military – SemperVerus

US Dept. of War Elevating Chaplaincy Corps Back to Spiritual Significance

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke via a Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) video Dec. 16, 2025 to announce immediate changes to directives given to military chaplains. He said George Washington’s original intent of establishing chaplains was that they were “to be the spiritual and moral backbone of our nation’s forces.” But he said that role has been degraded due to “an atmosphere of political correctness and secular humanism,” which has minimized chaplains to the role of “therapists, instead of ministers.”

[ Read the SemperVerus article, US Military Academy Prayers ]

Watch the video and read the transcript below:

The Gun That Preserved the Union in the American Civil War

The total years between the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783 (the civil war when British colonialists fought British soldiers, also known as American Patriots fighting American Loyalists to the Crown) to the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861 (when American Northerners fought American Southerners) were 78; a time of merely 3 generations.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Celebrating 250 Years: Learn About the American Revolution ]

Within that span, the gun, Brown Bess—popularly used in the 18th-century conflict (1775–1783)—evolved into the Springfield Model 1861, used in the 19th-century hostility (1861–1865).

[ Read the SemperVerus article, The Heavy, Long Gun That Won the American Revolutionary War ]

The primary difference between the Brown Bess and the Springfield Model 1861 is the transition from a smoothbore, flintlock musket with limited accuracy to a rifled, percussion-cap musket with significantly increased range and precision.

The Heavy, Long Gun That Won the American Revolutionary War

Malnourished, ill-clothed, and under-paid: it is astonishing to consider the level of commitment to liberty exhibited by Colonial Militia and Minutemen and Continental Army soldiers slogging hundreds of miles for 8 years in sweltering and freezing weather to finally win the American Revolutionary War against the British Empire, the most powerful land and naval military force in the world at the time.

Celebrating 250 Years: Learn About the American Revolution

The White House Salute to America 250 Task Force, in partnership with Hillsdale College, provides a history series that tells the remarkable story of American Independence, highlighting the stories of the crucial characters and events that resulted in a small rag-tag army defeating the mightiest empire in the world and establishing the greatest republic ever to exist. This is the story of America.