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The American Revolution A Film By Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein & David Schmidt The Most Sacred Thing (May 1780 – Onward) VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. ♪ Jane Kamensky, voice-over: I think to believe in America rooted in the American Revolution is to believe in possibility. That, to me, is the extraordinary thing about the Patriot side of the fight. I think everybody on every side, including people who were denied even the ownership of themselves, had the sense of possibility worth fighting for. ♪ The American Revolution changed the world. It's not just about the birth of the United States. It has ramifications across the globe, so studying the American Revolution, understanding it, and putting it in a global context, I think, is vitally important for us to understand why we are where we are now. [Gunfire and shouting] ♪ Voice: Our country was thrown into great confusion by the long continuance of the war. [Church bell ringing] The churches in Virginia were almost entirely shut up, and its holy ordinances unobserved. Most of our men were engaged in the war. Our town had now become a garrison. Betsy Ambler. ♪ Narrator: Betsy Ambler of Yorktown, Virginia, had been 10 when the war began. She was now 15 and had lived most of the intervening years away from home. By the spring of 1780, she was back in Yorktown with her family. Life there had changed. The most populated parts of Virginia all lay within reach of the Royal Navy and any troops the British might land. Governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Assembly chose to move the capital from nearby Williamsburg to Richmond, and, since Betsy Ambler's father had been appointed to the state government, her family would have to leave Yorktown again. ♪ George Washington had long known that Yorktown was particularly vulnerable. As early as 1777, he had warned a Virginia militia commander against stationing troops there. ♪ Voice: I can by no means think it would be prudent to have any considerable stationary force at Yorktown. Being upon a narrow neck of land, it would be in danger of being cut off. The enemy might very easily throw up a few ships and land a body of men there who would oblige them to surrender. [Washington] ♪ ♪ Narrator: In late May of 1780, shortly after the British capture of Charles Town, South Carolina, an elite Loyalist group of green-clad cavalry and mounted infantry called the British Legion were in hot pursuit of Continental soldiers fleeing north. Their commander was a 25-year-old English officer-- Banastre Tarleton, handsome, rakish, ruthless, and determined to make himself a celebrated soldier. "Tarleton," wrote the British chronicler Horace Walpole, "boasts of having butchered more men and lain with more women than anybody" in the army. Tarleton caught up with the rebels near the North Carolina border, a region called the Waxhaws, and demanded they surrender. Voice: You will order every person under your command to pile his arms in one hour. If you are rash enough to reject these terms, the blood be upon your head. [Tarleton] [Gunfire] The Patriots chose to fight. Tarleton's men quickly overwhelmed them. Some who dropped their weapons and asked for quarter received none. "They refused my terms," Tarleton wrote. "I have cut 170 officers and men to pieces." ♪ He may have destroyed the last Continental force in South Carolina, but he had also helped inspire local Patriots to oppose British occupation. When they went into battle over the coming months, many would be eager to deal out what they called "Tarleton's Quarter" to any Loyalist unlucky enough to fall into their hands. ♪ Vincent Brown: That war in South Carolina is bloody. It's a guerrilla conflict. It's sometimes brother against brother in this backwoods warfare. ♪ It's an ugly, ugly, ugly conflict, and if one wants a national origin story that's clean and neat and tells you very clearly who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, the American Revolution in South Carolina is not that story. [Brass band playing "The British Grenadiers"] ♪ Christopher Brown: The British government was very good at seizing and occupying cities. Newport, Philadelphia, New York, Charles Town, Savannah-- these are the kind of main ports that throughout the war Britain could secure, but holding those places were not holding America. Pacifying an entire countryside is an entirely different task than seizing strategic positions. Narrator: General Charles Cornwallis had been left in charge in the South with clear orders from General Henry Clinton back in New York. He was not to move on to North Carolina and Virginia until South Carolina was completely pacified. It was to be the first full-scale military occupation of an entire colony in North America. ♪ From Charles Town, British troops quickly occupied posts in a great arc from Savannah and Augusta in Georgia through the village called Ninety Six to Camden and then to Georgetown, 60 miles up the coast from Charles Town. When the British take the decision to move the war decisively to the South, I think they're trying to exploit the fact that there are smaller numbers of White colonists and larger numbers of slaves in those territories and the colonists will be more vulnerable. Voice: Their property, slaves, we need not seek. It flies to us, and famine follows. Their trade we can annihilate, and when an army cannot find subsistence, on what hope shall a people resist? Major John Andre. ♪ Voice: I determined to go to Charles Town and throw myself into the hands of the English. They received me readily, and I began to feel the happiness of liberty, of which I knew nothing before. Boston King. Voice: I have been robbed and deserted by my slaves. I would sell some of my Negroes, but the slaves in this country in general have behaved so infamously, their value is so trifling that it must be absolute ruin to sell at this time. Eliza Lucas Pinckney. Narrator: At his headquarters in New York, General Clinton continued to believe most South Carolinians were Loyalists. He had insisted that Patriots swear allegiance to the Crown or be considered as enemies and treated accordingly. Those who did swear allegiance were swiftly disillusioned as their Loyalist neighbors began to settle old scores. Those "insurgents" who refused the oath and dared to take up arms against the King, Tarleton told General Cornwallis, "don't deserve" leniency and would get none from him or his men. Conway: The oath of allegiance was really going too far because it obliged them to publicly identify as on the British side, but I think the fundamental problem is that the British are reluctant to restore civil government in the territories they occupy. They maintain military government, and, of course, that reinforces the American claim that the British are set on imposing despotism on the colonies. [Chickens clucking] Voice: Times began to be troublesome, and people began to divide into parties. ♪ Those that had been good friends in times past became enemies. They began to watch each other with jealous eyes. James Collins. Narrator: 16-year-old James Collins lived on his family's farm just below the North Carolina border. His father Daniel was an Irish immigrant who loathed the British and encouraged his son to become a collector of news, a spy, reporting on his Loyalist neighbors. [Horse whinnies] Christopher Brown: One of the things that happens in wartime is, people who are really good politicians, they create binaries. You're either with us or you're against us. The fact of the matter is, in real life, that's actually not true. There's often more than two possibilities. There were a lot of people in 13 colonies who actually didn't care that much about the outcome. They just wanted it over. Conway: The British are heavily reliant on recruiting Loyalists as soldiers, and Loyalists are often very embittered... ♪ and, of course, if you've got soldiers who are keen on revenge, they're not the ideal instruments of pacification. ♪ Narrator: On June 22, 1780, James Collins' father was among the men gathered at a tiny settlement called Brown's Crossroads, summoned there by Captain Christian Huck, a Loyalist with a well-earned reputation for cruelty. He was there to administer the Oath of Allegiance. [Men shouting] Narrator: Captain Huck stunned the crowd by warning that "even if the rebels were as thick as the trees "and Jesus Christ would come down and lead them, he [would still] defeat them." His audience, Presbyterians all, considered that blasphemy. We must fight, James' father said as soon as he got home, "or submit and be slaves." He went off to join the Patriot militia the next morning. James went, too, carrying an ancient shotgun. ♪ For the next few weeks, Christian Huck continued to burn homes, menace women, and murder rebels. In July, after he took a Patriot family hostage, the Collinses' militia caught up to him and killed him along with many of his men. New volunteers were now swelling Patriot ranks. By early August, Cornwallis had to admit that the whole country he had claimed to have pacified is in an absolute state of rebellion. [Cannon fires] Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock, Blue Savannah and Black Mingo Creek, Tearcoat Swamp and Halfway Swamp, Horse Shoe and Quinby Bridge-- the battles and skirmishes that would take place in South Carolina between 1780 and 1781, 102 of them by one count, would yield nearly 1/5 of all the battlefield deaths suffered during the entire war... [Cannon fires] and nearly all those American casualties would come at the hands of other Americans. [Cannon fires] Maya Jasanoff: Violence is radicalizing. It is polarizing, and it happens in the Revolution to people on both sides of the equation that when they are victims of violence, they will then become perpetrators of violence. ♪ Voice: There was no one about in the streets, only a few sad and frightened faces in the windows. I talked to some of the principal citizens, informing them that this was but the vanguard of a much larger force on the way and that our King had decided to uphold them with all his power and strength. General Rochambeau. Narrator: On July 11, 1780, 5 French warships and a host of transport vessels had emerged from the fog that blanketed the harbor at Newport, Rhode Island, and some 4,600 officers and men under the Comte de Rochambeau came ashore. Rhode Islanders still remembered that the last French fleet that came had abandoned them, and Protestant residents weren't sure if these Catholic foreigners had come to help or conquer them... ♪ but when the French commander promised that his men would pay for everything they needed in silver coin, not worthless Continental paper, a French officer remembered, "their countenances brightened... at this mention of hard money." The next day, General Rochambeau wrote to Washington, "Here we are, sir, at your orders." ♪ Meanwhile, Congress, without consulting George Washington, had now appointed General Horatio Gates, the hero of Saratoga, commander of the whole Southern Department. In late July, he and several aides rode into a camp of 1,200 Continentals from Maryland and Delaware that stretched along the deep river at Cox's Mill in North Carolina. Gates' objective was Camden, South Carolina, a British outpost and supply depot in the center of the state. When he reached Rugeley's Mill, 12 miles north of Camden, Gates had convinced himself that he had 7,000 soldiers at his disposal. ♪ In fact, he had just over 3,000 men, Continentals and militia, and by then, Cornwallis had reached Camden with reinforcements. At 10 P.M. on the night of August 15, 1780, Gates started south toward Camden. By sheer coincidence, Cornwallis chose to lead his men north on the same sandy road that evening, hoping to surprise Gates. [Shouting and gunfire] At about 2 A.M. on August 16, mounted scouts from the two armies collided. There was a brief exchange of fire. They separated and prepared for battle. [Gunfire ends] At dawn, Cornwallis followed the British custom of placing his best troops on his right. Gates, who was himself an ex-British officer and should have known better, unaccountably assigned his least experienced men to face them-- militiamen, many of whom had never been in combat. As the Patriots tried to form their lines, a long, red wall of chanting British regulars began storming toward them. The militia broke and ran. [Shouting and gunfire] Voice: I confess I was among the first that fled. The cause of that I cannot tell except that everyone I saw was about to do the same. I threw away my gun. Private Garrett Watts. [Cannon fires] Narrator: Continentals on the right did hold for a time. Gates' second in command, General Johann de Kalb, a Bavarian-born volunteer, was shot, slashed, and bayoneted again and again but managed to order one counterattack after another until he was finally knocked to the ground, mortally wounded. His men too began to run. ♪ General Gates witnessed none of this. Shortly after the shooting began, he had fled the battlefield on horseback and stayed on the run until he reached Hillsborough, North Carolina, 180 miles away. ♪ The defeat at Camden and the story of Gates' flight ruined his reputation. When it came time to name a successor, Congress would defer to George Washington. ♪ Although South Carolina was not pacified, General Cornwallis was impatient to invade North Carolina, the next step on the road to the biggest prize--Virginia and what he hoped would be the total subjugation of the Southern states. [Horse whinnies] [Fife and drums playing] Iris de Rode: Washington's reputation in France is an interesting one. In France, he is revered. He is admired. People love George Washington in ways that sometimes seems exaggerated, but it's true. They admire him not just because he's a general and they respect the military side, but it's more that he's a symbol for a Republican leader. For the French, Washington became a symbol of what was possible in an egalitarian world where even a farmer could become a general, so they admire him for that military talent that he had, which was not based on aristocracy, titles, or money. He was there because of his talent. Narrator: On September 21, 1780, Washington and 4 of his closest aides met in Hartford, Connecticut, with General Rochambeau and his entourage. The French army remained in Newport. Washington's army was arrayed around New York. For two days, the allied commanders discussed what steps they might take together to defeat the British. ♪ Washington and Rochambeau agreed that the most important objective was still New York City, but before an assault could take place, they would need to have naval superiority and a far larger combined army. Washington begged Rochambeau to ask his king for more help. Rochambeau said he would try. [Bird screeches] Voice: I have observed in this war we have sometimes been in the south when we should have been in the north and oftener in the north when we should have been in the south, but should we ever possess the Hudson River, we can reduce the northern provinces. General Henry Clinton. ♪ Narrator: On September 25, Washington and his staff inspected the fortifications at West Point on the Hudson. They were scheduled to dine with the general whom Washington had just appointed commander of the fort, one of his best soldiers-- Benedict Arnold. ♪ Washington had been startled by what poor condition the fortifications were in and concerned that Arnold had not been there to greet him. He was not at his headquarters, either, when his commander arrived for dinner. Voice: No one could give me any information where he was. The impropriety of his conduct when he knew I was to be there struck me very forcibly. I had not the least idea of the real cause. [Washington] ♪ Narrator: That evening, when his trusted aide Alexander Hamilton brought him a bundle of papers, Washington discovered the real cause. Benedict Arnold-- the commander of West Point, the place Washington considered the most important post in America-- had deserted and fled to the British that morning. Worse still, he had planned to surrender the fort and all the men stationed in it to the enemy. Few soldiers had contributed more to the Revolutionary cause than Benedict Arnold. Time and again, he had exhibited extraordinary initiative and bravery on the battlefield and was severely wounded twice-- at Quebec and Saratoga. Nathaniel Philbrick: He had done all these miracles on the battlefield, but he was not seeing any of the recognition he believed he deserved. "Why am I doing this? I've lost my personal finances. I've destroyed my body. For what?" Narrator: Two years earlier, Washington had made Arnold military commander in Philadelphia. It had not gone well. He used his position to profit from the sale of confiscated Loyalist property. He had also settled into the same mansion the British commander had occupied and was accused of being far too close to wealthy merchants suspected of Loyalist sympathies. ♪ Philbrick: While Arnold is in the midst of this terrible frustration in Philadelphia, he falls in love with a young woman named Peggy Shippen, whose family is of Loyalist sympathies, who had gotten to know the British officers during the British occupation of Philadelphia quite well, and one of them was a Major Andre, who, just as it so happened, would become the head of the British spy network, and whether or not Peggy was the one who made this all happen, soon after the two of them are married, Arnold begins to make overtures to the British. Narrator: In the strictest secrecy, he began to communicate through Major John Andre that he'd gone to war only to redress legitimate American grievances, not independence, and had been appalled when Congress allied itself with Catholic France, which he believed was the enemy of liberty and Protestantism. He now volunteered to enlist in the King's service, either as an officer in the British Army or by cooperating on some concerted plan to sabotage the Revolutionary cause. For 17 months, coded messages had gone back and forth before a concrete plan could be agreed upon. ♪ Arnold was to persuade Washington to give him command of West Point and all the American outposts on the Hudson and then weaken their defenses so that General Clinton's forces could sail up the river and take them all. In exchange, Arnold was to be made a general in the British service, and paid 20,000 British pounds plus £500 a year for the rest of his life. Clinton's forces were poised to move up the Hudson. All that then remained was for Andre and Arnold to meet and work out a few final details. Andre had explicit orders. He was not to cross into rebel territory, dress as a civilian, or carry any papers. He disobeyed all 3, and on his way back to the British lines, Andre was captured by 3 New York militiamen with incriminating documents hidden in his stockings in Benedict Arnold's handwriting. ♪ Philbrick: This came as a devastating blow to Washington, and it was a blow to the American people to realize that one of their own, one of their own that had been a great hero, could make this decision to turn on all of them. He was the last person Washington ever thought would have betrayed him. Narrator: Because Major Andre had been captured in civilian clothes, he was hanged as a spy. Arnold, who managed to escape, got his commission and was given command of a regiment made up of Loyalists and deserters from the Continental Army called the American Legion. ♪ Voice: Since the fall of Lucifer, nothing has equaled the fall of Arnold. He will now sink as low as he had been high before, and as the devil made war upon heaven after his fall, so I expect Arnold will upon America. Should he ever fall into our hands, he will be a sweet sacrifice. General Nathanael Greene. ♪ ♪ Narrator: General Cornwallis' planned invasion of North Carolina would be a 3-pronged assault. On the right, a column would seize the port of Wilmington, ensuring that supplies could flow smoothly inland from the coast. In the center, Cornwallis would himself lead the bulk of his army toward the tiny town of Charlotte, then just a crossroads and a courthouse. On the left, Major Patrick Ferguson and perhaps a thousand Loyalists were to guard his flank and try to rally more men from the backcountry. ♪ Ferguson, a Scottish-born career soldier who directed his men in battle with a silver whistle, led his Loyalist force across the border into western North Carolina. He released rebel prisoners and sent them over the Blue Ridge Mountains with a message for those Patriots who called themselves the Overmountain Men, the settlers who had defied the 1763 proclamation forbidding them to occupy Indian lands. A British victory was inevitable, Ferguson told them, and every man who laid down his arms would be treated gently and justly... [Splashing] but the frontiersmen did not believe him. News of Tarleton's cruelty and Loyalist abuses was still fresh. Instead of surrendering, they came swarming over the mountains after Ferguson, who realized he was in trouble, changed course, and moved towards Charlotte. Along the way, he issued a proclamation meant to rally Loyalists. Voice: Gentlemen, if you choose to be pissed upon forever and ever by a set of mongrels, say so at once and let your women turn their backs upon you and look out for real men to protect them. If you wish or deserve to live and bear the name of man, grasp your arms in a moment and run to camp. The Backwater-men have crossed the mountains. [Ferguson] ♪ Edward Lengel: That's the wrong tone to take when you're communicating with these backcountry over-the-mountain men, these Scots-Irish settlers. ♪ Narrator: Just inside South Carolina, Ferguson unaccountably decided to make a stand on a hill grandly named King's Mountain. Nearly a thousand Patriot militia-- half Overmountain Men and half from the Virginia and Carolina backcountry, including James Collins-- were right behind him. ♪ Voice: Each leader made a short speech in his own way to his men, desiring every coward to be off immediately. Here, I confess, I would have willingly been excused. [Collins] Narrator: On October 7, 1780, as they waited for the signal to start up the hillside, Collins recalled, each man threw 4 or 5 musket balls into his mouth to stave off thirst and speed reloading. [Gunfire] The Patriots attacked with terrifying ferocity. [Whooping and gunfire] Voice: They appeared like so many devils from the infernal regions. They were the most powerful-looking men ever beheld-- tall, raw-boned, and sinewy with long, matted hair, such men as were never before seen in the Carolinas. Drury Mathis. [Whistle blowing] Narrator: As the Patriots closed in on the summit, Ferguson continued to ride from point to point, waving his saber, blowing his whistle, trying to get his Loyalists to hold on. Several balls slammed into him at once. He tumbled from his saddle, his foot caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged back and forth along the ground until his men could grab the reins. [Horse whinnies] Ferguson had been the only British soldier in the battle that day. Everyone else on both sides was an American. [Shouting and gunfire] The Loyalists surrendered. ♪ Voice: The dead lay in heaps on all sides while the groans of the wounded were heard in every direction. "Great God," said I, "Is this the fate of mortals? Was it for this cause that man was brought into the world?" ♪ We proceeded to bury the dead, but it was badly done. The hogs in the neighborhood gathered into the place to devour the flesh of men, and the wolves became so plenty that it was dangerous for anyone to be out at night. Private James Collins. Lengel: After Kings Mountain, Patriots murder many of their captives. If they see somebody among the captives who gives them a dirty look, they'll say, "Oh, I know that guy. "He burned a farm just over the next hill, "and he killed somebody's family. Let's string him up," and so all kinds of atrocities take place. Man: Fight back! Narrator: When Cornwallis learned that the Patriots had annihilated a thousand-man Loyalist force, he pulled his army out of Charlotte and headed back into South Carolina. [Horse whinnies] ♪ Voice: The women of America, animated by the purest patriotism, are sensible of sorrow at this day in not offering more than barren wishes for the success of so glorious a Revolution. If opinion and manners did not forbid us to march to glory by the same paths as the men, we should at least equal and sometimes surpass them in our love for the public good. Esther Reed. ♪ Narrator: In Philadelphia, a prominent woman named Esther Reed had published a pamphlet which called upon all women to forego luxuries and instead raise funds to help the soldiers. ♪ They collected 300,000 Continental dollars, hoping to split it among the troops. George Washington vetoed that idea. They would just buy rum, he said. What they needed were shirts. The women would make more than 2,000 of them. Voice: And see the spirit catching from state to state. America will not wear chains while her daughters are virtuous. Abigail Adams. [Wind blowing] Rick Atkinson: It's quite primitive, the conditions their soldiers are living in. A belief in the cause keeps you putting one foot in front of the other, but that does not keep you warm. It does not cool you down in the summer. It does not feed you, so it's a constant struggle just day to day exclusive of battle. Voice: We never stood upon such perilous ground. Our troops are poorly clothed, badly fed, and worse paid. They have not seen a paper dollar in the way of pay for nearly 12 months. General Anthony Wayne. ♪ Narrator: On New Year's Day 1781, fueled by rum and righteous indignation, some 1,500 Pennsylvania Continentals encamped near Morristown, New Jersey, mutinied. They killed two officers who tried to stop them, seized 6 cannon, and began marching toward Philadelphia to confront Congress with their grievances, but before the mutineers could get there, the Pennsylvania legislature intervened and agreed to most of their demands, including the promise of full back pay and the choice of leaving the army or re-enlisting. No one was to be punished. Half the men left the army. The rest re-enlisted. 3 weeks later, when 3 New Jersey regiments also mutinied, Washington ordered New England troops to surround them. The men were assembled and made to look on as a firing squad of their fellow mutineers was forced to execute two of the ringleaders. Philbrick: Washington realized the only thing he could do was to take them down with terrible brutality. ♪ This was Washington's moment of having to end this in a very summary fashion. [Gunshot] Narrator: "Every thing is now quiet," Washington wrote afterwards, but he feared that unless some way were found to pay and clothe and supply his men, there would be still more mutinies. [Wind blowing] Voice: Be assured that day does not follow night more certainly than it brings with it some additional proof of the impracticality of carrying on the war without aid. We are at the end of our tether. Now or never, deliverance must come. [Washington] [Wind blowing] ♪ Voice: Richmond, Virginia. War in itself, however distant, is indeed terrible, but when brought to our very doors, the reflection is indeed overwhelming. What a gloomy time do I look forward to. Already our gentlemen begin to apprehend that the enemy will advance into the country. ♪ If they do, God knows what will become of us. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: Virginia's Patriots weren't ready to resist an invasion. Men were refusing conscription. Wealthy planters had exempted themselves, their sons, and overseers from serving because, they claimed, they needed to stay home to keep their slaves in line. "The Rich wanted the Poor to fight for them," one farmer recalled, "to defend their property [while] they refused to fight for themselves." Then, in January of 1781, Loyalist troops, British regulars, and German soldiers sailed into Chesapeake Bay and up the James River. Their commander was Benedict Arnold, now a brigadier general in the British Army and eager to demonstrate his newfound devotion to the Crown. ♪ He and half his men marched toward Richmond, the new state capital. At the sight of Arnold's men, Virginia militiamen, many without arms, melted away. ♪ Many years later, an enslaved member of Governor Jefferson's household remembered that "in 10 minutes, not a White man was to be seen in Richmond." Voice: My mother was so scared, she didn't know whether to stay indoors or out. The British formed in line and marched up with drums beating. It was an awful sight. Seemed like the day of judgment was come. Isaac Granger. ♪ Narrator: Arnold's men burned warehouses filled with salt and tobacco and seized 2,200 small arms, nearly 40 cannon, and 503 hogsheads of rum. Even printing presses were, in Arnold's words, "purified by the flames." ♪ He and his men then moved back down the James, pillaging as they went, and settled in for the rest of the winter at Portsmouth, near the mouth of the Chesapeake, where they could be supported by the Royal Navy. Philbrick: To send Benedict Arnold to Virginia was sending the man Washington most despised to his home state, and what Washington did was send the officer that he trusted, in many ways, the most, Lafayette, to contain this treasonous dog. Narrator: "Should [Arnold] fall into your hands," Washington told the Marquis de Lafayette when he ordered him south to protect Virginia, "you will execute... the punishment due [for] his treason... in the most summary way." ♪ Voice: South Carolina. When I left the Northern Army, I expected to find in this Southern Department a thousand difficulties to which I was a stranger, but the embarrassments far exceed my utmost apprehension. I have but a shadow of an army. Nathanael Greene. I think Nathanael Greene is the unsung hero of the American Revolution. Without Nathanael Greene in the South grinding it out battle after battle in the war-torn South, the Revolution could have easily been lost. ♪ Narrator: After the disaster at Camden, George Washington had sent Nathanael Greene to replace the disgraced Horatio Gates as commander of what was left of the southern army. "I think I am giving you a General," Washington told a South Carolina congressman, "but what can a General do without men, without arms, without clothing, without provisions?" ♪ Greene's forces were outnumbered by more than two to one. Nonetheless, he decided to divide his small army. "It makes the most of my inferior force," he explained, "for it compels my adversary to divide his." ♪ Greene himself and most of his men marched into South Carolina to a camp near Cheraw on the Pee Dee River. Meanwhile, Daniel Morgan led what Greene called his "Flying Army" west "to annoy the enemy in that quarter" and "spirit up the people." ♪ [Horse whinnies] In response, Cornwallis sent Banastre Tarleton after Daniel Morgan. Morgan had hoped to get his men safely back across the broad river before facing his pursuer, but Tarleton was soon within 5 miles. ♪ Morgan chose to make a stand at the Cowpens, a rolling meadow 500 yards long and almost as wide on which herdsmen grazed their cattle on the way to market. He expected Tarleton to lead a headlong charge into his ranks and planned to take advantage of his rash opponent. Daniel Morgan was a master tactician. His planning for the Battle of Cowpens is really brilliant in the way that he draws Tarleton into a trap. Narrator: Morgan knew that his less-reliable militia, faced with an onrushing enemy, would likely break and run, so he would try to turn that weakness into a strength. For the next day's battle, he would arrange his men in 3 lines 150 yards apart. Militiamen would man the first two. Morgan ordered them to fire just two volleys each into the oncoming enemy and then retreat behind the third line, manned by seasoned Continentals. He hoped the enemy, convinced the militia were running away again, would charge and suddenly find themselves under deadly fire from his most experienced fighters hidden behind a rise. ♪ Morgan spent the night before the battle building the militia's confidence. Voice: He went among the volunteers, told them to keep in good spirits and the day would be ours. "Just hold up your head, boys. Two fires," he would say, "and you're free, "and then when you return to your homes, "how the old folks will bless you and the girls kiss you for your gallant conduct." Major Thomas Young. ♪ Lengel: Morgan's recognition of them and their recognition of Morgan as this crusty backwoodsman who's just like them gives them a confidence and an ability to think clearly and to follow orders in a way that they would not have done this for anybody else. [Rooster crows] Voice: About sunrise on the 17th of January 1781, the enemy came in full view. The sight--to me, at least-- seemed somewhat imposing. They halted for a short time and then advanced rapidly, as if certain of victory. Private James Collins. [Shouting and gunfire] Narrator: The first line of militia managed to pick off a few regulars and then, following orders, fell back. ♪ When the enemy came within 50 yards of the second line, the militia fired two volleys into them, a "heavy & galling fire," Morgan remembered, that felled 2/3 of Tarleton's infantry officers, but, just as Tarleton had assumed it would, the second line appeared to fall apart, too. The British stepped up their pace, eager to catch the fleeing militia. Surely, Tarleton thought, the battle was nearly won. His men raced up a slope and at its crest suddenly found themselves face to face with the third line and under what a Continental officer remembered as a "very destructive fire which they little expected." [Cannon fires] This time, it was the Patriots who charged with bayonets, emitting a blood-curdling war cry they had adapted from Native warriors, a yell that would reverberate on Southern battlefields for decades. [Men whooping] Voice: Morgan rode up in front and, waving his sword, cried out, "Give them one more fire, and the day is ours." [Sword clangs] We then advance briskly. They began to throw down their arms and surrender themselves. Private James Collins. Narrator: Meanwhile, American cavalry attacked the enemy's rear, "shouting and charging," one Patriot said, "like madmen." The British line broke. It was all over in 35 minutes. The British lost 300 men killed or wounded. 525 more were taken prisoners. Tarleton managed to get away, but Daniel Morgan was exultant. "I have Given him," he said, "a devil of a whipping." ♪ News of Tarleton's defeat stunned General Cornwallis. Nearly a third of his army was now lost. He set out to catch the rebel force. Two months later, at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina, Nathanael Greene tried the same tactics against Cornwallis that Morgan had used against Tarleton. [Gunfire] At first, the strategy seemed to work. Cornwallis' left began to buckle. If Greene had had reserves, he might have prevailed. He had no reserves. Cornwallis won the battle, but he had lost another 500 men. [Gunshot] When the news eventually reached Britain, the leader of the opposition in Parliament was unimpressed. "Another such victory," he said, "would destroy the British army." Cornwallis and his exhausted men staggered east to Wilmington. He had had enough of the Carolinas. Cornwallis decided to defy his orders from General Clinton and lead his army north to link up with British and Loyalist forces already in Virginia. Voice: I cannot help expressing my wishes that the Chesapeake may become the seat of war, even, if necessary, at the expense of abandoning New York. Until Virginia is in a manner subdued, our hold of the Carolinas must be difficult, if not precarious. Lord Cornwallis. Narrator: On April 25, 1781, Cornwallis began his northward march. Word of his disobedience would not reach Clinton's headquarters in New York for more than a month. "My wonder at this move... will never cease," Clinton wrote when he heard the news, "but [Cornwallis] has made it. And we shall say no more but to make the best of it." ♪ Voice: The seat of war is chiefly in the southern states, and there our enemies by victories and defeats are wasting daily. ♪ Our own American affairs wear a more pleasing aspect. Maryland has acceded to the Confederation at the very time when Britain is deluding herself with the idea that we are crumbling to pieces. Abigail Adams. Narrator: In early 1781, Maryland became the last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. Almost 5 years after declaring their independence, the United States finally had the kind of confederation they thought they wanted, but it was just an alliance, not a central government. ♪ All laws were left to the individual states, including those governing slavery, which was still legal everywhere... ♪ but now there were people in all parts of America looking to abolish it. They would have their first successes in the North. ♪ Christopher Brown: It's in this moment that the first antislavery organizations begin to take shape, especially in those places where slavery is not terribly important to the social and economic order-- Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut. Annette Gordon-Reed: It's easier in the North, where there are fewer Black people. The sort of traditional things to say is that the South was a slave society and the North was a society with slaves. Bernard Bailyn: Before the Revolution, slavery was never a major public issue. There were people who spoke against it and gave good reasons to what evil it was, but it was not a major public issue. After the Revolution, there never was a time when it wasn't. Narrator: In 1780, Pennsylvania's Gradual Emancipation Act had said that anyone born into slavery in that state after the act's adoption automatically became free at 28, but any man, woman, or child enslaved before its passage remained enslaved to the end of their lives unless they bought their freedom or had their owner grant it to them. ♪ Voice: Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me and I'd been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it just to stand one minute on God's earth a free woman. I would. [Elizabeth Freeman (Mumbet)] Narrator: When an enslaved woman in Western Massachusetts called Mumbet was struck by her mistress with a kitchen shovel, she had stalked from the house and refused to return. Her owner went to court to get her back. Mumbet's lawyer convinced an all-White jury that since the preamble to the new Massachusetts state constitution declared all men "free and equal" and since his client was a human being, she should be free. The Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed. Mumbet changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman and lived nearly 50 years in Stockbridge, serving her neighbors as a healer, nurse, and midwife. Her gravestone in a Stockbridge cemetery reads, "She was born a slave... yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal." ♪ By the time of her death in 1829, all the states from New Jersey north to New England had called for the abolition of slavery, but it would take another generation and a still more terrible war to end it everywhere in the United States. ♪ ♪ Voice: There are few generals that have run oftener than I have done, but I have taken care not to run too far and commonly have run as fast forward as backward to convince our enemy that we were like a crab that could run either way. Nathanael Greene. Narrator: One by one, all across the Lower South, British outposts either surrendered to Patriots or were abandoned-- Fort Watson, Camden, Orangeburg, Fort Motte, Fort Granby, Fort Galphin, Georgetown, Augusta. [Cannon fires] General Greene fought 3 full-scale battles with the British-- at Hobkirk Hill, Ninety Six, and Eutaw Springs-- and lost them all, but he inflicted such heavy casualties each time that the enemy was forced to withdraw closer and closer to Charles Town. "We fight," Greene said, "get beat, rise, and fight again." ♪ He couldn't have done it without local Patriot militias. Francis Marion's outfit eluded British cavalry by hiding in the swamp so successfully that Banastre Tarleton said, "[A]s for this old fox, the Devil himself could not catch him." ♪ As Britain's grip on the region weakened, the anarchy that had characterized the backcountry for months spiraled into chaos. Partisans on both sides seemed bent on being more cruel than those on the other. They tortured and murdered captives, burned homes and flogged their owners, raped women and hanged their husbands. Gangs of bandits held up travelers and plundered farms. Voice: With us in the North, the difference is little more than a division of sentiment. But here, they prosecute each other with little less than savage fury. You can have no idea of the distress and misery that prevail in this quarter. Nathanael Greene. ♪ Narrator: By the end of the summer of 1781, the British would be penned up in just 3 coastal towns in the Carolinas and Georgia-- Wilmington, Charles Town, and Savannah. London's Southern strategy was falling apart. ♪ Voice: The King has decided that the principal objective of his arms in America during the war with the English is to drive them from the Gulf of Mexico and the banks of the Mississippi, which should be considered as the bulwark of the vast empire of New Spain. [Bernardo de Gálvez] ♪ Narrator: Bernardo de Gálvez-- the bold, young governor of Spanish Louisiana-- saw an opportunity in the American Revolution to take back West Florida for his king, even before Spain had entered the war in 1779. Kathleen DuVal: Bernardo de Gálvez had big ambitions for Spain, and he had big ambitions for himself. He believed that war against Britain would be his chance to push Spanish colonies even farther into North America, past Louisiana, into the rest of the Gulf Coast, the Appalachians, perhaps most of Eastern North America. Narrator: As soon as Gálvez heard Spain had officially entered the war, he left New Orleans and rallied an army that reflected the extraordinary diversity of the Gulf Coast-- Spaniards, Frenchmen, Acadians, Irishmen, Black and biracial men from Africa and the Americas, Choctaws, Houmas, Alabamas, men from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Hispaniola, and a handful of volunteers from the United States. ♪ DuVal: Gálvez began to take British posts. He took Baton Rouge, Natchez, and then sailed with his militia and took the post of Mobile. Narrator: By the spring of 1781, Gálvez's only objective left in British West Florida was its capital and stronghold--Pensacola. ♪ It was defended by local Black and White militiamen; British, German, and Loyalist soldiers; and hundreds of Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Muscogee Creeks who opposed any imperial expansion that threatened their lands in the southeastern interior. ♪ Gálvez landed his army and began a siege. For a month and a half, Spanish guns edged closer and closer to the heart of the British defenses. [Cannon fires] Finally, on May 8, 1781, a shell hit the British gunpowder magazine. [Explosion] The explosion killed almost a hundred men, mostly Loyalist troops, and blew a wide hole in the fort's walls. Gálvez's men poured through the gap, and within hours, the British commander surrendered. Spanish rule was restored in West Florida and with it Spanish control of the Gulf of Mexico. ♪ DuVal: West Florida is the first nonrebelling colony that Britain loses. After the Spanish victory at Pensacola, many, many people in Britain think it's time to stop this war before it gets any worse. ♪ Narrator: Britain was more alone than ever, at war with the Netherlands now as well as with France and Spain, and its West Indian islands and Gibraltar in the Mediterranean were under attack. To London, North America mattered less and less, and General Clinton in New York could do little more than make sure that city remained in British hands. de Rode: The British stronghold is in New York. It's where they won the battle in 1776 against George Washington, which is one of the reasons George Washington really wants to take New York, because he feels very humiliated by that specific battle, so for him since that time, it became almost an obsession. "If we take New York, we're gonna win this war." ♪ Narrator: When word came that French warships and more French troops would arrive on the East Coast sometime that summer, Washington and Rochambeau met again in Connecticut to discuss where the fleet might, in fact, do the most good-- at New York or in Virginia, where Cornwallis was now headed. Washington still favored New York. Rochambeau told him that he preferred to leave the decision to the Comte de Grasse, the admiral now commanding the French fleet in the Caribbean, but in private letters to de Grasse, Rochambeau argued that blockading the Chesapeake should take precedence. In the meantime, Rochambeau marched his more than 4,000 men from Newport to join Washington's army in Westchester County, New York. The French were stunned by what they saw. ♪ Voice: I cannot too often repeat how astonished I have been at the American Army. It is inconceivable that troops nearly naked, badly paid, and composed of old men, Negroes, and children should march so well. [Cromot du Bourg] Voice: The Rhode Island Regiment includes many Negroes, and that regiment is the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in its maneuvers. [Ludwig von Closen] ♪ Narrator: As American and French soldiers probed British defenses around New York, Washington waited for Admiral de Grasse to pick his target-- New York or Virginia. ♪ On May 20, 1781, Lord Cornwallis arrived at Petersburg, Virginia. He commanded some 7,000 British, German, and Loyalist troops. Benedict Arnold was not among them. He had been recalled to New York and would eventually sail for England, never to see his country again. ♪ Cornwallis first tried to hunt down the Marquis de Lafayette, who had been harassing British forces in Virginia, but Lafayette managed to slip away. Voice: You can be entirely calm with regard to the rapid marches of Lord Cornwallis. Let him march from St. Augustine to Boston. What he wins in his front he loses in his rear. His army will bury itself without requiring us to fight him. [Lafayette] ♪ Narrator: Cornwallis unleashed two raiding parties into the heart of Virginia. 250 horsemen, commanded by Banastre Tarleton, were ordered to try to capture Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Assembly, now meeting at Charlottesville, where Tarleton managed to seize several legislators, including Daniel Boone from Kentucky County, but with only moments to spare, Jefferson escaped his would-be captors on horseback. ♪ Voice: Such terror and confusion. What an alarming crisis is this. We were off in a twinkling. The nearer the mountains, the greater the safety was the conclusion, so on we traveled through byways and brambles. [Ambler] ♪ Narrator: Betsy Ambler's family was on the run, too, eventually finding temporary sanctuary on a friend's backcountry plantation. ♪ After 3 mostly fruitless weeks spent marching through the backcountry, Cornwallis and his men started southeast towards Williamsburg. Some 4,500 ex-slaves now trailed along behind. ♪ By bringing the war into Virginia, Cornwallis had provided the largest body of Black people in North America the possibility of freedom. Among those who threw in their lot with the British were 23 from Thomas Jefferson's estates and 16 from George Washington's Mount Vernon. Gordon-Reed: What do you do? Do you stay, or do you take a chance at your freedom and leave your family? How many people can go with you? Sometimes whole families left together. ♪ I would imagine it being frightening but also a sense of hope because the system that they were in may be destroyed and that they may have an opportunity for freedom. ♪ Voice: Has the God who made the White man and the Black left any record declaring us a different species? Are we not sustained by the same power, supported by the same food, hurt by the same wounds, pleased with the same delights, and propagated by the same means? And should we not then enjoy the same liberty and be protected by the same laws? ♪ Some consider us as much property as a house or a ship and think how anxious we must be to raise ourselves from this degrading state. James Forten. Narrator: James Forten was born free in Philadelphia. At 9, he had been in the crowd at the Pennsylvania State House that heard the Declaration of Independence read to the public for the very first time. Forten took the promise of the Declaration to heart and never questioned whether its self-evident truths applied to him. ♪ Now, in the summer of 1781, Forten was 14, old enough to fight for his country. With his mother's permission, he went down to the docks, signed on to a privateer, and set out to sea. Forten was one of 20 men and boys of color in a crew of 200. For privateers eager to attract volunteers, race was no barrier. ♪ His first voyage was a triumph, but the second was a disaster. His ship was overtaken and captured by a British warship. ♪ Once aboard, the captain's son befriended him, and the captain offered to release him if he were willing to sail with the boy to England. Forten refused. He could not turn his back on his country. [Gulls squawking] Instead, he joined hundreds of American prisoners huddled below decks aboard the notorious British prison ship the "Jersey" moored in the East River off Brooklyn-- dark, fetid, rife with disease. [Bell rings] ♪ Meanwhile, starting in June 1781, Cornwallis began to receive a series of contradictory communications from General Clinton back in New York City. First, Cornwallis was to send nearly half his forces north to New York, which Clinton still believed Washington's most likely target. Then Clinton changed his mind. Cornwallis was now to send those same troops to the Delaware Bay, where they might sail north and threaten Philadelphia. Finally, with his men aboard boats in Portsmouth and ready to sail, Cornwallis was to forget moving them north at all. Instead, he was to locate and fortify a deep-water, year-round port in Virginia suitable for the Royal Navy's largest warships. Cornwallis' engineers recommended Yorktown. He arrived there on August 2, 1781. ♪ On August 14, Washington learned that the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse was on its way to the Chesapeake, not New York. ♪ Voice: Matters having now come to a crisis and a decisive plan to be determined on, I was obliged to give up all idea of attacking New York. [Washington] de Rode: George Washington is a realistic military man who knows when to not attack, and so with the advice of the French that had much more experience in warfare, he listens to them and decides to march to the South. Narrator: Then word arrived from Lafayette that Cornwallis was establishing his army at Yorktown. If the French Navy could command the Chesapeake and keep the British fleet out, Lafayette wrote, "the British Army would, I think, be ours." But before Washington could move his army south, some way had to be found to pay his men. Congress was broke. [Horse whinnies] Voice: My personal credit, which, thank heaven, I have preserved through all the tempests of the war, has been substituted for that which the country has lost. I am now striving to transfer that credit to the public. Robert Morris. Narrator: Washington turned to an old friend, the richest man in America-- Robert Morris. Morris had again and again used his own money to supply the Continental Army. He had also used public funds for personal speculations and made millions in government contracts. William Hogeland: Robert Morris was a war profiteer and mingled public and private funds with unabashed abandon, and without him, it's not clear at all that the Revolution would have been won or even would have been fought very long because he did front his own money to keep the army in the field. People said he financed the American Revolution. That's largely true. Critics of Morris said that the Revolution financed him, and that's true, too. ♪ Narrator: Now Morris combined his own funds with borrowed Spanish gold and silver to pay the men. Voice: Each of us received a month's pay. This was the first that could be called money which we had received as wages since the year '76. Joseph Plumb Martin. [People cheering] Narrator: Leaving 4,000 Continentals behind, the French and American armies began to make their way south in 3 great columns on August 18. ♪ The campaign was an enormous undertaking and a great gamble. ♪ In order to keep Cornwallis from escaping by sea, French naval forces from both the Caribbean and Newport, Rhode Island, would have to elude British warships patrolling the Atlantic coast and enter the Chesapeake Bay. At the same time, thousands of French and American troops, who could not speak one another's language, would have to continue to make their way together some 450 miles from Westchester County to Virginia in the heat of summer. [Horse nickers] de Rode: It's hot and humid, and, as the French write, "infested by mosquitoes," and so this is a very complicated march. You have to think of thousands of men marching through these little roads. They have to create bridges. They have to get obstacles out of the way, and we're not talking just about men marching. We have a lot of animals behind them. ♪ In order to not walk in the middle of the day, they start in the middle of the night, so it's pitch dark. You're walking on little paths, probably quite muddy, and you just walk, and then for a few hours later, you have to stop because you have to create your new encampment. You get some food, which often arrived way too late. Narrator: To deceive the British into thinking that he was planning an amphibious assault on Staten Island or Sandy Hook, Washington had made sure that false documents suggesting an imminent attack fell into British hands. ♪ Philbrick: Washington is able to convince Clinton that he is going to attack New York. It's a brilliant series of deceptive maneuvers that Washington is able to pull off. By the time Clinton realizes that Washington is not going after him but is on his way south, Washington is in Philadelphia. [Gulls squawking] Narrator: At Yorktown, Cornwallis hated the kind of defensive war he was being asked to oversee and considered the port and Gloucester across the river "dangerous posts," since neither commanded the surrounding countryside. He'd started by fortifying Gloucester. The work had gone slowly. He and his men expected a British fleet to arrive in the York River any day, but they now heard upsetting rumors that a French fleet "had left the West Indies and was approaching the coast of North America." By late summer, work had begun on the fortifications at Yorktown itself. Meanwhile, at Portsmouth, where some of Cornwallis' men remained, smallpox was ravaging the former slaves who had followed the British army there. What should be done, the commander at Portsmouth, wrote Cornwallis, "with the hundreds...that are dying by scores every day?" Voice: It is shocking to think of the state of the Negroes, but we cannot bring a number of sick and useless ones to this place. ♪ I leave it to your humanity to do the best you can for them, but on your arrival here, we must adopt some plan to prevent an evil which will certainly produce some fatal distemper in the army. Lord Cornwallis. ♪ Narrator: Portsmouth was evacuated, and the troops joined Cornwallis' army at Yorktown. ♪ It was from there, on the morning of August 30, that Captain Johann Ewald looked out toward the Chesapeake Bay. Voice: I could detect 3 heavy vessels in the distance. We soon had news that the 3 vessels which lay before our noses were French. [Ewald] Narrator: Admiral de Grasse was now lying at anchor just inside the narrow entrance to the Chesapeake Bay between Cape Charles and Cape Henry. Philbrick: The Chesapeake is a huge bay, but its point of access is the two capes. It's very narrow, and anyone who can control that controls this huge body of water. [Horse whinnies] Narrator: On the morning of September 5, a dispatch rider caught up with George Washington near Head of Elk, Maryland, with the good news that the French fleet had arrived. ♪ That same day, though, sailors aboard de Grasse's flagship spotted sails approaching from the north. They were 19 British ships sent from New York with orders to find and destroy the French fleet. de Grasse might have stayed where he was, blocking entrance to the bay, but if he had done so, the 8 French ships, loaded with heavy siege guns that were on their way from Newport, would have been kept out of the Chesapeake. de Grasse moved out into the open sea to confront his enemy. ♪ The two fleets maneuvered for 6 hours. Commanders scattered sand across their decks to absorb the sailors' blood they knew was about to be shed. ♪ At 4:00 in the afternoon, they opened fire. [Cannon fire continues] The broadsides continued until dark. [Man shouts] Narrator: The result was a standoff, but the British vessels got the worst of it and were forced to limp back to New York. ♪ Meanwhile, the French squadron from Newport carrying the heavy siege guns had slipped unnoticed into the bay, and, avoiding Cornwallis' defenses at Yorktown, sailed up the James River, and Washington and Rochambeau's armies were arriving at Williamsburg. Cornwallis was trapped. Lengel: From the very beginning, Washington recognized that this war was going to end when the stars aligned. He's been waiting for this, and he snatches at it. Voice: We prepared to move down and pay our old acquaintance the British a visit. I doubt not that their wish was not to have so many of us come at once, as their accommodations were rather scanty. They thought the fewer, the better. We thought the more, the merrier. Joseph Plumb Martin. ♪ Narrator: On September 28, 1781, at 5 A.M., the French and American armies, now 18,000 strong, started toward Yorktown. The allies established a crescent-shaped encampment around the town-- the French on the left, the Americans on the right. Washington and Rochambeau set up headquarters just a few hundred yards apart. ♪ The two commanders rode forward to reconnoiter. Washington had long understood Yorktown's strategic limitations and the hole the British had dug for themselves. ♪ 800 to 1,000 yards from Yorktown stood an outer line of trenches and redoubts, their bases bristling with abatis, sharpened logs meant to repel invaders. ♪ Black laborers could be seen struggling to complete an inner ring around the town. ♪ Swamps and marshy creeks made a direct assault impractical. The allies didn't have time to starve the defenders, either. The French fleet was due to return to the Caribbean within weeks. A traditional, European-style siege seemed to be the answer. Washington left its planning to the French. The Americans were "totally ignorant of the operations of a siege," Rochambeau said. He had taken part in 14 of them. ♪ At dawn on September 30, French and American troops edged cautiously toward the outermost British defenses, expecting stiff resistance. Instead, they found them empty. Cornwallis, outnumbered 3 to 1, had pulled his men back into town. Lengel: Cornwallis makes a fatal mistake. He's exhausted. He's depressed. A commander who otherwise is very effective is just not at his best. Narrator: For 5 days and nights, allied soldiers worked to transform the abandoned British positions into their own strongholds and to bring up the artillery, equipment, and entrenching tools needed to dig their first parallel trench and begin the siege. ♪ British artillery hurled shot and shells at the Americans and Frenchmen as they worked. [Men shouting] Sarah Osborn, the wife of a New Jersey corporal, was one of the women who carried beef, bread, and hot coffee to the men as they dug. One day, she remembered, George Washington happened by and asked her if she wasn't afraid of the British cannonballs. "No," she said, "It would not do for the men to fight and starve, too." [Distant explosion] When the parallel was complete, it stretched for more than a mile, a trench 10 feet wide and nearly 4 feet deep. ♪ At 3:00 in the afternoon on October 9, the French opened fire. Two hours later, Washington was given the honor of touching off the first American cannon. [Man shouting] Narrator: All along the allied lines, cannon and mortars began firing into Yorktown. ♪ Voice: The remainder of the night passed in a dreadful slaughter. Several parts of the garrison were in flames on this night, and the whole discovered a view awful and tremendous. Bartholomew James. Voice: It was as if one witnessed the shock of an earthquake. 3,600 shot by the enemy were counted in this 24 hours. These were fired at the city into our lines and against the ships in the harbor. Private Johann Conrad Doehla. ♪ Narrator: By the night of October 11, the allies had begun digging a second parallel, but before the noose could be tightened completely, two enemy redoubts, Numbers Nine and Ten, had to be taken. The American target was redoubt Number Ten. The men were from Lafayette's force. Alexander Hamilton was in command. Joseph Plumb Martin and his company led the way. ♪ Voice: We advanced beyond the trenches and lay down on the ground to await the signal. Our watchword was "Rochambeau," a good watchword, for being pronounced "Rochambeau," it sounded, when pronounced quick, like "Rush on, boys." [Martin] [Cannon fires] Narrator: When the signal was given, Martin and his fellow soldiers rushed forward. Right behind them came Rhode Islanders, including many free Black men or former slaves. ♪ The moment they reached the abatis, the redoubt's defenders began firing down into them. ♪ Voice: But there was no stopping us. I forced a passage at a place where I saw our shot had cut away some of the abatis. While passing, a man at my side received a ball in his head and fell under my feet, crying out bitterly. The fort was taken and all quiet in a short time. [Martin] ♪ Narrator: Lafayette sent a dispatch to a French officer in the column assigned to capture Redoubt Number 9, saying his men were in his redoubt. "Where are you?" "Tell the Marquis I am not in mine," the French officer replied, "but will be in 5 minutes." [Cannon fires] Voice: There was no mercy that night. Complaints and groans could be heard everywhere. Someone called out here, another there, begging to be killed for the love of God, as the redoubt was strewn with the dead and wounded, so much so that we had to walk on them. Georg Daniel Flohr. Narrator: The allies lost no time in rolling their big guns into both redoubts and opening fire on Yorktown. Friederike Baer: It was absolutely horrific. There was no moment to rest. There was no place to hide. For days, there was continuous bombardment. [Shells whooshing] ♪ Narrator: Cornwallis knew his cause was hopeless, but he could not seem to bear what Banastre Tarleton called "the mortification of a surrender." ♪ [Snare drum playing] At about 10:00 in the morning on October 17, 1781, a drummer boy appeared on a British parapet, beating his drum, the signal that Cornwallis wished to negotiate. When the thunder of the guns drowned out the drumming, an officer climbed up next to the boy and waved a white handkerchief. Voice: He might have beat away till doomsday if he had not been sighted by men on the front lines, but when the firing ceased, I thought I had never heard a drum equal to it, the most delightful music to us all. Ebenezer Denny. [Snare drum continues] Narrator: The Battle of Yorktown was over. The Patriots and their French allies had won. ♪ The world would never be the same. ♪ Surrender negotiations went on for a day and a half. Cornwallis wanted his British and German soldiers free to sail home. Washington refused. He recalled the disrespectful way Patriot General Benjamin Lincoln and his men had been treated after the fall of Charles Town. Until a formal peace was reached, the surrendering soldiers were to remain in the United States as prisoners of war. Cornwallis had little choice but to agree. ♪ As the British and Germans marched out of what was left of Yorktown-- their flags cased, their numbers reduced by wounds and disease-- they had orders to avoid even looking at the victorious Americans. Only the French, they'd been told, were worthy opponents. Washington and Rochambeau waited on horseback. Lord Cornwallis was nowhere to be seen. He claimed to be ill, but, as a professional soldier, he may simply have been too humiliated at having to surrender his army to a group of rebels to make an appearance. Cornwallis' second in command, General Charles O'Hara, stood in for him and tried to surrender his sword to General Rochambeau. Rochambeau refused to accept it. "We are subordinate to the Americans," he said. "General Washington will give you orders." Washington wouldn't accept it, either. He passed O'Hara on to his second in command, Benjamin Lincoln, who formally accepted the sword and then handed it back, as custom dictated. ♪ Conway: The ultimate humiliation-- not only having to surrender to the Americans, but having to surrender to the second in command of the Americans. ♪ Voice: With what soldiers in the world could one do what was done by these men? One can perceive what an enthusiasm which these poor fellows call liberty can do. Who would have thought a hundred years ago that out of this multitude of rabble would arise a people who could defy kings? Johann Ewald. [Church bell ringing] Voice: This is a blow, my Lord, which gives me the most serious concern, as it will, in its consequences, be exceedingly detrimental to the King's interest in this country. Henry Clinton. Narrator: When the Prime Minister, Lord North, finally heard about the surrender at Yorktown 5 weeks after it happened, he staggered around as if he'd been hit by a musket ball, waving his arms and crying out again and again, "Oh, God, it is all over." ♪ In a speech to Parliament, King George III said that, while recent events in Virginia had been "unfortunate," he remained determined to fight on "to restore my deluded subjects to that happy and prosperous condition which they formerly derived from...obedience to the laws," but Britain had grown weary of the war. ♪ Some 50,000 British, German, and Loyalist troops had lost their lives in North America. The British national debt had doubled. Other battlefields seemed more important-- in the Caribbean, where they would soon destroy Admiral de Grasse's fleet; in the Mediterranean, where they still held Gibraltar; and in India, where they continued to expand their empire. ♪ On February 27, 1782, Parliament voted to halt all offensive activity in North America. Lord North's government fell. Alan Taylor: Could they have kept the war going from a purely military perspective? Sure, but politically, the will to fight vanishes, so the pro-war administration is toppled, and the King is forced to accept a new government with a new political coalition that is committed to negotiating a peace settlement with the American rebels. ♪ Voice: Alas, what remains of Yorktown now, what had given it its high privilege, that of being accessible from every quarter, proved its greatest misfortune. Its excellent harbor rendered it the port of all others most favorable for an invading enemy. Too soon did they avail themselves of it, and this Eden became desolate. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: Betsy Ambler and her family never returned to Yorktown, settling permanently in Richmond. ♪ Not long after the surrender, slaveholders began turning up at Yorktown, eager to reclaim the surviving runaways who had fled to the British. Washington set up two fortified posts where slaves were to be kept under guard until their owner came to claim them. Patriot troops were encouraged to help track them down. ♪ "The Negroes looked condemned," one militiaman remembered, "for the British had promised them their freedom." ♪ 5 enslaved people captured at Yorktown were returned to Thomas Jefferson. Two more, both women, were returned to George Washington's Mount Vernon. ♪ Washington's army soon moved north. Rochambeau's men marched up to Boston the following year and sailed away. ♪ Cornwallis' defeated men were marched to prison camps in the interior. Eager to get them back, Parliament finally recognized captured Americans as prisoners of war. Redcoats and rebels alike could expect to be exchanged. Jennifer Kreisberg: [Vocalizing "Amazing Grace"] After 7 months of suffering aboard the prison ship the "Jersey," James Forten was released, emaciated but lucky to be alive. ♪ He walked all the way home to Philadelphia from New York, most of the way barefoot. He astonished his mother on arrival. She had long since given him up for dead. ♪ After the war, Forten would build a great fortune making sails for the American merchant fleet and use part of those earnings to fund the abolitionist movement. When decades later, a friend urged him to apply for one of the pensions being granted to war veterans, Forten refused. "I was a volunteer, sir," he said. He didn't want money. He wanted citizenship. ♪ Voice: Our country asserts for itself the glory of being the freest upon the surface of the globe. She proclaimed freedom to all mankind. The brightness of her glory was radiant, but one dark spot still dimmed its luster. So much is doing in the world to ameliorate the condition of mankind, and the spirit of freedom is marching with rapid strides and causing tyrants to tremble. May America awake from the apathy in which she has long slumbered. She must sooner or later fall in with the irresistible current in the cause of liberty. James Forten. Jasanoff: Loyalists knew the war was lost, and the question for them became, "What's gonna happen to us next?" and--given the violence, this insurgency, counterinsurgency, back and forth, down-and-dirty fighting in the countryside-- Loyalists had every reason to fear that now that the Patriots were in charge, they were gonna find themselves on the rough end of recriminations. [Pounding on door] Narrator: Everywhere, Patriots were seeking revenge on men and women who had once been their neighbors and fellow subjects of the King. "The mob," one Loyalist wrote, "now reigns... fully and uncontrolled." [Gunshots and shouting] In Georgia, Patriots hunted down and killed Loyalists who had sought sanctuary in the swamps. ♪ Other Loyalists were exiled and their property confiscated. ♪ Voice: I cannot say I look back with regret at the part I took from motives of loyalty, from love to my country as well as duty to my sovereign, and, notwithstanding my sufferings, I would do it again if there was occasion. John Peters. [Church bell ringing] Narrator: John Peters and his wife Ann settled in Nova Scotia. Most Loyalists would choose to stay despite the danger and take their chances, hoping to resume their old lives in the new country, but thousands decided to leave. They huddled together in the last British strongholds of New York City, Charles Town, and Savannah, waiting for ships to be found to take them away. Jasanoff: In an incredible gesture at the end of the American Revolution, the British government offers continuing protection to American Loyalists, and I don't know of any other precedent for this kind of mass evacuation of civilians organized by a government, and particularly by the military, with a view to helping these refugees get started with a new life somewhere else outside the place that they had always called home. Narrator: General Guy Carleton, who had replaced Henry Clinton as commander of British forces, was expected to move more than 30,000 troops with their mountains of supplies as well as 60,000 Loyalists and 15,000 enslaved people out of the United States. Carleton began that summer with Savannah. Some 3,000 Whites and perhaps 5,000 Blacks sailed to other British colonies. Charles Town was next-- almost 11,000 people, Black and White. Most of them ended up in Jamaica and the Bahamas. Only New York remained in British hands. ♪ Meanwhile, in Paris, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens were trying to work out a permanent peace. Ignoring their instructions to include the French, whose assistance had ensured their astonishing victory, the American envoys decided to negotiate alone with British emissaries. "Let us be honest and grateful to France," John Jay said, "but let us think for ourselves." ♪ They had a draft treaty within a week. Its terms were generous to the Americans, so generous they would cause the new British government to fall, as well. ♪ It declared the 13 former colonies "to be free, Sovereign and independent states" and set expansive boundaries, stretching all the way from the Great Lakes to Florida and from the Appalachians westward to the Mississippi, a territory larger than England, France, and Spain put together. British troops were to be withdrawn with "all convenient Speed" and were barred, the agreement said, from "carrying away any Negroes or other Property of the American Inhabitants." ♪ This provisional treaty was signed by the American and British negotiators on November 30, 1782. A final comprehensive treaty would not come for another 9 months. ♪ Joseph Ellis: There's a consensus at the end among the negotiators, including the Brits, that we're witnessing the creation of an American empire. ♪ de Rode: Some people would say the British lost the war, but then they won the aftermath, and France lost that period. They could not reinvent themselves in order to prevent their collapse. The promise of the American Revolution was, of course, a promise of democracy, of equality, of liberties, of all these new concepts at a time where in Europe, there were only monarchies. The republic had won against the monarchy. It inspired many. Narrator: The American Revolution would be the opening signal for more than two centuries of revolution, first in Europe, then in the Caribbean, South America, Asia, and Africa. Baer: The ideas are very powerful. When they're talking about liberty, when they're talking about equality, when they're talking about opportunity, the freedom from oppression, the American Revolutionary movement served as a model for other societies and communities around the world. ♪ Narrator: But in early 1783 at the Continental Army's winter encampment at Newburgh, New York, things were not going well. An unsigned manifesto began circulating among Washington's officers openly calling for a mutiny. If peace really came, they would refuse to disarm and be free to use the army to force Congress and the states into providing the back pay they were owed. [Approaching hoofbeats] On March 15, at a meeting to hear more about the conspiracy, officers heard horse's hooves. [Horse whinnies] The door flew open. Washington and his aides entered. The general stepped to the lectern. ♪ He spoke for 20 minutes, urging his officers to resist drowning "our rising empire in blood." Most shifted in their seats, unconvinced. ♪ Then Washington asked if he could read a letter from a Virginia congressman who had pledged support for the army. He stumbled over the first words, paused, and pulled a pair of spectacles from his coat. Voice: Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind. [Washington] ♪ Narrator: The rest of the letter didn't matter. Many officers, hard men made harder still by battle, were openly weeping. The mutiny was over before it could begin. ♪ Voice: The unparalleled perseverance of the armies of the United States, through almost every possible suffering and discouragement for the space of 8 long years, was little short of a standing miracle. George Washington. Narrator: As the Continental Army began to disband, Washington tried again to persuade Congress to provide his men with at least 3 months' back pay in cash, but the best they could do was issue a blizzard of paper certificates, vaguely promising to redeem them one day. ♪ Voice: Some of the soldiers went off for home the same day their fetters were knocked off. Others stayed and got their final settlement certificates, which they sold to procure decent clothing and money sufficient to enable them to pass with decency through the country and to appear something like themselves when they arrived among their friends. I was among those. ♪ When the country had drained the last drop of service it could screw out of the poor soldiers, we returned to drift like old, worn-out horses. Joseph Plumb Martin. ♪ Ellis: That group of people are ordinary Americans, below the level of ordinary, and they won the war because they never left. They stayed. That was it. They refused to leave, and, um... um... you can sound pretty patriotic, but I don't think you can be patriotic enough about them. ♪ Voice: We had lived together as a family of brothers for several years--had shared with each other the hardships, dangers, and sufferings incident to a soldier's life; had sympathized with each other in trouble and sickness-- and now we were to be parted forever, as unconditionally separated as though the grave lay between us. [Martin] ♪ [Gulls squawking] Narrator: By the spring of 1783, more than 30,000 Loyalists and almost as many British and German troops still remained in New York City, all waiting for ships to take them away, so many people that General Carleton could not tell George Washington precisely when they would all be gone. Soldiers shipped out for home or the West Indies. Some Loyalists planned to sail to Quebec or the Bahamas, but the overwhelming majority-- nearly 30,000 American men, women, and children-- resolved to begin their new lives like John and Ann Peters had, to the north in Nova Scotia. Of the more than 3,000 Black people who had also found sanctuary in New York, half were considered the property of Loyalists and so would have to accompany their owners wherever they chose to go... ♪ but most of the rest were runaways, like Harry Washington, who had been the property of George Washington, and Boston King, who had been promised that if they fled their Patriot owners, they would be free. That freedom now seemed in peril. ♪ Voice: Peace was restored between America and Great Britain, which issued universal joy among all parties except us who had escaped from slavery and taken refuge in the English army, for a report prevailed at New York that all slaves were to be delivered up to their masters. This dreadful rumor filled us all with inexpressible anguish and terror, especially when we saw our masters coming and seizing upon their slaves in the streets of New York or even dragging them out of their beds. Many of the slaves had very cruel masters so that thoughts of returning home with them embittered life to us. For some days, we lost our appetite for food, and sleep departed from our eyes. Boston King. Narrator: From his headquarters up the Hudson, George Washington continued to insist every runaway be returned to his or her owner. General Carleton refused. "National Honour," he told Washington, required him to make good on official British pledges made to persons of "any complexion." Voice: The English had compassion upon us in the day of distress. In consequence of this, each of us received a certificate from the commanding officer at New York, which dispelled all our fears. [King] ♪ Narrator: Carleton decreed that any enslaved person who had left a Patriot owner and served behind the British lines for 12 months was free. Disputes between runaways and owners or slave catchers determined to return them to slavery were adjudicated by a committee of 4 British officers and 3 Americans who met weekly at Fraunces Tavern on Pearl Street. ♪ Voice: I came from Virginia. I was with Lord Dunmore, washing and ironing in his service. I came with him to New York and was in service with him till he went away. My master came for me. I told him I would not go with him. He took my money and stole my child from me and sent it to Virginia. Judith Jackson. ♪ Narrator: Judith Jackson won the right to go to Nova Scotia, but she stayed on in New York, frantically trying to recover her daughter until she was forced to sail without her. ♪ [Man shouts] Narrator: There were more tense moments at dockside. Before any vessel carrying Black passengers, slave or free, could leave New York, British and American inspectors demanded to see their certificates and entered their names and descriptions in separate ledgers... Rhiannon Giddens: [Vocalizing "Dean Cadalan Samhach"] ♪ Narrator: but once underway, Boston King, Harry Washington, and all the hundreds of other free persons the British allowed to sail north were filled, as King wrote, "with joy and gratitude." ♪ In the end, Nova Scotia proved cold and unforgiving. Black refugees were not made welcome. ♪ Both men would eventually join nearly 1,200 other African Americans who emigrated again, this time to Sierra Leone in West Africa, where they founded a new British colony with a new capital city they called Freetown. Voice: If we had the means of publishing to the world the many acts of treachery and cruelty committed by them on our women and children, it would appear that the title of Savages would with much greater justice be applied to them than to us. Old Smoke. Narrator: The 150,000 Native Americans who lived in the vast territory that was now the United States were not so much as mentioned in the treaty. Kreisberg: [Vocalizing "Grief"] Voice: We were struck with astonishment at hearing we were forgot. We could not believe it possible such firm friends and allies could be so neglected by England, whom we had served with so much zeal and fidelity. Thayendanegea, Joseph Brant. The losers in the negotiation of Paris are the Native Americans. I mean, it would be hard-pressed to say that they'd be better off if the British had won, but they probably would have. ♪ Narrator: The contributions Native Americans had made to winning American independence would soon be forgotten, too, including Oneidas, Tuscaroras, Delawares, Catawbas, and the Indian community at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. ♪ Voice: In this late war, we have suffered much. Our blood has been spilled with yours, and many of our young men have fallen by the side of your warriors. ♪ Almost all those places where your warriors have left their bones, there our bones are seen also. [Stockbridge petitioners] ♪ Philip Deloria: The Stockbridge Indians, their home, their land is gonna go away. They're not gonna be able to hold on to that, and they are moved to New York. Then they end up in Wisconsin. Like so many tribes, right, they end up being kicked around and moved from place to place. This is, of course, the story of Native people relative to the United States. ♪ Voice: Beloved men and warriors of the United States, we, the women of the Cherokee Nation, now speak to you. We are mothers and have many sons, some of them warriors and beloved men. Our cry is all for peace. ♪ This peace must last forever. Let your women hear our words. [Delegation of Cherokee Women] [Drum and rattle playing] Narrator: There would be no peace. As the United States moved inexorably westward, Native nations would continue to fight for their independence for another century. ♪ Native Americans would not become citizens of the United States until 1924, and their struggle to remain sovereign would never end. ♪ ♪ At 1:00 in the afternoon on November 25, 1783, George Washington-- "straight as a dart," an eyewitness recalled, "and as noble as he could be"-- led a procession of soldiers and civilians down Bowery Lane and Queen Street, west across Wall Street, and then down Broadway. [Fireworks pop and crackle] The British were finally gone. Washington was back in the city he had been forced to abandon in 1776. New Yorkers celebrated for days with illuminations, bonfires, and fireworks... [Fireworks continue] and now George Washington had one more duty to perform. He would ride to Annapolis, Maryland, where the Confederation Congress was now meeting, and formally resign his commission. [Trumpet playing "Amazing Grace"] Ellis: He knew what he was doing. He walks away from power. He's not gonna be a Cromwell. He's not gonna be a Caesar. He's not gonna be what Napoleon is gonna become. He could have easily become dictator head, and he had no interest in that whatsoever. ♪ Narrator: Accompanied by two military aides and his enslaved companion William Lee, Washington set out right away for Mount Vernon, hoping to be home for Christmas Eve. ♪ Voice: These are the times that tried men's souls, and they are over, and the greatest and completest Revolution the world ever knew gloriously and happily accomplished. As United States, we are equal to the importance of the title, but otherwise we are not. Our union is the most sacred thing and that which every man should be most proud and tender of. Our great title is Americans. Thomas Paine. [Drum roll] Narrator: The war had brought the states together, but peace soon threatened to tear them apart. Small states continued to fear large ones. Northern and Southern states jockeyed for dominance and quarreled over borders. Vermonters had already declared themselves a separate republic. North Carolina's Overmountain settlers were seeking to secede and form their own state called Franklin. [Gunfire] Elsewhere, farmers turned to violence to protest state taxes they considered unreasonable. In Massachusetts, protest became insurrection, Shays' Rebellion put down only after former comrades in arms fired on each other. A "cloud of evils," George Washington wrote, "was threatening the tranquility of the Union." ♪ Voice: Our situation is truly delicate and critical. On the one hand, we stand in need of a strong Federal Government founded on principles that will support the prosperity and union of the states. On the other, we have struggled for liberty and made lofty sacrifices at her shrine, and there are still many among us who revere her name too much to relinquish the rights of man for the dignity of government. Mercy Otis Warren. ♪ Narrator: The new Congress, created by the Articles of Confederation, was toothless, saddled with colossal debts, and incapable of collecting taxes with which to pay them off. Christopher Brown: It's not hard to imagine at all Britain, France, and Spain picking off individual states to create sort of commercial alliances or political alliances and military alliances, as client states, and all kinds of things. Sounds crazy, but it's no more crazy to have actually created a federal government that would actually work, and famously, a lot of British observers throughout the 1780s-- "Just give them a few years. It's all gonna fall apart." Philbrick: One of the lessons Washington learned during the American Revolution is that without a powerful central government, nothing effective could happen. The frustrations he experienced trying to get these 13 colonies to work in unison and failing every time in the Continental Congress taught him that something had to change. ♪ Narrator: In late May 1787, 55 delegates met in Philadelphia to draw up a constitution. Nearly half owned slaves. 30 had served in the war. George Washington lent his prestige by agreeing to preside over the convention. ♪ 4 months later, they had hammered out a 4-page document. To devise a government that the American people could agree to live under demanded historic compromises-- some creative, some tragic. ♪ The Constitution delineated which powers fell to the central government and which remained with the states, a system of shared sovereignty they called federalism. The architects of the Constitution divided the federal government into 3 branches-- the legislative, executive, and judicial-- in a delicate balance by which each was meant to check the others to ensure against overreach that could result in tyranny. They feared that a demagogue might incite citizens into betraying the American experiment. Alexander Hamilton was concerned that an "unprincipled" man would "mount the hobby horse of popularity" and "throw things into confusion." "In a government like ours," he would write, no one is "above the law." [Bell rings] Voice: I wish the Constitution which is offered had been made more perfect, but I sincerely believe it is the best that could be obtained at this time, and as a constitutional door is opened for amendment hereafter, the adoption of it is, in my opinion, desirable. [Washington] Bailyn: They were trying to create a system in which you could have a sufficiently powerful government that could work properly for its own people and the great powers of the world and still retain the freedoms of the individual, and that is the great issue that runs all the way through the Revolution. It's a struggle between the possibilities of power and of liberty. ♪ Narrator: In order for the Constitution to take effect, the individual states had to ratify it. That would foster one of the most extensive public debates in history. ♪ Gordon-Reed: The people who created the American Revolution and created the American nation assumed that Americans would be involved, that they would be active citizens, not subjects. Being a citizen requires the kind of participation in the democracy that keeps it vibrant. ♪ Narrator: In the end, all 13 states did ratify the Constitution, but before consenting to live under the new federal government, the American people wanted to enshrine the liberties they had won in the Revolution. The Constitution was almost immediately amended with a Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of worship and the separation of church and state, freedom of speech and assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, trial by jury, and a ban on cruel and unusual punishment. James Madison, who wrote the Bill of Rights, called the Constitution "nothing more than the draft of a plan, "nothing but a dead letter, "until life and validity were breathed into it by the voice of the people." ♪ Vincent Brown: The idea that government derives its authority from the consent of the governed was pretty radical. It's still pretty radical. If we take the words of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson-- "All men--" let's say men, women-- "are created free and equal," right-- Jefferson clearly didn't take that seriously as a slaveholder, but I do, and I think it's incumbent on all of us to take those words from Jefferson and make them real in our own lives, even if they weren't real in his. ♪ Narrator: When the time came to choose the first president under the Constitution, George Washington was the only choice and won the vote of every single elector. ♪ He was inaugurated in New York City on April 30, 1789. John Adams, the first vice president, thought the chief executive should have a royal, or at least a princely, title, but for Washington, President of the United States was honor enough... [People cheering] and when he left the presidency in 1797, King George himself paid tribute. By surrendering first his military and then his political power, he said, George Washington had made himself "the greatest character of the age." ♪ Voice: Our government daily acquires strength and stability. The union is complete. ♪ Nothing hinders our being a very happy and prosperous people, provided we have wisdom rightly to estimate our blessings and hearts to improve them. Abigail Adams. Rhiannon Giddens: [Vocalizing "Amazing Grace"] Voice: I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance. ♪ And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism. Thomas Jefferson. ♪ Atkinson: America is predicated on an idea that should act as a pole star for us to provide true north, telling us what it is that we think we can do as a people. ♪ The perpetual challenge of the American experiment is to draw on those aspirational ideals and make them our own, hand them off to our children and our grandchildren, and to use that as a propulsion system for being the nation that those forebears thought we could become. ♪ Voice: The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government. ♪ Patriots, come forward! Your country demands your services. Hear her proclaiming, in sighs and groans, in her governments, in her finances, in her trade, in her manufactures, in her morals, and in her manners, "The Revolution is not over!" Benjamin Rush. ♪ ♪ ♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of "The American Revolution" with interactives, games, classroom materials, and more. ♪ Announcer: "The American Revolution" DVD and Blu-ray, as well as the companion book and soundtrack, are available online and in stores. The series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video. ♪ Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. URL https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-6-the-most-sacred-thing/

The American Revolution A Film By Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein & David Schmidt The Soul of All America (December 1777 – May 1780) VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. [Cannon fire] ♪ Voice: I have of late lost a great many intimate friends. The numbers of fine young men from 15 to 5 and 20 with loss of limbs hurts me beyond conception, and I every day curse Columbus and all the discoverers of this diabolical country. In what manner the Parliament will act on this occasion we cannot conceive. Major John Bowater. ♪ Voice: You cannot--I venture to say, you cannot conquer America. My lords, in 3 campaigns, we have done nothing and suffered much. [Gavel bangs] You may swell every expense and every effort, pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow, traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country. Your efforts are forever vain and impotent. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms-- never, never, never. [Men shouting] William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. [Gavel bangs] ♪ [Distant cannon fire] ♪ [Fife and drums playing] Jane Kamensky: The American Revolution is, on the one hand, an intensely local war, and, on the other hand, a great global war. As a global war, the American Revolution continues the series of wars among empires for the prize of North America. Britain, Spain, France are all seeking some form of victory or advantage... ♪ but the beginning of 1778, the rebellious United States' cause is at the thread end of its ability to continue to exist. ♪ Voice: There comes a soldier, his bare feet are seen through his worn-out shoes, his legs nearly naked from the tattered remains of an only pair of stockings, his breeches not sufficient to cover his nakedness. His whole appearance pictures a person forsaken and discouraged. Dr. Albigence Waldo, surgeon, First Connecticut Infantry. ♪ Narrator: The weary Continentals whom George Washington led into winter quarters at Valley Forge in December of 1777, were, a visitor, said, just "a skeleton of an army." They'd been fighting and marching for months, but many hadn't been paid since August. Nearly 3,000 of them were officially unfit for duty. Over the next 6 months, 2,500 soldiers would die, mostly from typhus, typhoid, influenza, and dysentery. Clothing was so scarce that when a man died, what was left of his uniform was washed and carefully preserved so that another member of his unit might be at least a little warmer. ♪ Voice: I am now convinced that unless some great change takes place, this army must inevitably be reduced to one or the other of these things-- starve, dissolve, or disperse in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can. George Washington, headquarters at the Valley Forge. ♪ Narrator: Valley Forge took its name from an abandoned ironworks that stood at the intersection of a small creek and the Schuylkill River some 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Washington himself called it "a dreary kind of place," but he chose it because it was close enough to Philadelphia to move quickly against British foragers when they dared venture out of the city and far enough from it to make surprise attacks unlikely. Pennsylvania legislators complained that instead of withdrawing to Valley Forge, Washington should be about the business of recapturing Philadelphia. Voice: I can assure those gentlemen that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside than to occupy a cold, bleak hill and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blankets. It would give me infinite pleasure to afford protection to every individual and to every spot of ground in the whole of the United States. Nothing is more my wish, but this is not possible with our present force. George Washington. [Canon fire in distance] ♪ [Fire crackling] Voice: I'd experienced what I thought sufficient of the hardships of military life the year before, but we were now absolutely in danger of perishing, and that too in the midst of a plentiful country. Joseph Plumb Martin. [Horse neighs] Narrator: Private Joseph Plumb Martin had survived the Battles of Long Island, Kips Bay, the disaster at Germantown, and the siege of Fort Mifflin, and he was still just 17. ♪ Now huddled in tattered canvas tents at Valley Forge, soldiers went for days with nothing to eat but fire cakes-- just flour and water baked on hot stones. Several days went by when many soldiers had no food at all. There was talk of mutiny. Rick Atkinson: The apparatus of war supporting the army has come unglued. All of these support functions that help keep an army thriving, keep it healthy, have really begun to implode. Narrator: Congress, still in exile in York, Pennsylvania, told Washington to commandeer food and fodder from the surrounding countryside, but he resisted, worried it might turn civilians against the cause. Instead, he tried to purchase everything his men needed, but the steady depreciation of Continental currency made that problematic. William Hogeland: Nothing like the American Revolutionary War had been fought. No public project like it had been undertaken before, and it was incredibly expensive. What happens with a paper currency if it isn't well-supported and isn't handled properly is, it depreciates wildly against gold and silver. It was useless as a currency, and in that sense, the Congress went broke. ♪ Stephen Conway: The British Army, on the contrary, has lots of hard cash, and lots of Americans who are not politically interested one way or the other see opportunities for commercial benefit-- selling products, selling goods and services to the British Army. Narrator: Washington's army was dwindling again. Men simply went home. Hundreds enlisted in Loyalist regiments. Others joined roving outlaw bands that looted isolated farmhouses. Still others made their way to Philadelphia to surrender, hoping they would be treated better as prisoners of war than as soldiers at Valley Forge. Washington's officers were leaving, too. Voice: The number of resignations in the Virginia Line is induced by officers finding that every man who remains at home is making a fortune whilst they are spending what they have in the defense of their country. Thomas Nelson. ♪ Narrator: Over the coming months, more than 500 of Washington's officers would resign. To add to his troubles, some members of Congress and a handful of commanders had begun whispering that he had proved himself weak and indecisive in battle. If the Revolution were to succeed, some argued, command of the Continental Army should pass to Horatio Gates, who had recently accepted the surrender of an entire British army at Saratoga. ♪ Voice: I did not solicit this command, but accepted it after much entreaty. As soon as the public gets dissatisfied with my service, I shall quit the helm with as much satisfaction and retire to a private station with as much content as ever the weariest pilgrim felt upon his safe arrival in the Holy Land. George Washington. Narrator: Until that moment came, Washington would work tirelessly, first to maintain, and then to improve his army. Shelter came first. He ordered the men to cut down trees, dismantle farmers' outbuildings and fences, and bang together row upon row of log huts, perhaps 2,000 of them, each one 14 by 16 feet and meant to house 12 men. ♪ Valley Forge would for a time be the fourth largest city in America-- 20,000 men, women, and children from all 13 states. For many, English was not their native language. They spoke German, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Dutch, Swedish, French, Mohican, Oneida, Wolof, Kikongo, and more. Nearly 10% were African American, most of whom served alongside whites in integrated regiments. Some 60 men were enrolled in a brand-new all-Black company belonging to the First Rhode Island Regiment. The state legislature promised those who were enslaved their freedom at war's end and pledged to pay compensation to those whose property they had been. ♪ Among the Native American soldiers and scouts at Valley Forge were Tuscaroras, Oneidas, as well as Mohicans and Wappingers from Stockbridge, Massachusetts. ♪ The hundreds of women who lived among the soldiers did the men's laundry, nursed the sick and wounded, and cared for an unknown number of children. When men went to war, they were gone and so was whatever pay they were going to get, and many women just could not survive on their own, and so it was actually better for everybody when women traveled with the armies. ♪ Narrator: Martha Washington joined her husband at Valley Forge. At least 8 servants-- men and women, white and Black, enslaved and free-- lived alongside the Washingtons in a stone house they rented from the family of the mill owner who had built it. 8 of General Washington's closest aides were crowded in there, as well, among them, two especially idealistic young officers in their early 20s-- John Laurens and the Marquis de Lafayette. ♪ Iris de Rode: As soon as Lafayette arrived, he starts to look around and get inspired by everything he sees, and he's young, and he's excited to be in this new country in what, to him, is the New World, and he's going to explore and understand. He really starts to believe in the cause for equalities, for liberties. ♪ Narrator: John Laurens of South Carolina was the son of Henry Laurens, the current president of Congress and one of the biggest slave traders in North America. From Valley Forge, the young Laurens wrote to his father. Voice: I would solicit you to seed me a number of your able-bodied men slaves instead of leaving me a fortune. I would bring about a twofold good. First, I would advance those who are unjustly deprived of the rights of mankind, and I would reinforce the defenders of liberty with a number of gallant soldiers. ♪ My dearest friend and father, I hope that my plan for serving my country and the oppressed Negro race will not appear to you the chimera of a young mind, but a laudable sacrifice of private interest to justice and the public good. John Laurens. Narrator: Henry Laurens rejected his son's proposal. Freeing some slaves, he said, would simply "render Slavery more irksome to those who remained in it." ♪ [Wind blowing] In February, the bad conditions at Valley Forge grew still worse. Some 1,000 soldiers would sicken and die that month. Voice: I was called to relieve a soldier thought to be dying. He was an Indian, an excellent soldier. He has fought for those very people who disinherited his forefathers. Having finished his pilgrimage, he was discharged from the war of life and death. His memory ought to be respected more than those rich ones who supply the world with nothing better than money and vice. Dr. Albigence Waldo. [Chickens clucking] Narrator: Desperate to feed his hungry men, Washington now organized what was called the Great Forage, more than 1,500 men in all, to scour the countryside in eastern Pennsylvania, western New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, seizing whatever they could find and handing out promissory notes in exchange. ♪ Voice: The militia and some regular troops on one side, and Loyalist refugees with the Englishmen on the other, were constantly roving about, plundering and destroying everything in a barbarous manner. Everywhere distrust, fear, hatred and abominable selfishness were met with. Reverend Nils Collin. ♪ Narrator: Nils Collin was a Swedish missionary sent to America to serve as rector of the Swedish Church in Swedesboro, New Jersey. Since he considered himself a subject of the Swedish monarch, his conscience would not allow him to swear allegiance to the British king or to ally himself with the Patriot cause. He vowed to remain neutral, but bands of American and British soldiers and their sympathizers took turns occupying the town, seizing livestock and provisions, and punishing those who stood in their way. ♪ Voice: Many members of the congregation suffered injury in various ways by this frenzy. Dr. Otto's house was burnt down by Loyalist refugees. James Stillman lost most of his cattle. Sutherland, a Scotchman, together with a young Swede, Hendrickson, were taken to New York as prisoners. ♪ On the opposite side, the militia pillaged the following-- Jacob and Anders Jones, who had traded with the English; a sea captain, Jan Cox, whose beds were cut up and his China, tea tables, and bureaus smashed. From all this it is apparent how terrible this civil war raged, party hatred flamed in the hearts of my people. Some would not go to church because the sight of their enemy aroused the memory of the evils they had suffered. Nils Collin. Vincent Brown: Given the choice to fight for the Patriot cause or join the British effort to suppress the Patriots, most people stood to the side. Most people tried to let it pass. They tried to get out of the way. Kamensky: It's common individuals, ordinary individuals asking the question that I think we all ask about politics every day-- "What does this have to do with me?" ♪ Voice: Girls at the age of 12 and 13 require a mother's care. A girl of 13, left without an advisor and fancying herself a woman, stands on a precipice that trembles beneath her. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: Betsy Ambler and her younger sister Mary spent that winter in Winchester, Virginia. They were left with an aunt and uncle while their parents and little sisters headed southeast to avoid the cold. Betsy spent much of her time trying to win the attention of "charming young..." Continental "officers." "Here," she said, "was a fine field open for a romantic girl." Voice: Early in the spring, our good father returned. And though he treated us himself as children, he saw that we had been considered of an age to attract too much attention. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: The Ambler family would be reunited, and they would be returning to Yorktown, what Betsy called her "beloved birthplace." Her father's finances had been hit hard by the war. He and his two daughters had to make the long, dusty trip home in a wagon, not a coach. "We were rather ashamed of our cavalry," Betsy remembered. Voice: The only possible good from the entire change in our circumstances was that we were made acquainted with the manner and situation of our country, which we otherwise should never have known. We were forced to industry and to endeavor by amiable and agreeable conduct to make amends for the loss of fortune. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: When the Amblers finally got to Yorktown, they settled not in "our former mansion," she recalled, but in a much smaller house on the edge of town. [Birds chirping] Voice: My imagination frequently recurs to that enchanting spot situated on a little eminence overlooking a smiling meadow, where a gentle stream meandering round the sloping hill was lost in one of the noblest rivers in our country. Here, my sister and myself often wandered, gathering wildflowers to adorn our hair, till we almost fancied ourselves heroines. Betsy Ambler. [Officer saying commands] Christopher Brown: Washington had this really interesting quality of being able to project authority and confidence and allowing that to spill out into others, so that they acquired authority and confidence by being in his orbit. I think he had the effect of pulling out some of the best in the people who were around him. Narrator: To provide his army with the reliable logistical support it desperately needed, Washington insisted that Congress appoint as quartermaster general the officer he trusted most-- Nathanael Greene, but Greene was a fighting general. He knew there was more combat ahead and wanted to be in on what he called "the mischief." Atkinson: Greene says, nobody in history has ever heard of a "quartermaster." He doesn't want the job, but he takes the job. Like Washington, he's got a brain built for executive action, and he's good at being the quartermaster. Narrator: Thanks to Nathanael Greene's mastery of logistics and Washington's appeals to state governors, by the end of March 1778, herds of cattle and sheep were plodding toward Valley Forge from several directions, along with wagon trains filled with everything from barrels of nails to brand-new uniforms and crates of bayonets and muskets. [Snare drum playing] Now that his men were better fed, clothed, and equipped and their ranks were swelling as fresh recruits, recalled regulars, and returning convalescents all converged on Valley Forge, Washington wanted every man in his newly reorganized army to undergo formal military training to end what he called the confusion that had too often undercut its performance on the battlefield. The man he picked to oversee that task was a newcomer to America-- Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben. Voice: Never before or since have I had such an impression of the ancient fabled God of War as when I looked on the baron. The trappings of his horse, the enormous holsters of his pistols all seemed to favor the idea. He seemed to me a perfect personification of Mars. Private Ashbel Green. Narrator: Steuben claimed to be a baron, a lieutenant general in the Prussian Army, and a close aide to Frederick the Great. He really was a baron, though a penniless one, and he had served in Frederick's headquarters for a time, but his army career in Europe had been cut short by an accusation that he had taken familiarities with young boys. In America, he said, he wanted to put his "talents in the arts of war in the service of a republic." ♪ Steuben was hot-tempered, and his English was initially limited to a single word--"goddamn." Voice: When some movement or maneuver was not performed to his mind, he began to swear in German, then in French, and then in both languages together. When he had exhausted his artillery of foreign oaths, he would call to his aides, "Come and swear for me in English. These fellows won't do what I bid them." Peter Stephen Du Ponceau. Edward Lengel: Baron von Steuben is really a comical figure when he arrives at camp. The men make fun of him, but he is a man who you need pulling the men together and giving them a sense of common purpose. After the men have drilled with him for a little while, they stop laughing. [Man shouting orders] Narrator: But for all his bluster, Steuben grasped the character of the men he was to work with. "The genius of this nation is not to be compared... with the Prussians, Austrians or French," he wrote to an old friend back home. "You say to your soldier, 'Do this,' and he does it," but here, "I am obliged to say, "'This is the reason why you ought to do that,' and then he does it." ♪ Steuben taught the men to march at a "common step" of 75 paces a minute and a "quick step" of 120 paces, to move in columns rather than straggle in single file, to shift into battle line and back again when under fire, to load and fire musket volleys more quickly, and to become proficient with the bayonet, the weapon that had once terrified them when in British or Hessian hands. As skills improved, so did morale. ♪ By spring, the danger of mutiny had eased. So had the mutterings about Washington's leadership. He was, it was clear, indispensable to the cause of liberty. ♪ That year, a German-language almanac published in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, would call Washington Des Landes Vater-- "the Country's Father." ♪ He was the glue that held people together. These 13 colonies had to come together, and he was the person to do it. We would not have had a country without him. I don't know, actually. I mean, you know-- God, I can't believe I'm saying this because I'm not a huge fan of "great man" theories of history or explanations of history, but let's put it this way. It's easy to see the American effort for independence failing without Washington's leadership. ♪ [Gull squawks] Narrator: After midnight on April 23, 1778, 31 sailors and Marines from the 20-gun Continental Navy sloop "Ranger," tossing in the Irish Sea, climbed into two longboats and began rowing toward the port of Whitehaven on the western coast of England. Their Scottish-born commander knew these waters well. He'd begun his seafaring career there as a 13-year-old apprentice seaman named John Paul Jr. In the intervening years, he had sailed aboard slave ships, risen to command merchant vessels, and then, after killing a crewman, fled to America. There, he changed his name to John Paul Jones and volunteered to join the fledgling Continental Navy. Voice: I resolved to make the greatest efforts to bring to an end the barbarous ravages to which the English turned in America by making good fire in England of shipping. John Paul Jones. Narrator: When Jones' men reached the Whitehaven wharf, they found more than 200 vessels moored in its harbor. As Jones worked to get a fire going aboard a boat loaded with coal, angry townspeople raced to the waterfront. Voice: I stood between them and the ship of fire with a pistol in my hand and ordered them to retire, which they did with precipitation. The flames had already caught the rigging and begun to ascend the main mast. It was time to retire. John Paul Jones. Narrator: Jones and his men made it back to the Ranger and sailed away. [Cannon fire] The next day, they engaged a British warship, the "Drake," and after a battle that Jones remembered as "warm, close, and obstinate," captured it and its crew and brought it into the French port of Brest. Jones understood his impact on British public opinion. Mothers began warning their children to be good, or the fearsome "Pirate" John Paul Jones would get them. ♪ Voice: What was done is sufficient to show that not all their boasted navy can protect their own coasts and that the scenes of distress which they have occasioned in America may soon be brought home to their own doors. John Paul Jones. ♪ Voice: What a miraculous change in the political world-- the government of France an advocate for liberty, espousing the cause of Protestants, and risking a war to secure their independence; Britain at war with America, France in alliance with her. These, my friend, are astonishing changes. Elbridge Gerry. Narrator: It had taken nearly 3 months for word of the new military alliance with France to reach Washington. The French would be sending soldiers and the fleet. His army would no longer be alone. "This...great... glorious...news," he said, "must put the independency of America out of all manner of dispute." [Snare drum playing] Washington was eager now to test his newly disciplined army against the enemy. Voice: The enemy imagined Philadelphia to be of more importance to us than it really was and to that belief added the absurd idea that the soul of all America was centered there and would be conquered there. Thomas Paine. ♪ Narrator: The British, German, and Loyalist troops penned up in Philadelphia had had a hard winter, too. They had subsisted on half-rations. Wounded troops occupied every public building in town except the State House, where the Declaration of Independence had been signed, which was crowded with Patriot prisoners. ♪ 1777 had ended badly for the British. General Burgoyne had surrendered an entire army at Saratoga. General Howe might have occupied Philadelphia, and his subordinates still held New York City and Newport, but they controlled little else, and now, with the French joining the war, Britain would be required to defend all its imperial holdings-- in India, Africa, Ireland, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, as well as in North America. Kathleen DuVal: The French decide to enter the war, and that changes everything for Britain. Britain knows that Spain and the Netherlands may be next. Suddenly, those 13 colonies that were rebelling are kind of the small potatoes of the war. They could lose their profitable plantation islands. They could lose Jamaica. The stakes are big in this war, and the 13 colonies have become just a tiny corner of it. ♪ Narrator: Lord North, the British prime minister, dispatched peace commissioners to America that spring, armed with a series of concessions aimed at ending the fighting, everything the Americans had been demanding for years. All they had to do was renounce independence. What they're offering is basically terms that would have been acceptable to the colonists in 1774 or 1775. Narrator: Congress would not hear of it. The very idea of dependence, its president, Henry Laurens, said, "is inadmissible." British negotiators responded with a warning. Americans could now expect far harsher treatment than any they had yet received, and they had appointed a new commander to deliver that treatment. Voice: On the 10th of May, Sir Henry Clinton arrived at Philadelphia, relieving Sir William Howe as commander in chief. Captain Johann Ewald. Atkinson: Henry Clinton is a formidable military officer. He's had a lot of combat experience, but he's a very, very difficult personality. He's easily aggrieved. He carries his grievances and grudges with him. He will be the British commander in chief longer than any other general in the American Revolution, for 4 years. Narrator: General Henry Clinton, who had been fighting in America since Bunker's Hill, had hoped to be relieved. Instead, he would be asked to do at least as much as his predecessor had been asked to do and to do it with far fewer men. His new orders were to send 8,000 of his soldiers to protect British interests in Florida and the Caribbean. He was to leave the rest of the New England and Mid-Atlantic states in Patriot hands for the most part and eventually mount seaborne assaults on the 4 Southern Colonies. Clinton concluded he first had to get his army back to New York, which meant evacuating Philadelphia that had been taken just 9 months earlier. Most of his men, he decided, would have to march to New York. He had too few ships to carry his entire army as well as some 3,000 Loyalists now eager to leave with him. Voice: All of the loyal inhabitants who had taken our protection lamented that they now had to give up all their property. Brave people who have rendered such good service to the King are being left behind. God alone knows what will happen to them. Johann Ewald. Maya Jasanoff: Philadelphia has its population turned inside out a couple of different times in the Revolution. New York City has its population turned around, a kind of back-and-forth of Loyalist and Patriot residents, depending on which army is in charge, and when an army leaves, the population that had come in order to live under their protection have to sort of fumble and figure out what it is that they're going to do next. ♪ Voice: Philadelphia, June 18th. This morning when we arose, there was not one redcoat to be seen. Colonel Gordon and some others had not been gone a quarter of an hour before the Americans entered the city. Elizabeth Drinker. Narrator: To act as military governor of Philadelphia, George Washington selected General Benedict Arnold, still suffering from war wounds so severe that he could not mount a horse. He was to restore order and preserve tranquility. Philadelphia was now almost unrecognizable. Retreating redcoats had looted homes, desecrated churches, felled orchards for firewood, and in the houses they had used as barracks, cut holes in the floor to serve as privies. Returning Patriot refugees were enraged at what had been done to their city and were eager to punish anyone who had collaborated with the occupiers. The homes and property of scores of accused Tories would be confiscated. 23 men were tried for treason. Two Quakers were hanged. Nathaniel Philbrick: Philadelphia was divided between the Loyalists and the Patriots, who were at each other's throats. It would have required someone of great tact and sympathy to keep the lid on this city. That was not Arnold. Narrator: By June 18, 1778, most of Clinton's army was in New Jersey and had begun its march toward New York, some 90 miles away. They moved in two great columns-- more than 18,000 soldiers, nearly 2,000 noncombatants, 46 artillery pieces, and 5,000 horses. The next morning, George Washington led his army out of Valley Forge for the first time in months and began shadowing the British as they moved east, looking for an opportunity to strike. Atkinson: Washington has decided that he is not going to directly intercept this column, which is very strong. He wants to nick at them and--and peck at them from the rear and make life miserable for them and watch for an opening. Narrator: Once again, New Jersey militia made the British passage as painful as possible, felling trees across the roads, destroying bridges, flooding streams to make fording difficult, and picking off individual soldiers by ambush. ♪ Voice: The whole province was in arms, following us with Washington's army, constantly surrounding us on our marches and besieging our camps. Each step cost human blood. Johann Ewald. [Thunder] Narrator: The weather added to their misery-- heat that soared above 90 degrees, sudden downpours that turned sandy roads into bogs, followed by dense humidity, swarms of mosquitoes, and still more heat. 20 British soldiers died of heat exhaustion on a single day. As many as 500 men are thought to have deserted during the march, most of them Hessians, blending into German-speaking communities nearby. [Birds chirping] ♪ On the morning of June 24, 1778, Americans otherwise disconnected by the vastness of their continent witnessed an otherworldly phenomenon at roughly the same time as the moon eclipsed the sun. ♪ Indians and Spanish colonists in Mexico and Texas saw it first. When it reached Spanish New Orleans and British Mobile, the flags of empire flew in sudden darkness for more than 4 minutes. The total eclipse lasted even longer for the Muscogee Creeks on the Chattahoochee River and for the "Maroon" communities of self-emancipated former slaves hidden in the Great Dismal Swamp. ♪ When mid-morning darkness descended on the Virginia capital at Williamsburg, "Lightening buggs were seen as at Night." ♪ The same darkness briefly enveloped Washington's army as it followed the British into New Jersey. "Had this happened upon such an occasion in "olden time," Private Joseph Plumb Martin remembered, "it would have been considered ominous, either of good or bad fortune, but we took no notice of it." ♪ Martin had been detached from his Connecticut regiment and assigned to join fast-moving light infantry with orders to follow the enemy closely enough to capture stragglers and welcome deserters. The day after the eclipse, Clinton decided to head east towards Sandy Hook, a Loyalist stronghold from which royal transports could ferry his men to New York. He merged his two divisions into one column, and, he recalled, hoping that "Mr. Washington might possibly be induced to commit himself" to battle, "[I placed] the elite of my army between him and my [supply train]... to defend it from insult." He put General Charles Cornwallis in charge of that force. ♪ At Hopewell, Washington convened a council of war. General Nathanael Greene, back in the field, was eager for a fight. Voice: If we suffer the enemy to pass through the Jerseys without attempting anything upon them, I think we shall ever regret it. People expect something from us, and our strength demands it. Nathanael Greene. Narrator: But most commanders urged caution. Major General Charles Lee-- Washington's second in command, captured two years before and only recently exchanged-- was especially adamant in his opposition. Sending Americans against British regulars would be "criminal," he said, but when Washington decided to send forward 4,500 troops anyway, Lee insisted seniority required that he lead them. If he weren't given command, he said, he would be "disgraced." Washington relented and ordered Lee to follow Cornwallis' elite rearguard and look for an opportunity to attack. ♪ [Indistinct conversation] Narrator: The British left their encampment around Monmouth Court House well before dawn on Sunday, June 28th. [Gunfire] By mid-morning, Lee's men had formed west of the British line, trying piecemeal to attack and dislodge Cornwallis' forces. All their efforts proved futile. [Shouting and gunfire] Narrator: As the Patriots struggled in the increasingly brutal heat, Clinton sent an entire division to reinforce Cornwallis. More than 10,000 British, German, and Loyalist troops counterattacked. Atkinson: Things go south in a hurry for the Americans. Lee loses control, and the next thing you know, this American advance guard, the vanguard that's supposed to be attacking, is fleeing. Lengel: They're confused. They begin falling back, but then Washington appears. The knowledge of his presence causes the retreat to stop instantaneously without even having said a word. Those who witnessed this moment said that it was like a bolt of electricity shot through the forces once they realized that Washington was there. Voice: His presence stopped the retreat. His fine appearance on horseback, his calm courage gave him the air best calculated to excite enthusiasm. He rode all along the lines amid the shouts of the soldiers, cheering them by his voice and example. Marquis de Lafayette. Lengel: Washington gives some orders. The men get back into line... [Gunshot] and they face down the British attack, and they don't break. Man: Fire! ♪ [Men shouting commands] Narrator: General Steuben's training had paid off. The British launched a series of assaults. General Henry Clinton himself led one of them, sword in hand. ♪ Colonels Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr both had horses shot out from under them, but the Americans held. Atkinson: Washington places his defenses in a way that stops the British assault. He's got good ground for his artillery. He's hammering the British. [Men shouting] ♪ Narrator: The artillery duel continued for two hours. Infantry on both sides sought whatever cover they could. Voice: With the thermometer at 96, what could be done in a hot pine barren loaded with everything that the poor soldier carries? It breaks my heart that I was obliged under those cruel circumstances to attempt it. General Henry Clinton. ♪ Narrator: Finally, at around 3:45, Clinton ordered a stop to the firing. With his supply train now well on its way towards Sandy Hook and safety, he reluctantly began to withdraw his exhausted troops. Washington's men were worn out, too. The heat, Joseph Plumb Martin remembered, was like "the mouth of [an]...oven." [Insect buzzing] Voice: It was generally understood the battle was to be renewed at the dawn of day, but at the dawn of day, I heard the shout of victory-- "The British are gone." Dr. William Read. ♪ Narrator: The Battle of Monmouth had left some 362 of Washington's men and 411 of Clinton's dead, wounded, or missing. Corpses, swollen and blackening in the heat, sprawled everywhere. Both sides claimed victory. ♪ Clinton's column reached Sandy Hook without serious interruption and embarked for Staten Island. His objective was to get his army to New York, and he had done so... ♪ but when the fighting ended, Washington's men held the field. "It is glorious for America," a New Jersey colonel wrote his wife. At least one British officer admitted his army had endured "a handsome flogging." Although there would be fierce fighting and many skirmishes in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, Monmouth would be the last major battle fought in the North during the American Revolution... ♪ and it would be more than 3 years before George Washington would personally lead his troops into battle again. ♪ Serena Zabin: What he learns over the course of the war is that there are other ways to perform his leadership that's not actually by doing something big and bold but that waiting and holding back and containment can also be a way of showing his strength. [Clock ticking] Voice: Cruel as this war has been and separated as I am on account of it from the dearest connection in life, I would not exchange my country for the wealth of the Indies, or be any other than an American. Abigail Adams. ♪ Stacy Schiff: One of the great blessings here is how much time John spends in Philadelphia with Abigail back in Massachusetts because from that, we have really the most detailed, richest correspondence of the Revolutionary years. Narrator: In the summer of 1778, Abigail and John Adams were apart, as they almost always were during the war. She was at their home in Braintree, Massachusetts, managing the household, and he was newly arrived in Paris, sent by Congress to join Benjamin Franklin and the American delegation to France. ♪ There, on the Fourth of July, Adams and Franklin hosted a modest celebration on the second anniversary of American independence. Voice: We had the honor of the company of all the American gentlemen and ladies in and about Paris with a few of the French gentlemen in the neighborhood. They were not ministers of state, nor ambassadors, nor princes, nor dukes, nor peers, nor marquises, nor cardinals, nor archbishops, nor bishops. John Adams. Narrator: Thousands of miles west of Paris in Philadelphia, where the Continental Congress had just returned from exile, General Benedict Arnold presided over a feast and entertainment for the city's political, military, and merchant leaders. They were interrupted by what one of them called "a crowd of the vulgar" outside mocking the pretensions of the wealthy. DuVal: I think the American Revolution creates an idea that there is no class in the United States, that we, in our founding moment, decided to do away with that. It's not true. There have always been wide varieties in wealth and power in the United States, and there were more opportunities in the colonies than there were in Europe, but some of the opportunity, some of the promise of the United States, is built on slavery and taking Native land. ♪ Narrator: Late the same evening of July 4th, in the heart of the continent, Virginia militia under Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark reached British-held Kaskaskia, a mostly French-speaking village on the Mississippi River. Man: Ready! [Gunshots] Narrator: In the dead of night, Clark's men overwhelmed the town's defenses. Woman: [Vocalizing] Narrator: The next morning, he notified the terrified townspeople that the King of France had joined the Americans. Clark guaranteed they would be free to practice their Catholic faith, since all religions would be tolerated in America, provided they agreed to bow to the authority of the United States. It was a bloodless start to what would become Clark's bloody campaign to conquer Indian country east of the Mississippi. [Snare drum playing] [Gulls squawking] The French fleet Washington had been waiting for finally appeared off New York in the week after Independence Day-- 12 ships of the line, 4 frigates, and over 4,000 French marines, all commanded by Vice Admiral Charles Henri, Comte d'Estaing, a veteran of warfare against Britain in India and Sumatra. De Rode: D'Estaing is a French aristocrat. He considers himself quite superior to these American "ragtag" army and is looking at them and thinks, "How am I gonna work with these people?" Because he thought, "I'm the French admiral. I know what to do here, so they better listen to me." Narrator: Washington hoped a coordinated attack with this new French force could trap Clinton in New York, take back the city, and, by so doing, persuade Britain that further prosecution of the war was hopeless. Because d'Estaing had convinced himself that his heaviest ships would run aground trying to enter New York Harbor, he decided to move against the British garrison at Newport, Rhode Island, instead. It was to be a coordinated assault with American ground forces under General John Sullivan, but neither commander spoke the other's language. Sullivan, the son of Irish indentured servants, loathed aristocrats like the French commander, who, in turn, found Sullivan crude and inept. [Cannon fire] It all went wrong. Without informing the French, Sullivan advanced a day earlier than had been planned. When a British fleet appeared offshore, d'Estaing sailed out to do battle... [Thunder] but a howling storm scattered and seriously damaged both fleets. De Rode: 18th-century warfare is mainly based on the weather. You could have no alternative. If there is a big storm coming in, you can't do anything besides getting just wiped away. Admiral d'Estaing had to go for repairs in Boston. [Cannon fire] Lengel: The French, in essence, leave the Americans in the lurch. Sullivan is barely able to extract his forces from what could have been a catastrophe. ♪ Narrator: The first joint French-American operation had failed. Once the repairs were finished in Boston, d'Estaing would set sail for the French West Indies without even bothering to tell Washington he was leaving. French ships would be available to the Americans only during the late summer and early fall, when hurricanes threatened the Caribbean. The American Revolution was important to France only when its successes deepened Britain's failures and Washington knew he could not win the decisive battle without French help. Lengel: Anti-French feeling runs so high after this that Lafayette said he never at any point in the war felt that his life was at so much risk as it was when he walked down the streets of Boston after this catastrophe at Rhode Island. He thought he was gonna be strung up. [Man shouts] ♪ Voice: I, with some of my comrades who were in the Battle of White Plains in the year '76, saw a number of the graves of those who fell in that battle. Some of the bodies had been so slightly buried that the dogs or hogs or both had dug them out of the ground. Here were Hessian skulls. Poor fellows! They were left unburied in a foreign land. They had perhaps as near and dear friends to lament their sad destiny as the Americans who laid buried near them. They should have kept at home. Joseph Plumb Martin. ♪ Narrator: By the fall of 1778, Washington's army was arrayed in an arc from Middlebrook, New Jersey, to Danbury, Connecticut. He would remain within striking distance of New York City, determined to recapture the place he had been forced to abandon in 1776. [Shouting and gunfire] For months, his and Clinton's armies had probed one another's lines. On a single summer afternoon near Kingsbridge, a Maryland patrol ambushed a German unit, killing 6 and wounding 6 more, and Loyalist cavalry ambushed and hacked to death most of the Stockbridge Indians who had been with Washington's army since 1775. They "have fought and bled by our side," Washington said. "We consider them as our friends and brothers." ♪ Voice: On the great road from New York to Boston, not a single solitary traveler was visible from week to week or from month to month. The world was motionless and silent. Chaplain Timothy Dwight. ♪ Narrator: Before the Revolution, Westchester County in New York had been one of the wealthiest in the colonies, but for nearly two years now, it had been a part of what was called the "Neutral Ground," uncontrolled by either army but plundered by both again and again. ♪ Roving bands of lawless raiders prowled the countryside rustling livestock, extorting cash, looting and burning homes, raping women. Voice: This year has not been a very glorious one to America. Our enemies, however, have nothing to boast of since they have not gained one inch of territory more than they possessed a year ago and are at least Philadelphia out of pocket. What the winter may produce I know not. I wish it would give us peace but do not expect it. Abigail Adams. Women: ♪ Sit down, servant, sit down... ♪ Taylor: It's pretty clear the British are not gonna win the war in New England. They're not gonna get enough popular support, probably not gonna win the war in the Middle Atlantic region either. Woman: ♪ I know you tired... ♪ Taylor: The great potential place where their relatively more reduced forces can have more leverage is the South, so the goal is just see what you can retain. You probably can't keep all of these 13 colonies. Maybe you can keep the most valuable of these colonies. Woman: ♪ I know you're mighty tired... ♪ Conway: The Southern Colonies are seen as an integrated part of an economic system that generates great power and wealth for Britain, so keeping the Southern Colonies with their ability to provision the West Indian islands, and particularly their plantation economies, is seen as a vital British interest, and that, more than anything else, is why the war shifts to the South from 1778. Woman: ♪ Sit down ♪ Narrator: After General Clinton learned the French fleet had sailed away from Boston, he prepared for the invasion of the South that London had ordered him to undertake. ♪ Jasanoff: Another reason that the British pursue a Southern strategy after Saratoga is that they assume that there are many more Loyalists in the South who will come to their aid. There was also, of course, the question of the enslaved population. Voice: A great majority of the inhabitants of North and South Carolina are loyal subjects. It is also well known that the principal resources for carrying on the rebellion are drawn from the labor of an incredible multitude of Negroes in the Southern Colonies. But the instant that the King's troops are put in motion in those colonies, these poor slaves would be ready to rise upon their rebel masters. Moses Kirkland. So the Southern Strategy was to recapture the Southern Colonies one by one, starting with Georgia, and move up the coast, and in each place, they hoped to put Loyalists in charge, and that way, the British Army could continue moving north. Narrator: from New York, General Clinton sent a squadron south to try to capture Savannah, the capital of Georgia and its only city of any size. ♪ With the help of an African American river pilot named Sampson, the British fleet sailed up the Savannah River and began disembarking below the city at dawn on December 29, 1778. ♪ Some 700 Continental troops and 150 local militia were waiting. The British commander saw that a direct assault was certain to be bloody. ♪ Then Quamino Dolly, an elderly enslaved man, led part of the British force through a swamp that allowed them to get behind the startled Americans and open fire. [Gunfire] The Patriots panicked. British troops chased them through the town. 83 Americans were killed and 30 more drowned trying to swim across the Yamacraw Creek. 453 surrendered. The British lost just 7 dead. ♪ Over the weeks that followed, The British captured Augusta and reimposed royal rule in Georgia. "I have," their commander boasted, "ripped one star and one stripe from the rebel flag." [Bird squawks] Voice: My disposition always active, I could not content myself at home while my fellow countrymen were fighting the battles of my country. John Greenwood. ♪ Narrator: In January of 1779, the teenaged fifer John Greenwood decided to try something new. He would sign onto a Boston privateer, hoping both to strike more blows at the British and to make a fortune for himself. He chose the 18-gun, 130-man "Cumberland" because its commander was Captain John Manley, who had been the most successful sea raider in the Continental Navy for years and who was now a civilian only because there were too few naval vessels for him to have one to command. Atkinson: The Americans have no navy to speak of. Congress asks that 13 frigates be built. None of those frigates really get into action in a meaningful way. The British have 400 warships. What the Americans do have are privateers. Philbrick: Privateers made warfare a for-profit endeavor, and so you had countless sailors in New England and up and down the coast, volunteering to go out in privateers, take British vessels, and make them money from what they got from them. Narrator: Profits from privateering attracted a host of Revolutionary leaders, including Generals Nathanael Greene, Henry Knox, and George Washington himself. Investors shared the profits from the sale of captured cargo with the officers and men who took them, like the crew of the "Cumberland," John Greenwood's ship. Voice: Every ship had the right or took it to wear what kind of fancy flag the captain pleased. Captain Manley's flag was a very singular one, with a pine tree painted green and under the tree the representation of a large rattlesnake cut into 13 pieces, then in large black letters, "Join or Die." John Greenwood. [Cannon fire] Narrator: Over the course of the Revolution, some 1,700 American privateers are thought to have prowled the seas, capturing nearly 2,000 British vessels. John Greenwood and the "Cumberland" set out for the Caribbean, the most profitable hunting ground. Americans had already seized so many British merchant ships that they had reduced the sugar trade by 2/3. ♪ The "Cumberland's" voyage went smoothly at first. They easily commandeered a British ship loaded with soldiers and wine. A few days later, they came within sight of the port of Bridgetown on the island of Barbados... but the next morning, a British Navy frigate called the "Pomona" bore down on them with 36 guns and a crew of 300. [Cannon fire] British cannonballs tore through the "Cumberland's" sails and rigging. One shot went "through and through" the hull, Greenwood remembered, causing the whole ship to shudder. There was nothing else to do but surrender. ♪ The Americans spent 5 grim months in the Bridgetown jail before they were exchanged. ♪ John Greenwood would serve on at least 4 more privateers before the Revolution ended. He was captured and imprisoned 3 more times and somehow survived it all. ♪ After the war, John Greenwood would become a prominent Manhattan dentist. His most celebrated patient was his old commander, George Washington, for whom he fashioned dentures of human and horse's teeth and ivory from a hippopotamus. [Bird squawks] Voice: You ask me, "Can the enemy continue to prosecute the war?" I answer, "Can we carry on the war much longer?" Certainly, no. The true point of light, then, in which to place and consider this matter is not simply whether Great Britain can carry on the war, but whose finances-- theirs or ours-- is most likely to fail. George Washington. Narrator: General Washington spent the first 5 weeks of 1779 in Philadelphia, summoned there by Congress. It was not a happy visit. "I never was much...afraid of the enemy's arms," Washington wrote a friend, but he did fear that people were wearying of the war that had gone on for 4 years and still had no end in sight, and Congress seemed mired, he said, in "party disputes and personal quarrels." The value of Continental currency was melting "like snow before a hot sun," he complained, so that "a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions." Christopher Brown: On both the North American side and on the British side, there is an exhaustion that is settling in and an economic reality for both-- the American side, the question of coming up with the resources every year to be able to fight the war-- uniforms, guns, paying the men, replacing the ones who die, replacing the ones who desert. Britain has the money, but it starts to look a little bit like a sunk-cost problem. "Are we going to continue to pour money into an effort when there's no end in view?" ♪ Hogeland: One of the critical ways by which the Revolutionary War was funded was debt. There were a number of ways to raise money, but the best ways were to borrow, so you had to go to lenders, largely a merchant class, but also planters and even some prosperous farmers. It was a bit of a risky speculation because getting paid back and getting your interest paid would depend upon winning this extremely unlikely war. Nonetheless, that was a pretty good way of raising money to fight the Revolution, and it created an entire class of American lenders with strong interests in creating a very strong government because that was the only way they could see themselves getting paid their interest. ♪ Voice: Shall we at last become the victims of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it, heaven. Forbid it all. Our cause is noble. It is the cause of mankind, and the danger to it springs from ourselves. George Washington. ♪ Voice: When we took up the hatchet and struck the Virginians, our nation was alone and surrounded by them, and after we had lost some of our best warriors, we were forced to leave our towns, and now we live in the grass as you see us, but we are not yet conquered. Dragging Canoe. ♪ Colin Calloway: Indian Country is a mosaic of multiple Indigenous nations, each one of whom is pursuing its own interests and its own foreign policy. Woman: [Singing in Native language] Narrator: In the Ohio River Valley, the Delawares and their Shawnee allies had a long, contentious history with their expansionist neighbors. When the Revolution began, both nations struggled to stay out of it, but after Virginia militiamen violated a truce, most Shawnees sided with the British. In 1778, White Eyes, a Delaware war chief who leaned toward supporting the United States, went to Pittsburgh to negotiate with the Americans. ♪ The resulting Treaty of Fort Pitt seemed like a landmark agreement. Philip Deloria: The Fort Pitt Treaty is a really formal, legalistic document. An article near the end of the treaty says, "Oh, and by the way, when this is all over, "Indians can have a state like other states, and the Delaware"--this is the treaty with the Delaware-- "the Delaware will be the head of the state," and so it's making this very interesting promise of the possibility that Indian people could be part of the American republic. Narrator: White Eyes was made a colonel in the Continental Army and accompanied an American expedition against the British at Fort Detroit... [Gunfire] but somewhere along the way, Patriot militiamen killed him. With his death, the Americans had lost their best Indian ally in the Ohio Country, and the promise of the treaty was forgotten. [Horse neighs] In a council at Detroit, a delegation of Shawnees and Delawares promised the British that they would take up the tomahawk, "sharpen" it, "and strike against our Common Enemy." Calloway: The British have been telling them all along, "Don't trust the Americans because the Americans are out to take your land and to kill you." Voice: I always knew they were for open war but never before could get a proper excuse for exterminating them. To excel them in barbarity is the only way to make war and gain a name among the Indians. The cries of the widows and the fatherless on the frontiers required their blood from my hands. George Rogers Clark. ♪ Michael Witgen: George Rogers Clark is an Indian fighter and an Indian hater. He imagines himself as sort of seeking justice for white settlers who've died on the frontier at the hands of Native people, and he imagines himself as sort of the avenging angel of these communities. There is, to be sure, lots of violence in this backcountry, in part because white settlers are squatting on Native territory. ♪ Narrator: In February of 1779, Clark led his Virginians east from the Mississippi to take British outposts and destroy any Indians who dared support the enemy. His first target was Fort Vincennes on the Wabash River in what is now Indiana. There, he had 4 bound Indian captives lined up in full view of the fort and then hacked to death. Clark warned that if Vincennes did not surrender, all its defenders would suffer the same fate. The British commander gave up. Then Clark sent an ultimatum to any Indians tempted to make war on American settlers. Voice: I don't care whether you are for peace or war, as I glory in war. This is the last speech you may ever expect. The next thing will be the tomahawk, and you may expect in 4 moons to see your women and children given to the dogs to eat while those nations that have kept their words with me will flourish and grow like the willow trees on the riverbanks. George Rogers Clark. Narrator: Your "Name Strikes Terror to both English and Indians," one of Clark's captains told him, but "if there's not a stop put to Killing Indian friends, we must Expect to have all foes." Clark would not listen. Native people from the Smoky Mountains to the Great Lakes were now coming together to forget former quarrels and unite against the United States. Calloway: Most Native Americans recognize that the new United States represents an existential threat to them, their way of life, and their sovereignty, so it makes sense for Indian people-- for most Indian people-- to side with the British as the best bet to preserve their own independence and protect their land. Narrator: By the spring of 1779, hundreds of people, Indians and settlers, had been killed in the West. ♪ Deloria: There's a randomness to this, as well. "Those Indians killed some people over there, so we're gonna kill these Indians," but they didn't have anything to do with it, so you never quite know who's gonna come after you, and you never know what the logic is, and there's, most of the time, not a logic about why kill that person and not kill this person, so it's very uncertain kind of terrain, and I think it breeds an intense kind of violence that happens here. ♪ Narrator: A Shawnee boy named Tecumseh, one of the war's many refugees, would never forget the devastation that the American Revolution had brought to his country, but for him and his people, the Revolution was just one chapter in their struggle for independence. That war would rage on for decades. ♪ [Gulls squawking] Voice: If the enemy have it in their power to press us hard this campaign, I know not what may be the consequence. George Washington. Narrator: Like Washington, British General Clinton was stretched thin, too, and could only take small-scale actions. [Cannon fire] In May of 1779, he ordered raids in the Chesapeake Bay to destroy Virginia shipyards, dry docks, and tobacco warehouses. 17 ships were needed just to carry the loot back to New York. A few weeks later, he dispatched ships to sail up the Hudson and capture two forts-- at Stony Point and Verplanck's Point. The ease with which those forts fell convinced Washington to strengthen fortifications 10 miles to the north at a narrow curve in the river called West Point. Washington believed West Point "the most important post in America." The Polish engineer Colonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko was given the task of designing a series of interlocking fortifications on both sides of the river. An enormous chain weighing 65 tons and covered by gun batteries at both ends had been installed to block hostile passage. ♪ In early July, Clinton ordered another expedition against the Patriot privateering that had taken such a toll on British shipping, burning Norwalk, Fairfield, and New Haven. ♪ It had been more than a year since the Battle of Monmouth. Washington remained eager to take back New York, but he didn't have the men or the ships. Still, he understood it would be damaging to his army's reputation if he did not strike back somewhere, so on the night of July 15th, he ordered General Anthony Wayne and a hand-picked force of 1,350 men to attack Stony Point on the Hudson. Under the cover of darkness, they took it. [Musket fire] [Sword is drawn from scabbard] "The fort & garrison are ours," Wayne reported back to Washington at 2:00 in the morning. "Our officers & men behaved like men who were determined to be free." ♪ Meanwhile, when enslaved African Americans from New England to Georgia learned that summer that General Clinton had issued a proclamation promising "refuge" within the British Army to "any Negro" who was "the property of a Rebel," many of them began to see the British flag as a symbol of hope. ♪ Like Lord Dunmore before him, Clinton was no abolitionist. He decreed that any Black man captured while serving with the rebel army was to be sold as a slave, and the profit divided among his captors. The British commander's motives were exclusively military-- to strip rebels of their human "property" and assemble a big workforce to support his army... but for many Black Americans, their war was about ending slavery for themselves, their children, and their children's children. Vincent Brown: We know that about 15,000 Black people actually joined the British or ran away to the British lines versus about 5,000 ultimately entering the Patriot cause, and that's because, for many of those enslaved people, the British represented freedom. The Patriots did not. That's a hard story to tell to Americans. ♪ Man: Fire! [Cannon fire] [Men shouting] Narrator: In June 1779, King Carlos III of Spain joined France in the war against England. His goal was to recapture for his empire everything Spain had lost to Britain during the Seven Years' War and to add to it, as well, including Gibraltar, the British-held spit of land that controlled the narrow entrance to the Mediterranean. ♪ For the Spanish king, like the French king, the American Revolution was useful only to undercut Britain. Christopher Brown: This is not about securing American independence. This is about cutting Britain's economic commercial might down to size, but it's risky, though, especially for Spain, because Spain has a empire in the Americas that looks a little bit like Britain's North American empire only much larger and many, many, many more people. And so you encourage a colonial independence movement in the British Empire, who's to say your own people won't get the same idea? Narrator: Given the sudden widening of the global war, the opposition in Parliament called upon King George to direct measures for restoring peace to America. He would not hear of it. Voice: The present contest with America I cannot help seeing as the most serious in which any country was ever engaged. Step by step, the demands of America have risen. Independence is their object. Should America succeed in that, the West Indies must follow. Ireland must soon be a separate state. Then this island would be reduced to itself and soon would be a poor island indeed. King George III. [Gull squawking] Voice: "London Morning Post." John Paul Jones resembles a Jack o' Lantern to mislead our mariners and terrify our coasts. He's no sooner seen than lost. ♪ Narrator: John Paul Jones was now in command of another ship-- a slow, battered French merchant vessel. He fitted it out with 40 old French guns, gathered a 320-man crew from 8 different countries, and renamed it the "Bonhomme Richard" after the French version of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack." ♪ In August, the "Richard" and several smaller warships sailed all the way around the British Isles in search of merchant prizes. Jones took 17 ships, captured 100 British sailors, and locked them up below his decks. ♪ Late in the afternoon on September 23rd, just off the chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head, Jones caught up with a convoy of some 40 British supply ships. He signaled his squadron to form a line of battle. When they failed to respond, the "Bonhomme Richard" alone engaged the "Serapis," the larger of the two Royal Navy escort ships. Commanded by Richard Pearson, a veteran sailor, the British vessel was a fast, new 44-gun frigate. [Cannon fire] As the battle began, hundreds of English villagers lined the cliffs, hoping to see a British man-of-war destroy the dreaded rebel they called "Pirate Jones." [Men shouting] Narrator: A British broadside caused cannon on the "Richard's" lower gun deck to explode, killing men and putting the rest of the battery out of action. At one point, the "Serapis" rammed the "Richard." Their rigging became entangled, and before the British ship could break free, Jones ordered his men to throw grappling hooks, locking the two ships together gunport to gunport. [Cannon fire] Their crews fired into each other at point-blank range. The "Bonhomme Richard" took the worst of it-- half the crew dead or wounded, fires raging everywhere, decks slippery with blood, seawater rushing in through holes blasted in the hull-- but then a sailor high in the "Richard's" rigging managed to lob a grenade down the main hatchway of the British ship. [Explosions] It set off explosions from one end of the "Serapis" to the other. [Explosions continue] Half its crew were dead or wounded. Captain Pearson surrendered. Jones clambered aboard the British warship and sailed it into neutral Dutch waters. The "Bonhomme Richard" sank the next day. In Paris, John Paul Jones was hailed as a hero. He met Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, and when he heard that George III had knighted Captain Pearson for fighting so valiantly, Jones was unimpressed. "Should I have the good fortune to fall in with him again," he said, "I'll make him a lord." ♪ [Rattle and drum playing] Voice: We do not mean to let the enemy penetrate into our country, for we well know that as far as they set their foot, they will claim the country is conquered. Old Smoke. Jennifer Kreisberg: [Singing "Grief" in Native language] Narrator: Back in the summer of 1777, the British and their Mohawk and Seneca allies had prevailed over their enemies in their ambush near Oriskany Creek. [Gunfire] Over the months that followed, New York and Pennsylvania saw raid after raid, skirmish after skirmish. Patriots drove Loyalists from their homes. Loyalists and their Indian allies burned settlements at Cherry Valley and in the Wyoming Valley. Hundreds died on both sides. Atkinson: It has gotten to the point where Washington is under intense pressure from Congress, from the state of New York, from the state of Pennsylvania, to do something about it, and because the war has kind of gone fallow in the North after Monmouth, he agrees that he will put together a punitive expedition against the Indians led by one of his major generals, John Sullivan, to drive them away from the frontier. ♪ Calloway: One of the things that I think is always on Washington's mind during this war is the end of the war, so Washington basically realizes, "We're gonna win independence because France is in the war, "Spain's in the war, and we need to make sure "that we can present a legitimate and robust claim to western land." One of the foundational truths of American history is that this is a nation built on Indian land, and Washington would not dispute that, I think, for a minute. Narrator: Washington's orders to General Sullivan in May of 1779 had been clear and uncompromising. Voice: The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more that the country may not merely be overrun, but destroyed. You will not by any means listen to any overture for peace before the total ruin of their settlements is affected. George Washington. Narrator: The Continental Army invaded from 3 sides. In early August, Colonel Daniel Brodhead led 600 men northward from Fort Pitt to destroy the Seneca villages along the upper Allegheny River. Sullivan and 3 Continental brigades started north along the Susquehanna, while another moved west from the Mohawk Valley. At the end of the month their combined forces-- 4,500 men--began marching north. ♪ Witgen: They don't find destitute villages or scattered villages of savage people. They find what, to them, are undoubtedly easily recognizable prosperous villages. They're cedar-planked buildings, multiple-story buildings, often with chimneys, often with glass windows. [Child speaking] Witgen: These people have material wealth that they've accumulated over the years, and they have houses that look like something that people on the Eastern Seaboard would inhabit. [Gunfire] ♪ Narrator: On August 29th, some 600 Senecas, Mohawks, Cayugas, Delawares, and Loyalists tried to halt the invasion and were defeated. ♪ Voice: We sent out a small party to look for some of the dead Indians. They found them and skinned two of them from their hips down for boot legs-- one pair for the major, the other for myself. Lieutenant William Barton. [Man shouting orders] Voice: Our brigade destroyed about 150 acres of the best corn that I ever saw-- some of the stalks grew 16 feet high-- besides great quantities of beans, potatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, squash, and watermelons, and the enemy looking at us from the hills. Lieutenant Erkuries Beatty. Voice: There is something so cruel in destroying the habitations of any people, however mean they may be, that I might say the prospect hurts my feelings. Dr. Jabez Campfield. Narrator: When some soldiers asked General Sullivan if he wouldn't at least spare fruit orchards that had taken years to grow, he refused. "The Indians," he said, "shall see that there is malice enough "in our hearts to destroy everything that contributes to their support." ♪ Deloria: The Sullivan expedition ends up mapping New York for future settlement. Everybody kind of moves through New York and says, "Wow. These apple orchards are so great, "these cornfields are so fantastic, I'm coming back here at the end of this," right? And so in many ways, it is not only a military campaign. It's a scouting expedition for future settlement. Narrator: The troops torched village after village-- Catherine's Town, Appletown, Cayuga Town, Kanadaseaga, Canandaigua, Honeoye. By then, Sullivan was within miles of Little Beard's Town, which he had been told was the grand capital of Indian Country. Little Beard's Town was the home of Mary Jemison, who had been adopted years earlier by Senecas after her Irish parents had been killed during a raid. Voice: He was about to march to our town when our Indians resolved to give him battle on the way. They sent all the women and children into the woods. And then, well-armed, they set out to face the conquering enemy. Mary Jemison. ♪ Narrator: A scouting party of 26 Continentals, guided by an Oneida scout and commanded by Lieutenant Thomas Boyd, was advancing ahead of the main column on September 13th, when they stumbled into a Seneca and Loyalist ambush. [Gunfire] 16 men were encircled. 14 were killed and scalped. Boyd and another man were captured. ♪ The next day, Sullivan's main army reached Little Beard's Town. Voice: On entering the town, we found the body of Lieutenant Boyd and another rifleman in a most terrible, mangled condition. They was both stripped naked and their heads cut off. Erkuries Beatty. Narrator: Sullivan's men buried what was left of their companions, looted and burned all 128 dwellings in Little Beard's Town, and then spent 8 hours methodically uprooting and destroying crops. By the end, Sullivan reported to Washington that his army had burned a total of 40 towns. Farther to the west, Colonel Brodhead had destroyed 10 more. ♪ Most of the Seneca refugees made their way to Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario, where some 5,000 men, women, and children belonging to a host of nations huddled together in muddy camps. ♪ Voice: We of the Six Nations have been much cast down by the great loss we have sustained. But yet we do not despair. We are determined to persevere in the cause we have engaged in. We hope to be able to survive the winter, and then we mean once more to meet our enemies and see whether we are to live or die. And if such is the will of the Great Spirit, we will leave our bones with those of the rest of our brethren, rather than evacuate our country or give our enemies room to say we fled from them. Twethorechte. ♪ Narrator: The damage Patriot campaigns did to Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Mohawk homelands was profound and permanent. Some Haudenosaunee would come to call George Washington "the Town Destroyer" and would remember the American Revolution as "the Whirlwind." ♪ [Waves breaking] In the late summer of 1779, both George Washington and British General Henry Clinton believed that the long-awaited all-out American assault on British-occupied New York City could finally be just weeks away. Each had learned that the French fleet was sailing back north from the West Indies. Neither was sure where it was headed. Clinton ordered all British troops to withdraw from occupied Newport to strengthen New York's defenses. Washington readied plans for a siege of the city and called upon 5 neighboring states to provide him with more militia, but French Admiral d'Estaing never came. Instead, he appeared at the mouth of the Savannah River with 32 warships to join forces with southern Patriots who had already retaken Augusta and were eager to recapture the rest of Georgia. ♪ Aboard were 4,000 French troops, including 750 "free men of color," Black and mixed-race troops from what would one day be called Haiti. ♪ While d'Estaing waited for his American allies to join the siege, he surrounded Savannah with heavy artillery and demanded its surrender. The outnumbered British refused, stalling for time until reinforcements of their own could reach the city. As they braced for an attack, redcoats and Loyalist troops and scores of Savannah's free and enslaved residents had time to complete two defensive lines around the city. [Cannon fire] After Continentals and Patriot militiamen arrived from Charleston, d'Estaing led a direct assault on October 9th. Some Americans became mired in a rice field. [Shouting and gunfire] French troops in white uniforms proved easy targets. British guns sent grapeshot, nails, and chunks of iron tearing through the attackers. The ditch, a British officer remembered, was chock full of their dead. [Gunfire continues] De Rode: For the French-American alliance, it is quite the defeat. People do lose their trust in the availabilities of the French to help the Americans. They were very happy to have signed an alliance with them, but the first campaigns, plural, completely failed. Narrator: D'Estaing, who had been wounded twice, sailed away to France. The American commander General Benjamin Lincoln limped back to Patriot-controlled Charleston. Voice: You know the importance of Charleston. It is the bond that binds 3 states to the authority of Congress. If the enemy possessed themselves of this town, there will be no living for honest Patriots. David Ramsay. ♪ Atkinson: The winter of 1779-1780, probably the harshest winter in North America in the 18th century. ♪ New York Harbor froze over solidly. You could drag cannon from the tip of Manhattan Island to Staten Island. You could cross the Hudson River on foot, and the winter was all the worse in Upstate New York for the Indians. Voice: That winter was the most severe that I have witnessed since my remembrance. The snow fell about 5 feet deep and remained so. Almost all the game upon which we depended perished and reduced us almost to starvation. Mary Jemison. ♪ Narrator: For General Washington and most of his army at winter quarters in and around Morristown, New Jersey, the temperature rarely rose above zero. It was "cold enough to cut a man in two," Joseph Plumb Martin remembered. ♪ Joseph Ellis: The winter in New Jersey at Morristown was worse than Valley Forge. The enthusiasm for the war had begun to wane years before, and it continued to wane each year. Voice: We were absolutely literally starved. I did not put a single morsel into my mouth for 4 days except a little black birch bark. I saw several of the men roast their old shoes and eat them, and I was afterwards informed that some of the officers killed and ate a favorite little dog that belonged to one of them. Joseph Plumb Martin. Narrator: To add to their misery, the men of Joseph Plumb Martin's 8th Connecticut Regiment had not been paid for months. By spring, they had had enough. ♪ Voice: The men now saw no other alternative but to starve to death or break up the army. This was a hard matter for the soldiers to think upon. They were truly patriotic. They loved their country, and they had already suffered everything short of death in its cause. What was to be done? [Joseph Plumb Martin] Narrator: The 4th and 8th Connecticut Regiments planned to desert. When a colonel tried to talk them out of it, someone stabbed him with a bayonet. A Pennsylvania regiment was rushed in to surround them, and its colonel managed to talk the men into staying on. In the end, Martin wrote, "We were unwilling to desert "the cause of our country when in distress. We knew her cause involved our own." ♪ Voice: This is the most important hour Britain ever knew. If we lose it, we shall never see such another. Henry Clinton. Narrator: It had now been 21 months since General Clinton was ordered to take the Carolinas. On the day after Christmas 1779, leaving enough of a force behind to defend New York, Clinton finally sailed south for Charleston. Atkinson: Every farthing of the wealth in South Carolina is built on the back of slavery. That's one of the reasons why South Carolina and the other Southern states have robust militias. It is not to repel foreign invaders. It's to suppress potential slave insurrections. Narrator: Charleston was one of the largest cities in the United States, home to 12,000 people, half of them enslaved. If it could be captured, the British believed, a Loyalist majority in the Carolinas would rally to the Crown. Lengel: Charleston has resisted British attacks before. There's a sense of confidence that it'll be able to resist British attacks again. Americans are almost delusional about it. They don't look the facts in the face of how vulnerable Charleston really is. The geography is impossible. Charleston is really out on a limb. The British are gonna cut this place off, and they're gonna capture it. Congress, instead of recognizing this fact, they keep sending more and more men to defend Charleston. They send the best that the Continental Army has. It's a mistake. ♪ Narrator: Some 30 miles southwest of the city on February 11, 1780, Clinton began landing his troops. As the British army marched toward Charleston, first hundreds, then thousands of enslaved men, women, and children fled their plantations to join them. ♪ It would be more than a month before Clinton's forces could form a line a mile and a half north of the rebel fortifications and begin a European-style siege. ♪ More British troops from New York and Savannah would swell the British army to more than 10,000, roughly twice as large as the force with which Patriot General Benjamin Lincoln hoped somehow to defend the city. Desperate for reinforcements, Lincoln suggested arming enslaved men and was told no. Whites feared giving weapons to Black people, and, besides, slave owners did not want their property killed or maimed in battle. Militia from the backcountry were also reluctant to come to the crowded city. They feared smallpox and were unmoved by the plight of planters and merchants whose wealth and political power they had long resented. ♪ On April 1, 1780, the British began constructing the first of a series of parallels, sequential support trenches that would allow them to inch closer and closer to the city. ♪ A week later, British warships forced their way into Charleston Harbor and took command of it. General Clinton called upon the rebels to surrender in order to save the town and its people from what he called "havock and desolation." General Lincoln refused. Man: Fire! Narrator: The British opened fire. [Cannon fire] The Americans fired back. Man: Fire! Narrator: The guns would continue day and night for a month. [Men shouting] ♪ As each blasted at the other, the British parallels moved closer to the American lines-- 800 yards... 450 yards... 250. ♪ There was no escape. General Lincoln asked that his surrendering men be granted the usual honors of war, but General Clinton refused: Rebels deserved no such honors. ♪ Lengel: When Charleston falls, it's a body blow to the Revolution and to the American cause. It's a humiliation because we've lost not only Charleston, but we've lost some of the best troops that we have, and the British in their surrender terms really drive home that humiliation. ♪ Narrator: It was the worst defeat suffered by the Patriots during the Revolution. An entire army was captured, 5,618 men by Clinton's count, including Benjamin Lincoln and 6 other generals, along with more than 300 cannon, 376 barrels of gunpowder, and 5,916 muskets. ♪ Hundreds of South Carolinians streamed into the occupied city from the countryside, eager now to swear allegiance to the Crown. ♪ Voice: To Lord Germain-- With the greatest pleasure, I report to your Lordship that the inhabitants from every quarter declare their allegiance to the King, and offer their services in arms in support of his government. In many instances, they have brought prisoners, their former oppressors or leaders, and I may venture to assert that there are few men in South Carolina who are not either our prisoners or in arms with us. Henry Clinton. [Birds chirping] Narrator: General Clinton and 4,000 troops returned to New York, leaving General Charles Cornwallis in command of the southern theater. A few more such victories, British commanders believed, and the Loyalty to the Crown of all the Southern Colonies would be reconfirmed. "The English lion," a German officer wrote, "has awakened from his sleep." ♪ Voice: Unless Congress is vested with powers competent to the great purposes of war, our cause is lost. We can no longer drudge on in the old way. I see one head gradually changing into 13. I see one army branching into thirteen-- and am fearful of the consequences of it. George Washington. [Wind blowing] ♪ ♪ Announcer: Next time on "The American Revolution"... The shock of treason. Joseph Ellis: He was the last person Washington ever thought would have betrayed him. Announcer: The South explodes in battle. Vincent Brown: It's sometimes brother against brother in this backwoods warfare. It's an ugly conflict. Announcer: And a new nation rises. Voice: Who would have thought that out of this multitude of rabble would arise a people who could defy kings? [Johann Ewald] [Men shouting] Announcer: Don't miss the conclusion of "The American Revolution" next time. ♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of "The American Revolution" with interactives, games, classroom materials, and more. ♪ Announcer: "The American Revolution" DVD and Blu-ray, as well as the companion book and soundtrack, are available online and in stores. The series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video. ♪ Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. URL https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-5-the-soul-of-all-america/

The American Revolution A Film By Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein & David Schmidt Conquer by a Drawn Game (January 1777 – February 1778) VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. [Musket fire] ♪ Voice: Mankind have ever been so prone to yield implicit obedience to that authority to which they have long been accustomed that there are few examples of resistance, unless the wanton abuse of power has rendered it necessary. When this is the case, the feelings of the man and the patriot are awakened, and both the peasant and the statesman are urged to struggle even in blood. No suffering which Britain can inflict will reduce America to submission. The thunder of their artillery may lay waste the cities, but the spirit of the people is unconquerable. Mercy Otis Warren. ♪ We think about the kind of anticolonial, insurgent uprisings, independence movements of the 20th century, and think of those as being sort of the Third World fighting back against the sort of imperial colonial powers. You don't always recognize the fact that the United States actually started that. ♪ Voice: England is the natural enemy of France. She is an enemy at once grasping, ambitious, unjust, and perfidious. The invariable and most cherished purpose in her politics has been, if not the destruction of France, at least her overthrow and her ruin. Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes. Narrator: The Comte de Vergennes, the French foreign minister, was determined to avenge his country's humiliating defeat in the Seven Years' War. He had already persuaded Louis XVI to open French ports to American merchants for the selling of American goods and the buying of French ones, and even to provide some funds with which the Americans could purchase guns and ammunition, provided they did so in secret. ♪ Woman: The French needed to reorganize their army. They were reforming their navy. So they did start to send clandestine weapons, they started to send money, they started to send uniforms to the "insurgents" in America because they didn't want to have an open warfare against the British at the time, yet. ♪ Narrator: At the end of 1776, the Continental Congress had sent 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin, the most widely admired American on earth, to try to talk France into providing much more help. Franklin understood that the Americans could not compete with the British Army and Navy unless France entered the war, and that the French would not dare do so unless the Americans showed that they could win. The last time he had heard from America, prospects did not look bright. The "Declaration of Independence" had proved American seriousness, but the invasion of Canada had been a disaster, and British forces had defeated Washington on Long Island, then driven him out of New York City. After a secret meeting with Vergennes in Paris in January of 1777, Franklin promised that if France and its ally Spain were to join the Americans, Britain would be reduced to a state of "weakness and humiliation." But continuing reports of American defeats were not encouraging, and Vergennes refused to meet again. He also feared that the thirteen former colonies would never come together as a nation. Publicly, Franklin remained optimistic, but privately, he was anxious for better news from home that might persuade the French to join the American Revolution. Voice: Those who live under arbitrary power do nevertheless approve of liberty and wish for it. 'Tis a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own. [Franklin] ♪ Narrator: Though Benjamin Franklin did not yet know it, George Washington's army had stunned the British and lifted Patriot spirits by taking the garrison at Trenton, New Jersey, on the day after Christmas 1776. [Officer shouts command] Voice: Though the rebels seem to be ignorant of the precision, order, and even of the principles by which large bodies are moved, they possess some of the requisites for making good troops, such as extreme cunning, great industry, and a spirit of enterprise upon any advantage. Though it was once the fashion of this army to treat them in the most contemptible light, they are now become a formidable army. Lieutenant William Harcourt. ♪ Narrator: But now the British were on the move again. General William Howe sent General Charles Cornwallis and some 9,000 redcoats and Hessians to recapture Trenton and trap the rebel army against the Delaware River. Washington decided to fight rather than retreat. To do otherwise, he said, would be to destroy the "dawn of hope." On January 2, 1777, he posted 1,000 men along the road from Princeton, a college town twelve miles away, with orders to slow Cornwallis' column until evening. The Patriots contested every inch of ground as they fell back through Trenton to join most of Washington's army arrayed on the south side of the Assunpink Creek. At dusk, when the advance guard of Cornwallis' column started across the lone stone bridge over the Assunpink, American artillery opened up on them with what Henry Knox proudly called "great vociferation." Three times, the redcoats tried to cross the bridge. Three times, American fire hurled them back. Perhaps one hundred Americans would be killed or wounded before darkness fell, but the British lost three times as many. Cornwallis called a halt. His forces still outnumbered Washington's, and the creek was fordable upstream. "We'll go over," Cornwallis reportedly told his commanders, "and bag him in the morning." Washington ordered a small detachment to stay on their hillside that night, tending campfires and banging entrenching tools to make the enemy believe they were digging in. Meanwhile, the rest of his army would slip silently away, following unguarded back roads to get behind Cornwallis and attack his rear guard at Princeton. At dawn, two British regiments on their way to reinforce Cornwallis saw Americans marching toward them. The British "were as much astonished," Patriot General Henry Knox would write to his wife Lucy, "as if an army had dropped perpendicularly upon them." [Cannonfire] The British fired their cannon, then charged with fixed bayonets. The American Commander, General Hugh Mercer's, horse was shot out from under him. He fought with his sword as long as he could before being mortally wounded by British bayonets. His men began to fall back. Washington once again galloped to the front, ignoring the bullets flying all about him, exhorting his men to stand and fight. One of his aides covered his eyes, fearful of seeing his commander shot from his saddle. Man: He's really lucky. Bullets are going all around him, everybody else is dying, he's never scratched. He assumes he's never going to be killed. Now, there's probably a lot of people in war that assume that and they get killed. And we never hear about them. He doesn't believe in God in the total Christian sense, but he believes in Providence. Providence. He really thinks the gods, or God, is on our side and his side. Narrator: Washington's men held. Veteran Continentals joined them. Now it was the Americans' turn to charge. [Soldiers shouting] "I never saw men" look "so furious as they did," one remembered. Voice: The fate of this extensive continent seemed suspended by a single thread. But happy for us, happy for unborn millions, that we had a general who knew how to take advantage, and by a masterful maneuver frustrated the designs of the enemy. Lieutenant Samuel Shaw. Man: George Washington was no military colossus. He was no Frederick the Great or Napoleon. His natural instincts, I think, were to preserve the Americans intact so they could fight another day. But this caution was occasionally complemented by boldness. For the most part, Washington saw his primary task as holding the Continental Army together, because it represented the rebellion. Without the Continental Army, there would be no United States. Narrator: Seventy Americans had been killed or wounded in the Battle of Princeton, but the enemy had lost another 450-- killed, wounded, or captured. By the time Cornwallis realized Washington had fooled him at Assunpink Creek that morning, it had been too late to catch him. And when he and the rest of his army reached Princeton that evening, Washington and his army had vanished again. ♪ Voice: Everyone was so frightened that it was completely forgotten even to obtain information about where the Americans had gone. But the enemy now had wings, and, it was believed, had flown to the mountains of Morristown. Captain Johann Ewald. Narrator: Morristown, New Jersey, a tiny village in the heart of the thickly forested Watchung Mountains, would be Washington's winter headquarters for the next five months. It was out of reach of the British Navy but well suited for raiding British outposts and for keeping an eye out for a British advance from New York. Most of the troops who had offered to stay after Trenton went home as soon as their reenlistment was up. By the end of January, Washington had fewer than 3,000 Continentals in his camp. But encouraged by Patriot victories at Trenton and Princeton and angered by the excesses of British occupation, New Jersey militiamen now rallied to him. Voice: They are actuated by resentment now. And resentment coinciding with principle is a very powerful motive. John Adams. Narrator: Whenever British foraging parties ventured from their outposts, Patriots attacked them... [Musket fire] at Maidenhead and Quibbletown, Bound Brook and Drake's Farm, Piscataway and English Neighborhood, and at least 50 other places. That winter, more British and Hessian troops were killed fighting over forage than would fall in battle. Voice: The British lost men who were not easily replaced. The rebel loss was soon repaired by drafts from the militia. It inured them to hardships, and it emboldened them to look a British or a Hessian soldier in the eye, whose very face would make a hundred of them run after the Battle of Brooklyn. Justice Thomas Jones. Narrator: And now New Jersey Loyalists found themselves the targets of vengeful Patriots. At Morristown, Patriots hanged two Loyalist officers, and got 33 of their men to enlist in the Continental Army by threatening to hang them, too. General Howe's hope of pacifying the state had brought civil war instead. [Musket fire] If one thinks of this as a British Empire and British subjects, who are contending for their rights, right, then it's a civil war. Then it's family against family, sometimes brother against brother. It's hard to tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. This is a predicament that is incredibly fraught and incredibly difficult for people to sort out. Woman: This inability to really figure out who is the enemy here is a problem. They're marching through the countryside, and they don't know. "This farm, is this farm-- are these Loyalists? "Are there rebels in there? Are they going to shoot at us out of the window," which does happen. Who do you trust? Narrator: The frequent attacks forced the British to abandon most of their New Jersey outposts. Winter would end in frustration and failure. Voice: The next will be a trying campaign. And as all that is dear and valuable may depend upon the issue of it, let us have a respectable army, such as will be competent to every exigency. George Washington. Narrator: Spring was coming. Armies would soon be again on the move. And Washington wanted to be ready for whatever the British were planning next. Congress had come back to Philadelphia, but while they were in exile in Baltimore, it had become clear that expecting delegates to make instant decisions about the battlefield was impractical. They had voted to grant General Washington total control over his army for a period of six months and authorized him to imprison without trial suspected Loyalists or anyone who refused to supply his army. Some delegates had feared that affording Washington such powers would make him a dictator, betraying the principles for which they were supposed to be fighting. General Nathanael Greene sought to reassure them. Voice: I can see no evil nor danger to the states in delegating such powers to the general. There was never a man who might seem more safely trusted, nor a time when there was a louder call. [Greene] ♪ Narrator: Most of Washington's new recruits signed on for three years and a ten-dollar bonus, but those who signed up for the duration of the war were promised a twenty-dollar bonus, and 100 "free" acres of Indian land when the war was over. Man: When we think about what was offered to the Continental soldier, Indian land at the end of it all-- that land hasn't been taken, ceded, bought. That land is still Indian land, right? It tells you that the entire Revolution is premised on the future possibility. Narrator: These soldiers were different from the men who had rallied after Lexington and Concord. Most of them had been farmers and artisans, propertied men with taxes to pay, creditors to appease, crops to sow and harvest. From now on, the Continental Army would be made up predominantly of the poorest of the poor-- jobless laborers and landless tenants, second and third sons without hope of an inheritance, debtors and British deserters, indentured servants and apprentices, felons hoping to win pardons for their service, immigrants from Ireland, and immigrants from Germany, or their descendants who had never learned English. John Adams had worried that only "the meanest, idlest, most intemperate and worthless men" in America could ever be persuaded to serve more than a year. But victory would be impossible without them. When patriotic speeches and free rum failed to attract enough recruits, some states instituted drafts. Names were drawn from a hat. Married men were exempted. Propertied draftees wanting to avoid service could hire substitutes at fees to be negotiated with their replacements. Epping, New Hampshire, managed to avoid sending any of its men to war by paying men from neighboring villages to go. South Carolina advertised for "vagrants and idle disorderly persons." Thousands of African Americans, enslaved and free, served alongside Whites in units from New England all the way south to Georgia. Some volunteered, some were drafted. Many stood in for their gun-shy enslavers. Connecticut and Rhode Island would later promise enslaved recruits their freedom when the war ended. From 1777 onward, the American Revolution, begun in part to defend the interests of property-owners, would be fought mostly by men who owned little or no property at all. ♪ Voice: Montreal. Two deserters from the rebel country informed me that my property had been seized, and that my wife and the children had been turned out of my house and sent off through the woods, snowstorms, and bad roads. John Peters. Narrator: To escape persecution and fight for his king, the Vermont Loyalist John Peters had fled to Canada in 1776, leaving behind his wife Ann and their six children. [Knock on door] After his defection, Patriots seized his home and evicted his family. Carrying their infant son, Ann Peters managed to get everyone all the way to Lake Champlain, where they were spotted by a British boat and carried north to a rendezvous with John. They were "naked and dirty," he remembered, but safe. In the weeks that followed, John Peters began to recruit American Loyalists for a new regiment-- the Queen's Loyal Rangers. He would command it, and his now-15-year-old son, John Jr., would be among the first to sign up. ♪ Voice: The smallpox has made such headway in every quarter that I find it impossible to keep it from spreading through the whole army. [Washington] Narrator: As fresh recruits made their way into the Continental Army camps, some carried with them smallpox, the scourge that had threatened the army from the beginning of the Revolution. Washington had always resisted ordering inoculation, because it took men out of action for weeks. But now he decided to run the risk. Voice: I have determined not only to inoculate all the troops now here that had not had smallpox but shall order the doctors to inoculate the recruits as fast as they come in. [Washington] Ellis: The British troops were less vulnerable to smallpox because they had been exposed more to it in Scotland and Ireland and England. Washington made a decision that to serve in the Continental Army, you had to first undergo inoculation. And that was probably the single most important military decision he made. Narrator: Private Joseph Plumb Martin reenlisted and received his inoculation that spring along with 400 other Connecticut recruits at a Continental Army supply depot at Peekskill in the Hudson Highlands. He had been just 15 when he first joined the Connecticut militia. After enduring combat, cold, hunger, and a bout of near-fatal illness, Martin had decided he'd had enough and left his militia regiment in December. But life on his grandparents' farm soon bored him, and when local draftees thought he might be talked into serving in their place in the Continental Army, they began bidding against one another. Voice: I thought I might as well endeavor to get as much for my skin as I could. I forget the sum. They were now freed from any further trouble, at least for the present, but I was again a soldier. [Martin] Narrator: By the middle of May, Washington's force at Morristown had grown to nearly 12,000 men. Voice: There is a clock calm at this time in the political and military hemispheres. The surface is smooth and the air serene. Not a breath, nor a wave. No news, nor noise. John Adams. ♪ Voice: By what means, may I ask, do you expect to conquer America? If you could not effect it in the summer, when our army was less than yours, nor in the winter, when we had none, how are you to do it? You cannot be so insensible as not to see that we have two-to-one the advantage of you, because we conquer by a drawn game and you lose by it. Thomas Paine. ♪ Narrator: In London, Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for America, was embarrassed by how long the war was taking and concerned about growing opposition to it in Parliament. Germain found the setbacks at Trenton and Princeton "extremely mortifying," thought Sir Guy Carleton's failure to capture Fort Ticonderoga the previous autumn inexcusable, believed the Howe brothers' repeated offers of pardons to rebels "sentimental," and insisted they instead force Americans to undergo what he called "a lively experience of losses and sufferings." Conway: Running of the war largely comes down to Lord George Germain, who is coordinating and orchestrating military operations from Britain. In logistical terms, fighting a war 3,000 miles from the home islands was a major enterprise in the days of sailing ships. Christopher Brown: When the British government gets information about what's happening on the ground, they're already weeks out of date. And then they're issuing orders for things that will happen two to three months in the future. You can think about what that means for actually making decisions. Narrator: General John Burgoyne, a dashing favorite of the King, had persuaded Germain to place him in charge of an army in Canada, promising to succeed in a second invasion of the Colonies, where General Carleton had failed. Voice: I do not conceive any expedition can be so formidable to the enemy or so effectual to close the war as an invasion from Canada by Ticonderoga. [Burgoyne] Narrator: Burgoyne proposed a three-pronged attack. He would lead an army south to seize Ticonderoga and then move on to take Albany; to the west, a smaller diversionary force would advance via Lake Ontario and the Mohawk River Valley, rallying support among Indians and Loyalists as they went; finally, Sir William Howe was to lead his army up the Hudson from New York to complete the juncture of the three forces, isolating New England. General Howe had other plans. Voice: I am fully persuaded the principal army should act offensively to get possession of Philadelphia, where the enemy's chief strength will certainly be collected. The rebels are at present buoyed up by hopes of assistance from France. If that door were shut by any means, it would, in my opinion, put a stop to the rebellion. [Howe] ♪ In 18th-century European wars, the capture of an enemy's capital city usually brought the war to a close. Of course, America had no capital city in the sense of Paris in France or London in Britain. But it did have Philadelphia, which was seen as the political headquarters of the rebellion. Howe became obsessed with the capture of Philadelphia and the defeat of Washington's army. Narrator: Because Lord Germain had failed to reconcile the two incompatible strategies, his two commanders-- Howe and Burgoyne-- would plan two distinct campaigns in which neither would support the other. There would be no rendezvous on the Hudson. But Burgoyne was so sure of success that even before he set sail, he had bet the opposition leader in Parliament a sizeable sum that he would "be home victorious by Christmas Day" 1777. Voice: If the frenzy of hostility should remain, the messengers of justice and of wrath await them in the field, and devastation, famine, and every concomitant horror that a reluctant but indispensable prosecution of military duty must occasion. [Burgoyne] ♪ Narrator: By the time he reached Quebec, Burgoyne had convinced himself that thousands of Native Americans would join his army. In fact, no more than 500 men answered his call-- Mohawks, Algonquins, Abenakis, and Wyandots-- drawn from seven villages along the St. Lawrence River. They joined him for many reasons: to seek the honors of war, to receive British goods in payment of their service, and out of an eagerness to settle old scores with the hated people they called Bostonians. Man: The Hudson River Valley, the Mohawk River Valley, the Adirondack Mountains, Lake Champlain, and up to the St. Lawrence River Valley, that's been the battlefield for the colonial powers for centuries. And our people were swept up in it, and a lot of what happened had more to do with what kings and queens in Europe were deciding. A major chess tournament happened here, and we were the pawns. Narrator: On June 20, 1777, Burgoyne's enormous army began moving south on Lake Champlain. Scores of birch bark canoes paddled by Native Americans came first. They were followed by Royal Navy warships and 200 bateaux carrying more than 6,500 British and German regulars, Loyalist troops, and French-speaking Canadians, along with a number of children and hundreds of women. Fort Ticonderoga, on the west side of the lake, was Burgoyne's first target. It was now linked by a floating bridge to a separate hilltop fortification on the east side called Mount Independence. Determined to take both outposts, Burgoyne sent forces down each side of the lake by land. He expected he would have to mount a full-scale siege, but a British officer quickly spotted a fatal flaw in the rebel defenses. About a mile southwest of Ticonderoga stood a hill that overlooked both forts. It remained undefended. If British guns could be hauled to the high ground, both Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence would be completely exposed. When astonished Patriots spotted redcoats peering down from the hill on the afternoon of July 5th, American General Arthur St. Clair ordered both fortifications abandoned. The next morning, British troops raised the King's colors above Fort Ticonderoga. ♪ The Americans fled in two directions, with Burgoyne's men right behind them. After hours of tramping in the heat, those Patriots heading east called a temporary halt at a tiny deserted frontier settlement called Hubbardton. [Bugle music] Voice: The morning after our retreat, orders came very early for the troops to refresh and be ready for marching. Some were eating, some were cooking, and all in a very unfit posture for battle. [Musket fire, men shouting] Then there was a cry: "The enemy are upon us!" Ebenezer Fletcher, 2nd New Hampshire. Narrator: Ebenezer Fletcher was a sixteen-year-old from New Ipswich, New Hampshire. As the menacing line of redcoats moved closer, firing volleys as they came, the 2nd New Hampshire fired back and then began to seek cover. Voice: Many of our party retreated into the woods. I made shelter for myself and discharged my piece. But before I had time to reload it, I received a musket ball in the small of my back and fell with my gun cocked. [Fletcher] Narrator: Elsewhere, the fighting intensified. In the fierce combat that followed, the Americans more than held their own against some of Britain's best-trained professional soldiers. In the end, the British won, but they were too tired to pursue the retreating Americans. Though in great pain, Ebenezer Fletcher decided to escape; he slipped away into the forest, eluded hungry wolves and bands of Loyalists, and eventually made it home to New Ipswich, New Hampshire. Once he healed, he would return to serve out his three-year enlistment in the Continental Army. ♪ Voice: It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg. [Thomas Jefferson] [Bell ringing] Narrator: Most of the revolutionaries belonged to Protestant denominations, but there were Catholics and Jews among them, too, as well as Muslims, whose faith had crossed the Atlantic on slave ships. Central to the philosophy of some of the most influential creators of the United States was their belief in a Supreme Being but one who did not interfere in the affairs of men or distinguish between faiths. They were deists, and they believed it was each individual's responsibility to lead a virtuous life, which could only come from tolerance and a lifetime of learning: the pursuit of happiness. ♪ Man: The revolutionaries believed that the American people would have to be educated. Without education, there could be no virtue in the populace, and without virtue in the populace, the government would fail. Republics are based on authority coming from the bottom up, not like monarchies from the top down. So you require an educated, virtuous-- they use that term over and over, drawing it from antiquity-- virtuous population to sustain a republican government. Voice: Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York have long subsisted without any established religion at all. They have made the happy discovery that the way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them. Let us, too, give this experiment fair play. Thomas Jefferson. ♪ Voice: To Lord Germain, I have the honor to inform your Lordship that the enemy were dislodged from Ticonderoga and Mount Independence, and were driven, on the same day, beyond Skenesborough on the right and to Hubbardton on the left. General John Burgoyne. ♪ Narrator: The armies had been moving at a dizzying pace. Burgoyne's forces had reached Skenesborough by July 9th, but they had now outrun their gigantic supply train. Burgoyne decided to send his guns by water, south on Lake George. But his men were to march through the woods to Fort Edward on the east bank of the Hudson just 23 miles away. General Philip Schuyler, commander of the Continental Army's Northern Department, sent axmen into the woods to slow Burgoyne's overland advance. He would let the forest fight for him. The narrow path between Skenesborough and Fort Edward ran along a twisting stream called Wood Creek. The Americans felled trees every few feet on both sides of the road so that their tangled branches made the path impassable; they also destroyed some 40 crude bridges that crossed and recrossed the creek and used boulders to flood the boggy ground that surrounded it. It would take Burgoyne's men three exhausting weeks to turn the path into a road their wagons could navigate. And he was still a long way from his main objective--Albany. ♪ Voice: O the American war! I heard, I saw, I felt, smelled, and tasted its woes for ninety-two long months: famines, sores, sicknesses, plagues, battles; houses ransacked and burned; towns depopulated; gardens made graves. Roger Lamb. Narrator: Among the men in Burgoyne's army was Irish-born Corporal Roger Lamb, who kept his memories alive in watercolors and in print. ♪ By now, 400 more Native Americans from the Great Lakes-- Fox, Menominee, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Ho-Chunk-- had joined Burgoyne. His Indian allies attacked retreating Patriot forces. In one instance, they killed 22 men and scalped their corpses to terrify those sent out in search of them. Voice: This strikes a panic in our men which is not to be wondered at, when we consider the hazards they run by being fired at from quarters, and the woods so thick they can't see three yards before them, and then to hear the cursed war whoop, which makes the woods ring for miles. General John Glover. Narrator: Settlers were attacked, too, with little regard for their loyalties. A young woman named Jane McCrea, on her way to meet her Loyalist fiancé, was killed. And when her scalp was brought into Burgoyne's camp, he threatened to hang the perpetrator. Deloria: We don't really know much about Jane McCrea. She seems to have had reddish-brown hair and been an average person. But very quickly, Jane McCrea becomes a blonde and she has very long, beautiful hair. And she's pure and fair. And she's been plucked out of life right in her prime. Darren Bonaparte: It was just too captivating and tragic and scary a thing. That became part of the propaganda aspect of the war. It was used against us. Deloria: What happens is the American propagandists are not simply attacking Indians; they're using it to attack the British themselves and British policy. It's that the British sponsor Indian warfare that kills Jane McCrea, and that becomes a very, very powerful piece of cultural argument. Narrator: Hundreds of Patriot soldiers continued to flee southward. By the end of July 1777, most of what was left of the American forces in the area had withdrawn to Saratoga, a small cluster of houses north of Albany. Voice: To General Washington, our army is weak in numbers. I foresee that all this part of the country will soon be in their power unless we are speedily and largely reinforced. General Schuyler. Narrator: Washington had been shocked to learn of Ticonderoga's fall, but he also shared Nathanael Greene's view that "General Burgoyne's triumphs "may serve to bait his vanity and lead him on to his total ruin." To try to bring on that ruin, Washington took a calculated risk and sent some of his best officers north-- General Benedict Arnold, whose "conduct and bravery" he greatly admired, as well as Colonel Daniel Morgan and his sharpshooting frontiersmen from Virginia. Voice: General Washington is certainly a most surprising man, one of nature's geniuses, a heaven-born general if there is any of that sort. That a Negro-driver should, with a ragged banditti of undisciplined people, the scum and refuse of all nations on Earth, so long keep a British general at bay-- it is astonishing. It is too much. Nicholas Cresswell. Narrator: Burgoyne remained confident he would capture Albany. He assured Lord Germain that the obstacles the Patriots were placing in the path of his army were merely acts of "desperation and folly." He had once hoped to join forces with General Howe on the Hudson River, but Howe was already headed for Philadelphia. ♪ Man: General Howe can't go overland through New Jersey because the Americans are strong enough that they could really harass the column that he has to send down there. So, he decides to send his force by ship. Narrator: With favorable winds, it should have taken the fleet a little over a week. But winds died or blew the wrong way. Lightning storms split masts and ripped sails. Water and provisions ran low. Instead of trying to sail up the Delaware River under Patriot guns, the British would go still further south and approach Philadelphia via the Chesapeake Bay. Voice: I wish we could but fix upon their object. Their conduct is really so mysterious that you cannot reason upon it so as to form any certain conclusions. [Washington] Narrator: When Washington finally got word that the British had entered the Chesapeake, he realized where they were headed and hurried his army to defend Philadelphia. ♪ Voice: I think there can be no doubt that Howe aims at this place. He gives us an opportunity of exerting the strength of all the middle states against him, while New York and New England are destroying Burgoyne. Now is the time. Never was so good an opportunity for my countrymen to turn out and crush that vaporing, blustering bully to atoms. John Adams. [Crows cawing] Narrator: By early August, General Burgoyne was in trouble. He had reached the Hudson at Fort Edward, but he was still 50 miles from Albany. He would press on, but to do that, he needed more provisions. When he heard that only a handful of militia were guarding a sizable rebel depot at Bennington, he ordered nearly 800 men-- British, German, Native-American, French-Canadian, and Loyalist troops-- to seize it. [Bagpipe music] The men spoke at least five different languages. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, was certain his disciplined forces had nothing to fear from what he called "uncouth militia." Baer: Baum does not know English. He doesn't really know the terrain. There is some confusion about where they're going, who they're dealing with. They go out towards Bennington, and they are met by a large number of Americans that had assembled there that they just had not anticipated. Narrator: There were far more than "a handful" of militiamen; some 1,800 New Englanders and New Yorkers were waiting for them. Four miles west of Bennington, Colonel Baum spread his force in a wide arc with two strong points-- a hastily-built redoubt atop a forested 300-foot hill in the center, manned by British and German troops, and a second redoubt on a less lofty hill defended by John Peters, who had led his Queen's Loyal Rangers south from Canada back to near his old home in Vermont. On August 16th, at 3:00 in the afternoon, the Patriot commander, John Stark of New Hampshire-- a hard-fighting veteran of Breed's Hill, Trenton, and Princeton-- sent his men forward. [Musket fire, soldiers shouting] Narrator: The Germans were quickly outflanked and outnumbered. Baum urged his dragoons to try to cut their way out through the swarming militia. Moments later he fell, mortally wounded. Meanwhile, in and around the Loyalist redoubt, old friends battled one another. Voice: As the rebels were coming up, I observed a man fire at me, which I returned. He loaded again as he came up crying out, "Peters, you damned Tory, I have got you." I saw that it was a rebel captain, Jeremiah Post, an old schoolfellow and playmate and a cousin of my wife's. He rushed on me with his bayonet, which entered just below my left breast but was turned by the bone. Though his bayonet was in my body, I felt regret at being obliged to destroy him. [Weapon fires] Colonel John Peters, Queen's Loyal Rangers. [Musket fire] Narrator: All afternoon, the battle went back and forth. The Patriots eventually prevailed. Wounded and with his son by his side, John Peters led the survivors of his regiment back to Burgoyne's Army. Few of Colonel Baum's men escaped death, injury, or capture. Prisoners were packed into the Bennington Meeting House, many badly wounded. Voice: They were in all stages of suffering, and some were dying. Some of their fellow soldiers who were less seriously wounded would go to a dying comrade, and, kneeling by his side, would clasp their hands, bow their heads, and swaying their bodies up and down, would mutter prayers in their own language. And when death came to him, they would pass to another. [Woman] Narrator: At Bennington, Burgoyne had lost nearly 15% of his army, and he had accomplished nothing. Assurances about the near universality of Loyalist sentiments were dead wrong. Voice: The country now abounds in the most active and most rebellious race of the continent, and hangs like a gathering storm upon my left. [Burgoyne] ♪ Voice: Resolved that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation. [The Flag Resolution] ♪ Narrator: During a short meeting devoted mostly to fiscal matters, the Continental Congress had called for a new flag to represent their new country. But two years later, the committee of Congress overseeing the Army still regretted that there was as yet no "national standard." Some militia companies and privateers designed their own banners and had their wives and daughters make them. Although artists often included the Stars and Stripes in their postwar romantic renderings of Revolutionary events, it is not known ever actually to have been flown by the Continental Army above a battlefield, nor does anyone know who made the first one. ♪ Voice: We know the Indians now to have the highest notions of liberty of any people on Earth-- a people who will never consider consequences when they think their liberty likely to be invaded, though it may end in their ruin. George Croghan. Narrator: The Haudenosaunee was a centuries-old union comprised of the Six Nations-- Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Oneida, and Mohawk. Each was allowed to act in its own interest, but they were expected to act together in matters affecting them all. They likened their confederacy to a "great longhouse." The Senecas were the keepers of its western door, the Mohawks--the eastern door. At the center was Onondaga, where representatives met around the Great Council Fire. Man: Normally you hammer things out until everybody says, "OK, this is what we will do." And that had endured, right? Battered and bruised and bombarded through colonial wars and all the rest of it. That had endured. And then the Revolution occurs. [Cannon firing] Bonaparte: For us, the Mohawk people, it was survival. Period. And you didn't know which side was going to be the best choice. We kind of gravitated mostly to the British because they had kind of won our respect, beating the French, and pretty much having our interests when they dealt with the regular colonists. Voice: The disturbances in America give great trouble to all our nations. The Mohawks, our particular nation, have on all occasions shown their zeal and loyalty to the Great King. Thayendanegea. Narrator: No Mohawk man identified more closely with the British than Thayendanegea, who was also known as Joseph Brant. His sister Molly had married the British superintendent of Indian affairs, and her connections helped Brant make his name among the English. He had fought for the Crown in the French and Indian War at 15, attended an English mission school, and, in 1776, traveled to London, where he reaffirmed his people's loyalty to Britain in an audience with King George III. Many of the Indian people in this time are kind of anonymous to us in some ways because we don't have accurate representations of them, but one of the major exceptions is Joseph Brant, who had his portrait painted not once but many, many times. This is the 18th century. Not just anybody got their portrait painted. To have your portrait painted multiple times was unusual. I think he controlled his space. "I confound your stereotypical images of savage Indians." Narrator: Brant had fought against the Patriots at the Battle of Long Island, then began traveling from town to town within the Six Nations, urging the young men to join him. It was imperative, he told them, to "defend" our "lands and liberty against the rebels "who, in a great measure, began the rebellion to be sole Masters of the Continent." But suspicious of the way Brant seemed to move between the Indian and British worlds, more traditional leaders resented this minor chief's ambition to lead them into war, and preferred to hold back until it seemed clear Britain was headed for victory. And so, when Brant assembled his armed Volunteers, only a handful were from the Six Nations. Perhaps 80% of them were Loyalist settlers disguised as Indians. ♪ In early August, Brant's men were with British forces as they initiated the second part of Burgoyne's grand scheme to seize the Hudson and cut off the New England states. They started by laying siege to Fort Stanwix, a Patriot outpost far west on the Mohawk River, a crucial meeting place that connected the Great Lakes with the East. The British had believed the fort was only thinly defended and in disrepair. Actually, it was held by some 600 Continental soldiers, and they had been strengthening the fortifications at the urging of some Oneidas, who made their homes in the valley and did not share Joseph Brant's enthusiasm for the Crown. The American Revolution was about to plunge the once-united Six Nations into a civil war of their own. Calloway: Many Oneidas were closer to the Americans. Some are intermarried. Oneida people were, in many cases, surrounded by American colonists. Narrator: When an 800-man Patriot militia column commanded by General Nicholas Herkimer reached Oriska, an Oneida settlement on Oriskany Creek just eight miles from the embattled Fort Stanwix, sixty Oneida chiefs and warriors joined them. They were ready to fight alongside their White neighbors and help thwart the British invasion. Joseph Brant and his men were waiting for them, alongside hundreds of other Mohawks, Senecas, and Loyalists. [Woman singing in Native American language on soundtrack] On the morning of August 6, 1777, as Herkimer's long column filed into a ravine and began splashing across a stream, Loyalists fired from above, while hundreds of Native Americans allied with the British ran down among the startled men, wielding tomahawks, clubs, and scalping knives. ♪ Bonaparte: It was a slaughter. It was horrific what happened. And even the Native people who survived the war said they'd never experienced anything like that. ♪ Narrator: Perhaps as many as 400 Patriot militia lay dead, including some 30 of their Oneida allies. Almost 100 of the British forces had been killed or wounded, 65 of whom were Indians. The Mohawks and Senecas were accustomed to warfare that yielded far fewer casualties, and were stunned. Voice: There, I have seen the most dead bodies all over it that I never did see, and never will again. I thought, at the time, the bloodshed a stream running down on the descending ground. And yet some living crying for help, but have no mercy on to be spared of them. Chainbreaker. ♪ Bonaparte: We look back on the Battle of Oriskany as one of those points where the Longhouse seemed to be burning-- the all-time worst-case scenario, where we're actually killing each other in combat. For what? For what? For somebody else can claim our land? [Musket fire] Narrator: Fort Stanwix continued to hold out. British artillery proved too light to damage the fort's reinforced walls. Then word came that General Benedict Arnold and a large force of Continentals were on their way to break the siege. Britain's Native American allies decided to go home. They wanted time to mourn their dead. Without them, the cause was lost. The British withdrew their remaining forces and returned to Canada. The other army Burgoyne had once hoped would meet him at Albany would not be there. Meanwhile, General Horatio Gates, the new commander of the Continental Army's Northern Department, was methodically gathering his forces near the village of Saratoga to stop Burgoyne. ♪ [Horse clopping] Voice: Philadelphia is the asylum of the disaffected. The very air is contagious. The Quakers in general are wolves in sheep's clothing. And while they shelter themselves under the pretext of contentious scruples, they are the more dangerous. Philip Schuyler. Narrator: Philadelphia may have been the place where the Patriots were trying to form a national government, but its citizens were deeply divided. I think one of the really great examples of the difficulties of any kind of sort of neutral place is what happens to the Quakers over the course of the war. The Quakers are famously pacifist. And that's not good enough in Revolutionary America. Narrator: When the first anniversary of American independence was celebrated in the city that July, Patriots had called upon homeowners to place candles in their windows as a symbol of fidelity to the cause. Thomas and Sarah Fisher's home on Second Street remained dark that evening, and suffered fifteen broken windows. The Fishers were Quakers and therefore officially neutral. Their faith, one believer explained, held that "setting up and putting down of kings and governments is God's peculiar prerogative." Patriots routinely raided their shops and warehouses to supply the Continental Army. But the Fishers were defiant: they would not accept Continental money or pay any tax that supported the war, and they refused to denounce King George III. On August 23rd, the Fishers rode out to Stenton, Sarah's family's country estate near Germanton. Voice: On the road, we heard the disagreeable news that Washington's army is to march that way. We met numbers of wagons and light horsemen, and, on our getting to Stenton, found General Washington's bodyguard had taken possession of our house. They behaved civil, were very quiet. And Washington appeared extremely grave and thoughtful. [Sarah Fisher] ♪ Narrator: On August 24th, Washington paraded his men through the streets of Philadelphia. He hoped to persuade its citizens that his army would be able to defend them. Many in the crowd cheered; others remained stone-faced. Among the officers riding alongside Washington that day was a Frenchman, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier-- the Marquis de Lafayette. Congress had just made him a major general. He was just nineteen years old. Voice: The welfare of America is intimately bound up with the happiness of humanity. She is going to become the deserving and sure refuge of virtue, of honesty, of tolerance, of equality, and of a tranquil liberty. [Lafayette] Woman: Lafayette comes without a word of English but just with a sense that the American continent is the continent on which he will make his name, on which he stakes his glory, and with a willingness to essentially do anything that needs to be done for the sake of American independence. Narrator: Europe was momentarily at peace, and Lafayette was just one of many young officers-- from France, Bavaria, Prussia, and Poland-- all eager to show what they could do on the battlefield in the New World. But Lafayette stood out. He was so rich, he bought the ship in which he and a dozen other would-be officers had crossed the ocean. The young man's military experience was minimal, but his father had been killed by British artillery when he was two. "To injure England is to serve my country," he said. And he was determined to become a real major general, commanding a division of his own. de Rode: To George Washington, Lafayette was interesting. He had personal money with him that he could invest to buy uniforms, to buy supplies. He had a very important network at the French Court because he was, himself, from a very powerful family. So, if he could advocate for the cause of the American Revolution in France, it could create very important support from Versailles. Narrator: Washington liked him from the first, but would not consider giving him a command until he had seen how he fared in battle. Until then, he said, Lafayette was to join his staff, to consider himself part of his military family. ♪ Voice: I feel in a most painful situation between hope and fear. There must be fighting and very bloody battles, too, I apprehend. Why is man called humane when he delights so much in blood, slaughter, and devastation? Even those who are styled civilized nations think this little spot worth contending for, even to blood. Abigail Adams. ♪ Narrator: On August 25th, after five miserable weeks at sea, General Howe's 16,000-man army finally began to disembark near the mouth of the Elk River in Maryland. Atkinson: This is in the middle of the summer. It's broiling hot. These men have been on the ships for weeks. The horses are dying by the scores. But they disembark at the head of the Chesapeake Bay. And now they're looking for the Americans. Voice: Almost every movement of the war in North America is an act of enterprise, clogged with innumerable difficulties. A knowledge of the country, intersected, as it everywhere is, by woods, mountains, waters, or morasses, cannot be obtained with any degree of precision. General William Howe. Narrator: To block the enemy's advance on Philadelphia, George Washington interposed his 14,000-man army along Brandywine Creek, some 30 miles west of the city. The bulk of his force guarded Chad's Ford, prepared to face Howe's army in the open. Washington made sure his men understood what was at stake. Voice: If the enemy is overthrown, the war is at an end. One bold stroke will free the land from devastations and burnings. If we behave like men, this campaign will be our last. [Washington] Narrator: General Howe, now encamped near the village of Kennet Square, was eager for a climactic battle, too. He didn't think he could end the rebellion at one blow, but if he could destroy Washington's army and then seize Philadelphia, he would surely make that objective much easier. His plan was to divide his army and flank Washington's, just as he had on Long Island the previous summer. A little less than half his force, commanded by the German General Knyphausen, was to move toward Chad's Ford and keep Washington's army pinned down there, braced for an all-out attack. Meanwhile, the rest of General Howe's force, led by General Cornwallis and Howe himself, would move north as quietly as possible to attack the right flank of the rebel army. That attack was to be the signal for Knyphausen at Chad's Ford to storm across the Brandywine. If all went as planned, General Howe would be able to trap Washington's army between the two forces. Washington, again, misreads the ground. He has made tactical errors earlier in the war at the Battle of Long Island, and he makes another one at Brandywine. He believes that there are no fords up Brandywine Creek that the British can get across securely to outflank the Americans. That's not true. There are fords up there. The British find them. The British are well-informed. There are a number of Loyalists who are acting as guides; they're providing information about the terrain, about the topography, about, "Here on the map is where you can get around these American positions." ♪ Narrator: At daybreak on September 11, 1777, Generals Howe and Cornwallis set out on what would be a twisting seventeen-mile march to get behind the Americans. A dense morning fog screened their movements. General Knyphausen and his column began moving east soon after, along the Great Post Road toward Chad's Ford. [Cannon and musket fire] Forward elements of the American Army had felled trees across the road. Riflemen hidden in the woods fired into the enemy's ranks. American guns across the creek lobbed shells among them. But by midmorning, Knyphausen's men had driven the American advance troops back across the Brandywine, ready to storm across the creek when the signal was given. At his headquarters, General Washington was unsure what was happening. And so, he settled in for what he believed would be an all-out frontal assault across Chad's Ford, just as Howe wanted him to. Meanwhile, Howe and Cornwallis' men had waded across two waist-deep fords far upstream and marched for hours in intense heat without a break. The weary British and German troops halted on the bare slopes of Osborne's Hill to rest. They stayed there long enough for Washington to finally learn of the coming attack on his flank and order three brigades to leave their positions along the river and form a defensive line at another hill on which the Birmingham Meeting House stood: John Sullivan's men from Maryland and Delaware, William Alexander's from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and Adam Stephen's Virginians-- some 3,000 soldiers. [Cannon and musket fire] At around 4:00 in the afternoon, Howe ordered his much larger force forward in three perfectly disciplined columns. American marksmen fired into them from an apple orchard. American artillery tore through their ranks. The redcoats kept coming. Sullivan's brigade broke and ran, but the others held firm. Voice: There was a most infernal fire of cannon and musketry, the most incessant shouting. "Incline to the right!" "Incline to the left!" "Halt!" "Fire!" "Charge!" The balls plowing up the ground. The trees crackling over one's head. The branches riven by the artillery. The leaves falling as in autumn by the grapeshot. [British soldier] [Soldiers shouting] Man: A battle like Brandywine saw suffering at every corner. It was a hellscape in so many different ways. Cannonballs ripping through the forest; splinters killing men, just taking off arms, legs. [Cannons firing] Narrator: The outnumbered Americans were driven back five times, and five times managed to surge forward again before they finally broke. Had General Nathanael Greene and his reinforcements not raced some four miles in less than forty-five minutes to cover their retreat, it might have become a rout. Back at Chad's Ford, the sound of the fighting on Birmingham Hill had been the signal for General Knyphausen to send his army streaming across the Brandywine. The remaining Patriots could not hold. Washington ordered a retreat. ♪ Night fell. General Howe lamented that if he had more time, he could have brought about the rebel army's "total overthrow." Atkinson: The Americans, only by the grace of darkness, get away. The British can't chase them any further in the dark. It's a serious defeat for the Americans. It is going to open the gateway toward Philadelphia. ♪ Voice: We experienced another drubbing. But we did, I think, as well as could be expected. I saw not a despairing look, nor did I hear a despairing word. We had our solacing words always ready for each other: "Come, boys, we shall do better another time." Such was the spirit of the times. Captain Enoch Anderson. ♪ Narrator: The spirit of the times was not universal, as Washington's beaten army stumbled through the dark. Hundreds of men melted away into the countryside and headed home, making an accurate count of casualties impossible. But more than 1,000 Americans are thought to have been killed, wounded, or taken captive during the Battle of Brandywine, roughly twice as many casualties as the British had suffered. Voice: Our Americans, after holding firm for considerable time, were finally routed. While I was trying to rally them, the English honored me with a musket shot, which wounded me slightly in the leg. But the wound is nothing. The ball hit neither bone nor nerve, and all I have to do for it is to lie on my back for a while. Marquis de Lafayette. ♪ [Waves breaking, ship's rigging creaking] Voice: I needed all my courage and tenderness to keep my resolution of following my husband. Besides the perils of the sea, I was told that we would be exposed to be eaten by the savages, and that people in America lived upon horse flesh and cats. Baroness Friederike Riedesel. Narrator: When German General Friedrich Adolph Riedesel left Europe in 1776 to join General Burgoyne's northern campaign, he had left his pregnant wife and two small daughters at home. But as soon as she could, after her third daughter was born, Baroness Riedesel crossed the Atlantic with all three girls. In mid-August, she caught up with her husband and Burgoyne's army at Fort Edward. Voice: In the beginning, all went well. We cherished the sweet hope of a sure victory and of coming into the promised land. And when on the passage across the Hudson, General Burgoyne exclaimed, "The English never lose ground," our spirits were greatly exhilarated. [Baroness Riedesel] Narrator: On September 13, 1777, two days after Washington's defeat at the Battle of the Brandywine, General Burgoyne's army in New York began streaming across the Hudson near Saratoga on a bridge of boats covered with planks. Officers and men, women, children, horses, cattle, wagons, field-pieces-- it took three days for it all to cross. Waiting for them some 10 miles south of Saratoga were General Horatio Gates' 6,900 Continentals and 1,300 militia, dug in along Bemis Heights, a broad plateau anchored on the right by the Hudson River and sheltered on the left by craggy wooded bluffs. Colonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish volunteer for the Americans, had chosen the site and laid out brigade encampments, breastworks, and artillery emplacements all along the Heights for 3/4 of a mile. Patriot cannon commanded the river road to Albany. Officers had a clear view of the rough terrain across which the British would have to march-- deep ravines and dense woods, broken here and there by half-cleared farmers' fields. Most of Burgoyne's Native scouts had left him by now, so while he knew the Americans were somewhere ahead of him, he had no way of knowing how many they were or precisely how they were positioned. On September 19th, he resolved to find out and then try to drive through the rebel lines. He divided his force into three columns. Scottish General Simon Fraser, with nearly 3,000 troops, set out to pinpoint his enemy's flank, hoping to locate high ground from which to fire on the rebels. 2,200 soldiers under German General Riedesel approached along the river road. Burgoyne himself led the middle column-- some 1,700 soldiers--to assault what he guessed was the center of the American lines. Watching from Bemis Heights, General Gates was content to wait. This was his first battlefield command, and he was a careful, cautious man. Both Fraser's and Riedesel's columns stalled, but Burgoyne's men managed to make it through the forest to a clearing named Freeman's Farm, where General Benedict Arnold and Daniel Morgan's riflemen went out to engage them. [Musket fire] Atkinson: General Burgoyne asks for reinforcements. Riedesel, who's a very fine commander, immediately sends some reinforcements up from the river to hit the Americans in the American right flank. And this successfully stops the American momentum. This First Battle of Saratoga, the Battle of Freeman Farm, it's a draw, basically. You can say that the British have been successful in that they have held onto the ground, but for the most part, it's inconclusive. Narrator: Burgoyne had not located the main rebel positions on Bemis Heights, and had lost 591 men, nearly twice as many as the Patriots had lost, and, unlike General Gates, Burgoyne had no realistic prospect of replacing them. ♪ Voice: I was an eyewitness of the whole affair and shivered at every shot, for I could hear everything. I saw a great number of wounded. And what was still more harrowing, they even brought three of them into the house where I was. [Baroness Riedesel] ♪ Woman: Imagine what a battlefield looks like after a battle. It has a lot of bodies. It has a lot of blood and gore. And it was the job of women to go in and take care of those bodies, to clean them up, to identify them, if they could, to see over the burial of bodies. Part of the work of war is dealing with death. Voice: Although we repulsed them with loss, we ourselves were much weakened. The bodies of the slain were scarcely covered with the clay. And the only tribute of respect to fallen officers was to bury them by themselves, without throwing them in the common grave. So destruction comes with rapid wings, and ruin rushes on like a whirlwind to sweep the best officers, and sometimes almost entire battalions, from their strongest foundations. Roger Lamb. ♪ Voice: Harassed and exhausted by perpetual change from bad to worse, my poor afflicted mother consented to go beyond the mountains to Winchester. It was indeed a new world to us-- rude and wild as nature had made it. Betsy Ambler. ♪ Narrator: Betsy Ambler and her family from Yorktown, Virginia, had been on the move since the war began, trying to find a place that suited her mother's frail health and was safe from the British. For decades, Winchester, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, had been an important waystation on the Great Wagon Road that settlers followed through the backcountry from Philadelphia to the Carolinas. Because it was so far inland, Winchester served new purposes: it was a relatively safe place for storing military supplies and materiel; a safe haven for refugees; and a place to house prisoners of war. Suspected Loyalists were often exiled to Winchester, too. Voice: We not unfrequently made acquaintance with agreeable men who were condemned to banishment in this dreary place on account of "disaffection," as it was called, to the great cause of liberty. Amongst those proscribed, genteel Quakers from Philadelphia were numerous. [Ambler] Narrator: One of those Quakers was Sarah Fisher's husband Thomas. As British troops advanced on Philadelphia, Congress and the local authorities had convinced themselves that he and seven other wealthy Quakers were communicating with the enemy. They had them arrested, and when they again refused to swear allegiance to the new government, loaded them into wagons and sent them off under guard to Winchester. ♪ Now alone in Philadelphia, Sarah Fisher had two small boys to care for and was nearly eight months' pregnant. Voice: I feel forlorn and desolate, and the world appears like a dreary desert, almost without any visible protecting hand to guard us from the ravenous wolves and lions that prowl about for prey, seeking to devour those harmless innocents that don't go hand-in-hand with them in their cruelty and rapine. [Fisher] Narrator: Her husband's only crime, Sarah Fisher said, was that he saw himself as a subject of Britain. But she was cheered to see that rebels and their sympathizers, including all the members of the Continental Congress, were now fleeing the city in fear of the enemy's approach after the American defeat at Brandywine. Voice: People in very great confusion, some flying one way and some another, as if not knowing where to go or what to do. Wagons rattling, horses galloping, women running, children crying, delegates flying, and altogether the greatest consternation, fright, and terror that can be imagined. [Fisher] ♪ Narrator: George Washington still hoped somehow to keep the British from occupying Philadelphia. He ordered General Anthony Wayne and his Pennsylvania division to attack the rear of the advancing army. But local Loyalists alerted General Howe that Wayne and his men were camped near the Paoli Tavern, and he sent 1,700 soldiers to deal with them. ♪ As they approached through the woods on the night of September 20th, they were ordered to remove the flints from their muskets for fear someone's gun would go off and alert the sleeping rebels. They fixed bayonets and exploded out of the trees with what a British officer remembered: "such a cheer as made the wood echo." [Sound of musket fire, bayonets stabbing, soldiers shouting] Voice: The light infantry bayoneted every man they came up with. And the cries of the wounded formed altogether one of the most dreadful scenes I ever beheld. Every man that fired was instantly put to death. Lieutenant Martin Hunter. Narrator: At least 53 Patriots were stabbed to death, and more than 200 were wounded or captured. Americans would remember it as the Paoli Massacre. Washington gave up hope of holding Philadelphia. ♪ Six days after the massacre, September 26, 1777, General Cornwallis led 3,000 victorious British troops into Philadelphia. Voice: About 10 o'clock, the troops began to enter. A band of music played a tune, which I afterwards understood was called "God save Great George Our King." Then followed the soldiers, no wanton levity, or indecent mirth, but a gravity well becoming the occasion on all their faces. Sarah Fisher. Narrator: General Howe, with 8,000 more troops camped in Germanton, made his headquarters at Stenton, Sarah Fisher's country home that had only a few weeks before been occupied by George Washington. At Brandywine, General Howe had repeated the tactics that had won the Battle of Long Island. Now Washington hoped to repeat his successful surprise attack on Trenton by hitting Howe at Germanton in early October. Washington's plan was ambitious and complicated. Success would depend on dividing his 11,000-man force into four separate columns to undertake miles-long marches at night on poorly marked roads so as to arrive simultaneously on the town's northern and western edges at precisely 5 A.M. on October 4th. Then, at dawn, they were to storm into town on four different roads. It would be the first time during the Revolution that Washington dared hurl his army against the main British force. [Musket fire] John Sullivan's and Anthony Wayne's columns swiftly swept aside British pickets north of the town. Wayne's men found themselves face-to-face with the British Light Infantry, the same soldiers who had massacred so many of their comrades at Paoli just two weeks earlier. Voice: Our people pushed on with their bayonets and took ample vengeance for that night's work. The rage and fury of the soldiers were not to be restrained. [General Anthony Wayne] Narrator: The Americans continued to push the British back through the town, driving them from one fenced yard to the next. Voice: Fortune smiled on our arms. The enemy were broke, dispersed, and flying in all quarters. We were in possession of their whole encampment. [Wayne] Narrator: In the face of the advancing Americans, British Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Musgrave ordered half his regiment-- between 100 and 120 soldiers-- to duck inside the largest house in Germanton, the home of Benjamin Chew, the Loyalist ex-chief justice of Pennsylvania. Its walls were two feet thick. Musgrave directed his men to block the door and ground-floor windows with furniture. Downstairs, his men were to bayonet anyone who dared try to enter while others fired into the passing rebels from the upstairs windows. Atkinson: Washington is advised, "Bypass them. Go around them. Isolate them. Keep the momentum going." Narrator: But Henry Knox insisted that the house had to be taken right away. "It would be unmilitary," he said, "to leave a castle in our rear." Washington agreed. [Cannons firing] Artillery blew in the front door and damaged statuary in the garden, but bounced harmlessly off the walls. Continentals from New Jersey repeatedly stormed the house and were cut down on the lawn and front steps. As the siege at the Chew House went on, the bulk of the American force streamed past, continuing to drive the British back. A Patriot victory seemed likely. Voice: About this time came on perhaps the thickest fog known in the memory of man, which, together with the smoke, brought on almost midnight darkness. It was not possible to distinguish friend from foe at five yards distance. [Elias Dayton] Narrator: When the men who had penetrated the farthest heard the furious gunfire still coming from the Chew House, they believed the enemy had somehow gotten behind them. Now it was the Patriots who began to fall back. General Cornwallis himself led the counterattack. His troops freed Musgrave's men from the Chew House and drove the Americans back along the roads they'd followed into town. The British had won...again. ♪ Voice: I rode over the battlefield, and with surprise and admiration approached the house, which the brave Colonel Musgrave had defended. During the battle, some thirty defenders were killed and wounded. I counted seventy-five dead Americans. The rooms of the house were riddled by cannonball and looked like a slaughterhouse because of the blood splattered around. There, the entire English army was saved. Johann Ewald. For the Americans, what had been a sure victory-- it looked like they were going to drive the British back into Philadelphia--becomes a fairly significant defeat. Washington gets away again, but there are hundreds of casualties. The British capture quite a few Americans. And what had been a glorious morning turns into a very grim evening. Narrator: Reporting to Congress, Washington tried to put the best face he could on his humiliating defeat. Voice: Upon the whole, it may be said the day was rather unfortunate than injurious. We sustained no material loss of men and brought off all our artillery, except one piece. The enemy are nothing the better by the event. And our troops, who are not in the least dispirited by it, have gained what all young troops gain by being in actions. [Washington] He is very good at, I think, the key tactic for an insurrectionary force, which is living to fight another day, and successfully plays a long game of just not being crushed. Ellis: Washington's not a great field commander, but he's resilient, and he understands the kind of war he's fighting. At some point, he reaches the insight-- and it's a basic insight-- he doesn't have to win. The British have to win. He only has not to lose. ♪ Voice: The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so different, there was so great a variety of religions, they were composed of so many different nations, their customs, manners, and habits had so little resemblance, their intercourse had been so rare, and their knowledge of each other so imperfect that to unite them in the same principles of theory and the same system of action, was certainly a very difficult enterprise. John Adams. ♪ Narrator: After fleeing Philadelphia, the Continental Congress reconvened in a small county courthouse in York, Pennsylvania. The delegates had taken just 27 days of discussion the previous year to declare American independence, but it would take them 526 days to fashion the Articles of Confederation. They were meant in part to demonstrate to France that the thirteen former colonies could act effectively together, but the result was not a government. Woman: They needed to have a way to pay for wars; they needed to run wars. They needed to possess Native lands; they needed to redistribute those lands. But the Articles had so much political compromise that it wasn't a functional centralized government. Narrator: By design, the Articles of Confederation were weak and constrained. Each state remained a more or less independent republic jealously guarding its own sovereignty and freedom. Congress had no power to tax, which meant it couldn't pay the soldiers in the Continental Army. And before the Articles could even become operative, they needed to be ratified by all the states. That would take another 39 months. ♪ Voice: The armies were so near that not a night passed without firing. No foraging party could be made without great detachments to cover it. I do not believe either officer or soldier ever slept during that interval. General John Burgoyne. Narrator: For eighteen days after the Battle of Freeman's Farm near Saratoga, the American and British armies strengthened their defenses and skirmished constantly but remained precisely where they had been when the shooting stopped. Meanwhile, Loyalist refugees continued to stream into the British camp, forcing Burgoyne to reduce rations by a third. Desertions, especially among German troops, rose so fast that Baron Riedesel promised his soldiers ten guineas for every would-be deserter they brought back and five guineas if he had to be shot for resisting. At 11:00 in the morning on October 7th, Burgoyne led some 1,500 men out of his camp and formed a long, thin line across two unharvested wheat fields just west of Freeman's Farm, redcoats on the right, Germans in the center, elite British grenadiers on the left. While some of his men harvested the wheat his encampment desperately needed, Burgoyne and several of his officers climbed onto the roof of a log cabin with spyglasses, trying to see if there was a way around the rebel left. Tall trees blocked them from seeing anything useful, but Americans patrolling the no man's land saw them. [Musket fire] Shots were exchanged. From Bemis Heights, General Gates now ordered Daniel Morgan's corps and Brigadier General Enoch Poor's brigades to attack the British on both flanks. British General Fraser was killed. The redcoats crumbled. Then Benedict Arnold galloped onto the battlefield. He seemed to be everywhere, leading a charge against the British center, racing between the armies through a swarm of musket balls to rally another regiment so that they could sweep the defenders from two fortified cabins. He urged the exhausted men on to seize a redoubt manned by some 200 German grenadiers. Voice: You cannot conceive how men looked. And at first it appeared to me that if the order came for us to march, I could not do it. Nathaniel Bacheller. Narrator: But when Arnold gave the order, Bacheller and his comrades climbed to their feet and moved forward again, shouting as they rushed toward the front of the redoubt. Arnold rode around it, forced his way inside, and demanded that its defenders surrender. Most did surrender or fled, but one fired a musket ball that shattered Arnold's left leg, the same leg that had been wounded at Quebec two years before, and killed his horse, which fell on him. Unable to move, Arnold continued to shout orders until the fighting died down and he could be carried from the field. "Arnold was our fighting general," one of his men remembered. "He was as brave a man as ever lived." Philbrick: I think it's safe to say that Benedict Arnold should be regarded as the hero of Saratoga. It was really an aggressive move at the end that sealed the victory for the Americans. Narrator: The British stumbled back to Saratoga, carrying their wounded with them. [Cannons firing] Voice: October 10th--Saratoga. A frightful cannonade began, principally directed against the house in which we had sought shelter, probably because the enemy believed that all the generals made it their headquarters. Alas! It harbored none but wounded soldiers or women. We were finally obliged to take refuge in a cellar. My children laid down on the earth with their heads upon my lap. My own anguish prevented me from closing my eyes. Eleven cannonballs went through the house, and we could plainly hear them rolling over our heads. One poor soldier, whose leg they were about to amputate, had the other leg taken off by another cannonball in the very middle of the operation. [Baroness Riedesel] [Cannons firing] Narrator: Militiamen continued to stream into Gates' army, its numbers now swollen to 17,000. By October 13th, the Americans had Burgoyne's army completely surrounded. Voice: Every hour, the position of the army grew more critical and the prospect of salvation grew less and less. Even for the wounded, no spot could be found which could afford them a safe shelter. The sick and wounded would drag themselves along into a quiet corner in the woods, and lie down to die. General Riedesel. ♪ Conway: Saratoga was a body blow to the British. It was clear that all of the old assumptions, that the British Army was a professional force that would sooner or later prevail over the amateurish Americans, all those assumptions were undermined. The amateurish Americans had actually beaten the British. For the British, this was not just a military defeat; it was a psychological blow of very considerable proportions. Narrator: That afternoon, Burgoyne gathered his staff. They were trapped, without food or forage. They voted to begin negotiations with General Gates. ♪ For three days, messages flew back and forth between the camps. Voice: During the time of the cessation of arms, a soldier in the 9th Regiment named Maguire came down to the bank of the river with a number of his companions, who engaged in conversation with a party of Americans on the opposite shore. ♪ Maguire suddenly darted like lightning from his companions, and resolutely plunged into the stream. [Water splashing] At the very same moment, one of the American soldiers, seized with a similar impulse, resolutely dashed into the water from the opposite shore. The wondering soldiers on both sides beheld them eagerly swim towards the middle of the river, where they met. They hung on each other's necks and wept. They were brothers. One was in the British and the other in the American service, totally ignorant until that hour that they were engaged in hostile combat against each other's life. Roger Lamb. ♪ Narrator: On the morning of October 17th, Gates' generous terms were accepted. He and Burgoyne met between their respective lines and shook hands. Burgoyne presented his sword to Gates-- who handed it back, as dictated by military custom. To his dying day, Burgoyne would blame others for his defeat-- Lord Germain, General Howe, his Loyalist German and Native allies-- everyone but himself. Voice: All the army gave up and surrendered themselves prisoners of war to our men. Such a thing was never heard of. Such a sight was never seen before, so many men giving in to us. Exult, oh, Americans and rejoice and praise the Lord, who hath done wonderful things for you. Ezra Tilden. Narrator: An entire British army had been forced to lay down its arms-- one lieutenant general, two major generals, three brigadiers, 350 commissioned and staffed officers, 5,900 other ranks, and some 600 women and children. Along with them, the Americans seized 30 artillery pieces, 60 wagons, 1,500 swords, 3,400 bayonets, and 4,600 muskets and rifles. Burgoyne's Canadian and Loyalist auxiliaries were to be permitted to make their way north to Canada, while more than 6,000 British and German prisoners were to be marched to Boston and sent home from there to Europe, pledged never to return. But when they got there, they learned that Congress had refused to ratify Gates' agreement with Burgoyne. After months housed in makeshift camps, they were sent south. Voice: I never had the least idea that the creation produced such a sordid set of creatures in human figure-- poor, dirty, emaciated men, great numbers of women, who seemed to be the beasts of burden, and children, some very young infants who were born on the road. Hannah Winthrop. Narrator: The prisoners would eventually be marched more than 600 miles to Charlottesville, Virginia, and still later to other camps in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Many died. Hundreds escaped. Some would rejoin the British army at New York; others joined the Continental Army or simply disappeared into the populace. By the time the remaining prisoners from Saratoga were released in 1783, only a few of the 6,000 would be left. ♪ [Distant bird cawing] Voice: Everything is almost gone of the vegetable kind, butchers obliged to kill fine milk cows. One woman walked two miles out of town only for an egg. Such is the dreadful situation we are reduced to. Sarah Fisher. Narrator: At first, Philadelphia Loyalists had welcomed British troops into their city. But as it grew colder that autumn, homeowners would be forced to take officers into their homes, whether they wanted to or not and, as Sarah Fisher wrote, there were soon "very bad accounts "of the licentiousness of the English officers deluding young girls." Sarah Fisher felt especially isolated and alone, but she soon gave birth to a baby daughter, whom she named Hannah, after her late mother. American patrols made foraging in the surrounding countryside dangerous for British troops. Provisions grew increasingly scarce. Prices soared. General Howe had to find a way for the Royal Navy to ferry food, supplies, and equipment up the Delaware River to Philadelphia. American forces occupied two forts--Fort Mifflin on Mud Island, and Fort Mercer at Red Bank on the New Jersey side. For weeks, the British worked to destroy them. The besieged Americans, Thomas Paine wrote, had nothing "to cover them but their bravery." Joseph Plumb Martin had been among the last Americans to evacuate Fort Mifflin. Voice: Every private soldier in an army thinks his particular services as essential to carry on the war he's engaged in, as the services of the most influential general. And why not? What could officers do without such men? Nothing at all. [Distant explosions] Great men get great praise, little men nothing. [Martin] Narrator: Both forts fell. The Delaware was now open to British shipping. Howe's army could safely spend the winter in Philadelphia. In December, George Washington would lead his army into winter quarters, a hilly, wooded, remote place northwest of Philadelphia called Valley Forge. [Distant bell tolling] In France, Benjamin Franklin had heard little of what was happening in America for seven long weeks. Then, on December 4th, a rider clattered into his courtyard, shouting he had important news. Franklin hurried out to greet him. "Sir," he asked, "is Philadelphia taken?" "Yes, sir," the courier answered. Franklin, dejected, turned to go back inside. "But, Sir," the rider said. "I have greater news than that. "General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners of war." Just a few months earlier, Franklin had written that only "a small matter" would be needed to bring France into the war with Britain. Clearly, the surrender of an entire British army was a large matter. The Comte de Vergennes, the French Foreign Minister, whose newly rebuilt navy was now ready for war, saw the victory at Saratoga and the former colonies' tentative steps toward forming a central government as the best evidence so far that a French-American alliance might defeat the British. Louis XVI agreed. "America is triumphant," he said, "and England beaten." Alan Taylor: Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga is a crushing blow, and it impresses the French. But the French are also impressed by George Washington's survival. He's still hanging in there. His army is still fighting. The British may force their way into Philadelphia, but they have not destroyed Washington's army. de Rode: It's quite a risk to send your army to fight with an army that might never win. But there's more to the story, because the French are not just waiting for the victory. They're waiting for their own army to be ready. Finally, their navy was ready, their army was ready. They were strong enough again and felt confident that this was the right moment to join the rebels. Narrator: In Paris, on February 6, 1778, French and American commissioners would sign two treaties. The first recognized the independence of the United States of America and established commercial relations between the two countries. The second, the Treaty of Alliance, promised full support for the American cause from the French Army and Navy, as well as its Treasury. ♪ Schiff: The importance of the French alliance, just in entirely practical terms, we're talking about what would today be $25 billion to $30 billion in aid. We're talking about a war effort that the colonies could not have provided for themselves. And the idea that a foreign power bankrolled that effort and that it would have impossible without them, that's the chapter we don't like to think too much about because our sense of our independence is that it's something that we achieved on our own. Narrator: Although it would be nearly three months before the news crossed the Atlantic, an uprising among British subjects in North America was about to ignite another global war. ♪ ♪ Announcer: Next time on "The American Revolution"... Winter at Valley Forge. Voice: This army must inevitably starve or disperse in order to obtain subsistence. [George Washington] Announcer: Alliances are formed... Colin Calloway: The new United States represents an existential threat. Announcer: and the French enter the war. Kathleen DuVal: Britain knows that Spain and the Netherlands may be next. The stakes are big in this war. Announcer: When "The American Revolution" continues next time. ♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of "The American Revolution" with interactives, games, classroom materials, and more. ♪ Announcer: "The American Revolution" DVD and Blu-ray, as well as the companion book and soundtrack, are available online and in stores. The series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video. ♪ Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. URL https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-4-conquer-by-a-drawn-game/

The American Revolution A Film By Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein & David Schmidt The Times That Try Men’s Souls (July 1776 – January 1777) VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. Voice: The plan laid down for our education was entirely broken in upon by the war. Instead of morning lessons, we were to knit stockings; instead of embroidering, to make homespun garments; and in place of the music of the harpsichord, to listen to the loud, clanging trumpet and never-ceasing drum, for in every direction that we traveled-- and heaven knows we left but little of Virginia unexplored-- we heard naught but the din of war. Our late peaceful country now became a scene of terror and confusion. Betsy Ambler. [Men shouting] ♪ Maya Jasanoff: Our images of the American Revolution tend to be images of men in wigs in wood-paneled rooms, and that helps to reinforce an image of the American Revolution as just a war about ideals. I think that we really do a disservice to...history and to the experiences of the people who lived through it when we paper over the violence of the American Revolution with this set of very idealized images that we have of the Founding Fathers signing documents in Philadelphia. The United States came out of violence. ♪ [Sea gulls crying] Voice: I peeped out at the bay and saw something resembling a wood of pine trees trimmed. I declare at my noticing this that I could not believe my eyes, but judge you of my surprise when, in about 10 minutes, the whole bay was full of shipping as ever it could be. I do declare that I thought all London was afloat. Private Daniel McCurtin. ♪ Narrator: On Saturday morning, June 29, 1776, Colonel Henry Knox, whose artillery had convinced the British to flee Boston, was breakfasting with his wife Lucy on the second floor of a commandeered mansion at Number 1 Broadway when he, too, spotted the British ships that Private McCurtin had seen as they approached New York Harbor unopposed. [Bell ringing] Voice: My God, you can scarcely conceive of the distress and anxiety-- the city in an uproar, the alarm guns firing, the troops repairing to their posts. [Henry Knox] Narrator: Martha Washington and other officers' wives, including Lucy Knox and her infant daughter, were sent away from the city for their safety. The Royal Navy anchored off Staten Island and began to disembark some 10,000 British regulars. Crowds of local Loyalists cheered them as they stepped ashore. Stephen Conway: The Royal Navy, as one contemporary put it, was the "Canvas Wings of the British State." It enabled the British to appear off the coastline almost anywhere unhindered. ♪ Voice: We expect a very bloody summer at New York, as it is here, I presume, the grand efforts of the enemy will be aimed, and I am sorry to say that we are not, either in men or arms, prepared for it. George Washington. ♪ ♪ Narrator: By the summer of 1776, the Revolution, which began as a quarrel over the rights of British subjects, had become a war for American independence, and as that revolution spread throughout the colonies, thousands of Americans, patriots and Loyalists alike, would be driven from their homes. 11-year-old Betsy Ambler of Yorktown, Virginia, and her family had been among the earliest refugees. Her mother suffered from what Betsy called "a nervous malady." In 1775, the constant talk of war and Yorktown's vulnerability to an attack by water had so terrified her mother that her father decided to move the family, Betsy said, "and seek a safe retreat for her." The Amblers were more fortunate than most displaced families. They and their relatives owned farms and plantations worked by enslaved people scattered across the state. They settled first in a small house in the tiny village of New Castle in Hanover County. It was there that Betsy's mother gave birth to another daughter--Lucy. Since Lucy "made her appearance just after the declaration," Betsy recalled, their father called her "his only independent child." Now a fully committed patriot, Betsy's father had lost his paid position as Collector of Royal Customs, and a Royal Navy blockade would soon choke off the shipping on which his profits as a merchant had been made. Voice: The war, though it was to involve my immediate family in poverty and perplexity of every kind, was for the foundation of independence and prosperity for my country, and what sacrifice would not an American, a Virginian, at the earliest age, have made for so desirable an end? Betsy Ambler. ♪ Voice: What to do with this city puzzles me. It is so encircled with deep, navigable water that whoever commands the sea must command the town. General Charles Lee. Narrator: George Washington had assigned a former British officer, General Charles Lee, to fortify New York City and its surroundings. The Patriot commanders feared they could not hold the town for long but hoped to make the British pay the highest possible price for its capture. Since no one could say where or when British attacks would come, Washington had been forced to scatter his army and its 121 cannon all around the harbor. Rick Atkinson: New York is an archipelago. It's a confluence of islands. It's a problem. If you don't control the naval approaches in and around New York, you cannot properly defend New York. Narrator: New York was one of the best natural harbors on the Atlantic seaboard, and although the town still occupied just a single square mile at Manhattan's southern tip, it was the second-largest city in the newly created United States and the gateway to the Hudson River. If the British commander, General William Howe, could capture it, his forces would be free to ascend the river and divide rebellious New England from the rest of the states. Nathaniel Philbrick: This whole war, in many ways, is a water campaign. It's who controls the coast, but it's also who controls the rivers and the lakes. This is where the fighting would be, wherever water provided you with a way to get into the interior of the country. [Splash] Narrator: Both the British and the Americans had considered New York and the farming communities that bordered it to be Loyalist strongholds. For weeks, Patriots had prowled the streets, roughing up Loyalists. Thousands fled with what belongings they could carry. Hundreds more were arrested. Several dozen were hauled away to Simsbury, Connecticut, and imprisoned in an abandoned copper mine 70 feet below the Earth that the Patriots called the Catacomb of Loyalty. [Gavel bangs] A Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies, chaired by the attorney John Jay, held daily inquisitions. 40 men, including the Mayor of New York City, were jailed for plotting to assassinate George Washington. A member of Washington's own personal guard was found to be involved and hanged while 4 brigades of troops looked on. [Sandbag thumps, rope creaks] The city had been home to 25,000 people. By the summer of 1776, just 5,000 of them would remain, and those Loyalists left behind had learned to keep their opinions to themselves. Voice: To see the vast number of houses shut up, one would think the city almost evacuated. Troops are daily coming in. They break open the houses they find shut up to quarter themselves. Necessity knows no law. [Unidentified Loyalist] Narrator: Continental soldiers and militiamen from 10 states continued to stream into town. Eventually, there would be more than 20,000 of them in and around New York. They moved into abandoned houses, tore up parquet floors for firewood, and hurled refuse from the windows. Despite a 10 P.M. curfew, troops flocked to a warren of West Side brothels built on land owned by Trinity Church. Customers called it the Holy Ground. ♪ On the afternoon of July 12th, 2 British warships slipped their anchors off Staten Island, moved into the harbor past the tip of Manhattan, and began sailing up the Hudson. [Cannonfire] Voice: The cannon from the city did but very little execution, as not more than half the number of the men belonging to them were present. The others were at their cups, and at their usual place of abode on the Holy Ground. Lieutenant Isaac Banks. Narrator: Later that same evening, a still-larger British fleet, more than 100 vessels, began streaming through the narrows and into New York Harbor. Its commander was General William Howe's elder brother Vice Admiral Richard Howe. Both had once expressed sympathy for the colonists, and both had been empowered to negotiate with rebel leaders and issue pardons in hopes of avoiding further bloodshed, but while the Admiral was crossing the Atlantic, Congress had declared American independence. [Men shouting] Voice: We learned the deplorable situation of His Majesty's faithful subjects, that they were hunted after and shot at in the woods and swamps to which they had fled to avoid the savage fury of the rebels. We also heard that the Congress had now announced the colonies to be independent states. That proclaims the villainy and madness of these deluded people. [Ambrose Serle] ♪ Voice: To my dear Betsey, my wife-- It is hard to be quite happy when one full half, at least, of both body and soul is left at home, but, believe it, I am not more mortal here in the neighborhood of the British cannon than I should be was I happy in your peaceful, loving arms. Till my God calls me, I am immortal. Philip Vickers Fithian. Narrator: Philip Vickers Fithian of Cohansey, New Jersey, was a newly married 28-year-old Presbyterian clergyman, recently appointed chaplain of a militia brigade. He was a graduate of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, where his classmates had included Aaron Burr and James Madison. After college, he spent a year as a tutor on a Virginia plantation, where, seeing the inhuman cruelty of slavery up close, he introduced the owner's children to the work of the enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley. In New York, Fithian found himself sleeping on the floor of a Loyalist's abandoned home, conducting prayer meetings twice a day and afterwards visiting the hospitals filled with men dying from dysentery. Amen. Amen. Voice: Here I must daily visit among many in a contagious disorder, but I am not discouraged nor dispirited. I am willing to hazard and suffer equally with my countrymen since I have a firm conviction that I am in my duty. [Fithian] Friederike Baer: When we really take a look at what these regiments were like, we see a lot of individuals who are not carrying arms-- including women, including children, including servants, medical personnel, chaplains-- and there are all kinds of individuals there that are essential parts of these armies that are doing essential labor, without whom, I think, the army couldn't operate. Voice: August 1st-- There is a report pretty well confirmed that near 40 sail of the enemy came in this afternoon and are joining the fleet. We are all uncertain. [Fithian] Narrator: The ships that came in that day were straggling in from a failed British expedition in South Carolina. The Royal governors of the southern colonies, who had all been driven to ships anchored off their coasts, continued to insist that the rebellion had been stirred up by only a tiny minority of radicals, that the overwhelmingly loyal populace of their colonies would take up arms in support of the Crown, provided help was sent. In June, British warships had converged on Charleston Harbor, where their 262 guns opened fire on a rebel fort on Sullivan's Island. [Cannonfire] More than 7,000 cannonballs were fired. Most that hit their target were absorbed by the fort's sturdy palmetto walls. Within the fort, Patriot Colonel William Moultrie ordered his men to "distress [the enemy] in every shape to the utmost of your powers." They did. They had just 31 guns, but they proved deadly accurate, toppling masts, riddling hulls, blowing sailors and sea captains apart. The British flagship alone was hit 70 times, and 111 crewmen were killed or maimed. By evening, the battered fleet pulled away. "We never had such a drubbing in our lives," one British sailor remembered. It took 3 weeks to repair the damage to their ships before they made their way back north to join the forces threatening New York. The British would not attempt to recapture a southern colony again for 2 1/2 years. ♪ [Insects chirping] Voice: It seems to be the intention of the White people to destroy us as a people, but I have a great many young fellows that would support me, and we are determined to have our land. Tsi'yu-gunsini. ♪ Narrator: In the summer of 1776, Cherokee warriors led by Tsi'yu-gunsini, "Dragging Canoe" in English, began attacking frontier settlements west of the Appalachians on land now claimed by Virginia and the Carolinas. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 had expressly barred colonists from purchasing or moving onto Indian lands west of the Appalachians, but British officials had been powerless to enforce it or to keep some Native Americans, including Dragging Canoe's own father, from leasing or selling land to settlers and speculators. Kathleen DuVal: We think of the Revolution as a war against empire, but it very quickly becomes a war for empire. One war aim of the American Revolution is to take the Ohio Valley and the South. That's what Americans wanted. The British government had kept them from taking Native lands, so for the Shawnees and the Delawares, Cherokees, and many other people, the American Revolution was a war to protect these places against an enemy they already knew quite well. Voice: Our Shawnee nation, from being a great people, are now reduced to a handful. The red people, who were once masters of the whole country, hardly possess ground enough to stand on. The lands where but lately we hunted are now thickly inhabited and covered with forts and armed men, and wherever a fort appears, there will soon be towns and settlements. [Shawnee Delegate] DuVal: In May 1776, a delegation of Shawnees, Delawares, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee came to the Cherokee town of Chote. They said, "Enough is enough. "We've had year after year "of illegal settlement coming onto our lands. "Now a war has come "that has divided those settlers from their government. This is the time to strike." Voice: It is better to die like men than to diminish away by inches. The Cherokees have a hatchet. Take it up and use it immediately. [Shawnee Delegate] Narrator: British agents still in Indian country, who had armed the Cherokees to fight the rebels, now urged them to be patient and wait until British troops could join them. Dragging Canoe would not listen to the British or to the elders of his father's generation, who had urged diplomacy. He rallied the young men and went to war. [Flames crackling] They killed and scalped settlers in the Carolina and Virginia backcountry, burned their cabins and crops, and drove off their livestock. Colin Calloway: The result is, as the older chiefs feared it would be, that those American colonies immediately send armies into Cherokee country. Some of the American leaders actually say in as many words, "This is just what we were waiting for. "Now we have justification "for launching a full-scale assault on the Cherokees and to drive them out and take their land." ♪ Voice: Nothing will reduce those wretches so soon as pushing the war into the heart of their country, but I would not stop there. I would never cease pursuing them while one of them remained on this side of the Mississippi. Thomas Jefferson. ♪ DuVal: There are thousands of militiamen in South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia ready to join the Revolution, ready to fight Britain, but the British aren't there. There are no British there to fight. Who's there to fight? The Cherokees. Narrator: Some 6,000 militiamen stormed through Cherokee country. They destroyed 36 towns, including Dragging Canoe's own village. Philip Deloria: This is meant to be instructive to other tribes. "If you think you're gonna keep a British alliance, "guess what we're gonna do? "We're gonna come and burn everything. "We're gonna destroy your fields. "We're gonna destroy your corn. "We're gonna destroy all your stored-up food. "We're gonna wage total war on those people. Let's teach all Native people a lesson about what's coming." ♪ Narrator: In the end, older Cherokee leaders would sue for peace and be forced to cede another 5 million acres. Maggie Blackhawk: The colonists wanted to possess that land exclusively, and it's a vision that is Western, as contrasted to Native people, who had a more spiritual or more engaged relationship to land. Narrator: Unlike his elders, Dragging Canoe would not surrender. With hundreds of men and their families, he managed to escape westward to settle along the Chickamauga Creek in what is now Tennessee, where he remained defiant. "I could not hear their talks of peace," Dragging Canoe said. "My thoughts and my heart are for war." ♪ Imperial powers were advancing all across North America in 1776-- Russia along the Alaska coast, Spain in what became San Francisco Bay, the Lakota in the Black Hills, and the Comanches on the Southern Plains. On August 12th off Staten Island in New York, Britain, the world's greatest naval power, landed 107 more ships. Aboard them were 8,600 hired Hessian troops. Everything about the German soldiers was intended to intimidate-- their tightly fitted uniforms that made the wearers seem bigger than they were, the whiskers many grew when most men were clean-shaven, the helmets worn by their grenadiers and fusiliers that added a foot to their height, and the reputation for ferocity so widespread that some Americans believed them cannibals with a special taste for babies. Baer: I think it is an effective propaganda tool. "They will plunder our homes. They will burn our village. They will rape our women." These kind of portrayals really show up frequently, especially in the spring of '76 before the first Germans even set foot on American soil. [Sea gulls crying] Voice: Peace will not be restored in America until the rebel army is defeated. Should the enemy offer battle in the open field, we must not decline it. General William Howe. Narrator: General William Howe and his brother Richard were in joint command of the largest seaborne assault force Britain had ever assembled-- 24,000 soldiers, including the 8,600 Hessians, and 400 ships manned by some 10,000 sailors and marines. ♪ At dawn on August 22nd, 4,000 British and Hessian troops crossed the narrows and came ashore at Gravesend on the southeastern edge of Long Island, boatloads of assault troops. Voice: The enemy have now landed on Long Island. The hour is fast approaching on which the honor and success of this army and the safety of our bleeding country depend. George Washington. ♪ Narrator: More troops continued to land. Soon, more than 20,000 British, Hessian, and Loyalist soldiers occupied a tent city that sprawled for 8 miles just beyond the beach. General Washington reminded his men of the dismissive things British officers had said of them. Now they would have a chance to prove them wrong, provided they remained cool but determined. Voice: Remember that you are free men fighting for the blessings of liberty, that slavery will be your portion and that of your posterity if you do not acquit yourselves like men. [Washington] ♪ Narrator: Washington knew an attack was coming somewhere, but he worried that the British landing on Long Island was merely a diversion, and so he divided his army. Most would stay in Manhattan, while some 8,000 men, many of them ill-trained militia, were posted on Long Island, where Washington's most trusted general, Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, had strengthened the series of forts and earthworks that ran from Red Hook to Wallabout Bay. Most of the defenses were concentrated near the lofty cliffs closest to Manhattan called Brooklyn Heights after the tiny village of Brooklyn that stood just behind them. Washington and his generals believed that if the British were to seize that high ground, their guns would command the city, much as rebel guns had commanded Boston and its harbor earlier that year, but Nathanael Greene had fallen ill and was soon replaced by Major General Israel Putnam of Connecticut, whose fighting spirit was not matched by strategic sense or knowledge of the terrain. Between the Brooklyn Heights fortifications and the British encampment ran a rugged, forested ridge called the Gowanus Heights. 4 passes cut in or around it-- Gowanus, Flatbush, Bedford, and Jamaica. With Washington's approval, Putnam ordered 3,000 of his men to dig in and hold the ridge and 3 of the passes. Unaccountably, the Jamaica Pass remained virtually unguarded. Washington makes a number of serious tactical mistakes when he's commander of the American military and none more serious than at Long Island. He'd been a surveyor. He should have known the value of completely understanding the ground that you're trying to defend. He doesn't. He doesn't go and explore the ground toward Jamaica, which is the far end of this glacial feature, and doesn't recognize that he can be outflanked by the British. Narrator: The Battle of Long Island began in the early-morning hours of August 27, 1776, and it started with a skirmish over watermelons. ♪ Around midnight, Pennsylvania pickets at the Red Lion Inn on the far right of the American lines had dimly glimpsed two shadowy figures in a melon patch. They were British foragers out in front of a large force of redcoats and hoping for a treat before they were sent against the enemy. [Gunfire] The Pennsylvanians opened fire. A few minutes later, a British musket volley from the woods sent the Americans running back to camp. With the British attack underway, General William Alexander was ordered to organize a force to try and stop it. Alexander and 1,600 men took up positions south of a salt marsh and mill pond next to Gowanus Creek as 5,000 British troops advanced toward them. With no trees or stone walls for cover, American and British forces stood in line, European style, and fired musket volleys and artillery at one another. "Both the balls and shells flew very fast," a Maryland soldier remembered, "now and then taking off a head." ♪ Meanwhile, in the center of the American lines, British cannonfire ripped through the trees above the ridgeline, where several hundred troops under New Hampshire General John Sullivan guarded the Flatbush and Bedford passes. Hessian and Highland regiments advanced toward them with fixed bayonets, retreating several times under furious American fire. Watching from a fort on Cobble Hill, Washington was pleased with the way the fighting was going so far. Both fronts seemed to be holding, but he also sent for reinforcements from Manhattan. [Fife playing] Voice: Our sergeant major informed us that the regiment was ordered to Long Island. It gave me a rather disagreeable feeling, as I was pretty well-assured I should have to sniff a little gunpowder. [Gunfire] The horrors of battle then presented themselves to my mind in all their hideousness. "I must come to it now," thought I. Joseph Plumb Martin. Narrator: Private Joseph Plumb Martin of the Connecticut militia was just 15 years old that summer, 1 of 7 children of a small-town minister so quarrelsome, he could not hold on to a congregation. Martin had wanted to enlist since Lexington and Concord. On July 6, 1776, he remembered, he'd taken "up the pen, "loaded it with the fatal charge [of ink], "[and] wrote my name. [N]ow I was a soldier in name at least, if not in practice." Before the boats carrying Martin and his fellow soldiers could cross the East River to Brooklyn, the tide of battle had begun to turn. The British attacks on the American right and center, which Washington's army seemed to have thwarted, had turned out to be mere demonstrations meant to occupy troops who might otherwise have defended against the main British assault. That would soon begin on the American left. The British had slipped through the undefended Jamaica Pass. 12 hours earlier, leaving their campfires burning to confuse the Patriots, General Henry Clinton had led some 10,000 British and German soldiers north along a dirt road grandly called the King's Highway. They moved in silence, guided by 3 Loyalist volunteers. ♪ Atkinson: This is Clinton's idea. He's persuaded Howe that this is the right way to do it. "Don't attack frontally. "You don't want another Bunker Hill. Go around them," so he leads-- it's a better part of 10,000 men in the dark of night very quietly, as quiet as 10,000 men pulling artillery guns with horses can be. Narrator: The plan worked perfectly. The British column, nearly 2 miles long, made it through the pass and reached the village of Bedford, well behind American lines and just 2 miles from the main fortifications on and around Brooklyn Heights. [2 cannon shots] General Clinton ordered 2 guns fired in quick succession, the signal for British troops besieging the American right and center to move forward simultaneously, trapping John Sullivan's men in between. Sullivan ordered his gunners to turn their field pieces around to fire at the enemy, now rushing at them from behind, but as they struggled to do so, Hessian grenadiers and Highland Scots swarmed up and over the Gowanus Heights, firing and bayoneting as they came. It was a rout. Voice: Blood, carnage, fire. Many, many, we fear, are lost. Such a dreadful din my ears never before heard. Philip Fithian. [Gunfire] Atkinson: Muskets are mostly inaccurate beyond 80 yards and hopeless beyond 120 yards, so a lot of the killing is done with a bayonet, and the bayonet is a nasty way to kill. It's a nasty way to die. This is really eyeball to eyeball, nose to nose. It's very intimate, and that kind of intimacy is horrifying. Narrator: Hundreds of Americans surrendered, including General Sullivan. "Their fear of the Hessian troops was indescribable," the German commander General Heister remembered. Voice: When they caught only a glimpse of us, they surrendered immediately and begged on their knees for their lives. I am surprised that the British troops have achieved so little against these people. [Heister] ♪ Voice: We soon landed at Brooklyn. We now began to meet the wounded men, another sight I was unacquainted with, some with broken arms, some with broken legs, and some with broken heads. [Martin] Narrator: The fighting Joseph Plumb Martin was about to witness would prove the last and bloodiest of the day. [Gunfire and shouting] ♪ 3 British columns were now converging on General Alexander and his men on the American right. He did his best to rally them, but the number of attackers steadily grew. Alexander fell back, and finally, rather than see his command destroyed, he urged his men to retreat to the village of Brooklyn across the tidal marshes that flanked Gowanus Creek. Voice: Such as could swim got across. Those that could not swim sunk. The British were pouring the canister and grapeshot upon the Americans like a shower of hail. Many of them were killed in the pond and more were drowned. [Martin] Narrator: To provide cover for his desperate men and to occupy the British troops firing at them from inside and around an old stone house, Alexander led some 400 soldiers from Maryland into the enemy guns again and again. Fewer than a dozen of them made it safely back to the American lines. Alexander himself was forced to surrender. "The slaughter was horrible," a Hessian chaplain wrote. "I went over the battlefield among the dead, who mostly had been hacked and shot all to pieces." At least 200 Americans had been killed, and perhaps a thousand more were captured. Washington watched this final carnage through his spyglass. By noon, it was all over. The British believed they had won what one general called a "cheap and complete victory." Atkinson: Washington's heartbroken because he recognizes instantly what a catastrophe this has been. The only saving grace is that enough of them pull back to form sort of an inner defense around Brooklyn that gives the British pause. They pull back within those defenses. Now they've got their backs to the East River. Things are about as dire as they could possibly be. Narrator: Washington and the bulk of his battered army, crowded now inside the defenses on Brooklyn Heights, expected that at any moment, the British would mount an all-out assault aimed at destroying them. General William Howe's officers urged him to finish what he had begun, but instead of ordering an assault, Howe stood down. He knew his brother Richard's fleet was about to enter the East River and prevent the rebels from escaping by water. The Americans were astonished. "General Howe is either our friend or no general," Israel Putnam said. "He had our whole army in his power." [Thunder, raining] Meanwhile, a storm blew in and continued off and on for the next 2 days. It kept Admiral Howe's fleet from entering the East River. By the middle of the second day, Washington decided to try to withdraw his army to Manhattan. Washington sends out orders that every boat, every fishing smack, every canoe, everything that floats that can be found be brought very secretly and very quietly to the landing, very close to where Brooklyn Bridge now is on the Brooklyn side. Narrator: To man his mismatched flotilla, he would call on 2 regiments of seasoned mariners and fishermen, Black and White and Native American, from Massachusetts coastal towns. Colonel John Glover of Marblehead led one of the regiments. As darkness fell, Washington ordered his men to begin moving silently down from the Heights to the ferry landing regiment by regiment. Voice: I seized my musket and fell into the ranks. We were strictly enjoined not to speak or even cough. All orders were communicated in whispers. Joseph Plumb Martin. ♪ Atkinson: A providential breeze comes up that allows them to raise sails and get across the East River, and then an even more providential fog rolls in, and it obscures what's happening. ♪ Narrator: All through the night, John Glover and his men from Marblehead sailed or rowed or paddled back and forth undetected, ferrying more than 9,000 men as well as horses, artillery, and baggage wagons to safety in Manhattan. Atkinson: When dawn breaks, the British realize everyone's gone. They see the last of the boats disappearing across the river in the traces of fog. [Cannonfire] And they fire a few shots pointlessly at this retreating gaggle, including Washington in one of the last boats, and the Americans escape to Manhattan Island and get away to fight another day. ♪ Narrator: The Battle of Long Island was the largest battle of the American Revolution. It had been a devastating defeat for George Washington and the Patriot cause, but his army was still alive. ♪ [Birds chirping] Voice: Braintree, Massachusetts-- The best accounts we can collect from New York assure us that our men fought valiantly. We are no ways dispirited here. If our men are all drawn off and we should be attacked, you would find a race of Amazons in America. Abigail Adams. ♪ Narrator: Every army engaged on either side in the Revolution would be accompanied by a moving village of civilians-- men, women, and children. Most of the women were soldiers' wives who cared for the wounded and washed and cooked and mended for the troops. Some sold provisions, including rum. George Washington often resented feeding all the women and children, but he also understood, he said, that he had somehow to provide for them "or lose by Desertion-- perhaps to the Enemy-- some of the oldest and best Soldiers in the Service." Women acted as spies, and a handful disguised themselves and fought as men until they were found out, but most made their contributions to the war effort away from the battlefield. Voice: Preston, Connecticut-- Dear husband, I hope that I shall have the pleasure of your company at home this winter. The anxieties of the mind cannot be accounted for, especially when ties of flesh and blood bind them. My only comfort now is at present in the dear, little pledges of our love--our children. When I see them, I see my dear when so glorious a cause calls him from my arms. My country, o my country. Your affectionate wife till death, Lois. ♪ Narrator: With sons and husbands and fathers away, some women turned their homes into boarding houses to pay the bills. On farms, women already caring for children and households now slaughtered hogs, cut and stacked firewood, harvested wheat, and brought it to market. Voice: The men say we have no business with political matters, it is not in our sphere, but I won't have it thought that we are capable of nothing more than minding the dairy, visiting the poultry house, and all such domestic concerns. Our thoughts can soar aloft. We can form conceptions of things of higher nature. Eliza Wilkinson. ♪ Voice: Can you be surprised that the Negroes should endeavor to recover their freedom when they daily hear at the tables of their masters how much the Americans are applauded for the stand they are making for theirs? [John Purrier] [Rhiannon Giddens singing "Dean Cadalan Samhach"] ♪ Jane Kamensky: The liberty talk that proliferates through British America originates in coffee houses and across dining tables. It surfaces in letters and in pamphlets. Those pamphlets are excerpted in newspapers and travel up and down the coast. Even letters, like newspapers, are read aloud, so we know that the language of liberty is contagious and is leaky, leaky in that there are planter-class people in Jamaica saying, "You know, this stuff is kind of hot, "so watch it when you're talking "because you know all those Black and Brown people "who are standing, serving around the edges of your room, they have ears." [Giddens continues singing "Dean Cadalan Samhach"] Voice: The signal was to be given first by discharging a gun at Batchelors Hall Plantation. They were then to rise in general rebellion and attack the several estates, and put to death all the White people they could. Sam. ♪ Narrator: That same summer of 1776 in Northwestern Jamaica, enslaved men, women, and children living on 47 different plantations secretly conspired to overthrow their enslavers, hoping their rebellion would spread across the whole island and unite the people of African descent living there, including Igbos, Creoles, and Coromantees. The planned revolt was an unintended consequence of the American Revolution. The American ban on trade with the British had denied enslaved Jamaicans the food they needed to survive. Then London ordered almost half the soldiers who policed the island to sail northward to strengthen General Howe's forces in New York. Their departure was supposed to be the signal for enslaved people to rise up, but before the plot could get underway, a child was discovered emptying his overseer's pistol and was made to reveal what he knew of the conspiracy. The Royal governor declared martial law. The revolt was crushed. 135 people were put on trial. 17 were executed. 11 were beaten, and 45 were torn from their families and deported to other islands... [Giddens singing "Angola"] Narrator: but that summer and fall, there were other sporadic uprisings or rumors of uprisings among enslaved workers on other British islands-- Saint Kitts, Montserrat, Antigua, Barbados-- all of them striking fear in American slaveholders. Vincent Brown: Slave rebellions were usually unsuccessful, so you wonder, why would you fight? Slavery was so incredibly horrifying. It was a regime of terror, right, that was very, very difficult to withstand. People can abuse, rape, torture, murder enslaved persons without consequences, so if you just imagine that situation and that kind of desperation, it becomes clearer why, when given an opportunity, you would fight against that. ♪ [Birds chirping] Narrator: On September 11, 1776, 3 delegates of the Continental Congress-- John Adams of Massachusetts, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania-- made their way to a Loyalist's house on Staten Island for a meeting with Admiral Howe, who was hoping to persuade the Congress to negotiate a peace. ♪ Howe did what he could to reassure the delegates that all could still be forgiven if only the Americans would abandon independence. "If America should fall," he told the delegates, "[I] should feel and lament it like the loss of a brother." "[W]e will do our utmost," Franklin answered, "to save Your Lordship that mortification." "They met. They talked. They parted," Admiral Howe's secretary said, "and now nothing remains but to fight it out." There was no going back. Howe apologized to his visitors for wasting their time. Christopher Brown: The British government throughout the first few years of the war really thought that a show of force would bring the majority of Americans to their senses and that the instigators, the provocateurs, the ones who were responsible for the uprising would be captured, killed, or their neighbors would just say, "Enough. We don't actually want to go to war with our own nation." ♪ Voice: On our side, the war should be defensive. We should on all occasions avoid a general action or put anything to the risk unless compelled by a necessity into which we ought never to be drawn. George Washington. Narrator: Back in New York City, Washington again expected another British attack and again didn't know where or when it was likely to come, so again he divided what was left of his forces. Leaving behind General Putnam and some 3,500 men to hold the city itself, General Washington led most of his troops north toward the tiny village of Harlem. Militiamen were posted along the East River opposite Long Island. Joseph Plumb Martin found himself with 500 Connecticut troops at Kips Bay. At the same time, 5 British frigates sailed up the river and anchored on the opposite shore. At 11:00 in the morning on September 15th, they opened fire. [Cannonfire] Voice: I thought my head would go with the sound. I made a frog's leap for the ditch and lay as still as I possibly could and began to consider which part of my carcass was to go first. We kept the lines till they were almost leveled upon us, when our officers gave the order to leave. [Martin] Narrator: As Martin and his comrades ran, 4,000 enemy troops began coming ashore at Kips Bay, among them Hessians who bayoneted several wounded Americans and mutilated the dead. Voice: Our people were all militia, and the demons of fear and disorder seemed to take full possession of all and everything that day. [Martin] [Gunfire] Narrator: Then General Washington seemed to appear out of nowhere, ordering his stampeding men to form a defensive line. "Take the walls," he bellowed. "Take the cornfield." They kept running. "Are these the men with which I am to defend America?" Washington was known for being aloof, terse, stoical, but, "Those who have seen him strongly moved," a friend remembered, could "bear witness that his wrath was terrible." He seemed stunned and urged his horse forward toward the oncoming Hessians. An aide snatched his horse's bridle and led his commander out of harm's way. Colonel John Glover and his regiment from Marblehead, Massachusetts, which had just made Washington's escape from Long Island possible, rushed up and were able to slow the British advance... [Gunfire] but many Patriots did not stop running until they reached the safety of strongly fortified American positions on the plateau known as Harlem Heights. The British were slow to follow the fleeing rebels. General Howe wanted to wait until thousands more troops were ashore on Manhattan Island. The delay gave General Putnam time to lead his men north out of New York City to join Washington in Harlem. The British entered the abandoned city in triumph. Voice: The King's forces took possession of the place, incredible as it may seem, without the loss of a man. A woman pulled down the rebel standard upon the fort and, after trampling it underfoot with the most contemptuous indignation, hoisted up in its stead His Majesty's flag. Ambrose Searle, Secretary to Admiral Howe. Jasanoff: New York City becomes the great British stronghold of the American Revolution. Once the Continental Army is driven out, the Patriots don't want to stick around, and they tend to go, too. Meanwhile, the Loyalists come into the city. People stream in from the countryside to take shelter, and the city becomes this kind of garrison town. Narrator: Hundreds of Loyalists would formally reaffirm their allegiance to George III by signing a document they called their Declaration of Dependence. Over the coming weeks, more Loyalists poured into the city, now eager to take up arms in the King's cause. [Fifes and drums playing] Voice: It is the cause of truth against falsehood, of loyalty against rebellion, of legal government against usurpation. In short, it is the cause of human happiness. Charles Inglis. Narrator: Over the course of the war, as many as 50,000 Americans volunteered to serve in Loyalist militia companies or in provincial units attached to the British Army-- the King's American Regiment, the Queen's American Rangers, the Prince of Wales' American Volunteers, the Royal Highland Emigrants, and the British Legion. Everyone knew someone who fought for the other side. Even Benjamin Franklin's son William, the deposed Royal Governor of New Jersey, remained faithful to his king and was imprisoned for it. [Distant cannonfire] Voice: Had I been left to the dictates of my own judgment, New York should have been lain in ashes. To this end, I applied to Congress but was absolutely forbid. Providence--or some good, honest fellow-- has done more for us than we were disposed to do for ourselves. George Washington. [Flames crackling] Voice: September 21, 1776. We are a good deal alarmed at a fire that must have spread amazingly, for though we are 6 1/2 miles from the town, we could see a pin on the ground by the light of the blaze. Loftus Cliffe. Narrator: New York City was on fire. The next morning, Irish-born Lieutenant Loftus Cliffe, who had already survived 3 battles, went for a walk through the still-smoldering streets. Voice: I cannot paint the misery of a very pretty town near as large as Cork now reduced. Two churches, the governor's house, and several other fine buildings are in ruins, being set afire in different places at once in the dead of last night. Their design was to destroy the town. O Washington, what have you to answer for? [Cliffe] Narrator: The origins of the fire remained a mystery, but General Howe was convinced it had been set by rebels, and the next day when soldiers brought before him an American spy captured behind British lines, he showed no mercy. Howe ordered Captain Nathan Hale, a member of an elite espionage unit organized by George Washington, to be hanged the following morning. As he went to the gallows, a British officer remembered, Hale "behaved with great composure and resolution." Above his body, British soldiers hung a sign labeled, "George Washington," the man they all blamed for setting fire to New York City. ♪ Alan Taylor: A lot is riding on George Washington's performance not only in the battlefield, but in his relationship with Congress and his relationship with the states, his relationship with his soldiers. George Washington understands that his role is not just military. It's also political. He has to project dignity. He has to project authority. He has to also do this while projecting deference to Congress. He cannot become a dictator. ♪ Voice: We have been sent into life at a time when the greatest lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to have lived, when, before the present epocha, had 3 millions of people full power and a fair opportunity to form and establish the wisest and happiest government that human wisdom can contrive. [Gavel bangs] John Adams. ♪ Narrator: As Washington and Howe faced off against one another in New York, in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress had been laboring to adopt Articles of Confederation, meant to formally bind all 13 states together while also guaranteeing the independence of each, a first tentative step toward a permanent government for the new United States. ♪ Taylor: When we think about our American Revolution, we, of course, think about independence from Britain, and that's a big deal, but we also need to think about this is the formation of republican government, and it's also the formation of our union of our states, and all 3 of those were enormous gambles. They were unprecedented. There had never been the foundation of a republic out of a revolution... [Gavel bangs] and these 13 colonies had had bitter rivalries with one another, and so forming a union out of these states was gonna be as difficult as achieving independence from Britain. [Gavel banging rapidly] Narrator: Congress debated draft articles for weeks on the first floor of the Pennsylvania State House, where they had just declared independence in July. They were held up over a host of issues, including apportionment, boundary disputes, taxation, and autonomy of the individual states. Congress was a disputatious assembly and not necessarily an efficient assembly through these years. Yes, they are running a war. Yes, they are founding a nation, but there's also a tremendous amount of infighting. There's a tremendous amount of inertia. There are more committees than anyone could count, and there were secret committees. For example, the first person sent to France to solicit aid from the French for the Revolution is sent without the knowledge of the rest of Congress. As John Jay will later say to George Washington, "There is as much intrigue in Congress "as there is at the Vatican, and as little secrecy as there is in a boarding school." ♪ Narrator: Meanwhile, upstairs in the same building, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania held a convention of its own to establish its government. Similar meetings were being held in other states. All of the new constitutions would guarantee freedom of the press, fair trials, and due process under law and made sure power rested not with autocratic governors, but with legislators elected by propertied men. Pennsylvania took things a step further. They created the most egalitarian constitution in the new United States with a Bill of Rights and a one-house legislature elected by taxpaying workingmen as well as property owners, all of which worried many of the delegates downstairs. William Hogeland: Pennsylvania had a radical constitution where almost any White, free man could vote and stand for office, which had never happened before pretty much anywhere. People were committed to using the revolution to make it a real social revolution, a real economic revolution, and get free, working people-- men, White men-- a say in government, which was a radical idea at the time. John Adams wasn't for that. Samuel Adams wasn't for that. Richard Henry Lee wasn't for that. When John Adams read that constitution, his response was, quote, "Good God!" ♪ Voice: In the new code of laws, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation. Abigail Adams. Voice: There will be no end of it. New claims will arise. Women will demand a vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to, and every man who has not a farthing will demand an equal voice with any other in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions and prostrate all ranks to one common level. John Adams. Hogeland: It's a misconception to think of the founders as being pro-democracy, but I think it's also a misconception to think that their failure to be democratic is some sort of flaw or error or something they just kind of missed. They were very adamantly opposed to democracy. Democracy came to America, with all of the problems that came with it, not as a direct purpose of the American Revolution, really, but as an unintended consequence. Narrator: By the time Pennsylvania had ratified its constitution, the debates over the Articles of Confederation downstairs in Congress had become so heated, the prospect of compromise seemed so remote that the delegates agreed to table the subject. Frustrated and worried about his sick wife, Thomas Jefferson returned home to Virginia, the place he still called "my country." [Birds chirping] ♪ Voice: Camp near Kingsbridge-- Amidst all the distress and ruins of this dreadful war, I am yet alive and yours. Our enemies pursue us close from place to place. I pray God daily that you, my dear wife, forever may you be happy. Philip. Narrator: Days after writing to his wife, Chaplain Fithian fell victim to dysentery, the disease that had killed so many of the men whose last moments he'd filled with prayer. He was carried to a hospital tent. There was nothing anyone could do. ♪ Voice: October 8th-- This morning about 10:00, Mr. Fithian closed his eyes upon the things of time and is gone to a spiritual world. Andrew Hunter. ♪ [Bells tolling] Narrator: News of the American defeat on Long Island at the end of August did not reach London till October 10th. It was greeted with what one courtier called "an extravagance of joy." The King promised General Howe a knighthood. Now that the Americans had seen how futile it was to defy British regulars, they would surely come to their senses and sue for peace. Not all Englishmen shared that view. ♪ Voice: London. To the printer of the "Public Advertiser"-- Sir, I find that the late action at Long Island has made a considerable impression upon the Public; the Friends of Ministry thinking everything gained, the Friends of America everything lost. Because the last action was in our favor, we think we are to succeed in the next, but liberty takes a great deal of killing, and the courage of freemen is the same thing on both sides of the Atlantic. The Americans are daily improving in Arms and in Hatred. We see only the Beginning of Sorrows;-- Benefit to neither-- Misery to both. [The Public Advertiser] Voice: Ticonderoga appears to be the last part of the world that God made, and I have some ground to believe it was finished in the dark, that it was never intended that man should live in it is clear, for the people who have attempted to make any stay have, for the most part, perished by pestilence or the sword. General Anthony Wayne. Narrator: By the fall of 1776, only half of the 11,000 Americans who manned Ticonderoga and Crown Point on Lake Champlain were fit for duty. The smallpox threat was lifting, but thousands still suffered from other diseases. Morale was further weakened by antagonism among men from the supposedly United States. New Englanders brawled with Pennsylvanians so often that they had been sent to the opposite shore to set up a separate fortification on a hilltop called Mount Independence. After the American retreat from Quebec City in early 1776, a British drive down the Hudson seemed inevitable. Before British General Guy Carleton's army could even reach the Hudson, he had to sail south and seize the two American forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, and before he could do that, he had to put together a fleet at the lake's northern end. That had taken months. Calloway: This water route is a corridor. It's been called the Warpath of Nations, where Indian warriors from Canada had raided down the Champlain Valley, down the Hudson River, and so this was-- this was like an open door. Narrator: The Americans had just 4 ships with which to oppose the British fleet. Many more were needed. Ticonderoga's commander, a former British major named Horatio Gates, appointed his most enterprising officer to get the job done. Benedict Arnold was still limping from the wound he'd received at Quebec and was still angry at having been accused of stealing supplies during the retreat from Montreal. Gates had dismissed Arnold's detractors. "Men of little merit are ever jealous of those who have a great deal." Voice: The enemy will soon have a considerable naval force. I make no doubt of their soon paying us a visit. I beg that at least 100 good seamen may be sent to me as soon as possible. Benedict Arnold. Narrator: Arnold transformed the tiny settlement of Skenesborough, 20 miles below Ticonderoga, into a bustling shipyard. He had hoped for a fleet of at least 30 vessels but had to settle for just 15. Voice: I intend to come up as high as Isle Valcour, where is a good harbor and where we shall have the advantage of attacking the enemy in the open lake. [Arnold] Narrator: When the British flotilla finally started south on Lake Champlain, Carleton commanded nearly twice as many vessels as Arnold did, armed with more than twice as many guns, manned by 700 seasoned crewmen, and carrying 10,000 British and German troops and 400 Native allies. Arnold and his fleet were waiting for them in a cove hidden behind Valcour Island. [Cannonfire] As Carleton's fleet slid past, 4 American ships moved out onto the lake to engage the British, Arnold personally directing the guns of his flagship-- the "Congress." [Gunfire] By evening, the fleets had fought to a standoff. The Americans had lost 2 vessels but succeeded in blowing up a British gunboat. As darkness fell, Carleton ordered his fleet to keep the Americans trapped so that he could destroy them the following day... ♪ but at 7:00, while fog covered the lake and Carleton and his officers were dining below deck, Arnold formed his battered ships into a single line and then ordered them with muffled oars and in complete silence to glide slowly past the British squadron. ♪ When Carleton finally caught up with them, they began a running battle that went on for 2 days. British firepower took a steady toll. Arnold eventually ordered his flagship and 4 other vessels run aground in Button Mould Bay and set on fire. He and his men escaped into the forest. When they reached Crown Point, Arnold realized the fortifications there could not withstand a serious British attack and ordered them burned to the ground. [Flames crackling] "At 4:00 [in the] morning, I reached [Ticonderoga]," Arnold recalled, "exceedingly fatigued and unwell, having been without sleep or refreshment for near 3 days." Voice: It has pleased Providence to preserve General Arnold. Few men ever met with so many hairbreadth escapes in so short a space of time. Horatio Gates. Philbrick: The battle was not a victory for the Americans, but it is one of the great slugfests of naval warfare, and it happens on a lake. It convinced the British that it was gonna be much more difficult to take Ticonderoga than they thought. Narrator: The American force at Ticonderoga had grown to 15,000, and its fortifications had been strengthened. Carleton now believed a long siege would be needed to take it. Then it began to snow. Once the lake froze, provisioning his forces would be difficult, and a retreat would be impossible. Carleton turned around and withdrew, eventually going into winter quarters at Quebec City far to the north. The British began to plan a second, more significant invasion for the next spring. [Digging] [Man grunts] Voice: The rebels have taken positions upon amazing, strong hills and works they have all the way to Kingsbridge. Their soldiers would rather work than fight. Ours would rather fight than work, but General Howe was determined to not run our heads against their works. Loftus Cliffe. Narrator: For the better part of a month, Washington's and Howe's armies warily faced one another at Harlem Heights, "as quiet," an American lieutenant recalled, "as if they were a thousand miles apart." With little to do, soldiers on both sides went into the surrounding countryside, where they plundered homes, terrified civilians, and then burned their houses to cover up their crimes. Baer: Plunder is more or less an accepted part of warfare in the 18th century. The British, the Hessian, and the American generals all worry about that. Washington worries about that. His men plunder, and he's like, "Can you stop? Please don't do this. You're alienating the people." Narrator: "Militiamen," Washington complained to Congress, "were undisciplined, disobedient, "liable to run instead of fight, 'hurtful' to the cause." To make matters worse, the 12-month enlistments in the Continental Army, begun in Boston the previous winter, would soon be running out. At the end of the year, Washington would again have to raise and train a whole new army. He understood that appeals to patriotism alone would no longer work. [Shouting] Voice: When men are irritated and the passions inflamed, they fly hastily and cheerfully to arms, but after the first emotions are over, to expect that they are influenced by any other principle than those of interest is to look for what never did and, I fear, never will happen. [Washington] Narrator: Congress agreed to authorize 88 new battalions. The number each state was to provide depended on their free populations. The states would never come close to meeting those goals. Voice: The policy of Congress has been the most absurd and ridiculous imaginable, pouring in militiamen who come and go every month. People coming from home with all the tender feelings of domestic life are not sufficiently fortified with natural courage to stand the shocking scenes of war, to march over dead men, to hear without concern the groanings of the wounded. I say few men can stand such scenes unless steeled by habit or fortified by military pride. Nathanael Greene. ♪ Narrator: On October 11th, 150 vessels threaded their way up the East River and into Long Island Sound with 4,000 British and Hessian troops. Their objective was to get behind Washington's forces in Northern Manhattan. To avoid that, Washington began a full-scale retreat, following the west bank of the Bronx River for 18 miles north toward the seat of Westchester County-- White Plains. [Cannonfire] By the time the British forces got there on October 28th, the American line stretched for 3 miles through the village, anchored on the right by the lightly defended Chatterton Hill. [Gunfire] General Howe sent 2 columns up the slope. Patriot militiamen predictably scattered, but the Continentals held. As the British approached, a Connecticut colonel told his men, "Fire at their legs. "One man wounded is better than a dead one, "for it takes two more to carry him off, and there is 3 gone," but British artillery took a fearful toll. Voice: A cannonball cut down Lieutenant Young's Platoon, which was next to that of mine. The ball first took the head of Smith--a stout, heavy man-- and dashed it open. Then it took off Chilson's arm. It then took Taylor across the bowels. What a sight that was to see. There was men with their legs and arms and guns and packs all in a heap. Private Elijah Bostwick. Narrator: At day's end, Washington retreated east of White Plains. Again General Howe made only a halfhearted effort to follow. Baer: The British essentially let Washington escape once again. Opportunities to just end this war right now are being wasted. Voice: Is it through incapacity or by design of our commander that so many great opportunities are let slip? I am inclined to adopt the latter. Captain William Bamford. ♪ Conway: There are moments when General Howe in particular seems to hold back from delivering the final knockout blow. There's that feeling, the very torn and conflicted feeling, about whether the Americans are truly enemies or misguided subjects who need to be encouraged to come back into the fold. [Horse neighs] Narrator: As Howe headed back towards Manhattan, Washington crossed the Hudson and headed south. He thought it most likely that Howe planned to race across New Jersey and capture Philadelphia before winter set in. He had again misjudged his adversary. Howe actually wanted to take 2 forts on opposite sides of the Hudson that blocked British ships from going upriver-- Fort Lee in New Jersey and Fort Washington on Manhattan Island, a crude, star-shaped earthwork 265 feet above the river. Fort Washington would come first. [Cannonfire] British guns pounded the fort and the long line of trenches and redoubts that surrounded it. The British troops who attacked from the south and east had comparatively little trouble driving the defenders back behind the fort's walls, but Hessian troops under the command of General Wilhelm von Knyphausen coming at them from the north had a much tougher task, climbing a rocky hillside covered by the tangled branches of felled trees and so steep that they had to grab at bushes to pull themselves up, all under steady fire from above. Voice: Before us, beside, and upon one another, we saw our unfortunate comrades shattered, dead on the Earth in their own blood. Even the air seemed filled with fear. Lieutenant Johann Friedrich von Bardeleben. Narrator: Margaret Corbin, a Pennsylvania artilleryman's wife, was standing near her husband when he was mortally wounded. She stepped in and kept up such deadly fire that her position became a target for Hessian guns. Grapeshot eventually hit her jaw and breast and rendered her left arm useless. 3 years later, she would become the first woman to receive a lifetime disability pension but at half the rate wounded men received. American muskets eventually clogged from overuse. The defenders fell back and were forced to surrender, nearly 3,000 men. The British renamed Fort Washington Fort Knyphausen after the victorious German general. As the battered captives made their 12-mile march south to New York City, British soldiers and Loyalists lined the road, jeering and cursing. Officers were often paroled after pledging not to take up arms again, but enlisted men were given no such option. Instead, they were prodded into makeshift prisons already overcrowded with hundreds of prisoners taken at Quebec, Long Island, and Kips Bay. ♪ There were no blankets, little firewood, and sometimes no food. Rats scuttled over the muddy straw that covered the floors. Voice: The men's appearance in general resembled dead corpses more than living men. Indeed, great numbers had already arrived at their long home, and the remainder appeared far advanced on the same journey. Captain Jabez Fitch. Narrator: Thousands of American prisoners would die by the end of 1776. By then, the British had begun packing the prisoners into disused transport ships anchored in the East River. Conditions there would prove worse than those on land. Atkinson: They die of exposure. They die of malnutrition. They die of disease-- smallpox, typhus, typhoid, dysentery. We have our own prison ships near Albany, where British soldiers and Loyalists are kept in very awful conditions. It's a deplorable part of the story of the American Revolution. ♪ Narrator: Early on November 20, 1776, some 5,000 British and Hessian troops crossed the Hudson and began struggling up the slippery, 440-foot rock face of the New Jersey Palisades, so steep the Patriots had not believed anyone could climb it. The British commander was General Charles Cornwallis, who then ordered his men to start marching south toward Fort Lee, 6 miles away. General Nathanael Greene had already begun to evacuate it when the enemy took Fort Washington. Now he ordered everyone remaining to leave immediately. ♪ Voice: The rebels fled like scared rabbits. Not a rascal of them could be seen. They have left some poor pork, a few greasy proclamations, and some of that scoundrel "Common Sense" man's letters, which we can read at our leisure. [British officer] ♪ Narrator: By evening, Greene and most of his 2,000 men managed to link up with Washington's force at New Bridge on the Hackensack River. Voice: They marched 2 abreast, looked ragged, some without a shoe to their feet and most of them wrapped in their blankets. The next evening, the British encamped on the other side of the Hackensack. We could see their fires about 100 yards apart gleaming brilliantly in the gloom of the night, extending for more than a mile along the river. Reverend Theodore Roneyn. Narrator: As his army retreated across the state, followed by Cornwallis with a far larger force, Washington hoped somehow, somewhere to offer battle, but Cornwallis had orders from General Howe to avoid confrontation. From Howe's vantage point, there was no need for another major battle. The rebel army was shrinking daily. What one officer called "the devil of desertion" had infected Washington's ranks. Men were simply drifting away into the countryside. When Washington called upon the states for 5,000 more troops, he was met mostly by silence. His aide-de-camp Joseph Reed expressed the General's continued frustrations. Voice: When I look round and see how few of the numbers who talked so largely of death and honor are around me, I am lost in wonder. Your noisy Sons of Liberty are, I find, the quietest in the field. [Joseph Reed] ♪ Narrator: To compound things, Washington's second in command-- General Charles Lee, who had been stationed in Westchester County with a sizable force-- responded to Washington's repeated requests to hurry to his aid with one excuse after another. Lee was scornful of Washington, hoped someday to replace him as commander in chief, and saw himself as not subject to Washington's orders. On November 30th, the British issued a proclamation aimed at restoring their rule in New Jersey. Anyone willing to swear "peaceable obedience to His Majesty" within 60 days would receive "a free and General Pardon." More than 3,000 New Jersey residents took them up on the offer, and hundreds answered the call for Loyalists to fight alongside the British regulars. New Jersey's Patriot government fled, but while General Howe was offering pardons, his soldiers were demanding provisions from civilians. [Pounding on door] Edward Lengel: The people who were really at the sharp end of the sword were the civilians, and if you think from the point of view of somebody, say, a mother of a family-- who's on her farm, you know that the very little that you have to survive can be destroyed in an instant. [Glass shattering] Voice: Tories lead the relentless foreigners to the houses of their neighbors and strip poor women and children of everything they have to eat or wear, and after plundering them in this sort, the brutes often ravish the mothers and daughters and compel the fathers and sons to behold their brutality. Nathanael Greene. Conway: As an army is advancing and occupying new territories, dreadful things happen. We see lots of instances of rape and sexual assault of women. Sadly, this is not unusual in all wars. Narrator: Mary Campbell of Hunterdon County, New Jersey, told a judge what British troops had done to her. Voice: Mary Campbell, wife of Daniel Campbell, sayeth that sometime in December, a number of soldiers belonging to the King of Great Britain's army came to the house of her father. Two of them seized hold of her arms and dragged her out of the house to an old shop near the dwelling house, broke open the door, and pulled her in against all her cries and entreaties and swore if she did not hold her tongue, they would run her through with a bayonet. 3 of said soldiers successively had knowledge of the body of this deponent, she being 5 months and upwards advanced in her pregnancy at that time. Her mark, Mary M. Campbell. ♪ Narrator: At Pennington, 16 women fled into the woods to escape British soldiers, only to be dragged back and repeatedly assaulted. Such behavior, one British officer admitted, was "calculated to lose you friends and gain you enemies." It did, and people soon began taking revenge. New Jersey militiamen took up arms again less out of devotion to the revolutionary cause than out of anger at what was being done to them and their families. [Gunshot] Voice: It is now very unsafe for us to travel in New Jersey. The peasants meet our men alone or in small unarmed groups. They have their rifles hidden in the bushes or ditches and the like. When they see one or several men belonging to our army, they shoot them in the head, then quickly hide their rifles and pretend they know nothing. Captain Friedrich von Munchhausen. ♪ ♪ Voice: No lads ever show greater activity in retreating than we have. Our soldiers are the best fellows in the world at this business. Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Webb. Narrator: Hackensack, Acquackanonk, Newark, Spanktown, New Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton. In 12 days, the Americans fell back some 70 miles. On December 2nd, Washington began to take his army across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. The news continued to be bad for the Patriot cause. General Henry Clinton landed 7,000 British and Hessian regulars at Newport, Rhode Island, without firing a shot. Like New York City and New Jersey, Rhode Island seemed likely lost. British forces were now just 60 miles from Philadelphia, and the roads leading out of the city were choked with frightened refugees. Congress denied what it called the "false and malicious" rumors that it was planning to leave town and then fled to Baltimore. General Charles Lee had finally given in to Washington's entreaties and had been slowly leading his force across New Jersey. On the evening of December 12th, he slipped away from his encampment to an isolated tavern in Basking Ridge. A Loyalist tipped off the British. Dragoons surrounded the building and seized the Continental Army's second in command. One Hessian captain was exultant-- "We have captured... the only rebel general whom we had cause to fear"-- but then General Howe abruptly called off his campaign. Winter was coming. The Continental Congress was on the run. There would be plenty of time the following year, he was certain, to destroy what was left of Washington's army and permanently end the rebellion. ♪ While Howe and most of his army withdrew to New York, he left behind a chain of 17 garrisons stretching from the Hudson to the Delaware. Atkinson: Things can hardly look darker than they look for Washington and his army and the hopes of the cause in December of 1776. As he gets into Pennsylvania and he's looking back across the Delaware River, his options are very, very limited. He's been evicted from New York. His army is down to maybe 3,000 men. He writes his brother at one point and says, "I think the game is pretty near up." He doesn't let his men know that he's feeling that despondent, but he's feeling pretty glum. ♪ Narrator: But now his army had begun to grow again. General William Alexander, who had been freed from British captivity, arrived with a thousand ragged reinforcements. A thousand Philadelphia militia appeared. General John Sullivan, also exchanged, brought in 2,000 more men who had served under the captured General Lee. On December 22nd, the 16-year-old fifer John Greenwood and some 600 other New Englanders also staggered into camp. Washington's appeals for help had reached all the way to Ticonderoga, and these men had been on their way for nearly a month. Washington now had about 6,000 men fit for duty. The question was what he might do with them in the 10 days remaining before their enlistments ran out and most of his best-trained soldiers went home. Voice: Our cause is desperate and hopeless if we do not take the opportunity of the collection of troops at present to strike some stroke. Delay with us is now equal to total defeat. Joseph Reed. Narrator: Washington decided to strike the garrison at Trenton, New Jersey, manned by some 1,500 Hessians under the command of Colonel Johann Rall. Most of the little town's inhabitants had fled, and their homes had been turned into barracks. Washington outlined a bold and ambitious plan of attack that called for 3 simultaneous crossings of the ice-choked Delaware, all to be launched on Christmas night. [Drums beating rhythmically] 1,800 Pennsylvanians and Rhode Islanders were to cross downriver near Bristol and march toward a second Hessian outpost at Burlington. 800 Pennsylvania militia were to cross and hold the bridge over Assunpink Creek and keep the Hessians from escaping once the battle began. In the main attack, Washington himself would lead 2,400 Continentals across the river at McConkey's Ferry and then begin the 9-mile march south toward their target. Voice: None knew but the first officers where we were a-going. I never heard a soldier say anything nor ever saw him trouble himself about where they led him or where he was. It was enough to know that he must go wherever the officer commanded him. Through fire and water, it was all the same, for it was impossible to be in a worse condition than what they were in. John Greenwood. ♪ Narrator: Thomas Paine, who had been with Washington's army as it retreated across New Jersey, had just published a new essay meant to restore sagging morale called "The American Crisis." By the time Washington's army got underway on Christmas, patriots up and down the river had read and been inspired by it. Voice: These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. [Paine] Narrator: A freezing rain began to fall at dusk as the Americans clambered into the ferry boats and cargo vessels that made up Washington's hastily assembled fleet. ♪ The river was fast-running and filled with swirling, jagged pieces of floe ice. Somehow, Colonel John Glover and his Massachusetts sailors from Marblehead, the same men who had rescued Washington's army after the Battle of Long Island and stopped the British advance following Kips Bay, now managed to get all 2,400 men, some 50 horses, and 18 field pieces across safely. John Greenwood was among the first to step ashore. Voice: We had to wait for the rest to cross, so we began to pull down the fences and make fires to warm ourselves, for the storm came on so fast that it rained, hailed, and snowed and froze and blew a hurricane, so much so, when I turned my face toward the fire, my back was a-freezing. By turning round and round, I kept myself from perishing. [Greenwood] Narrator: Washington hoped that the landing would be completed by midnight so that his men could reach Trenton before dawn, but the last boat did not scrape ashore till 3:00 in the morning. And though Washington did not know it yet, ice had prevented the two other forces from getting across the river. If Trenton were to be taken, it would be up to Washington's force alone. As he and his men finally started toward the town, the driving snow, fierce cold, and hardship of hauling 18 guns along a frozen, rutted road slowed the advance. Voice: When we halted in the road, I sat down on a stump of a tree and was so benumbed with cold, I wanted to go to sleep. And if I had, unnoticed, I should have been frozen to death without knowing it, but, as good luck always attended me, Sergeant Madden came to me and aroused me up and made me walk about. [Greenwood] Narrator: Two other soldiers did fall asleep and froze to death. At a crossroads, the column split in two. Washington went with Nathanael Greene and turned left for the Pennington Road. John Sullivan and his men, including John Greenwood, continued to the right along the River Road. Each column reached its assigned position outside the still-dozing town just before 8:00. [Men shouting] Nathanael Greene's men began the attack, charging out of the snow-filled woods. "The storm continued with great violence," one officer recalled, "but was in our backs and consequently in the faces of the enemy." [Gunfire] Hessian pickets spotted them through the snow, opened fire, then fell back as remaining townspeople watched in terror. Voice: In the gray dawn came the beating of drums and the sound of firing. The Hessian soldiers quartered in our house hastily decamped. All was uproar and confusion. Martha Reed. ♪ Narrator: The German soldiers formed up as best they could, prepared to fight, but Henry Knox had positioned cannon and howitzers at the upper end of King and Queen Streets that ran through the heart of the town, and when the German commander Johann Rall mounted his horse and ordered his men to charge into them, Knox remembered, "these [guns], in the twinkling of an eye, cleared the streets." Some Hessians scattered. Brief, fierce firefights followed. Voice: My mother and we children hid in the cellar to escape the shots that fell about the house. Our next-door neighbor was killed on his doorstep, and a bullet struck the blacksmith as he was in the act of closing himself in his cellar, and many other townspeople were injured by chance shots. [Martha Reed] [Gunshot] Narrator: As Nathanael Greene's column drove through town from the north, John Sullivan's column moved in from the south. Voice: They made a full fire right at us, but I did not see that they killed anyone. Orders were given to charge bayonets and rush on. As we came within pistol shot, they fired again point blank at us. We dodged, and they did not hit a man. Before they had time to load again, we were within 3 feet of them. They broke in an instant and ran like so many frightened devils. [Greenwood] Narrator: Colonel Rall was shot from his horse, mortally wounded. Voice: Finally, they were driven through the town into an orchard beyond. The poor fellows saw themselves completely surrounded. Henry Knox. ♪ Narrator: It was all over in less than 45 minutes. ♪ 22 Hessians lay dead or dying in the snow. 83 more were wounded. 900 were captured. Just 2 Americans had died-- those frozen before the battle began, and only 5 were wounded, including an artilleryman from Virginia named James Monroe, whose life was saved when a local doctor managed to stop the bleeding. ♪ As the Hessian prisoners were marched to Philadelphia, Washington issued a broadside declaring that since they were not volunteers, but forced into this war, they should be seen not as enemies, but as innocent people. ♪ Baer: The Americans decided very early on to treat German prisoners well. That is a strategic decision, portraying these soldiers as the innocent victims of the contract of two despots. They are being sent, sold by their rulers for money to fight in the war that does not concern them. In other words, they are victims of tyranny, kind of like we are. Narrator: Perhaps 1/4 of the 23,000 Hessian soldiers who survived the war would choose to stay on afterwards and become citizens of the new nation they'd fought against creating, and many of those who returned home would come back again, this time with their families. ♪ Voice: The small scale of our maps deceived us. As the word "America" takes up no more room than the word "Yorkshire," we seem to think the territories they represent are much of the same bigness, though Charleston is as far from Boston as London from Venice. We have undertaken a war against farmers and farmhouses scattered through a wild waste of continent. [British commentator] [Bells ringing] Voice: Philadelphia-- This affair has given new life and spirits to the cause and has lowered the crests of the Tories in this place, who looked upon the matter as settled and were hourly expecting the King's troops to arrive without molestation. Things begin to wear a better aspect. General Washington's army has now become respectable. Reverend David Griffith. Narrator: Washington's army may have become respectable, but it was still about to disintegrate. The Continental regiments from New England-- his most disciplined, most seasoned soldiers-- were all planning to go home in just 5 days, leaving him with 1,400 men with which to face what he feared would be a swift reprisal from the enemy. He now had to persuade as many of them as he could to remain with him at least a little longer. ♪ On New Year's Eve at Trenton, Washington asked that all his depleted regiments assemble so that he could speak to them. He praised his men for their courage, one sergeant recalled, and "in the most affectionate manner entreated us to stay," but when he finished, and the drums beat for volunteers, not a single man stepped forward. Washington spoke again. ♪ Voice: My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do and more than can reasonably be expected, but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigue and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay only one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country, which you probably never can do under any other circumstances. The present is emphatically the crisis which is to decide our destiny. [Washington] ♪ Narrator: "This time," the sergeant remembered, "the soldiers felt the force of the appeal. "One said to another, 'I will remain if you will.' "A few stepped forward, "and their example was immediately followed by nearly all who were fit for duty." In the end, more than half the New England troops agreed to fight on for 6 weeks. On New Year's Day 1777, supplemented by scattered militia and 4 fresh regiments of Continentals from Pennsylvania, George Washington again commanded some 6,500 men. John Greenwood was not among them. ♪ Voice: I had the itch then so bad that my breeches stuck to my thighs, and I had a hundred lice on me. I told my lieutenant I was going home. Says he, "My God, you are not, I hope, going to leave us, "as you are the life and soul of us. You are to be promoted." I told him I would not stay to be a colonel. [Greenwood] Narrator: 20 months earlier, 14-year-old John Greenwood had walked all the way from Maine to Massachusetts and joined the American cause, hoping it would somehow help him get back to his parents in British-occupied Boston. Now he would tramp more than 300 miles back home, where his father saw to it that the boy's clothes were baked in the oven, and he himself was fumigated with sulfur before he could re-enter the home he'd yearned for for so long. For now, the Revolution would have to go on without him, but it would go on, thanks to the sacrifices he and his fellow soldiers had made and the victory they had won when no victory had seemed possible. ♪ [Drum beating rhythmically] [Rhiannon Giddens humming "Amazing Grace"] ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Hmm ♪ ♪ Mm-hmm ♪ ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm mm mm ♪ ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ Announcer: Next time on "The American Revolution." Brandywine... Nathaniel Philbrick: Brandywine was a hellscape in so many ways. Announcer: Germantown... and the pivotal battle of Saratoga. [Gunfire and shouting] Native peoples are divided. Darren Bonaparte: We're killing each other. For what? So somebody else can claim our land? Announcer: and the strategy of a general. Joseph Ellis: Washington reaches the insight-- he doesn't have to win. He only has not to lose. Announcer: When "The American Revolution" continues next time. ♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of "The American Revolution" with interactives, games, classroom materials, and more. ♪ Announcer: "The American Revolution" DVD and Blu-ray, as well as the companion book and soundtrack, are available online and in stores. The series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video. ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ [Bagpipes stop, drums continue] ♪ ♪ Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. URL https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-3-the-times-that-try-mens-souls/

The American Revolution A Film By Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein & David Schmidt An Asylum for Mankind (May 1775 – July 1776) VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. [Insects chirping, loon calling] [Splashing] Narrator: Before dawn on May 10th, 1775-- less than a month after Lexington and Concord-- some 85 New Englanders rowed across the southern end of Lake Champlain, keeping silent, muskets primed. Their objective was a dilapidated, star-shaped fortress called Ticonderoga, built by the French 20 years earlier and now occupied by 50 British soldiers and 24 women and children. If they could capture it, they might be able to stop British troops from attacking from the north; to provide American forces with a staging area should they ever choose to invade Canada; and to take possession of dozens of artillery pieces that the rebel forces ringing Boston desperately needed. The men slipped silently onto the shore. The British surrendered without a shot. So did the 9 redcoats stationed at Crown Point, a smaller outpost nearby. The Americans had two commanders. One was Colonel Ethan Allen, the hard-drinking leader of the "Green Mountain Boys," a band of vigilantes who had spent years defending their settlements in the Vermont region of northwestern New England against New Yorkers who also claimed the land. The other was a newly promoted 34-year-old Connecticut militia colonel. He was descended from a distinguished New England family that had fallen on hard times. Able but arrogant, sensitive to slights, he would become one of the most important commanders of the American Revolution. His name was Benedict Arnold. ♪ William Hogeland: Once it's a shooting war, as with Lexington and Concord, it's a war. There's no doubt about that. But independence was not, in any way, officially on the table as a goal of the Americans at that point. The idea of independence was still controversial. The official position was that the fight was essentially for redress, for "Let's get back to the way things used to be. Back when things were good, when you left us alone." Narrator: The blood shed at Lexington and Concord had deepened the divisions among Americans from Georgia to New Hampshire. "Loyalists," those who remained faithful to the Crown and hoped His Majesty's troops would soon restore law and order, dismissed those whose sympathies lay with the militiamen surrounding Boston as "rebels." The "rebels" called themselves "Patriots"-- or "Whigs" after British champions of constitutionally guaranteed rights-- and vilified their Loyalist neighbors as "Tories." Alan Taylor: The term "Patriot" is a very old one that pre-exists the Revolution. It applies to people who believe that they are the defenders of liberty against power. Now, "rebel" is a term that the British will use, and the Loyalists will use, to apply to the people who call themselves the "Patriots." So, to be a rebel means that you are rejecting the legitimate authority of your sovereign, King George III of the British Empire. Voice: That we are divorced is to me very clear. The only question is concerning the proper time for making an explicit declaration in words. Some people must have time to look around them, before, behind, on the right hand, and on the left, then to think, and after all this, to resolve. Others see at one intuitive glance into the past and the future, and judge with precision at once. But remember you can't make 13 clocks strike precisely alike at the same second. [Ticking] John Adams. ♪ Taylor: I think the greatest misconception about the American Revolution is that it was something that unified Americans and that it was just a war of Americans against the British. It leaves out the reality that it was a civil war among Americans. Voice: I tremble at the thoughts of war; but of all wars, a civil war! Our all is at stake. Sarah Mifflin. Narrator: In the spring of 1775, a Philadelphia woman named Sarah Mifflin wrote to a British officer who had been her friend before the shooting began. He had suggested that the whole thing was just a minor disagreement. Voice: It is not a quibble in politics. It is this plain truth, which the most ignorant peasant knows, that no man has a right to take their money without their consent. I know this, that as free I can die but once, but as a slave I shall not be worthy of life. Sarah Mifflin. ♪ Narrator: Some 20,000 militiamen from towns all over Massachusetts--and from Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island as well-- had poured into the series of impromptu camps that kept the British caged in Boston. They were united in their anger at the redcoats but very little else. They were militiamen, not professional soldiers, expected to meet immediate crises, not take part in prolonged campaigns. Few had uniforms. Many had never been more than 50 miles from home. Their first loyalty was to the towns from which they came and the neighbors whom they had elected as their officers. Once the shooting stopped and it became clear that the British were not going to attack them, they began drifting home to plant their crops. In overall charge of this dwindling, disorganized force was General Artemas Ward, the commander of the Massachusetts militia. From his headquarters in Cambridge, he understood that if there were to be any hope of holding their own against the British, he needed a paid, recruited army-- and he needed it fast. ♪ Voice: Wherever you go, we will be by your sides. Our bones shall lie with yours. We are determined never to be at peace with the redcoats while they are at variance with you. If we are conquered, our lands go with yours. But if we are victorious, we hope you will help us to recover our just rights. Captain Solomon Uhhaunauwaunmut. Narrator: Among the troops who arrived in Cambridge was a company of Native Americans from Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Philip Deloria: Stockbridge is a community of multiple tribes, which has a long history of surviving colonization, in part through adopting Christianity and adopting certain kinds of strategic ways of being in relation with colonists. They come over from Western Massachusetts and they're part of the Siege of Boston. Ned Blackhawk: Most Indigenous powers stay relatively on the sidelines of the conflict during the early years. But many Native communities, particularly those who have lived with settlers for generations, come to share loyalties and sensibilities. And so, many decide that it's in their best interest to join the Revolutionary forces and take up arms against the British Empire. Narrator: The presence of the Stockbridge men among the rebels, General Thomas Gage, the commander-in-chief of the British Army in North America, said, freed him to call upon other Native Americans to join his forces and fight for the Crown. Enslaved New Englanders were not recruited by either side. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress insisted it was engaged in a struggle for freedom from British "slavery." Enlisting them, it said, would be "inconsistent." But free African-Americans were welcome-- and at least 35 and perhaps as many as 50 men of color had fought at Lexington and Concord and more would soon be engaged in the next, far bigger battle with the British. Black, White, and Native American soldiers would serve in regiments more integrated than American forces would be again for almost two centuries. Voice: What?! 10,000 peasants keep 5,000 King's troops shut up! Well, let us get in, and we'll soon find elbow room. General John Burgoyne. ♪ Narrator: On May 25th, 1775, a Royal Navy frigate threaded its way into Boston harbor. Aboard were British reinforcements and 3 major generals. John Burgoyne was the showiest and the most self-assured of the three. A playwright as well as a soldier, eager always for advancement, he was dismissive of the rebels besieging Boston, whom he called a "rabble in arms, flushed with insolence." Henry Clinton had spent 6 boyhood years in New York, where his father had been the Royal Governor. He was soft-spoken, retiring, insecure. William Howe had once expressed sympathy with the American cause, but he now saw an opportunity to burnish his reputation as a soldier. They had been sent to bolster General Gage, whom the King's Ministers now saw as overly timid. The commanders all agreed that if they could seize the heights at Dorchester and Charlestown, they could break the rebel siege. Rick Atkinson: There are two pieces of high ground that the British have to worry about. One is Dorchester Heights. And the other is the high ground on the Charlestown Peninsula, including Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill. If you put cannon on either the Charlestown Peninsula or on Dorchester Heights, you would be able to bombard British forces in Boston. The British decide that they are going to seize Charlestown first. Narrator: The Patriots got wind of the plan, and Colonel William Prescott was ordered to seize and fortify Bunker's Hill, the highest prominence on the Charlestown peninsula. As Prescott and his men got there, however, it was somehow decided that they should instead build their fort on the crest of another, lower hill that came to be called Breed's Hill. But it was within range of both the warships in the harbor and a British battery in Boston's North End. Prescott's men went to work with picks and shovels trying to make as little noise as possible so as not to alert the British. But when dawn broke on June 17th, 1775, the redoubt was only half-finished. ♪ A 20-gun British Navy ship opened fire on the hilltop. A cannonball tore the head off a private named Asa Pollard. To steady his men, Prescott leaped onto the unfinished parapet and bellowed at the warships, "Hit me if you can!" British General Howe was certain that the hill would "easily be carried." As soon as the mid-afternoon tide came in, Howe would personally accompany a large force to the eastern tip of the Charlestown Peninsula. [Explosions] The British stepped up their cannonade, the roar so loud it rattled windows in Braintree, 10 miles away, where Abigail Adams wondered whether "the day--perhaps the decisive day--is come," she wrote, "on which the fate of America depends." Prescott rushed to strengthen his left flank, ordering some of his men to dig a ditch and form a 165-foot breastwork and assigning others to strengthen a rail-and-stone fence that ran all the way down to the bluff overlooking the Mystic River beach. Looking up at the American positions, General Howe believed the hill could be taken by what was called a "turning" movement. While one column assaulted the redoubt from the left and another, led by Howe himself, attacked the rail fence head-on, a third would slip along the undefended Mystic River beach, get behind the rebels, turn their line, and destroy them. Such attacks had worked well against disciplined armies in Europe. Stacy Schiff: No one expects that a bunch of country farmers with muskets are going to hold off a trained army who have orders from an actual general in Boston. There is a real disbelief that a bunch of ragtag colonists are going to manage to hold their own against trained soldiers. [Explosions] Narrator: When the column on the left neared Charlestown and came under fire from Americans hidden in abandoned buildings, British ships set the town ablaze with incendiary shells. Then, at around half past 3, Howe's redcoats started up the right side of the hill. Tall, fearsome grenadiers formed the first rank; behind them came the Foot Infantry. But the men had to dismantle wooden fences and stone walls that blocked their climb. Their uniforms were woolen. The sun was hot. And, like the anxious New Englanders waiting for them on the hilltop, some had never been in battle. Atkinson: The notion that the British Army is this battle-tested, experienced force, they're good. There's no doubt about it. Their officers are good. They're very disciplined, for the most part. But they are as scared and as new to this as the Americans are. [Indistinct shouting, explosion] Narrator: As Howe's force continued their ascent, British light infantry on the far right started their flanking maneuver along the narrow beach, bent on getting behind the American defenses, sure they could get there unopposed. But Colonel John Stark of New Hampshire and 60 of his militiamen were waiting for them. He had seen that the beach was open to a flanking attack and directed his men to build a barricade. When the British got within range, the Patriots opened fire. [Gunfire] The light infantry disintegrated. The New Hampshire men kept firing until the stunned survivors began to retreat toward their boats. Behind them lay nearly 100 dead and wounded, lying, Stark recalled, "as thick as sheep in a fold." Meanwhile, at the top of Breed's Hill, Prescott and his officers reassured their men: the redcoats could never reach them if they held their fire till they came close. 90 yards out, a stone wall stopped the Grenadiers. As they laid down their arms and worked to tear apart the wall, the Patriots fired their muskets. [Gunfire] British officers urged their men to keep advancing. Instead, the soldiers stayed where they were and tried to shoot back. The Americans had cover. The British had none. The redcoats broke and retreated down the slope. General Howe let his lines regroup, then ordered them back up the hill, in hopes of driving through the gap between the breastwork and the rail fence. He would go with them. This time, the Patriots behind the fence waited till the Grenadiers got within 50 yards before opening fire. [Gunfire] It was hard to miss. Scores of British soldiers fell, dead, dying, screaming in pain. [Gunfire] Atkinson: They deliberately target the British officers and they can recognize them in part because they're all wearing red coats, right, but the officers are wearing coats that are almost vermillion in hue because they can afford the more expensive dyes that make those coats pop. [Gunfire] The British, frankly, think this is unfair. Trying to target officers, there's something unseemly about it. But the Americans are not going to stop throughout the whole war. [Indistinct shouting, gunfire] Narrator: The Americans cheered, hoping General Howe had had enough. [Gunfire] Atkinson: Every one of his staff officers is killed or wounded. Howe will come back down the hill, unharmed, remarkably. But he's got blood all over his stockings from the men who've been shot on either side of him. Narrator: The teenage fifer John Greenwood had been away that day. When he heard the guns, he hurried back to rejoin his regiment. ♪ Voice: Everything seemed to be in the greatest terror and confusion. I felt very much frightened and would have given the world if I had not enlisted for a soldier. Then, I saw a Negro man, wounded in the back of his neck. I saw the wound very plain and the blood running down his back. I asked him if it hurt him much as he did not seem to mind it. He said no, and that he was only a-going to get a plaster put on it and meant to return. Immediately, you cannot conceive what encouragement it gave me. I began to feel from that moment brave and like a soldier. John Greenwood. ♪ Narrator: From the Boston waterfront, townspeople, including John Greenwood's brother Isaac, watched as British soldiers rowed wounded regulars from Charlestown. They were "obliged," he said, "to bail the blood out like water." And when they started back toward Charlestown again with fresh troops, "the soldiers," Isaac remembered, "looked as pale as death when they got into the boats, "for they could plainly see their brother redcoats mowed down like grass." At the bottom of Breed's Hill, General Howe was determined to come at the Americans one more time. Up above, Colonel Prescott knew his men had little powder left and that many of their muskets were fouled from so much firing. This time, in order to make each shot count, he insisted his men wait until their targets were within 30 yards. [Indistinct shouting, gunfire] "As fast as the front man was shot down, the next stepped forward into his place," one militiaman recalled. "It was surprising how they would step over their dead as though they had been logs of wood." [Gunfire] "We fired till our ammunition began to fail," another militiaman remembered, "then our firing began to slacken-- and at last it went out like an old candle." British marines with bayonets began climbing over the parapets. Some Americans hurled rocks or swung their muskets like clubs. Others clawed their way out of the redoubt and ran. It was all over in a matter of minutes. The Patriots had been driven from Breed's Hill. 115 Americans had been killed and another 305 wounded. ♪ Atkinson: The British succeed in that they drive the Americans off of the Charlestown Peninsula. They take Breed's Hill. They take Bunker Hill. But it has been a, a pyrrhic victory of the first order. It's 4 of the most awful hours of combat in American military history. There are 1,000 British casualties that day. There are 220-some British dead. Stephen Conway: 40% of the attacking force was killed or injured. 40%. That's horrendously high casualty rate. It is the highest casualty rate for the British Army until the first day of the Somme in 1916. It is unbelievably bloody. And that has a really profound impact. Narrator: "The loss we have sustained," General Gage admitted, "is greater than we can bear." During the final struggle, two prominent men had been killed. As Major John Pitcairn encouraged his British Marines to climb over the walls, he'd been shot through the chest and fell, dying, into the arms of his son. He was so hated by New Englanders because he had led the British troops at Lexington Green that at least 4 different men would subsequently claim to have fired the fatal shot. Dr. Joseph Warren, the president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, whom the British considered the most "incendiary" of all the rebel leaders, had insisted on joining the men defending Breed's Hill and was shot in the head. The British officer in charge of the burial detail boasted that they had "stuffed the scoundrel "with another Rebel into one hole and there he and his seditious principles may remain." Voice: Saturday gave us a dreadful specimen of the horrors of civil war. You may easily judge what distress we were in to see and hear Englishmen destroying one another. God grant the blood already spilt may suffice. But this we cannot reasonably expect. Reverend Andrew Eliot. ♪ Narrator: When the news of the battle--remembered as the Battle of Bunker Hill-- eventually made its way to London, the King proclaimed "The deluded People" of America were in a state of "open and avowed rebellion." Anyone who now aided their cause was a traitor. General Gage had been right-- the rebellion would never be crushed without overwhelming force. But Gage was soon called home, replaced as commander-in-chief by General William Howe. For almost 3 years, Howe would lead the struggle to try to put down the rebellion-- and carefully avoid ordering any more frontal assaults against entrenched Americans. ♪ Britain, at the expense of 3 millions, has killed 150 Americans this campaign, which is 20,000 pounds a head. And at Bunker's Hill, she gained a mile of ground. During the same time, 60,000 children have been born in America. From these data, calculate the time and expense necessary to kill us all, and conquer our whole territory. Benjamin Franklin. ♪ [Thunder] Voice: Unhappy it is to reflect that a brother's sword has been sheathed in a brother's breast, and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice? George Washington. Narrator: On July 2nd, 1775, Private Phineas Ingalls of Andover, Massachusetts, noted in his diary that it "rained" and that "a new general from Philadelphia" had arrived in Cambridge. That new general was George Washington of Virginia, the commander of the Continental Army the Congress in Philadelphia had just created. His arrival meant that the New England war in which Phineas Ingalls and his fellow militiamen had joined was about to become an American war. Jane Kamensky: Washington is a figure toward whom people naturally turn for leadership. It is clear, by the time the Continental Army is signed into being in the late spring of 1775, that its commander-in-chief can be nobody else. There's something about his presence that makes him the inescapable choice. Narrator: The Second Continental Congress had been meeting since May, and it was obvious from the first that 43-year-old George Washington would command its new army. He had led troops during the French and Indian War, and he was from Virginia, the wealthiest and most populated colony. New England delegates, eager to ensure that colony's support for the war, favored naming a Virginian. Washington was also one of America's richest men, the beneficiary of the work of scores of indentured servants and more than 100 enslaved people at his plantation on the Potomac River-- Mount Vernon. They grew tobacco and wheat, corn and flax and hemp, milled flour, distilled whiskey, caught, salted, and sold fish. And to the West, he had amassed tens of thousands of acres of Indian lands. Washington has this vision of the future in which...America's future is not to the East, not towards Europe. It's to the West. He does see the future and the next century as something in which we should focus on the consolidation of the continent. Hogeland: What defines his early career is an amazing focus, a ruthless and intense focus, on his own interests, which makes him exactly like every other member of his class. It's just that he became George Washington. Narrator: Washington considered outward evidence of ambition unseemly, but his appearance alone made him stand out in Philadelphia. He was about 6'3" when the average height of the men he would lead into battle was around 5'7", and he alone among the delegates appeared each day dressed as a soldier. Washington will remain, I think, endlessly fascinating. Partly because he was so mysterious, so reserved in his manner, frequently, and didn't give up a lot of what was going on in his gut. ♪ Ellis: He was naturally a person who created space around himself, and pity anybody that enters that space that's not invited. Martha gets into that space. Lafayette gets into that space. Maybe Hamilton gets into that space. Voice: He has so much martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to be a general and a soldier from among 10,000 people. There is not a king in Europe that would not look like a "valet de chambre" by his side. Benjamin Rush. He's got a brain built for executive action. He's willing to take responsibility. He's got an adhesive memory. He is, according to Thomas Jefferson, the greatest horseman of his age. He's built to lead other men in the dark of night, which is a rare and valuable trait in any commander. Voice: I am now embarked on a tempestuous ocean, from whence, perhaps, no friendly harbor is to be found. Narrator: Washington accepted that he and his army would be subordinate to the civilian control of Congress, but he did not yet see himself as a revolutionary. He still hoped to lead what he called "a loyal protest," as if George III might somehow overrule Parliament and restore the rights of British colonists. On his way to Cambridge, he met a dispatch rider who carried a letter that told of the terrible bloodletting that had taken place on Breed's Hill. ♪ Atkinson: He shows up in Cambridge in early July, 1775, as a Virginian commanding, almost exclusively, New England militiamen. He doesn't know what to make of them; they don't know quite what to make of him. He has nothing good to say about New Englanders, privately. They're almost from different countries. But his job is to take this gaggle, this cluster of militia forces, and to form them into a national army. Narrator: Washington thought he'd be commanding a 20,000-man force; in fact, he had fewer than 14,000 men fit for service. He was assured he would have 15 tons of precious gunpowder; there were just 5. On August 6th, a company of 96 riflemen from Virginia arrived, concrete evidence that Americans beyond New England would volunteer to fight. They had marched nearly 500 miles in 3 weeks. Their leader was Captain Daniel Morgan, a big, brawling one-time wagoner whose back bore the scars of a lashing he'd received during the French and Indian War after he'd knocked unconscious a British officer who had insulted him. More riflemen soon followed, from Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as more Virginians. Their rifles were far more accurate than the smooth-bore muskets most Patriots used; their grooved barrels spun a ball, making it fly straighter and truer. A British soldier would call them "the most fatal widow-and-orphan makers in the world." But the riflemen were also frontiersmen. They sounded different from New Englanders, dressed differently, disliked discipline of any kind. Taylor: So what's going to come out of this Revolution is attempts to create an American national identity. And somebody like George Washington becomes quite eloquent in trying to persuade people, "You're not Carolinians," "You're not New Yorkers," "You're not New Englanders." "We're all Americans." Narrator: Always at Washington's side, throughout the Revolution, was William Lee, the enslaved servant he had brought with him from Mount Vernon. Kamensky: I think we have to understand Washington as both the figurehead without whom American liberty would not have survived. At the same time, he's an enslaver of 317 men, women, and children. He acted as an enslaver in the ways that enslavers did. He bought and sold people. He broke up families. Do not look for gilded statues of marble men. They were not that and neither are we and neither is anybody at all. ♪ Narrator: Washington was impatient, eager to get at the enemy. In September, he proposed mounting a water-borne attack on Boston. His officers talked him out of it. Atkinson: Washington has got a lot to learn. Because he's been out of uniform for 16 years, there's a lot he does not know. He knows very little about artillery. He knows very little about fortification. He knows nothing about continental logistics. So, he brings a stack of books with him. Nathaniel Philbrick: Typically, Washington, before he would make a big decision, would canvass his major generals as to what to do. And inevitably, he would do whatever Nathanael Greene suggested. Narrator: General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, a Quaker who came to see pacifism as impractical in the face of what he called "this business of necessity," hoped the British might make a move so that the Americans, he said, could "sell them another hill at the same price" as they had paid taking Breed's Hill. ♪ But the British didn't dare mount an attack on Washington's forces, either. The memory of the last battle was too fresh. The standoff would continue for another 6 months. ♪ In Boston, soldiers and civilians alike suffered. There was too little firewood: regulars ripped pews from churches and demolished whole houses trying to keep warm. Of 40 transport vessels dispatched from England and Ireland to provision the town, 32 never made it--blown off-course by unfavorable winds all the way to the West Indies or seized by Patriots. Voice: What, in God's name, are ye all about in England? Have you forgot us? For we have not had a vessel for 3 months with any sort of supplies. And, therefore, our miseries are become manifold. British Officer. ♪ Voice: In 1770, I built a house, dam, saw, and grist mills on the west side of the Connecticut River. Here I was in easy circumstances, and as independent as my mind ever wished. John Peters. Narrator: Before the war, Yale-educated John Peters had been the most respected man in the small settlement of Moretown in Vermont, where he lived with his wife Ann and their children. In 1774, his neighbors had picked him to represent them in the First Continental Congress. But when Peters got to Philadelphia and sensed the other delegates "meant to have a serious rebellion," he refused to take part and left for home. On the way back, suspicious Patriots detained him 4 times-- in Wethersfield, Hartford, Springfield, and finally in Moretown itself, where "another mob threatened to execute him," he remembered, "as an enemy to Congress." His own father, a colonel in Connecticut's rebel militia, urged his fellow Patriots to use "severity" on his son to make him "a friend to America." [Indistinct shouting] Voice: The mob again and again visited me. They confined me to the limits of the town and threatened me with death if I transgressed their orders. [John Peters] Narrator: Even then, Peters refused to betray his "King and Conscience." Instead, he put his head down and hoped to stay out of the fight. Voice: I little thought the troubles would be so great, or if they did, would last so long. I endeavored to be quiet, but it would not do. The madness of the people was daily growing. [John Peters] ♪ Atkinson: Lake Champlain is this 90-mile-long teardrop that extends from the Canadian border down almost to the Hudson River. If you controlled Lake Champlain, you controlled the most obvious entry point into New York from the north, and into Canada from the south. Everything else is wilderness. ♪ Philbrick: The Americans saw an opportunity. If they could take Montreal, if they could take Quebec, and have command of the St. Lawrence, they would have the British right where they wanted them. Narrator: In the late summer of 1775, some 1,200 New York and New England troops assembled on the Ile aux Noix, just inside the Province of Quebec. Their commander Richard Montgomery had orders from the Continental Congress to "take immediate possession" of the British garrison at Montreal and then keep moving north. The ultimate goal was to eliminate the province as a military threat and perhaps adopt it as the 14th American Colony. They did not expect much opposition: there were just 700 British regulars in the whole province. Now George Washington called for a complementary expedition through the forests of the Maine province of Massachusetts to surprise and capture Quebec City on the St. Lawrence River. To lead it, Washington chose Benedict Arnold. Atkinson: Benedict Arnold is the finest tactical commander on either side in the first couple of years of the war. He's conspicuously gifted in being able to motivate men, tactically, under difficult circumstances, to do what he wants them to do. Narrator: Arnold had emerged from the capture of Fort Ticonderoga with a mixed reputation: he had quarreled with rival officers and become so incensed at having his expenses questioned that he simply left the militia and went home. But after his wife died, he left his 3 sons with his sister and joined Washington's Continental Army. "An idle life under my present circumstances," he told a friend, "would be but a lingering death." Quebec, Washington believed, was certain to be "very easy prey." But "not a moment's time is to be lost," he added. Conway: The Americans were not hostile to the concept of empire. On the contrary, they were great enthusiasts for it. They called it the "Continental Army" and the "Continental Congress" for a good reason. They had ambitions to incorporate Canada, Florida, and the whole of the continent of North America. Narrator: On September 25th, from a boatyard on the Kennebec River in Maine, Benedict Arnold and his 1,100-man force set out for Canada. ♪ Voice: Failure to punish the people of the 4 New England governments for their many rebellious and piratical acts, only encouraged them to go to greater lengths. I determined to destroy some of their towns and shipping. Vice Admiral Samuel Graves. Narrator: In October, Vice Admiral Samuel Graves, commander-in-chief of His Majesty's North American Station, announced he planned to lay waste to the ports of Marblehead, Salem, Cape Ann, Ipswich, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Saco, Falmouth, Machias. All of them were bases from which privateers-- Patriot raiders--menaced British shipping. Graves dispatched Lieutenant Henry Mowat and 4 warships to carry out his orders. Mowat began with Falmouth-- now Portland, Maine. [Bells tolling] Mowat gave the nearly 2,000 townspeople two hours, he said, to "remove without delay the Human Species" before the bombardment began, then agreed to reconsider provided the townspeople turned over all their arms and gunpowder by the following morning. When they didn't, British ships opened fire. [Cannon fire] The cannonade went on for more than 7 hours, firing more than 3,000 rounds of shot and hollow balls filled with combustible material. In mid-afternoon, landing parties rowed ashore. They hurled torches into the doors and windows of homes and shops. [Clatter] News of Falmouth's destruction spread fast. Ports up and down the coast braced for the next attack. Washington and Congress had both already begun arming ships to seize enemy cargoes to supply the army. Now Congress voted to commission 13 frigates for a new Continental Navy. Philbrick: To have a navy in the late 18th century was to have a fleet of ships that were the most sophisticated machines in the world at that time. They were very expensive. And they required all sorts of economic power and technology to create. Great Britain had that. The colonies really didn't. And, so, to go against this huge naval power was kind of an insane task to even contemplate. Narrator: The most successful Patriot commander was John Manley, a sea captain from Marblehead. He managed to seize 7 British vessels before the end of the year, including an ordnance ship, its hold filled with 100,000 flints, 2,000 muskets, and 30,000 cannonballs-- all of it badly needed by the Continental Army. ♪ British Admiral Graves ultimately decided against attacking any more ports. But the damage was done. Voice: The savage and brutal barbarity of our enemies is a full demonstration that there is not the least remains of virtue, wisdom, or humanity in the British. Therefore, we expect soon to break off all kind of connection with Britain, and form into a Grand Republic of the American United colonies. "The New England Chronicle." ♪ Voice: In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom. It is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance. I will assert, that the same principle lives in us. Phillis Wheatley. ♪ Narrator: George Washington made his Cambridge headquarters in the handsome home of a Loyalist who had fled to England. One morning, not long after he had moved in, he noticed a 6-year-old African-American named Darby Vassall swinging on the gate. Vassall remembered saying he had been born in the house and his parents had worked there. Washington urged him to come inside and get something to eat; he had plenty of chores for him to do. When Darby asked what sort of wages he could expect, Washington thought the question impertinent and "unreasonable." Darby Vassall lived to be a very old man and, when asked, he liked to say that in his experience, George Washington "was no gentleman," since he'd expected a boy to work for free. Washington was also shocked to see Black soldiers encamped alongside their White neighbors. Unconvinced they could ever make good soldiers, Washington persuaded the Massachusetts Provincial Congress to enlist no more of them, though dozens had fought on Breed's Hill. Christopher Brown: I think that Washington was concerned about what it might mean for slavery and slaveholding. I think he was alert to the ways that it could end up eroding the institution. Narrator: Enslaved African-Americans constituted just 2% percent of the population of New England, but 40% of Virginians were held as slaves, and planters like Washington lived in constant fear that they would rise up against them-- as enslaved people had risen up on the British island of Jamaica 3 times in the last 15 years. Voice: When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, and compel them to live with you in a state of war. Are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? Olaudah Equiano. Narrator: The growing talk of "liberty" had appealed to those who had the least of it and craved it most. From New England to South Carolina, enslaved people offered to help the British if they were granted freedom. In November of 1775, Virginia's Royal Governor Lord Dunmore, who had been forced to flee with some 300 soldiers, sailors, and Loyalists to ships anchored in the Chesapeake Bay, issued a Proclamation that seemed to confirm the slaveholders' worst nightmares. It promised freedom to any enslaved man owned by a rebel who was willing to take up arms and help suppress the uprising. Atkinson: Britain is the biggest slave-trading nation on earth. Nevertheless, the British believe that if they can convince enough slaves to abandon their masters in the South, to take up arms against the American rebels, that this is a manpower pool that can also derange the economies of the Southern states. It's not that the British are anti-slavery, by any means, in the 1770s, right? Their colonies in the Caribbean are their most profitable colonies in the Americas. They are firmly committed to slavery. But, opportunistically, when they think that they can encourage slaves to rise up against rebelling colonists, they'll do so. Annette Gordon-Reed: For enslaved people, this was a way of getting out of a situation that seemed intractable. And it gave them an impetus to get involved in all of this. In the sort of chaos of war, they found an opportunity, a way to escape their situation. Voice: "The Virginia Gazette." Be not then, ye Negroes, tempted by this proclamation to ruin yourselves. Whether you will profit by my advice, I cannot tell. But this I know, that whether we suffer or not, if you desert us, you most certainly will. Narrator: Dunmore's Proclamation helped drive Southern slaveholders to the side of the revolutionaries. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina spoke for many: Lord Dunmore's proclamation tends "in my judgment, "more effectually to work an eternal separation "between Great Britain and the Colonies than any other expedient." Dunmore says that he only wants the slaves of rebels to join him. Not clear exactly how you can tell them apart, or whether there's any kind of census going on of who do you belong to. Narrator: Dunmore was not an abolitionist; he did not free any of the 57 human beings he held in slavery himself; the Patriots would capture them all and sell them to fund their cause. Voice: Wednesday. Last night after going to bed, Moses, my son's man, Joe, Billy, Postillion, John, Mulatto Peter, Tom, Panticore, Manuel, and Lancaster Sam all ran away to Lord Dunmore. Landon Carter. Narrator: Now runaways streamed to the governor's ships, silently slipping along the rivers and tidal creeks that opened into the Chesapeake Bay. 87 men, women, and children from a single Virginia plantation fled to Dunmore. [Dogs barking] Voice: Ran off last night from the subscriber: a Negro man named Charles, who is a very shrewd, sensible fellow, and can both read and write. There is reason to believe he intends an attempt to get to Lord Dunmore. His elopement was from no cause of complaint, or dread of whipping but from a determined resolution to get liberty, as he conceived. "The Virginia Gazette." Narrator: "There is not a man among them," George Washington's farm manager warned him, "but would leave us if they believed "they could make their escape. Liberty is sweet." He was right. The first enslaved person to escape Mount Vernon was named Harry Washington. Born somewhere near the Gambia River in West Africa, he was captured, carried across the ocean, and, in 1763, purchased by George Washington. Freedom was never far from his mind. In 1771, he had tried to escape but was caught and brought back. 4 years later, he saw his chance. Erica Dunbar: Following Lord Dunmore's proclamation, Harry Washington knew that this would be an opportunity, and he joined the British against the people who had once owned him. Narrator: George Washington called Lord Dunmore a "Monster," and an "arch-traitor to the rights of humanity." Voice: If that man is not crushed before spring, he will become the most formidable enemy America has. His strength will increase, as a snowball, by rolling, and faster. Nothing less than depriving him of life or liberty will secure peace to Virginia. George Washington. Narrator: Scores of runaways were caught and brutally punished; some were killed, others sold off to compensate their enslavers. But some 800 men would make it to Dunmore's growing fleet, along with roughly the same number of women and children. Men found fit for duty were enlisted in a special unit called "Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment." They were commanded by White officers but paid a wage for the first time in their lives. Voice: The proclamation has had a wonderful effect. The Negroes are flocking in from all quarters. And had I but a few more men here, I would march immediately to Williamsburg, by which I should soon compel the whole colony to submit. Lord Dunmore. Narrator: Bolstered by reinforcements, Dunmore occupied Norfolk and ordered a stockade built at the Great Bridge over the Elizabeth River to block the only road to town from the South. Some 700 Patriots dug in across the river, and on December 9, 1775, when Dunmore's troops charged across the bridge to dislodge them, more than 100 of his men, Black and White, were killed. "They fought, bled, and died like Englishmen," one man remembered. Dunmore's makeshift army-- including what was left of the Ethiopian regiment-- fled back to sea. With them went scores of Loyalist families from in and around Norfolk, most of them Dunmore's fellow Scots. He now commanded a floating city--including rafts on which the poorest struggled to survive. Brown: Dunmore's Proclamation turns the conflict, in Virginia, into a genuine crisis. But it does help clarify differences, right? It establishes that there is one side of this conflict that is unevenly committed to slavery. And then there's another side, our side, which is fully committed to it. And for some Patriots, that's all they need to know. It creates a sense that this is an existential conflict in a way that it had not before. Voice: These lords of themselves, these kings of me, these demigods of independence. It has been proposed that the slaves should be set free, an act which, surely, the lovers of liberty cannot but commend. How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes? Dr. Samuel Johnson. ♪ [Indistinct shouting] Voice: Connecticut wants no Massachusetts man in her corps; Massachusetts thinks there is no necessity for a Rhode Islander to be introduced into hers. Could I have foreseen what I have, and am like to experience, no consideration upon earth should have induced me to accept this command. [George Washington] [Indistinct shouting] Narrator: Now George Washington faced for the first time the problem that would haunt him again and again: when enlistments expired at the end of the year, most of his army was simply going to melt away. ♪ To fill out his ranks, Washington persuaded the governors of Massachusetts and New Hampshire to send him a total of 5,000 militiamen. The newcomers were so sullen, veteran soldiers called them the "Long-Faced People." Washington asked Congress if Indian units could serve in his army. While they debated the issue, many Native people did join the ranks. 5 sons of a Mohegan woman named Rebecca Tanner would die fighting for the Patriots over the course of the war. ♪ In December, Washington changed his mind about enlisting African-Americans. His desperate need for men was part of it. But there were also appeals from Black veterans themselves or from their officers. "It has been represented to me," Washington wrote to the Continental Congress, "that the free Negroes who have "served in this Army are very much dissatisfied at being discarded." They could now re-enlist. Kamensky: Washington brings to Cambridge the "hard no" of a Virginia planter. But he is also willing to revise himself. To think about the whole of the potential fighting force and whether Black men can play a role within it. I think many people, most people from his station, would have started where he started and have gone no further. So, I think he does have a sort of flexibility as a commander, which is the only thing that the commander of an insurrectionary force can have. Narrator: Though the decision remained unpopular, by the end of the war, some 5,000 African-Americans had served in the Continental Army. A lot of these decisions about who to fight for, who to align with, are deeply, deeply local. They're not necessarily about high ideals at all, right? So, when people think there's an opportunity with the British, they may align with and run off to British lines. But when the Patriot Army kind of opens its ranks to Black people, there are lots of Black people who think they can gain advantage, concession, and even, one day, some status from fighting for the Patriots. It's not a question of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. It's what can I get from making this decision, right now, in this place, at this time, among these people. Narrator: Washington's new army--an ill-assorted mix of soldiers who'd decided to stay on, raw recruits, and short-term militiamen-- now numbered around 8,000 men. But only 2/3 were fit for duty. Those men were still cold, still poorly armed, still poorly paid-- but also still able to keep the British trapped in Boston. Voice: It is not in the pages of history perhaps to furnish a case like ours. To maintain a post within musket shot of the enemy for 6 months together, without powder, and at the same time to disband one Army and recruit another, within that distance of 20-odd British regiments, is more than probably ever was attempted. ♪ [Thunder] Voice: At the most moderate computation, this rebellion will cost Great Britain 10 millions of treasure and 20,000 lives. What then, in the name of wonder, is the object of the war? Are we to throw away so much treasure and so many lives to gain a point which, when gained, is not worth 1% on our money? The "Public Advertiser." Maya Jasanoff: In the British Parliament, there are debates taking place. There are people lining up on one side who say, "You know, we ought to actually "grant the colonies more autonomy. "We ought to loosen the strictures "that we've placed on them. "We ought to think about ways that they might be represented." Narrator: The war in North America was not universally popular in England. The colonies were 3,000 miles away. The theater of war would be far larger than any the British Army had ever encountered before. It was sure to be costly and bloody and likely to be prolonged. The Army chief and England's most distinguished naval commander would both refuse to take part in the war. The Lord Mayor and aldermen of the City of London appealed to the King to reconsider. It was far better to give the Americans their "rights and liberties," they said, than impose "the dreadful operations of your armaments." But the new Secretary of State for America, Lord George Germain, remained determined to crush the rebellion-- and to do it with a single, all-out campaign. If the war dragged on, King George himself feared that Britain's old Catholic enemies, France and Spain, might be persuaded to support the rebel cause. Voice: The rebellious war now levied is become more general, and is manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire. The object is too important, the spirit of the British nation too high, the resources with which God hath blessed her too numerous, to give up so many colonies which she has planted with great industry, nursed with great tenderness, and protected and defended at much expense of blood and treasure. [King George III] Atkinson: King George was not an ogre. He was not a tyrant. Contrary to the stereotype that most Americans have of him, he's actually a pretty extraordinary man. Conway: He was a very great constitutional monarch. In fact, in 1775, he declares, "I'm fighting the war of the legislature." In other words, he's fighting for Parliament's rights over the American colonies. Not his own rights, Parliament's rights. But once the war starts, he sees himself as the commander-in-chief with a responsibility to make sure the war is run efficiently and effectively. Narrator: The British Navy was the largest on earth, but the all-volunteer British Army numbered fewer than 50,000 officers and men on paper. And it was still smaller in reality, just 1/3 of the size of the French Army, and scattered across the world from Ireland to India, the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. "Unless it rains men in red coats," one official warned, "I know not where we are to get all we shall want." Ellis: The British should have recognized that this was going to be extremely difficult and perhaps unwinnable conflict. They were confident of two things. They had invincible military power. And, therefore, there was no need for them to compromise. And secondly, that any compromise of Sovereignty, of Parliament's Sovereignty, was going to encourage independence on the part of the Americans. They had a kind of "Domino" theory: if we lose American colonies, then we lose Canada, then we lose the Caribbean. So that George III and his Ministers really believe that nothing less than the future of the British Empire is at stake. [Bird cawing] Voice: Our commander, Arnold, was of a remarkable character. Brave and beloved by the soldiery, he possessed great powers of persuasion. Private John Joseph Henry. ♪ Narrator: Benedict Arnold and his men had made slow progress on their way up the Kennebec River as part of the American invasion of Canada. Their provisions had been packed into 220 flat-bottomed "bateaux," built for them at George Washington's orders. All Arnold knew about the forests his men were about to penetrate came from a crude 15-year-old British map that seemed to suggest Quebec City was 180 miles away and could be reached in just 20 days. ♪ The real distance turned out to be 270 miles. [Wind blowing] Nothing could have prepared Arnold for the ordeal he and his men were about to endure. [Water spraying] The Kennebec turned out to be punctuated by waterfalls and rapids. Submerged rocks tore the bottoms of their boats. Within 72 hours, 1/4 of their provisions were lost or ruined. In the mornings, wet clothes were glazed with ice, one man wrote, thick as a pane of glass. On the 10th day, Arnold began rationing the remaining food-- just salt pork and flour. It snowed on the 19th day and rained relentlessly for days afterwards. Then, it snowed again. Philbrick: America is this huge continent. There's tornadoes, there's hurricanes, there's winter storms. Turns of weather that we know are coming for weeks on end hit the people of the 18th century completely by surprise. They're not just fighting each other. In a profound way, they are fighting the American climate and geography and topography. This is a difficult place to conduct a war. ♪ Narrator: After a month of hardship, the officer leading the battalion that had been bringing up the rear declared the mission suicidal, turned his 300 men around, and started for home with many of the remaining provisions. ♪ Arnold's men were now forced to subsist on candles, tree bark, and soup made by boiling rawhide. One company killed and ate their captain's Newfoundland dog. ♪ Of the 1,100 men who set out from Cambridge, more than 1/3 had turned back, been escorted home as invalids, or died along the way. [Bell rings] Finally, 45 days after setting off--not 20-- Arnold's men saw the spires and walls of Quebec City looming across the St. Lawrence River. Philbrick: No one, particularly the British, can believe that suddenly they are there. Arnold, because of this, would have a reputation now. He would be known as the "American Hannibal" for his ability to move men over mountains, to achieve seemingly impossible things. Narrator: Meanwhile, American forces led by General Montgomery had easily taken Montreal. Then, with 300 of his men, Montgomery set out along the St. Lawrence to meet up with Arnold. Together, they planned their assault on Quebec City. They realize that they've got a hard decision to make. We either attack now, or many of our men are going to leave. Their enlistments are up. They're cold. It's mid-winter in Canada. ♪ Narrator: There were only some 300 British regulars stationed in the fortified city. So, General Guy Carleton, the royal governor of Canada, ordered every able-bodied man within its walls to prepare for battle. Anyone who refused had to leave or be prosecuted as a spy. The city's ramparts were soon guarded by some 1,800 men. The American plan called for two small, noisy diversionary feints to draw defenders away from the attack's real targets. Meanwhile, Arnold and his men would circle around Quebec City from the north, while General Montgomery would approach from the south. Together, they would storm the citadel's steep walls. ♪ Voice: Dear Father, if you receive this letter, it will be the last this hand will ever write you. Heaven only knows what will be my fate. But whatever it may be, I cannot resist the inclination I feel to assure you that in this cause I feel no reluctance to venture a life, which I consider as only lent to be used when my country demands it. Your very affectionate son, John Macpherson. [Wind blowing] Voice: The storm was outrageous. Covering the locks of our guns with the lapels of our coats and holding down our heads... [Gunshot] we ran in single file. John Joseph Henry. Narrator: The Americans launched their attack at 4 in the morning on December 31st, 1775, under the cover of a howling blizzard. Many men had pinned to their hats slips of paper with the words, "Liberty or Death." [Gunfire] Everything went wrong. [Gunfire] The diversionary attacks fooled no one. Arnold's men came under merciless fire from the ramparts above-- and the enemy had placed formidable barricades in their way. [Gunfire] When a ricocheting bullet fragment tore through Arnold's left leg, he had to be carried back to camp. Captain Daniel Morgan of Virginia took over. He managed to lead his men past one barricade only to be blocked by another. He tried 4 times to scale it, then decided to wait for Montgomery and his men to break through. ♪ But Montgomery never made it. [Gunshot] Within moments of making his way into the city, he, John Macpherson, and 11 others were killed. [Gunfire] Voice: The enemy, having the advantage of the ground in front, a vast superiority of numbers, and dry and better arms, gave them an irresistible power. About 9:00 a.m., it was apparent to all of us that we must surrender. John Joseph Henry. ♪ Narrator: 30 Americans lay dead. 389 were taken prisoner, including Daniel Morgan. ♪ Arnold, though badly wounded, was not captured and vowed to try to take the city again before it could be reinforced. Voice: I have no thoughts of leaving this proud town, until I first enter it in triumph. Providence which has carried me through so many dangers, is still my protection. Benedict Arnold. ♪ Voice: I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature, and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave cries give, give. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which humane nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances. When I consider these things, I feel anxious for the fate of our monarchy, or democracy, or whatever is to take place. Abigail Adams. Narrator: On New Year's Day, 1776, George Washington ordered a new "Continental Union" flag raised atop Prospect Hill overlooking occupied Boston. The British Union Jack still filled its upper left-hand corner. But its 13 red and white stripes, he said, were intended as a "compliment to the United Colonies." With the exception of the city of Boston, Patriots now controlled each of the 13 colonies. Several other royal governors had, like Dunmore, fled to ships offshore. But people within the colonies remained deeply divided. Some of the free population favored independence. Others were appalled at the thought of breaking with the King. Abandoning Britain, one Virginian wrote, would "dissolve the bands of religion, of oaths, of laws, "of language, of blood, which hold us united under the influence of the common parent." Still others remained "disaffected," favoring neither side, hoping somehow to carry on with their lives while their fellow-Americans-- suspicious of their neutrality-- fought things out. But events were changing minds. Gordon-Reed: What happened in the run-up to all of this gave people a sense that they might be able to make it on their own. They were different from the people in Great Britain. They realized that they were moving apart. Voice: If we must erect an independent government in America, a republic will produce strength, hardiness, activity, courage, fortitude, and enterprise. But there is so much rascality, so much venality and corruption, so much avarice and ambition, such a rage for profit and commerce among all ranks and degrees of men, even in America, that I sometimes doubt whether there is public virtue enough to support a republic. John Adams. Taylor: The leaders of the American Revolution need popular support. The leaders of the American Revolution are going to have to make promises that there's going to be greater social mobility; there's going to be greater respect for common people; there is going to be broader political participation in the future than there has been in the colonial past by loosening up structures of authority, including structures of religious authority. If you're making this Revolution and you need the support of thousands of common people, men and women, what's in it for them? Gordon Wood: Up to the 18th century, people assumed that everything will always remain the same. But the idea that you could take charge and change your culture, that's what--that's the fundamental basis of the Enlightenment, that man can be changed. ♪ Voice: The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent. Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation. Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind. ♪ We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand. Thomas Paine. ♪ Narrator: On January 9th, 1776, a slender pamphlet titled "Common Sense" was published in Philadelphia-- the most important pamphlet in American history. It was signed simply "an Englishman." Its author, a recent newcomer to America, was 38-year-old Thomas Paine. The son of a Quaker corset-maker and his Anglican wife, Paine had failed at his father's profession, lost his first wife and their child in childbirth, been fired from his post as tax collector, endured the collapse of a second childless marriage, and had seen his possessions auctioned off to pay his debts. During his 8-week voyage from Britain, he'd contracted typhus, and when his ship reached Philadelphia, he had to be carried off, half-dead. But Paine was a master with words, skillfully weaving the latest Enlightenment philosophy with biblical references that everyone knew. And he was a violent foe of aristocracy and monarchy. Schiff: It's a much more radical document than anything that had preceded it. "Common Sense" takes off like an accelerant through the colonies. Everyone reads it. Narrator: Excerpts from "Common Sense" appeared in newspapers throughout the colonies. The pamphlet would sell tens of thousands of copies. Taylor: It is an unprecedented bestseller. With the exception of the Bible in the colonies, no book has been read as widely as "Common Sense" is. Bernard Bailyn: It was a wholesale attack on the entire world of Britain, political, cultural. And it's in slam-bang prose. No American pamphleteer wrote that kind of really tough extreme language. Hogeland: It just made people listen and made people think at a time when the Congress would never have thought of attacking the King, personally, King George III, the "Crown of England." They were always like, "Oh, he's not really getting it. "It's Parliament that's our problem. The King needs to help us." He just called the King a "beast," in print. He was the working-class intellectual. His politics were radically democratic, in many ways. And that made him different from the other famous Founders. Voice: Hereditary succession is an insult and an imposition on posterity. For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings is that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion. Thomas Paine. Bailyn: That pamphlet did stir people's minds about the possibility of a different kind of world. Voice: "Common Sense" struck a string which required a touch to make it vibrate. The country was ripe for independence, and only needed somebody to tell the people so. Private Ashbel Green. Hogeland: Some of the Founders, and others, thought this is the moment we can start over again. We can actually begin the world anew. And it must have been, you know, wildly exciting at the time. And I think it still excites us, that we are the product of a revolutionary moment where the world turned upside down. Voice: My countrymen will come reluctantly into the idea of independency. I find "Common Sense" is working a wonderful change in the minds of many men. George Washington. ♪ Narrator: Not all minds were changed. Hannah Griffitts, the Philadelphia poet who in 1768 had urged American women to boycott British goods, was horrified. Kamensky: The idea that to reform the Empire by not buying tea or imported cloth would lead to this crazy question of independence was an impossible thing for her to countenance. Paine is where a lot of people get on the revolutionary road. It's where she gets off. Narrator: For some Americans, "Common Sense" confirmed their worst fears. Vermont Loyalist John Peters, who continued to receive death threats from his Patriot neighbors, had reached a breaking point. Voice: Often mobbed and once imprisoned by the malcontents, I quitted my family, property, and offices, and fled to Canada, to avoid personal danger and to support the British cause against its enemies. [John Peters] Voice: The want of guns is so great that no trouble or expense must be spared to obtain them. [George Washington] Atkinson: Washington has got Boston surrounded. The problem is, he doesn't have the big guns necessary to make the British in Boston really feel threatened. He's got some artillery, but not enough. They tend to be smaller field guns. He knows that at Ticonderoga, which is several hundred miles away, there are more than 80 British guns that have been captured by Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen. And he tells Henry Knox, "Go to Ticonderoga, bring back whatever you can." ♪ Narrator: Henry Knox was a big, amiable, 25-year-old Boston bookseller who had learned all he knew about artillery and military engineering from volumes he'd stocked in his shop and from his service in the Boston militia. He'd earned Washington's admiration for overseeing the construction of fortifications at Roxbury. Atkinson: Washington, who's got a very good eye for subordinate talent, recognizes that this guy, he doesn't even have a uniform at the time, has something about him that Washington finds appealing, and the potential that Henry Knox evinces is something that Washington recognizes immediately. Narrator: Before setting out, Knox wrote a letter to his pregnant wife Lucy, who had fled Boston, leaving her Loyalist parents and siblings behind. Voice: Keep up your spirits, my dear girl, and don't be alarmed when I tell you that the General has ordered me to go to the westward as far as Ticonderoga. Don't be afraid, there is no fighting in the case. I am going upon business only. Henry Knox. Narrator: Knox made his way to the captured forts and found 55 guns worth transporting-- 39 field pieces, 14 mortars, and two howitzers-- all weighing more than 64 tons. ♪ Knox's task was somehow to move them 300 miles down into the Hudson Valley, across the Berkshires, and all the way to Boston. He had horses and ox teams haul the guns overland to the northern end of Lake George. From there, a small fleet of barges and boats ferried them more than 30 miles against howling winds to Fort George at the southern end. ♪ Voice: I have made 42 exceeding strong sleds and have provided 80 yoke of oxen to drag them as far as Springfield, where I shall get fresh cattle to carry them to camp. We shall have a fine fall of snow, which will make the carriage easy. Henry Knox. ♪ Narrator: The snow for which Knox hoped proved unpredictable, sometimes too light for his sleds to glide over, sometimes too heavy for them to move at all. ♪ Crossing the Berkshires, oxen hauled the cannon up and over mountains so tall that from their summits, Knox remembered, "We might almost have seen all the kingdoms of the earth." ♪ Wherever they went, farmers and townspeople turned out to see them. Voice: We reached Westfield, Massachusetts, and found that very few, even among the oldest inhabitants, had ever seen a cannon. We were great gainers by this curiosity. For while they were employed in remarking upon our guns, we were with equal pleasure discussing the qualities of their cider and whiskey. John P. Becker. Narrator: As the ox train lumbered on, Knox hurried ahead alone to Cambridge. He reported to Washington that over the next few weeks, all the artillery he'd been promised would be at his disposal. ♪ When the last of Knox's cannon reached Washington's army, England's hold on Boston was doomed. Atkinson: It's one of the most extraordinary expeditions in American military history. He appears back in Cambridge, says, "Boss, I'm here. "I've brought back 50 guns. "They're parked right outside of town. They're available whenever you need them." Washington says, "You're my man." And he puts Knox in charge of Continental Artillery. [Drumbeat] Narrator: On the night of March 4th, 1776, some 3,000 men and 300 teams worked to put 20 or more heavy guns in place on Dorchester Heights. [Drumbeat] Voice: March 5th. This morning at daybreak, we discovered two redoubts on the hills on Dorchester Point, and two smaller works on their flanks. They were all raised during the night, with an expedition equal to that of the genie belonging to Aladdin's wonderful lamp. From these hills they commanded the whole town, so that we must drive them from their post, or desert the place. [British Officer] Narrator: Unwilling to sacrifice any more men, General Howe decided to leave Boston for Halifax in Nova Scotia, where he hoped to regroup. ♪ With him went 10,000 soldiers and their dependents as well as 1,100 Loyalist men, women, and children who would have to build new lives in a new place. Among them were Henry Knox's in-laws. "I have lost," his wife Lucy wrote, "my father, mother, brother, and sisters." ♪ Voice: How horrid is this war? Brother against brother and the parent against the child. Who were the first promoters of it, I know not. But God knows. And I fear they will feel the weight of His vengeance. ♪ Tis pity, the little time we have to spend in this world, we cannot enjoy ourselves and our friends, but must be devising means to destroy each other. Lucy Knox. ♪ Narrator: With the evacuation of Boston, no British garrison now remained anywhere in the rebellious colonies. Serena Zabin: I think it surprises everybody that the Patriots are having some successes. So much so that everyone's convinced that it's either the support of God or the virtue of the cause that is helping them win. One of their favorite metaphors is the Battle of Jericho. They're sure that all it takes is for this army that has right on its side to show up and blow a trumpet, and the walls are just going to fall down. Narrator: Some Americans believed the war was over. The Massachusetts legislature thanked George Washington for his service and wished him "Peace and Satisfaction of Mind" in his retirement. But Washington knew better. He informed Congress that he would "immediately repair to New York, with the remainder of the Army." He was sure that Howe's next move would be to attack that strategically important port. By mid-April, 1776, he and his wife Martha, and several members of their household, were in residence there. Meanwhile, Congress sent a Connecticut businessman named Silas Deane to Paris to secretly buy munitions and supplies-- and to look into the possibility of forging an alliance with France. Schiff: Two questions, really, conjoin at this point. One question is, if we're going to make ourselves independent, if we're going to somehow create a nation, which is a truly novel and destabilizing concept, how are we going to do that? We have absolutely no means with which to do so. So, we will have to enlist the aid of a foreign power. And then comes the question of a Declaration. And the question is, which needs to happen first. ♪ Voice: Independence is the only bond that can tie and keep us together. Every day convinces us of its necessity. Instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us hold out to his neighbor the hearty hand of friendship. And let no other name be heard among us, than those of a good citizen; an open and resolute friend; and a virtuous supporter of the Rights of Mankind, and of the Free and Independent States of America. Thomas Paine. ♪ [Thunder] Voice: Language cannot describe, nor imagination paint, the scenes of misery the soldiery endure, continually groaning and calling for relief, but in vain. The most shocking of all spectacles was to see a large barn crowded full of men with this disorder, many of which could not see, speak, or walk. Dr. Lewis Beebe. Narrator: That spring, colonists on both sides of the fighting were ravaged by a common enemy: "Variola major"--smallpox. Highly infectious, the virus had scarred, blinded, or killed hundreds of thousands in North America over the past 2 1/2 centuries. ♪ The American Revolution coincided with a continent-wide epidemic that would last for 7 years and take some 100,000 more lives--Black, White, as well as Native American. Colin Calloway: When armies are marching back and forth, this is prime environment for the spread of diseases. And one of the largest, or at least best documented, smallpox epidemics, and it may be epidemics, plural, happens at the time of the American Revolution. Smallpox was the dread disease of humanity. Narrator: There were just two weapons against smallpox: isolating its victims to keep them from infecting others or inoculating the still unaffected by deliberately implanting live virus into an incision in hopes that the infection they contracted would neither prove fatal nor infect anyone else before it conferred immunity. George Washington knew the disease firsthand; he'd been permanently scarred by it as a young man. But he initially rejected inoculation for his soldiers: if he imposed it universally, his whole army would have been incapacitated for weeks; if he employed it piecemeal and just one still-infectious inoculated soldier was released too early, he might infect his whole company. Instead, anyone showing smallpox symptoms was isolated in a special hospital with guards posted to keep visitors out. [Seagulls crying] Meanwhile, aboard Lord Dunmore's floating city in the Chesapeake Bay, the men of his Ethiopian Regiment and their families, packed together on small, segregated vessels, were without immunity and not inoculated until the disease was already raging among them. So was typhus. Voice: The fever has proved a very malignant one and has carried off an incredible number of our people, especially the Blacks. Had it not been for this horrid disorder, I am satisfied I should have had 2,000 Blacks with whom I should have had no doubt of penetrating into the heart of this colony. Lord Dunmore. ♪ Narrator: In late May, Dunmore moved his ramshackle fleet north to Gwynn's Island, lured there by the presence of some 400 cows with which he hoped to help feed his followers. But smallpox and typhus came with him. Runaways continued to find their way to Dunmore, 6 or 8 a day--and died almost as fast. [Gunshot] Eventually, under fire from Virginia militiamen onshore, Dunmore and his fleet would be forced to sail away from the island. [Gunshot] They left behind hundreds of sick African-American men, women, and children. A Virginian who reached the island a day or two later never forgot what he saw. Voice: On our arrival, we were struck with horror at the number of dead bodies, in a state of putrefaction, without a shovelful of earth upon them; others gasping for life; and some had crawled to the water's edge, who could only make known their distress by beckoning to us. Such a scene of cruelty my eyes never beheld; for which the authors never can make atonement in this world. [Virginia Militiaman] ♪ Narrator: Dunmore's experiment in emancipation had ended in disaster. But over the 7 years of fighting that followed, tens of thousands of enslaved people would flee to the British, believing that the King's representatives were more likely than the Revolutionaries to fulfill their hopes for liberty. ♪ Gordon-Reed: Opting for freedom is a gamble. And it makes people take all kinds of risks. The notion that you would be in a situation where your children, and your children's children, and your children's children's children would be enslaved, I can understand wanting to risk death to prevent that. ♪ Narrator: That same spring, smallpox would end the American dream of capturing Canada, as well. For more than 4 months, Benedict Arnold, now promoted to general, had continued to blockade Quebec City, hoping he could mount a successful second assault before spring temperatures thawed the ice blocking the St. Lawrence, and the British could land reinforcements. But by May, nearly half of those Americans who remained were sick. Then, Royal Navy warships and transports arrived, filled with thousands of fresh troops-- and thousands more were on the way. The Americans took flight. British forces, led by General Guy Carleton and General John Burgoyne, pursued them-- soon supported by Native American allies. Darren Bonaparte: For us, my people living on the St. Lawrence, the British rallied us and said, "We've got Americans invading. They're going to kill all of you." We sent 100 of our warriors to help the British drive the Americans out of the Montreal area. Narrator: One by one, the Americans abandoned their outposts. Reinforcements added to their numbers, but 3/4 of the newcomers had no immunity to smallpox. Voice: The road ran alongside of the river opposite the city of Montreal, and we could plainly see the red-coated British soldiers on the other shore. So close were they upon us that if we had not retreated as we did, all would have been prisoners, for they were in numbers as 6-to-our-one, and we, moreover, nearly half-dead with sickness and fatigue and lack of clothing. John Greenwood. Narrator: The young fifer John Greenwood was among those reinforcements when Arnold ordered his men to abandon Montreal. Nearly 2,000 fell ill. Eventually they crowded onto Ile aux Noix, waiting their turn to be ferried south on Lake Champlain to Crown Point and Ticonderoga. ♪ 20 to 60 men fell ill every day, and 15 to 20 died. Two great pits were dug in which the dead were heaped each evening, one man recalled, "with no other covering but the rags in which they died." By the end of June, 10 months after the American invasion of Canada began, it was over. 12,000 Americans had taken part. Some 5,000 of them had been killed, wounded, taken prisoner, died of disease, or deserted. The survivors were now encamped back on the shores of Lake Champlain where the campaign had started. ♪ Voice: Our army at Crown Point is an object of wretchedness to fill a human mind with horror. Our misfortunes in Canada are enough to melt a heart of stone. The smallpox is 10 times more terrible than Britons, Canadians, and Indians together. John Adams. ♪ Narrator: "Our affairs are hastening to a crisis," John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress. warned, "and the approaching campaign "will in all probability determine forever the fate of America." France had by now quietly pledged to provide some arms and money-- but open support would require the Congress to cut all ties to Britain. "Every day," John Adams wrote to a friend, independence "rolls in upon us like a torrent." On May 15th, Congress called upon all 13 colonies to form their own governments. By adopting new constitutions, the colonies would turn themselves into sovereign States. ♪ The next day, delegates learned that the British, desperate and without European allies, had hired thousands of foreign troops to help crush the rebellion. Some German princes had agreed to provide them--for a price. Most came from Hessen-Kassel and Hessen-Hanau, so the Americans would call them all "Hessians." "O Britons," one Rhode Islander lamented, "how art you fallen that you hire foreigners to cut your children's throats." Voice: The British nation have proceeded to the last extremity. And we should expect a severe trial this summer, with Britons, Hessians, Indians, Negroes, and every other butcher the gracious King of Britain can hire against us. Josiah Bartlett, New Hampshire. Friederike Baer: The Americans are using the British Government's decision to hire foreign soldiers in the war against British subjects, if they look at this as a civil war to some extent. They're using this as a tool to rile up resistance against Britain, to mobilize men to, basically, take up arms against these invaders, and ultimately to support independence. [Gavel banging] Narrator: On June 7th, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced resolutions in Congress declaring that "these United Colonies are & of right "ought to be free & independent States absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown." ♪ Meanwhile, a letter to a Pennsylvania newspaper signed only "Republicus" declared that it was time for independent Americans "to call themselves by some name"-- and proposed the "United States of America." ♪ A 5-man committee was named to produce a document setting forth the reasons for making such a momentous decision. 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson of Virginia was assigned to write the first draft. ♪ He would draw from Aristotle, Cicero, John Locke, and the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by his friend George Mason. But his goal, he said, was to distill what he called "an expression of the American mind." ♪ He worked in a rented room on Market Street, fueled by cups of tea brought to him by his 14-year-old valet, Robert Hemings-- the son of an enslaved servant, Elizabeth Hemings, and Jefferson's father-in-law. Voice: When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ♪ We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [Thomas Jefferson] Wood: Everything that we believe in comes out of the Revolution. Our ideas of liberty, equality, it's the defining event of our history. "All men are created equal." That is the most famous and important phrase in our history. If we don't celebrate it, we have no reason to be a people. And Lincoln knew that. And that's why he says, "All honor to Jefferson." ♪ Narrator: Thomas Jefferson was proposing something altogether new and radical in the world. It was the American people's "right," he argued, it was "their duty"-- to "throw off" tyranny and learn to govern themselves. Voice: That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. [Thomas Jefferson] Narrator: Since no one had authority over anyone else by birthright, Jefferson was affirming that all legitimate power came from the people themselves-- even if he, the owner of hundreds of human beings, could never make that truth a reality in his own life. Gordon-Reed: His relationship to slavery is foundational. From the beginning to the end, this institution bounded his life, even though he knew it was wrong. How could you know something is wrong and still do it? Well, that is the human question for all of us. ♪ Taylor: The Declaration of Independence, we remember it, primarily, from its opening preamble, the most famous sentences in our history, quoted ever since as a mandate for expanding liberty for other people. But most of the document is something else. It is a list of crimes allegedly committed by the King. That means that when the Patriot leaders decide that they want independence, then they must persuade their people in the colonies, now states, that the King has forfeited his just authority. The purpose of the Declaration of Independence is to declare the King is no longer sovereign. Narrator: Throughout history, most people had been subjects, living under authoritarian rule. "All experience hath shewn," Jefferson wrote, "that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable." George III himself, not the Parliament, was now the enemy. The Declaration denounced him as "unfit to be the ruler of a free people," guilty of 18 "injuries and usurpations," all meant to establish, it read, "absolute tyranny." It charged that he had invaded "the rights of the people," sent "swarms of officers to harass" them, imposed a standing army in peacetime, levied taxes without the colonists' consent, and was now waging war against them. ♪ Dunmore's Proclamation had deepened fears of slave uprisings, and reports that the governor of Canada had enlisted Native people to resist the invasion there further inflamed Congress. In the 18th and final charge against the King, Jefferson did all he could to exploit their fury. Voice: He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. [Thomas Jefferson] Narrator: Proclaiming the equality of "all men" was a genuinely revolutionary idea, but that equality was not yet extended to Native Americans, enslaved or free Blacks, the poor, or any woman. Jefferson's original list of "injuries" had also included the charge that George III was somehow responsible for the Atlantic slave trade. He called it "cruel war against human nature itself." The other delegates refused to adopt that charge. ♪ The Declaration of Independence was formally ratified on July 4th, 1776-- just 1,337 words that ended with the phrase, "We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." ♪ When Rhode Island delegate Stephen Hopkins, who had palsy, signed the document, he is said to have remarked, "My hand trembles, but my heart does not." [Crowd cheering] It was first read aloud to a cheering crowd in the State House yard at Philadelphia on July 8th. It was soon published in 29 newspapers, and greeted by parades and celebratory volleys of gunfire throughout the newly United States. [Gunfire] Voice: Boston, Massachusetts-- when Colonel Crafts read the proclamation, great attention was given to every word, and every face appeared joyful. The King's arms were taken down from the State House and every vestige of him from every place in which it appeared and burned in King Street. Thus ends royal authority in this state, and all the people shall say, "Amen." Abigail Adams. [Crowd cheering] Narrator: On July 9th, in New York, General Washington ordered the Declaration read to his troops. Hearing the list of George III's alleged crimes so angered the men that a number of them raced down Broadway to Bowling Green, tied ropes to the statue of the King, and pulled it to the ground. ♪ Pieces of the shattered statue were dispatched by wagon to Litchfield, Connecticut, where Patriots melted the gilded lead into bullets-- 42,088 of them. ♪ Far to the north at Fort Ticonderoga, the battered survivors of the failed invasion of Canada were assembled so that the Declaration could be read to them. When it was over, an eyewitness said, "The language of every man's countenance was, "Now we are a people; we have a name among the states of the world." ♪ Among those who heard the Declaration read at Ticonderoga was private Lemuel Haynes, a free African-American from Granville, Massachusetts. He understood right away what it might mean for people like him--and wrote an essay entitled: "Liberty Further Extended." ♪ Voice: Liberty is a jewel which was handed down to man from the cabinet of heaven. It hath pleased God to make "of one blood all nations of men for to dwell upon the face of the earth." And as all are of one species, therefore, we may reasonably conclude that liberty is equally as precious to a Black man as it is to a White one, and bondage equally as intolerable to the one as it is to the other. [Lemuel Haynes] Maggie Blackhawk: The Declaration of Independence was deeply significant to people at the margins. It gave them a space of moral argument. It gave them a space of legal argument that could be leveraged to reshape United States democracy and become a part of it. And we are going to push every lever we had to be able to make this democracy real, and to make these visions, these values, real rather than hypocritical. ♪ Voice: London, "The Gentleman's Magazine." The American Declaration reflects no honor upon either the erudition or honesty of its authors. "We hold," they say, "these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal"? Every plowman knows that they are not created equal. It certainly is no reason why the Americans should turn rebels. Atkinson: King George was determined that the Americans not be permitted to break away. He believes, and his senior ministers believe, that this slippery slope of an American insurrection will only lead to the dissolution of the British Empire. The sun never sets on the British Empire. That phrase was coined in 1773. And George is determined it's never going to set as long as he is the monarch. ♪ Narrator: And the King had sent a great fleet to New York--with thousands of troops-- to prevent that from ever happening. ♪ ♪ ♪ Announcer: Next time on "The American Revolution"... Battleground: New York. Rick Atkinson: Washington makes a number of tactical mistakes, none more serious than at Long Island. Announcer: Women continue to be at the heart of the resistance. Voice: If our men are all drawn off and we should be attacked, you would find a race of Amazons in America. [Abigail Adams] Announcer: And the reality of war. Maya Jasanoff: The United States came out of violence. Announcer: When "The American Revolution" continues next time. ♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of "The American Revolution" with interactives, games, classroom materials, and more. ♪ Announcer: "The American Revolution" DVD and Blu-ray, as well as the companion book and soundtrack, are available online and in stores. The series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video. ♪ Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. URL https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-2-an-asylum-for-mankind/

The American Revolution A Film By Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein & David Schmidt In Order to Be Free (May 1754 – May 1775) VIDEO - ends ability to view 12/15/2025 TRANSCRIPT Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. ♪ Voice: From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has arisen not to be extinguished. Without consuming, it winds its progress from nation to nation, and conquers by a silent operation. Man finds himself changed and discovers that the strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it, and that, in order to be free, it is sufficient that he wills it. Thomas Paine. [Explosion] [Drum beating slow rhythm] Voice: We know our lands are now become more valuable. The White people think we do not know their value, but we are sensible that the land is everlasting. Canasatego, Spokesman for the Six Nations. [Woman singing in Native American language] Narrator: Long before 13 British colonies made themselves into the United States, the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy-- Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Oneida, and Mohawk-- had created a union of their own that they called the Haudenosaunee-- a democracy that had flourished for centuries. Voice: We heartily recommend union. We are a powerful confederacy. And by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh strength and power. Therefore, whatever befalls you, never fall out one with another. [Canasatego] ♪ Narrator: In the spring of 1754, the celebrated scientist and writer Benjamin Franklin proposed that the British colonies form a similar union. He printed a cartoon of a snake cut into pieces above the dire warning "Join, or Die." A few weeks later at Albany, New York, Franklin and other delegates from 7 colonies agreed to his Plan of Union-- and then went home to try and sell it. But when the plan was presented at the colonial capitals, each of the individual legislatures rejected it because they did not want to give up their autonomy. [Cannonfire] The plan died, but the idea would survive. 20 years later, "Join, or Die" would be a rallying cry in the most consequential revolution in history. ♪ Voice: We are in the very midst of a revolution the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the history of nations. Objects of the most stupendous magnitude, and measures in which the lives and liberties of millions yet unborn are intimately interested, are now before us. John Adams. [Explosion] Narrator: The American Revolution was not just a clash between Englishmen over Indian land, taxes, and representation, but a bloody struggle that would engage more than 2 dozen nations, European as well as Native American, that also somehow came to be about the noblest aspirations of humankind. It was fought in hundreds of places, from the forests of Quebec to the backcountry of Georgia and the Carolinas; from the rough seas off England, France and in the Caribbean, to the towns and orchards of Indian Country. [Gunshots] The fighting would take place on roads and in villages and cities; by woods and fields, and along waterways with old American names: the Susquehanna, the Tennessee, and the Ohio; the Oriskany, the Catawba, and the Chesapeake; and along waters with newer names: the Charles, the Hudson, and the Schuylkill; the Brandywine, the Cooper, and the Ashley; and finally the York. The war grew out of a multitude of grievances lodged against the British Parliament by British subjects living an ocean away in 13 otherwise disunited colonies. It was also a savage civil war that pitted brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, American against American, killing tens of thousands of them. [Gunfire] Voice: However great the blessings to be derived from a revolution in government, the scenes of anarchy, cruelty, and blood, which usually precede it, and the difficulty of uniting a majority in favor of any system, are sufficient to make every person who has been an eyewitness recoil at the prospect of overturning empires. Abigail Adams. Narrator: The American Revolution was the first war ever fought proclaiming the unalienable rights of all people. It would change the course of human events. ♪ Man: It's our creation myth, our creation story. It tells us who we are, where we came from, uh, what our forebears believed, and, and, and what they were willing to die for. That's the most profound question any people can ask themselves. Woman: What the American Revolution gave the United States was an actual idea of a moment of origin, which many other countries in the world don't have. And it has invested these particular years of these particular people with a set of stakes that are so far beyond what any set of events and any set of people can plausibly carry that it has made the way that Americans think about this period very unreal and detached. Man: One of the most remarkable aspects of the Revolutionary War is that you had such different places come together as one nation. I'm not sure there is a state, anywhere in the world, in the late 18th century, that has as wide variety of people who inhabit it, um, and so, it really is actually kind of remarkable, the way that that nation ends up cohering, not around culture, not around religion, not around ancient history. It was coming together around a set of purposes and ideals for one common cause. [Soldier shouting orders] Voice: Events like these have seldom, if ever before, taken place on the stage of human action. For who has before seen a disciplined army formed from such raw materials? Who that was not a witness could imagine that men who came from the different parts of the continent, strongly disposed to despise and quarrel with each other, would become but one patriotic band of brothers? George Washington. ♪ [Gunfire] Voice: We have great reason to believe you intend to drive us away. Why do you come to fight in the land that God has given us? Why don't you fight in the old country and on the sea? Why do you come to fight on our land? Shingas, Lenape Nation. ♪ Narrator: For several generations, violent conquest and Old-World diseases had decimated Native populations between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains, where, by the middle of the 18th century, 13 distinct British colonies were established south of French Canada and north of Spanish Florida. Now, as land speculators and settlers eyed the Ohio River Valley beyond the Appalachians, the paramount question became who would control the North American interior. Both Protestant Britain and Catholic France-- ancient enemies that had already fought 3 wars in North America-- claimed the region. So did a host of Indian nations who had lived and farmed and hunted there for hundreds of generations. In 1754, to solidify Britain's claim, the Royal Colony of Virginia dispatched militia to protect their interests in the Ohio Country. The small force of militiamen and a handful of Native allies surrounded a group of unsuspecting French soldiers... Man: Fire! [Gunfire] and fired into them. Nearly half of the Frenchmen were killed or wounded. The rest surrendered. According to one of the Indians with the Virginians, the militia's 22-year-old commander had been the first to shoot into the enemy's encampment. If so, George Washington fired the very first shot of a global conflict that would come to be called the Seven Years' War and set the stage for the American Revolution. Soon after his surprise attack, a French and Indian force surrounded Washington and his men, forcing him, for the first and only time in his life, to surrender. A less prominent young man's military career might have ended there, but Washington was given a second chance the following year as aide-de-camp to General Edward Braddock, the British commander sent to dislodge the French at Fort Duquesne. Braddock was confident his red-coated British regulars could easily defeat anyone who stood between him and the fort. [Gunfire] But on July 9, 1755, a much smaller French and Indian force overwhelmed them. The British panicked. Braddock was mortally wounded. The Command fell to Washington. Two horses were shot from under him. Musket balls ripped through his hat and jacket. He ordered a retreat and managed to get most of his men safely off the battlefield. Washington learned two valuable lessons: British troops were not invincible, and there was no shame in retreating if you could live to fight another day. He was hailed as a hero and given overall command of Virginia's militia. But after his appeal for a Royal commission in the British Army was rejected, he retired from military service in 1758 and returned to his plantation at Mount Vernon, filled with resentment at how the British had treated him. Man: And he comes to view the people in London as people who have a condescending view of Americans. They think of him as inferior. They didn't give him a commission. I mean, when Washington is told that he didn't get a commission, he doesn't think that means he's inferior. He thinks that means the British are really stupid. Voice: There can be no sufficient reason given why we, who spend our blood and treasure in defense of the King's Dominions, are not entitled to equal preferment. We can't conceive that being Americans should deprive us of the benefits of British subjects. [Washington] [Cannonfire] Man: The Seven Years' War, against Britain's imperial rivals, France and Spain, is fought not only in North America. It's fought in the Caribbean, it's fought in Africa, it's fought in India, it's fought in the Philippines. So, even though it starts in the Ohio backcountry, with a dispute between colonists and the French and their Indian allies, it mushrooms into a global campaign that touches Europe and all parts of the world. The American colonies are just one piece on a broad, global Imperial chessboard as far as British policymakers are concerned. Narrator: Remembered in North America as the French and Indian War, the fighting went on for years until a series of British victories, won by regulars and colonial troops, ended the French Empire's presence on the continent, gave Britain Spanish Florida, and more than tripled the lands claimed by England's King. Man: France transfers to Britain all of its territory in North America. But it's a little bit like the Greek myths, you know, never wish for something too much 'cause you might get what you wished for. The British, in North America, have been hoping and praying for the defeat of the French for 80 years. And now they're victorious. Church bells are ringing. This is the moment we've all hoped for. And then it all begins to go to hell in a hand basket. ♪ Woman: Britishness in America is just everywhere. In Boston, the Town House sits at the center of Queen and King Streets. The London Bookshop was around the corner. The Crown Coffee House. The sort of ideal of, uh, fashion, of political currency, of the basis of one's rights and that sense of home. They talk about Britain even when they have never been there as home. Narrator: On Saturday, December 27, 1760, a British frigate anchored in Boston harbor. It brought with it big news. King George II had died in October. His 22-year-old grandson now reigned as George III. Crowds cheered. Bostonians were proud to be part of what had become the most far-flung empire on Earth. Man: In the 18th century, the belief was, who in the world has got it right? Only one people on Earth-- the British. They have a mixed constitution, constitutional monarch, House of Lords, an elected House of Commons. You got an element of democracy, element of aristocracy, element of monarchy. The 3 of them will check and balance each other and produce the perfect combination. Vincent Brown: We tend to think of the British Empire in America as the 13 North American colonies that became the United States. But Great Britain actually had 26 colonies in America. And, by far, the most important of those, the most profitable, the most militarily significant, and the best politically connected of those colonies were those colonies in the Caribbean. The territories that tended to have the most slaves, and exploit enslaved labor most intensively, tended to be the most profitable colonies. So, if you look at North America, for example, Massachusetts is the least profitable colony in North America and it's got the smallest percentage of slaves in its territory. The most profitable colony in North America is South Carolina. Then, when you get to a place like Jamaica or Barbados, where 90% of the population is enslaved, then you're really talking. That's where the money is being made and that's also why that's where the Royal Navy warships are concentrated. Narrator: But the 13 contiguous colonies that clung to the Atlantic seaboard were the most populous. The colonists' numbers had doubled every 25 years. By 1763, the population-- Black and White-- had reached almost 2 million. Christopher Brown: And those settlers produce for the Empire, but they also consume. They provide markets. They purchase goods that are manufactured in Britain. It's the fastest-growing part of the British economy, is the trades with North America. Man: The British Empire expanded enormously as a result of the Seven Years' War. There's real anxiety that unless this empire is tied together more tightly, by central control and direction, it will start to fragment, in much the same way as the Roman Empire was assumed to have collapsed. Narrator: For more than 150 years, London had treated its North American colonies with what one British politician would call "salutary neglect." Each colony was part of the King's dominions, but in most of them, legislatures, elected by propertied White men, made laws, levied taxes, and decided how they'd be spent. Slavery was legal everywhere, from New Hampshire to Georgia. Many of the Black people living in the colonies had been born there or in the Caribbean. But tens of thousands were from West Africa-- captured from what is now Senegal, Gambia, and Gabon; Angola, Congo, and the Ivory Coast; Nigeria, Cameroon, and Ghana. Christopher Brown: I think it's easy to underestimate the sheer diversity and variety, um, in the colonies. Close to the majority of the population in the southern colonies are African. There are French Huguenots; there are Germans. There's Scots. There's Scots-Irish. There are Native people, not just on the frontiers, but actually living in the heart of the 13 colonies. Man: Most of the population of North America is Indigenous. 70%, 80% of the continent is still controlled by Indigenous people, politically, economically, and militarily. It's not a separate place, it's not this timeless space where Native people are sort of existing in harmony with nature and that they have no interest in the outside world. Native people want the good stuff that Europeans are bringing. Europeans want the wealth that they can get from Native people. Native powers are as important to the global market economy as a place like Virginia or a place like New York. Voice: If there is a country in the world where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is America. Made up as it is of people from different nations, speaking different languages, and more different in their modes of worship, it would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable. Thomas Paine. Narrator: In Britain, 2% of the population-- lords and lesser gentry-- owned 2/3 of all the land, and most people had for centuries lived "dependent" lives, either as tenant farmers, working land belonging to aristocrats, or as landless laborers working for an employer. For most free White men in the colonies, North America was a land of opportunity. Taylor: The people who are coming from Northern Britain, as well as a lot of Scots-Irish, often are bringing the resentments that they'd been pushed off their lands by landlords. And so, there's a great sensitivity about any kind of financial exaction that could be a slippery slope leading to the kinds of dependence that they had escaped from. Narrator: The colonies were overwhelmingly agricultural. Just 3 seaport towns-- Philadelphia, Boston, and New York-- were home to more than 10,000 people. And 2 out of 3 farmers were independent, proud owners of their land. Others were indentured servants, hoping that once they fulfilled their contract, that they, too, could prosper on their own. Woman: For Americans, land and liberty are completely intertwined. White Americans see their liberty as being founded on not being a peasant on somebody's else's land. Preserving, promoting that liberty for White Americans, to them, means taking Native land. There is no other answer. Calloway: American colonists had been looking forward to the glorious day when the French and their Indian allies would be defeated, and British subjects would sweep over the Appalachian Mountains, looking for land. Woman: Maps at the time show the colonies extending well into the interior. We often see maps as benign, as descriptive, as without argument. But they're aspirational, in many ways. They're an argument rather than a conclusion. DuVal: Hundreds of Native nations still are completely intact, completely independent. In the north, is the powerful Haudenosaunee League, the Six Nations, including the Mohawks and the Senecas. To their south are the Shawnees, who have retaken the Ohio Valley in recent years and formed a huge confederacy that stretches from the Delawares, or the Lenapes, in the east to the powerful nations, including the Anishinaabe of the Great Lakes. South of there are the Chickasaws, the Cherokees, the Choctaws, the Creek Confederacy, or the Muscogees, and hundreds of other smaller nations. These are nations that fight against each other, but also that increasingly, by the late 18th century, are making some larger confederacies, in part to try to fight against settlers who have been moving onto their land in recent years. [Thunder] Narrator: Beginning in the spring of 1763, in what was called Pontiac's War, warriors from at least a dozen Native nations overran many of the British forts along the Great Lakes and in the Ohio Valley and raided settlements, killing or capturing 2,000 colonists and driving out some 4,000 more. Many colonists responded by killing any Indian they encountered. Calloway: The Brits look at this situation and say, "OK, we've just inherited all of this empire. "How on earth are we gonna stop this kind of thing happening again and again, and again?" Narrator: The British concluded that Native Americans and colonists needed to be separated, at least for a time, and so, in 1763, a Royal Proclamation declared all the territory beyond the Appalachians off-limits to settlement or speculation. Man: That prohibits White settlers from moving into these interior worlds, the same interior worlds that many colonists felt like they had just fought for. And many settlers become outraged that, uh, the British Crown has any form of imperial, um, recognition of these Indigenous populations. A kind of racial animus has formed in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War, in which many British settlers come to resent all Indians. Christopher Brown: It's not because the British Government is especially concerned about Native Americans. It's because they don't want Americans spreading out, where they'll be even more difficult to control. Part of British policy is British settlers will stay near the coast. And part of the colonists' answer is, "No. Sorry, we're not doing that." Narrator: London hoped the Proclamation would pacify the frontier. Instead, it infuriated those would-be settlers poised to move west and frustrated land speculators who saw fortunes to be made there. Calloway: And that is a huge slap in the face and a blow to those elite colonial Americans who've been indulging in this investment. Who are these people? Household names: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Washington. Narrator: After abandoning his dream of serving as an officer in the British Army, George Washington had married an enormously wealthy widow, Martha Dandridge Custis, and had made himself still wealthier speculating in western lands. He saw no reason to stop. The law was only a temporary measure to "quiet the minds of the Indians," he said, and he directed his land agent to defy the Proclamation and "secure [for him] some of the most valuable Lands" beyond the Appalachians. Man: I think the American Revolution was all about land. It's easy to make the political kinds of arguments, but I think underpinning all of that was the possibility of expansion, um, was the conflict with Indian people. Narrator: Now to enforce the hated law and to police the frontier, the British government resolved to station an army of 10,000 men in North America. The cost would be enormous-- some 360,000 British pounds a year. London did not have the money. Years of war on 4 continents had doubled the national debt. Britain was in the midst of a postwar depression, and British consumers were already burdened with higher taxes than were the subjects of any other European monarch. The average British subject paid 26 shillings a year in taxes; the average New Englander paid just one. So, some bright spark has the idea, "Well, let's tax the American colonists." Right? They should pay their share because, after all, we fought the war for them, and this is to defend them. Narrator: In 1764, the Prime Minister, George Grenville, proposed a series of 3 parliamentary statutes, all meant to make the colonies help pay for their own defense. The Currency Act, which forbade the colonists from issuing their own money, angered the tobacco-growing gentry of Virginia, who were especially hard-hit. The Sugar Act imposed taxes on imports from the Caribbean, and to enforce it, the British Navy dispatched 44 ships to stop smuggling, enraging New Englanders, whose economy had long profited from it. The rest of the colonies were largely unaffected. London assumed Americans were too disunited, too divided by self-interest, to ever be able to present a united front. But now, Grenville introduced a third tax-- the Stamp Act. It would affect nearly every colonist in every colony. No one would be able to obtain a license or a loan, transfer land or draft a will, earn a diploma, purchase a newspaper, or even buy a deck of cards unless it was printed or written on English-made paper that bore a stamp embossed by the Royal Treasury, for which they would have to pay. For the very first time, Parliament planned to tax the 13 colonies directly. The Stamp Act was scheduled to go into effect on November 1, 1765. Taylor: Colonists said, "No taxation without representation." What they meant was, no taxation except by our elected Legislature, here in our particular colony. These taxes were very small, but the fear was, "If we give into this precedent, "if we pay the small Stamp Tax now, what will they do in the future?" [Gavel banging] Narrator: In the Virginia House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry introduced a series of resolutions asserting that only the General Assembly of that colony had the "right and power to lay taxes" on its people. Henry went on to declare that just as Julius Caesar had his assassin Brutus, George III should understand that some American resister was sure "to stand up in favor of his country." When some delegates shouted "Treason!" others who were present remembered he responded, "If this be treason, make the most of it!" [Gavel banging rapidly] In Boston, 42-year-old Samuel Adams helped rally the opposition against implementation of the Stamp Act. A failure as a brewer and as a collector of local taxes, Adams was a master of propaganda. His mission, he once explained, was to "keep the attention of [my] fellow-citizens awake to their grievances." Voice: If our trade may be taxed, why not our lands? Why not the produce of our lands and everything we possess or make use of? If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are paid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves? [Samuel Adams] Woman: In terms of masters of communication, Samuel Adams was really up there. He has an amazing ability to translate a concept into easily digested words. And, therefore, to make, um, what seem--what could seem like fairly abstract ideas very vital and very urgent, and he's tireless. So, he's able to produce page after page after page, new offenses, new crimes, new injustices. Narrator: Pamphleteers took up the cause, declaring the Stamp Act illegitimate. Most of the colonies' 24 weekly newspapers-- the businesses that would be hit hardest--followed suit. Those that didn't faced being shut down by their journeymen and apprentices. Taylor: Newspapers are very important. The colonial public is more literate than any other people in the world outside of Scandinavia. There's also word of mouth, conversation, absolutely essential. Man: It became very common to discuss how you govern people and how people are free. These ideas had filtered into the general population. Narrator: Those ideas now led to protests in the streets. In Boston, in August of 1765, a crowd formed-- made up of men and a handful of women, free Blacks and runaway slaves, poorly paid or unemployed workers who resented the rich, and apprentices in their off-hours, just looking for trouble. They hanged in effigy the local man designated to become distributor of stamps and went on to invade the home of the lieutenant governor, destroying everything in sight and carrying off all of his furniture and 900 British pounds in cash. In Newport, Rhode Island, another mob surrounded the stamp distributor, forced him to resign, and to lead them in chants of "Property and Liberty." In Charleston, South Carolina, White anti-Stamp Act protestors marched through the streets chanting, "Liberty!" But when enslaved South Carolinians echoed their cries, frightened enslavers called out the militia to patrol the street. The Maryland appointee was driven from Annapolis with only the clothes on his back. By the time the Stamp Act was supposed to go into effect, none of the 13 colonies had an official in place willing to enforce it. Schiff: Part of our Revolution I think we have largely sanitized. I think we've forgotten much of the street warfare, of the anarchy, of the provocations that took place. Voice: A black cloud seems to hang over us. It appears to me that there will be an end to all government here, for the people are all running mad. James Parker. Narrator: When a crowd surrounded the British Army headquarters in New York City, General Thomas Gage made sure his men held their fire, for fear, he said, that 50,000 angry colonists would swarm into the city and start a civil war. General Gage was in charge of all British soldiers in North America. He had been sent to maintain peace on the frontier. Instead, he had found himself at loggerheads with colonists convinced they were being denied their rights as Englishmen. Gage understood what was happening. Voice: The spirit of democracy is strong amongst them. The question is not of the inexpediency of the Stamp Act or the inability of the colonies to pay the tax, but that it is contrary to their rights and not subject to the legislative power of Great Britain. [Gage] Conway: Thomas Gage was married to an American. He owned land in the colonies. He was, in many ways, embedded within colonial society. So, he was particularly reluctant, I think, to engage in conflict. Taylor: In the colonial world and the European world, democracy had a bad name. It was a synonym for "anarchy." It had a reputation as being turbulent, as a system exploited by ruthless politicians called "demagogues"-- people who pandered to the passions of common people in order to whip them up and get them to do passionate things, and to get government to serve them and to prey upon the property of more wealthy people. So, democracy is not the aspiration that creates the Revolution. The Revolution creates the conditions for people to aspire to have a democracy. Narrator: Meanwhile, hundreds of merchants in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia pledged to boycott British goods until the Stamp Act was repealed. To keep up the opposition, some lawyers, merchants, and skilled craftsmen established an association, the Sons of Liberty, and soon had chapters from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Charleston, South Carolina working together. Voice: The colonies until now were ever at variance and foolishly jealous of each other; they are now united for their common defense against what they believe to be oppression; nor will they soon forget the weight which this close union gives them. Dr. Joseph Warren. Narrator: The colonies now accounted for 1/3 of Britain's trade. With the boycott, some manufacturers were forced to close their doors. Thousands of workers lost their jobs. The town councils of 27 English trading and manufacturing towns pleaded for repeal. By mid-February 1766, the British cabinet was looking for a way out of the impasse. It asked Benjamin Franklin, then living in London as a lobbyist for Pennsylvania, to appear before the House of Commons, hoping that hearing from the best-known American on Earth would help. Franklin patiently answered 174 questions. What had been the colonists' attitude toward Great Britain before the Stamp Act was enacted? Voice: The best in the world. They had not only a respect but an affection for Great Britain; for its laws, its customs, its manners, and even a fondness for its fashions, which greatly increased the commerce. [Franklin] Narrator: "Would the colonies now accept a compromise?" he was asked. "No," he answered. "It was a matter of principle." "Might a military force compel the colonists to pay the tax?" "No," Franklin said. Voice: Suppose a military force is sent into America. They will find nobody in arms. What are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion. They may indeed make one. [Franklin] ["Rule Britannia" playing] Narrator: 8 days after Franklin's testimony, the House of Commons voted to repeal the Stamp Act. British workers would return to their factories. Merchant vessels set sail again for the colonies. When the news reached America in April, the Sons of Liberty disbanded; their rights as Englishmen seemed to have been restored. New York commissioned a statue of King George, wearing a Roman toga, to be placed on the Bowling Green at the tip of Manhattan. But beginning in the summer of 1767, the British government, still struggling with war debt, would win passage of 5 new laws--the Townshend Acts. One of them especially angered colonists. It imposed new taxes on 4 items manufactured in England-- glass, lead, paper, and painter's colors-- and on a fifth item, tea, grown in China but re-exported from Britain and loved by the colonists, rich and poor alike. Newspaper editors and pamphleteers denounced the new taxes. A revived and more militant Sons of Liberty called for a new boycott of British goods. Women, who normally played a subordinate role in public life and had almost no legal rights, joined the resistance by the thousands as "Daughters of Liberty." Woman: Crisis changes people. And it gave women different ideas about what they should be doing. DuVal: Women were the main consumers in colonial society and they were the ones who made sure the boycotts worked. Women stopped drinking tea. Women started making their own fabric. Women started making toys for their children. And they didn't just stop buying British things and start making their own things; they publicized it. Taylor: One of the key forms of political theater during the Resistance Movement would be for a local minister to invite the women of the community to come down to the church and to spend the day spinning and weaving cloth. And it would be a competition to see which community could produce the most homespun. It would be published in the newspaper. And these women would be praised as great American Patriots for having produced so much homespun cloth. DuVal: And reporters would report, "The ladies of Boston, "The ladies of New York "are the most patriotic. They are at the forefront of this protest movement." If women hadn't done that, the protest movement and eventually the Revolution would have gone nowhere. Voice: Let the Daughters of Liberty nobly arise, And though we've no voice but a negative here, Stand firmly resolved and bid them to see, That rather than freedom, we'll part with our tea. Hannah Griffitts. Voice: I wish to see America boast of Empire-- of Empire not established in the thralldom of nations but on a more equitable base. Though such a happy state, such an equal government, may be considered by some as a Utopian dream; yet, you and I can easily conceive of nations and states under more liberal plans. Mercy Otis Warren. Narrator: The political philosopher and historian Mercy Otis Warren would publish plays and poems that satirized Royal officials with names like Judge Meagre and Sir Spendall. No woman played a more important role in promoting resistance. Tensions with England continued to grow. In Boston, in June of 1768, a ship called the "Liberty" was seized by the Royal Navy. Its owner, John Hancock, was the richest merchant in the city, a prominent member of the Sons of Liberty-- and a practiced smuggler. A big, angry crowd formed at the wharf. Voice: The mobs here are very different from those in Old England. These Sons of Violence are attacking houses, breaking windows, beating, stoning, and bruising several gentlemen belonging to the Customs. Ann Hulton. Voice: The town has been under a kind of democratical despotism for a considerable time. And it has not been safe for people to act or speak contrary to the sentiments of the ruling demagogues. Thomas Gage. Narrator: On orders from London, General Gage sent two regiments of regulars from Nova Scotia, not to defend Boston, but to police it. Most Bostonians were appalled. Woman: An army during wartime makes sense. Of course, you need that. But an army during peacetime is a standing army. And if you have an army during peacetime, the thinking is that its only use is to turn on poor, innocent subjects. Voice: To have a standing army! Good God! What can be worse to a people who have tasted the sweets of liberty? Things are come to an unhappy crisis. All confidence is at an end. And the moment there is any bloodshed, all affection will cease. Reverend Andrew Eliot. Voice: The spirit of emigration to America, which seems to be epidemic through Great Britain, is likely to depopulate the Mother Country, and leave our ancient kingdom the resort of owls and dragons, and other solitary animals, who shun the light, and seem displeased at the human race. "The Edinburgh Amusement." [Bell tolling] Narrator: The steadily rising tensions between England and its North American colonies did not slow the steady stream of English, Scots-Irish, German, and a small number of Jewish immigrants eager to carve out new lives within the North American interior. Christopher Brown: Part of what really sets the North American experience apart is just how many European settlers are coming to North America. [Horse nickers] And they keep coming. 15,000 a year. A kind of empire was already in view. Narrator: Thousands of new arrivals and American-born colonists poured down the Great Wagon Road that ran all the way from Philadelphia to the Carolinas. The backcountry there was already the home of Native peoples, including the Catawbas and Cherokees. Voice: Upon the whole, it is the best country in the world for a poor man to go to and do well. And the farther they go back in the country, the land turns richer and better. Here, a man of small substance, if upon a precarious footing at home, can, at once, secure to himself a handsome, independent living, and do well for himself and posterity. All modes of Christian worship are here tolerated. "Scotus Americanus." Taylor: Colonial America is a very Protestant place. And it's founded when the norm in Europe was that whoever your sovereign was got to set what the religion should be. Narrator: Congregationalism was the established church in nearly all New England colonies. The official religion in much of the South was the Church of England. But those who belonged to other faiths resented being forced by colonial legislatures to pay the salaries of clergymen who did not minister to them. None were more resentful than the backcountry settlers in the Carolinas-- Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists. Taylor: And what they hear from their ministers about whether resisting their sovereign or supporting their sovereign is the right thing to do as a Christian duty, that will matter a lot. [Drum beating rhythmically] Voice: I was born in Boston in America in the year 1760. In the time I was at school, the troubles began to come on. And I was told the day of judgment was near at hand, and the moon would turn into blood, and the world would be set on fire. John Greenwood. Narrator: Shortly before noon on Saturday, October 1, 1768, 8-year-old John Greenwood left his home in Boston's North End and hurried toward the waterfront. There, riding at anchor in a great arc, he saw 14 British warships, their cannon trained upon the city. Boats swarmed between the ships and the end of Long Wharf, ferrying hundreds of British red-coated regulars. General Gage's occupying army had arrived. The crowds that lined the street were for the most part silent and sullen. But it was not the history being made that impressed young John Greenwood that day. It was the irresistible music played by Afro-Caribbean men and boys in colorful uniforms. Voice: I was so fond of hearing the fife and drum played by the British that somehow or another, I got an old split fife, and fixed it by puttying up the crack to make it sound, and then learned to play several tunes. I believe it was the sole cause of all my travails and disasters. [Greenwood] [Fife playing upbeat tune] Narrator: Before long, the boy was playing well enough to become a fifer for a local militia. "The flag of our company," he remembered, "was an English flag." They would not be English forever. Half the newly arrived troops were housed in barracks on Castle Island, but orders from London had been clear. It was "His Majesty's pleasure," they said, that the rest of the troops "be quartered in that town." [Man shouting orders] For 17 months, Boston was an occupied city. The rattle of drums awakened residents every morning. Passersby were routinely stopped and searched. Many soldiers had brought their wives and children; others courted Boston girls, or were pursued by them. 40 troops were married during the occupation, and more than 100 of their offspring were baptized. But some soldiers got drunk, robbed people, insulted women, profaned the Sabbath. There were brawls, stabbings, suits and countersuits. From London, Benjamin Franklin was concerned. Voice: Some indiscretion on the part of Boston's warmer people, or of the soldiery, may occasion a tumult. And if blood is once drawn, there is no foreseeing how far the mischief may spread. [Franklin] Narrator: On the evening of March 5, 1770, there were tussles between Bostonians and British soldiers all across the city. At the Royal Customs House, a crowd of young men surrounded a lone sentry and pelted him with snowballs and chunks of ice. Convinced a city-wide uprising was underway, Captain Thomas Preston raced several armed grenadiers to the scene. More snowballs and rocks and oyster shells greeted them. They fixed bayonets. [Bells tolling] Zabin: Somebody starts ringing the church bells, which in Boston is a sign for fire. Some people are bringing buckets to be part of a bucket brigade. Some people are drawn by the noise. It's very hard, in fact impossible, to know what happened, which is that somebody yells, "Fire." [Gunfire] All we know really is that when the smoke cleared, there are 5 people dead or dying. Narrator: The first was a tall dock-worker-- part Native-American, part African-American-- named Crispus Attucks. The second was a ropemaker named Samuel Gray, who was standing next to Attucks. The third was James Caldwell, a sailor who was in town, it was said, to call upon the girl he hoped to marry. The terrified crowd began to scatter. John Greenwood's older brother Isaac was there, too, and escaped unharmed, but a ricocheting ball hit their friend Samuel Maverick in the back. He died in agony the following morning. Maverick, an apprentice, had shared a bed in the Greenwood home with the now 9-year-old John, who recalled that after his friend's death, he deliberately slept in pitch-black darkness, hoping "to see his spirit." Zabin: People start arguing, already, even before they go to bed, about what happened. Paul Revere creates probably the most famous engraving of the 18th century, which he titles the "Bloody Massacre." The British Army is very anxious to try to spin this as a story of self-defense... but the language of massacre is the one that holds. Narrator: A fifth man, a leathermaker named Patrick Carr, would die several days later. 10,000 mourners accompanied the coffins of the dead to the Old Granary Cemetery. Voice: The Fatal Fifth of March can never be forgotten. The horrors of that dreadful night are but too deeply impressed on our hearts-- when our streets were stained with the blood of our brethren; and our eyes were tormented with the sight of the mangled bodies of the dead. Joseph Warren. Narrator: Not everyone was grieving. An Anglican clergyman, Mather Byles, asked a fellow cleric, "Which is better, "to be ruled by one tyrant 3,000 miles away or by 3,000 tyrants not a mile away." [Gavel banging rapidly] Captain Preston was found not guilty of ordering his men to fire. The other 8 soldiers were put on trial separately. Samuel Adams' younger cousin, John Adams, risking his reputation, served as the soldiers' attorney. Most of his clients were acquitted as well. Two were found guilty of manslaughter. They were branded on their right thumbs so that if they were ever charged with another crime, they could not make a claim of innocence again. The British government was relieved by the outcome of the trials. Most of the regulars were withdrawn to Castle William-- their harbor fortress. Once again, American colonists had forced the British to back down and Parliament had already repealed all but one of the Townshend Acts. Only the duty on tea remained. ♪ Voice: Yorktown stood unrivaled in Virginia; its commanding view, its vast expanse of water, its excellent harbor. It was the seat of wealth and elegance, one of the most delightful situations in America, at least, my infantine imagination painted it so. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: Betsy Ambler was 6 years old in 1771-- the oldest child in a prominent Yorktown, Virginia family. A young Thomas Jefferson had once hoped to marry her mother, Rebecca, but she had married Jacquelin Ambler instead. He insisted that all his daughters get a proper education. He was a planter and merchant in Yorktown, the bustling deepwater port near Virginia's colonial capital at Williamsburg. On Yorktown docks, enslaved Africans entered America, and the tobacco they harvested went out to the world. Though Betsy's father was the Royal Collector of Customs, he and his family had grown more and more sympathetic to their neighbors' calls for liberty. Voice: Young as I was, the word "liberty" so constantly sounding in my ears seemed to convey an idea of everything that was desirable on Earth. True, that in attaining it, I was to see every comfort abandoned. [Ambler] Voice: Thomas Hutchinson, Governor of Massachusetts: There is now a disposition in all the colonies to let the controversy with the kingdom subside. Hancock and most of the party are quiet and all of them abate of their virulence, except Samuel Adams. [Hutchinson] Narrator: For 2 years, Samuel Adams kept up a steady stream of essays, in which he warned again and again that the lull was only temporary, that Parliament remained bent on imposing tyranny. ♪ Kamensky: Those who have interests in keeping the political story alive and growing, have to really work to keep it front and center, to define the problem as something present in the minds of ordinary people. Why would I care about this as a--as a woman? Why would I care about this as a small farmer? [Sawing] Narrator: In 1772, events beyond Boston gave Adams the ammunition he needed to spread his radical message throughout the colonies. In April, when a sawmill owner in New Hampshire was charged with commandeering pine trees earmarked for the masts of royal warships, a mob drove the British officials who came to arrest him out of town. [Fireball] In June, when the "Gaspée," a British customs schooner, ran aground while chasing smugglers, angry Rhode Islanders set it afire. And that fall, Adams learned that beginning the following year, the British Treasury would use the revenue from tea to pay the salaries of the most important Massachusetts officials, including all the colony's judges. The judges' first loyalty would now be to the Crown, not the colonists. There would be no way to ensure impartial justice. Adams drafted a fiery response. Voice: Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. [Samuel Adams] ♪ Narrator: Printed copies of his writings were sent to town meetings throughout the colony. So-called Committees of Correspondence soon linked advocates of resistance in more than 100 Massachusetts towns and districts. Eventually, their network would spread into other colonies. Schiff: "Committees of Correspondence" is an effort to try to bring all of the colonies onto the same page, to make them feel as if they have a common cause, words which had really not been used before. And it's through those committees that, essentially, the Revolutionary spirit diffuses itself throughout the colonies. Voice: Let not the iron hand of tyranny ravish our laws and seize the badge of freedom. Is it not high time for the people of this country explicitly to declare whether they will be freemen or slaves? Samuel Adams. Voice: I need not point out the absurdity of your exertions for liberty, while you have slaves in your houses. If you are sensible that slavery is, in itself, and in its consequences, a great evil, why will you not pity and relieve the poor, distressed, enslaved Africans? Caesar Sarter. Kamensky: Slavery as a metaphor is in the conversation from the beginning. Everywhere there's slavery, there are people thinking about freedom. Nothing shows the desire for freedom like the struggles of subject peoples. Voice: I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat: What pangs excruciating must molest, What sorrows labour in my parent's breast? Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd: Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway? Phillis Wheatley. Narrator: Phillis Wheatley, who was stolen from Senegambia in West Africa and taken to Massachusetts as a young girl, was renamed for the slave ship the "Phillis" that brought her and the Wheatley family that bought her. In Boston, the Wheatleys saw to her education, and as a teenager, still enslaved, her "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" won favor on both sides of the Atlantic. It was the first published book by an African-American writer. Voice: How well the cry for liberty, and the reverse disposition for the exercise of oppressive power over others agree, I humbly think it does not require the penetration of a philosopher to determine. [Wheatley] Voice: I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in the province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me-- fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have. You know my mind upon this subject. Abigail Adams. Voice: Ye men of sense and virtue-- Ye advocates for American liberty-- Bear a testimony against a vice which degrades human nature and dissolves that universal tie of benevolence which should connect all the children of men together in one great family. The plant of liberty is of so tender a nature that it cannot thrive long in the neighborhood of slavery. Benjamin Rush. Christopher Brown: Part of what happens in the years before the American War is that liberties are kind of broken out of a national context. These are not English liberties. These are transcendent liberties. These are liberties that all individuals have by the nature of being human. [Waves crashing] Man: Heave away! Voice: The Americans have made a discovery, or think they have made one, that we mean to oppress them. We have made a discovery, or think we have made one, that they intend to rise in rebellion. Our severity has increased their ill behavior. We know not how to advance. They know not how to retreat. Some party must give way. Edmund Burke. Narrator: In October of 1773, 7 ships set out from Plymouth, England for North American ports. The cargo hold of each was filled with crates of tea. It all belonged to the Crown- chartered East India Company, which was on the brink of bankruptcy. To save the company, Lord North, the Prime Minister, had won passage of a new Tea Act, designed to undercut smuggling and reduce the cost of tea. Kamensky: It seemed to Parliament like a "Win-Win-Win." Shore up the East India Company, take it more in-house as a governmental organization, and give Americans cheaper, non-smuggled tea at the same time. Narrator: But colonial merchants who had profited handsomely from smuggling portrayed the new law as yet another assault on American rights. John Adams wrote that immediate resistance was necessary because of its "attack upon a fundamental principle of the [British] constitution." No American had consented to the tea tax; therefore, no American need pay it. Government-appointed tea agents were to be persuaded-- or coerced--into refusing to receive any tea. In Charleston, South Carolina, the Sons of Liberty "convinced" an agent not to accept the shipment meant for him. In Philadelphia, the Governor of Pennsylvania talked a ship's captain into sailing back to Britain. In Boston, when 3 of the ships loaded with tea arrived, thousands of Bostonians and supporters from outlying towns gathered at the Old South Meeting House and declared that the tea should remain on board and be sent back to Britain. On December 16, 1773, hundreds looked on from shore as between 50 and 60 men-- rich as well as poor-- all crudely disguised as Native Americans, climbed into boats and headed for the ships. Deloria: They dress like Indians, kinda. It's an expression of what it is to be American. When you claim to be Indian, you're claiming to be here, aboriginal, part of this continent. And you're drawing a really bright line between yourself and the Mother Country. [Crates smashing; people shouting] Narrator: The men banged open 342 crates and poured more than 46 tons of tea into the harbor. [Splashing] No other property was disturbed. And when one of the boarders was seen filling his coat pockets with fistfuls of tea, he received a "severe bruising." Taylor: This is an assault on the property of the East India Company, and it's an assault upon the pride and the power of Parliament. So, it's a very big deal. Protesting taxes is one thing. Destroying private property worth thousands of pounds sterling, that's something else. Narrator: In Manhattan, the King had grown so unpopular in some quarters that royal officials thought it prudent to surround his statue with an iron fence. A law warning of the dire consequences for anyone who dared deface the statue... [Gunshot] did not prevent one New Yorker from firing a musket ball through its cheek... [Gunshot] and another one through its neck. ♪ Voice: The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of man. But when the checks of conscience are thrown aside, or the moral sense weakened, humanity is obscured. Mercy Otis Warren. Voice: The most shocking cruelty was exercised a few nights ago upon a poor old man named Malcolm. There's no law that knows a punishment for the greatest crimes beyond what this is, of cruel torture. Ann Hulton. Narrator: In Boston, in January of 1774, a small boy on a sled accidentally ran into a minor customs official named John Malcolm, who cursed and threatened to beat him. When George Hewes, who had helped dump the tea into Boston harbor, tried to intervene, Malcolm knocked him unconscious with his cane. [People shouting] Malcolm was hauled from his house. He was stripped nearly naked, hot tar was poured over him, scalding his flesh, and then he was covered with feathers. ♪ Jasanoff: Tarring and feathering is something that has come down to us as an almost kind of comical thing because you see these people with chicken feathers on them, but this is hideous stuff. Boiling pitch is poured onto somebody's skin. The burns are unbelievable. And it's all part, also, of a kind of spectacle of violence that is a really important part of this. And this is why the feathers are put on, in part. It's that you are trying to humiliate and shame the victim. [Shouting continues] Narrator: Hundreds jeered as Malcolm was pulled through the freezing streets for 5 hours. His assailants stopped here and there to whip him. It would be 8 weeks before he was able to leave his bed. ♪ Voice: Boston has been the ringleader of all violence and opposition to the execution of the laws of this country. Boston has not only therefore to answer for its own violence but for having incited other places to tumults. Lord North, Prime Minister. Narrator: Lord North hoped, he said, to make America lie "prostrate at his feet." They "must fear you," he added, "before they will love you." Now that they had destroyed Crown property, it was clear that much of America was not afraid. North would do his best to change that. In the process, he would try to end every vestige of self-rule prized by the people of Massachusetts. First, the Prime Minister convinced the Parliament to repeal that colony's long-standing charter, then dissolved the elected assembly again and limited each town and village to just one town meeting a year. The port of Boston would be closed until all its residents had paid in full for the tea just 60 of them had destroyed. That came to nearly 5 British pounds per taxpayer-- more than a craftsman made in a month. It means no ships going in, no ships going out, no work for sailors, no work for merchants. It means hunger in Boston. Narrator: British officers were also now empowered to commandeer vacant homes and barns to quarter their troops. Americans would denounce the new laws as the "Intolerable Acts." ♪ In England on leave, General Gage was summoned by George III. He told the King what he wanted to hear. The people of Massachusetts pretended to be "lyons," he said. But if England sent in enough troops, they would undoubtedly "prove very meek." General Gage was given a new title-- Governor of Massachusetts in addition to Commander-in-Chief-- and a new mission: to enforce the new Acts, end Boston's resistance, and demonstrate to all the colonies the folly of defying their King and Parliament. Gage and 4 fresh regiments set sail for Boston in mid-April, 1774. [Sheet flapping] Christopher Brown: The British Government sees this as a police action, that if they can punish Boston and shut down Massachusetts, contain the rebellion, that the other colonies would get the message and that order could be restored with some grumbling. I think the British Government is genuinely surprised, um, to see the ways that the other 12 colonies rally to Massachusetts' cause. Taylor: You are not gonna have an American Revolution unless you have Virginia onboard. And the leaders of Massachusetts understood this. It was not going to be easy. There were deep prejudices between the two regions because of the differences in their ethnic mix and in the nature of their cultures. And they hadn't previously had any kind of trust for one another. Narrator: But in Virginia, the House of Burgesses declared a day of "fasting, humiliation and prayer" in solidarity with the people of Massachusetts. And when the royal governor Lord Dunmore declared the very idea an insult to the King and dissolved the assembly, its members reconvened in Williamsburg's Raleigh Tavern. The Virginians warned that "an attack made "on one of our sister colonies is an attack made on all British America" and called for a "Continental Congress" to meet in Philadelphia in September to see how the colonies might resist together. All the 13 colonies except Georgia-- where people were afraid to lose British protection in the event of an Indian war-- agreed to take part. The Prime Minister's effort to intimidate the other colonies by punishing Massachusetts had instead begun to unite them. [Bell tolling] Voice: Lebanon, Connecticut. Yesterday, the bells of the town early began to toll a solemn peal, and continued the whole day. The shops in town were all shut and silent. Our brethren in Boston are suffering for their noble exertions in the cause of liberty-- the common cause of all America-- and we are heartily willing to unite our little powers for the just rights and privileges of our country. [Lebanon Town Meeting] ♪ Narrator: Now news of a new offense by the King's ministers-- The Quebec Act-- would bind them still more tightly together. Jasanoff: The British decide that it would make sense to grant a degree of civil liberties to those French-speaking Catholics in Quebec in order to integrate them into British governance and make sure that they have a population that can sort of live with British authority. Narrator: Protestants, who equated the Papacy with despotism, were outraged. The Act also extended Quebec's borders west and south, adding to the fury of land speculators and would-be settlers. DuVal: To British colonists, the Quebec Act was another slap in the face. The British Government is looking more and more, with each of these acts, like the problem, instead of the protector that it's supposed to be. ♪ Narrator: That summer, beginning in Western Massachusetts, in town after town, crowds of angry armed men forced the resignations of the councilors, judges, and magistrates appointed by General Gage. Juries refused to serve. Courts closed down. When Gage learned that rebels in the towns surrounding Boston had quietly begun to remove some of the precious gunpowder every town was allotted for its defense, he sent 250 soldiers to the stone powder-house in Charles Town to confiscate it. Angry colonists saw the raid as yet another provocation. [Horse nickers] The Massachusetts Assembly defiantly reconstituted itself and soon set about creating a clandestine provincial fighting force, tens of thousands strong. Man: March! There had been organized town militias in New England since the earliest days in case of trouble with Indians. Every man between the ages of 16 and 60 was expected to arm himself and take part. [Horse nickers] It was also now suggested that each town assign a quarter of its militiamen to a special company, ready to act, they said, at "a minute's warning." Neighboring colonies followed the Massachusetts example. [Tapping] The Connecticut Assembly urged every town to double its supply of gunpowder, ball, and flints. Rhode Island ordered all militia officers to make their men ready to "march to the assistance of any Sister Colony" whenever they were needed. Voice: The line of conduct seems now chalked out. The New England governments are in a state of rebellion. Blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent. King George III. ♪ Voice: Philadelphia-- The regularity and elegance of this city are very striking. It is situated upon a neck of land about 2 miles wide between the River Delaware and the River Schuylkill. And the uniformity of this city is disagreeable to some. I like it. Front Street is near the river, then 2nd Street, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th. The cross streets are named for forest and fruit trees-- Pear Street, Apple Street, Walnut Street, Chestnut Street, et cetera. John Adams. [Bell tolling] Narrator: In the autumn of 1774, when 12 colonies sent delegates to the Continental Congress, Philadelphia was the logical place to assemble. It was home to some 40,000 people and was the most populous city in British America-- larger than New York, more than twice the size of Boston. The delegates met in the newly constructed Carpenters' Hall, hoping to develop a common means of resistance while still somehow remaining within the Empire. It would not be easy. Adjacent colonies quarreled over borders. Small ones feared domination by large ones. And half the delegates were lawyers, fond of arguing. Voice: This assembly is like no other that ever existed. Every man in it is a "great man"-- an orator, a critic, a statesman--and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory, his criticism, and his political abilities. [John Adams] [Men arguing] Schiff: You have a group of men who have hailed from essentially different countries, who observe different religions, who conform to different habits, who are really meeting each other for the first time. No one is really sure what to do, at first. Is this meant to be a negotiation? Is this meant to be another boycott effort? Is this meant to be some kind of serious rupture with the Mother Country? Voice: Their plan is to frighten and intimidate. But supposing the worst, you have nothing to fear from anyone but the New England provinces. As for the Southern people, they talk very high, but it's nothing more than words. Their numerous slaves in the bowels of their country and the Indians at their backs will always keep them quiet. Thomas Gage. Narrator: General Gage assured London the Congress was a "motley crew," unlikely to achieve anything. The "motley crew" included some of the colonies' leading political figures-- Samuel and John Adams from Massachusetts; John Jay, a young attorney from New York, convinced some solution short of war with the Mother Country must still be found; and Patrick Henry, who argued that ties with Britain had already been severed. "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders, are no more," Henry said. "I am not a Virginian, but an American." But a fellow delegate from Virginia spoke for many. "Independency" was not the wish of any "thinking man in all North America." Voice: I shall not undertake to say where the line between Great Britain and the colonies should be drawn, but I am clearly of opinion that one ought to be drawn. The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us; till custom and use will make us as tame and abject slaves as the Blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway. George Washington. Ellis: Most people in 1774 would say they're British. They wouldn't say they're Americans. The change happens in '75, '76, and the major source of it is a thing that's created called the "Continental Association." The Association is an engine for creating revolution. Narrator: The Continental Association was not a committee, but a phased program that forbade Americans from importing British goods as of December 1, 1774, from consuming British goods as of March 1, 1775, and barred them from exporting American goods to Britain beginning on September 10th-- if London still had not given in to their demands. Among the so-called "British goods" the delegates intended to boycott were enslaved Africans-- whom they agreed not to import after December 1, 1775. The delegates made plans to hold a second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 6 months. "We must change our Habits," John Adams wrote, "our Prejudices, our Palates, "our Taste in Dress, Furniture, Equipage, Architecture, et cetera." To make sure Americans did so, every community was expected to establish its own Committee of Safety in order to "attentively observe the conduct of all persons." By the spring of 1775, some 7,000 men had been elected to serve on such committees throughout the colonies, tasked with spying on their neighbors, opening their mail, poring over merchants' records in search of suspicious transactions. Most of those suspected of failing to observe the boycott or who were overheard criticizing resistance were ostracized, their names and supposed crimes printed in the local newspaper, their neighbors forbidden even to speak with them. [Men shouting] Ellis: Every town, every hamlet, every village has a Committee of Safety and Inspection. And they go house to house. You have to take a "Loyalty Oath." There's millions of conversations. And that's when the change happens. Voice: If we must be enslaved, let it be by a King at least, not by a parcel of upstart, lawless committeemen. If I must be devoured, let me be devoured by the jaws of a lion, and not gnawed to death by rats and vermin. Reverend Samuel Seabury. Narrator: Harassed, shamed, shunned, censored, sometimes attacked, opponents of resistance-- called "Loyalists"-- saw the Committees of Safety as more tyrannical than Parliament could ever be. Nathaniel Philbrick: There was a sense of brutality that went with the Patriot cause that said, "No, you are wrong, and we are right." To be a Loyalist didn't mean that you were evil. It just meant that you felt a great sense of loyalty to the country that had made the prosperity that was the American colonies at this point possible. Taylor: The Loyalists are essentially the conservatives. They're the people who believe in law and order. They don't like mobs. They don't like committees telling them what to do. [Thunder] They don't see King George III as a tyrant. Voice: We are preparing for war. To fight with whom? Not with France and Spain, whom we have been used to think our natural enemies-- but with Great Britain, our parent country. My heart recoils at the thought. Andrew Eliot. [Sea gulls crying] Voice: If a civil war commences between Great Britain and her colonies, either the Mother Country, by one great exertion, may ruin both herself and America, or the Americans, by a lingering contest, will gain an independency. And in this case and whilst a new, a flourishing, and an extensive empire of freemen is established on the other side of the Atlantic, you will be left to the bare possession of your foggy islands. Catharine Macaulay. Narrator: General Gage now warned London: "The whole Continent has embraced the cause of the town of Boston." Voice: If you think 10,000 men sufficient, send 20,000. You will save both blood and treasure in the end. A large force will terrify and engage many to join you. A middling one will encourage resistance and gain no friends. [Gage] Narrator: But General Gage was sent far fewer men than he'd hoped for. And he was ordered to move decisively against the rebels and arrest their leaders. Samuel Adams and John Hancock had fled Boston and found refuge with friends in Lexington, a small town-- just 750 people and 400 cows-- on the road to the larger town of Concord, some 18 miles northwest of Boston. [Drums beating rhythmically] Gage planned to send troops through Lexington to Concord, where he had been told arms and provisions meant for a sizeable rebel army were hidden. Success would depend on the strictest secrecy. [Dog barking] Late on the evening of April 18, 1775, 700 British regulars were awakened, not told where they were going, and silently marched through the dark empty streets of Boston. A fleet of boats was waiting to row them across the Charles River to the Cambridge marshes. For all the care the British had taken to keep their plans secret, Dr. Joseph Warren, one of Boston's leading rebels, got wind of it. You don't move 1,000 men out of Boston in the middle of the night without arousing a response. American rebel leaders send warning. Two men, William Dawes and a silversmith named Paul Revere, are sent in different routes to alert Samuel Adams and others in Lexington that the British, in fact, are coming. Narrator: Before the two men left, Revere saw to it that 2 lanterns appeared in the belfry of the Old North Church just long enough to alert sympathizers on the mainland that the regulars were crossing by water to Cambridge, not marching overland through Roxbury. [Racing hoofbeats] Voice: Time will never erase the horrors of that midnight cry, when we were roused from the benign slumbers of the season with the dire alarm, that 1,000 of the troops of George III were gone forth to murder the peaceful inhabitants of the surrounding villages. Hannah Winthrop. ♪ Narrator: Just after midnight on the morning of April 19, 1775, Revere reached Lexington and the house where Adams and Hancock were hiding. "The Regulars are coming out!" he shouted. The two rebel leaders fled into the night. [Bell tolling] Lexington's militiamen, summoned from their beds, dressed, gathered up whatever weapons they happened to own, and hurried to the town green. Their commander was Captain John Parker, a farmer, who, like many of his 70 men, had fought alongside the British in the French and Indian War. ♪ Then, shortly before dawn, someone spotted 6 companies of redcoats-- about 250 men--approaching at a rapid clip. On horseback in the lead was Major John Pitcairn, a Scottish veteran with nothing but scorn for colonists. Captain Parker knew he could not stop the British, but he wanted to impress them with his men's resolve. Parker told them not to fire first. A British officer shouted, "Throw down your arms, ye villians, ye rebels, and disperse." Atkinson: They begin to disperse. Many of them turn their backs and start to walk away. [Click, gunshot] A shot rings out. No one knows where the shot came from. Man: Fire! [Gunshots] That leads to promiscuous shooting... mostly by the British. [Heavy gunfire] It's not a battle. It's not a skirmish. It's a massacre. Now blood has been shed. Now the man on your left has been shot through the head. Your neighbor on the right has been badly wounded. You can't put that genie back in the bottle. Narrator: 8 militiamen died on the Lexington Green. 9 more were wounded. The rest fled. Atkinson: The fact that the British have fired on their own people, which is how it's viewed by the Americans, causes an outrage that takes it to a new level in terms of resistance, a feeling that, um... "They're killing us, and the only thing "that we can do in response is to kill them as quickly as we can in numbers as profound as we can." [Gunfire] Man: Charge! Narrator: The British resumed their march toward Concord, now just 6 1/2 miles away. [Bell tolling] Meanwhile, other riders fanned out across the countryside to spread word of what had happened. Militiamen from nearby towns rushed toward Concord. "It seemed as if men came down from the clouds," one man said. It was not memories of the Stamp Act or the tax on tea that rallied them. "We always had governed ourselves," one man remembered, "and we always meant to." In Acton, 6 miles to the west of Concord, 40 Minutemen gathered at the home of their commander, Captain Isaac Davis, a 30-year-old gunsmith. Voice: My husband said but little that morning. He seemed serious and thoughtful. As he led the company from the house, he turned himself round and seemed to have something to communicate. He only said, "Take good care of the children," and was soon out of sight. Hannah Davis. [Gunfire] Narrator: The British seized 2 bridges spanning the Concord River and spread throughout the town. [Glass breaks] They entered houses, broke into barns and outbuildings. Most of the arms and provisions they'd hoped to find had either been shifted elsewhere or successfully hidden. But they did smash open 60 barrels of flour and destroyed several wooden gun carriages before setting it all ablaze. Atkinson: The decision is made by the American commanders on the scene that we're not gonna fight in Concord. We will retreat across the Concord River, across the North Bridge, and we will wait for them on the other side. Narrator: By then, some 450 militiamen were clustered together on a hillside overlooking the North Bridge, still under strict orders not to fire upon the King's troops unless fired upon. But when they saw smoke rising from town, they concluded that Concord itself was burning. At North Bridge, the American soldiers, the militiamen, see this and they say to each other, "They're burning down our town. Are we gonna let them burn down our town?" And that's when they march to the bridge. Narrator: 3 companies of British regulars now guarded the bridge. Isaac Davis, the gunsmith from Acton, was picked to head the column sent towards it. Suddenly, without orders, a redcoat fired his musket. The front line of British troops followed with a ragged volley. A musket ball tore through Isaac Davis' chest, severing an artery and spraying blood on two men coming up behind him. Abner Hosmer, another member of his company, was shot through the head. "God damn them," a militia captain shouted. "Fire men, fire!" [Rapid gunfire] At least 8 redcoats were hit, including 4 officers. The British began to back away, then to run. When one wounded soldier struggled to his feet and tried to follow, a militiaman split his skull with a hatchet. The British regulars regrouped and began the long march back to Boston. Voice: Before the whole had quitted the town, we were fired on from houses and behind trees. And before we had gone half a mile, we were fired on from all sides, but mostly from the rear, where people had hid themselves in houses till we had passed and then fired. [John Barker] [Gunfire continues] Atkinson: Every step of the way becomes more intense. [Click, gunshot] The sound of bullets winging around them. The sound of bullets hitting soldiers, this deep thud, as if you're beating a rug... [Gunfire continues] screams of men who've been wounded in the British column. [Horse nickers] And it's beginning to look as though the column could be destroyed. Narrator: The British were in complete disarray as they staggered into Lexington. But now filling the road ahead of them were more than 1,000 much-needed reinforcements. [Cannonfire] Two British cannon swept the Lexington Green, and one ball smashed through the wall of the meetinghouse. Several houses were set on fire, but the redcoats were still outnumbered and under relentless attack. They resumed their retreat to Boston. [Gunshot] Voice: We retired for 15 miles under an incessant fire, which like a moving circle surrounded us and followed us wherever we went. It was impossible not to lose a good many men. General Hugh Percy. Conway: The retreat from Concord was a truly horrifying event for many British soldiers. It would have been a fairly traumatic experience, to put it mildly, to be shot at from all sides by people you didn't believe were going to shoot at you. Narrator: In the village of Monatomy, the fighting was house-to-house. A militiaman named Amos Farnsworth remembered entering a home to find a pool of blood that half-covered his shoes. Voice: The bloody field at Monatomy was strewed with mangled bodies. We met one affectionate father with a cart, looking for his murderd son, and picking up his neighbors who had fallen in battle. Hannah Winthrop. Narrator: In Boston, crowds watched as the redcoats straggled back. The British had suffered 273 casualties, including 73 dead. ♪ 95 Americans had been hit over the course of the day, 49 of them fatally. Family members moved along the road looking for missing sons and brothers and fathers. In Acton that evening, Hannah Davis and her 4 children looked on as men of her husband Isaac's militia company carried his corpse through her door. Voice: He was placed in my bedroom till the funeral. The bodies of Abner Hosmer, one of the company, and of James Hayward, who was killed in Lexington in the afternoon, were brought by their friends to the house, where the funeral of the three was attended together. [Davis] ♪ Narrator: As April 19th drew to a close, some 14,000 armed men from 58 Massachusetts towns and villages were converging on Boston. And as the news of the bloodshed spread, they would soon be joined by more men from Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, until a 10-mile semicircle of hundreds of campfires stretched from Roxbury to Chelsea, cutting off Boston. General Gage ordered his men to dig in and prepare for a siege. Atkinson: The British are pretty secure in Boston because they have enough firepower, they have enough manpower to prevent the Americans from pushing them out of Boston. And they have the Royal Navy. But they are, essentially, surrounded. It's not a true siege because they've got passage in and out of Boston Harbor. They can bring in supplies. They can bring in reinforcements, as need be. But they can't get outside of Boston proper. So, the British Empire, in New England, at this point, consists of about 1 square mile of Boston itself. ♪ Voice: When I reflect and consider that the fight was between those whose parents but a few generations ago were brothers, I shudder at the thought. And there's no knowing where our calamities will end. John Andrews. Atkinson: War never follows the script that you have written for it when you set out to make war. The British objective is, first and foremost, to suppress the rebellion. It's to teach the rascals a lesson. It's to force them to acknowledge the primacy of Parliament and the authority of the King. And so, now the decision has been made that we will use force. And there's a presumption that it won't take much... but it's gonna go on for 8 years-- 8 years, blood, treasure, catastrophe, really, for the British Empire. So, uh, those initial shots on Lexington Green, on the morning of April 19, 1775, are going to have profound repercussions. [Birds chirping] Voice: The whole country was in a commotion, and nothing was talked of but war, liberty, or death. [Greenwood] [Scraping] Narrator: John Greenwood was 14 that April. His father had sent him away 2 years earlier to Falmouth-- now Portland--Maine to learn cabinet-making as an apprentice to an uncle. But when news of Lexington and Concord reached him, he asked to be allowed to return to Boston to make sure his parents and siblings were safe. He was worried that they "would all be killed by the British." It would take him 4 1/2 days to walk the 100 miles to Boston. [Men talking and laughing] Voice: As I stopped at the taverns, out came my fife, and I played them a tune or two. They used to ask me where I came from and where I was a-going to. I told them I was a-going to fight for my country. They were astonished such a little boy and alone should have such courage. [Greenwood] Narrator: When John reached Charles Town, he hoped to take a ferry to Boston, but a sentry stopped him. No one was allowed into the besieged city. Zabin: It's terrifying to be a civilian in Boston, regardless of your political affiliation. Especially women and children are just looking for any way out. Something like 12,000 people of a town of about 16,000 manage to leave. Narrator: Unable to find his parents among the refugees, Greenwood was invited by 2 young militiamen to share their quarters in Cambridge--the empty, looted home of a Loyalist clergyman who'd fled to the British. His friends urged him to enlist in their company as a fifer, and he agreed. Voice: They told me it was only for eight months, and that I would have eight dollars a month, and that they would quick drive the British from Boston, and then I could have an opportunity of seeing my parents. [Greenwood] [Waves crashing] Voice: Britain has found means to unite us. General Gage drew the sword; and a war is commenced, which the youngest of us may not see the end of. [Franklin] Narrator: Benjamin Franklin returned home from London in time to attend the Second Continental Congress that began meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia just 3 weeks after Lexington and Concord. Delegates from all 13 colonies now attended, but they remained split between those still hoping for reconciliation and those, like John Adams, convinced a revolution was now inevitable. Voice: The cancer is too deeply rooted, and too far spread to be cured by anything short of cutting it out entire. [John Adams] [Flames crackling] Narrator: From Boston, British General Hugh Percy sent a warning to his superiors in London. Voice: Whoever looks upon the Americans as an irregular mob will find himself much mistaken. They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about. You may depend upon it, that as the rebels have now had time to prepare, they are determined to go through with it. [Percy] [Hammer striking metal] Voice: What a scene has opened upon us. If we look back, we are amazed at what is past. If we look forward, we must shudder at the view. Our only comfort lies in the justice of our cause. All our worldly comforts are now at stake-- our nearest and dearest connections are hazarding their lives and properties. God give them wisdom and integrity sufficient to the great cause in which they are engaged. Abigail Adams. ♪ [Theme music playing] [Theme music playing] ♪ Announcer: Next time on "The American Revolution"... [Gunfire] Bunker Hill... Stephen Conway: 40%. That's horrendously high casualty rate for the British Army. Announcer: a rare opportunity... Annette Gordon-Reed: In the chaos of war, they found a way to escape their situation. Announcer: and the most important words in American history. Voice: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. [Thomas Jefferson] Announcer: when "The American Revolution" continues next time. ♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of "The American Revolution" with interactives, games, classroom materials, and more. ♪ Announcer: "The American Revolution" DVD and Blu-ray, as well as the companion book and soundtrack, are available online and in stores. The series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video. ♪ Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You. URL https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-1-in-order-to-be-free/