Many Americans at the time didn't think it was possible to defeat a military power as great as Britain at the start of the Revolutionary War, according to Paul Moreno.

"I think just about any historian looking backwards would say, 'Yeah, the odds were certainly very overwhelmingly against the Colonists,'" says Moreno, a professor of history and dean of social sciences at Hillsdale College.

The Founding Fathers understood they were risking their "lives and fortunes and honor, but most of them thought that it was a risk that was worth taking, that was justified because their cause was right," he says.

It was clear from the start of the war that no man was better equipped to handle the challenges of leading the Continental Army against the British than George Washington.

"One of the subtitles of great biographies of Washington is 'The Indispensable Man,' and that's absolutely what he was," Moreno says of Washington, adding that "he was a man of such a character, that he's sort of embodied the virtue that the American people believed their cause and the cause of republican government depended upon."

Moreno joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" for the second part of an Independence Day series to discuss how the Colonists, under Washington's leadership, defeated the British to win to Revolutionary War. 

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