BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:The American Revolution PBS Documentary Episode 1 DTSTAMP:20251118T010116Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:587-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n The American Revolution\n\n A Film By\n\n Ken Burns\, Sar ah Botstein &\; David Schmidt\n\n\n\n In Order to Be Free (May 1754 – May 1775)\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n VIDEO - ends ability to view 12/15/2025 \n\ n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n TRANSCRIPT\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Announc er: Major funding for \"The American Revolution\" was provided by The Bett er Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Cri mson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation.\n\nMajor funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein\, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation\, the Lilly Endowment\, and by Better Angels Societ y members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt\, Stephen A. Schwarzman\, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst.\n\nAdditional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations\, the Pew Charitable Trusts\, Gilbert S. O menn and Martha A. Darling\, the Park Foundation\, and by Better Angels So ciety members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg\, Perry and Donna Golkin\, The Miche lson Foundation\, Jacqueline B. Mars\, the Kissick Family Foundation\, Dia ne and Hal Brierley\, John H.N.\n\nFisher and Jennifer Caldwell\, John and Catherine Debs\, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund\, and these additio nal members.\n\n\"The American Revolution\" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting\, and Viewers Like You.\n\nT hank You.\n\nAnnouncer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt arou nd the world.\n\nThe fight would take ingenuity\, determination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power to do?\n\nBank of America.\n\ n♪ Voice: From a small spark\, kindled in America\, a flame has arisen n ot to be extinguished.\n\nWithout consuming\, it winds its progress from n ation to nation\, and conquers by a silent operation.\n\nMan finds himself changed and discovers that the strength and powers of despotism consist w holly in the fear of resisting it\, and that\, in order to be free\, it is sufficient that he wills it.\n\nThomas Paine.\n\n[Explosion] [Drum beatin g slow rhythm] Voice: We know our lands are now become more valuable.\n\nT he White people think we do not know their value\, but we are sensible tha t the land is everlasting.\n\nCanasatego\, Spokesman for the Six Nations.\ n\n[Woman singing in Native American language] Narrator: Long before 13 Br itish colonies made themselves into the United States\, the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy-- Seneca\, Cayuga\, Onondaga\, Tuscarora\, Oneid a\, and Mohawk-- had created a union of their own that they called the Hau denosaunee-- a democracy that had flourished for centuries.\n\nVoice: We h eartily recommend union.\n\nWe are a powerful confederacy.\n\nAnd by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken\, you will acqu ire fresh strength and power.\n\nTherefore\, whatever befalls you\, never fall out one with another.\n\n[Canasatego] ♪ Narrator: In the spring of 1754\, the celebrated scientist and writer Benjamin Franklin proposed that the British colonies form a similar union.\n\nHe printed a cartoon of a s nake cut into pieces above the dire warning \"Join\, or Die.\"\n\nA few we eks later at Albany\, New York\, Franklin and other delegates from 7 colon ies agreed to his Plan of Union-- and then went home to try and sell it.\n \nBut when the plan was presented at the colonial capitals\, each of the i ndividual legislatures rejected it because they did not want to give up th eir autonomy.\n\n[Cannonfire] The plan died\, but the idea would survive.\ n\n20 years later\, \"Join\, or Die\" would be a rallying cry in the most consequential revolution in history.\n\n♪ Voice: We are in the very mids t of a revolution the most complete\, unexpected\, and remarkable of any i n the history of nations.\n\nObjects of the most stupendous magnitude\, an d measures in which the lives and liberties of millions yet unborn are int imately interested\, are now before us.\n\nJohn Adams.\n\n[Explosion] Narr ator: The American Revolution was not just a clash between Englishmen over Indian land\, taxes\, and representation\, but a bloody struggle that wou ld engage more than 2 dozen nations\, European as well as Native American\ , that also somehow came to be about the noblest aspirations of humankind. \n\nIt was fought in hundreds of places\, from the forests of Quebec to th e backcountry of Georgia and the Carolinas\; from the rough seas off Engla nd\, France and in the Caribbean\, to the towns and orchards of Indian Cou ntry.\n\n[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 Cha rles\, the Hudson\, and the Schuylkill\; the Brandywine\, the Cooper\, and the Ashley\; and finally the York.\n\nThe war grew out of a multitude of grievances lodged against the British Parliament by British subjects livin g an ocean away in 13 otherwise disunited colonies.\n\nIt was also a savag e civil war that pitted brother against brother\, neighbor against neighbo r\, American against American\, killing tens of thousands of them.\n\n[Gun fire] Voice: However great the blessings to be derived from a revolution i n government\, the scenes of anarchy\, cruelty\, and blood\, which usually precede it\, and the difficulty of uniting a majority in favor of any sys tem\, are sufficient to make every person who has been an eyewitness recoi l at the prospect of overturning empires.\n\nAbigail Adams.\n\nNarrator: T he American Revolution was the first war ever fought proclaiming the unali enable rights of all people.\n\nIt would change the course of human events .\n\n♪ Man: It's our creation myth\, our creation story.\n\nIt tells us who we are\, where we came from\, uh\, what our forebears believed\, and\, and\, and what they were willing to die for.\n\nThat's the most profound question any people can ask themselves.\n\nWoman: What the American Revolu tion gave the United States was an actual idea of a moment of origin\, whi ch many other countries in the world don't have.\n\nAnd it has invested th ese 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 plausib ly carry that it has made the way that Americans think about this period v ery unreal and detached.\n\nMan: One of the most remarkable aspects of the Revolutionary War is that you had such different places come together as one nation.\n\nI'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 th at nation ends up cohering\, not around culture\, not around religion\, no t around ancient history.\n\nIt was coming together around a set of purpos es and ideals for one common cause.\n\n[Soldier shouting orders] Voice: Ev ents like these have seldom\, if ever before\, taken place on the stage of human action.\n\nFor who has before seen a disciplined army formed from s uch raw materials?\n\nWho that was not a witness could imagine that men wh o came from the different parts of the continent\, strongly disposed to de spise and quarrel with each other\, would become but one patriotic band of brothers?\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\n♪ [Gunfire] Voice: We have great rea son to believe you intend to drive us away.\n\nWhy do you come to fight in the land that God has given us?\n\nWhy don't you fight in the old country and on the sea?\n\nWhy do you come to fight on our land?\n\nShingas\, Len ape Nation.\n\n♪ Narrator: For several generations\, violent conquest an d Old-World diseases had decimated Native populations between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains\, where\, by the middle of the 18th c entury\, 13 distinct British colonies were established south of French Can ada and north of Spanish Florida.\n\nNow\, as land speculators and settler s eyed the Ohio River Valley beyond the Appalachians\, the paramount quest ion became who would control the North American interior.\n\nBoth Protesta nt Britain and Catholic France-- ancient enemies that had already fought 3 wars in North America-- claimed the region.\n\nSo did a host of Indian na tions who had lived and farmed and hunted there for hundreds of generation s.\n\nIn 1754\, to solidify Britain's claim\, the Royal Colony of Virginia dispatched militia to protect their interests in the Ohio Country.\n\nThe small force of militiamen and a handful of Native allies surrounded a gro up of unsuspecting French soldiers... Man: Fire!\n\n[Gunfire] and fired in to them.\n\nNearly half of the Frenchmen were killed or wounded.\n\nThe re st surrendered.\n\nAccording to one of the Indians with the Virginians\, t he militia's 22-year-old commander had been the first to shoot into the en emy's encampment.\n\nIf so\, George Washington fired the very first shot o f a global conflict that would come to be called the Seven Years' War and set the stage for the American Revolution.\n\nSoon after his surprise atta ck\, a French and Indian force surrounded Washington and his men\, forcing him\, for the first and only time in his life\, to surrender.\n\nA less p rominent young man's military career might have ended there\, but Washingt on 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 Fo rt Duquesne.\n\nBraddock was confident his red-coated British regulars cou ld easily defeat anyone who stood between him and the fort.\n\n[Gunfire] B ut on July 9\, 1755\, a much smaller French and Indian force overwhelmed t hem.\n\nThe British panicked.\n\nBraddock was mortally wounded.\n\nThe Com mand fell to Washington.\n\nTwo horses were shot from under him.\n\nMusket balls ripped through his hat and jacket.\n\nHe ordered a retreat and mana ged to get most of his men safely off the battlefield.\n\nWashington learn ed two valuable lessons: British troops were not invincible\, and there wa s no shame in retreating if you could live to fight another day.\n\nHe was hailed as a hero and given overall command of Virginia's militia.\n\nBut 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 a t Mount Vernon\, filled with resentment at how the British had treated him .\n\nMan: And he comes to view the people in London as people who have a c ondescending view of Americans.\n\nThey think of him as inferior.\n\nThey didn't give him a commission.\n\nI mean\, when Washington is told that he didn't get a commission\, he doesn't think that means he's inferior.\n\nHe thinks that means the British are really stupid.\n\nVoice: There can be n o sufficient reason given why we\, who spend our blood and treasure in def ense of the King's Dominions\, are not entitled to equal preferment.\n\nWe can't conceive that being Americans should deprive us of the benefits of British subjects.\n\n[Washington] [Cannonfire] Man: The Seven Years' War\, against Britain's imperial rivals\, France and Spain\, is fought not only in North America.\n\nIt's fought in the Caribbean\, it's fought in Africa \, it's fought in India\, it's fought in the Philippines.\n\nSo\, even tho ugh it starts in the Ohio backcountry\, with a dispute between colonists a nd the French and their Indian allies\, it mushrooms into a global campaig n that touches Europe and all parts of the world.\n\nThe American colonies are just one piece on a broad\, global Imperial chessboard as far as Brit ish policymakers are concerned.\n\nNarrator: Remembered in North America a s the French and Indian War\, the fighting went on for years until a serie s of British victories\, won by regulars and colonial troops\, ended the F rench Empire's presence on the continent\, gave Britain Spanish Florida\, and more than tripled the lands claimed by England's King.\n\nMan: France transfers to Britain all of its territory in North America.\n\nBut 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.\n\nThe British\, in North A merica\, have been hoping and praying for the defeat of the French for 80 years.\n\nAnd now they're victorious.\n\nChurch bells are ringing.\n\nThis is the moment we've all hoped for.\n\nAnd then it all begins to go to hel l in a hand basket.\n\n♪ Woman: Britishness in America is just everywher e.\n\nIn Boston\, the Town House sits at the center of Queen and King Stre ets.\n\nThe London Bookshop was around the corner.\n\nThe Crown Coffee Hou se.\n\nThe sort of ideal of\, uh\, fashion\, of political currency\, of th e basis of one's rights and that sense of home.\n\nThey talk about Britain even when they have never been there as home.\n\nNarrator: On Saturday\, December 27\, 1760\, a British frigate anchored in Boston harbor.\n\nIt br ought with it big news.\n\nKing George II had died in October.\n\nHis 22-y ear-old grandson now reigned as George III.\n\nCrowds cheered.\n\nBostonia ns were proud to be part of what had become the most far-flung empire on E arth.\n\nMan: In the 18th century\, the belief was\, who in the world has got it right?\n\nOnly one people on Earth-- the British.\n\nThey have a mi xed constitution\, constitutional monarch\, House of Lords\, an elected Ho use of Commons.\n\nYou got an element of democracy\, element of aristocrac y\, element of monarchy.\n\nThe 3 of them will check and balance each othe r and produce the perfect combination.\n\nVincent Brown: We tend to think of the British Empire in America as the 13 North American colonies that be came the United States.\n\nBut Great Britain actually had 26 colonies in A merica.\n\nAnd\, by far\, the most important of those\, the most profitabl e\, the most militarily significant\, and the best politically connected o f those colonies were those colonies in the Caribbean.\n\nThe territories that tended to have the most slaves\, and exploit enslaved labor most inte nsively\, tended to be the most profitable colonies.\n\nSo\, if you look a t North America\, for example\, Massachusetts is the least profitable colo ny in North America and it's got the smallest percentage of slaves in its territory.\n\nThe most profitable colony in North America is South Carolin a.\n\nThen\, when you get to a place like Jamaica or Barbados\, where 90% of the population is enslaved\, then you're really talking.\n\nThat's wher e the money is being made and that's also why that's where the Royal Navy warships are concentrated.\n\nNarrator: But the 13 contiguous colonies tha t clung to the Atlantic seaboard were the most populous.\n\nThe colonists' numbers had doubled every 25 years.\n\nBy 1763\, the population-- Black a nd White-- had reached almost 2 million.\n\nChristopher Brown: And those s ettlers produce for the Empire\, but they also consume.\n\nThey provide ma rkets.\n\nThey purchase goods that are manufactured in Britain.\n\nIt's th e fastest-growing part of the British economy\, is the trades with North A merica.\n\nMan: The British Empire expanded enormously as a result of the Seven Years' War.\n\nThere's real anxiety that unless this empire is tied together more tightly\, by central control and direction\, it will start t o fragment\, in much the same way as the Roman Empire was assumed to have collapsed.\n\nNarrator: For more than 150 years\, London had treated its N orth American colonies with what one British politician would call \"salut ary neglect.\"\n\nEach colony was part of the King's dominions\, but in mo st of them\, legislatures\, elected by propertied White men\, made laws\, levied taxes\, and decided how they'd be spent.\n\nSlavery was legal every where\, from New Hampshire to Georgia.\n\nMany of the Black people living in the colonies had been born there or in the Caribbean.\n\nBut tens of th ousands were from West Africa-- captured from what is now Senegal\, Gambia \, and Gabon\; Angola\, Congo\, and the Ivory Coast\; Nigeria\, Cameroon\, and Ghana.\n\nChristopher Brown: I think it's easy to underestimate the s heer diversity and variety\, um\, in the colonies.\n\nClose to the majorit y of the population in the southern colonies are African.\n\nThere are Fre nch Huguenots\; there are Germans.\n\nThere's Scots.\n\nThere's Scots-Iris h.\n\nThere are Native people\, not just on the frontiers\, but actually l iving in the heart of the 13 colonies.\n\nMan: Most of the population of N orth America is Indigenous.\n\n70%\, 80% of the continent is still control led by Indigenous people\, politically\, economically\, and militarily.\n\ nIt's not a separate place\, it's not this timeless space where Native peo ple are sort of existing in harmony with nature and that they have no inte rest in the outside world.\n\nNative people want the good stuff that Europ eans are bringing.\n\nEuropeans want the wealth that they can get from Nat ive people.\n\nNative powers are as important to the global market economy as a place like Virginia or a place like New York.\n\nVoice: If there is a country in the world where concord\, according to common calculation\, w ould be least expected\, it is America.\n\nMade 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 w as impracticable.\n\nThomas Paine.\n\nNarrator: In Britain\, 2% of the pop ulation-- lords and lesser gentry-- owned 2/3 of all the land\, and most p eople had for centuries lived \"dependent\" lives\, either as tenant farme rs\, working land belonging to aristocrats\, or as landless laborers worki ng for an employer.\n\nFor most free White men in the colonies\, North Ame rica was a land of opportunity.\n\nTaylor: The people who are coming from Northern Britain\, as well as a lot of Scots-Irish\, often are bringing th e resentments that they'd been pushed off their lands by landlords.\n\nAnd so\, there's a great sensitivity about any kind of financial exaction tha t could be a slippery slope leading to the kinds of dependence that they h ad escaped from.\n\nNarrator: The colonies were overwhelmingly agricultura l.\n\nJust 3 seaport towns-- Philadelphia\, Boston\, and New York-- were h ome to more than 10\,000 people.\n\nAnd 2 out of 3 farmers were independen t\, proud owners of their land.\n\nOthers were indentured servants\, hopin g that once they fulfilled their contract\, that they\, too\, could prospe r on their own.\n\nWoman: For Americans\, land and liberty are completely intertwined.\n\nWhite Americans see their liberty as being founded on not being a peasant on somebody's else's land.\n\nPreserving\, promoting that liberty for White Americans\, to them\, means taking Native land.\n\nThere is no other answer.\n\nCalloway: American colonists had been looking forw ard to the glorious day when the French and their Indian allies would be d efeated\, and British subjects would sweep over the Appalachian Mountains\ , looking for land.\n\nWoman: Maps at the time show the colonies extending well into the interior.\n\nWe often see maps as benign\, as descriptive\, as without argument.\n\nBut they're aspirational\, in many ways.\n\nThey' re an argument rather than a conclusion.\n\nDuVal: Hundreds of Native nati ons still are completely intact\, completely independent.\n\nIn the north\ , is the powerful Haudenosaunee League\, the Six Nations\, including the M ohawks and the Senecas.\n\nTo their south are the Shawnees\, who have reta ken the Ohio Valley in recent years and formed a huge confederacy that str etches from the Delawares\, or the Lenapes\, in the east to the powerful n ations\, including the Anishinaabe of the Great Lakes.\n\nSouth of there a re the Chickasaws\, the Cherokees\, the Choctaws\, the Creek Confederacy\, or the Muscogees\, and hundreds of other smaller nations.\n\nThese are na tions 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 y ears.\n\n[Thunder] Narrator: Beginning in the spring of 1763\, in what was called Pontiac's War\, warriors from at least a dozen Native nations over ran many of the British forts along the Great Lakes and in the Ohio Valley and raided settlements\, killing or capturing 2\,000 colonists and drivin g out some 4\,000 more.\n\nMany colonists responded by killing any Indian they encountered.\n\nCalloway: The Brits look at this situation and say\, \"OK\, we've just inherited all of this empire.\n\n\"How on earth are we g onna stop this kind of thing happening again and again\, and again?\"\n\nN arrator: The British concluded that Native Americans and colonists needed to be separated\, at least for a time\, and so\, in 1763\, a Royal Proclam ation declared all the territory beyond the Appalachians off-limits to set tlement or speculation.\n\nMan: That prohibits White settlers from moving into these interior worlds\, the same interior worlds that many colonists felt like they had just fought for.\n\nAnd many settlers become outraged t hat\, uh\, the British Crown has any form of imperial\, um\, recognition o f these Indigenous populations.\n\nA kind of racial animus has formed in t he aftermath of the Seven Years' War\, in which many British settlers come to resent all Indians.\n\nChristopher Brown: It's not because the British Government is especially concerned about Native Americans.\n\nIt's becaus e they don't want Americans spreading out\, where they'll be even more dif ficult to control.\n\nPart of British policy is British settlers will stay near the coast.\n\nAnd part of the colonists' answer is\, \"No.\n\nSorry\ , we're not doing that.\"\n\nNarrator: London hoped the Proclamation would pacify the frontier.\n\nInstead\, it infuriated those would-be settlers p oised to move west and frustrated land speculators who saw fortunes to be made there.\n\nCalloway: And that is a huge slap in the face and a blow to those elite colonial Americans who've been indulging in this investment.\ n\nWho are these people?\n\nHousehold names: Benjamin Franklin\, Thomas Je fferson\, Patrick Henry\, George Washington.\n\nNarrator: After abandoning his dream of serving as an officer in the British Army\, George Washingto n had married an enormously wealthy widow\, Martha Dandridge Custis\, and had made himself still wealthier speculating in western lands.\n\nHe saw n o reason to stop.\n\nThe law was only a temporary measure to \"quiet the m inds of the Indians\,\" he said\, and he directed his land agent to defy t he Proclamation and \"secure [for him] some of the most valuable Lands\" b eyond the Appalachians.\n\nMan: I think the American Revolution was all ab out land.\n\nIt's easy to make the political kinds of arguments\, but I th ink underpinning all of that was the possibility of expansion\, um\, was t he conflict with Indian people.\n\nNarrator: 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.\n\nThe cost would be enormous-- som e 360\,000 British pounds a year.\n\nLondon did not have the money.\n\nYea rs of war on 4 continents had doubled the national debt.\n\nBritain was in the midst of a postwar depression\, and British consumers were already bu rdened with higher taxes than were the subjects of any other European mona rch.\n\nThe average British subject paid 26 shillings a year in taxes\; th e average New Englander paid just one.\n\nSo\, some bright spark has the i dea\, \"Well\, let's tax the American colonists.\"\n\nRight?\n\nThey shoul d pay their share because\, after all\, we fought the war for them\, and t his is to defend them.\n\nNarrator: In 1764\, the Prime Minister\, George Grenville\, proposed a series of 3 parliamentary statutes\, all meant to m ake the colonies help pay for their own defense.\n\nThe Currency Act\, whi ch forbade the colonists from issuing their own money\, angered the tobacc o-growing gentry of Virginia\, who were especially hard-hit.\n\nThe Sugar Act imposed taxes on imports from the Caribbean\, and to enforce it\, the British Navy dispatched 44 ships to stop smuggling\, enraging New Englande rs\, whose economy had long profited from it.\n\nThe rest of the colonies were largely unaffected.\n\nLondon assumed Americans were too disunited\, too divided by self-interest\, to ever be able to present a united front.\ n\nBut now\, Grenville introduced a third tax-- the Stamp Act.\n\nIt would affect nearly every colonist in every colony.\n\nNo one would be able to obtain a license or a loan\, transfer land or draft a will\, earn a diplom a\, purchase a newspaper\, or even buy a deck of cards unless it was print ed or written on English-made paper that bore a stamp embossed by the Roya l Treasury\, for which they would have to pay.\n\nFor the very first time\ , Parliament planned to tax the 13 colonies directly.\n\nThe Stamp Act was scheduled to go into effect on November 1\, 1765.\n\nTaylor: Colonists sa id\, \"No taxation without representation.\"\n\nWhat they meant was\, no t axation except by our elected Legislature\, here in our particular colony. \n\nThese taxes were very small\, but the fear was\, \"If we give into thi s precedent\, \"if we pay the small Stamp Tax now\, what will they do in t he future?\"\n\n[Gavel banging] Narrator: In the Virginia House of Burgess es\, 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.\n\nHenry went on to declare that just as Julius Caesar h ad his assassin Brutus\, George III should understand that some American r esister was sure \"to stand up in favor of his country.\"\n\nWhen some del egates shouted \"Treason!\"\n\nothers who were present remembered he respo nded\, \"If this be treason\, make the most of it!\"\n\n[Gavel banging rap idly] In Boston\, 42-year-old Samuel Adams helped rally the opposition aga inst implementation of the Stamp Act.\n\nA failure as a brewer and as a co llector of local taxes\, Adams was a master of propaganda.\n\nHis mission\ , he once explained\, was to \"keep the attention of [my] fellow-citizens awake to their grievances.\"\n\nVoice: If our trade may be taxed\, why not our lands?\n\nWhy not the produce of our lands and everything we possess or make use of?\n\nIf taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our havi ng a legal representation where they are paid\, are we not reduced from th e character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves?\n \n[Samuel Adams] Woman: In terms of masters of communication\, Samuel Adam s was really up there.\n\nHe has an amazing ability to translate a concept into easily digested words.\n\nAnd\, therefore\, to make\, um\, what seem --what could seem like fairly abstract ideas very vital and very urgent\, and he's tireless.\n\nSo\, he's able to produce page after page after page \, new offenses\, new crimes\, new injustices.\n\nNarrator: Pamphleteers t ook up the cause\, declaring the Stamp Act illegitimate.\n\nMost of the co lonies' 24 weekly newspapers-- the businesses that would be hit hardest--f ollowed suit.\n\nThose that didn't faced being shut down by their journeym en and apprentices.\n\nTaylor: Newspapers are very important.\n\nThe colon ial public is more literate than any other people in the world outside of Scandinavia.\n\nThere's also word of mouth\, conversation\, absolutely ess ential.\n\nMan: It became very common to discuss how you govern people and how people are free.\n\nThese ideas had filtered into the general populat ion.\n\nNarrator: Those ideas now led to protests in the streets.\n\nIn Bo ston\, in August of 1765\, a crowd formed-- made up of men and a handful o f women\, free Blacks and runaway slaves\, poorly paid or unemployed worke rs who resented the rich\, and apprentices in their off-hours\, just looki ng for trouble.\n\nThey hanged in effigy the local man designated to becom e distributor of stamps and went on to invade the home of the lieutenant g overnor\, destroying everything in sight and carrying off all of his furni ture and 900 British pounds in cash.\n\nIn Newport\, Rhode Island\, anothe r mob surrounded the stamp distributor\, forced him to resign\, and to lea d them in chants of \"Property and Liberty.\"\n\nIn Charleston\, South Car olina\, White anti-Stamp Act protestors marched through the streets chanti ng\, \"Liberty!\"\n\nBut when enslaved South Carolinians echoed their crie s\, frightened enslavers called out the militia to patrol the street.\n\nT he Maryland appointee was driven from Annapolis with only the clothes on h is back.\n\nBy the time the Stamp Act was supposed to go into effect\, non e of the 13 colonies had an official in place willing to enforce it.\n\nSc hiff: Part of our Revolution I think we have largely sanitized.\n\nI think we've forgotten much of the street warfare\, of the anarchy\, of the prov ocations that took place.\n\nVoice: A black cloud seems to hang over us.\n \nIt appears to me that there will be an end to all government here\, for the people are all running mad.\n\nJames Parker.\n\nNarrator: When a crowd surrounded the British Army headquarters in New York City\, General Thoma s Gage made sure his men held their fire\, for fear\, he said\, that 50\,0 00 angry colonists would swarm into the city and start a civil war.\n\nGen eral Gage was in charge of all British soldiers in North America.\n\nHe ha d been sent to maintain peace on the frontier.\n\nInstead\, he had found h imself at loggerheads with colonists convinced they were being denied thei r rights as Englishmen.\n\nGage understood what was happening.\n\nVoice: T he spirit of democracy is strong amongst them.\n\nThe question is not of t he inexpediency of the Stamp Act or the inability of the colonies to pay t he tax\, but that it is contrary to their rights and not subject to the le gislative power of Great Britain.\n\n[Gage] Conway: Thomas Gage was marrie d to an American.\n\nHe owned land in the colonies.\n\nHe was\, in many wa ys\, embedded within colonial society.\n\nSo\, he was particularly relucta nt\, I think\, to engage in conflict.\n\nTaylor: In the colonial world and the European world\, democracy had a bad name.\n\nIt was a synonym for \" anarchy.\"\n\nIt had a reputation as being turbulent\, as a system exploit ed 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 t he property of more wealthy people.\n\nSo\, democracy is not the aspiratio n that creates the Revolution.\n\nThe Revolution creates the conditions fo r people to aspire to have a democracy.\n\nNarrator: Meanwhile\, hundreds of merchants in New York\, Boston\, and Philadelphia pledged to boycott Br itish goods until the Stamp Act was repealed.\n\nTo keep up the opposition \, some lawyers\, merchants\, and skilled craftsmen established an associa tion\, the Sons of Liberty\, and soon had chapters from Portsmouth\, New H ampshire to Charleston\, South Carolina working together.\n\nVoice: The co lonies 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 u nion gives them.\n\nDr.\n\nJoseph Warren.\n\nNarrator: The colonies now ac counted for 1/3 of Britain's trade.\n\nWith the boycott\, some manufacture rs were forced to close their doors.\n\nThousands of workers lost their jo bs.\n\nThe town councils of 27 English trading and manufacturing towns ple aded for repeal.\n\nBy mid-February 1766\, the British cabinet was looking for a way out of the impasse.\n\nIt 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.\n\nFranklin patiently answered 174 questions.\n\nWhat had been the c olonists' attitude toward Great Britain before the Stamp Act was enacted?\ n\nVoice: The best in the world.\n\nThey had not only a respect but an aff ection for Great Britain\; for its laws\, its customs\, its manners\, and even a fondness for its fashions\, which greatly increased the commerce.\n \n[Franklin] Narrator: \"Would the colonies now accept a compromise?\"\n\n he was asked.\n\n\"No\,\" he answered.\n\n\"It was a matter of principle.\ "\n\n\"Might a military force compel the colonists to pay the tax?\"\n\n\" No\,\" Franklin said.\n\nVoice: Suppose a military force is sent into Amer ica.\n\nThey will find nobody in arms.\n\nWhat are they then to do?\n\nThe y cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them.\n\nThe y will not find a rebellion.\n\nThey may indeed make one.\n\n[Franklin] [\ "Rule Britannia\" playing] Narrator: 8 days after Franklin's testimony\, t he House of Commons voted to repeal the Stamp Act.\n\nBritish workers woul d return to their factories.\n\nMerchant vessels set sail again for the co lonies.\n\nWhen the news reached America in April\, the Sons of Liberty di sbanded\; their rights as Englishmen seemed to have been restored.\n\nNew York commissioned a statue of King George\, wearing a Roman toga\, to be p laced on the Bowling Green at the tip of Manhattan.\n\nBut beginning in th e summer of 1767\, the British government\, still struggling with war debt \, would win passage of 5 new laws--the Townshend Acts.\n\nOne of them esp ecially angered colonists.\n\nIt 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.\n\nNewspaper editors and pamphleteers de nounced the new taxes.\n\nA revived and more militant Sons of Liberty call ed for a new boycott of British goods.\n\nWomen\, who normally played a su bordinate role in public life and had almost no legal rights\, joined the resistance by the thousands as \"Daughters of Liberty.\"\n\nWoman: Crisis changes people.\n\nAnd it gave women different ideas about what they shoul d be doing.\n\nDuVal: Women were the main consumers in colonial society an d they were the ones who made sure the boycotts worked.\n\nWomen stopped d rinking tea.\n\nWomen started making their own fabric.\n\nWomen started ma king toys for their children.\n\nAnd they didn't just stop buying British things and start making their own things\; they publicized it.\n\nTaylor: One of the key forms of political theater during the Resistance Movement w ould 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.\n\nAnd it would be a competition to see which community could produce the most h omespun.\n\nIt would be published in the newspaper.\n\nAnd these women wou ld be praised as great American Patriots for having produced so much homes pun cloth.\n\nDuVal: And reporters would report\, \"The ladies of Boston\, \"The ladies of New York \"are the most patriotic.\n\nThey are at the for efront of this protest movement.\"\n\nIf women hadn't done that\, the prot est movement and eventually the Revolution would have gone nowhere.\n\nVoi ce: Let the Daughters of Liberty nobly arise\, And though we've no voice b ut a negative here\, Stand firmly resolved and bid them to see\, That rath er than freedom\, we'll part with our tea.\n\nHannah Griffitts.\n\nVoice: I wish to see America boast of Empire-- of Empire not established in the t hralldom of nations but on a more equitable base.\n\nThough such a happy s tate\, such an equal government\, may be considered by some as a Utopian d ream\; yet\, you and I can easily conceive of nations and states under mor e liberal plans.\n\nMercy Otis Warren.\n\nNarrator: The political philosop her and historian Mercy Otis Warren would publish plays and poems that sat irized Royal officials with names like Judge Meagre and Sir Spendall.\n\nN o woman played a more important role in promoting resistance.\n\nTensions with England continued to grow.\n\nIn Boston\, in June of 1768\, a ship ca lled the \"Liberty\" was seized by the Royal Navy.\n\nIts owner\, John Han cock\, was the richest merchant in the city\, a prominent member of the So ns of Liberty-- and a practiced smuggler.\n\nA big\, angry crowd formed at the wharf.\n\nVoice: The mobs here are very different from those in Old E ngland.\n\nThese Sons of Violence are attacking houses\, breaking windows\ , beating\, stoning\, and bruising several gentlemen belonging to the Cust oms.\n\nAnn Hulton.\n\nVoice: The town has been under a kind of democratic al despotism for a considerable time.\n\nAnd it has not been safe for peop le to act or speak contrary to the sentiments of the ruling demagogues.\n\ nThomas Gage.\n\nNarrator: On orders from London\, General Gage sent two r egiments of regulars from Nova Scotia\, not to defend Boston\, but to poli ce it.\n\nMost Bostonians were appalled.\n\nWoman: An army during wartime makes sense.\n\nOf course\, you need that.\n\nBut an army during peacetime is a standing army.\n\nAnd if you have an army during peacetime\, the thi nking is that its only use is to turn on poor\, innocent subjects.\n\nVoic e: To have a standing army!\n\nGood God!\n\nWhat can be worse to a people who have tasted the sweets of liberty?\n\nThings are come to an unhappy cr isis.\n\nAll confidence is at an end.\n\nAnd the moment there is any blood shed\, all affection will cease.\n\nReverend Andrew Eliot.\n\nVoice: The s pirit of emigration to America\, which seems to be epidemic through Great Britain\, is likely to depopulate the Mother Country\, and leave our ancie nt kingdom the resort of owls and dragons\, and other solitary animals\, w ho shun the light\, and seem displeased at the human race.\n\n\"The Edinbu rgh Amusement.\"\n\n[Bell tolling] Narrator: The steadily rising tensions between England and its North American colonies did not slow the steady st ream of English\, Scots-Irish\, German\, and a small number of Jewish immi grants eager to carve out new lives within the North American interior.\n\ nChristopher Brown: Part of what really sets the North American experience apart is just how many European settlers are coming to North America.\n\n [Horse nickers] And they keep coming.\n\n15\,000 a year.\n\nA kind of empi re was already in view.\n\nNarrator: Thousands of new arrivals and America n-born colonists poured down the Great Wagon Road that ran all the way fro m Philadelphia to the Carolinas.\n\nThe backcountry there was already the home of Native peoples\, including the Catawbas and Cherokees.\n\nVoice: U pon the whole\, it is the best country in the world for a poor man to go t o and do well.\n\nAnd the farther they go back in the country\, the land t urns richer and better.\n\nHere\, a man of small substance\, if upon a pre carious footing at home\, can\, at once\, secure to himself a handsome\, i ndependent living\, and do well for himself and posterity.\n\nAll modes of Christian worship are here tolerated.\n\n\"Scotus Americanus.\"\n\nTaylor : Colonial America is a very Protestant place.\n\nAnd it's founded when th e norm in Europe was that whoever your sovereign was got to set what the r eligion should be.\n\nNarrator: Congregationalism was the established chur ch in nearly all New England colonies.\n\nThe official religion in much of the South was the Church of England.\n\nBut those who belonged to other f aiths resented being forced by colonial legislatures to pay the salaries o f clergymen who did not minister to them.\n\nNone were more resentful than the backcountry settlers in the Carolinas-- Baptists\, Presbyterians\, Lu therans\, Methodists.\n\nTaylor: And what they hear from their ministers a bout whether resisting their sovereign or supporting their sovereign is th e right thing to do as a Christian duty\, that will matter a lot.\n\n[Drum beating rhythmically] Voice: I was born in Boston in America in the year 1760.\n\nIn the time I was at school\, the troubles began to come on.\n\nA nd I was told the day of judgment was near at hand\, and the moon would tu rn into blood\, and the world would be set on fire.\n\nJohn Greenwood.\n\n 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.\n\nThere\, riding at anchor in a great arc\, he saw 14 British warships\, their cannon trained upon the city.\n\nBoats swarmed between t he ships and the end of Long Wharf\, ferrying hundreds of British red-coat ed regulars.\n\nGeneral Gage's occupying army had arrived.\n\nThe crowds t hat lined the street were for the most part silent and sullen.\n\nBut it w as not the history being made that impressed young John Greenwood that day .\n\nIt was the irresistible music played by Afro-Caribbean men and boys i n colorful uniforms.\n\nVoice: 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.\n\nI believe it was the sole cause of all my travai ls and disasters.\n\n[Greenwood] [Fife playing upbeat tune] Narrator: Befo re long\, the boy was playing well enough to become a fifer for a local mi litia.\n\n\"The flag of our company\,\" he remembered\, \"was an English f lag.\"\n\nThey would not be English forever.\n\nHalf the newly arrived tro ops were housed in barracks on Castle Island\, but orders from London had been clear.\n\nIt was \"His Majesty's pleasure\,\" they said\, that the re st of the troops \"be quartered in that town.\"\n\n[Man shouting orders] F or 17 months\, Boston was an occupied city.\n\nThe rattle of drums awakene d residents every morning.\n\nPassersby were routinely stopped and searche d.\n\nMany soldiers had brought their wives and children\; others courted Boston girls\, or were pursued by them.\n\n40 troops were married during t he occupation\, and more than 100 of their offspring were baptized.\n\nBut some soldiers got drunk\, robbed people\, insulted women\, profaned the S abbath.\n\nThere were brawls\, stabbings\, suits and countersuits.\n\nFrom London\, Benjamin Franklin was concerned.\n\nVoice: Some indiscretion on the part of Boston's warmer people\, or of the soldiery\, may occasion a t umult.\n\nAnd if blood is once drawn\, there is no foreseeing how far the mischief may spread.\n\n[Franklin] Narrator: On the evening of March 5\, 1 770\, there were tussles between Bostonians and British soldiers all acros s the city.\n\nAt the Royal Customs House\, a crowd of young men surrounde d a lone sentry and pelted him with snowballs and chunks of ice.\n\nConvin ced a city-wide uprising was underway\, Captain Thomas Preston raced sever al armed grenadiers to the scene.\n\nMore snowballs and rocks and oyster s hells greeted them.\n\nThey fixed bayonets.\n\n[Bells tolling] Zabin: Some body starts ringing the church bells\, which in Boston is a sign for fire. \n\nSome people are bringing buckets to be part of a bucket brigade.\n\nSo me people are drawn by the noise.\n\nIt's very hard\, in fact impossible\, to know what happened\, which is that somebody yells\, \"Fire.\"\n\n[Gunf ire] All we know really is that when the smoke cleared\, there are 5 peopl e dead or dying.\n\nNarrator: The first was a tall dock-worker-- part Nati ve-American\, part African-American-- named Crispus Attucks.\n\nThe second was a ropemaker named Samuel Gray\, who was standing next to Attucks.\n\n The third was James Caldwell\, a sailor who was in town\, it was said\, to call upon the girl he hoped to marry.\n\nThe terrified crowd began to sca tter.\n\nJohn Greenwood's older brother Isaac was there\, too\, and escape d unharmed\, but a ricocheting ball hit their friend Samuel Maverick in th e back.\n\nHe died in agony the following morning.\n\nMaverick\, an appren tice\, 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 p itch-black darkness\, hoping \"to see his spirit.\"\n\nZabin: People start arguing\, already\, even before they go to bed\, about what happened.\n\n Paul Revere creates probably the most famous engraving of the 18th century \, which he titles the \"Bloody Massacre.\"\n\nThe British Army is very an xious to try to spin this as a story of self-defense... but the language o f massacre is the one that holds.\n\nNarrator: A fifth man\, a leathermake r named Patrick Carr\, would die several days later.\n\n10\,000 mourners a ccompanied the coffins of the dead to the Old Granary Cemetery.\n\nVoice: The Fatal Fifth of March can never be forgotten.\n\nThe horrors of that dr eadful 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.\n\nJoseph Warren.\n\nNa rrator: Not everyone was grieving.\n\nAn 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.\"\n\n[Gavel bangi ng rapidly] Captain Preston was found not guilty of ordering his men to fi re.\n\nThe other 8 soldiers were put on trial separately.\n\nSamuel Adams' younger cousin\, John Adams\, risking his reputation\, served as the sold iers' attorney.\n\nMost of his clients were acquitted as well.\n\nTwo were found guilty of manslaughter.\n\nThey 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.\n\nThe British government was relieved by the outcome of the trials.\n\nMost of the regulars were withdrawn to Castle W illiam-- their harbor fortress.\n\nOnce again\, American colonists had for ced the British to back down and Parliament had already repealed all but o ne of the Townshend Acts.\n\nOnly the duty on tea remained.\n\n♪ Voice: Yorktown stood unrivaled in Virginia\; its commanding view\, its vast expa nse of water\, its excellent harbor.\n\nIt was the seat of wealth and eleg ance\, one of the most delightful situations in America\, at least\, my in fantine imagination painted it so.\n\nBetsy Ambler.\n\nNarrator: Betsy Amb ler was 6 years old in 1771-- the oldest child in a prominent Yorktown\, V irginia family.\n\nA young Thomas Jefferson had once hoped to marry her mo ther\, Rebecca\, but she had married Jacquelin Ambler instead.\n\nHe insis ted that all his daughters get a proper education.\n\nHe was a planter and merchant in Yorktown\, the bustling deepwater port near Virginia's coloni al capital at Williamsburg.\n\nOn Yorktown docks\, enslaved Africans enter ed America\, and the tobacco they harvested went out to the world.\n\nThou gh Betsy's father was the Royal Collector of Customs\, he and his family h ad grown more and more sympathetic to their neighbors' calls for liberty.\ n\nVoice: 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 .\n\nTrue\, that in attaining it\, I was to see every comfort abandoned.\n \n[Ambler] Voice: Thomas Hutchinson\, Governor of Massachusetts: There is now a disposition in all the colonies to let the controversy with the king dom subside.\n\nHancock and most of the party are quiet and all of them ab ate of their virulence\, except Samuel Adams.\n\n[Hutchinson] Narrator: Fo r 2 years\, Samuel Adams kept up a steady stream of essays\, in which he w arned again and again that the lull was only temporary\, that Parliament r emained bent on imposing tyranny.\n\n♪ Kamensky: Those who have interest s in keeping the political story alive and growing\, have to really work t o keep it front and center\, to define the problem as something present in the minds of ordinary people.\n\nWhy would I care about this as a--as a w oman?\n\nWhy would I care about this as a small farmer?\n\n[Sawing] Narrat or: In 1772\, events beyond Boston gave Adams the ammunition he needed to spread his radical message throughout the colonies.\n\nIn April\, when a s awmill owner in New Hampshire was charged with commandeering pine trees ea rmarked for the masts of royal warships\, a mob drove the British official s who came to arrest him out of town.\n\n[Fireball] In June\, when the \"G aspée\,\" a British customs schooner\, ran aground while chasing smuggler s\, angry Rhode Islanders set it afire.\n\nAnd that fall\, Adams learned t hat beginning the following year\, the British Treasury would use the reve nue from tea to pay the salaries of the most important Massachusetts offic ials\, including all the colony's judges.\n\nThe judges' first loyalty wou ld now be to the Crown\, not the colonists.\n\nThere would be no way to en sure impartial justice.\n\nAdams drafted a fiery response.\n\nVoice: 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 s upport and defend them in the best manner they can.\n\n[Samuel Adams] ♪ Narrator: Printed copies of his writings were sent to town meetings throug hout the colony.\n\nSo-called Committees of Correspondence soon linked adv ocates of resistance in more than 100 Massachusetts towns and districts.\n \nEventually\, their network would spread into other colonies.\n\nSchiff: \"Committees of Correspondence\" is an effort to try to bring all of the c olonies onto the same page\, to make them feel as if they have a common ca use\, words which had really not been used before.\n\nAnd it's through tho se committees that\, essentially\, the Revolutionary spirit diffuses itsel f throughout the colonies.\n\nVoice: Let not the iron hand of tyranny ravi sh our laws and seize the badge of freedom.\n\nIs it not high time for the people of this country explicitly to declare whether they will be freemen or slaves?\n\nSamuel Adams.\n\nVoice: I need not point out the absurdity of your exertions for liberty\, while you have slaves in your houses.\n\nI f 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?\n\nCaesar Sarter.\n\nKamensky: Slavery as a metaphor is in the conversation from the beginning.\n\nEverywhere there's slavery\, t here are people thinking about freedom.\n\nNothing shows the desire for fr eedom like the struggles of subject peoples.\n\nVoice: 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 ?\n\nSteel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd That from a father seiz' d his babe belov'd: Such\, such my case.\n\nAnd can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway?\n\nPhillis Wheatley.\n\nNarrator: Phillis W heatley\, who was stolen from Senegambia in West Africa and taken to Massa chusetts as a young girl\, was renamed for the slave ship the \"Phillis\" that brought her and the Wheatley family that bought her.\n\nIn Boston\, t he Wheatleys saw to her education\, and as a teenager\, still enslaved\, h er \"Poems on Various Subjects\, Religious and Moral\" won favor on both s ides of the Atlantic.\n\nIt was the first published book by an African-Ame rican writer.\n\nVoice: How well the cry for liberty\, and the reverse dis position for the exercise of oppressive power over others agree\, I humbly think it does not require the penetration of a philosopher to determine.\ n\n[Wheatley] Voice: I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in the pr ovince.\n\nIt always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me-- fight ourse lves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as g ood a right to freedom as we have.\n\nYou know my mind upon this subject.\ n\nAbigail Adams.\n\nVoice: Ye men of sense and virtue-- Ye advocates for American liberty-- Bear a testimony against a vice which degrades human na ture and dissolves that universal tie of benevolence which should connect all the children of men together in one great family.\n\nThe plant of libe rty is of so tender a nature that it cannot thrive long in the neighborhoo d of slavery.\n\nBenjamin Rush.\n\nChristopher Brown: Part of what happens in the years before the American War is that liberties are kind of broken out of a national context.\n\nThese are not English liberties.\n\nThese a re transcendent liberties.\n\nThese are liberties that all individuals hav e by the nature of being human.\n\n[Waves crashing] Man: Heave away!\n\nVo ice: The Americans have made a discovery\, or think they have made one\, t hat we mean to oppress them.\n\nWe have made a discovery\, or think we hav e made one\, that they intend to rise in rebellion.\n\nOur severity has in creased their ill behavior.\n\nWe know not how to advance.\n\nThey know no t how to retreat.\n\nSome party must give way.\n\nEdmund Burke.\n\nNarrato r: In October of 1773\, 7 ships set out from Plymouth\, England for North American ports.\n\nThe cargo hold of each was filled with crates of tea.\n \nIt all belonged to the Crown- chartered East India Company\, which was o n the brink of bankruptcy.\n\nTo save the company\, Lord North\, the Prime Minister\, had won passage of a new Tea Act\, designed to undercut smuggl ing and reduce the cost of tea.\n\nKamensky: It seemed to Parliament like a \"Win-Win-Win.\"\n\nShore up the East India Company\, take it more in-ho use as a governmental organization\, and give Americans cheaper\, non-smug gled tea at the same time.\n\nNarrator: But colonial merchants who had pro fited handsomely from smuggling portrayed the new law as yet another assau lt on American rights.\n\nJohn Adams wrote that immediate resistance was n ecessary because of its \"attack upon a fundamental principle of the [Brit ish] constitution.\"\n\nNo American had consented to the tea tax\; therefo re\, no American need pay it.\n\nGovernment-appointed tea agents were to b e persuaded-- or coerced--into refusing to receive any tea.\n\nIn Charlest on\, South Carolina\, the Sons of Liberty \"convinced\" an agent not to ac cept the shipment meant for him.\n\nIn Philadelphia\, the Governor of Penn sylvania talked a ship's captain into sailing back to Britain.\n\nIn Bosto n\, 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 Brit ain.\n\nOn December 16\, 1773\, hundreds looked on from shore as between 5 0 and 60 men-- rich as well as poor-- all crudely disguised as Native Amer icans\, climbed into boats and headed for the ships.\n\nDeloria: They dres s like Indians\, kinda.\n\nIt's an expression of what it is to be American .\n\nWhen you claim to be Indian\, you're claiming to be here\, aboriginal \, part of this continent.\n\nAnd you're drawing a really bright line betw een yourself and the Mother Country.\n\n[Crates smashing\; people shouting ] Narrator: The men banged open 342 crates and poured more than 46 tons of tea into the harbor.\n\n[Splashing] No other property was disturbed.\n\nA nd when one of the boarders was seen filling his coat pockets with fistful s of tea\, he received a \"severe bruising.\"\n\nTaylor: This is an assaul t on the property of the East India Company\, and it's an assault upon the pride and the power of Parliament.\n\nSo\, it's a very big deal.\n\nProte sting taxes is one thing.\n\nDestroying private property worth thousands o f pounds sterling\, that's something else.\n\nNarrator: 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.\n\nA 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 chee k... [Gunshot] and another one through its neck.\n\n♪ Voice: The study o f the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul.\n\nWe there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of ma n.\n\nBut when the checks of conscience are thrown aside\, or the moral se nse weakened\, humanity is obscured.\n\nMercy Otis Warren.\n\nVoice: The m ost shocking cruelty was exercised a few nights ago upon a poor old man na med Malcolm.\n\nThere's no law that knows a punishment for the greatest cr imes beyond what this is\, of cruel torture.\n\nAnn Hulton.\n\nNarrator: I n Boston\, in January of 1774\, a small boy on a sled accidentally ran int o a minor customs official named John Malcolm\, who cursed and threatened to beat him.\n\nWhen George Hewes\, who had helped dump the tea into Bosto n harbor\, tried to intervene\, Malcolm knocked him unconscious with his c ane.\n\n[People shouting] Malcolm was hauled from his house.\n\nHe was str ipped nearly naked\, hot tar was poured over him\, scalding his flesh\, an d then he was covered with feathers.\n\n♪ Jasanoff: Tarring and featheri ng is something that has come down to us as an almost kind of comical thin g because you see these people with chicken feathers on them\, but this is hideous stuff.\n\nBoiling pitch is poured onto somebody's skin.\n\nThe bu rns are unbelievable.\n\nAnd it's all part\, also\, of a kind of spectacle of violence that is a really important part of this.\n\nAnd this is why t he feathers are put on\, in part.\n\nIt's that you are trying to humiliate and shame the victim.\n\n[Shouting continues] Narrator: Hundreds jeered a s Malcolm was pulled through the freezing streets for 5 hours.\n\nHis assa ilants stopped here and there to whip him.\n\nIt would be 8 weeks before h e was able to leave his bed.\n\n♪ Voice: Boston has been the ringleader of all violence and opposition to the execution of the laws of this countr y.\n\nBoston has not only therefore to answer for its own violence but for having incited other places to tumults.\n\nLord North\, Prime Minister.\n \nNarrator: Lord North hoped\, he said\, to make America lie \"prostrate a t his feet.\"\n\nThey \"must fear you\,\" he added\, \"before they will lo ve you.\"\n\nNow that they had destroyed Crown property\, it was clear tha t much of America was not afraid.\n\nNorth would do his best to change tha t.\n\nIn the process\, he would try to end every vestige of self-rule priz ed by the people of Massachusetts.\n\nFirst\, the Prime Minister convinced the Parliament to repeal that colony's long-standing charter\, then disso lved the elected assembly again and limited each town and village to just one town meeting a year.\n\nThe port of Boston would be closed until all i ts residents had paid in full for the tea just 60 of them had destroyed.\n \nThat came to nearly 5 British pounds per taxpayer-- more than a craftsma n made in a month.\n\nIt means no ships going in\, no ships going out\, no work for sailors\, no work for merchants.\n\nIt means hunger in Boston.\n \nNarrator: British officers were also now empowered to commandeer vacant homes and barns to quarter their troops.\n\nAmericans would denounce the n ew laws as the \"Intolerable Acts.\"\n\n♪ In England on leave\, General Gage was summoned by George III.\n\nHe told the King what he wanted to hea r.\n\nThe people of Massachusetts pretended to be \"lyons\,\" he said.\n\n But if England sent in enough troops\, they would undoubtedly \"prove very meek.\"\n\nGeneral 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.\n\nGage and 4 fresh regiments set sail for Boston in mid-April\, 1774.\n\n[Sheet flapping] Christopher B rown: The British Government sees this as a police action\, that if they c an punish Boston and shut down Massachusetts\, contain the rebellion\, tha t the other colonies would get the message and that order could be restore d with some grumbling.\n\nI think the British Government is genuinely surp rised\, um\, to see the ways that the other 12 colonies rally to Massachus etts' cause.\n\nTaylor: You are not gonna have an American Revolution unle ss you have Virginia onboard.\n\nAnd the leaders of Massachusetts understo od this.\n\nIt was not going to be easy.\n\nThere were deep prejudices bet ween the two regions because of the differences in their ethnic mix and in the nature of their cultures.\n\nAnd they hadn't previously had any kind of trust for one another.\n\nNarrator: But in Virginia\, the House of Burg esses declared a day of \"fasting\, humiliation and prayer\" in solidarity with the people of Massachusetts.\n\nAnd when the royal governor Lord Dun more declared the very idea an insult to the King and dissolved the assemb ly\, its members reconvened in Williamsburg's Raleigh Tavern.\n\nThe Virgi nians warned that \"an attack made \"on one of our sister colonies is an a ttack made on all British America\" and called for a \"Continental Congres s\" to meet in Philadelphia in September to see how the colonies might res ist together.\n\nAll the 13 colonies except Georgia-- where people were af raid to lose British protection in the event of an Indian war-- agreed to take part.\n\nThe Prime Minister's effort to intimidate the other colonies by punishing Massachusetts had instead begun to unite them.\n\n[Bell toll ing] Voice: Lebanon\, Connecticut.\n\nYesterday\, the bells of the town ea rly began to toll a solemn peal\, and continued the whole day.\n\nThe shop s in town were all shut and silent.\n\nOur brethren in Boston are sufferin g 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 t he just rights and privileges of our country.\n\n[Lebanon Town Meeting] ♪ Narrator: Now news of a new offense by the King's ministers-- The Queb ec Act-- would bind them still more tightly together.\n\nJasanoff: The Bri tish 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 in to British governance and make sure that they have a population that can s ort of live with British authority.\n\nNarrator: Protestants\, who equated the Papacy with despotism\, were outraged.\n\nThe Act also extended Quebe c's borders west and south\, adding to the fury of land speculators and wo uld-be settlers.\n\nDuVal: To British colonists\, the Quebec Act was anoth er slap in the face.\n\nThe 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.\n\n♪ 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 Gen eral Gage.\n\nJuries refused to serve.\n\nCourts closed down.\n\nWhen 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 defe nse\, he sent 250 soldiers to the stone powder-house in Charles Town to co nfiscate it.\n\nAngry colonists saw the raid as yet another provocation.\n \n[Horse nickers] The Massachusetts Assembly defiantly reconstituted itsel f and soon set about creating a clandestine provincial fighting force\, te ns of thousands strong.\n\nMan: March!\n\nThere had been organized town mi litias in New England since the earliest days in case of trouble with Indi ans.\n\nEvery man between the ages of 16 and 60 was expected to arm himsel f and take part.\n\n[Horse nickers] It was also now suggested that each to wn assign a quarter of its militiamen to a special company\, ready to act\ , they said\, at \"a minute's warning.\"\n\nNeighboring colonies followed the Massachusetts example.\n\n[Tapping] The Connecticut Assembly urged eve ry town to double its supply of gunpowder\, ball\, and flints.\n\nRhode Is land ordered all militia officers to make their men ready to \"march to th e assistance of any Sister Colony\" whenever they were needed.\n\nVoice: T he line of conduct seems now chalked out.\n\nThe New England governments a re in a state of rebellion.\n\nBlows must decide whether they are to be su bject to this country or independent.\n\nKing George III.\n\n♪ Voice: Ph iladelphia-- The regularity and elegance of this city are very striking.\n \nIt is situated upon a neck of land about 2 miles wide between the River Delaware and the River Schuylkill.\n\nAnd the uniformity of this city is d isagreeable to some.\n\nI like it.\n\nFront Street is near the river\, the n 2nd Street\, 3rd\, 4th\, 5th\, 6th\, 7th\, 8th\, 9th.\n\nThe cross stree ts are named for forest and fruit trees-- Pear Street\, Apple Street\, Wal nut Street\, Chestnut Street\, et cetera.\n\nJohn Adams.\n\n[Bell tolling] Narrator: In the autumn of 1774\, when 12 colonies sent delegates to the Continental Congress\, Philadelphia was the logical place to assemble.\n\n It was home to some 40\,000 people and was the most populous city in Briti sh America-- larger than New York\, more than twice the size of Boston.\n\ nThe delegates met in the newly constructed Carpenters' Hall\, hoping to d evelop a common means of resistance while still somehow remaining within t he Empire.\n\nIt would not be easy.\n\nAdjacent colonies quarreled over bo rders.\n\nSmall ones feared domination by large ones.\n\nAnd half the dele gates were lawyers\, fond of arguing.\n\nVoice: This assembly is like no o ther that ever existed.\n\nEvery 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.\n\n[John Adams] [Men arguing] Schiff: You have a group of men who have hailed from essentially different countries\, who observe different religions\, who co nform to different habits\, who are really meeting each other for the firs t time.\n\nNo one is really sure what to do\, at first.\n\nIs this meant t o be a negotiation?\n\nIs this meant to be another boycott effort?\n\nIs t his meant to be some kind of serious rupture with the Mother Country?\n\nV oice: Their plan is to frighten and intimidate.\n\nBut supposing the worst \, you have nothing to fear from anyone but the New England provinces.\n\n As for the Southern people\, they talk very high\, but it's nothing more t han words.\n\nTheir numerous slaves in the bowels of their country and the Indians at their backs will always keep them quiet.\n\nThomas Gage.\n\nNa rrator: General Gage assured London the Congress was a \"motley crew\,\" u nlikely to achieve anything.\n\nThe \"motley crew\" included some of the c olonies' leading political figures-- Samuel and John Adams from Massachuse tts\; John Jay\, a young attorney from New York\, convinced some solution short of war with the Mother Country must still be found\; and Patrick Hen ry\, who argued that ties with Britain had already been severed.\n\n\"The distinctions between Virginians\, Pennsylvanians\, New Yorkers and New Eng landers\, are no more\,\" Henry said.\n\n\"I am not a Virginian\, but an A merican.\"\n\nBut a fellow delegate from Virginia spoke for many.\n\n\"Ind ependency\" was not the wish of any \"thinking man in all North America.\" \n\nVoice: I shall not undertake to say where the line between Great Brita in and the colonies should be drawn\, but I am clearly of opinion that one ought to be drawn.\n\nThe crisis is arrived when we must assert our right s or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us\; till custom a nd use will make us as tame and abject slaves as the Blacks we rule over w ith such arbitrary sway.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\nEllis: Most people in 17 74 would say they're British.\n\nThey wouldn't say they're Americans.\n\nT he change happens in '75\, '76\, and the major source of it is a thing tha t's created called the \"Continental Association.\"\n\nThe Association is an engine for creating revolution.\n\nNarrator: The Continental Associatio n was not a committee\, but a phased program that forbade Americans from i mporting British goods as of December 1\, 1774\, from consuming British go ods as of March 1\, 1775\, and barred them from exporting American goods t o Britain beginning on September 10th-- if London still had not given in t o their demands.\n\nAmong the so-called \"British goods\" the delegates in tended to boycott were enslaved Africans-- whom they agreed not to import after December 1\, 1775.\n\nThe delegates made plans to hold a second Cont inental Congress in Philadelphia in 6 months.\n\n\"We must change our Habi ts\,\" John Adams wrote\, \"our Prejudices\, our Palates\, \"our Taste in Dress\, Furniture\, Equipage\, Architecture\, et cetera.\"\n\nTo make sure Americans did so\, every community was expected to establish its own Comm ittee of Safety in order to \"attentively observe the conduct of all perso ns.\"\n\nBy 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.\n\nMost of those suspected of failing to obser ve the boycott or who were overheard criticizing resistance were ostracize d\, their names and supposed crimes printed in the local newspaper\, their neighbors forbidden even to speak with them.\n\n[Men shouting] Ellis: Eve ry town\, every hamlet\, every village has a Committee of Safety and Inspe ction.\n\nAnd they go house to house.\n\nYou have to take a \"Loyalty Oath .\"\n\nThere's millions of conversations.\n\nAnd that's when the change ha ppens.\n\nVoice: If we must be enslaved\, let it be by a King at least\, n ot by a parcel of upstart\, lawless committeemen.\n\nIf I must be devoured \, let me be devoured by the jaws of a lion\, and not gnawed to death by r ats and vermin.\n\nReverend Samuel Seabury.\n\nNarrator: Harassed\, shamed \, shunned\, censored\, sometimes attacked\, opponents of resistance-- cal led \"Loyalists\"-- saw the Committees of Safety as more tyrannical than P arliament could ever be.\n\nNathaniel Philbrick: There was a sense of brut ality that went with the Patriot cause that said\, \"No\, you are wrong\, and we are right.\"\n\nTo be a Loyalist didn't mean that you were evil.\n\ nIt 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 possi ble.\n\nTaylor: The Loyalists are essentially the conservatives.\n\nThey'r e the people who believe in law and order.\n\nThey don't like mobs.\n\nThe y don't like committees telling them what to do.\n\n[Thunder] They don't s ee King George III as a tyrant.\n\nVoice: We are preparing for war.\n\nTo fight with whom?\n\nNot with France and Spain\, whom we have been used to think our natural enemies-- but with Great Britain\, our parent country.\n \nMy heart recoils at the thought.\n\nAndrew Eliot.\n\n[Sea gulls crying] Voice: If a civil war commences between Great Britain and her colonies\, e ither the Mother Country\, by one great exertion\, may ruin both herself a nd America\, or the Americans\, by a lingering contest\, will gain an inde pendency.\n\nAnd in this case and whilst a new\, a flourishing\, and an ex tensive empire of freemen is established on the other side of the Atlantic \, you will be left to the bare possession of your foggy islands.\n\nCatha rine Macaulay.\n\nNarrator: General Gage now warned London: \"The whole Co ntinent has embraced the cause of the town of Boston.\"\n\nVoice: If you t hink 10\,000 men sufficient\, send 20\,000.\n\nYou will save both blood an d treasure in the end.\n\nA large force will terrify and engage many to jo in you.\n\nA middling one will encourage resistance and gain no friends.\n \n[Gage] Narrator: But General Gage was sent far fewer men than he'd hoped for.\n\nAnd he was ordered to move decisively against the rebels and arre st their leaders.\n\nSamuel Adams and John Hancock had fled Boston and fou nd refuge with friends in Lexington\, a small town-- just 750 people and 4 00 cows-- on the road to the larger town of Concord\, some 18 miles northw est of Boston.\n\n[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.\n\nSuccess would depend on t he strictest secrecy.\n\n[Dog barking] Late on the evening of April 18\, 1 775\, 700 British regulars were awakened\, not told where they were going\ , and silently marched through the dark empty streets of Boston.\n\nA flee t of boats was waiting to row them across the Charles River to the Cambrid ge marshes.\n\nFor all the care the British had taken to keep their plans secret\, Dr.\n\nJoseph Warren\, one of Boston's leading rebels\, got wind of it.\n\nYou don't move 1\,000 men out of Boston in the middle of the nig ht without arousing a response.\n\nAmerican rebel leaders send warning.\n\ nTwo men\, William Dawes and a silversmith named Paul Revere\, are sent in different routes to alert Samuel Adams and others in Lexington that the B ritish\, in fact\, are coming.\n\nNarrator: Before the two men left\, Reve re saw to it that 2 lanterns appeared in the belfry of the Old North Churc h just long enough to alert sympathizers on the mainland that the regulars were crossing by water to Cambridge\, not marching overland through Roxbu ry.\n\n[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 f orth to murder the peaceful inhabitants of the surrounding villages.\n\nHa nnah Winthrop.\n\n♪ Narrator: Just after midnight on the morning of Apri l 19\, 1775\, Revere reached Lexington and the house where Adams and Hanco ck were hiding.\n\n\"The Regulars are coming out!\"\n\nhe shouted.\n\nThe two rebel leaders fled into the night.\n\n[Bell tolling] Lexington's milit iamen\, summoned from their beds\, dressed\, gathered up whatever weapons they happened to own\, and hurried to the town green.\n\nTheir commander w as Captain John Parker\, a farmer\, who\, like many of his 70 men\, had fo ught alongside the British in the French and Indian War.\n\n♪ Then\, sho rtly before dawn\, someone spotted 6 companies of redcoats-- about 250 men --approaching at a rapid clip.\n\nOn horseback in the lead was Major John Pitcairn\, a Scottish veteran with nothing but scorn for colonists.\n\nCap tain Parker knew he could not stop the British\, but he wanted to impress them with his men's resolve.\n\nParker told them not to fire first.\n\nA B ritish officer shouted\, \"Throw down your arms\, ye villians\, ye rebels\ , and disperse.\"\n\nAtkinson: They begin to disperse.\n\nMany of them tur n their backs and start to walk away.\n\n[Click\, gunshot] A shot rings ou t.\n\nNo one knows where the shot came from.\n\nMan: Fire!\n\n[Gunshots] T hat leads to promiscuous shooting... mostly by the British.\n\n[Heavy gunf ire] It's not a battle.\n\nIt's not a skirmish.\n\nIt's a massacre.\n\nNow blood has been shed.\n\nNow the man on your left has been shot through th e head.\n\nYour neighbor on the right has been badly wounded.\n\nYou can't put that genie back in the bottle.\n\nNarrator: 8 militiamen died on the Lexington Green.\n\n9 more were wounded.\n\nThe rest fled.\n\nAtkinson: Th e 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.\"\n\n[Gunfire] Man: Charge!\n\nN arrator: The British resumed their march toward Concord\, now just 6 1/2 m iles away.\n\n[Bell tolling] Meanwhile\, other riders fanned out across th e countryside to spread word of what had happened.\n\nMilitiamen from near by towns rushed toward Concord.\n\n\"It seemed as if men came down from th e clouds\,\" one man said.\n\nIt was not memories of the Stamp Act or the tax on tea that rallied them.\n\n\"We always had governed ourselves\,\" on e man remembered\, \"and we always meant to.\"\n\nIn Acton\, 6 miles to th e west of Concord\, 40 Minutemen gathered at the home of their commander\, Captain Isaac Davis\, a 30-year-old gunsmith.\n\nVoice: My husband said b ut little that morning.\n\nHe seemed serious and thoughtful.\n\nAs he led the company from the house\, he turned himself round and seemed to have so mething to communicate.\n\nHe only said\, \"Take good care of the children \,\" and was soon out of sight.\n\nHannah Davis.\n\n[Gunfire] Narrator: Th e British seized 2 bridges spanning the Concord River and spread throughou t the town.\n\n[Glass breaks] They entered houses\, broke into barns and o utbuildings.\n\nMost of the arms and provisions they'd hoped to find had e ither been shifted elsewhere or successfully hidden.\n\nBut they did smash open 60 barrels of flour and destroyed several wooden gun carriages befor e setting it all ablaze.\n\nAtkinson: The decision is made by the American commanders on the scene that we're not gonna fight in Concord.\n\nWe will retreat across the Concord River\, across the North Bridge\, and we will wait for them on the other side.\n\nNarrator: By then\, some 450 militiame n were clustered together on a hillside overlooking the North Bridge\, sti ll under strict orders not to fire upon the King's troops unless fired upo n.\n\nBut when they saw smoke rising from town\, they concluded that Conco rd itself was burning.\n\nAt North Bridge\, the American soldiers\, the mi litiamen\, see this and they say to each other\, \"They're burning down ou r town.\n\nAre we gonna let them burn down our town?\"\n\nAnd that's when they march to the bridge.\n\nNarrator: 3 companies of British regulars now guarded the bridge.\n\nIsaac Davis\, the gunsmith from Acton\, was picked to head the column sent towards it.\n\nSuddenly\, without orders\, a redc oat fired his musket.\n\nThe front line of British troops followed with a ragged volley.\n\nA musket ball tore through Isaac Davis' chest\, severing an artery and spraying blood on two men coming up behind him.\n\nAbner Ho smer\, another member of his company\, was shot through the head.\n\n\"God damn them\,\" a militia captain shouted.\n\n\"Fire men\, fire!\"\n\n[Rapi d gunfire] At least 8 redcoats were hit\, including 4 officers.\n\nThe Bri tish began to back away\, then to run.\n\nWhen one wounded soldier struggl ed to his feet and tried to follow\, a militiaman split his skull with a h atchet.\n\nThe British regulars regrouped and began the long march back to Boston.\n\nVoice: Before the whole had quitted the town\, we were fired o n from houses and behind trees.\n\nAnd before we had gone half a mile\, we were fired on from all sides\, but mostly from the rear\, where people ha d hid themselves in houses till we had passed and then fired.\n\n[John Bar ker] [Gunfire continues] Atkinson: Every step of the way becomes more inte nse.\n\n[Click\, gunshot] The sound of bullets winging around them.\n\nThe 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 Br itish column.\n\n[Horse nickers] And it's beginning to look as though the column could be destroyed.\n\nNarrator: The British were in complete disar ray as they staggered into Lexington.\n\nBut now filling the road ahead of them were more than 1\,000 much-needed reinforcements.\n\n[Cannonfire] Tw o British cannon swept the Lexington Green\, and one ball smashed through the wall of the meetinghouse.\n\nSeveral houses were set on fire\, but the redcoats were still outnumbered and under relentless attack.\n\nThey resu med their retreat to Boston.\n\n[Gunshot] Voice: We retired for 15 miles u nder an incessant fire\, which like a moving circle surrounded us and foll owed us wherever we went.\n\nIt was impossible not to lose a good many men .\n\nGeneral Hugh Percy.\n\nConway: The retreat from Concord was a truly h orrifying event for many British soldiers.\n\nIt 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.\n\nNarrator: In the village of Monatomy\, the fighting was house-to-house.\n\nA militiaman nam ed Amos Farnsworth remembered entering a home to find a pool of blood that half-covered his shoes.\n\nVoice: The bloody field at Monatomy was strewe d with mangled bodies.\n\nWe met one affectionate father with a cart\, loo king for his murderd son\, and picking up his neighbors who had fallen in battle.\n\nHannah Winthrop.\n\nNarrator: In Boston\, crowds watched as the redcoats straggled back.\n\nThe British had suffered 273 casualties\, inc luding 73 dead.\n\n♪ 95 Americans had been hit over the course of the da y\, 49 of them fatally.\n\nFamily members moved along the road looking for missing sons and brothers and fathers.\n\nIn Acton that evening\, Hannah Davis and her 4 children looked on as men of her husband Isaac's militia c ompany carried his corpse through her door.\n\nVoice: He was placed in my bedroom till the funeral.\n\nThe bodies of Abner Hosmer\, one of the compa ny\, 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 thr ee was attended together.\n\n[Davis] ♪ Narrator: As April 19th drew to a close\, some 14\,000 armed men from 58 Massachusetts towns and villages w ere converging on Boston.\n\nAnd as the news of the bloodshed spread\, the y would soon be joined by more men from Rhode Island\, New Hampshire\, and Connecticut\, until a 10-mile semicircle of hundreds of campfires stretch ed from Roxbury to Chelsea\, cutting off Boston.\n\nGeneral Gage ordered h is men to dig in and prepare for a siege.\n\nAtkinson: The British are pre tty secure in Boston because they have enough firepower\, they have enough manpower to prevent the Americans from pushing them out of Boston.\n\nAnd they have the Royal Navy.\n\nBut they are\, essentially\, surrounded.\n\n It's not a true siege because they've got passage in and out of Boston Har bor.\n\nThey can bring in supplies.\n\nThey can bring in reinforcements\, as need be.\n\nBut they can't get outside of Boston proper.\n\nSo\, the Br itish Empire\, in New England\, at this point\, consists of about 1 square mile of Boston itself.\n\n♪ Voice: When I reflect and consider that the fight was between those whose parents but a few generations ago were brot hers\, I shudder at the thought.\n\nAnd there's no knowing where our calam ities will end.\n\nJohn Andrews.\n\nAtkinson: War never follows the script that you have written for it when you set out to make war.\n\nThe British objective is\, first and foremost\, to suppress the rebellion.\n\nIt's to teach the rascals a lesson.\n\nIt's to force them to acknowledge the prim acy of Parliament and the authority of the King.\n\nAnd so\, now the decis ion has been made that we will use force.\n\nAnd there's a presumption tha t it won't take much... but it's gonna go on for 8 years-- 8 years\, blood \, treasure\, catastrophe\, really\, for the British Empire.\n\nSo\, uh\, those initial shots on Lexington Green\, on the morning of April 19\, 1775 \, are going to have profound repercussions.\n\n[Birds chirping] Voice: Th e whole country was in a commotion\, and nothing was talked of but war\, l iberty\, or death.\n\n[Greenwood] [Scraping] Narrator: John Greenwood was 14 that April.\n\nHis father had sent him away 2 years earlier to Falmouth -- now Portland--Maine to learn cabinet-making as an apprentice to an uncl e.\n\nBut 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 saf e.\n\nHe was worried that they \"would all be killed by the British.\"\n\n It would take him 4 1/2 days to walk the 100 miles to Boston.\n\n[Men talk ing and laughing] Voice: As I stopped at the taverns\, out came my fife\, and I played them a tune or two.\n\nThey used to ask me where I came from and where I was a-going to.\n\nI told them I was a-going to fight for my c ountry.\n\nThey were astonished such a little boy and alone should have su ch courage.\n\n[Greenwood] Narrator: When John reached Charles Town\, he h oped to take a ferry to Boston\, but a sentry stopped him.\n\nNo one was a llowed into the besieged city.\n\nZabin: It's terrifying to be a civilian in Boston\, regardless of your political affiliation.\n\nEspecially women and children are just looking for any way out.\n\nSomething like 12\,000 p eople of a town of about 16\,000 manage to leave.\n\nNarrator: Unable to f ind his parents among the refugees\, Greenwood was invited by 2 young mili tiamen to share their quarters in Cambridge--the empty\, looted home of a Loyalist clergyman who'd fled to the British.\n\nHis friends urged him to enlist in their company as a fifer\, and he agreed.\n\nVoice: They told me it was only for eight months\, and that I would have eight dollars a mont h\, and that they would quick drive the British from Boston\, and then I c ould have an opportunity of seeing my parents.\n\n[Greenwood] [Waves crash ing] Voice: Britain has found means to unite us.\n\nGeneral Gage drew the sword\; and a war is commenced\, which the youngest of us may not see the end of.\n\n[Franklin] Narrator: Benjamin Franklin returned home from Londo n 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.\n\nDelegates from all 13 colonies now attended\, but they rem ained split between those still hoping for reconciliation and those\, like John Adams\, convinced a revolution was now inevitable.\n\nVoice: The can cer is too deeply rooted\, and too far spread to be cured by anything shor t of cutting it out entire.\n\n[John Adams] [Flames crackling] Narrator: F rom Boston\, British General Hugh Percy sent a warning to his superiors in London.\n\nVoice: Whoever looks upon the Americans as an irregular mob wi ll find himself much mistaken.\n\nThey have men amongst them who know very well what they are about.\n\nYou may depend upon it\, that as the rebels have now had time to prepare\, they are determined to go through with it.\ n\n[Percy] [Hammer striking metal] Voice: What a scene has opened upon us. \n\nIf we look back\, we are amazed at what is past.\n\nIf we look forward \, we must shudder at the view.\n\nOur only comfort lies in the justice of our cause.\n\nAll our worldly comforts are now at stake-- our nearest and dearest connections are hazarding their lives and properties.\n\nGod give them wisdom and integrity sufficient to the great cause in which they are engaged.\n\nAbigail Adams.\n\n♪ [Theme music playing] [Theme music play ing] ♪ Announcer: Next time on \"The American Revolution\"... [Gunfire] Bunker Hill... Stephen Conway: 40%.\n\nThat's horrendously high casualty r ate for the British Army.\n\nAnnouncer: a rare opportunity... Annette Gord on-Reed: In the chaos of war\, they found a way to escape their situation. \n\nAnnouncer: and the most important words in American history.\n\nVoice: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.\n \n[Thomas Jefferson] Announcer: when \"The American Revolution\" continues next time.\n\n♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of \"The American Revolution\" with interactive s\, games\, classroom materials\, and more.\n\n♪ Announcer: \"The Americ an Revolution\" DVD and Blu-ray\, as well as the companion book and soundt rack\, are available online and in stores.\n\nThe series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video.\n\n♪ Announcer: The Americ an Revolution caused an impact felt around the world.\n\nThe fight would t ake ingenuity\, determination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the ti de of history and set the American story in motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power to do?\n\nBank of America.\n\nAnnouncer: Major funding for \"Th e American Revolution\" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and t he Blavatnik Family Foundation.\n\nMajor funding was also provided by Davi d M. Rubenstein\, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation\, t he Lilly Endowment\, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt\, Stephen A. Schwarzman\, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Cata lyst.\n\nAdditional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Founda tions\, the Pew Charitable Trusts\, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling \, the Park Foundation\, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist a nd Amy Berg\, Perry and Donna Golkin\, The Michelson Foundation\, Jacqueli ne B. Mars\, the Kissick Family Foundation\, Diane and Hal Brierley\, John H.N.\n\nFisher and Jennifer Caldwell\, John and Catherine Debs\, The Full erton Family Charitable Fund\, and these additional members.\n\n\"The Amer ican Revolution\" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting\, and Viewers Like You.\n\nThank You.\n\n\n\n\n URL\n\ n https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-1-in-order-to- be-free/\n\n  \n\n\n\n CONSTITUTION\n\n\n\n Note: The following text is a transcription of the Constitution as it was inscribed by Jacob Shallus on parchment (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archive s Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflect the original.\n\nWe the Pe ople of the United States\, in Order to form a more perfect Union\, establ ish Justice\, insure domestic Tranquility\, provide for the common defence \, promote the general Welfare\, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ou rselves and our Posterity\, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.\n\nArticle. I.\nSection. 1.\nAll legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States\ , which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.\n\nSection . 2.\nThe House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen eve ry second Year by the People of the several States\, and the Electors in e ach State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.\n\nNo Person shall be a Represe ntative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years\, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States\, and who shall not\, when elected\, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.\n\n Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several St ates which may be included within this Union\, according to their respecti ve Numbers\, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of fr ee Persons\, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years\, and ex cluding Indians not taxed\, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of th e Congress of the United States\, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years\, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Represen tatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand\, but each State sh all have at Least one Representative\; and until such enumeration shall be made\, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three\, Mass achusetts eight\, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one\, Connecticu t five\, New-York six\, New Jersey four\, Pennsylvania eight\, Delaware on e\, Maryland six\, Virginia ten\, North Carolina five\, South Carolina fiv e\, and Georgia three.\n\nWhen vacancies happen in the Representation from any State\, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.\n\nThe House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers\; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment .\n\nSection. 3.\nThe Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State\, chosen by the Legislature thereof\, for six Ye ars\; and each Senator shall have one Vote.\n\nImmediately after they shal l be assembled in Consequence of the first Election\, they shall be divide d as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of th e first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year\, of t he second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year\, and of the third Cl ass at the Expiration of the sixth Year\, so that one third may be chosen every second Year\; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation\, or otherwise\ , during the Recess of the Legislature of any State\, the Executive thereo f may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislatur e\, which shall then fill such Vacancies.\n\nNo Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years\, and been nine Yea rs a Citizen of the United States\, and who shall not\, when elected\, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.\n\nThe Vice Pres ident of the United States shall be President of the Senate\, but shall ha ve no Vote\, unless they be equally divided.\n\nThe Senate shall chuse the ir other Officers\, and also a President pro tempore\, in the Absence of t he Vice President\, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of t he United States.\n\nThe Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impea chments. When sitting for that Purpose\, they shall be on Oath or Affirmat ion. When the President of the United States is tried\, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.\n\nJudgment in Cases of Impeachment sh all not extend further than to removal from Office\, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor\, Trust or Profit under the United S tates: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment\, Trial\, Judgment and Punishment\, according to Law.\n\nSecti on. 4.\nThe Times\, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators an d Representatives\, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature t hereof\; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regula tions\, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.\n\nThe Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year\, and such Meeting shall be on the f irst Monday in December\, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day .\n\nSection. 5.\nEach House shall be the Judge of the Elections\, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members\, and a Majority of each shall cons titute a Quorum to do Business\; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day\, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members \, in such Manner\, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.\n\ nEach House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings\, punish its Member s for disorderly Behaviour\, and\, with the Concurrence of two thirds\, ex pel a Member.\n\nEach House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings\, and from time to time publish the same\, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy\; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall\, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present\ , be entered on the Journal.\n\nNeither House\, during the Session of Cong ress\, shall\, without the Consent of the other\, adjourn for more than th ree days\, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.\n\nSection. 6.\nThe Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services\, to be ascertained by Law\, and paid o ut of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases\, except Treason\, Felony and Breach of the Peace\, be privileged from Arrest durin g their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses\, and in goin g to and returning from the same\; and for any Speech or Debate in either House\, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.\n\nNo Senator or Representative shall\, during the Time for which he was elected\, be appoi nted to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States\, which shall have been created\, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encrea sed during such time\; and no Person holding any Office under the United S tates\, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office .\n\nSection. 7.\nAll Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the Hou se of Representatives\; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendmen ts as on other Bills.\n\nEvery Bill which shall have passed the House of R epresentatives and the Senate\, shall\, before it become a Law\, be presen ted to the President of the United States\; If he approve he shall sign it \, but if not he shall return it\, with his Objections to that House in wh ich it shall have originated\, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal\, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideratio n two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill\, it shall be sent \, together with the Objections\, to the other House\, by which it shall l ikewise be reconsidered\, and if approved by two thirds of that House\, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays\, and the Names of the Persons voting for a nd against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respecti vely. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days ( Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him\, the Same sha ll be a Law\, in like Manner as if he had signed it\, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return\, in which Case it shall not be a Law.\n\nEvery Order\, Resolution\, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a questio n of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States \; and before the Same shall take Effect\, shall be approved by him\, or b eing disapproved by him\, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate an d House of Representatives\, according to the Rules and Limitations prescr ibed in the Case of a Bill.\n\nSection. 8.\nThe Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes\, Duties\, Imposts and Excises\, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United Stat es\; but all Duties\, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States\;\n\nTo borrow Money on the credit of the United States\;\n\ nTo regulate Commerce with foreign Nations\, and among the several States\ , and with the Indian Tribes\;\n\nTo establish an uniform Rule of Naturali zation\, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the Un ited States\;\n\nTo coin Money\, regulate the Value thereof\, and of forei gn Coin\, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures\;\n\nTo provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the U nited States\;\n\nTo establish Post Offices and post Roads\;\n\nTo promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts\, by securing for limited Times t o Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings a nd Discoveries\;\n\nTo constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court\ ;\n\nTo define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas \, and Offences against the Law of Nations\;\n\nTo declare War\, grant Let ters of Marque and Reprisal\, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land a nd Water\;\n\nTo raise and support Armies\, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years\;\n\nTo provide and maintain a Navy\;\n\nTo make Rules for the Government and Regulation of th e land and naval Forces\;\n\nTo provide for calling forth the Militia to e xecute the Laws of the Union\, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions\ ;\n\nTo provide for organizing\, arming\, and disciplining\, the Militia\, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States\, reserving to the States respectively\, the Appointment of the Officers\, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress\;\n\nTo exercise exclusive Legislati on in all Cases whatsoever\, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles s quare) as may\, by Cession of particular States\, and the Acceptance of Co ngress\, become the Seat of the Government of the United States\, and to e xercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Leg islature of the State in which the Same shall be\, for the Erection of For ts\, Magazines\, Arsenals\, dock-Yards\, and other needful Buildings\;—A nd\n\nTo make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying in to Execution the foregoing Powers\, and all other Powers vested by this Co nstitution in the Government of the United States\, or in any Department o r Officer thereof.\n\nSection. 9.\nThe Migration or Importation of such Pe rsons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit\, shal l not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight h undred and eight\, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation\, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.\n\nThe Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended\, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.\n\nNo Bill of Attainder or e x post facto Law shall be passed.\n\nNo Capitation\, or other direct\, Tax shall be laid\, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.\n\nNo Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles e xported from any State.\n\nNo Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: no r shall Vessels bound to\, or from\, one State\, be obliged to enter\, cle ar\, or pay Duties in another.\n\nNo Money shall be drawn from the Treasur y\, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law\; and a regular State ment and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shal l be published from time to time.\n\nNo Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them\, shall\, without the Consent of the Congress\, accept of any present\, Emolument\, Office\, or Title\, of any kind whatever\, from any King\, Prince\, or foreign State.\n\nSection. 10.\nNo State shall enter in to any Treaty\, Alliance\, or Confederation\; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal\; coin Money\; emit Bills of Credit\; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts\; pass any Bill of Attainder\, e x post facto Law\, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts\, or grant any Title of Nobility.\n\nNo State shall\, without the Consent of the Con gress\, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports\, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Pr oduce of all Duties and Imposts\, laid by any State on Imports or Exports\ , shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States\; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.\n\nNo State shall\, without the Consent of Congress\, lay any Duty of Tonnage\, keep Troops\, or Ships of War in time of Peace\, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State\, or with a foreign Power\, or engage in Wa r\, unless actually invaded\, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.\n\nArticle. II.\nSection. 1.\nThe executive Power shall be vest ed in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Offic e during the Term of four Years\, and\, together with the Vice President\, chosen for the same Term\, be elected\, as follows\n\nEach State shall ap point\, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct\, a Number of Electors\, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to w hich the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Represen tative\, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United S tates\, shall be appointed an Elector.\n\nThe Electors shall meet in their respective States\, and vote by Ballot for two Persons\, of whom one at l east shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And the y shall make a List of all the Persons voted for\, and of the Number of Vo tes for each\; which List they shall sign and certify\, and transmit seale d to the Seat of the Government of the United States\, directed to the Pre sident of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall\, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives\, open all the Certificates\, a nd the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President\, if such Number be a Majority of the whol e Number of Electors appointed\; and if there be more than one who have su ch Majority\, and have an equal Number of Votes\, then the House of Repres entatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President\; an d if no Person have a Majority\, then from the five highest on the List th e said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President\, the Votes shall be taken by States\, the Representation from e ach State having one Vote\; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a M ember or Members from two thirds of the States\, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case\, after the Choice o f the President\, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the El ectors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes\, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vic e President.\n\nThe Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Elector s\, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes\; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.\n\nNo Person except a natural born Citizen\, or a Citizen of the United States\, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution\, shall be eligible to the Office of President\; neit her shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attaine d to the Age of thirty five Years\, and been fourteen Years a Resident wit hin the United States.\n\nIn Case of the Removal of the President from Off ice\, or of his Death\, Resignation\, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office\, the Same shall devolve on the Vice Presid ent\, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal\, Death\ , Resignation or Inability\, both of the President and Vice President\, de claring what Officer shall then act as President\, and such Officer shall act accordingly\, until the Disability be removed\, or a President shall b e elected.\n\nThe President shall\, at stated Times\, receive for his Serv ices\, a Compensation\, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished du ring the Period for which he shall have been elected\, and he shall not re ceive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States\, or a ny of them.\n\nBefore he enter on the Execution of his Office\, he shall t ake the following Oath or Affirmation:—\"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United Stat es\, and will to the best of my Ability\, preserve\, protect and defend th e Constitution of the United States.\"\n\nSection. 2.\nThe President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States\, and of the Militia of the several States\, when called into the actual Service of the United States\; he may require the Opinion\, in writing\, of the prin cipal Officer in each of the executive Departments\, upon any Subject rela ting to the Duties of their respective Offices\, and he shall have Power t o grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States\, exc ept in Cases of Impeachment.\n\nHe shall have Power\, by and with the Advi ce and Consent of the Senate\, to make Treaties\, provided two thirds of t he Senators present concur\; and he shall nominate\, and by and with the A dvice and Consent of the Senate\, shall appoint Ambassadors\, other public Ministers and Consuls\, Judges of the supreme Court\, and all other Offic ers of the United States\, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise pro vided for\, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers\, as they think proper \, in the President alone\, in the Courts of Law\, or in the Heads of Depa rtments.\n\nThe President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that m ay happen during the Recess of the Senate\, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.\n\nSection. 3.\nHe shall fr om time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union \, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge ne cessary and expedient\; he may\, on extraordinary Occasions\, convene both Houses\, or either of them\, and in Case of Disagreement between them\, w ith Respect to the Time of Adjournment\, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper\; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public M inisters\; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed\, and s hall Commission all the Officers of the United States.\n\nSection. 4.\nThe President\, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States\, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for\, and Conviction of\, Trea son\, Bribery\, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.\n\nArticle. III.\nS ection. 1.\nThe judicial Power of the United States\, shall be vested in o ne supreme Court\, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from ti me to time ordain and establish. The Judges\, both of the supreme and infe rior Courts\, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour\, and shall\, at stated Times\, receive for their Services\, a Compensation\, which sha ll not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.\n\nSection. 2.\nT he judicial Power shall extend to all Cases\, in Law and Equity\, arising under this Constitution\, the Laws of the United States\, and Treaties mad e\, or which shall be made\, under their Authority\;—to all Cases affect ing Ambassadors\, other public Ministers and Consuls\;—to all Cases of a dmiralty and maritime Jurisdiction\;—to Controversies to which the Unite d States shall be a Party\;—to Controversies between two or more State s\;— between a State and Citizens of another State\,—between Citizens of different States\,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States\, and between a State\, or the Citizens t hereof\, and foreign States\, Citizens or Subjects.\n\nIn all Cases affect ing Ambassadors\, other public Ministers and Consuls\, and those in which a State shall be Party\, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdictio n. In all the other Cases before mentioned\, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction\, both as to Law and Fact\, with such Exceptions\, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.\n\nThe Trial of all Crimes\, except in Cases of Impeachment\, shall be by Jury\; and such Tri al shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been commit ted\; but when not committed within any State\, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.\n\nSection. 3.\ nTreason against the United States\, shall consist only in levying War aga inst them\, or in adhering to their Enemies\, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Wi tnesses to the same overt Act\, or on Confession in open Court.\n\nThe Con gress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason\, but no Attai nder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood\, or Forfeiture except duri ng the Life of the Person attainted.\n\nArticle. IV.\nSection. 1.\nFull Fa ith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts\, Records\, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by ge neral Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts\, Records and Proceedin gs shall be proved\, and the Effect thereof.\n\nSection. 2.\nThe Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citize ns in the several States.\n\nA Person charged in any State with Treason\, Felony\, or other Crime\, who shall flee from Justice\, and be found in an other State\, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled\, be delivered up\, to be removed to the State having Juris diction of the Crime.\n\nNo Person held to Service or Labour in one State\ , under the Laws thereof\, escaping into another\, shall\, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein\, be discharged from such Service or Labo ur\, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.\n\nSection. 3.\nNew States may be admitted by the Co ngress into this Union\; but no new State shall be formed or erected withi n the Jurisdiction of any other State\; nor any State be formed by the Jun ction of two or more States\, or Parts of States\, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.\n\nTh e Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and R egulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the Uni ted States\; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States\, or of any particular State.\n\ nSection. 4.\nThe United States shall guarantee to every State in this Uni on a Republican Form of Government\, and shall protect each of them agains t Invasion\; and on Application of the Legislature\, or of the Executive ( when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.\n\nArt icle. V.\nThe Congress\, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary\, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution\, or\, on the Ap plication of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States\, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments\, which\, in either Case\, shal l be valid to all Intents and Purposes\, as Part of this Constitution\, wh en ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States\, o r by Conventions in three fourths thereof\, as the one or the other Mode o f Ratification may be proposed by the Congress\; Provided that no Amendmen t which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Sect ion of the first Article\; and that no State\, without its Consent\, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.\n\nArticle. VI.\nAll Deb ts contracted and Engagements entered into\, before the Adoption of this C onstitution\, shall be as valid against the United States under this Const itution\, as under the Confederation.\n\nThis Constitution\, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof\; and all Tr eaties made\, or which shall be made\, under the Authority of the United S tates\, shall be the supreme Law of the Land\; and the Judges in every Sta te shall be bound thereby\, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any S tate to the Contrary notwithstanding.\n\nThe Senators and Representatives before mentioned\, and the Members of the several State Legislatures\, and all executive and judicial Officers\, both of the United States and of th e several States\, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation\, to support this Constitution\; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualific ation to any Office or public Trust under the United States.\n\nArticle. V II.\nThe Ratification of the Conventions of nine States\, shall be suffici ent for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratif ying the Same.\n\nThe Word\, \"the\,\" being interlined between the sevent h and eighth Lines of the first Page\, The Word \"Thirty\" being partly wr itten on an Erazure in the fifteenth Line of the first Page\, The Words \" is tried\" being interlined between the thirty second and thirty third Lin es of the first Page and the Word \"the\" being interlined between the for ty third and forty fourth Lines of the second Page.\n\nAttest William Jack son Secretary\n\ndone in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thou sand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscrib ed our Names\,\n\nG°. Washington\nPresidt and deputy from Virginia\n\n\n\ n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n URL\n\n\n\n https://www.archives.gov/founding-do cs/constitution-transcript\n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251116 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR