The forgotten July 4th story: Betrayal, assassination plots, and the true birth of America

While millions of Americans participate in Fourth of July festivities, many don’t know what exactly it is they’re celebrating; others may vaguely know, but the complete history of the United States is something they’ve long forgotten or were never taught.

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn revisits a powerful but largely forgotten story about America’s dramatic birth — the hidden plots, betrayals, and extraordinary character that defined the days right before July 4.

“All of us celebrate Fourth of July — everybody does. But nobody knows what's happening the days before the Fourth of July. ... This is when this country was being born in two cities at the same time and on two completely different tracks,” says Glenn, “and those two tracks slam together on one morning.”

“Because while [Thomas] Jefferson is writing ... what kind of men we could be [in the Declaration of Independence], George Washington is discovering the kind of men that we already have among us. The British fleet are coming,” he continues.

But a bloody war wasn’t the only plot to foil America. While the British fleet sat in the harbor awaiting the signal to invade New York, British Crown-appointed New York Governor William Tryon and New York City Mayor David Mathews were scheming to assassinate or kidnap George Washington.

“[Tryon and Matthews] are quietly buying off Continental soldiers, paying them to switch sides the moment the British land. ... The minute the British land, they're to turn their guns around and blow the powder magazines, seize the bridge at the north end of Manhattan, so Washington's whole army is trapped on that island like fish in a barrel,” Glenn recounts.

One of the men in Washington’s personal “lifeguard” (secret service) — Thomas Hickey — was in on this plot.

“Hickey gets himself thrown in jail for passing counterfeit money, and he couldn't keep his mouth shut. He bragged to another prisoner about the conspiracy ... well, that prisoner talked, and it landed in front of a secret committee tasked with sniffing out exactly this kind of treason committee led by a young New Yorker named John Jay,” says Glenn, highlighting Jay’s contributions from writing the famous Federalist Papers to becoming the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jay’s task force, he says, is often described by historians as “the first American intelligence agency.”

Hickey’s trial for treason happened at the same time Jefferson was penning the Declaration of Independence — two “tracks” Glenn says “come together” in a remarkable way.

On Monday, June 28, 1776, Hickey was publicly hanged for treason, making him “the first soldier this country ever executed for treason before we were a country,” Glenn explains.

At that same time, Jefferson went to Independence Hall with the finished draft of the Declaration of Independence in tow.

“One single morning, in one young nation that didn't legally even exist yet, in one city, the words of who we wanted to become were first being read into the record. And another city just up the road, a man was being hung by a rope for trying to strangle that nation in its cradle,” Glenn summarizes. “The promise and the betrayal in the same hour — 90 miles apart.”

Four days later on July 2, Congress voted to approve a resolution for independence.

“The ink isn't even dry and the enemy is already in the water,” says Glenn.

“It would have been so easy in that moment of terror — invasion coming, traitors in the ranks, the mayor himself in on it — for Washington to become the very thing that they were fighting.”

Instead he refused to become a tyrant, choosing to uphold the rule of law and the ideals of the revolution even when it was risky and difficult.

“In the middle of the most dangerous month of their life, with a knife already at the Republic's throat, they chose process over panic, law over vengeance. And in the same breath, in the same week, they put their names down on this document that said power has to answer to something higher than its own power,” says Glenn.

“That's who we are. That's who we were. That's who we can be every day going forward.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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