keep and bear arms and who exercised that right when it mattered most.
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  That is what the entire foundation of the Second Amendment is about.
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  The founders didn't put the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights because of hunting.
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  They put it in there because they lived through August of seventeen seventy-six.
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  They knew what it meant to stand against a government that wanted to disarm and control them.
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  They knew that armed populace is the last line of defense for liberty.
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  And third, Washington's retreat from Brooklyn shows us something about resilience.
• 4:58
  He didn't win that battle.
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  He got outmaneuvered, outgunned, but he kept his army intact.
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  He lived to fight another day.
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  And that's the lesson for all of us.
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  In the fight for the Second Amendment, we don't win every battle.
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  We face setbacks.
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  We face courts that rule against us, legislatures that pass bad laws, agencies that overreach, but you stay in the fight, you adapt, you regroup, and you keep going.
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  At the end of the day, August seventeen seventy-six is a reminder that freedom isn't free, and it's a guarantee just because you write it down on a piece of parchment, it has to be defended by real people with real arms and making real sacrifices.
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  That's was true two hundred and fifty years ago, and it's just as true today.
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  So if you found this interesting, subscribe, share it with somebody, give it five stars, do what all that kind of stuff is.
• 5:46
  This series is all about remembering where we came from and why we're fighting for it.
• 5:52
  We'll do September next month, and we'll keep on going.
• 5:55
  So I'm Jeff Dowdle.
• 5:56
  It's the Live to Shoot podcast, defending the Second Amendment.
• 5:59
  Stay informed, stay armed, and never stop fighting.
• 6:02
  Talk to you later.