The American Revolution PBS Documentary Episode 2

The American Revolution
A Film By
Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein & David Schmidt

An Asylum for Mankind (May 1775 – July 1776) 

VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

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

URL
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-2-an-asylum-for-mankind/