8th Virginia Regiment

What? Okay, like, do you know this? Are you telling these stories to your kids? Now, what about John Peter Mullenberg, total baller? On Sunday morning, January 21st, 1776, just nine months after the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord, Reverend John Peter Mullenberg climbed into the pulpit of his church in Woodstock, Virginia, to deliver a farewell sermon.

Mullenberg was not only a minister, he had become an outspoken supporter of the Patriot cause and had recently been commissioned to raise the 8th Virginia Regiment, which still stands today.

That morning, he stood before his congregation filled with farmers and frontiersmen of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

And this is what he preached.

He removed his black clerical robe, revealing the uniform of a continental officer underneath it.

He stepped down from the pulpit, He called upon the men of his congregation and community to enlist and to join him.

Their response was 300 men eventually rallied to Muhlenberg and became the nucleus of the 8th Virginia Regiment.

The pastor, who had once shepherded them in the pulpit, would now lead them into war.