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The Brethren: A Story of Faith and Conspiracy in Revolutionary America

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Brendan McConville provides an account of a Revolutionary-era conspiracy in which a band of farmers opposed to military conscription and fearful of religious persecution plotted to kill the governor of North Carolina.

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 20, 2024

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This video is a transcript of an interview discussing a book about American history, specifically the period following independence around 1776-1777. The author, Brendan, explains his motivations for writing the book, highlighting a gap in scholarly work about the experiences of ordinary people during this chaotic time, particularly in relation to the interplay of politics and religion. Brendan's research focuses on a group referred to as "the brethren," who initially formed a movement expressing dissatisfaction with the new revolutionary leadership in North Carolina but were later labeled a conspiracy by those in power. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the broader social, religious, and economic context of the time, revealing that the vast majority of the population were Protestants who had strong anti-Catholic sentiments. The interview further explores how the American Revolution was characterized by a mix of radical change and conservative agrarian elements, and the complex motivations behind the actions of different social groups during this period. Brendan hopes that readers will recognize the unique role of religion in shaping political attitudes during the revolution and the lasting divide between the religious and non-religious factions in American society. Overall, the conversation underscores the multifaceted nature of the revolution and aims to provide a deeper understanding of the events that shaped the early United States.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Really was just interested in the general question of

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what happened in America right after independence.

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There had been a lot of books written in early American

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history about the years leading up to independence,

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but then immediately they sort of jumped to the end

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of the war or the constitutional crisis of 1787.

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And I, I was curious as about what happened in 1776 and 1777

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after they declared independence,

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because it seemed pretty chaotic to me.

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And I thought, well, that's an interesting story.

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Uh, I I was wondering,

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did people just magically become Americans, you know,

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as we would think about them, how did both events

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and the mental baggage they brought

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with them from the British Empire,

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how did they shape their behavior

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and how they understood change and,

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and the things that they confronted?

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And so, I, I didn't feel like there was scholarship that,

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addressed, that, I also felt like there,

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there, there we needed to discuss the interplay of politics

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and religion in the American Revolution.

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And, and that was sort of a question at that moment,

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in a kind of very profound way.

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And, that I, I had a feeling that the way

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that we talked about the spiritual and the political

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and the way we sort of divided them,

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wasn't a good way to proceed.

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Um, and then finally, I, I thought that

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I had come across a set of documents

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that was really unique in the sense that it probed

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how people really at the bottom of the free social order,

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in other words, in the, in the free white population,

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how they experienced and lived the revolution.

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And that kind of information is really hard to dig out.

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In, in the study of the American Revolution, I

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Had been told by another person with

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An amateur, An amateur,

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scholar ba basically a genealogist.

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He said, well, look, I was working in North Carolina

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and I, I came across a set of depositions

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and legal documents about this conspiracy,

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what he thought was a conspiracy.

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And he said there was over a hundred pages of documents,

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many of 'em, depositions from people, you know,

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yeoman farmers, people who were working, you know, sort

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of everyday people as we would now put it.

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And, he said, as far as I know,

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they've never really been used

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or had they've been used very sparsely.

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So that intrigued me right away,

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because we don't kind of get that.

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So I knew that where they were stored in the North Carolina

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State Archive, and I knew that the, archive of the,

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university of North Carolina,

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the Wilson Library at the University

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of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, both

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of those archives contained material related

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to this episode, to this conspiracy.

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So I, I decided to go down

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and start to sort of probe around in them.

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And that's how I began my research.

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The brethren were the WW

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Was the name or the name they gave themselves of the group

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of people who were involved in

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this. What happened, which is

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Really, It begins as a movement

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and becomes labeled as a conspiracy.

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It's not simply a conspiracy.

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It, it begins as a movement,

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of concern about the state leadership,

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the new revolutionary state leadership in North Carolina.

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And then it becomes labeled, by that leadership

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and by the people in the, the revolutionary committees

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of safety as a conspiracy, against the state.

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And that's how it sort of develops, through time in,

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in 1777.

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So that's, that's the sort of trajectory of it.

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And, the brethren were the members of those

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who were part of that questioning group in the sense who,

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who were people who were unhappy about the state leadership?

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The new revolutionary state leadership at

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17 74, 17 75, 17 76, 17 77,

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were probably the most disordered

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and tumultuous moments in American society

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until the Civil War.

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Uh, there was just, it was chaos.

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And in that chaos, people's views about things were shaped

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by what they had exper lived, their lived experience,

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and what they brought to, the table in a sense

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to the moment of, the revolution

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and the moment of independence.

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So most people in America at that time were Protestants,

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almost, you know, 95, 90 8%

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of the population were Protestant.

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There were, there was a tiny Catholic population in Maryland

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and Pennsylvania, and there was a tiny,

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Jewish population in various towns in the,

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in the south and Mid-Atlantic.

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And there were some Muslim people

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among the enslaved population.

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And there were Native Americans

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who had their own spiritual beliefs in, in, you know,

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particular to their different nations.

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Uh, but the vast majority

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of the white population were Protestants

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of some time to a degree.

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Uh, you know, I, I think that would probably

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surprise a modern listener

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because almost everyone was a Protestant of some kind,

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and they were virulently, anti-Catholic.

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I think that because of the way a, as a nation,

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we've discussed the revolution, it's sort of hard for people

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to accept that when they really start to mobilize

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as a revolution, as when it be,

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it really doesn't become a revolution.

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The American Revolution,

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of course in most American history textbooks,

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it begins in 1764

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and 1765 with the protests, against the stamp back,

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which is a piece of imperial legislation, a taxation.

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And of course, that's a very central thing.

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I I would never take away from that.

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But in 1774, it becomes a revolution.

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Very suddenly, there's a sudden shift from it being a kind

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of diffused, protest movement

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and expression of unhappiness.

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It becomes a revolutionary movement.

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Uh, it's in part in response to,

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to the imperial legislation that punished Boston

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for the Boston Tea Party.

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And, I think that the hardest thing though for, the,

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you know, contemporary Americans to sort of wrap their minds

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around, if you wanna put it that way, is

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that when they mobilize in, in 1774, the,

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the religious element is to the forefront of it.

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In other words, they think

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that they're mobilizing against a form of politics and, and,

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and, and empire that has been corrupted by Catholicism.

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And that it, without a doubt,

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that is the center ideological pillar.

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The, the reason for this will sort

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of get kind of complicated.

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Uh, it has to do in part with the behavior

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of the London government.

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It also has to do in part with the way that they had,

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nor the London government had normalized the situation

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of the French Catholics in Canada.

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They had captured Canada,

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the British Empire in the previous war, the war

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of the, seven years war.

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And they had captured that.

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And they basically were allowing these Catholics

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to continue on in their Catholicism, to have their priests

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to live in a kind of French way.

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And the British colonists saw that as a threat.

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They also saw the imperial legislation against the city

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of Boston because of the Boston Tea Party as evidence

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of kind of Catholic tainted,

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tyranny taking hold in the British government

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because the British government basically closed down the

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port of Boston and took away their civilian government.

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They imposed a military government, on Boston

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and took away many of what they considered their

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rights as Englishmen.

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So they saw both of these things as being center to,

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a kind of, or evidence of a kind

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of broader corruption in the empire, which was tainted,

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somehow shaped by,

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or tainted by a kind of crypto Catholicism

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or Catholicism at the highest reaches of the empire.

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And that's what mobilized people to action.

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Uh, by the end of 1774,

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not only had the population become politically, sort

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of aroused, but they had also formed hundreds of

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what they called, they called committees of safety,

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which were the same as the committees

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of safety in the French Revolution.

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In, in other revolutions.

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They were localized in the American Revolution,

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but they behaved in much the same way.

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In other words, they began to assert their authority

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and break down the control of the imperial government,

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which they now saw as being corrupted.

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I do hope that they take,

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two things really from the work.

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Number one, I, I hope they take away

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that the American Revolution was a real revolution,

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but among a kind of, in many ways, conservative,

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agrarian Protestant people, which is sort

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of almost like a contradiction or a paradox.

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It was quite, it looks like a,

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a revolution like the French Revolution,

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the Russian Revolution in the sense of, there's a lot

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of popular political mobilization.

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There's lots of people who want radical change,

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but at the same time, many of the participants are people

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everyday people trying to live everyday life

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who now become, enmeshed.

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But it, it is of akin in a certain way

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to the later revolutions.

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Uh, in other ways it's quite different

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from them and quite unique.

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But it, the other thing I want people to take away,

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besides that issue of, the complexity of it

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and the realness of the revolution, is that the interplay

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of religion and politics

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and the American Revolution makes it unique

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and makes it much more, in, in a sense, it, it, it,

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it shapes the whole issue,

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but not in the simple way of just saying, well,

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they were religious, or whatever.

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It, religion plays itself out in many ways.

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In the case of this conspiracy, the people

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who mobilized were looking at the leadership of their state

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and saying, Hey, I don't like their religious beliefs.

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A lot of them are denying the divinity of Jesus Christ.

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I mean, speaking frankly,

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and I don't mean this facetiously,

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you couldn't get elected governor

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of North Carolina today if you came out in public

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and said, I don't have spiritual beliefs,

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or, I'm not, I don't think you could get elected

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to anything in America by saying, look, I don't have,

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you know, any spiritual beliefs.

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You could be of different religious beliefs in America.

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But I think if someone came out and said, I'm an atheist,

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or, you know, or I don't believe in anything,

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it would be a tough battle.

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I, I think most Americans are, have spiritual beliefs.

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And in 1776 for the leadership, as many

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of them did in North Carolina to say,

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I don't know if I believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ,

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you were asking for the population in a sense,

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to have doubts about you and to mobilize against you.

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Even the people who had previously, as many of these people

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who become involved in this conspiracy do,

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had supported the revolution.

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They had supported all this.

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But then when the leaders start saying two things, really,

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the leaders start saying we're,

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we don't necessarily believe in

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the divinity of Jesus Christ.

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And we don't wanna swear to that in public.

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We don't wanna swear to the absolute, authority

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of the Bible and its divine origins.

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And we're perfectly open to having an alliance

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with Catholic France, which was the traditional enemy

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of British Americans and the British Empire.

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People become extremely upset,

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and that division opens up in the society,

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and I don't know if it's ever fully been CLO closed,

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there's always a division in America between people who are,

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you know, extremely religious and people who are not.

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And the, the, the former group is always much larger America

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'cause of the way American society works.

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And I, I think this book, the Brethren speaks to that issue.

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And I hope people will take a, take that away from it.

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