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 2 DTSTAMP:20251118T012025Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:588-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n The American Revolution\n A Film By\n Ken Burns\, Sarah B otstein &\; David Schmidt\n\n\n\n An Asylum for Mankind (May 1775 – J uly 1776) \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n VIDEO\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\ n TRANSCRIPT\n\n\n\n Announcer: Major funding for \"The American Revolutio n\" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation.\n\nMajor funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein\, th e Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation\, the Lilly Endowment\, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt\, Stephen A. Schwarzman\, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst.\n\nAdditional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations\, the Pew Char itable Trusts\, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling\, the Park Foundati on\, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg\, Perry and Donna Golkin\, The Michelson Foundation\, Jacqueline B. Mars\, the Kis sick Family Foundation\, Diane and Hal Brierley\, John H.N.\n\nFisher and Jennifer Caldwell\, John and Catherine Debs\, The Fullerton Family Charita ble Fund\, and these additional members.\n\n\"The American Revolution\" wa s made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting\ , and Viewers Like You.\n\nThank You.\n\nAnnouncer: The American Revolutio n caused an impact felt around the world.\n\nThe fight would take ingenuit y\, determination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of histor y and set the American story in motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power t o do?\n\nBank of America.\n\n[Insects chirping\, loon calling] [Splashing] Narrator: Before dawn on May 10th\, 1775-- less than a month after Lexing ton and Concord-- some 85 New Englanders rowed across the southern end of Lake Champlain\, keeping silent\, muskets primed.\n\nTheir objective was a dilapidated\, star-shaped fortress called Ticonderoga\, built by the Fren ch 20 years earlier and now occupied by 50 British soldiers and 24 women a nd children.\n\nIf they could capture it\, they might be able to stop Brit ish troops from attacking from the north\; to provide American forces with a staging area should they ever choose to invade Canada\; and to take pos session of dozens of artillery pieces that the rebel forces ringing Boston desperately needed.\n\nThe men slipped silently onto the shore.\n\nThe Br itish surrendered without a shot.\n\nSo did the 9 redcoats stationed at Cr own Point\, a smaller outpost nearby.\n\nThe Americans had two commanders. \n\nOne was Colonel Ethan Allen\, the hard-drinking leader of the \"Green Mountain Boys\,\" a band of vigilantes who had spent years defending their settlements in the Vermont region of northwestern New England against New Yorkers who also claimed the land.\n\nThe other was a newly promoted 34-y ear-old Connecticut militia colonel.\n\nHe was descended from a distinguis hed New England family that had fallen on hard times.\n\nAble but arrogant \, sensitive to slights\, he would become one of the most important comman ders of the American Revolution.\n\nHis name was Benedict Arnold.\n\n♪ W illiam Hogeland: Once it's a shooting war\, as with Lexington and Concord\ , it's a war.\n\nThere's no doubt about that.\n\nBut independence was not\ , in any way\, officially on the table as a goal of the Americans at that point.\n\nThe idea of independence was still controversial.\n\nThe officia l position was that the fight was essentially for redress\, for \"Let's ge t back to the way things used to be.\n\nBack when things were good\, when you left us alone.\"\n\nNarrator: The blood shed at Lexington and Concord had deepened the divisions among Americans from Georgia to New Hampshire.\ n\n\"Loyalists\,\" those who remained faithful to the Crown and hoped His Majesty's troops would soon restore law and order\, dismissed those whose sympathies lay with the militiamen surrounding Boston as \"rebels.\"\n\nTh e \"rebels\" called themselves \"Patriots\"-- or \"Whigs\" after British c hampions of constitutionally guaranteed rights-- and vilified their Loyali st neighbors as \"Tories.\"\n\nAlan Taylor: The term \"Patriot\" is a very old one that pre-exists the Revolution.\n\nIt applies to people who belie ve that they are the defenders of liberty against power.\n\nNow\, \"rebel\ " is a term that the British will use\, and the Loyalists will use\, to ap ply to the people who call themselves the \"Patriots.\"\n\nSo\, to be a re bel means that you are rejecting the legitimate authority of your sovereig n\, King George III of the British Empire.\n\nVoice: That we are divorced is to me very clear.\n\nThe only question is concerning the proper time fo r making an explicit declaration in words.\n\nSome people must have time t o look around them\, before\, behind\, on the right hand\, and on the left \, then to think\, and after all this\, to resolve.\n\nOthers see at one i ntuitive glance into the past and the future\, and judge with precision at once.\n\nBut remember you can't make 13 clocks strike precisely alike at the same second.\n\n[Ticking] John Adams.\n\n♪ Taylor: I think the great est misconception about the American Revolution is that it was something t hat unified Americans and that it was just a war of Americans against the British.\n\nIt leaves out the reality that it was a civil war among Americ ans.\n\nVoice: I tremble at the thoughts of war\; but of all wars\, a civi l war!\n\nOur all is at stake.\n\nSarah Mifflin.\n\nNarrator: In the sprin g of 1775\, a Philadelphia woman named Sarah Mifflin wrote to a British of ficer who had been her friend before the shooting began.\n\nHe had suggest ed that the whole thing was just a minor disagreement.\n\nVoice: It is not a quibble in politics.\n\nIt is this plain truth\, which the most ignoran t peasant knows\, that no man has a right to take their money without thei r consent.\n\nI know this\, that as free I can die but once\, but as a sla ve I shall not be worthy of life.\n\nSarah Mifflin.\n\n♪ Narrator: Some 20\,000 militiamen from towns all over Massachusetts--and from Connecticut \, New Hampshire\, and Rhode Island as well-- had poured into the series o f impromptu camps that kept the British caged in Boston.\n\nThey were unit ed in their anger at the redcoats but very little else.\n\nThey were milit iamen\, not professional soldiers\, expected to meet immediate crises\, no t take part in prolonged campaigns.\n\nFew had uniforms.\n\nMany had never been more than 50 miles from home.\n\nTheir first loyalty was to the town s from which they came and the neighbors whom they had elected as their of ficers.\n\nOnce the shooting stopped and it became clear that the British were not going to attack them\, they began drifting home to plant their cr ops.\n\nIn overall charge of this dwindling\, disorganized force was Gener al Artemas Ward\, the commander of the Massachusetts militia.\n\nFrom his headquarters in Cambridge\, he understood that if there were to be any hop e of holding their own against the British\, he needed a paid\, recruited army-- and he needed it fast.\n\n♪ Voice: Wherever you go\, we will be b y your sides.\n\nOur bones shall lie with yours.\n\nWe are determined neve r to be at peace with the redcoats while they are at variance with you.\n\ nIf we are conquered\, our lands go with yours.\n\nBut if we are victoriou s\, we hope you will help us to recover our just rights.\n\nCaptain Solomo n Uhhaunauwaunmut.\n\nNarrator: Among the troops who arrived in Cambridge was a company of Native Americans from Stockbridge\, Massachusetts.\n\nPhi lip Deloria: Stockbridge is a community of multiple tribes\, which has a l ong history of surviving colonization\, in part through adopting Christian ity and adopting certain kinds of strategic ways of being in relation with colonists.\n\nThey come over from Western Massachusetts and they're part of the Siege of Boston.\n\nNed Blackhawk: Most Indigenous powers stay rela tively on the sidelines of the conflict during the early years.\n\nBut man y Native communities\, particularly those who have lived with settlers for generations\, come to share loyalties and sensibilities.\n\nAnd so\, many decide that it's in their best interest to join the Revolutionary forces and take up arms against the British Empire.\n\nNarrator: The presence of the Stockbridge men among the rebels\, General Thomas Gage\, the commander -in-chief of the British Army in North America\, said\, freed him to call upon other Native Americans to join his forces and fight for the Crown.\n\ nEnslaved New Englanders were not recruited by either side.\n\nThe Massach usetts Provincial Congress insisted it was engaged in a struggle for freed om from British \"slavery.\"\n\nEnlisting them\, it said\, would be \"inco nsistent.\"\n\nBut free African-Americans were welcome-- and at least 35 a nd perhaps as many as 50 men of color had fought at Lexington and Concord and more would soon be engaged in the next\, far bigger battle with the Br itish.\n\nBlack\, White\, and Native American soldiers would serve in regi ments more integrated than American forces would be again for almost two c enturies.\n\nVoice: What?!\n\n10\,000 peasants keep 5\,000 King's troops s hut up!\n\nWell\, let us get in\, and we'll soon find elbow room.\n\nGener al John Burgoyne.\n\n♪ Narrator: On May 25th\, 1775\, a Royal Navy friga te threaded its way into Boston harbor.\n\nAboard were British reinforceme nts and 3 major generals.\n\nJohn Burgoyne was the showiest and the most s elf-assured of the three.\n\nA playwright as well as a soldier\, eager alw ays for advancement\, he was dismissive of the rebels besieging Boston\, w hom he called a \"rabble in arms\, flushed with insolence.\"\n\nHenry Clin ton had spent 6 boyhood years in New York\, where his father had been the Royal Governor.\n\nHe was soft-spoken\, retiring\, insecure.\n\nWilliam Ho we had once expressed sympathy with the American cause\, but he now saw an opportunity to burnish his reputation as a soldier.\n\nThey had been sent to bolster General Gage\, whom the King's Ministers now saw as overly tim id.\n\nThe commanders all agreed that if they could seize the heights at D orchester and Charlestown\, they could break the rebel siege.\n\nRick Atki nson: There are two pieces of high ground that the British have to worry a bout.\n\nOne is Dorchester Heights.\n\nAnd the other is the high ground on the Charlestown Peninsula\, including Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill.\n\nIf you put cannon on either the Charlestown Peninsula or on Dorchester Heigh ts\, you would be able to bombard British forces in Boston.\n\nThe British decide that they are going to seize Charlestown first.\n\nNarrator: The P atriots got wind of the plan\, and Colonel William Prescott was ordered to seize and fortify Bunker's Hill\, the highest prominence on the Charlesto wn peninsula.\n\nAs Prescott and his men got there\, however\, it was some how decided that they should instead build their fort on the crest of anot her\, lower hill that came to be called Breed's Hill.\n\nBut it was within range of both the warships in the harbor and a British battery in Boston' s North End.\n\nPrescott's men went to work with picks and shovels trying to make as little noise as possible so as not to alert the British.\n\nBut when dawn broke on June 17th\, 1775\, the redoubt was only half-finished. \n\n♪ A 20-gun British Navy ship opened fire on the hilltop.\n\nA cannon ball tore the head off a private named Asa Pollard.\n\nTo steady his men\, Prescott leaped onto the unfinished parapet and bellowed at the warships\ , \"Hit me if you can!\"\n\nBritish General Howe was certain that the hill would \"easily be carried.\"\n\nAs soon as the mid-afternoon tide came in \, Howe would personally accompany a large force to the eastern tip of the Charlestown Peninsula.\n\n[Explosions] The British stepped up their canno nade\, the roar so loud it rattled windows in Braintree\, 10 miles away\, where Abigail Adams wondered whether \"the day--perhaps the decisive day-- is come\,\" she wrote\, \"on which the fate of America depends.\"\n\nPresc ott rushed to strengthen his left flank\, ordering some of his men to dig a ditch and form a 165-foot breastwork and assigning others to strengthen a rail-and-stone fence that ran all the way down to the bluff overlooking the Mystic River beach.\n\nLooking up at the American positions\, General Howe believed the hill could be taken by what was called a \"turning\" mov ement.\n\nWhile one column assaulted the redoubt from the left and another \, led by Howe himself\, attacked the rail fence head-on\, a third would s lip along the undefended Mystic River beach\, get behind the rebels\, turn their line\, and destroy them.\n\nSuch attacks had worked well against di sciplined armies in Europe.\n\nStacy Schiff: No one expects that a bunch o f country farmers with muskets are going to hold off a trained army who ha ve orders from an actual general in Boston.\n\nThere is a real disbelief t hat a bunch of ragtag colonists are going to manage to hold their own agai nst trained soldiers.\n\n[Explosions] Narrator: When the column on the lef t neared Charlestown and came under fire from Americans hidden in abandone d buildings\, British ships set the town ablaze with incendiary shells.\n\ nThen\, at around half past 3\, Howe's redcoats started up the right side of the hill.\n\nTall\, fearsome grenadiers formed the first rank\; behind them came the Foot Infantry.\n\nBut the men had to dismantle wooden fences and stone walls that blocked their climb.\n\nTheir uniforms were woolen.\ n\nThe sun was hot.\n\nAnd\, like the anxious New Englanders waiting for t hem on the hilltop\, some had never been in battle.\n\nAtkinson: The notio n that the British Army is this battle-tested\, experienced force\, they'r e good.\n\nThere's no doubt about it.\n\nTheir officers are good.\n\nThey' re very disciplined\, for the most part.\n\nBut they are as scared and as new to this as the Americans are.\n\n[Indistinct shouting\, explosion] Nar rator: As Howe's force continued their ascent\, British light infantry on the far right started their flanking maneuver along the narrow beach\, ben t on getting behind the American defenses\, sure they could get there unop posed.\n\nBut Colonel John Stark of New Hampshire and 60 of his militiamen were waiting for them.\n\nHe had seen that the beach was open to a flanki ng attack and directed his men to build a barricade.\n\nWhen the British g ot within range\, the Patriots opened fire.\n\n[Gunfire] The light infantr y disintegrated.\n\nThe New Hampshire men kept firing until the stunned su rvivors began to retreat toward their boats.\n\nBehind them lay nearly 100 dead and wounded\, lying\, Stark recalled\, \"as thick as sheep in a fold .\"\n\nMeanwhile\, at the top of Breed's Hill\, Prescott and his officers reassured their men: the redcoats could never reach them if they held thei r fire till they came close.\n\n90 yards out\, a stone wall stopped the Gr enadiers.\n\nAs they laid down their arms and worked to tear apart the wal l\, the Patriots fired their muskets.\n\n[Gunfire] British officers urged their men to keep advancing.\n\nInstead\, the soldiers stayed where they w ere and tried to shoot back.\n\nThe Americans had cover.\n\nThe British ha d none.\n\nThe redcoats broke and retreated down the slope.\n\nGeneral How e let his lines regroup\, then ordered them back up the hill\, in hopes of driving through the gap between the breastwork and the rail fence.\n\nHe would go with them.\n\nThis time\, the Patriots behind the fence waited ti ll the Grenadiers got within 50 yards before opening fire.\n\n[Gunfire] It was hard to miss.\n\nScores of British soldiers fell\, dead\, dying\, scr eaming in pain.\n\n[Gunfire] Atkinson: They deliberately target the Britis h officers and they can recognize them in part because they're all wearing red coats\, right\, but the officers are wearing coats that are almost ve rmillion in hue because they can afford the more expensive dyes that make those coats pop.\n\n[Gunfire] The British\, frankly\, think this is unfair .\n\nTrying to target officers\, there's something unseemly about it.\n\nB ut the Americans are not going to stop throughout the whole war.\n\n[Indis tinct shouting\, gunfire] Narrator: The Americans cheered\, hoping General Howe had had enough.\n\n[Gunfire] Atkinson: Every one of his staff office rs is killed or wounded.\n\nHowe will come back down the hill\, unharmed\, remarkably.\n\nBut he's got blood all over his stockings from the men who 've been shot on either side of him.\n\nNarrator: The teenage fifer John G reenwood had been away that day.\n\nWhen he heard the guns\, he hurried ba ck to rejoin his regiment.\n\n♪ Voice: Everything seemed to be in the gr eatest terror and confusion.\n\nI felt very much frightened and would have given the world if I had not enlisted for a soldier.\n\nThen\, I saw a Ne gro man\, wounded in the back of his neck.\n\nI saw the wound very plain a nd the blood running down his back.\n\nI asked him if it hurt him much as he did not seem to mind it.\n\nHe said no\, and that he was only a-going t o get a plaster put on it and meant to return.\n\nImmediately\, you cannot conceive what encouragement it gave me.\n\nI began to feel from that mome nt brave and like a soldier.\n\nJohn Greenwood.\n\n♪ Narrator: From the Boston waterfront\, townspeople\, including John Greenwood's brother Isaac \, watched as British soldiers rowed wounded regulars from Charlestown.\n\ nThey were \"obliged\,\" he said\, \"to bail the blood out like water.\"\n \nAnd when they started back toward Charlestown again with fresh troops\, \"the soldiers\,\" Isaac remembered\, \"looked as pale as death when they got into the boats\, \"for they could plainly see their brother redcoats m owed down like grass.\"\n\nAt the bottom of Breed's Hill\, General Howe wa s determined to come at the Americans one more time.\n\nUp above\, Colonel Prescott knew his men had little powder left and that many of their muske ts were fouled from so much firing.\n\nThis time\, in order to make each s hot count\, he insisted his men wait until their targets were within 30 ya rds.\n\n[Indistinct shouting\, gunfire] \"As fast as the front man was sho t down\, the next stepped forward into his place\,\" one militiaman recall ed.\n\n\"It was surprising how they would step over their dead as though t hey had been logs of wood.\"\n\n[Gunfire] \"We fired till our ammunition b egan to fail\,\" another militiaman remembered\, \"then our firing began t o slacken-- and at last it went out like an old candle.\"\n\nBritish marin es with bayonets began climbing over the parapets.\n\nSome Americans hurle d rocks or swung their muskets like clubs.\n\nOthers clawed their way out of the redoubt and ran.\n\nIt was all over in a matter of minutes.\n\nThe Patriots had been driven from Breed's Hill.\n\n115 Americans had been kill ed and another 305 wounded.\n\n♪ Atkinson: The British succeed in that t hey drive the Americans off of the Charlestown Peninsula.\n\nThey take Bre ed's Hill.\n\nThey take Bunker Hill.\n\nBut it has been a\, a pyrrhic vict ory of the first order.\n\nIt's 4 of the most awful hours of combat in Ame rican military history.\n\nThere are 1\,000 British casualties that day.\n \nThere are 220-some British dead.\n\nStephen Conway: 40% of the attacking force was killed or injured.\n\n40%.\n\nThat's horrendously high casualty rate.\n\nIt is the highest casualty rate for the British Army until the f irst day of the Somme in 1916.\n\nIt is unbelievably bloody.\n\nAnd that h as a really profound impact.\n\nNarrator: \"The loss we have sustained\,\" General Gage admitted\, \"is greater than we can bear.\"\n\nDuring the fi nal struggle\, two prominent men had been killed.\n\nAs Major John Pitcair n encouraged his British Marines to climb over the walls\, he'd been shot through the chest and fell\, dying\, into the arms of his son.\n\nHe was s o hated by New Englanders because he had led the British troops at Lexingt on Green that at least 4 different men would subsequently claim to have fi red the fatal shot.\n\nDr.\n\nJoseph Warren\, the president of the Massach usetts Provincial Congress\, whom the British considered the most \"incend iary\" of all the rebel leaders\, had insisted on joining the men defendin g Breed's Hill and was shot in the head.\n\nThe British officer in charge of the burial detail boasted that they had \"stuffed the scoundrel \"with another Rebel into one hole and there he and his seditious principles may remain.\"\n\nVoice: Saturday gave us a dreadful specimen of the horrors of civil war.\n\nYou may easily judge what distress we were in to see and he ar Englishmen destroying one another.\n\nGod grant the blood already spilt may suffice.\n\nBut this we cannot reasonably expect.\n\nReverend Andrew Eliot.\n\n♪ Narrator: When the news of the battle--remembered as the Bat tle of Bunker Hill-- eventually made its way to London\, the King proclaim ed \"The deluded People\" of America were in a state of \"open and avowed rebellion.\"\n\nAnyone who now aided their cause was a traitor.\n\nGeneral Gage had been right-- the rebellion would never be crushed without overwh elming force.\n\nBut Gage was soon called home\, replaced as commander-in- chief by General William Howe.\n\nFor almost 3 years\, Howe would lead the struggle to try to put down the rebellion-- and carefully avoid ordering any more frontal assaults against entrenched Americans.\n\n♪ Britain\, a t the expense of 3 millions\, has killed 150 Americans this campaign\, whi ch is 20\,000 pounds a head.\n\nAnd at Bunker's Hill\, she gained a mile o f ground.\n\nDuring the same time\, 60\,000 children have been born in Ame rica.\n\nFrom these data\, calculate the time and expense necessary to kil l us all\, and conquer our whole territory.\n\nBenjamin Franklin.\n\n♪ [ Thunder] Voice: Unhappy it is to reflect that a brother's sword has been s heathed in a brother's breast\, and that the once happy and peaceful plain s of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves.\ n\nSad alternative!\n\nBut can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?\n\nG eorge Washington.\n\nNarrator: On July 2nd\, 1775\, Private Phineas Ingall s of Andover\, Massachusetts\, noted in his diary that it \"rained\" and t hat \"a new general from Philadelphia\" had arrived in Cambridge.\n\nThat new general was George Washington of Virginia\, the commander of the Conti nental Army the Congress in Philadelphia had just created.\n\nHis arrival meant that the New England war in which Phineas Ingalls and his fellow mil itiamen had joined was about to become an American war.\n\nJane Kamensky: Washington is a figure toward whom people naturally turn for leadership.\n \nIt is clear\, by the time the Continental Army is signed into being in t he late spring of 1775\, that its commander-in-chief can be nobody else.\n \nThere's something about his presence that makes him the inescapable choi ce.\n\nNarrator: The Second Continental Congress had been meeting since Ma y\, and it was obvious from the first that 43-year-old George Washington w ould command its new army.\n\nHe had led troops during the French and Indi an War\, and he was from Virginia\, the wealthiest and most populated colo ny.\n\nNew England delegates\, eager to ensure that colony's support for t he war\, favored naming a Virginian.\n\nWashington was also one of America 's richest men\, the beneficiary of the work of scores of indentured serva nts and more than 100 enslaved people at his plantation on the Potomac Riv er-- Mount Vernon.\n\nThey grew tobacco and wheat\, corn and flax and hemp \, milled flour\, distilled whiskey\, caught\, salted\, and sold fish.\n\n And to the West\, he had amassed tens of thousands of acres of Indian land s.\n\nWashington has this vision of the future in which...America's future is not to the East\, not towards Europe.\n\nIt's to the West.\n\nHe does see the future and the next century as something in which we should focus on the consolidation of the continent.\n\nHogeland: What defines his early career is an amazing focus\, a ruthless and intense focus\, on his own in terests\, which makes him exactly like every other member of his class.\n\ nIt's just that he became George Washington.\n\nNarrator: Washington consi dered outward evidence of ambition unseemly\, but his appearance alone mad e him stand out in Philadelphia.\n\nHe was about 6'3\" when the average he ight of the men he would lead into battle was around 5'7\"\, and he alone among the delegates appeared each day dressed as a soldier.\n\nWashington will remain\, I think\, endlessly fascinating.\n\nPartly because he was so mysterious\, so reserved in his manner\, frequently\, and didn't give up a lot of what was going on in his gut.\n\n♪ Ellis: He was naturally a pe rson who created space around himself\, and pity anybody that enters that space that's not invited.\n\nMartha gets into that space.\n\nLafayette get s into that space.\n\nMaybe Hamilton gets into that space.\n\nVoice: He ha s so much martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to be a general and a soldier from among 10\,000 people.\n\nThere is not a king in Europe that would not look like a \"valet de chambre\" by his si de.\n\nBenjamin Rush.\n\nHe's got a brain built for executive action.\n\nH e's willing to take responsibility.\n\nHe's got an adhesive memory.\n\nHe is\, according to Thomas Jefferson\, the greatest horseman of his age.\n\n He's built to lead other men in the dark of night\, which is a rare and va luable trait in any commander.\n\nVoice: I am now embarked on a tempestuou s ocean\, from whence\, perhaps\, no friendly harbor is to be found.\n\nNa rrator: Washington accepted that he and his army would be subordinate to t he civilian control of Congress\, but he did not yet see himself as a revo lutionary.\n\nHe still hoped to lead what he called \"a loyal protest\,\" as if George III might somehow overrule Parliament and restore the rights of British colonists.\n\nOn his way to Cambridge\, he met a dispatch rider who carried a letter that told of the terrible bloodletting that had take n place on Breed's Hill.\n\n♪ Atkinson: He shows up in Cambridge in earl y July\, 1775\, as a Virginian commanding\, almost exclusively\, New Engla nd militiamen.\n\nHe doesn't know what to make of them\; they don't know q uite what to make of him.\n\nHe has nothing good to say about New Englande rs\, privately.\n\nThey're almost from different countries.\n\nBut his job is to take this gaggle\, this cluster of militia forces\, and to form the m into a national army.\n\nNarrator: Washington thought he'd be commanding a 20\,000-man force\; in fact\, he had fewer than 14\,000 men fit for ser vice.\n\nHe was assured he would have 15 tons of precious gunpowder\; ther e were just 5.\n\nOn August 6th\, a company of 96 riflemen from Virginia a rrived\, concrete evidence that Americans beyond New England would volunte er to fight.\n\nThey had marched nearly 500 miles in 3 weeks.\n\nTheir lea der was Captain Daniel Morgan\, a big\, brawling one-time wagoner whose ba ck bore the scars of a lashing he'd received during the French and Indian War after he'd knocked unconscious a British officer who had insulted him. \n\nMore riflemen soon followed\, from Pennsylvania and Maryland as well a s more Virginians.\n\nTheir rifles were far more accurate than the smooth- bore muskets most Patriots used\; their grooved barrels spun a ball\, maki ng it fly straighter and truer.\n\nA British soldier would call them \"the most fatal widow-and-orphan makers in the world.\"\n\nBut the riflemen we re also frontiersmen.\n\nThey sounded different from New Englanders\, dres sed differently\, disliked discipline of any kind.\n\nTaylor: So what's go ing to come out of this Revolution is attempts to create an American natio nal identity.\n\nAnd somebody like George Washington becomes quite eloquen t in trying to persuade people\, \"You're not Carolinians\,\" \"You're not New Yorkers\,\" \"You're not New Englanders.\"\n\n\"We're all Americans.\ "\n\nNarrator: Always at Washington's side\, throughout the Revolution\, w as William Lee\, the enslaved servant he had brought with him from Mount V ernon.\n\nKamensky: I think we have to understand Washington as both the f igurehead without whom American liberty would not have survived.\n\nAt the same time\, he's an enslaver of 317 men\, women\, and children.\n\nHe act ed as an enslaver in the ways that enslavers did.\n\nHe bought and sold pe ople.\n\nHe broke up families.\n\nDo not look for gilded statues of marble men.\n\nThey were not that and neither are we and neither is anybody at a ll.\n\n♪ Narrator: Washington was impatient\, eager to get at the enemy. \n\nIn September\, he proposed mounting a water-borne attack on Boston.\n\ nHis officers talked him out of it.\n\nAtkinson: Washington has got a lot to learn.\n\nBecause he's been out of uniform for 16 years\, there's a lot he does not know.\n\nHe knows very little about artillery.\n\nHe knows ve ry little about fortification.\n\nHe knows nothing about continental logis tics.\n\nSo\, he brings a stack of books with him.\n\nNathaniel Philbrick: Typically\, Washington\, before he would make a big decision\, would canv ass his major generals as to what to do.\n\nAnd inevitably\, he would do w hatever Nathanael Greene suggested.\n\nNarrator: General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island\, a Quaker who came to see pacifism as impractical in the face of what he called \"this business of necessity\,\" hoped the British might make a move so that the Americans\, he said\, could \"sell them anot her hill at the same price\" as they had paid taking Breed's Hill.\n\n♪ But the British didn't dare mount an attack on Washington's forces\, eithe r.\n\nThe memory of the last battle was too fresh.\n\nThe standoff would c ontinue for another 6 months.\n\n♪ In Boston\, soldiers and civilians al ike suffered.\n\nThere was too little firewood: regulars ripped pews from churches and demolished whole houses trying to keep warm.\n\nOf 40 transpo rt vessels dispatched from England and Ireland to provision the town\, 32 never made it--blown off-course by unfavorable winds all the way to the We st Indies or seized by Patriots.\n\nVoice: What\, in God's name\, are ye a ll about in England?\n\nHave you forgot us?\n\nFor we have not had a vesse l for 3 months with any sort of supplies.\n\nAnd\, therefore\, our miserie s are become manifold.\n\nBritish Officer.\n\n♪ Voice: In 1770\, I built a house\, dam\, saw\, and grist mills on the west side of the Connecticut River.\n\nHere I was in easy circumstances\, and as independent as my min d ever wished.\n\nJohn Peters.\n\nNarrator: Before the war\, Yale-educated John Peters had been the most respected man in the small settlement of Mo retown in Vermont\, where he lived with his wife Ann and their children.\n \nIn 1774\, his neighbors had picked him to represent them in the First Co ntinental Congress.\n\nBut when Peters got to Philadelphia and sensed the other delegates \"meant to have a serious rebellion\,\" he refused to take part and left for home.\n\nOn the way back\, suspicious Patriots detained him 4 times-- in Wethersfield\, Hartford\, Springfield\, and finally in M oretown itself\, where \"another mob threatened to execute him\,\" he reme mbered\, \"as an enemy to Congress.\"\n\nHis own father\, a colonel in Con necticut's rebel militia\, urged his fellow Patriots to use \"severity\" o n his son to make him \"a friend to America.\"\n\n[Indistinct shouting] Vo ice: The mob again and again visited me.\n\nThey confined me to the limits of the town and threatened me with death if I transgressed their orders.\ n\n[John Peters] Narrator: Even then\, Peters refused to betray his \"King and Conscience.\"\n\nInstead\, he put his head down and hoped to stay out of the fight.\n\nVoice: I little thought the troubles would be so great\, or if they did\, would last so long.\n\nI endeavored to be quiet\, but it would not do.\n\nThe madness of the people was daily growing.\n\n[John Pe ters] ♪ Atkinson: Lake Champlain is this 90-mile-long teardrop that exte nds from the Canadian border down almost to the Hudson River.\n\nIf you co ntrolled Lake Champlain\, you controlled the most obvious entry point into New York from the north\, and into Canada from the south.\n\nEverything e lse is wilderness.\n\n♪ Philbrick: The Americans saw an opportunity.\n\n If they could take Montreal\, if they could take Quebec\, and have command of the St.\n\nLawrence\, they would have the British right where they wan ted them.\n\nNarrator: In the late summer of 1775\, some 1\,200 New York a nd New England troops assembled on the Ile aux Noix\, just inside the Prov ince of Quebec.\n\nTheir commander Richard Montgomery had orders from the Continental Congress to \"take immediate possession\" of the British garri son at Montreal and then keep moving north.\n\nThe ultimate goal was to el iminate the province as a military threat and perhaps adopt it as the 14th American Colony.\n\nThey did not expect much opposition: there were just 700 British regulars in the whole province.\n\nNow George Washington calle d for a complementary expedition through the forests of the Maine province of Massachusetts to surprise and capture Quebec City on the St.\n\nLawren ce River.\n\nTo lead it\, Washington chose Benedict Arnold.\n\nAtkinson: B enedict Arnold is the finest tactical commander on either side in the firs t couple of years of the war.\n\nHe's conspicuously gifted in being able t o motivate men\, tactically\, under difficult circumstances\, to do what h e wants them to do.\n\nNarrator: Arnold had emerged from the capture of Fo rt Ticonderoga with a mixed reputation: he had quarreled with rival office rs and become so incensed at having his expenses questioned that he simply left the militia and went home.\n\nBut after his wife died\, he left his 3 sons with his sister and joined Washington's Continental Army.\n\n\"An i dle life under my present circumstances\,\" he told a friend\, \"would be but a lingering death.\"\n\nQuebec\, Washington believed\, was certain to be \"very easy prey.\"\n\nBut \"not a moment's time is to be lost\,\" he a dded.\n\nConway: The Americans were not hostile to the concept of empire.\ n\nOn the contrary\, they were great enthusiasts for it.\n\nThey called it the \"Continental Army\" and the \"Continental Congress\" for a good reas on.\n\nThey had ambitions to incorporate Canada\, Florida\, and the whole of the continent of North America.\n\nNarrator: On September 25th\, from a boatyard on the Kennebec River in Maine\, Benedict Arnold and his 1\,100- man force set out for Canada.\n\n♪ Voice: Failure to punish the people o f the 4 New England governments for their many rebellious and piratical ac ts\, only encouraged them to go to greater lengths.\n\nI determined to des troy some of their towns and shipping.\n\nVice Admiral Samuel Graves.\n\nN arrator: In October\, Vice Admiral Samuel Graves\, commander-in-chief of H is Majesty's North American Station\, announced he planned to lay waste to the ports of Marblehead\, Salem\, Cape Ann\, Ipswich\, Newburyport\, Port smouth\, Saco\, Falmouth\, Machias.\n\nAll of them were bases from which p rivateers-- Patriot raiders--menaced British shipping.\n\nGraves dispatche d Lieutenant Henry Mowat and 4 warships to carry out his orders.\n\nMowat began with Falmouth-- now Portland\, Maine.\n\n[Bells tolling] Mowat gave the nearly 2\,000 townspeople two hours\, he said\, to \"remove without de lay the Human Species\" before the bombardment began\, then agreed to reco nsider provided the townspeople turned over all their arms and gunpowder b y the following morning.\n\nWhen they didn't\, British ships opened fire.\ n\n[Cannon fire] The cannonade went on for more than 7 hours\, firing more than 3\,000 rounds of shot and hollow balls filled with combustible mater ial.\n\nIn mid-afternoon\, landing parties rowed ashore.\n\nThey hurled to rches into the doors and windows of homes and shops.\n\n[Clatter] News of Falmouth's destruction spread fast.\n\nPorts up and down the coast braced for the next attack.\n\nWashington and Congress had both already begun arm ing ships to seize enemy cargoes to supply the army.\n\nNow Congress voted to commission 13 frigates for a new Continental Navy.\n\nPhilbrick: To ha ve a navy in the late 18th century was to have a fleet of ships that were the most sophisticated machines in the world at that time.\n\nThey were ve ry expensive.\n\nAnd they required all sorts of economic power and technol ogy to create.\n\nGreat Britain had that.\n\nThe colonies really didn't.\n \nAnd\, so\, to go against this huge naval power was kind of an insane tas k to even contemplate.\n\nNarrator: The most successful Patriot commander was John Manley\, a sea captain from Marblehead.\n\nHe managed to seize 7 British vessels before the end of the year\, including an ordnance ship\, its hold filled with 100\,000 flints\, 2\,000 muskets\, and 30\,000 cannon balls-- all of it badly needed by the Continental Army.\n\n♪ British Adm iral Graves ultimately decided against attacking any more ports.\n\nBut th e damage was done.\n\nVoice: The savage and brutal barbarity of our enemie s is a full demonstration that there is not the least remains of virtue\, wisdom\, or humanity in the British.\n\nTherefore\, we expect soon to brea k off all kind of connection with Britain\, and form into a Grand Republic of the American United colonies.\n\n\"The New England Chronicle.\"\n\n♪ Voice: In every human breast\, God has implanted a principle\, which we c all love of freedom.\n\nIt is impatient of oppression\, and pants for deli verance.\n\nI will assert\, that the same principle lives in us.\n\nPhilli s Wheatley.\n\n♪ Narrator: George Washington made his Cambridge headquar ters in the handsome home of a Loyalist who had fled to England.\n\nOne mo rning\, not long after he had moved in\, he noticed a 6-year-old African-A merican named Darby Vassall swinging on the gate.\n\nVassall remembered sa ying he had been born in the house and his parents had worked there.\n\nWa shington urged him to come inside and get something to eat\; he had plenty of chores for him to do.\n\nWhen Darby asked what sort of wages he could expect\, Washington thought the question impertinent and \"unreasonable.\" \n\nDarby Vassall lived to be a very old man and\, when asked\, he liked t o say that in his experience\, George Washington \"was no gentleman\,\" si nce he'd expected a boy to work for free.\n\nWashington was also shocked t o see Black soldiers encamped alongside their White neighbors.\n\nUnconvin ced they could ever make good soldiers\, Washington persuaded the Massachu setts Provincial Congress to enlist no more of them\, though dozens had fo ught on Breed's Hill.\n\nChristopher Brown: I think that Washington was co ncerned about what it might mean for slavery and slaveholding.\n\nI think he was alert to the ways that it could end up eroding the institution.\n\n Narrator: Enslaved African-Americans constituted just 2% percent of the po pulation of New England\, but 40% of Virginians were held as slaves\, and planters like Washington lived in constant fear that they would rise up ag ainst them-- as enslaved people had risen up on the British island of Jama ica 3 times in the last 15 years.\n\nVoice: When you make men slaves you d eprive them of half their virtue\, and compel them to live with you in a s tate of war.\n\nAre there no dangers attending this mode of treatment?\n\n Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection?\n\nOlaudah Equiano.\n\nNar rator: The growing talk of \"liberty\" had appealed to those who had the l east of it and craved it most.\n\nFrom New England to South Carolina\, ens laved people offered to help the British if they were granted freedom.\n\n In November of 1775\, Virginia's Royal Governor Lord Dunmore\, who had bee n forced to flee with some 300 soldiers\, sailors\, and Loyalists to ships anchored in the Chesapeake Bay\, issued a Proclamation that seemed to con firm the slaveholders' worst nightmares.\n\nIt promised freedom to any ens laved man owned by a rebel who was willing to take up arms and help suppre ss the uprising.\n\nAtkinson: Britain is the biggest slave-trading nation on earth.\n\nNevertheless\, the British believe that if they can convince enough slaves to abandon their masters in the South\, to take up arms agai nst the American rebels\, that this is a manpower pool that can also deran ge the economies of the Southern states.\n\nIt's not that the British are anti-slavery\, by any means\, in the 1770s\, right?\n\nTheir colonies in t he Caribbean are their most profitable colonies in the Americas.\n\nThey a re firmly committed to slavery.\n\nBut\, opportunistically\, when they thi nk that they can encourage slaves to rise up against rebelling colonists\, they'll do so.\n\nAnnette Gordon-Reed: For enslaved people\, this was a w ay of getting out of a situation that seemed intractable.\n\nAnd it gave t hem an impetus to get involved in all of this.\n\nIn the sort of chaos of war\, they found an opportunity\, a way to escape their situation.\n\nVoic e: \"The Virginia Gazette.\"\n\nBe not then\, ye Negroes\, tempted by this proclamation to ruin yourselves.\n\nWhether you will profit by my advice\ , I cannot tell.\n\nBut this I know\, that whether we suffer or not\, if y ou desert us\, you most certainly will.\n\nNarrator: Dunmore's Proclamatio n helped drive Southern slaveholders to the side of the revolutionaries.\n \nEdward Rutledge of South Carolina spoke for many: Lord Dunmore's proclam ation tends \"in my judgment\, \"more effectually to work an eternal separ ation \"between Great Britain and the Colonies than any other expedient.\" \n\nDunmore says that he only wants the slaves of rebels to join him.\n\nN ot clear exactly how you can tell them apart\, or whether there's any kind of census going on of who do you belong to.\n\nNarrator: Dunmore was not an abolitionist\; he did not free any of the 57 human beings he held in sl avery himself\; the Patriots would capture them all and sell them to fund their cause.\n\nVoice: Wednesday.\n\nLast night after going to bed\, Moses \, my son's man\, Joe\, Billy\, Postillion\, John\, Mulatto Peter\, Tom\, Panticore\, Manuel\, and Lancaster Sam all ran away to Lord Dunmore.\n\nLa ndon Carter.\n\nNarrator: Now runaways streamed to the governor's ships\, silently slipping along the rivers and tidal creeks that opened into the C hesapeake Bay.\n\n87 men\, women\, and children from a single Virginia pla ntation fled to Dunmore.\n\n[Dogs barking] Voice: Ran off last night from the subscriber: a Negro man named Charles\, who is a very shrewd\, sensibl e fellow\, and can both read and write.\n\nThere is reason to believe he i ntends an attempt to get to Lord Dunmore.\n\nHis elopement was from no cau se of complaint\, or dread of whipping but from a determined resolution to get liberty\, as he conceived.\n\n\"The Virginia Gazette.\"\n\nNarrator: \"There is not a man among them\,\" George Washington's farm manager warne d him\, \"but would leave us if they believed \"they could make their esca pe.\n\nLiberty is sweet.\"\n\nHe was right.\n\nThe first enslaved person t o escape Mount Vernon was named Harry Washington.\n\nBorn somewhere near t he Gambia River in West Africa\, he was captured\, carried across the ocea n\, and\, in 1763\, purchased by George Washington.\n\nFreedom was never f ar from his mind.\n\nIn 1771\, he had tried to escape but was caught and b rought back.\n\n4 years later\, he saw his chance.\n\nErica Dunbar: Follow ing Lord Dunmore's proclamation\, Harry Washington knew that this would be an opportunity\, and he joined the British against the people who had onc e owned him.\n\nNarrator: George Washington called Lord Dunmore a \"Monste r\,\" and an \"arch-traitor to the rights of humanity.\"\n\nVoice: If that man is not crushed before spring\, he will become the most formidable ene my America has.\n\nHis strength will increase\, as a snowball\, by rolling \, and faster.\n\nNothing less than depriving him of life or liberty will secure peace to Virginia.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\nNarrator: Scores of run aways were caught and brutally punished\; some were killed\, others sold o ff to compensate their enslavers.\n\nBut some 800 men would make it to Dun more's growing fleet\, along with roughly the same number of women and chi ldren.\n\nMen found fit for duty were enlisted in a special unit called \" Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment.\"\n\nThey were commanded by White officers b ut paid a wage for the first time in their lives.\n\nVoice: The proclamati on has had a wonderful effect.\n\nThe Negroes are flocking in from all qua rters.\n\nAnd had I but a few more men here\, I would march immediately to Williamsburg\, by which I should soon compel the whole colony to submit.\ n\nLord Dunmore.\n\nNarrator: Bolstered by reinforcements\, Dunmore occupi ed Norfolk and ordered a stockade built at the Great Bridge over the Eliza beth River to block the only road to town from the South.\n\nSome 700 Patr iots dug in across the river\, and on December 9\, 1775\, when Dunmore's t roops charged across the bridge to dislodge them\, more than 100 of his me n\, Black and White\, were killed.\n\n\"They fought\, bled\, and died like Englishmen\,\" one man remembered.\n\nDunmore's makeshift army-- includin g what was left of the Ethiopian regiment-- fled back to sea.\n\nWith them went scores of Loyalist families from in and around Norfolk\, most of the m Dunmore's fellow Scots.\n\nHe now commanded a floating city--including r afts on which the poorest struggled to survive.\n\nBrown: Dunmore's Procla mation turns the conflict\, in Virginia\, into a genuine crisis.\n\nBut it does help clarify differences\, right?\n\nIt establishes that there is on e side of this conflict that is unevenly committed to slavery.\n\nAnd then there's another side\, our side\, which is fully committed to it.\n\nAnd for some Patriots\, that's all they need to know.\n\nIt creates a sense th at this is an existential conflict in a way that it had not before.\n\nVoi ce: These lords of themselves\, these kings of me\, these demigods of inde pendence.\n\nIt has been proposed that the slaves should be set free\, an act which\, surely\, the lovers of liberty cannot but commend.\n\nHow is i t that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes? \n\nDr.\n\nSamuel Johnson.\n\n♪ [Indistinct shouting] Voice: Connecticut wants no Massachusetts man in her corps\; Massachusetts thinks there is n o necessity for a Rhode Islander to be introduced into hers.\n\nCould I ha ve foreseen what I have\, and am like to experience\, no consideration upo n earth should have induced me to accept this command.\n\n[George Washingt on] [Indistinct shouting] Narrator: Now George Washington faced for the fi rst time the problem that would haunt him again and again: when enlistment s expired at the end of the year\, most of his army was simply going to me lt away.\n\n♪ To fill out his ranks\, Washington persuaded the governors of Massachusetts and New Hampshire to send him a total of 5\,000 militiam en.\n\nThe newcomers were so sullen\, veteran soldiers called them the \"L ong-Faced People.\"\n\nWashington asked Congress if Indian units could ser ve in his army.\n\nWhile they debated the issue\, many Native people did j oin the ranks.\n\n5 sons of a Mohegan woman named Rebecca Tanner would die fighting for the Patriots over the course of the war.\n\n♪ In December\ , Washington changed his mind about enlisting African-Americans.\n\nHis de sperate need for men was part of it.\n\nBut there were also appeals from B lack veterans themselves or from their officers.\n\n\"It has been represen ted to me\,\" Washington wrote to the Continental Congress\, \"that the fr ee Negroes who have \"served in this Army are very much dissatisfied at be ing discarded.\"\n\nThey could now re-enlist.\n\nKamensky: Washington brin gs to Cambridge the \"hard no\" of a Virginia planter.\n\nBut he is also w illing to revise himself.\n\nTo think about the whole of the potential fig hting force and whether Black men can play a role within it.\n\nI think ma ny people\, most people from his station\, would have started where he sta rted and have gone no further.\n\nSo\, I think he does have a sort of flex ibility as a commander\, which is the only thing that the commander of an insurrectionary force can have.\n\nNarrator: Though the decision remained unpopular\, by the end of the war\, some 5\,000 African-Americans had serv ed in the Continental Army.\n\nA lot of these decisions about who to fight for\, who to align with\, are deeply\, deeply local.\n\nThey're not neces sarily about high ideals at all\, right?\n\nSo\, when people think there's an opportunity with the British\, they may align with and run off to Brit ish lines.\n\nBut when the Patriot Army kind of opens its ranks to Black p eople\, there are lots of Black people who think they can gain advantage\, concession\, and even\, one day\, some status from fighting for the Patri ots.\n\nIt's not a question of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.\n\nIt's what can I get from making this decision\, right now\, in thi s place\, at this time\, among these people.\n\nNarrator: Washington's new army--an ill-assorted mix of soldiers who'd decided to stay on\, raw recr uits\, and short-term militiamen-- now numbered around 8\,000 men.\n\nBut only 2/3 were fit for duty.\n\nThose men were still cold\, still poorly ar med\, still poorly paid-- but also still able to keep the British trapped in Boston.\n\nVoice: It is not in the pages of history perhaps to furnish a case like ours.\n\nTo maintain a post within musket shot of the enemy fo r 6 months together\, without powder\, and at the same time to disband one Army and recruit another\, within that distance of 20-odd British regimen ts\, is more than probably ever was attempted.\n\n♪ [Thunder] Voice: At the most moderate computation\, this rebellion will cost Great Britain 10 millions of treasure and 20\,000 lives.\n\nWhat then\, in the name of wond er\, is the object of the war?\n\nAre we to throw away so much treasure an d so many lives to gain a point which\, when gained\, is not worth 1% on o ur money?\n\nThe \"Public Advertiser.\"\n\nMaya Jasanoff: In the British P arliament\, there are debates taking place.\n\nThere are people lining up on one side who say\, \"You know\, we ought to actually \"grant the coloni es more autonomy.\n\n\"We ought to loosen the strictures \"that we've plac ed on them.\n\n\"We ought to think about ways that they might be represent ed.\"\n\nNarrator: The war in North America was not universally popular in England.\n\nThe colonies were 3\,000 miles away.\n\nThe theater of war wo uld be far larger than any the British Army had ever encountered before.\n \nIt was sure to be costly and bloody and likely to be prolonged.\n\nThe A rmy chief and England's most distinguished naval commander would both refu se to take part in the war.\n\nThe Lord Mayor and aldermen of the City of London appealed to the King to reconsider.\n\nIt was far better to give th e Americans their \"rights and liberties\,\" they said\, than impose \"the dreadful operations of your armaments.\"\n\nBut the new Secretary of Stat e for America\, Lord George Germain\, remained determined to crush the reb ellion-- and to do it with a single\, all-out campaign.\n\nIf the war drag ged on\, King George himself feared that Britain's old Catholic enemies\, France and Spain\, might be persuaded to support the rebel cause.\n\nVoice : The rebellious war now levied is become more general\, and is manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire.\n\nThe object is too important\, the spirit of the British nation too high\, the resources with which God hath blessed her too numerous\, to give up so man y colonies which she has planted with great industry\, nursed with great t enderness\, and protected and defended at much expense of blood and treasu re.\n\n[King George III] Atkinson: King George was not an ogre.\n\nHe was not a tyrant.\n\nContrary to the stereotype that most Americans have of hi m\, he's actually a pretty extraordinary man.\n\nConway: He was a very gre at constitutional monarch.\n\nIn fact\, in 1775\, he declares\, \"I'm figh ting the war of the legislature.\"\n\nIn other words\, he's fighting for P arliament's rights over the American colonies.\n\nNot his own rights\, Par liament's rights.\n\nBut once the war starts\, he sees himself as the comm ander-in-chief with a responsibility to make sure the war is run efficient ly and effectively.\n\nNarrator: The British Navy was the largest on earth \, but the all-volunteer British Army numbered fewer than 50\,000 officers and men on paper.\n\nAnd it was still smaller in reality\, just 1/3 of th e size of the French Army\, and scattered across the world from Ireland to India\, the Mediterranean to the Caribbean.\n\n\"Unless it rains men in r ed coats\,\" one official warned\, \"I know not where we are to get all we shall want.\"\n\nEllis: The British should have recognized that this was going to be extremely difficult and perhaps unwinnable conflict.\n\nThey w ere confident of two things.\n\nThey had invincible military power.\n\nAnd \, therefore\, there was no need for them to compromise.\n\nAnd secondly\, that any compromise of Sovereignty\, of Parliament's Sovereignty\, was go ing to encourage independence on the part of the Americans.\n\nThey had a kind of \"Domino\" theory: if we lose American colonies\, then we lose Can ada\, then we lose the Caribbean.\n\nSo that George III and his Ministers really believe that nothing less than the future of the British Empire is at stake.\n\n[Bird cawing] Voice: Our commander\, Arnold\, was of a remark able character.\n\nBrave and beloved by the soldiery\, he possessed great powers of persuasion.\n\nPrivate John Joseph Henry.\n\n♪ Narrator: Bened ict Arnold and his men had made slow progress on their way up the Kennebec River as part of the American invasion of Canada.\n\nTheir provisions had been packed into 220 flat-bottomed \"bateaux\,\" built for them at George Washington's orders.\n\nAll Arnold knew about the forests his men were ab out to penetrate came from a crude 15-year-old British map that seemed to suggest Quebec City was 180 miles away and could be reached in just 20 day s.\n\n♪ The real distance turned out to be 270 miles.\n\n[Wind blowing] Nothing could have prepared Arnold for the ordeal he and his men were abou t to endure.\n\n[Water spraying] The Kennebec turned out to be punctuated by waterfalls and rapids.\n\nSubmerged rocks tore the bottoms of their boa ts.\n\nWithin 72 hours\, 1/4 of their provisions were lost or ruined.\n\nI n the mornings\, wet clothes were glazed with ice\, one man wrote\, thick as a pane of glass.\n\nOn the 10th day\, Arnold began rationing the remain ing food-- just salt pork and flour.\n\nIt snowed on the 19th day and rain ed relentlessly for days afterwards.\n\nThen\, it snowed again.\n\nPhilbri ck: America is this huge continent.\n\nThere's tornadoes\, there's hurrica nes\, there's winter storms.\n\nTurns of weather that we know are coming f or weeks on end hit the people of the 18th century completely by surprise. \n\nThey're not just fighting each other.\n\nIn a profound way\, they are fighting the American climate and geography and topography.\n\nThis is a d ifficult place to conduct a war.\n\n♪ Narrator: After a month of hardshi p\, the officer leading the battalion that had been bringing up the rear d eclared the mission suicidal\, turned his 300 men around\, and started for home with many of the remaining provisions.\n\n♪ Arnold's men were now forced to subsist on candles\, tree bark\, and soup made by boiling rawhid e.\n\nOne company killed and ate their captain's Newfoundland dog.\n\n♪ Of the 1\,100 men who set out from Cambridge\, more than 1/3 had turned ba ck\, been escorted home as invalids\, or died along the way.\n\n[Bell ring s] Finally\, 45 days after setting off--not 20-- Arnold's men saw the spir es and walls of Quebec City looming across the St.\n\nLawrence River.\n\nP hilbrick: No one\, particularly the British\, can believe that suddenly th ey are there.\n\nArnold\, because of this\, would have a reputation now.\n \nHe would be known as the \"American Hannibal\" for his ability to move m en over mountains\, to achieve seemingly impossible things.\n\nNarrator: M eanwhile\, American forces led by General Montgomery had easily taken Mont real.\n\nThen\, with 300 of his men\, Montgomery set out along the St.\n\n Lawrence to meet up with Arnold.\n\nTogether\, they planned their assault on Quebec City.\n\nThey realize that they've got a hard decision to make.\ n\nWe either attack now\, or many of our men are going to leave.\n\nTheir enlistments are up.\n\nThey're cold.\n\nIt's mid-winter in Canada.\n\n♪ Narrator: There were only some 300 British regulars stationed in the forti fied city.\n\nSo\, General Guy Carleton\, the royal governor of Canada\, o rdered every able-bodied man within its walls to prepare for battle.\n\nAn yone who refused had to leave or be prosecuted as a spy.\n\nThe city's ram parts were soon guarded by some 1\,800 men.\n\nThe American plan called fo r two small\, noisy diversionary feints to draw defenders away from the at tack's real targets.\n\nMeanwhile\, Arnold and his men would circle around Quebec City from the north\, while General Montgomery would approach from the south.\n\nTogether\, they would storm the citadel's steep walls.\n\ n♪ Voice: Dear Father\, if you receive this letter\, it will be the last this hand will ever write you.\n\nHeaven only knows what will be my fate. \n\nBut whatever it may be\, I cannot resist the inclination I feel to ass ure you that in this cause I feel no reluctance to venture a life\, which I consider as only lent to be used when my country demands it.\n\nYour ver y affectionate son\, John Macpherson.\n\n[Wind blowing] Voice: The storm w as outrageous.\n\nCovering the locks of our guns with the lapels of our co ats and holding down our heads... [Gunshot] we ran in single file.\n\nJohn Joseph Henry.\n\nNarrator: The Americans launched their attack at 4 in th e morning on December 31st\, 1775\, under the cover of a howling blizzard. \n\nMany men had pinned to their hats slips of paper with the words\, \"Li berty or Death.\"\n\n[Gunfire] Everything went wrong.\n\n[Gunfire] The div ersionary attacks fooled no one.\n\nArnold's men came under merciless fire from the ramparts above-- and the enemy had placed formidable barricades in their way.\n\n[Gunfire] When a ricocheting bullet fragment tore through Arnold's left leg\, he had to be carried back to camp.\n\nCaptain Daniel Morgan of Virginia took over.\n\nHe managed to lead his men past one barri cade only to be blocked by another.\n\nHe tried 4 times to scale it\, then decided to wait for Montgomery and his men to break through.\n\n♪ But M ontgomery never made it.\n\n[Gunshot] Within moments of making his way int o the city\, he\, John Macpherson\, and 11 others were killed.\n\n[Gunfire ] Voice: The enemy\, having the advantage of the ground in front\, a vast superiority of numbers\, and dry and better arms\, gave them an irresistib le power.\n\nAbout 9:00 a.m.\, it was apparent to all of us that we must s urrender.\n\nJohn Joseph Henry.\n\n♪ Narrator: 30 Americans lay dead.\n\ n389 were taken prisoner\, including Daniel Morgan.\n\n♪ Arnold\, though badly wounded\, was not captured and vowed to try to take the city again before it could be reinforced.\n\nVoice: I have no thoughts of leaving thi s proud town\, until I first enter it in triumph.\n\nProvidence which has carried me through so many dangers\, is still my protection.\n\nBenedict A rnold.\n\n♪ Voice: I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature\, and that power\, whether vested in many or a few\, is ever gras ping\, and like the grave cries give\, give.\n\nYou tell me of degrees of perfection to which humane nature is capable of arriving\, and I believe i t\, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.\n\nWhen I consider these things\, I feel anxiou s for the fate of our monarchy\, or democracy\, or whatever is to take pla ce.\n\nAbigail Adams.\n\nNarrator: On New Year's Day\, 1776\, George Washi ngton ordered a new \"Continental Union\" flag raised atop Prospect Hill o verlooking occupied Boston.\n\nThe British Union Jack still filled its upp er left-hand corner.\n\nBut its 13 red and white stripes\, he said\, were intended as a \"compliment to the United Colonies.\"\n\nWith the exception of the city of Boston\, Patriots now controlled each of the 13 colonies.\ n\nSeveral other royal governors had\, like Dunmore\, fled to ships offsho re.\n\nBut people within the colonies remained deeply divided.\n\nSome of the free population favored independence.\n\nOthers were appalled at the t hought of breaking with the King.\n\nAbandoning Britain\, one Virginian wr ote\, would \"dissolve the bands of religion\, of oaths\, of laws\, \"of l anguage\, of blood\, which hold us united under the influence of the commo n parent.\"\n\nStill others remained \"disaffected\,\" favoring neither si de\, hoping somehow to carry on with their lives while their fellow-Americ ans-- suspicious of their neutrality-- fought things out.\n\nBut events we re changing minds.\n\nGordon-Reed: What happened in the run-up to all of t his gave people a sense that they might be able to make it on their own.\n \nThey were different from the people in Great Britain.\n\nThey realized t hat they were moving apart.\n\nVoice: If we must erect an independent gove rnment in America\, a republic will produce strength\, hardiness\, activit y\, courage\, fortitude\, and enterprise.\n\nBut there is so much rascalit y\, so much venality and corruption\, so much avarice and ambition\, such a rage for profit and commerce among all ranks and degrees of men\, even i n America\, that I sometimes doubt whether there is public virtue enough t o support a republic.\n\nJohn Adams.\n\nTaylor: The leaders of the America n Revolution need popular support.\n\nThe leaders of the American Revoluti on are going to have to make promises that there's going to be greater soc ial mobility\; there's going to be greater respect for common people\; the re is going to be broader political participation in the future than there has been in the colonial past by loosening up structures of authority\, i ncluding structures of religious authority.\n\nIf you're making this Revol ution and you need the support of thousands of common people\, men and wom en\, what's in it for them?\n\nGordon Wood: Up to the 18th century\, peopl e assumed that everything will always remain the same.\n\nBut the idea tha t you could take charge and change your culture\, that's what--that's the fundamental basis of the Enlightenment\, that man can be changed.\n\n♪ V oice: The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.\n\n'Tis not the af fair of a city\, a country\, a province\, or a kingdom\, but of a continen t.\n\nEverything that is right or natural pleads for separation.\n\nEvery spot of the old world is overrun with oppression.\n\nFreedom hath been hun ted round the globe.\n\nO!\n\nreceive the fugitive\, and prepare in time a n asylum for mankind.\n\n♪ We have it in our power to begin the world ov er again.\n\nA situation similar to the present hath not happened since th e days of Noah until now.\n\nThe birthday of a new world is at hand.\n\nTh omas Paine.\n\n♪ Narrator: On January 9th\, 1776\, a slender pamphlet ti tled \"Common Sense\" was published in Philadelphia-- the most important p amphlet in American history.\n\nIt was signed simply \"an Englishman.\"\n\ nIts author\, a recent newcomer to America\, was 38-year-old Thomas Paine. \n\nThe son of a Quaker corset-maker and his Anglican wife\, Paine had fai led at his father's profession\, lost his first wife and their child in ch ildbirth\, been fired from his post as tax collector\, endured the collaps e of a second childless marriage\, and had seen his possessions auctioned off to pay his debts.\n\nDuring his 8-week voyage from Britain\, he'd cont racted typhus\, and when his ship reached Philadelphia\, he had to be carr ied off\, half-dead.\n\nBut Paine was a master with words\, skillfully wea ving the latest Enlightenment philosophy with biblical references that eve ryone knew.\n\nAnd he was a violent foe of aristocracy and monarchy.\n\nSc hiff: It's a much more radical document than anything that had preceded it .\n\n\"Common Sense\" takes off like an accelerant through the colonies.\n \nEveryone reads it.\n\nNarrator: Excerpts from \"Common Sense\" appeared in newspapers throughout the colonies.\n\nThe pamphlet would sell tens of thousands of copies.\n\nTaylor: It is an unprecedented bestseller.\n\nWith the exception of the Bible in the colonies\, no book has been read as wid ely as \"Common Sense\" is.\n\nBernard Bailyn: It was a wholesale attack o n the entire world of Britain\, political\, cultural.\n\nAnd it's in slam- bang prose.\n\nNo American pamphleteer wrote that kind of really tough ext reme language.\n\nHogeland: It just made people listen and made people thi nk at a time when the Congress would never have thought of attacking the K ing\, personally\, King George III\, the \"Crown of England.\"\n\nThey wer e always like\, \"Oh\, he's not really getting it.\n\n\"It's Parliament th at's our problem.\n\nThe King needs to help us.\"\n\nHe just called the Ki ng a \"beast\,\" in print.\n\nHe was the working-class intellectual.\n\nHi s politics were radically democratic\, in many ways.\n\nAnd that made him different from the other famous Founders.\n\nVoice: Hereditary succession is an insult and an imposition on posterity.\n\nFor all men being original ly equals\, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever.\n\nOne of the strongest natur al proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings is that nature disappr oves it\, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by g iving mankind an ass for a lion.\n\nThomas Paine.\n\nBailyn: That pamphlet did stir people's minds about the possibility of a different kind of worl d.\n\nVoice: \"Common Sense\" struck a string which required a touch to ma ke it vibrate.\n\nThe country was ripe for independence\, and only needed somebody to tell the people so.\n\nPrivate Ashbel Green.\n\nHogeland: Some of the Founders\, and others\, thought this is the moment we can start ov er again.\n\nWe can actually begin the world anew.\n\nAnd it must have bee n\, you know\, wildly exciting at the time.\n\nAnd I think it still excite s us\, that we are the product of a revolutionary moment where the world t urned upside down.\n\nVoice: My countrymen will come reluctantly into the idea of independency.\n\nI find \"Common Sense\" is working a wonderful ch ange in the minds of many men.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\n♪ Narrator: Not all minds were changed.\n\nHannah Griffitts\, the Philadelphia poet who in 1768 had urged American women to boycott British goods\, was horrified.\n \nKamensky: The idea that to reform the Empire by not buying tea or import ed cloth would lead to this crazy question of independence was an impossib le thing for her to countenance.\n\nPaine is where a lot of people get on the revolutionary road.\n\nIt's where she gets off.\n\nNarrator: For some Americans\, \"Common Sense\" confirmed their worst fears.\n\nVermont Loyal ist John Peters\, who continued to receive death threats from his Patriot neighbors\, had reached a breaking point.\n\nVoice: Often mobbed and once imprisoned by the malcontents\, I quitted my family\, property\, and offic es\, and fled to Canada\, to avoid personal danger and to support the Brit ish cause against its enemies.\n\n[John Peters] Voice: The want of guns is so great that no trouble or expense must be spared to obtain them.\n\n[Ge orge Washington] Atkinson: Washington has got Boston surrounded.\n\nThe pr oblem is\, he doesn't have the big guns necessary to make the British in B oston really feel threatened.\n\nHe's got some artillery\, but not enough. \n\nThey tend to be smaller field guns.\n\nHe knows that at Ticonderoga\, which is several hundred miles away\, there are more than 80 British guns that have been captured by Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen.\n\nAnd he tell s Henry Knox\, \"Go to Ticonderoga\, bring back whatever you can.\"\n\n♪ Narrator: Henry Knox was a big\, amiable\, 25-year-old Boston bookseller who had learned all he knew about artillery and military engineering from volumes he'd stocked in his shop and from his service in the Boston militi a.\n\nHe'd earned Washington's admiration for overseeing the construction of fortifications at Roxbury.\n\nAtkinson: Washington\, who's got a very g ood eye for subordinate talent\, recognizes that this guy\, he doesn't eve n have a uniform at the time\, has something about him that Washington fin ds appealing\, and the potential that Henry Knox evinces is something that Washington recognizes immediately.\n\nNarrator: Before setting out\, Knox wrote a letter to his pregnant wife Lucy\, who had fled Boston\, leaving her Loyalist parents and siblings behind.\n\nVoice: Keep up your spirits\, my dear girl\, and don't be alarmed when I tell you that the General has ordered me to go to the westward as far as Ticonderoga.\n\nDon't be afraid \, there is no fighting in the case.\n\nI am going upon business only.\n\n Henry Knox.\n\nNarrator: Knox made his way to the captured forts and found 55 guns worth transporting-- 39 field pieces\, 14 mortars\, and two howit zers-- all weighing more than 64 tons.\n\n♪ Knox's task was somehow to m ove them 300 miles down into the Hudson Valley\, across the Berkshires\, a nd all the way to Boston.\n\nHe had horses and ox teams haul the guns over land to the northern end of Lake George.\n\nFrom there\, a small fleet of barges and boats ferried them more than 30 miles against howling winds to Fort George at the southern end.\n\n♪ Voice: I have made 42 exceeding st rong sleds and have provided 80 yoke of oxen to drag them as far as Spring field\, where I shall get fresh cattle to carry them to camp.\n\nWe shall have a fine fall of snow\, which will make the carriage easy.\n\nHenry Kno x.\n\n♪ Narrator: The snow for which Knox hoped proved unpredictable\, s ometimes too light for his sleds to glide over\, sometimes too heavy for t hem to move at all.\n\n♪ Crossing the Berkshires\, oxen hauled the canno n up and over mountains so tall that from their summits\, Knox remembered\ , \"We might almost have seen all the kingdoms of the earth.\"\n\n♪ Wher ever they went\, farmers and townspeople turned out to see them.\n\nVoice: We reached Westfield\, Massachusetts\, and found that very few\, even amo ng the oldest inhabitants\, had ever seen a cannon.\n\nWe were great gaine rs by this curiosity.\n\nFor while they were employed in remarking upon ou r guns\, we were with equal pleasure discussing the qualities of their cid er and whiskey.\n\nJohn P. Becker.\n\nNarrator: As the ox train lumbered o n\, Knox hurried ahead alone to Cambridge.\n\nHe reported to Washington th at over the next few weeks\, all the artillery he'd been promised would be at his disposal.\n\n♪ When the last of Knox's cannon reached Washington 's army\, England's hold on Boston was doomed.\n\nAtkinson: It's one of th e most extraordinary expeditions in American military history.\n\nHe appea rs back in Cambridge\, says\, \"Boss\, I'm here.\n\n\"I've brought back 50 guns.\n\n\"They're parked right outside of town.\n\nThey're available whe never you need them.\"\n\nWashington says\, \"You're my man.\"\n\nAnd he p uts Knox in charge of Continental Artillery.\n\n[Drumbeat] Narrator: On th e night of March 4th\, 1776\, some 3\,000 men and 300 teams worked to put 20 or more heavy guns in place on Dorchester Heights.\n\n[Drumbeat] Voice: March 5th.\n\nThis morning at daybreak\, we discovered two redoubts on th e hills on Dorchester Point\, and two smaller works on their flanks.\n\nTh ey were all raised during the night\, with an expedition equal to that of the genie belonging to Aladdin's wonderful lamp.\n\nFrom these hills they commanded the whole town\, so that we must drive them from their post\, or desert the place.\n\n[British Officer] Narrator: Unwilling to sacrifice a ny more men\, General Howe decided to leave Boston for Halifax in Nova Sco tia\, where he hoped to regroup.\n\n♪ With him went 10\,000 soldiers and their dependents as well as 1\,100 Loyalist men\, women\, and children wh o would have to build new lives in a new place.\n\nAmong them were Henry K nox's in-laws.\n\n\"I have lost\,\" his wife Lucy wrote\, \"my father\, mo ther\, brother\, and sisters.\"\n\n♪ Voice: How horrid is this war?\n\nB rother against brother and the parent against the child.\n\nWho were the f irst promoters of it\, I know not.\n\nBut God knows.\n\nAnd I fear they wi ll feel the weight of His vengeance.\n\n♪ Tis pity\, the little time we have to spend in this world\, we cannot enjoy ourselves and our friends\, but must be devising means to destroy each other.\n\nLucy Knox.\n\n♪ Nar rator: With the evacuation of Boston\, no British garrison now remained an ywhere in the rebellious colonies.\n\nSerena Zabin: I think it surprises e verybody that the Patriots are having some successes.\n\nSo much so that e veryone's convinced that it's either the support of God or the virtue of t he cause that is helping them win.\n\nOne of their favorite metaphors is t he Battle of Jericho.\n\nThey're sure that all it takes is for this army t hat has right on its side to show up and blow a trumpet\, and the walls ar e just going to fall down.\n\nNarrator: Some Americans believed the war wa s over.\n\nThe Massachusetts legislature thanked George Washington for his service and wished him \"Peace and Satisfaction of Mind\" in his retireme nt.\n\nBut Washington knew better.\n\nHe informed Congress that he would \ "immediately repair to New York\, with the remainder of the Army.\"\n\nHe was sure that Howe's next move would be to attack that strategically impor tant port.\n\nBy mid-April\, 1776\, he and his wife Martha\, and several m embers of their household\, were in residence there.\n\nMeanwhile\, Congre ss sent a Connecticut businessman named Silas Deane to Paris to secretly b uy munitions and supplies-- and to look into the possibility of forging an alliance with France.\n\nSchiff: Two questions\, really\, conjoin at this point.\n\nOne question is\, if we're going to make ourselves independent\ , if we're going to somehow create a nation\, which is a truly novel and d estabilizing concept\, how are we going to do that?\n\nWe have absolutely no means with which to do so.\n\nSo\, we will have to enlist the aid of a foreign power.\n\nAnd then comes the question of a Declaration.\n\nAnd the question is\, which needs to happen first.\n\n♪ Voice: Independence is the only bond that can tie and keep us together.\n\nEvery day convinces us of its necessity.\n\nInstead of gazing at each other with suspicious or d oubtful curiosity\, let each of us hold out to his neighbor the hearty han d of friendship.\n\nAnd let no other name be heard among us\, than those o f a good citizen\; an open and resolute friend\; and a virtuous supporter of the Rights of Mankind\, and of the Free and Independent States of Ameri ca.\n\nThomas Paine.\n\n♪ [Thunder] Voice: Language cannot describe\, no r imagination paint\, the scenes of misery the soldiery endure\, continual ly groaning and calling for relief\, but in vain.\n\nThe most shocking of all spectacles was to see a large barn crowded full of men with this disor der\, many of which could not see\, speak\, or walk.\n\nDr.\n\nLewis Beebe .\n\nNarrator: That spring\, colonists on both sides of the fighting were ravaged by a common enemy: \"Variola major\"--smallpox.\n\nHighly infectio us\, the virus had scarred\, blinded\, or killed hundreds of thousands in North America over the past 2 1/2 centuries.\n\n♪ The American Revolutio n coincided with a continent-wide epidemic that would last for 7 years and take some 100\,000 more lives--Black\, White\, as well as Native American .\n\nColin Calloway: When armies are marching back and forth\, this is pri me environment for the spread of diseases.\n\nAnd one of the largest\, or at least best documented\, smallpox epidemics\, and it may be epidemics\, plural\, happens at the time of the American Revolution.\n\nSmallpox was t he dread disease of humanity.\n\nNarrator: There were just two weapons aga inst smallpox: isolating its victims to keep them from infecting others or inoculating the still unaffected by deliberately implanting live virus in to an incision in hopes that the infection they contracted would neither p rove fatal nor infect anyone else before it conferred immunity.\n\nGeorge Washington knew the disease firsthand\; he'd been permanently scarred by i t as a young man.\n\nBut he initially rejected inoculation for his soldier s: if he imposed it universally\, his whole army would have been incapacit ated for weeks\; if he employed it piecemeal and just one still-infectious inoculated soldier was released too early\, he might infect his whole com pany.\n\nInstead\, anyone showing smallpox symptoms was isolated in a spec ial hospital with guards posted to keep visitors out.\n\n[Seagulls crying] Meanwhile\, aboard Lord Dunmore's floating city in the Chesapeake Bay\, t he men of his Ethiopian Regiment and their families\, packed together on s mall\, segregated vessels\, were without immunity and not inoculated until the disease was already raging among them.\n\nSo was typhus.\n\nVoice: Th e fever has proved a very malignant one and has carried off an incredible number of our people\, especially the Blacks.\n\nHad it not been for this horrid disorder\, I am satisfied I should have had 2\,000 Blacks with whom I should have had no doubt of penetrating into the heart of this colony.\ n\nLord Dunmore.\n\n♪ Narrator: In late May\, Dunmore moved his ramshack le fleet north to Gwynn's Island\, lured there by the presence of some 400 cows with which he hoped to help feed his followers.\n\nBut smallpox and typhus came with him.\n\nRunaways continued to find their way to Dunmore\, 6 or 8 a day--and died almost as fast.\n\n[Gunshot] Eventually\, under fi re from Virginia militiamen onshore\, Dunmore and his fleet would be force d to sail away from the island.\n\n[Gunshot] They left behind hundreds of sick African-American men\, women\, and children.\n\nA Virginian who reach ed the island a day or two later never forgot what he saw.\n\nVoice: On ou r arrival\, we were struck with horror at the number of dead bodies\, in a state of putrefaction\, without a shovelful of earth upon them\; others g asping for life\; and some had crawled to the water's edge\, who could onl y make known their distress by beckoning to us.\n\nSuch a scene of cruelty my eyes never beheld\; for which the authors never can make atonement in this world.\n\n[Virginia Militiaman] ♪ Narrator: Dunmore's experiment in emancipation had ended in disaster.\n\nBut over the 7 years of fighting t hat followed\, tens of thousands of enslaved people would flee to the Brit ish\, believing that the King's representatives were more likely than the Revolutionaries to fulfill their hopes for liberty.\n\n♪ Gordon-Reed: Op ting for freedom is a gamble.\n\nAnd it makes people take all kinds of ris ks.\n\nThe notion that you would be in a situation where your children\, a nd your children's children\, and your children's children's children woul d be enslaved\, I can understand wanting to risk death to prevent that.\n\ n♪ Narrator: That same spring\, smallpox would end the American dream of capturing Canada\, as well.\n\nFor more than 4 months\, Benedict Arnold\, now promoted to general\, had continued to blockade Quebec City\, hoping he could mount a successful second assault before spring temperatures thaw ed the ice blocking the St.\n\nLawrence\, and the British could land reinf orcements.\n\nBut by May\, nearly half of those Americans who remained wer e sick.\n\nThen\, Royal Navy warships and transports arrived\, filled with thousands of fresh troops-- and thousands more were on the way.\n\nThe Am ericans took flight.\n\nBritish forces\, led by General Guy Carleton and G eneral John Burgoyne\, pursued them-- soon supported by Native American al lies.\n\nDarren Bonaparte: For us\, my people living on the St.\n\nLawrenc e\, the British rallied us and said\, \"We've got Americans invading.\n\nT hey're going to kill all of you.\"\n\nWe sent 100 of our warriors to help the British drive the Americans out of the Montreal area.\n\nNarrator: One by one\, the Americans abandoned their outposts.\n\nReinforcements added to their numbers\, but 3/4 of the newcomers had no immunity to smallpox.\n \nVoice: The road ran alongside of the river opposite the city of Montreal \, and we could plainly see the red-coated British soldiers on the other s hore.\n\nSo close were they upon us that if we had not retreated as we did \, all would have been prisoners\, for they were in numbers as 6-to-our-on e\, and we\, moreover\, nearly half-dead with sickness and fatigue and lac k of clothing.\n\nJohn Greenwood.\n\nNarrator: The young fifer John Greenw ood was among those reinforcements when Arnold ordered his men to abandon Montreal.\n\nNearly 2\,000 fell ill.\n\nEventually they crowded onto Ile a ux Noix\, waiting their turn to be ferried south on Lake Champlain to Crow n Point and Ticonderoga.\n\n♪ 20 to 60 men fell ill every day\, and 15 t o 20 died.\n\nTwo great pits were dug in which the dead were heaped each e vening\, one man recalled\, \"with no other covering but the rags in which they died.\"\n\nBy the end of June\, 10 months after the American invasio n of Canada began\, it was over.\n\n12\,000 Americans had taken part.\n\nS ome 5\,000 of them had been killed\, wounded\, taken prisoner\, died of di sease\, or deserted.\n\nThe survivors were now encamped back on the shores of Lake Champlain where the campaign had started.\n\n♪ Voice: Our army at Crown Point is an object of wretchedness to fill a human mind with horr or.\n\nOur misfortunes in Canada are enough to melt a heart of stone.\n\nT he smallpox is 10 times more terrible than Britons\, Canadians\, and India ns together.\n\nJohn Adams.\n\n♪ Narrator: \"Our affairs are hastening t o a crisis\,\" John Hancock\, the president of the Continental Congress.\n \nwarned\, \"and the approaching campaign \"will in all probability determ ine forever the fate of America.\"\n\nFrance had by now quietly pledged to provide some arms and money-- but open support would require the Congress to cut all ties to Britain.\n\n\"Every day\,\" John Adams wrote to a frie nd\, independence \"rolls in upon us like a torrent.\"\n\nOn May 15th\, Co ngress called upon all 13 colonies to form their own governments.\n\nBy ad opting new constitutions\, the colonies would turn themselves into soverei gn States.\n\n♪ The next day\, delegates learned that the British\, desp erate and without European allies\, had hired thousands of foreign troops to help crush the rebellion.\n\nSome German princes had agreed to provide them--for a price.\n\nMost came from Hessen-Kassel and Hessen-Hanau\, so t he Americans would call them all \"Hessians.\"\n\n\"O Britons\,\" one Rhod e Islander lamented\, \"how art you fallen that you hire foreigners to cut your children's throats.\"\n\nVoice: The British nation have proceeded to the last extremity.\n\nAnd we should expect a severe trial this summer\, with Britons\, Hessians\, Indians\, Negroes\, and every other butcher the gracious King of Britain can hire against us.\n\nJosiah Bartlett\, New Ham pshire.\n\nFriederike Baer: The Americans are using the British Government 's decision to hire foreign soldiers in the war against British subjects\, if they look at this as a civil war to some extent.\n\nThey're using this as a tool to rile up resistance against Britain\, to mobilize men to\, ba sically\, take up arms against these invaders\, and ultimately to support independence.\n\n[Gavel banging] Narrator: On June 7th\, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced resolutions in Congress declaring that \"these Uni ted Colonies are &\; of right \"ought to be free &\; independent Sta tes absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.\"\n\n♪ Meanwhile\ , a letter to a Pennsylvania newspaper signed only \"Republicus\" declared that it was time for independent Americans \"to call themselves by some n ame\"-- and proposed the \"United States of America.\"\n\n♪ A 5-man comm ittee was named to produce a document setting forth the reasons for making such a momentous decision.\n\n33-year-old Thomas Jefferson of Virginia wa s assigned to write the first draft.\n\n♪ He would draw from Aristotle\, Cicero\, John Locke\, and the Virginia Declaration of Rights\, written by his friend George Mason.\n\nBut his goal\, he said\, was to distill what he called \"an expression of the American mind.\"\n\n♪ He worked in a re nted room on Market Street\, fueled by cups of tea brought to him by his 1 4-year-old valet\, Robert Hemings-- the son of an enslaved servant\, Eliza beth Hemings\, and Jefferson's father-in-law.\n\nVoice: When in the course of human events\, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the pol itical bands which have connected them with another\, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws o f nature and of nature's God entitle them\, a decent respect to the opinio ns of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel the m to the separation.\n\n♪ We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal\; that they are endowed by their Creator with ce rtain inalienable rights\; that among these are life\, liberty\, and the p ursuit of happiness.\n\n[Thomas Jefferson] Wood: Everything that we believ e in comes out of the Revolution.\n\nOur ideas of liberty\, equality\, it' s the defining event of our history.\n\n\"All men are created equal.\"\n\n That is the most famous and important phrase in our history.\n\nIf we don' t celebrate it\, we have no reason to be a people.\n\nAnd Lincoln knew tha t.\n\nAnd that's why he says\, \"All honor to Jefferson.\"\n\n♪ Narrator : Thomas Jefferson was proposing something altogether new and radical in t he world.\n\nIt was the American people's \"right\,\" he argued\, it was \ "their duty\"-- to \"throw off\" tyranny and learn to govern themselves.\n \nVoice: That to secure these rights\, governments are instituted among me n\, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed\, that whe never any form of government becomes destructive of these ends\, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it\, and to institute new gove rnment\, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power s in such form\, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.\n\n[Thomas Jefferson] Narrator: Since no one had authority over anyone else by birthright\, Jefferson was affirming that all legitima te power came from the people themselves-- even if he\, the owner of hundr eds of human beings\, could never make that truth a reality in his own lif e.\n\nGordon-Reed: His relationship to slavery is foundational.\n\nFrom th e beginning to the end\, this institution bounded his life\, even though h e knew it was wrong.\n\nHow could you know something is wrong and still do it?\n\nWell\, that is the human question for all of us.\n\n♪ Taylor: Th e Declaration of Independence\, we remember it\, primarily\, from its open ing preamble\, the most famous sentences in our history\, quoted ever sinc e as a mandate for expanding liberty for other people.\n\nBut most of the document is something else.\n\nIt is a list of crimes allegedly committed by the King.\n\nThat means that when the Patriot leaders decide that they want independence\, then they must persuade their people in the colonies\, now states\, that the King has forfeited his just authority.\n\nThe purpo se of the Declaration of Independence is to declare the King is no longer sovereign.\n\nNarrator: Throughout history\, most people had been subjects \, living under authoritarian rule.\n\n\"All experience hath shewn\,\" Jef ferson wrote\, \"that mankind are more disposed to suffer\, while evils ar e sufferable.\"\n\nGeorge III himself\, not the Parliament\, was now the e nemy.\n\nThe Declaration denounced him as \"unfit to be the ruler of a fre e people\,\" guilty of 18 \"injuries and usurpations\,\" all meant to esta blish\, it read\, \"absolute tyranny.\"\n\nIt charged that he had invaded \"the rights of the people\,\" sent \"swarms of officers to harass\" them\ , imposed a standing army in peacetime\, levied taxes without the colonist s' consent\, and was now waging war against them.\n\n♪ Dunmore's Proclam ation had deepened fears of slave uprisings\, and reports that the governo r of Canada had enlisted Native people to resist the invasion there furthe r inflamed Congress.\n\nIn the 18th and final charge against the King\, Je fferson did all he could to exploit their fury.\n\nVoice: He has excited d omestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabi tants of our frontiers\, the merciless Indian Savages\, whose known rule o f warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages\, sexes\, and cond itions.\n\n[Thomas Jefferson] Narrator: Proclaiming the equality of \"all men\" was a genuinely revolutionary idea\, but that equality was not yet e xtended to Native Americans\, enslaved or free Blacks\, the poor\, or any woman.\n\nJefferson's original list of \"injuries\" had also included the charge that George III was somehow responsible for the Atlantic slave trad e.\n\nHe called it \"cruel war against human nature itself.\"\n\nThe other delegates refused to adopt that charge.\n\n♪ The Declaration of Indepen dence was formally ratified on July 4th\, 1776-- just 1\,337 words that en ded with the phrase\, \"We mutually pledge to each other our lives\, our f ortunes\, and our sacred honor.\"\n\n♪ When Rhode Island delegate Stephe n Hopkins\, who had palsy\, signed the document\, he is said to have remar ked\, \"My hand trembles\, but my heart does not.\"\n\n[Crowd cheering] It was first read aloud to a cheering crowd in the State House yard at Phila delphia on July 8th.\n\nIt was soon published in 29 newspapers\, and greet ed by parades and celebratory volleys of gunfire throughout the newly Unit ed States.\n\n[Gunfire] Voice: Boston\, Massachusetts-- when Colonel Craft s read the proclamation\, great attention was given to every word\, and ev ery face appeared joyful.\n\nThe King's arms were taken down from the Stat e House and every vestige of him from every place in which it appeared and burned in King Street.\n\nThus ends royal authority in this state\, and a ll the people shall say\, \"Amen.\"\n\nAbigail Adams.\n\n[Crowd cheering] Narrator: On July 9th\, in New York\, General Washington ordered the Decla ration read to his troops.\n\nHearing the list of George III's alleged cri mes so angered the men that a number of them raced down Broadway to Bowlin g Green\, tied ropes to the statue of the King\, and pulled it to the grou nd.\n\n♪ Pieces of the shattered statue were dispatched by wagon to Litc hfield\, Connecticut\, where Patriots melted the gilded lead into bullets- - 42\,088 of them.\n\n♪ Far to the north at Fort Ticonderoga\, the batte red survivors of the failed invasion of Canada were assembled so that the Declaration could be read to them.\n\nWhen it was over\, an eyewitness sai d\, \"The language of every man's countenance was\, \"Now we are a people\ ; we have a name among the states of the world.\"\n\n♪ Among those who h eard the Declaration read at Ticonderoga was private Lemuel Haynes\, a fre e African-American from Granville\, Massachusetts.\n\nHe understood right away what it might mean for people like him--and wrote an essay entitled: \"Liberty Further Extended.\"\n\n♪ Voice: Liberty is a jewel which was h anded down to man from the cabinet of heaven.\n\nIt hath pleased God to ma ke \"of one blood all nations of men for to dwell upon the face of the ear th.\"\n\nAnd as all are of one species\, therefore\, we may reasonably con clude that liberty is equally as precious to a Black man as it is to a Whi te one\, and bondage equally as intolerable to the one as it is to the oth er.\n\n[Lemuel Haynes] Maggie Blackhawk: The Declaration of Independence w as deeply significant to people at the margins.\n\nIt gave them a space of moral argument.\n\nIt gave them a space of legal argument that could be l everaged to reshape United States democracy and become a part of it.\n\nAn d we are going to push every lever we had to be able to make this democrac y real\, and to make these visions\, these values\, real rather than hypoc ritical.\n\n♪ Voice: London\, \"The Gentleman's Magazine.\"\n\nThe Ameri can Declaration reflects no honor upon either the erudition or honesty of its authors.\n\n\"We hold\,\" they say\, \"these truths to be self-evident .\n\nThat all men are created equal\"?\n\nEvery plowman knows that they ar e not created equal.\n\nIt certainly is no reason why the Americans should turn rebels.\n\nAtkinson: King George was determined that the Americans n ot be permitted to break away.\n\nHe believes\, and his senior ministers b elieve\, that this slippery slope of an American insurrection will only le ad to the dissolution of the British Empire.\n\nThe sun never sets on the British Empire.\n\nThat phrase was coined in 1773.\n\nAnd George is determ ined it's never going to set as long as he is the monarch.\n\n♪ Narrator : And the King had sent a great fleet to New York--with thousands of troop s-- to prevent that from ever happening.\n\n♪ ♪ ♪ Announcer: Next ti me on \"The American Revolution\"... Battleground: New York.\n\nRick Atkin son: Washington makes a number of tactical mistakes\, none more serious th an at Long Island.\n\nAnnouncer: Women continue to be at the heart of the resistance.\n\nVoice: If our men are all drawn off and we should be attack ed\, you would find a race of Amazons in America.\n\n[Abigail Adams] Annou ncer: And the reality of war.\n\nMaya Jasanoff: The United States came out of violence.\n\nAnnouncer: When \"The American Revolution\" continues nex t time.\n\n♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of \"The American Revolution\" with interactives\, games\, classroom materials\, and more.\n\n♪ Announcer: \"The American R evolution\" DVD and Blu-ray\, as well as the companion book and soundtrack \, are available online and in stores.\n\nThe series is also available wit h PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video.\n\n♪ Announcer: The American R evolution caused an impact felt around the world.\n\nThe fight would take ingenuity\, determination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide o f 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 \"The Am erican Revolution\" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its memb ers Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the B lavatnik Family Foundation.\n\nMajor funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein\, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation\, the L illy Endowment\, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schm idt\, Stephen A. Schwarzman\, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst .\n\nAdditional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundation s\, the Pew Charitable Trusts\, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling\, t he Park Foundation\, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and A my Berg\, Perry and Donna Golkin\, The Michelson Foundation\, Jacqueline B . Mars\, the Kissick Family Foundation\, Diane and Hal Brierley\, John H.N .\n\nFisher and Jennifer Caldwell\, John and Catherine Debs\, The Fullerto n Family Charitable Fund\, and these additional members.\n\n\"The American Revolution\" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Publ ic Broadcasting\, and Viewers Like You.\n\nThank You.\n\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n URL\n\n https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-epis ode-2-an-asylum-for-mankind/\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251117 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR