Like any historical event, the American Revolution is remembered in broad strokes but was lived out one day at a time, in an era no less fractious, complex and contradictory than our own.
Ahead of the 250th birthday of the U.S. in 2026, on Sunday, Nov. 16, PBS premieres The American Revolution, a six-part, 12-hour survey of what its venerable filmmaker Ken Burns calls “most important event since the birth of Christ.”
It’s also a subject with which I’m very familiar, but I’ll get back to that later.
Burns’ Florentine Films has already covered baseball, jazz, the Civil War, the Vietnam War, Leonardo da Vinci, and many other subjects. But now it wades into what has, in recent years, become a contentious topic — how the British colonies in North America threw off the British crown and formed a new nation.
Along with airing nightly on PBS stations, the full series will also be available to stream on Nov. 16 at PBS.org and on the PBS App.
Take a look:
Hearing From Ken Burns in Person
In July, I went to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, to see a lengthy preview of The American Revolution, and to hear from Burns, producer Sarah Botstein, and featured historian Christopher Brown.
Doing a Documentary Without the Usual Archival Media
Burns began his remarks by addressing one of the chief difficulties of a documentarian in bringing the Revolution to life — the lack of film and video.
He said:
I think the whole thing was to sense that we accept the violence of our Civil War and the 20th Century wars. But because this [war] is without photographs, without newsreels, they’re dressed in their tights and breeches and have powdered wigs, that somehow we’ve lost touch with it.
And our American Revolution, which I think is the most important event since the birth of Christ, is sort of smothered with the barnacles, encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality and nostalgia. And that it is important to find a way to do this.
Breathing Life Into the Famous
Burns emphasized the importance of fleshing out notable figures but also the myriad other people that formal history didn’t make famous.
Washington, we wanted to make him human so that you could appreciate just how central his contribution is. I hope one of the clips that we showed there really… We’re speaking Spanish or French or British English if he’s not around. It’s that simple.
How spectacular his role in this was. And many of the others, we’d also introduce you to dozens of other characters, women, Native Americans, children, soldiers, loyalists. So, we’re not saying, “Oh, these are the bad guys.”
Friend vs. Friend
At the same time, while the Revolution is cast as Americans vs. Brits, it was as often Americans vs. each other. Said Burns:
In fact, one of the most poignant moments in the film [is when] loyalist that we follow through most of the episodes named John Peters is at the Battle of Bennington. He’s going to lose this battle.
And he hears this voice say, “Peters, you damn Tory,” as someone sticks a bayonet in him. And it’s deflected by the ribcage. He recognizes it as his boyhood best friend, Jeremiah Post, who then Peters says, “I was obliged to destroy.”
Nothing But the Truth Now — and That’s Fine
Whether out of ignorance or in service of a social or political agenda, many today exhibit shock to discover that the Founders weren’t actually made of marble, and that they were as flawed and faltering at times as any other human.
Yet, as Burns explains, these ordinary men rose to the occasion and did an extraordinary thing. They also asked extraordinary things of those around them … and still ask them of us.
Said Burns:
Now, I think that we’re fearful that if we get into the real nitty-gritty of the Revolution, it will diminish to big ideas. In fact, the big ideas are made even better and more inspirational by understanding exactly what went on, how difficult it was, how bad the odds are.
And that, our Founders, in their extraordinary genius, helped us to understand that we were creating something new in the world, citizen as opposed to subjects. And that citizens would require an effort. Subjects are just under authoritarian rule. Citizens have to invest in life-long learning. That’s the [goal], to be more virtuous.
If there’s a word that shows up throughout our founding, it’s virtue, virtue, virtue. All the time.
They’re borrowing from antiquity and they’re trying to instill in this new system, the idea of our obligation. That this was the highest office. It’s an amazing story. It’s taken us 10 years and the help of all the scholars like Chris on this to help wrestle it to the ground.
Putting Humans Back Into History
While not without controversy of their own, the PBS films produced by Burns and his collaborators do a great service by taking deep dives into their subjects, focusing especially on the experiences and testimony of (often unknown) individuals.
As are the origins of most important things and events, the American Revolution has been deeply mythologized and, to a large degree, sanitized for our protection. It’s absurd to think that the Founders, the fighters, and the citizenry were any more or less human than we are — but that’s how many regard them.
It does no good to either put people on pedestals or cast them as inhuman villains. Neither serves the truths of human nature nor history.
Along those lines, I recommend the nonfiction book The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III, by British historian Andrew Roberts. It looks at the Revolution from the other side of the pond, and offers surprising insights into the role anti-Catholicism played … on both sides.
As Roberts noted in The Catholic Herald:
In 1776, the propagandist Thomas Paine also insinuated that the King was a secret Roman Catholic, writing in his influential pamphlet Common Sense that “the phrase parent or mother country hath been jesuitically adopted by the King and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds”.
My American Revolution
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for a couple of decades or so now, but I spent my childhood and a chunk of my adult years smack in the heart of Revolutionary history in Northern New York State.
Around me were Lake George, with its Fort William Henry and Fort Ticonderoga; Fort Edward, named for the younger brother of King George III; and the pivotal Saratoga Battlefield, with its nameless monument to hero-turned-trailer Benedict Arnold.
One advantage of living in the midst of history is you discover details that can get obscured in the larger story.
For example, in the Union Cemetery in Fort Edward is the grave of Jane McCrea, an American woman engaged to a British officer. She was murdered near the town on July 27, 1777, by Native American allies of British forces under the leadership of Gen. John Burgoyne (defeated in the Battle of Saratoga in October of that same year).
Little known today outside of historians and my home area, the story of McCrea’s death went into contemporary folklore. It quickly became an important part of anti-British propaganda during the war … and she is mentioned in the fourth episode of The American Revolution.
In fifth and sixth grade, we studied the history of the Revolution and its predecessor, the French and Indian War (1754-’63), which took place over the same ground.
But these days, I’m not sure if the current students in my home area become as immersed in their local history as I was, let alone people in the rest of the country.
While we hear a lot about battles in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia, the Revolutionary War took place from Canada to South Carolina to Florida, on the high seas and in the Caribbean.
So, some folks may not even realize it also took place in their backyard.
The American Revolution may help to change all that.
Image: The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, January 3, 1777. Painting by John Trumbull, ca. 1789-1831. Credit Alamy Stock Photo/Kate O’Hare (Ken Burns)
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