The American Revolution Reconsidered

 

In anticipation of next year's Semiquincentennial of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, PBS last Sunday began to air the latest Ken Burns historical epic - a six-episode, twelve-hour documentary, The American Revolution. I watched the opening episode on our local PBS station and then watched the rest of the episodes on PBS Passport.

Twelve hours are a lot for a contemporary audience, with a notoriously limited attention span. That same audience may be as notoriously unfamiliar with much of American history. It will be a challenge to get those with little or no knowledge or interest in history to watch the series. Ken Burns, with his popularly oriented stye and well established reputation, may well be the one best positioned to do so.

My generation did study history in school, and it was probably my favorite subject. Even so, what we learned was limited in so many ways. For example, we learned just one thing about the Battle of Long Island, that "Washington lost." But we learned little or nothing about how that defeat fit into the overall story of the Revolution, either militarily or politically.

Ken Burns' style is noted for its inclusion of many and multiple voices. This is always a challenge, but perhaps seldom more so that with the American Revolution which involved so many different individual actors and diverse communities. There is a famous satirical comment by John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: "Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington - fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them, Franklin, Washington and the horse, conducted the entire revolution all by themselves." Obviously Adams and Jefferson and most of their contemporaries knew better, but ho many of our contemporaries do?

Burns' epic sets out to correct all such oversimplifications. It starts out by setting the scene of who the British colonists were, with their relationships were with one another, with their neighbors (Native Americans among and around them, the French to the north and west, etc.), with the enslave African population, and with the Mother Country, with which most originally identified and many continued to identify with until the end. The series highlights the colonists' relationship to land a a principal source of personal freedom and the conflict that inevitably created with the Indians and with Britain, which sought to limit the colonists' westward expansion. (The Revolution was also always "a war for empire," to wrest control of the Ohio Valley that the British had tried to keep the settlers out of.) The series also corrects any romanticized misimpression that the colonists were united as Americans and highlights how the American Revolution was actually a civil war among British Americans, thousands of whom remained loyal to the Crown and fought against their fellow colonists, dividing communities and families. (50,000 Americans served in Loyalist units.)

"Our late peaceful country now became a scene fo terror and confusion," a young Virginia woman is quoted as saying. Like other great conflicts, the Revolution was about big ideas and high ideals, but it was also an arena of terrifying fratricidal violence. The series spends less time on the bewigged idea-men and more on the experiences of ordinary soldiers and civilians, for whom the war was at times a terrifyingly violent experience. 

For some the war was a straight conflict between "loyalism" and "patriotism," but for many - especially the native tribes whose ancestral lands others were fighting over and enslaved Africans, it was often a complex calculation which side to fight for (or whether to take a side at all). In fact, both Indians and slaves fought on both sides. For some, such as the slaves who fought for the British and got to resettle in Canada, being on the losing side may have been a win. For the native Indian tribes, however, the Revolution resulted only in greater loss.

Burns captures all these complexities, without sllghting the larger canvas of great power politics, which eventually turned a rebellion in North America into a major world war fought on virtually every continent. It is good to be reminded that, however important the creation of the United States turned out to be in world history, at the time there were other places and conflicts that mattered more to many of the political players. 

Despite the infamous distortion of his role in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the series shows King George III in a more balanced light, reflecting the real complexities of the British constitution an the divisions within the British political establishment as well as the corresponding divisions within colonial society. It also illuminates the gradual transformation of opinion of those who started out wanting things to go back to the way they had been before but ended up wanting to start something new.

The series recognizes the unique and probably irreplaceable role played by George Washington. At the same time, the importance of the elite propertied theoreticians of the Revolution is balanced by the military significance of a Continental Army of largely propertyless men, all of which would have enormous implications for the democratizing dimensions of the Revolution and its aftermath. 

Obviously, any investigation into the American founding will have implications for how we consider our present. The British insistence on not leaving New York until they had arranged for Loyalists to leave as well is an obvious contrast to the ignominious American retreats from Vietnam in 1975 and Afghanistan in 2021. On the other hand, the series' emphasis on the diversity of the Americans and how new immigrants were constantly being added to the emerging society is a powerful reminder that America has always been about being a port of welcome for new and diverse peoples and has been immeasurably enriched by this experience.

Finally, we are reminded how the ideas and ideals of the Revolution have taken on a life of their own, apart from the complexities and compromises of the founding era and continue to matter not just on this continent but throughout the world.