This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

And we continue with our American stories.

Best-selling historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, David McCullough, is the author

of 1776. In this masterful work, he tells the intensely human story of those who marched

with George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence, beginning in 1775.

Here he is telling a little known story about both the British perspective and their colonies

in America.

Let's take a listen.

I wanted to begin in London.

I wanted to begin in late October in London because it's the day that the

king went before Parliament to give one of the most important speeches ever, any king or anyone

ever gave before Parliament. When we fought at Lexington and Concord and at Bunker Hill, we

were not fighting for independence. We were fighting for our rights as freeborn Englishmen.

In 1775, 1776, except for those 500,000 American men, women, and children who were held in slavery,

we had the highest standard of living of any people in the world, which is something most

people don't understand.

So we weren't fighting for independence, and we were very well off in world terms.

And we had more freedom, again, except for those 500,000 black men, women, and children in slavery. We had more freedom

than any other people in the world because people living under the British system had the

most freedom of anyone. But on the day when the King addressed Parliament, which is very

much like our State of the Union moment.

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