I Brought My Phone to the Birth of America 🇺🇸 | Stamp Act, Tea Party, Lexington

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Okay, I am in Boston, August 1765, 11 years before America is a country.

[00:00:08]That tree right there about to become the most famous tree in colonial history. Liberty Tree.

[00:00:16]I am sitting in on a Sons of Liberty meeting. They are literally planning a riot.

[00:00:22]Right now.

[00:00:29]The time is here. We must stand firm against tyranny.

[00:00:33]>> Remember the Stamp Act. To liberty and against Oliver.

[00:00:37]>> Stuffed dummy of a tax collector hanging from a tree and 300 people are vibing with this. He is reading his own resignation to a crowd under a tree.

[00:00:51]This is how the revolution starts. This is the energy of the American Revolution 11 years early. They are throwing fruit at a doll.

[00:01:01]Stamp Act repealed.

[00:01:04]Six months of riots. They actually made the British back down. Thomas.

[00:01:11]Shoemaker by day, mob captain by night. How did that even happen?

[00:01:18]The time has come.

[00:01:21]Look at him swing.

[00:01:24]Justice is near. They took the doll down and now they are parading it through the streets.

[00:01:30]Like a funeral for taxes.

[00:01:41]These guys about to commit federal vandalism and they are putting on face paint.

[00:01:49]This was the most expensive house in Massachusetts last night.

[00:01:55]This morning it is this. first edition of Cicero, just lying on the floor. They threw a man's library out the window.

[00:02:04]For taxes. Hey, it is night. 200 dudes with torches and clubs heading to the Lieutenant Governor's house. First time in colonial history, ordinary people made an empire say sorry, and it will not be the last.

[00:02:20]5,000 people in one room in December debating tea for 7 hours. He just said, "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country."

[00:02:35]That was the signal. And that kid is six. He has a torch.

[00:02:41]The British government is in for a really long century. By day I make shoes.

[00:02:48]By night I make sure the king knows we are not joking.

[00:02:53]Mr. Hart, people are calling you the firebrand.

[00:02:57]Why this fight? Why the stamps? Elias Hart up there about to give a one-sentence signal that ends with a federal crime.

[00:03:08]Uh that is the actual stamp distributor, and they made him stand on a barrel >> in December to publicly resign.

[00:03:17]Okay, I am in Boston, December 16th, 1773.

[00:03:23]Something big is happening tonight. Now everyone with a hatchet hidden under a coat is leaving. Heading to a tavern to put on face paint. Those ships full of East India Company tea, and then these guys about to dump all of it in the harbor.

[00:03:41]Mr. Hart, people are calling you the firebrand.

[00:03:45]Why this fight? Why the stamps? See, if they tax our paper, they will tax our windows.

[00:03:53]If they tax our windows, they will tax our breath.

[00:03:56]America is not a country yet, and I am about to do crimes with a man named Elias.

[00:04:21]I just boarded a British ship with a hatchet. There are 342 chests of tea down there. Sir, I have never lifted a tea chest in my life. I work in a bind. Never mind. Lifting.

[00:04:35]All right, lass. Heave ho. Mr. Ashton, you are the richest man in Boston. Why fund this? Why tonight? I believe this is the only path to our liberty, and the moment is now, Nova. I am the richest man in Massachusetts.

[00:04:48]And tonight, my friends are dumping 90,000 lbs of tea.

[00:04:52]Soot on my face. Splinters in my hand.

[00:04:56]Committing high-value crimes with a shoemaker named Silas. Guy makes shoes for Boston. Tonight, I am sending Boston's reply to the king.

[00:05:07]One chest at a time. Each chest weighs 400 lbs, and we are doing 342 of these.

[00:05:14]Tonight.

[00:05:15]Quietly. There it goes. 90,000 lbs of British tea straight into Boston Harbor.

[00:05:23]For free.

[00:05:32]3 hours. Three ships. 342 chests. Nobody got hurt. Nobody stole a leaf. Just a message.

[00:05:41]The British closed the port of an entire city as punishment.

[00:05:46]For tea.

[00:05:49]The colonies are calling them the Intolerable Acts. The British are calling them the Coercive Acts. Either way, Boston starves. Every other colony just sent Boston food. Virginia, Connecticut, the Carolinas. Nobody knew they were one country yet, but they were starting to act like one. The British are coming. To arms. To arms.

[00:06:08]To arms. To arms. The regulars are out.

[00:06:12]The regulars are out. Every farmhouse he hits lights up. He is not even saying the British. He is saying the regulars are out. The regulars are out. And then those farmers ride to the next town and yell it again.

[00:06:26]And again.

[00:06:28]Faster than the British can march.

[00:06:30]3:00 in the morning. Lexington. 77 militia men mustering on the green. They have never fought a war. That is Captain Eli Barrow, Lexington farmer, French and Indian War veteran, about to make the most quoted decision in American history. They are loading muskets at the breakfast table.

[00:06:49]Some of them are 17.

[00:06:51]Some are 70. All of them are scared.

[00:06:54]Down the road, that flicker of red through the fog, that is 700 British regulars coming for our 70. Captain, 700 coming.

[00:07:06]70 of you. Why stand here? Why not run?

[00:07:10]Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.

[00:07:18]If they mean to have a war, let it begin here. That is what he just said, and we are standing here waiting for it. You can hear them before you can see them. Boots on dirt. A thousand of them in step.

[00:07:34]Old Father Time is coming.

[00:07:37]Three centuries change.

[00:07:40]Old Father Time will not change us.

[00:07:50]>> See, that is the British Empire in red coats and bayonets lined up to kill our farmers. 700 against 70 and the 70 are not running.

[00:08:06]Disperse, ye rebels.

[00:08:09]Ye villains, disperse. Lay down your arms.

[00:08:14]Stand down.

[00:08:16]Fall back.

[00:08:17]No shot from us.

[00:08:19]Let them remember we did not start it. A shot.

[00:08:23]One shot. Nobody knows who fired it.

[00:08:26]Nobody. But the war just started and I cannot hear. I cannot hear anything. Just smoke and screaming and people on the grass. The eight dead, 10 wounded. Lexington, the British are walking on to Concord. The bells did not stop.

[00:08:48]Every town within 20 miles is sending men to Concord to make the British bleed for it. And and at the North Bridge in Concord the militia fired back for the first time ever. The British just ran from farmers with grandfather's muskets on a wooden bridge in Concord. But the British marched back to Boston for 16 miles through 3,000 militia shooting from every wall, every tree. And 273 British casualties, 985 American and a road that goes from this bridge all the