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And we return to our American stories.

Up next, another story in our series about us. That is the story of America,

with Hillsdale College Professor and author of Land of Hope, Bill McLeigh. If you know or have

kids, Bill has a phenomenal young reader's edition of his book as well. Pick it up at Amazon

or wherever you get your books. When we last left off, America had

beaten Britain at Yorktown, but what came next? Nobody really knew. Let's get into this story.

Take it away, Bill. I want to talk for a minute at the outset here about the song that we sometimes say was played by that band in Yorktown after America's Great Victory.

The song called The World Upside Down.

A British song, the idea was that the British Army band played this tune when they surrendered. It was

the custom that the British Army would play an American or French tune, but supposedly Washington

refused that, insisted that they play a British march. That's the way the tale is told. A lot of

people think it never happened. But it's a, it's a wonderful story,

and sometimes perpetuating these kinds of stories is important. It was an English ballad.

It was written in response to the efforts of Parliament in the 1640s to not exactly ban the

celebration of Christmas, but to make it into an extremely solemn occasion.

So without the festivities, without the gifts, without all the finery and, you know, glorious

excess that tends to go with Christmas in certainly the English-speaking world,

and much of the rest of the world.

And it didn't go over well.

This song arose, and I'll read the first stanza of it.

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