Legends of the Old West - NEW SHOW | “Mission History”

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Black Barrel Media and QCODE proudly share a preview of Mission History, a podcast that chronicles the tales of legendary military leaders, epic campaigns, and covert missions that remained hidden for years.  The first season journeys through the American Revolutionary War and pays homage to some of the elite soldiers on both sides of the conflict. It traces the origin from protests to rebellion to revolution. It illuminates the strategies of the leaders from both sides, the commanders on the battlefields, and the soldiers on the front lines. From the Boston Massacre to Bunker Hill … from the battles of Brooklyn, Brandywine, and Saragota to the battles of Camden, Cowpens, and Guilford Courthouse … and finally, to Yorktown … Mission History brings you the story of the American Revolutionary War presented by the Historic Camden Foundation in Camden, South Carolina. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Chris. Thanks for your patience during the longer than expected gap between new episodes. It was certainly not my intention, but as I seem to repeatedly learn, every time I think I have a plan in place, it falls apart. You're probably familiar with that feeling too. But I promise, new episodes of Legends of the Old West and Infamous America are on their way. If you're listening to this shortly after it's released, new series on both podcasts will begin Wednesday, October 4th.

In the meantime, I have something here to help fill the void. The reason the schedule has been so crazy is that I've been working overtime on our new podcast, Mission History. You may have heard the trailer back in April and seen some of our social media posts. Well, it's finally here. It's a military history podcast in partnership with our friends at Q Code Media, and Season 1 is the in-depth story of the American Revolutionary War, proudly presented by the historic Camden Foundation in Camden, South Carolina. You'll hear all the famous names and events and battles, but you'll also hear a lot of stuff you've probably never heard before.

If you're an American listener, your history textbooks in school probably skipped a ton of information about the campaign in the southern colonies in the second half of the war. That campaign changed the course of the war for the Americans. And you almost certainly didn't hear about the men on the British side who became some of the elite soldiers of the British army. They were the Scottish Highlanders of the 71st Regiment of Foot, also known as Fraser's Highlanders. You'll hear some of their stories, as well as their own words, just like you'll hear the words of the officers and privates on the American side.

Episodes 1 and 2 of Mission History are available right now. We did a double launch and released the first two episodes at once. Search for Mission History in whichever podcast player you're using right now. And if you want a preview, stay right here. I've pulled about 15 minutes of highlights from the first four episodes of the series. The full series will be 10 episodes, and the first eight will be the story of the war. You'll hear slices of episodes one and two at the beginning of the preview, and toward the end, you'll be the first to hear little tastes of episodes three and four. I hope you enjoy the preview, and I hope you give Mission History a shot on your favorite podcast player. Thanks.

That day, a wigmaker's apprentice walked past a British sentry post outside the Customs House on King Street. There was one lone soldier manning the station, and the apprentice shouted at the soldier because an officer had not paid a bill to the apprentice's employer. The soldier and the apprentice got into a heated argument, and the soldier hit the apprentice with his musket. Word of the altercation raced through the streets of Boston. Irate citizens rushed to the scene and quickly outnumbered the isolated soldier. The soldier called for reinforcements. As the sun set and the temperature dropped, seven soldiers and their captain rushed to the aid of the stranded sentry. There were now nine soldiers total, but they faced a crowd that grew by the minute. Bells clanged throughout the city, and people hurried toward the site of the disturbance.

The crowd grew to 300 people or more, and they shouted obscenities at the soldiers. They pelted the soldiers with rocks and snowballs, some of which allegedly contained cores of ice. The soldiers loaded their weapons in a display that was meant to subdue the escalating fervor of the mob. It had the opposite effect. The crowd raised the volume of its jeers and shouts, and then someone threw something like a stick that hit one of the soldiers and knocked him to the ground.

The scene turned to chaos, with screaming and yelling and objects flying toward the soldiers, and at some point, one of the soldiers fired his musket. The ball struck a former slave named Crispus Attucks, and he fell dead to the ground. The other soldiers fired, and the fusillade slammed into the crowd. Five men fell dead, and six more staggered with injuries. The captain shouted for his men to cease fire, and in the silence that followed, the gravity of the moment sank in. For the first time, British soldiers had fired on colonial civilians.

Long afterward, one of America's founding fathers, John Adams, reflected on the event and said, On that night, the foundation of American independence was laid. Paul Revere and William Dawes rode through the night, alerting homesteads and villages of the coming troops. Companies of colonial militiamen grabbed their guns and rushed to their town squares or village greens. These early colonial fighters were nicknamed the Minutemen for their willingness to be ready to move with little notice, at a minute's warning, as they said, and they proved it now.

At about 5 a.m., the British soldiers approached Lexington wearing their iconic red coats. The small town was on the road to Concord, and on a common area called Lexington Green stood 70 to 80 colonial militiamen and their captain, John Parker. The militiamen blocked the road, but they were badly outnumbered. When the first British soldiers rushed forward, Parker ordered the colonial militiamen to disperse. And in those first tense moments, someone fired a shot. To this day, no one knows if it was fired by a militiaman or a British soldier, but the British responded with a volley of musket fire that tore into the meager American force.

Seven militiamen died on Lexington Green, and another died later of his wounds. The colonials scattered, but that was just the beginning of a very long day for the British. Earlier in the spring, Congress had appointed Major General Charles Lee Commander of the Southern Department and sent him from New York to Charleston, South Carolina. South Carolina. As a city with a prominent port, Charleston was one of the keys to the South, and the key to protecting Charleston was protecting the fort on Sullivan's Island. Colonel William Moultrie was in charge of reinforcing the fort, and he manned the garrison with a little more than 400 men. Behind them, in Charleston, General Lee waited with more than 6,000 troops. The battle that day ended up being a cannon duel.

The British fleet shelled the colonial fort with an earth-shaking bombardment. For 11 hours, Colonel Moultrie and his men withstood the pounding from the British cannons. The cannonballs did little damage to the fort because it had been reinforced with logs from local palmetto trees. The palmetto walls and the lining of sand between them absorbed the cannonballs without shattering. Meanwhile, the colonial cannons blasted the British fleet and did severe damage. The waterways around Sullivan's Island were deceptively treacherous, and beyond them, there were swamps and sandbars. When British ground troops couldn't gain a foothold on the island, General Clinton called off the attack. The British retreated, and the first battle between the

British and the American colonists in the South was a colonial victory. It would be one to savor because it wouldn't happen again for a long time. Around New York, neither commander had the desire to move into a full-scale battle, so British General Henry Clinton put his plan for a southern campaign into motion. Clinton himself had failed to capture the port city of Charleston, South Carolina two years earlier, so now he turned his attention to another deep-water port, Savannah, Georgia.

Clinton ordered Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell to lead the expedition. Campbell was a battalion commander of the 71st Regiment of Foot, Fraser's Highlanders. Campbell assembled a force of 3,000 soldiers and set sail in late November. They arrived on the Georgia coast on December 23, 1778, and within six days, they captured Savannah. The Highlanders led the assault and were supported by Hessians and provincial regiments from New York and New Jersey. Captain Sir James Baird and Captain Charles Cameron led the Highlander light infantry companies who outflanked and surprised the American force that guarded Savannah.

Lieutenant Colonel John Maitland followed up with attacks from two sides with a combined force of Highlanders and Hessians. The Americans suffered heavy casualties, and the survivors retreated up to South Carolina. A company of Highlanders who took possession of the fort gave three cheers from the parapets as a signal to Captain Parker that the fort had fallen into our hands, and other companies of the right wing of the 71st Regiment immediately joined in the pursuit of the rebel army through the town of Savannah. Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell The British had their foothold in the south, and the southern theatre of the war was officially open.

foothold in the South, and the southern theater of the war was officially open. As the main army settled into their winter camps in the North, three years of non-stop fighting began in the South. Washington had been a young lieutenant colonel 20 years earlier during the French and Indian War, and he was currently a 43-year-old plantation owner who was active in local politics. Now, he was being asked to transform a collection of farmers and frontiersmen into an army because it seemed all but inevitable that the conflict between the colonies and England would grow into a full-scale war. Three months earlier, just three weeks before Lexington and Concord, Three months earlier, just three weeks before Lexington and Concord, Washington and the Virginia House of Burgesses had listened to an impassioned speech by Washington's fellow delegate, Patrick Henry.

Henry not only believed war was inevitable, he believed it needed to happen. The goal could be nothing less than independence, and the final line of his speech has been immortalized in American history. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. We have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending, we must fight. They tell us that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary.

But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable, and let it come. I repeat it, let it come. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.