Hayden's History Hour Ep. 1: America 250 And The Countdown To Freedom

Summary

Podcast Summary: Federalist Radio Hour – "Hayden's History Hour Ep. 1: America 250 And The Countdown To Freedom"

Date: February 3, 2026
Host: Hayden Daniel
Guest: Brianna Lyman, Federalist correspondent

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Episode Overview

The pilot episode of Hayden's History Hour focuses on the upcoming 250th anniversary of America's founding (“America 250”) and highlights Brianna Lyman's daily series, "Countdown to Freedom," which chronicles key Revolutionary events from January to July 1776. The conversation delves into often-overlooked moments from the American Revolution, the roles of ordinary people, and the struggle for independence, tying historical lessons to contemporary discussions on freedom, national character, and the importance of foundational values.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Countdown to Freedom: Goals and Approach

• Brianna Lyman introduces her micro-history series:
  • Intended for busy people: Episodes are under two minutes.
  • Focus: Not just on iconic figures/events, but also on ordinary colonists and lesser-known incidents.
  • Importance: Understanding the role of all contributors in the Revolution.
  • "The movement would have been unsuccessful and impossible if not for the average farmers and tavern keepers... who took up arms and were willing to fight and give their lives for the cause." – Brianna Lyman [01:25]

2. Divided Loyalties and Family Ties

• A significant slice of the population remained Loyalist, with complex ties to Britain.
• Many families and communities found themselves split in allegiance:
  • "It wasn't easy to convince all the colonists to pick up arms against a country of which... they had family living overseas." – Brianna Lyman [01:25]
• Up to a third of colonists remained loyal to Britain, with many leaving post-war (to Canada/England) [02:21]

3. Microhistories—Small Events, Big Impact

• Example: The burning of remaining houses for firewood while British officers mocked colonists at a Boston play.
  • Showcases colonial resilience and the underestimated tactics of local militias.
  • "Little stories like that really help set the big picture of what the colonists... were really willing to do to secure their freedom." – Brianna Lyman [02:55]

4. Research and Storytelling in "Countdown to Freedom"

• Research draws from both major historical milestones and obscure, “slow-news days.”
• Emphasizes the growing pressure to take sides as neutrality faded.
  • "There was no such thing as being neutral past July 4, 1776; you were a Loyalist or you were a patriot." – Brianna Lyman [05:39]

5. Hardships and Sacrifice

• Revolutionary struggles included extreme deprivation, blockades, and lack of supplies.
  • Patriots often endured more than even the British at times, e.g., Boston blockades [07:44].
• Motivation: Fighting for future generations, not just themselves.
  • "They did it all not even for themselves... but for their children and their grandchildren and people like you and I today..." – Brianna Lyman [07:44]

6. Key Stories and Coincidences

• The Benedict Arnold/John Andre episode:
  • The capture of Major John Andre—and his hidden plans—by three Patriot militiamen prevented the fall of West Point, possibly saving the Revolution.
  • "[They] saved the revolution, because had British gained control of the Hudson River and West Point, that would have been catastrophic." – Brianna Lyman [09:06]
• Coincidences and contingencies—history hinged on small moments and choices [11:52].

7. Family, Division, and Personal Cost

• The Revolution split families—case of Ben Franklin and his Loyalist son William, who became estranged and never reconciled.
  • "Even our greatest founders were willing to lose their children over the cause." – Brianna Lyman [15:18]

8. The Revolution as Civil War

• Parallels with English Civil War: grievances, divided colonies, and reluctance for radical break.
• Argument over when colonists shifted from fighting for English rights to full independence [20:39].

9. Accumulation of Grievances and Irreversible Paths

• Importance of key events (Lexington & Concord, use of Hessian mercenaries) and accumulating frustrations that pushed colonists to embrace independence.
  • "The king hired Hessian soldiers... to quite literally slaughter them... so, you know, the colonists thought they knew their enemy." – Brianna Lyman [21:57]

10. Canada's Role and Outcome

• Failed efforts to include Canada in the rebellion; complex relationship due to land allocations, population makeup [23:31].
• "Did they miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime?" – Brianna Lyman [24:31]

11. Foundational Values: Christianity and the Constitution

• America's enduring difference: a written constitution rooted in Christian values.
  • "We're not a democracy... What underpins our understanding of equality is Christianity." – Brianna Lyman [25:01]
• The necessity and brilliance of a written constitution as opposed to the British system [26:38].

12. Constitutional Debates and Their Legacy

• Battles between Federalists and Anti-Federalists; the ongoing struggle to maintain constitutional integrity against modern reinterpretations and activist judges [27:43].
• "The stories of hardship and sacrifice really underscore why we need to protect the Constitution and the vision that the founders had." – Hayden Daniel [29:01]

13. The Claremont Institute’s Publius Fellowship (and Reading the Founders)

• Lyman’s time at Claremont: intensive on natural rights, the philosophical and religious basis of American government, and why America “went wrong” is not the Constitution’s fault [29:44].
• "Claremont's entire thing is the founding was perfect... Any problem we have today... [is] not a result of the Constitution being wrong." – Brianna Lyman [31:42]
• Need to actively read primary sources and founding documents to understand America's heritage, as public education fails to do so [36:16].

14. America 250: Commemoration and Cultural Narrative

• Critique of the current government America 250 commission as ideologically left-leaning and misfocused.
  • "The woman who's running it... when asked who her favorite founding father was, she said she doesn't have one. She actually has favorite founding mothers. There is no such thing as a founding mother." – Brianna Lyman [37:05]
• Praise for Trump’s alternative "Freedom250" initiatives: plans for the Garden of National Heroes, national state fair, and outreach efforts.
  • Some concern over insufficient public awareness and promotion [39:44].
• Emphasis: America 250 is a vital opportunity to reclaim the narrative and remind citizens of the country’s greatness and shared values [41:12].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ordinary colonists:
  "The entire movement would have been unsuccessful and impossible if not for the average farmers and tavern keepers... who took up arms and were willing to fight and give their lives for the cause."
  – Brianna Lyman [01:25]

• On the impact of small incidents:
  "It’s little stories like that that really help set the big picture of what the colonists, the militia, were really willing to do to secure their freedom."
  – Brianna Lyman [02:55]

• On the internal divides of the revolution:
  "Even our greatest founders were willing to lose their children over the cause."
  – Brianna Lyman [15:18]

• On America's unique foundation:
  "What underpins our understanding of equality is Christianity. You don’t see that in other countries where they say all men are created equal."
  – Brianna Lyman [25:01]

• On writing the Constitution:
  "Thank God they did come up with the Constitution. Thank God they put in what they put in. Because we see today how willing Republicans and Democrats would be to strip us of certain fundamental rights..."
  – Brianna Lyman [26:38]

• On reading the founding documents:
  "Public schooling does a terrible job of exposing kids to primary source documents... but it's vital... to even have a chance of understanding the American founding."
  – Hayden Daniel [36:16]

• On the politics of America 250:
  "There is no such thing as a founding mother... The Founding fathers did something that nobody else, male or female, in other places could do. Right."
  – Brianna Lyman [37:05]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:43 – Introduction to America 250 and Countdown to Freedom
• 01:25 – The challenge of rallying all colonists; divided loyalties
• 02:21 – Macro vs micro-history; small events shaping the Revolution
• 04:14 – Personal connection: Lyman’s family history
• 05:39 – Doing research, pressure to pick a side
• 07:44 – Hardships of Revolution and blockades
• 09:06 – The story of Benedict Arnold & saving West Point
• 15:18 – Ben Franklin and his son: family divisions
• 21:57 – The use of Hessian mercenaries as an intolerable escalation
• 23:31 – Canada’s missed opportunity and colonial grievances
• 25:01 – America’s uniqueness: Christianity and a written constitution
• 29:44 – Claremont Institute’s Publius Fellowship
• 37:05 – Critique of America 250 leadership and the importance of narrative
• 39:44 – Discussion of Freedom250 and public awareness
• 41:12 – Final thoughts on seizing the opportunity to celebrate American history

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Conclusion

This wide-ranging conversation explores how the legacy of the American Revolution is richer and more complex than textbook heroics: families split by loyalty, lesser-known but pivotal incidents, and the extraordinary contributions of ordinary people. The episode also probes contemporary disputes over commemorating America’s founding and reasserts the need for education rooted in primary sources and the original moral vision of the founding generation.
Final Message: Engaging deeply with America’s origins—warts and all—is not just a matter of history, but an essential act of citizenship and national memory as the country marks its 250th birthday.

Transcript

[Hayden Daniel]

Hello and welcome to this special series of the Federalist History Hour. I'm Hayden Daniel, editor at the Federalist. As always, you can email the [e-mail] Follow us on Twitter ederalist. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts and of course, the premium version of our website as well. I'm joined today by Brianna Lyman, correspondent at the Federalist. Welcome to the show.

[Brianna Lyman]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Hayden Daniel]

America's got a pretty big birthday coming up, the big 250 this July 4th, and the white House is pretty busy working on a very special little celebration. I also understand that you are busy on this little special project celebrating this nation's founding called Countdown to Freedom, in which you chronicle the events of the Revolution from January 1, 1776 to July 4, 1776, when the founders signed the Declaration of Independence and leapt out into the unknown and embarked America on this great political experiment that we have been on for the last 250 years. Is that correct?

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah, it's just, it's been almost a month now. We're coming up on that one month mark and it's a lot of fun. If you haven't already had a chance to check it out, I encourage it. It's under two minutes because I don't want to bog people down. I know everyone has a busy life, but I think it's really important as we head to July 4th to understand just kind of reality. Not only were the founders facing, but average colonist, right. The the entire movement would have been unsuccessful and impossible if not for the average farmers and tavern keepers and so forth and so forth who took up arms and were willing to fight and give their lives for the cause. And in order to give their lives for the cause, they needed to be convinced. And Hayden, I know you know this as well, but it wasn't easy to convince all the colonists to pick up arms against a country of which, you know, they had family living overseas. Maybe they were born overseas and came here. Maybe their parents were. There were a lot of ties and similarities between the two people. So it was very difficult to convince them to raise arms against one another.

[Hayden Daniel]

Yes, up to a third of the colonists remain loyal to Britain and many of them left after the revolution mostly to Canada, but also to England as well. And I think that's one of the really impressive things about your series is that you not only take a big macro look at the revolution as in big events like Thomas Paine's Common Sense, you did that episode a few days ago or Benjamin Franklin's birthday. But you also look at the very small but still very important events that happened to normal colonists that either push them towards loyalism or push them towards the patriot cause.

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah. And I think that's like. And I really enjoy doing that. I love doing the research and digging into it. For example, you know, I think it was probably a week and a half ago there was an incident. It might have actually been January 8th. There was an incident in which colonists had wanted to go and basically take back the remaining houses that had been left after the British kind of, you know, burned down the area because they didn't want the British using the remaining wood for firewood. And so they launched this, like, overnight little expedition and managed to take captive a few British people and burned the remaining wood down. And it's a funny story because, one, no one hears of it, and two, at the same time that the colonists were doing this, the British were actually enjoying a play in Boston mocking the Continental army as being a bunch of, you know, country bumpkins. Meanwhile, those country bumpkins were out there burning down the firewood that they were dependent on. So it's little stories like that that really help set the big. The big picture of what the. The colonists, the militia, were really willing to do and to what, Leng, secure their freedom.

[Hayden Daniel]

Yep. The British definitely, especially the officers, definitely underestimated the sort of rustic provincials that they thought the colonists were. And they sort of got a rude awakening in instances like that. What inspired you to start this series? I mean, it's a pretty big undertaking, even if all the videos are under two minutes. I mean, it's quite the. Quite the project.

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah, I can definitely adjust to that. I'm currently working on doing a new studio setup, so we're having some technical difficulties, folks, but honestly, there were two big things. First and foremost, America is worth it. She's worth so much more. You know, I. I think of all the brave men and women who have sacrificed their lives and. Or their just their time to serve this country, and I'll be honest, I think I'm too much of a wuss to. To put myself in that position. And I just wanted to figure out a way that I could also honor America in a way that, you know, maybe some other people also can't or would be interested in. So this is hopefully my way of kind of giving back. One, to cover what makes America so great. And two, I just have a lot of family history. I am a Mayflower descendant. I have Revolutionary War patriots, my direct ancestors. I'M related to John Adams distantly. So this is my way of also trying to remember the story that my ancestors lived too. I mean, they lived in Massachusetts. They experienced this firsthand. They were, you know, Paul Revere's Midnight Ride, they were there kind of deal. So it's just trying to give the right amount of coverage to ordinary, again, colonists who were doing the extraordinary things.

[Hayden Daniel]

Yeah, it's. It's a bit of a running gag amongst the Federals about how many revolutionary figures that you're related to. So how do you do the research for these episodes, especially the ones that aren't. That are stories that aren't as well known?

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah, that's a great question. So obviously I'm fortunate enough that there are a few big, you know, the burning of Norfolk. I know a lot of people who watched that episode were mad that I mispronounced it as Nor Fork. But I am from New York and it's difficult for my R's and L's like that. For example, the episode that I'm hoping to get out today, if it does not run into technical issues, is actually not even a story that's really happening today. Because some days there was nothing like actually happening. Right. There were no. No proclamations, no decrees, no big meetings. So it's about finding something about what was happening for the colonists. And for the colonists on a day like this, they were struggling. Those who were remaining neutral, they were going to have to pick a side. Right. There was no such thing as being neutral past July 4, 1776, you were a Loyalist or you were a patriot. And so there was a lot of stuff building up. So the past, you know, yesterday and tomorrow in 1776, you're going to start seeing reports popping up in local newspapers in Pennsylvania, in Virginia, basically saying, we cannot sit back, everybody. Like, this is the time to fight for freedom. You know, you're not fighting against your brothers in England. You're fighting against the Parliament and the Crown. You can separate those two things. Your freedom is at stake. And it was a really tough decision for, like you said, you know, about a third of the colonists living in America. So for stories or days like this, when it feels a little slow, it's about putting yourself in a. An average colonist shoe.

[Hayden Daniel]

Yes. And it was not, as Thomas Paine might say, it was not a time for fair weather soldiers at the time. It would only get worse after 1776. I mean, the colonists went through all sorts of privations. I mean, most people know about Washington's army and Valley Forge, how terribly they suffered during the winter there. But even just normal colonists suffered quite a bit with the semi British blockade, especially once they captured New York and Charleston, the two major ports in the colonies, and Boston. But, yeah, it was lean times for the Revolution, but the Patriots stuck it out and persevered. So has working on this series giving you a greater appreciation for the Revolution?

[Brianna Lyman]

Oh, of course. I mean, there's so many different things. You know, for example, you just mentioned the blockade. And blockades were really difficult. More, I would argue, for the British than they were for the colonists at certain points in the war. So in 1776, it was actually more difficult, I'd say, for the British in Boston, for example. Right. Because the Patriots had pretty much taken control of most of everything except for Boston. But they were doing blockades. When British ships were trying to bring supplies up to Boston, they were actually running into trouble around, you know, New Jersey and New York ports by Patriots who were taking over these ships and saying, you're not going there. Right. And you just think of the sacrifice that's so. So many of these men had made. You know, it's freezing in New York right now. Right. But I have a really big warm sweater, and I'll put a scarf on and gloves. A lot of these men, they didn't have those things. Right. Supplies were low. Their shoes, you know, if they're marching miles and miles and miles, sometimes those shoes got worn and they didn't even wear them. And they did this again. They did it all. Not even for themselves. A lot of them understood they were signing up to possibly die, and yet they still did it, but they were doing it for their children and their grandchildren and people like you and I today who enjoy, you know, the privileges that they got for us so far.

[Hayden Daniel]

Or even if you can give us a little glimpse into the future. What are some of your favorite stories and episodes that you've looked into?

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah, this one was, like, a little. A little different. So Benedict Arnold's birthday was last week. And of course, he's a traitor. I'm not giving him props. But there is one story from the revolution that I probably won't be able to tell otherwise unless I tell it for Benedict Arnold's birthday because it occurred a few years into the war, but it took place in Tarrytown, New York. And Benedict Arnold, by, I think it was like, 1781, he had been really slighted. Okay. He had been passed over for promotions. He also had a really reckless spending habit. So he was accumulating a Ton of debt. And he decided, you know what? I'm not sticking it out with the Patriots. I am going to side and become a turncoat and go with the British. And what was really dangerous is that Benedict Arnold controlled West Point, which, for those of you who may not know, West Point is the. Or was the colonial military fort. Now, it's obviously a military academy, and it's right on the Hudson river in New York, which was a crucial waterway for the Patriots, okay? And they had control of it right now, or part of it, at least. And Benedict Arnold was planning on giving it away to the British. So one night in September, he meets with Major John Andre, a British general, and he gives him plans about how he's going to basically give the British control of West Point. And he tells Major John Andre, okay, put these in your boots and, you know, go down to New York City and bring these to your superiors. And Major John Andre heads down to New York City, and two or three days later, he's about 20 miles from New York City, so safety. And he accidentally ends up on a dirt road in Tarrytown, where three militiamen are sitting under what has been described as a tulip tree. And they notice this guy coming down. And the Major John Andre had seen one of the militiamen wearing a hessian coat, and the guy was just cold. The Major John Andre thought, oh, these must be, you know, people on my side. So he goes, oh, I'm actually a British general. And the Patriots go, well, we're not. And so they make him step off his horse, they search him, and they're like, all right. And they're just about to let him go. And suddenly one of the patriots says, take your shoe off. And Major John Andre takes his shoe off. And there are those papers that he is going to bring to the British, who basically say that Benedict Arnold is going to hand over control of West Point. And those three Patriots, right? Three average men who just signed up to be part of the local militia saved the revolution, because had British gained control of the Hudson river and West Point, that would have been catastrophic. George Washington even said that these three men have basically tried or have basically saved the revolutionary cause. So it's stories like that where you don't hear it enough, but you think of just one small mistake. If they would have let John Andre go without checking his boots. We may be talking about something different today.

[Hayden Daniel]

And it really underscores, sort of the coincidences that play a far larger role in American history and just history in general, that we often really don't think about, like, what if that patriot had not been wearing a hessian coat and Andre had lied and said, oh, I'm with the Patriots, and would they have just let him pass? Or if they had not been there at all, what would have happened? It's just those little coincidences play a lot bigger part in history in general than a lot of people really give it credit for. And I also want to stress just how strategically important West Point was in North America in general. The British had recognized that control of the Hudson river was basically the key to winning the war. I mean, if they could take control of the entire Hudson, they basically cut the colonies in half and then be able to deal with each half and independently. And that was actually the. The aim of the British campaign Battle of Saratoga, which many people believe is is the real turning point of the war. Coincidentally, Benedict Arnold was a commanding general of the patriot forces during that patriot victory, and he was wounded in action and was a war hero. But he then later blamed the commanding general, Horatio Gates, of, like, stealing his glory. That's one of the reasons he eventually. Turncoat.

[Brianna Lyman]

Right, Right. And exactly. You think of, again, you just, you know, made a great point. Benedict Arnold is someone who very well would have been remembered as an American hero after the war ended, but he just let his, his ego get in the way and he basically died a man. You know, I think he died actually over in England. But, you know, his legacy is that of a traitor. It doesn't matter that he helped win at Saratoga. It doesn't matter of all the good things he did, what matters is he did one bad thing, and that was defining.

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[Hayden Daniel]

So what are some. Maybe some individual facts that you maybe didn't know going in that you. That you've learned now that really sort of giving you more insight into the. Into the revolution?

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah. This was the subject of my Friday episode, I believe. And I. I love Ben Franklin. I. I've read a lot, and I thought I. I knew him pretty well. But the one thing I didn't realize is that his son William actually had a big falling out with Benjamin Franklin over the war. And I think that just goes to show you the personal toll that it took on one again, families, neighbors, but two, even our greatest founders were willing to lose their children over the cause. So William was the royal governor of New Jersey. Obviously, we know who Ben Franklin is. And William refused to become a patriot. And Ben Franklin and him were fighting about it. Then 1776 comes around, and William still doesn't want to budge, and he gets arrest by patriot forces and is thrown in a jail. And Ben Franklin does nothing to get his son out of jail. He actually lets his son linger in jail for a long time. When William's wife was on her deathbed, he had begged, you know, the, you know, Continental congress to let him have an exception to go see his wife. George Washington, I believe, even wrote a letter kind of attesting, like, all right, can we let this guy at least go see his wife? And Ben Franklin did nothing, as his father, to even say, I second this, or like, yeah, is there anything I can do? Can I speak to someone? Nothing. And when they finally reconciled after the war, Ben Franklin said, you know, this cost me so much great pain losing you for all those years, but I'm always your affectionate father. And then they met in person a short while later, and Ben Franklin said to William, apologize. You were a traitor, not only against, you know, the colonies, but against your own father. And William refused, and they never spoke again.

[Hayden Daniel]

That really just shows, again, just how fractious this war was, which we don't hear about that much. I think we usually think of the civil war as the sort of war between brothers and the war in which families are fractured and loyalties are really tested. But as your series has kind of revealed, that that's also true in the revolution.

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is. It is literally neighbor versus neighbor. And, you know, one way to think about the Revolutionary war is it was our revolution, but it was England's civil war that was a civil war for them because things had gone their way, we would have eventually reconciled to some degree. And, you know, the king at other points had said, you know, if we. If we. His October speech of 1775, he said, like, if you put your arms down now, you know, we're gonna. We're gonna welcome you back into it. And that would have been the end of a civil war. It just so happened that we were able to win and it turned into our revolution. But when you think of it in the context of a civil war, it really makes that, you know, brother versus brother, neighbor versus neighbor, all the more real.

[Hayden Daniel]

And it's funny you refer to it as a civil war, because during the English Civil war in the 1640s, you basically see every single grievance the colonists bring up in 1775, 1776 were also grievances of Parliament to the king in the 1640s, before the English Civil War. I mean, everything from taxation, no taxation without representation, to quartering of troops in normal citizens homes, those were all grievances that Parliament had with the king in the 1640s. And it's just a little both tragic and a little humorous that they seem to forget all those rights that they fought and had this very bloody civil war in the 1640s for. They seem to forget all of those also apply to their fellow Englishmen there in the colonies, too, which then leads to the American Revolution. And during the English Civil War, different colonies took different sides, too. So even then, it was a little bit of a battle between countrymen. Like, Maryland was a royalist stronghold, while New England was a parliamentarian stronghold. So you see this kind of pattern throughout the English colonial history of the thirteen colonies.

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah, yeah. And then you'd think that the crown would have learned from their mistakes in the 1600s, but they obviously didn't. And in a newspaper that came out on January 22, 1776, that I've been reading in the past few days, it was a speech they had reprinted, a speech that was given in London in September of 1775 from, you know, Britons who were basically sympathetic, to a degree, to the patriot cause by saying, look, they have tried everything. They've had their grievances accumulate, they haven't been heard. No free man can live under such type of duress. And so you even have, again, Britain's understanding the cause of the patriots. And it's also why the patriots were making appeals to the people of Britain, not just Parliament, right? But to the average citizens in Britain saying, like, hey, look, like we don't want to fight you guys. We're Just upset about, you know, our rights being trampled and taken away because they also were trying to hope for some kind of reconciliation with the Crown. And again, not everybody, you know, there were certain founders. You know, Sam Adams, he absolutely was not someone who was like, yeah, we can reconcile this one. But, you know, people like Ben Franklin, up to a certain point, I think he believed reconciliation was possible. I think some of the others definitely did. But, you know, the Crown made it unfeasible.

[Hayden Daniel]

Yes, you have radicals like Sam Adams who, who are sort of gung ho from the beginning for just complete separation. But I think if you look at most of the founders and most of the people who lived in the colonies in 1774, 1775, before some kind of the, the threshold of no return had been reached, most of them would say that they may even prefer to stay with England and that they're just trying to re. Establish their rights as Englishmen. Now that's a, a somewhat healthy debate in the historical community when that kind of transition happened from trying to re establish their, what they saw as their English, natural English rights to we're just going to be our own country and as secure our own rights. And of course, it happened sometime before July 4, 1776, obviously. But that was a very lively and very, very contentious debate in the thirteen colonies in the, in the lead up to, and ultimately independence. And it's still a subject of debate. Exactly when that happened and when public opinion kind of shifted towards independence rather than reconciliation.

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah, and, and you know, there were. There are obviously several events that, that pushed people further, obviously. Lexington and Concord, you know, the shot heard around the world, the burning of Norfolk, that was actually one of the grievances that the founders listed in the Declaration. There were what, 25 grievances, I believe there were, but there were little, not little things, but there were some big things. And then there were some smaller things, however, that accumulated to the point where colonists could not ignore the fact that the King was willing to do whatever. And I think something interesting that happened in January 1776 was the king hired Hessian soldiers, and this had been done in previous wars, but it hadn't been done to slaughter, you know, the colonists. Right. It was always fighting another empire. And the colonists saw that as really just an egregious display of authority, authority by the Crown, because here he was hiring these, you know, foreign mercenaries to quite literally slaughter them, because these were trained killers. So, you know, the colonists thought they knew their enemy. They thought they knew it was the British. But, you know, 12,000 Hessian soldiers were headed their way. Thomas Jefferson references in the Declaration of Independence as well in the, in the grievances. So there were, there were just a lot of things that pushed colonists further. But again, like you said, a third of them still never made that complete switch. And they did flee up to, you know, Nova Scotia and Canada. I unfortunately have one loyalist in my family tree that I try to ignore, but he fled to Nova Scotia as well.

[Hayden Daniel]

You might have to blame him more for being Canadian than a loyalist, you.

[Brianna Lyman]

Know, and, you know, it's funny you say Canada. Think about Canadians today. I mean, my God, did they miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime? Because the colonists had tried to actually get Canada to join them in their fight against England. And, and they said no.

[Hayden Daniel]

There was a, a very small unit of Canadian volunteers who did fight with the patriots. But yes, in general, Canadians did not join the Revolution partly because Canada was one of the reasons the revolution started. I mean, a large portion of the land that the colonists wanted after the end of the French and Indian War went to Canada, like modern day Ohio, Indiana, Michigan. That was all allotted to Canada and they were allowed to settle there. But the 13 colonies supposedly on the winning side of that war were not allowed to settle there also because roughly half of Canada's population in 1775 was French. And the French and the colonists did not get along very well. So they, the, the French colonists in Canada decided they would rather stick with the Crown than with the angry colonists who didn't like them very much.

[Brianna Lyman]

That is, that is like the biggest fumble of the, the century.

[Hayden Daniel]

I don't know, we might be, we might be lucky that we don't have, I know, the Quebec Qua in our country. Bad for Canada, maybe not so bad for us.

[Brianna Lyman]

No, I agree. I agree. It's good for us. I wouldn't want the Canadians today. I don't think they understand. And here's the thing, I don't. I don't think like, they understand freedom the way we do. I don't think any country understands freedom the way do, because, you know, we are a republic, and at the end of the day, there's no other successful republic anywhere in the world. They may have adopted, you know, certain democratic values, but we're not a democracy. Right. And they may have adopted, you know, the idea that all men are created equal as well. But what underpins our understanding of, of equality is Christianity. You don't see that in other countries where they say all men are created equal. Right. What's underpinning it is simply that you have, you know, a mob majority saying, yeah, of course, all men are created equal, but there's no foundation to that truth for them. Right. So we are the only country that could do what we've done because of our Christian foundations.

[Hayden Daniel]

Very true. Our Christian foundation, and I think importantly, our written constitution. Because it's not so much today, but once upon a time, Britain did have a moral Christian foundation, and they were largely on the same track that we were, but they didn't have a written constitution. So that opens up a lot of wiggle room and a lot of room for maneuver that unsavory characters can use to their political advantage, as we've seen in Britain, to their absolute detriment. And that country is just such a mess right now, and it's largely because of their flawed governmental system. I think we can say that.

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah. And it's funny, too, because you think about, you know, at the time of the founding, British. British England's lack of a written Constitution. And when the founders were, you know, going through the process of actually creating our system of government after the war ended, you had a lot of people, including Richard Henry lee, who on June 7, 1776, would put forward a proclamation saying to the colonies, now is the time to declare our independence, like it's now or never. He. He voted against the Constitution because he worried that it was a flawed document and that the states would lose their power, they would lose rights. They had. It could be, you know, effectively taken out of context, so to speak. And so you had that infighting between the Founders for several years. And thank God they did come up with the Constitution. Thank God they put in what they put in. Because we see today how willing Republicans and Democrats would be to strip us of certain fundamental rights or at least, you know, severely restrict them.

[Hayden Daniel]

Doesn't stop the Democrats from trying, as we've seen in that current SCOTUS case in Hawaii, about just trying to, like, wholesale strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights. But yes, that battle between the Federalists and anti Federalists and the anti Constitutionalists, very fierce debate after the Revolution. And then really, I mean, strains of that argument continue until the Civil War, you know, whether state power is sovereign over federal power and or vice versa. And that's pretty decisively settled by the Civil War.

[Brianna Lyman]

Right, right. And I mean, now we're kind of having that same debate to a degree. You know, Minnesota's in open rebellion against the federal government. They're trying to pull, I guess. I guess, like a nullification crisis of their Own. But that was settled. Right. Calhoun literally lost enough crisis, which I hate. And you, this is, this is your forte here. But, you know, we're still having these debates, right? There's still, still so many things that I wouldn't say necessarily are unclear. I think they're clear. But, you know, Democrats try to find workarounds. When you have an activist judiciary, it's very easy to then affect those workarounds. But, you know, there's still a lot of people who are fighting the Constitution very much so.

[Hayden Daniel]

All those stories we hear from the revolution and all those stories of hardship and sacrifice really underscores why we need to protect the Constitution and the vision that, that the founders had, if for nothing else, to honor their legacy and their sacrifice during the revolution. Speaking of sort of the foundation of the country, especially the moral underpinning, last year you participated in the very prestigious Publius Fellowship with the Claremont Institute. And you let me see some of your reading list, and there's very interesting readings on there. Would you like to describe sort of your time at the fellowship and what kind of things that you read while you were there?

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah. First of all, for anybody who is, you know, in college or a recent college grad or Even, you know, mid to late 20s, if you have the opportunity to become a fellow at Claremont, do it. I wish I had done it earlier. I wish I could do it every single year. But you can only take the fellowship once. But they have a few fellowships, so I did the Publius Fellowship. That is about a two and a half week program, and it really grounds young thinkers in natural rights. And I think so often, you know, a lot of conservatives even, we're taught conservative policies and we read these things and we hear the word rights or natural rights, and we think, yeah, that's, that's very self evident. But there's so many people I know who, who don't actually know what a natural right is. Right. They don't understand where rights come from. And so what Claremont is really able to do is, first of all, it starts you with some, you know, Greek philosophy, right. You. You learn about the philosophers, and then you see how the founders rely on those philosophers and then also relied on Christianity to come up with, you know, one, the idea for independence, the justification for independence. We do the. We go through the Federalist Papers, then we kind of jump to probably like the 1830s. We start talking about Calhoun and Lincoln, and then we obviously go over the Civil War, and then we use everything that we learned, all these new foundations, and we talk about the modern day, right? We talk about what. What went wrong in our country because something has gone wrong, terribly wrong, but it's not that it's a fault of the Constitution. So Claremont's entire thing is the founding was perfect, right? Everything about the founding. It may have been difficult at the time, but looking back now, it was perfect. Any problem we have today in America is not a. A result of the Constitution being wrong or the founding getting it wrong, or the system of government being wrong. No, it's something else. So we're trying to find that something else, and they're trying to teach us to think about, you know, identifying what that something else is.

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[Hayden Daniel]

I think it's very interesting that you brought up Christianity as a moral underpinning of the founding, because I don't know if you've noticed this during your readings as well, but whenever I read something from basically before 1900, like biblical references are everywhere. They talk constantly about the Bible and use biblical justifications for their positions. It's astounding to see it given how religion has just basically just been erased from our public discourse today over the last few decades.

[Brianna Lyman]

Right, right.

[Hayden Daniel]

And.

[Brianna Lyman]

And think about, like, Thomas Aquinas, right? He speaks a lot about something like eternal law, and he says, or he believes that God represents eternal law. Right? Because that's a combination of reason and revelation. Right? Reason leads to natural law. So all humans are endowed with reason because God endows them with it. And they use that and they use revelations in the Bible, right? We. We see. See common sense things in the Bible, right? We see a good moral foundation. And you combine those two things and you're able to kind of get a really solid framework for a functioning and healthy society. And what the founders saw is that Christianity, or God, I should say God gives humans human rights or natural rights and reason because God creates man in his image, right? That comes from Genesis. And so the reason that Christianity is so important is because the founders use that self evident truth that all men are created equal because they are made in God's image, and applied that to a structure of government which no one at that time had tried to do at all.

[Hayden Daniel]

Yes, I think that's very interesting that, that it really is the only original application of that, that of that idea. Like as you said, other republics have sort of copied our system, but the founders are basically the only ones to establish it out of, out of whole cloth, really. And during your fellowship, did you, you read all these things from the mouths of the founders themselves? You read their writings. You read the writings of the people in the 1830s and 40s during the slavery debates. You're reading primary source stuff.

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah, yeah. And again, like that is, that is the best way to do it because, you know, first of all, everything of course, is, you know, slightly open to interpretation. And if you read just one founding document, you can easily take that out of context. And so Claremont does a really good job of accumulating the right resources that you're reading everything within the context of one another, right? You're not just getting random papers here or there. You're. They're building up to something bigger. And, and to go back to how so many of our great statesmen constantly used religion or were signaling to Christianity, you know, think of, think of Abraham Lincoln, right? Think of the Gettysburg Address. Every single line in that was not only deliberate. I know it was, what, 273 words. But every line and every word choice was deliberate. And there were so many references to Christianity, right. You know, the idea of, you know, four score and, you know, that is obviously a reference to 1776. But also like the Bible, you know, describes the human lifespan at a certain point, and Lincoln is acknowledging that, like, we are reaching that lifespan as said in the Bible of the country. Like, are we going to, you know, basically like outlift this? And Mary Lincoln later said that her husband was extremely religious, heading to Gettysburg when he gave the Gettysburg Address. And we see that in their documents. And we, if you notice, that's what guided Lincoln through the Civil War. That's what was the basis for all of his decisions and for his position in the Civil War. And so many of our politicians today, they lack that moral compass. And I think that's why we're partially in the position we are in today, because people don't have that foundation to ground them.

[Hayden Daniel]

Not just our politician, a lot of our citizenry don't either. I think largely because they don't read those primary source documents and they don't read the Bible either. Like public schooling does a terrible job of exposing kids to primary source documents especially, especially over the last decade and a half or so with sort of the, the advent of DEI and things that just totally throw anything made by a, you know, a dead white male out the window. But it's vital to, to read those kind of things, to even have a, a chance of understanding the American founding and the American Revolution and American history just as a whole. The struggle I think we have with America 250 overall just kind of bring it back to the subject of the.

[Brianna Lyman]

Of the interview I was going to say with, you know, with America 250. This is a body of people who are supposed to be celebrating America, and it is being run by far left wing activists. For example, the woman who's running it, and I'm drawing a name on, drawing a blank on her name of course, right now, but when asked who her favorite founding father was, she said she doesn't have one. Right. She actually has favorite founding mothers. There is no such thing as a founding mother. Right. Abigail Adam may have been the closest thing we got to. And don't get me wrong, she was extremely inspirational for her husband, let alone for other women. Right? This was, this was a powerhouse of a female. But at the end of the day, she is not a founder in any sense of the word. Right? And it's insulting that you have people running America to 50 who can't even recognize that because they're so deluded by this, you know, warped gender ideology that, you know, masculinity is toxic. And think about all the great work feminists did. Women have done a lot of great things, right? But so have men. Right? And men have done different things than women, like founding a country. And don't get me wrong again, women were instrumental, you know, being the backbone for their husbands, keeping care of the house and the children, you know, tending to farms when their husbands were off at war. No one's, you know, d degrading those important actions of them. But we should also be able to acknowledge the Founding fathers did something that nobody else, male or female, in other places could do. Right. But it's important for people to remember that President Trump has come up with a different organization called Freedom250. And they are doing a much better job honoring America's founding than America 250. So if you have to choose between the two, remember, Freedom250 is the one to go to and to to subscribe to.

[Hayden Daniel]

Yes. And the Trump administration has a few big events planned I think the Garden of National Heroes is supposed to be unveiled, I think close to or on July 4, 2026. And they're supposed to be a sort of a national state fair. And it's kind of an oxymoron. It's supposed to be a big giant state fair. I think they're thinking about it in Iowa, that, that represents every single state. And those are great ideas. And yes, the, the Trump administration set up organization is at least ideologically leagues better than the other option. But maybe my one problem with it is that you kind of have to look for it.

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah.

[Hayden Daniel]

This might just be my personal experience, but I don't think they've done particularly good job advertising any of these things.

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I actually wasn't aware of it until I was talking to a colleague of ours and he was like, well, Freedom250 is a thing. And I think it's, you know, it's obviously hard. President Trump has a lot on his plate. So does his administration. So, you know, Freedom250 may not be top of mind when you have pressing issues happening here and now, but that being said, you know, celebrating America's 250 to me is probably the most important thing for the entire year because we should be celebrating American greatness and reminding people of what does it actually mean to one, be American, where do our rights actually come from, and what are our freedoms. Right. And I think Freedom 250 is doing a bus tour. Secretary Duffy, I think, kicked it off, but they're going to be visiting some cities and towns with, like, this giant tractor trailer, I think, and they'll have exhibits in that trailer that people can come see, and they'll stop at school. So I think that's a really great way to get people involved and kind of bring our, you know, important founding documents or images to people that may not be able to travel to the museums in Washington.

[Hayden Daniel]

Yes. And this is such a great opportunity to sort of expose people who, again, may not have ever been exposed to any of the founding documents or anything from the founding era. And it's a really great opportunity for Trump to really sort of pound the message home about who we are, where we come from, where we're going, of course, and to really kind of cement his Make America Great Again point initiative.

[Brianna Lyman]

Yeah, yeah. And this is a. I'm happy that the Trump administration has the opportunity to claim the narrative on America 250, because if this was the Biden administration, we'd see how it would play out, because he appointed the woman who's leading America 250 and she's a radical left winger who said that she can't even say, you know, she said she's a Mexican American. She has dual allegiances to two entirely separate countries and cultures, you know, so, so we want someone who is unequivocally and unapologetically 100% pro America and pro America only. So I hope the Trump administration ramps up these 250 efforts. I hope other Americans take a bigger interest in their history. Right, because this is their history. And if you need an easy way to do it, countdown to freedom Monday through Friday on my social media, that is the best place in my opinion to get that daily dose of history.

[Hayden Daniel]

Indeed it is. Thank you, Brianna, so much for joining me. You've been listening to this special series Federalist History Hour. I'm Hayden Daniel, editor at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.