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Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. We are once again

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continuing my series on unsung heroes of the founding generation for America 250. I have been so

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excited doing this. Today we're going to talk about a guy named Joseph Plump Martin. And I say a guy,

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but he was a boy. He was a very young boy. And I want to talk about him today and how courageous

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he was and his contribution to the American cause to helping us fight for our independence

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back in long, long ago before my day, I said fight for my independence, but I was not born yet. But

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you know what I mean? We're all still continuing to honor that legacy that our founders and all

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these brave unsung heroes, everything they did to get us to where we are today. Now Joseph's a

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really interesting character, because a lot of these stories I've been telling earlier, I've been

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talking about people who didn't actually fight in the war or people like there was Deborah Samson,

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who was a woman who disguised herself at almost like the story Mulah on the Disney movie,

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to fight in the war. So there were some soldiers, but then I talked about the baker who baked the

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bread for the revolutionary soldiers and the tailor who spied for George Washington was able

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to help us get a leg up on the British when they were coming after trying to capture George

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Washington. Now today I want to talk about somebody who did fight, who was an actual soldier, but he

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was very, very young. And he did something that was very rare for the time. And that was he later

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after the war wrote a memoir about his experiences that told a different story.

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Because war, remember, people look back on it with like all this glory and oh, was this

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wonderful noble thing, even now as I'm talking about the revolution to you guys, I'm talking

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about it in that way, right? We think about it as this, this glorious revolution where we were able

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to have our independence and get the Constitution and the Declaration and everything we have today.

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But wars, as we've also talked about, are not pleasant things, right? Wars are awful,

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war is a racket, war is just horrible and there is, you know, people go hungry and people die and

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people lose limbs and it's just really horrifying. And so in a time when people were really glorifying

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everything that happened in the war, Joseph Plum Martin was giving them a story that they had

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never heard before, but that's going to come much later. Let's start from the beginning.

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So in June 1776, that's before the Declaration assigned, but we're already pretty much in

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war because there was Lexington and Concord, but Joseph is only 15 years old and he was ready to go.

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He was ready to fight. He was a little farm boy. He was, you know, nothing, nothing special,

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not a trained soldier. And his grandparents were like, absolutely not, you're 15, you're not going

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to the war. And he threatened to run away. And I think they kind of capitulated, they basically

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gave in and we're like, okay, so things are things are getting started, right? And they're holding

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these enlistments to people to get a volunteer army first. And so people are lining up because,

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remember, this is a cause they really believe in. And what I love about this is the enlistment.

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These are voluntary enlistments, right? We've talked about conscription or what we called the draft

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in in earlier episodes where governments have forced people to go fight their wars for them.

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That usually happens when it's a very unpopular war, but that's not what's happening during the

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revolution. They're asking for volunteers. And so Joseph is very eager, even though he's so young

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and he decides he wants to fight. So he goes to enlist. Now the crowd is crazy. A lot of times

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these signups were just in like public calls or even taverns, right? Taverns were actually where

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a lot of business, a lot of decisions were getting made because it was like a local meeting spot.

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And they were usually more than one. But that was where a lot of things happened, a lot of these

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these types of enlistments or, you know, gatherings of sorts. And so he goes, and it's really,

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really chaotic. And somebody bumps into him and actually right as he's about to go sign his name up

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because he was bumped into it was a little scribble. Now a lot of people could not write at the time.

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So the enlistment officer was actually like, Oh, we'll take it the scribble. It's fine. Well,

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you're good. You're golden. Let's go. And he said, no, he's like, I don't want it to be a scribble.

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I want to proudly write my name on this document saying that I want to fight that I believe in

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this. I believe in the American cause. And so he signs his name boldly and proudly. And again,

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I think this is so powerful one because it shows that he wanted to go. No one was making him go.

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This was his voluntary consensual choice. And as we know, we love to hear that, right? We love

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consent. We love voluntary action. So this is something that he believes clearly, very passionately about.

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So those first six months of war, he is all over he's fighting. He is, you know, in the in the battles.

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So this is not something he's witnessing from afar. He is right in it. In 1777, his enlistment

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runs out because I think there were time periods. Things got a little crazy throughout the war.

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That was actually something George Washington really worried about as they started losing ground is

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that when people's enlistment periods were up, they were just going to leave. And a lot of them

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did. And I don't blame them because it was just so awful. They weren't getting paid. There was a lot

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going on. So his Joseph's first enlistment period ends in about 19 or 19 1777. I've got ahead a little

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bit 1777. And he immediately reenlists and goes back to the war. And I can only imagine parents

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out there. Can you imagine his grandparents worry? I mean, grown men were dying here. You have a 15

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year old boy who was just so eager to go. And I know I would probably be losing sleep, just being

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so worried about him all the time. But he goes back. And then when that enlistment period is over,

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he enlists again and ends up fighting until 1783. And remember, he's young. So he's starting as a

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private that's like bottom of the heap. But he grows into a sergeant by the end of the war,

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which is really interesting. Because one thing I've seen throughout this revolutionary and even

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regular history, but a lot of this founding history that I've been getting really, really into lately

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is how a lot of these people who didn't have much in way of money, they weren't wealthy,

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or people who weren't particularly well read. I don't want to say they weren't smart because I think

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there's lots of different kinds of smart. But people who didn't have a lot of your intellectual

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knowledge that you got from books, people like that, who didn't think they could rise up in the

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world by being lawyers or doctors, or have the money to start a business. A lot of them used

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military service to rise up the ranks. And do you know who else did that? George Washington.

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George Washington did not consider himself a very smart man. And if you read about him and read

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into history, he was never somebody who would give a lot of ideas. He would give his opinion on ideas

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and he would he obviously believed in the American cause. But the military was really good for him

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because that gave him the opportunity to make something of himself. And so I think with with

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Joseph, you're going to see some of that too. And it worked because he went from being a private

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to being a sergeant. And so he's going to rise up. And that's going to be, I mean, his entire,

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you know, not childhood because he was 15. He was a kid, but he wasn't like a young kid. He wasn't

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five. But he's going to really grow up within the Revolutionary War. He's going to really grow up

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in those battlefields. And I can't imagine how just hardened that would make you. But he definitely

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earned the role of sergeant. And he lived through the worst of it, right? There were so many periods

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of time during the Revolutionary War where all our soldiers were starving. I mean, you can't even

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imagine how starving they were. Sometimes they could only eat one tiny meal a day if it was available

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to them. And there were they were getting funds from Congress. They weren't getting food. Sometimes

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they had just to rely on on the kindness of people offering to give them food or the Baker

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General. We talked about him in another episode who was baking bread. They didn't have a lot. And

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then of course, there's that one horrible winter where a lot of soldiers didn't even have shoes.

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They didn't have proper clothes. They were freezing, but they fought because they believed in it. They

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fought because they felt like they had to because it was their independence. It was our country's

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independence on the line. And so Joseph is seeing all this. He's seeing these horrors. He's seeing

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people lose limbs. He's seeing his friends die. It's just it's so bad. I mean, it is constant sorrow

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and just constant, you know, just horrific. Again, I've never been to war. I can only imagine. I don't

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think I would have done very well. But there was another part to it too. Yes, obviously it was

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fighting. It was it was seeing people get hurt. But there was also a lot of like people forget that a

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lot of war was building trenches or, you know, long days just kind of sitting around and doing labor

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waiting for what the next move is going to be. And so there's a lot of downtime. It wasn't all

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these bloody gory battles. Usually it was a battle dealing with the aftermath, which was people again

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being killed or severely injured and then, you know, digging ditches or trenches or building defenses.

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So there's a lot of war that isn't this like glory of running towards people with your

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musket. It's like downtime and hard labor. So there's all these things. And then we have to remember

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all the frustration that happened from the soldiers themselves because they weren't getting paid some

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of the time because Congress didn't have money. They weren't giving them money. So they weren't

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getting paid. Some of them came back and found that not only were they never paid after the war,

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but their farms were being seized for not paying their taxes. So there's a lot of things going on

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that was not great, like the treatment of soldiers, which is going to lead to the Articles Confederation

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turning into the Constitution, because there was the argument that, oh, it's because we didn't

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have a strong central government that was able to do that. And we've gone back and forth on whether

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or not that's a good or bad thing or maybe somewhere in between. So we're not going to talk

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about that here. But this is his firsthand soldier experience, right? But nobody was writing about this

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because you have to remember at the time when the war is over, we are concentrated on this new

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country. And then when the Articles of Confederation start falling apart, it's the Constitutional Convention

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and it's these, even though that was kind of secret, but people got a new, but I was like an

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open secret. But there was all this other stuff going on. We're building a new country that the

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soldiers firsthand account is often being forgotten, which is interesting because you're going to have

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at least two soldier uprisings. You're going to have a Shays rebellion and you're going to have the whiskey

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militia, which is going to come and it's going to be this big thing because soldiers are going to be

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feeling like they were treated unfairly or soldiers who came back are going to come back and find

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out they were owing all these taxes or owed all these taxes. And so it's a very tumultuous time.

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So long after the war, Joseph is now 70 years old. I remember he was 15 when he gets into the

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war and he tells all of this. He writes his whole story down, the good, the bad, the ugly. What war

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really meant that it wasn't just this glory. It wasn't just these mythical figures like

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George Washington that it was brutal and that they persevered even still. And this is going to be

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impactful, but not yet. Two people actually aren't going to really read this book. They're not going

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to care too much, but it's going to be a really good written record because we don't have much of that.

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One, not everybody could read and write back then. So you weren't getting first-hand accounts. Nobody

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was updating their status or tweeting about what was going on. But he's going to write this book

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and it's going to be a different kind of book than something even George Washington would have

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written in his diary or letters. It's going to be a very nitty gritty and true firsthand account.

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And again, no one's going to read it, but like 100 years later, it's going to become big

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and people are going to read it. And we're going to realize that we have this really great firsthand

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account of this amazing 15-year-old soldier who had the wherewithal two years later document

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everything he experienced. And that's so important because the storytellers, you guys,

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the people who write down their experiences, that's how we learn about them throughout history.

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You might think it's silly to keep a journal or to keep some people call it a diary or whatever

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you want to call it. Some people might think that's silly to keep it. Like, why is anyone

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going to care? But you never know. Maybe it's just your kid someday reading in,

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finding out more about you and what you liked and how you thought. So these memoirs, he wasn't

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keeping it at the time, but he wrote it later. But these firsthand accounts are so important and

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they help shape history and they help really paint the bigger picture of what was going on.

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So I just think Joseph Plum Martin is so cool. And I think he's another one of these great unsung heroes

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that I'm so glad to know more about. So I will leave it there. As always, don't forget to like

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and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, I will talk to you later.