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 3 DTSTAMP:20251118T053520Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:589-7-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 The Times That Try Men’s Souls (Jul y 1776 – January 1777)\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n VIDEO\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\ n\n TRANSCRIPT\n\n\n\n Announcer: Major funding for \"The American Revolut ion\" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie an d Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Famil y Foundation.\n\nMajor funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein\, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation\, the Lilly Endowment \, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt\, Stephen A. Schwarzman\, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst.\n\nAdditiona l support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations\, the Pew Ch aritable Trusts\, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling\, the Park Founda tion\, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg\, Perr y and Donna Golkin\, The Michelson Foundation\, Jacqueline B. Mars\, the K issick Family Foundation\, Diane and Hal Brierley\, John H.N.\n\nFisher an d Jennifer Caldwell\, John and Catherine Debs\, The Fullerton Family Chari table Fund\, and these additional members.\n\n\"The American Revolution\" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcastin g\, and Viewers Like You.\n\nThank You.\n\nAnnouncer: The American Revolut ion caused an impact felt around the world.\n\nThe fight would take ingenu ity\, determination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of hist ory and set the American story in motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power to do?\n\nBank of America.\n\nVoice: The plan laid down for our education was entirely broken in upon by the war.\n\nInstead of morning lessons\, w e were to knit stockings\; instead of embroidering\, to make homespun garm ents\; and in place of the music of the harpsichord\, to listen to the lou d\, clanging trumpet and never-ceasing drum\, for in every direction that we traveled-- and heaven knows we left but little of Virginia unexplored-- we heard naught but the din of war.\n\nOur late peaceful country now beca me a scene of terror and confusion.\n\nBetsy Ambler.\n\n[Men shouting] ♪ Maya Jasanoff: Our images of the American Revolution tend to be images of men in wigs in wood-paneled rooms\, and that helps to reinforce an image of the American Revolution as just a war about ideals.\n\nI think that we really do a disservice to...history and to the experiences of the people w ho lived through it when we paper over the violence of the American Revolu tion with this set of very idealized images that we have of the Founding F athers signing documents in Philadelphia.\n\nThe United States came out of violence.\n\n♪ [Sea gulls crying] Voice: I peeped out at the bay and sa w something resembling a wood of pine trees trimmed.\n\nI declare at my no ticing this that I could not believe my eyes\, but judge you of my surpris e when\, in about 10 minutes\, the whole bay was full of shipping as ever it could be.\n\nI do declare that I thought all London was afloat.\n\nPriv ate Daniel McCurtin.\n\n♪ Narrator: On Saturday morning\, June 29\, 1776 \, Colonel Henry Knox\, whose artillery had convinced the British to flee Boston\, was breakfasting with his wife Lucy on the second floor of a comm andeered mansion at Number 1 Broadway when he\, too\, spotted the British ships that Private McCurtin had seen as they approached New York Harbor un opposed.\n\n[Bell ringing] Voice: My God\, you can scarcely conceive of th e distress and anxiety-- the city in an uproar\, the alarm guns firing\, t he troops repairing to their posts.\n\n[Henry Knox] Narrator: Martha Washi ngton and other officers' wives\, including Lucy Knox and her infant daugh ter\, were sent away from the city for their safety.\n\nThe Royal Navy anc hored off Staten Island and began to disembark some 10\,000 British regula rs.\n\nCrowds of local Loyalists cheered them as they stepped ashore.\n\nS tephen Conway: The Royal Navy\, as one contemporary put it\, was the \"Can vas Wings of the British State.\"\n\nIt enabled the British to appear off the coastline almost anywhere unhindered.\n\n♪ Voice: We expect a very b loody summer at New York\, as it is here\, I presume\, the grand efforts o f the enemy will be aimed\, and I am sorry to say that we are not\, either in men or arms\, prepared for it.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\n♪ ♪ Narrat or: By the summer of 1776\, the Revolution\, which began as a quarrel over the rights of British subjects\, had become a war for American independen ce\, and as that revolution spread throughout the colonies\, thousands of Americans\, patriots and Loyalists alike\, would be driven from their home s.\n\n11-year-old Betsy Ambler of Yorktown\, Virginia\, and her family had been among the earliest refugees.\n\nHer mother suffered from what Betsy called \"a nervous malady.\"\n\nIn 1775\, the constant talk of war and Yor ktown's vulnerability to an attack by water had so terrified her mother th at her father decided to move the family\, Betsy said\, \"and seek a safe retreat for her.\"\n\nThe Amblers were more fortunate than most displaced families.\n\nThey and their relatives owned farms and plantations worked b y enslaved people scattered across the state.\n\nThey settled first in a s mall house in the tiny village of New Castle in Hanover County.\n\nIt was there that Betsy's mother gave birth to another daughter--Lucy.\n\nSince L ucy \"made her appearance just after the declaration\,\" Betsy recalled\, their father called her \"his only independent child.\"\n\nNow a fully com mitted patriot\, Betsy's father had lost his paid position as Collector of Royal Customs\, and a Royal Navy blockade would soon choke off the shippi ng on which his profits as a merchant had been made.\n\nVoice: The war\, t hough it was to involve my immediate family in poverty and perplexity of e very kind\, was for the foundation of independence and prosperity for my c ountry\, and what sacrifice would not an American\, a Virginian\, at the e arliest age\, have made for so desirable an end?\n\nBetsy Ambler.\n\n♪ V oice: What to do with this city puzzles me.\n\nIt is so encircled with dee p\, navigable water that whoever commands the sea must command the town.\n \nGeneral Charles Lee.\n\nNarrator: George Washington had assigned a forme r British officer\, General Charles Lee\, to fortify New York City and its surroundings.\n\nThe Patriot commanders feared they could not hold the to wn for long but hoped to make the British pay the highest possible price f or its capture.\n\nSince no one could say where or when British attacks wo uld come\, Washington had been forced to scatter his army and its 121 cann on all around the harbor.\n\nRick Atkinson: New York is an archipelago.\n\ nIt's a confluence of islands.\n\nIt's a problem.\n\nIf you don't control the naval approaches in and around New York\, you cannot properly defend N ew York.\n\nNarrator: New York was one of the best natural harbors on the Atlantic seaboard\, and although the town still occupied just a single squ are mile at Manhattan's southern tip\, it was the second-largest city in t he newly created United States and the gateway to the Hudson River.\n\nIf the British commander\, General William Howe\, could capture it\, his forc es would be free to ascend the river and divide rebellious New England fro m the rest of the states.\n\nNathaniel Philbrick: This whole war\, in many ways\, is a water campaign.\n\nIt's who controls the coast\, but it's als o who controls the rivers and the lakes.\n\nThis is where the fighting wou ld be\, wherever water provided you with a way to get into the interior of the country.\n\n[Splash] Narrator: Both the British and the Americans had considered New York and the farming communities that bordered it to be Lo yalist strongholds.\n\nFor weeks\, Patriots had prowled the streets\, roug hing up Loyalists.\n\nThousands fled with what belongings they could carry .\n\nHundreds more were arrested.\n\nSeveral dozen were hauled away to Sim sbury\, Connecticut\, and imprisoned in an abandoned copper mine 70 feet b elow the Earth that the Patriots called the Catacomb of Loyalty.\n\n[Gavel bangs] A Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies\, chaired by the attorney John Jay\, held daily inquisitions.\n\n40 men\, including the Mayor of New York City\, were jailed for plotting to assassinate George W ashington.\n\nA member of Washington's own personal guard was found to be involved and hanged while 4 brigades of troops looked on.\n\n[Sandbag thum ps\, rope creaks] The city had been home to 25\,000 people.\n\nBy the summ er of 1776\, just 5\,000 of them would remain\, and those Loyalists left b ehind had learned to keep their opinions to themselves.\n\nVoice: To see t he vast number of houses shut up\, one would think the city almost evacuat ed.\n\nTroops are daily coming in.\n\nThey break open the houses they find shut up to quarter themselves.\n\nNecessity knows no law.\n\n[Unidentifie d Loyalist] Narrator: Continental soldiers and militiamen from 10 states c ontinued to stream into town.\n\nEventually\, there would be more than 20\ ,000 of them in and around New York.\n\nThey moved into abandoned houses\, tore up parquet floors for firewood\, and hurled refuse from the windows. \n\nDespite a 10 P.M.\n\ncurfew\, troops flocked to a warren of West Side brothels built on land owned by Trinity Church.\n\nCustomers called it the Holy Ground.\n\n♪ On the afternoon of July 12th\, 2 British warships sl ipped their anchors off Staten Island\, moved into the harbor past the tip of Manhattan\, and began sailing up the Hudson.\n\n[Cannonfire] Voice: Th e cannon from the city did but very little execution\, as not more than ha lf the number of the men belonging to them were present.\n\nThe others wer e at their cups\, and at their usual place of abode on the Holy Ground.\n\ nLieutenant Isaac Banks.\n\nNarrator: Later that same evening\, a still-la rger British fleet\, more than 100 vessels\, began streaming through the n arrows and into New York Harbor.\n\nIts commander was General William Howe 's elder brother Vice Admiral Richard Howe.\n\nBoth had once expressed sym pathy for the colonists\, and both had been empowered to negotiate with re bel leaders and issue pardons in hopes of avoiding further bloodshed\, but while the Admiral was crossing the Atlantic\, Congress had declared Ameri can independence.\n\n[Men shouting] Voice: We learned the deplorable situa tion of His Majesty's faithful subjects\, that they were hunted after and shot at in the woods and swamps to which they had fled to avoid the savage fury of the rebels.\n\nWe also heard that the Congress had now announced the colonies to be independent states.\n\nThat proclaims the villainy and madness of these deluded people.\n\n[Ambrose Serle] ♪ Voice: To my dear Betsey\, my wife-- It is hard to be quite happy when one full half\, at le ast\, of both body and soul is left at home\, but\, believe it\, I am not more mortal here in the neighborhood of the British cannon than I should b e was I happy in your peaceful\, loving arms.\n\nTill my God calls me\, I am immortal.\n\nPhilip Vickers Fithian.\n\nNarrator: Philip Vickers Fithia n of Cohansey\, New Jersey\, was a newly married 28-year-old Presbyterian clergyman\, recently appointed chaplain of a militia brigade.\n\nHe was a graduate of the College of New Jersey at Princeton\, where his classmates had included Aaron Burr and James Madison.\n\nAfter college\, he spent a y ear as a tutor on a Virginia plantation\, where\, seeing the inhuman cruel ty of slavery up close\, he introduced the owner's children to the work of the enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley.\n\nIn New York\, Fithian found himsel f sleeping on the floor of a Loyalist's abandoned home\, conducting prayer meetings twice a day and afterwards visiting the hospitals filled with me n dying from dysentery.\n\nAmen.\n\nAmen.\n\nVoice: Here I must daily visi t among many in a contagious disorder\, but I am not discouraged nor dispi rited.\n\nI am willing to hazard and suffer equally with my countrymen sin ce I have a firm conviction that I am in my duty.\n\n[Fithian] Friederike Baer: When we really take a look at what these regiments were like\, we se e a lot of individuals who are not carrying arms-- including women\, inclu ding children\, including servants\, medical personnel\, chaplains-- and t here are all kinds of individuals there that are essential parts of these armies that are doing essential labor\, without whom\, I think\, the army couldn't operate.\n\nVoice: August 1st-- There is a report pretty well con firmed that near 40 sail of the enemy came in this afternoon and are joini ng the fleet.\n\nWe are all uncertain.\n\n[Fithian] Narrator: The ships th at came in that day were straggling in from a failed British expedition in South Carolina.\n\nThe Royal governors of the southern colonies\, who had all been driven to ships anchored off their coasts\, continued to insist that the rebellion had been stirred up by only a tiny minority of radicals \, that the overwhelmingly loyal populace of their colonies would take up arms in support of the Crown\, provided help was sent.\n\nIn June\, Britis h warships had converged on Charleston Harbor\, where their 262 guns opene d fire on a rebel fort on Sullivan's Island.\n\n[Cannonfire] More than 7\, 000 cannonballs were fired.\n\nMost that hit their target were absorbed by the fort's sturdy palmetto walls.\n\nWithin the fort\, Patriot Colonel Wi lliam Moultrie ordered his men to \"distress [the enemy] in every shape to the utmost of your powers.\"\n\nThey did.\n\nThey had just 31 guns\, but they proved deadly accurate\, toppling masts\, riddling hulls\, blowing sa ilors and sea captains apart.\n\nThe British flagship alone was hit 70 tim es\, and 111 crewmen were killed or maimed.\n\nBy evening\, the battered f leet pulled away.\n\n\"We never had such a drubbing in our lives\,\" one B ritish sailor remembered.\n\nIt took 3 weeks to repair the damage to their ships before they made their way back north to join the forces threatenin g New York.\n\nThe British would not attempt to recapture a southern colon y again for 2 1/2 years.\n\n♪ [Insects chirping] Voice: It seems to be t he intention of the White people to destroy us as a people\, but I have a great many young fellows that would support me\, and we are determined to have our land.\n\nTsi'yu-gunsini.\n\n♪ Narrator: In the summer of 1776\, Cherokee warriors led by Tsi'yu-gunsini\, \"Dragging Canoe\" in English\, began attacking frontier settlements west of the Appalachians on land now claimed by Virginia and the Carolinas.\n\nThe Royal Proclamation of 1763 had expressly barred colonists from purchasing or moving onto Indian lands west of the Appalachians\, but British officials had been powerless to en force it or to keep some Native Americans\, including Dragging Canoe's own father\, from leasing or selling land to settlers and speculators.\n\nKat hleen DuVal: We think of the Revolution as a war against empire\, but it v ery quickly becomes a war for empire.\n\nOne war aim of the American Revol ution is to take the Ohio Valley and the South.\n\nThat's what Americans w anted.\n\nThe British government had kept them from taking Native lands\, so for the Shawnees and the Delawares\, Cherokees\, and many other people\ , the American Revolution was a war to protect these places against an ene my they already knew quite well.\n\nVoice: Our Shawnee nation\, from being a great people\, are now reduced to a handful.\n\nThe red people\, who we re once masters of the whole country\, hardly possess ground enough to sta nd on.\n\nThe lands where but lately we hunted are now thickly inhabited a nd covered with forts and armed men\, and wherever a fort appears\, there will soon be towns and settlements.\n\n[Shawnee Delegate] DuVal: In May 17 76\, a delegation of Shawnees\, Delawares\, Anishinaabe\, and Haudenosaune e came to the Cherokee town of Chote.\n\nThey said\, \"Enough is enough.\n \n\"We've had year after year \"of illegal settlement coming onto our land s.\n\n\"Now a war has come \"that has divided those settlers from their go vernment.\n\nThis is the time to strike.\"\n\nVoice: It is better to die l ike men than to diminish away by inches.\n\nThe Cherokees have a hatchet.\ n\nTake it up and use it immediately.\n\n[Shawnee Delegate] Narrator: Brit ish agents still in Indian country\, who had armed the Cherokees to fight the rebels\, now urged them to be patient and wait until British troops co uld join them.\n\nDragging Canoe would not listen to the British or to the elders of his father's generation\, who had urged diplomacy.\n\nHe rallie d the young men and went to war.\n\n[Flames crackling] They killed and sca lped settlers in the Carolina and Virginia backcountry\, burned their cabi ns and crops\, and drove off their livestock.\n\nColin Calloway: The resul t is\, as the older chiefs feared it would be\, that those American coloni es immediately send armies into Cherokee country.\n\nSome of the American leaders actually say in as many words\, \"This is just what we were waitin g for.\n\n\"Now we have justification \"for launching a full-scale assault on the Cherokees and to drive them out and take their land.\"\n\n♪ Voic e: Nothing will reduce those wretches so soon as pushing the war into the heart of their country\, but I would not stop there.\n\nI would never ceas e pursuing them while one of them remained on this side of the Mississippi .\n\nThomas Jefferson.\n\n♪ DuVal: There are thousands of militiamen in South Carolina\, North Carolina\, Virginia\, Georgia ready to join the Rev olution\, ready to fight Britain\, but the British aren't there.\n\nThere are no British there to fight.\n\nWho's there to fight?\n\nThe Cherokees.\ n\nNarrator: Some 6\,000 militiamen stormed through Cherokee country.\n\nT hey destroyed 36 towns\, including Dragging Canoe's own village.\n\nPhilip Deloria: This is meant to be instructive to other tribes.\n\n\"If you thi nk you're gonna keep a British alliance\, \"guess what we're gonna do?\n\n \"We're gonna come and burn everything.\n\n\"We're gonna destroy your fiel ds.\n\n\"We're gonna destroy your corn.\n\n\"We're gonna destroy all your stored-up food.\n\n\"We're gonna wage total war on those people.\n\nLet's teach all Native people a lesson about what's coming.\"\n\n♪ Narrator: I n the end\, older Cherokee leaders would sue for peace and be forced to ce de another 5 million acres.\n\nMaggie Blackhawk: The colonists wanted to p ossess that land exclusively\, and it's a vision that is Western\, as cont rasted to Native people\, who had a more spiritual or more engaged relatio nship to land.\n\nNarrator: Unlike his elders\, Dragging Canoe would not s urrender.\n\nWith hundreds of men and their families\, he managed to escap e westward to settle along the Chickamauga Creek in what is now Tennessee\ , where he remained defiant.\n\n\"I could not hear their talks of peace\,\ " Dragging Canoe said.\n\n\"My thoughts and my heart are for war.\"\n\n♪ Imperial powers were advancing all across North America in 1776-- Russia along the Alaska coast\, Spain in what became San Francisco Bay\, the Lako ta in the Black Hills\, and the Comanches on the Southern Plains.\n\nOn Au gust 12th off Staten Island in New York\, Britain\, the world's greatest n aval power\, landed 107 more ships.\n\nAboard them were 8\,600 hired Hessi an troops.\n\nEverything about the German soldiers was intended to intimid ate-- their tightly fitted uniforms that made the wearers seem bigger than they were\, the whiskers many grew when most men were clean-shaven\, the helmets worn by their grenadiers and fusiliers that added a foot to their height\, and the reputation for ferocity so widespread that some Americans believed them cannibals with a special taste for babies.\n\nBaer: I think it is an effective propaganda tool.\n\n\"They will plunder our homes.\n\n They will burn our village.\n\nThey will rape our women.\"\n\nThese kind o f portrayals really show up frequently\, especially in the spring of '76 b efore the first Germans even set foot on American soil.\n\n[Sea gulls cryi ng] Voice: Peace will not be restored in America until the rebel army is d efeated.\n\nShould the enemy offer battle in the open field\, we must not decline it.\n\nGeneral William Howe.\n\nNarrator: General William Howe and his brother Richard were in joint command of the largest seaborne assault force Britain had ever assembled-- 24\,000 soldiers\, including the 8\,60 0 Hessians\, and 400 ships manned by some 10\,000 sailors and marines.\n\n ♪ At dawn on August 22nd\, 4\,000 British and Hessian troops crossed the narrows and came ashore at Gravesend on the southeastern edge of Long Isl and\, boatloads of assault troops.\n\nVoice: The enemy have now landed on Long Island.\n\nThe hour is fast approaching on which the honor and succes s of this army and the safety of our bleeding country depend.\n\nGeorge Wa shington.\n\n♪ Narrator: More troops continued to land.\n\nSoon\, more t han 20\,000 British\, Hessian\, and Loyalist soldiers occupied a tent city that sprawled for 8 miles just beyond the beach.\n\nGeneral Washington re minded his men of the dismissive things British officers had said of them. \n\nNow they would have a chance to prove them wrong\, provided they remai ned cool but determined.\n\nVoice: Remember that you are free men fighting for the blessings of liberty\, that slavery will be your portion and that of your posterity if you do not acquit yourselves like men.\n\n[Washingto n] ♪ Narrator: Washington knew an attack was coming somewhere\, but he w orried that the British landing on Long Island was merely a diversion\, an d so he divided his army.\n\nMost would stay in Manhattan\, while some 8\, 000 men\, many of them ill-trained militia\, were posted on Long Island\, where Washington's most trusted general\, Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island \, had strengthened the series of forts and earthworks that ran from Red H ook to Wallabout Bay.\n\nMost of the defenses were concentrated near the l ofty cliffs closest to Manhattan called Brooklyn Heights after the tiny vi llage of Brooklyn that stood just behind them.\n\nWashington and his gener als believed that if the British were to seize that high ground\, their gu ns would command the city\, much as rebel guns had commanded Boston and it s harbor earlier that year\, but Nathanael Greene had fallen ill and was s oon replaced by Major General Israel Putnam of Connecticut\, whose fightin g spirit was not matched by strategic sense or knowledge of the terrain.\n \nBetween the Brooklyn Heights fortifications and the British encampment r an a rugged\, forested ridge called the Gowanus Heights.\n\n4 passes cut i n or around it-- Gowanus\, Flatbush\, Bedford\, and Jamaica.\n\nWith Washi ngton's approval\, Putnam ordered 3\,000 of his men to dig in and hold the ridge and 3 of the passes.\n\nUnaccountably\, the Jamaica Pass remained v irtually unguarded.\n\nWashington makes a number of serious tactical mista kes when he's commander of the American military and none more serious tha n at Long Island.\n\nHe'd been a surveyor.\n\nHe should have known the val ue of completely understanding the ground that you're trying to defend.\n\ nHe doesn't.\n\nHe doesn't go and explore the ground toward Jamaica\, whic h is the far end of this glacial feature\, and doesn't recognize that he c an be outflanked by the British.\n\nNarrator: The Battle of Long Island be gan in the early-morning hours of August 27\, 1776\, and it started with a skirmish over watermelons.\n\n♪ Around midnight\, Pennsylvania pickets at the Red Lion Inn on the far right of the American lines had dimly glimp sed two shadowy figures in a melon patch.\n\nThey were British foragers ou t in front of a large force of redcoats and hoping for a treat before they were sent against the enemy.\n\n[Gunfire] The Pennsylvanians opened fire. \n\nA few minutes later\, a British musket volley from the woods sent the Americans running back to camp.\n\nWith the British attack underway\, Gene ral William Alexander was ordered to organize a force to try and stop it.\ n\nAlexander and 1\,600 men took up positions south of a salt marsh and mi ll pond next to Gowanus Creek as 5\,000 British troops advanced toward the m.\n\nWith no trees or stone walls for cover\, American and British forces stood in line\, European style\, and fired musket volleys and artillery a t one another.\n\n\"Both the balls and shells flew very fast\,\" a Marylan d soldier remembered\, \"now and then taking off a head.\"\n\n♪ Meanwhil e\, in the center of the American lines\, British cannonfire ripped throug h the trees above the ridgeline\, where several hundred troops under New H ampshire General John Sullivan guarded the Flatbush and Bedford passes.\n\ nHessian and Highland regiments advanced toward them with fixed bayonets\, retreating several times under furious American fire.\n\nWatching from a fort on Cobble Hill\, Washington was pleased with the way the fighting was going so far.\n\nBoth fronts seemed to be holding\, but he also sent for reinforcements from Manhattan.\n\n[Fife playing] Voice: Our sergeant major informed us that the regiment was ordered to Long Island.\n\nIt gave me a rather disagreeable feeling\, as I was pretty well-assured I should have to sniff a little gunpowder.\n\n[Gunfire] The horrors of battle then prese nted themselves to my mind in all their hideousness.\n\n\"I must come to i t now\,\" thought I. Joseph Plumb Martin.\n\nNarrator: Private Joseph Plum b Martin of the Connecticut militia was just 15 years old that summer\, 1 of 7 children of a small-town minister so quarrelsome\, he could not hold on to a congregation.\n\nMartin had wanted to enlist since Lexington and C oncord.\n\nOn July 6\, 1776\, he remembered\, he'd taken \"up the pen\, \" loaded it with the fatal charge [of ink]\, \"[and] wrote my name.\n\n[N]ow I was a soldier in name at least\, if not in practice.\"\n\nBefore the bo ats carrying Martin and his fellow soldiers could cross the East River to Brooklyn\, the tide of battle had begun to turn.\n\nThe British attacks on the American right and center\, which Washington's army seemed to have th warted\, had turned out to be mere demonstrations meant to occupy troops w ho might otherwise have defended against the main British assault.\n\nThat would soon begin on the American left.\n\nThe British had slipped through the undefended Jamaica Pass.\n\n12 hours earlier\, leaving their campfire s burning to confuse the Patriots\, General Henry Clinton had led some 10\ ,000 British and German soldiers north along a dirt road grandly called th e King's Highway.\n\nThey moved in silence\, guided by 3 Loyalist voluntee rs.\n\n♪ Atkinson: This is Clinton's idea.\n\nHe's persuaded Howe that t his is the right way to do it.\n\n\"Don't attack frontally.\n\n\"You don't want another Bunker Hill.\n\nGo around them\,\" so he leads-- it's a bett er part of 10\,000 men in the dark of night very quietly\, as quiet as 10\ ,000 men pulling artillery guns with horses can be.\n\nNarrator: The plan worked perfectly.\n\nThe British column\, nearly 2 miles long\, made it th rough the pass and reached the village of Bedford\, well behind American l ines and just 2 miles from the main fortifications on and around Brooklyn Heights.\n\n[2 cannon shots] General Clinton ordered 2 guns fired in quick succession\, the signal for British troops besieging the American right a nd center to move forward simultaneously\, trapping John Sullivan's men in between.\n\nSullivan ordered his gunners to turn their field pieces aroun d to fire at the enemy\, now rushing at them from behind\, but as they str uggled to do so\, Hessian grenadiers and Highland Scots swarmed up and ove r the Gowanus Heights\, firing and bayoneting as they came.\n\nIt was a ro ut.\n\nVoice: Blood\, carnage\, fire.\n\nMany\, many\, we fear\, are lost. \n\nSuch a dreadful din my ears never before heard.\n\nPhilip Fithian.\n\n [Gunfire] Atkinson: Muskets are mostly inaccurate beyond 80 yards and hope less beyond 120 yards\, so a lot of the killing is done with a bayonet\, a nd the bayonet is a nasty way to kill.\n\nIt's a nasty way to die.\n\nThis is really eyeball to eyeball\, nose to nose.\n\nIt's very intimate\, and that kind of intimacy is horrifying.\n\nNarrator: Hundreds of Americans su rrendered\, including General Sullivan.\n\n\"Their fear of the Hessian tro ops was indescribable\,\" the German commander General Heister remembered. \n\nVoice: When they caught only a glimpse of us\, they surrendered immedi ately and begged on their knees for their lives.\n\nI am surprised that th e British troops have achieved so little against these people.\n\n[Heister ] ♪ Voice: We soon landed at Brooklyn.\n\nWe now began to meet the wound ed men\, another sight I was unacquainted with\, some with broken arms\, s ome with broken legs\, and some with broken heads.\n\n[Martin] Narrator: T he fighting Joseph Plumb Martin was about to witness would prove the last and bloodiest of the day.\n\n[Gunfire and shouting] ♪ 3 British columns were now converging on General Alexander and his men on the American right .\n\nHe did his best to rally them\, but the number of attackers steadily grew.\n\nAlexander fell back\, and finally\, rather than see his command d estroyed\, he urged his men to retreat to the village of Brooklyn across t he tidal marshes that flanked Gowanus Creek.\n\nVoice: Such as could swim got across.\n\nThose that could not swim sunk.\n\nThe British were pouring the canister and grapeshot upon the Americans like a shower of hail.\n\nM any of them were killed in the pond and more were drowned.\n\n[Martin] Nar rator: To provide cover for his desperate men and to occupy the British tr oops firing at them from inside and around an old stone house\, Alexander led some 400 soldiers from Maryland into the enemy guns again and again.\n \nFewer than a dozen of them made it safely back to the American lines.\n\ nAlexander himself was forced to surrender.\n\n\"The slaughter was horribl e\,\" a Hessian chaplain wrote.\n\n\"I went over the battlefield among the dead\, who mostly had been hacked and shot all to pieces.\"\n\nAt least 2 00 Americans had been killed\, and perhaps a thousand more were captured.\ n\nWashington watched this final carnage through his spyglass.\n\nBy noon\ , it was all over.\n\nThe British believed they had won what one general c alled a \"cheap and complete victory.\"\n\nAtkinson: Washington's heartbro ken because he recognizes instantly what a catastrophe this has been.\n\nT he only saving grace is that enough of them pull back to form sort of an i nner defense around Brooklyn that gives the British pause.\n\nThey pull ba ck within those defenses.\n\nNow they've got their backs to the East River .\n\nThings are about as dire as they could possibly be.\n\nNarrator: Wash ington and the bulk of his battered army\, crowded now inside the defenses on Brooklyn Heights\, expected that at any moment\, the British would mou nt an all-out assault aimed at destroying them.\n\nGeneral William Howe's officers urged him to finish what he had begun\, but instead of ordering a n assault\, Howe stood down.\n\nHe knew his brother Richard's fleet was ab out to enter the East River and prevent the rebels from escaping by water. \n\nThe Americans were astonished.\n\n\"General Howe is either our friend or no general\,\" Israel Putnam said.\n\n\"He had our whole army in his po wer.\"\n\n[Thunder\, raining] Meanwhile\, a storm blew in and continued of f and on for the next 2 days.\n\nIt kept Admiral Howe's fleet from enterin g the East River.\n\nBy the middle of the second day\, Washington decided to try to withdraw his army to Manhattan.\n\nWashington sends out orders t hat every boat\, every fishing smack\, every canoe\, everything that float s that can be found be brought very secretly and very quietly to the landi ng\, very close to where Brooklyn Bridge now is on the Brooklyn side.\n\nN arrator: To man his mismatched flotilla\, he would call on 2 regiments of seasoned mariners and fishermen\, Black and White and Native American\, fr om Massachusetts coastal towns.\n\nColonel John Glover of Marblehead led o ne of the regiments.\n\nAs darkness fell\, Washington ordered his men to b egin moving silently down from the Heights to the ferry landing regiment b y regiment.\n\nVoice: I seized my musket and fell into the ranks.\n\nWe we re strictly enjoined not to speak or even cough.\n\nAll orders were commun icated in whispers.\n\nJoseph Plumb Martin.\n\n♪ Atkinson: A providentia l breeze comes up that allows them to raise sails and get across the East River\, and then an even more providential fog rolls in\, and it obscures what's happening.\n\n♪ Narrator: All through the night\, John Glover and his men from Marblehead sailed or rowed or paddled back and forth undetec ted\, ferrying more than 9\,000 men as well as horses\, artillery\, and ba ggage wagons to safety in Manhattan.\n\nAtkinson: When dawn breaks\, the B ritish realize everyone's gone.\n\nThey see the last of the boats disappea ring across the river in the traces of fog.\n\n[Cannonfire] And they fire a few shots pointlessly at this retreating gaggle\, including Washington i n one of the last boats\, and the Americans escape to Manhattan Island and get away to fight another day.\n\n♪ Narrator: The Battle of Long Island was the largest battle of the American Revolution.\n\nIt had been a devas tating defeat for George Washington and the Patriot cause\, but his army w as still alive.\n\n♪ [Birds chirping] Voice: Braintree\, Massachusetts-- The best accounts we can collect from New York assure us that our men fou ght valiantly.\n\nWe are no ways dispirited here.\n\nIf our men are all dr awn off and we should be attacked\, you would find a race of Amazons in Am erica.\n\nAbigail Adams.\n\n♪ Narrator: Every army engaged on either sid e in the Revolution would be accompanied by a moving village of civilians- - men\, women\, and children.\n\nMost of the women were soldiers' wives wh o cared for the wounded and washed and cooked and mended for the troops.\n \nSome sold provisions\, including rum.\n\nGeorge Washington often resente d feeding all the women and children\, but he also understood\, he said\, that he had somehow to provide for them \"or lose by Desertion-- perhaps t o the Enemy-- some of the oldest and best Soldiers in the Service.\"\n\nWo men acted as spies\, and a handful disguised themselves and fought as men until they were found out\, but most made their contributions to the war e ffort away from the battlefield.\n\nVoice: Preston\, Connecticut-- Dear hu sband\, I hope that I shall have the pleasure of your company at home this winter.\n\nThe anxieties of the mind cannot be accounted for\, especially when ties of flesh and blood bind them.\n\nMy only comfort now is at pres ent in the dear\, little pledges of our love--our children.\n\nWhen I see them\, I see my dear when so glorious a cause calls him from my arms.\n\nM y country\, o my country.\n\nYour affectionate wife till death\, Lois.\n\n ♪ Narrator: With sons and husbands and fathers away\, some women turned their homes into boarding houses to pay the bills.\n\nOn farms\, women alr eady caring for children and households now slaughtered hogs\, cut and sta cked firewood\, harvested wheat\, and brought it to market.\n\nVoice: The men say we have no business with political matters\, it is not in our sphe re\, but I won't have it thought that we are capable of nothing more than minding the dairy\, visiting the poultry house\, and all such domestic con cerns.\n\nOur thoughts can soar aloft.\n\nWe can form conceptions of thing s of higher nature.\n\nEliza Wilkinson.\n\n♪ Voice: Can you be surprised that the Negroes should endeavor to recover their freedom when they daily hear at the tables of their masters how much the Americans are applauded for the stand they are making for theirs?\n\n[John Purrier] [Rhiannon Gidd ens singing \"Dean Cadalan Samhach\"] ♪ Jane Kamensky: The liberty talk that proliferates through British America originates in coffee houses and across dining tables.\n\nIt surfaces in letters and in pamphlets.\n\nThose pamphlets are excerpted in newspapers and travel up and down the coast.\n \nEven letters\, like newspapers\, are read aloud\, so we know that the la nguage of liberty is contagious and is leaky\, leaky in that there are pla nter-class people in Jamaica saying\, \"You know\, this stuff is kind of h ot\, \"so watch it when you're talking \"because you know all those Black and Brown people \"who are standing\, serving around the edges of your roo m\, they have ears.\"\n\n[Giddens continues singing \"Dean Cadalan Samhach \"] Voice: The signal was to be given first by discharging a gun at Batche lors Hall Plantation.\n\nThey were then to rise in general rebellion and a ttack the several estates\, and put to death all the White people they cou ld.\n\nSam.\n\n♪ Narrator: That same summer of 1776 in Northwestern Jama ica\, enslaved men\, women\, and children living on 47 different plantatio ns secretly conspired to overthrow their enslavers\, hoping their rebellio n would spread across the whole island and unite the people of African des cent living there\, including Igbos\, Creoles\, and Coromantees.\n\nThe pl anned revolt was an unintended consequence of the American Revolution.\n\n The American ban on trade with the British had denied enslaved Jamaicans t he food they needed to survive.\n\nThen London ordered almost half the sol diers who policed the island to sail northward to strengthen General Howe' s forces in New York.\n\nTheir departure was supposed to be the signal for enslaved people to rise up\, but before the plot could get underway\, a c hild was discovered emptying his overseer's pistol and was made to reveal what he knew of the conspiracy.\n\nThe Royal governor declared martial law .\n\nThe revolt was crushed.\n\n135 people were put on trial.\n\n17 were e xecuted.\n\n11 were beaten\, and 45 were torn from their families and depo rted to other islands... [Giddens singing \"Angola\"] Narrator: but that s ummer and fall\, there were other sporadic uprisings or rumors of uprising s among enslaved workers on other British islands-- Saint Kitts\, Montserr at\, Antigua\, Barbados-- all of them striking fear in American slaveholde rs.\n\nVincent Brown: Slave rebellions were usually unsuccessful\, so you wonder\, why would you fight?\n\nSlavery was so incredibly horrifying.\n\n It was a regime of terror\, right\, that was very\, very difficult to with stand.\n\nPeople can abuse\, rape\, torture\, murder enslaved persons with out consequences\, so if you just imagine that situation and that kind of desperation\, it becomes clearer why\, when given an opportunity\, you wou ld fight against that.\n\n♪ [Birds chirping] Narrator: On September 11\, 1776\, 3 delegates of the Continental Congress-- John Adams of Massachuse tts\, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina\, and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsyl vania-- made their way to a Loyalist's house on Staten Island for a meetin g with Admiral Howe\, who was hoping to persuade the Congress to negotiate a peace.\n\n♪ Howe did what he could to reassure the delegates that all could still be forgiven if only the Americans would abandon independence. \n\n\"If America should fall\,\" he told the delegates\, \"[I] should feel and lament it like the loss of a brother.\"\n\n\"[W]e will do our utmost\ ,\" Franklin answered\, \"to save Your Lordship that mortification.\"\n\n\ "They met.\n\nThey talked.\n\nThey parted\,\" Admiral Howe's secretary sai d\, \"and now nothing remains but to fight it out.\"\n\nThere was no going back.\n\nHowe apologized to his visitors for wasting their time.\n\nChris topher Brown: The British government throughout the first few years of the war really thought that a show of force would bring the majority of Ameri cans to their senses and that the instigators\, the provocateurs\, the one s who were responsible for the uprising would be captured\, killed\, or th eir neighbors would just say\, \"Enough.\n\nWe don't actually want to go t o war with our own nation.\"\n\n♪ Voice: On our side\, the war should be defensive.\n\nWe should on all occasions avoid a general action or put an ything to the risk unless compelled by a necessity into which we ought nev er to be drawn.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\nNarrator: Back in New York City\, Washington again expected another British attack and again didn't know wh ere or when it was likely to come\, so again he divided what was left of h is forces.\n\nLeaving behind General Putnam and some 3\,500 men to hold th e city itself\, General Washington led most of his troops north toward the tiny village of Harlem.\n\nMilitiamen were posted along the East River op posite Long Island.\n\nJoseph Plumb Martin found himself with 500 Connecti cut troops at Kips Bay.\n\nAt the same time\, 5 British frigates sailed up the river and anchored on the opposite shore.\n\nAt 11:00 in the morning on September 15th\, they opened fire.\n\n[Cannonfire] Voice: I thought my head would go with the sound.\n\nI made a frog's leap for the ditch and la y as still as I possibly could and began to consider which part of my carc ass was to go first.\n\nWe kept the lines till they were almost leveled up on us\, when our officers gave the order to leave.\n\n[Martin] Narrator: A s Martin and his comrades ran\, 4\,000 enemy troops began coming ashore at Kips Bay\, among them Hessians who bayoneted several wounded Americans an d mutilated the dead.\n\nVoice: Our people were all militia\, and the demo ns of fear and disorder seemed to take full possession of all and everythi ng that day.\n\n[Martin] [Gunfire] Narrator: Then General Washington seeme d to appear out of nowhere\, ordering his stampeding men to form a defensi ve line.\n\n\"Take the walls\,\" he bellowed.\n\n\"Take the cornfield.\"\n \nThey kept running.\n\n\"Are these the men with which I am to defend Amer ica?\"\n\nWashington was known for being aloof\, terse\, stoical\, but\, \ "Those who have seen him strongly moved\,\" a friend remembered\, could \" bear witness that his wrath was terrible.\"\n\nHe seemed stunned and urged his horse forward toward the oncoming Hessians.\n\nAn aide snatched his h orse's bridle and led his commander out of harm's way.\n\nColonel John Glo ver and his regiment from Marblehead\, Massachusetts\, which had just made Washington's escape from Long Island possible\, rushed up and were able t o slow the British advance... [Gunfire] but many Patriots did not stop run ning until they reached the safety of strongly fortified American position s on the plateau known as Harlem Heights.\n\nThe British were slow to foll ow the fleeing rebels.\n\nGeneral Howe wanted to wait until thousands more troops were ashore on Manhattan Island.\n\nThe delay gave General Putnam time to lead his men north out of New York City to join Washington in Harl em.\n\nThe British entered the abandoned city in triumph.\n\nVoice: The Ki ng's forces took possession of the place\, incredible as it may seem\, wit hout the loss of a man.\n\nA woman pulled down the rebel standard upon the fort and\, after trampling it underfoot with the most contemptuous indign ation\, hoisted up in its stead His Majesty's flag.\n\nAmbrose Searle\, Se cretary to Admiral Howe.\n\nJasanoff: New York City becomes the great Brit ish stronghold of the American Revolution.\n\nOnce the Continental Army is driven out\, the Patriots don't want to stick around\, and they tend to g o\, too.\n\nMeanwhile\, the Loyalists come into the city.\n\nPeople stream in from the countryside to take shelter\, and the city becomes this kind of garrison town.\n\nNarrator: Hundreds of Loyalists would formally reaffi rm their allegiance to George III by signing a document they called their Declaration of Dependence.\n\nOver the coming weeks\, more Loyalists poure d into the city\, now eager to take up arms in the King's cause.\n\n[Fifes and drums playing] Voice: It is the cause of truth against falsehood\, of loyalty against rebellion\, of legal government against usurpation.\n\nIn short\, it is the cause of human happiness.\n\nCharles Inglis.\n\nNarrato r: Over the course of the war\, as many as 50\,000 Americans volunteered t o serve in Loyalist militia companies or in provincial units attached to t he British Army-- the King's American Regiment\, the Queen's American Rang ers\, the Prince of Wales' American Volunteers\, the Royal Highland Emigra nts\, and the British Legion.\n\nEveryone knew someone who fought for the other side.\n\nEven Benjamin Franklin's son William\, the deposed Royal Go vernor of New Jersey\, remained faithful to his king and was imprisoned fo r it.\n\n[Distant cannonfire] Voice: Had I been left to the dictates of my own judgment\, New York should have been lain in ashes.\n\nTo this end\, I applied to Congress but was absolutely forbid.\n\nProvidence--or some go od\, honest fellow-- has done more for us than we were disposed to do for ourselves.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\n[Flames crackling] Voice: September 21 \, 1776.\n\nWe are a good deal alarmed at a fire that must have spread ama zingly\, for though we are 6 1/2 miles from the town\, we could see a pin on the ground by the light of the blaze.\n\nLoftus Cliffe.\n\nNarrator: Ne w York City was on fire.\n\nThe next morning\, Irish-born Lieutenant Loftu s Cliffe\, who had already survived 3 battles\, went for a walk through th e still-smoldering streets.\n\nVoice: I cannot paint the misery of a very pretty town near as large as Cork now reduced.\n\nTwo churches\, the gover nor's house\, and several other fine buildings are in ruins\, being set af ire in different places at once in the dead of last night.\n\nTheir design was to destroy the town.\n\nO Washington\, what have you to answer for?\n \n[Cliffe] Narrator: The origins of the fire remained a mystery\, but Gene ral Howe was convinced it had been set by rebels\, and the next day when s oldiers brought before him an American spy captured behind British lines\, he showed no mercy.\n\nHowe ordered Captain Nathan Hale\, a member of an elite espionage unit organized by George Washington\, to be hanged the fol lowing morning.\n\nAs he went to the gallows\, a British officer remembere d\, Hale \"behaved with great composure and resolution.\"\n\nAbove his bod y\, British soldiers hung a sign labeled\, \"George Washington\,\" the man they all blamed for setting fire to New York City.\n\n♪ Alan Taylor: A lot is riding on George Washington's performance not only in the battlefie ld\, but in his relationship with Congress and his relationship with the s tates\, his relationship with his soldiers.\n\nGeorge Washington understan ds that his role is not just military.\n\nIt's also political.\n\nHe has t o project dignity.\n\nHe has to project authority.\n\nHe has to also do th is while projecting deference to Congress.\n\nHe cannot become a dictator. \n\n♪ Voice: We have been sent into life at a time when the greatest law givers of antiquity would have wished to have lived\, when\, before the pr esent epocha\, had 3 millions of people full power and a fair opportunity to form and establish the wisest and happiest government that human wisdom can contrive.\n\n[Gavel bangs] John Adams.\n\n♪ Narrator: As Washington and Howe faced off against one another in New York\, in Philadelphia\, th e Continental Congress had been laboring to adopt Articles of Confederatio n\, meant to formally bind all 13 states together while also guaranteeing the independence of each\, a first tentative step toward a permanent gover nment for the new United States.\n\n♪ Taylor: When we think about our Am erican Revolution\, we\, of course\, think about independence from Britain \, and that's a big deal\, but we also need to think about this is the for mation of republican government\, and it's also the formation of our union of our states\, and all 3 of those were enormous gambles.\n\nThey were un precedented.\n\nThere had never been the foundation of a republic out of a revolution... [Gavel bangs] and these 13 colonies had had bitter rivalrie s with one another\, and so forming a union out of these states was gonna be as difficult as achieving independence from Britain.\n\n[Gavel banging rapidly] Narrator: Congress debated draft articles for weeks on the first floor of the Pennsylvania State House\, where they had just declared indep endence in July.\n\nThey were held up over a host of issues\, including ap portionment\, boundary disputes\, taxation\, and autonomy of the individua l states.\n\nCongress was a disputatious assembly and not necessarily an e fficient assembly through these years.\n\nYes\, they are running a war.\n\ nYes\, they are founding a nation\, but there's also a tremendous amount o f infighting.\n\nThere's a tremendous amount of inertia.\n\nThere are more committees than anyone could count\, and there were secret committees.\n\ nFor example\, the first person sent to France to solicit aid from the Fre nch for the Revolution is sent without the knowledge of the rest of Congre ss.\n\nAs John Jay will later say to George Washington\, \"There is as muc h intrigue in Congress \"as there is at the Vatican\, and as little secrec y as there is in a boarding school.\"\n\n♪ Narrator: Meanwhile\, upstair s in the same building\, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania held a conventio n of its own to establish its government.\n\nSimilar meetings were being h eld in other states.\n\nAll of the new constitutions would guarantee freed om of the press\, fair trials\, and due process under law and made sure po wer rested not with autocratic governors\, but with legislators elected by propertied men.\n\nPennsylvania took things a step further.\n\nThey creat ed the most egalitarian constitution in the new United States with a Bill of Rights and a one-house legislature elected by taxpaying workingmen as w ell as property owners\, all of which worried many of the delegates downst airs.\n\nWilliam Hogeland: Pennsylvania had a radical constitution where a lmost any White\, free man could vote and stand for office\, which had nev er happened before pretty much anywhere.\n\nPeople were committed to using the revolution to make it a real social revolution\, a real economic revo lution\, and get free\, working people-- men\, White men-- a say in govern ment\, which was a radical idea at the time.\n\nJohn Adams wasn't for that .\n\nSamuel Adams wasn't for that.\n\nRichard Henry Lee wasn't for that.\n \nWhen John Adams read that constitution\, his response was\, quote\, \"Go od God!\"\n\n♪ Voice: In the new code of laws\, I desire you would remem ber the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancest ors.\n\nDo not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands.\n\ nRemember\, all men would be tyrants if they could.\n\nIf particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies\, we are determined to foment a re bellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.\n\nAbigail Adams.\n\nVoice: There will be no end of it.\n\nNew claims will arise.\n\nWomen will demand a vote.\n\nLads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to\, and every man w ho has not a farthing will demand an equal voice with any other in all act s of state.\n\nIt tends to confound and destroy all distinctions and prost rate all ranks to one common level.\n\nJohn Adams.\n\nHogeland: It's a mis conception to think of the founders as being pro-democracy\, but I think i t's also a misconception to think that their failure to be democratic is s ome sort of flaw or error or something they just kind of missed.\n\nThey w ere very adamantly opposed to democracy.\n\nDemocracy came to America\, wi th all of the problems that came with it\, not as a direct purpose of the American Revolution\, really\, but as an unintended consequence.\n\nNarrat or: By the time Pennsylvania had ratified its constitution\, the debates o ver the Articles of Confederation downstairs in Congress had become so hea ted\, the prospect of compromise seemed so remote that the delegates agree d to table the subject.\n\nFrustrated and worried about his sick wife\, Th omas Jefferson returned home to Virginia\, the place he still called \"my country.\"\n\n[Birds chirping] ♪ Voice: Camp near Kingsbridge-- Amidst a ll the distress and ruins of this dreadful war\, I am yet alive and yours. \n\nOur enemies pursue us close from place to place.\n\nI pray God daily t hat you\, my dear wife\, forever may you be happy.\n\nPhilip.\n\nNarrator: Days after writing to his wife\, Chaplain Fithian fell victim to dysenter y\, the disease that had killed so many of the men whose last moments he'd filled with prayer.\n\nHe was carried to a hospital tent.\n\nThere was no thing anyone could do.\n\n♪ Voice: October 8th-- This morning about 10:0 0\, Mr.\n\nFithian closed his eyes upon the things of time and is gone to a spiritual world.\n\nAndrew Hunter.\n\n♪ [Bells tolling] Narrator: News of the American defeat on Long Island at the end of August did not reach London till October 10th.\n\nIt was greeted with what one courtier called \"an extravagance of joy.\"\n\nThe King promised General Howe a knighthood .\n\nNow that the Americans had seen how futile it was to defy British reg ulars\, they would surely come to their senses and sue for peace.\n\nNot a ll Englishmen shared that view.\n\n♪ Voice: London.\n\nTo the printer of the \"Public Advertiser\"-- Sir\, I find that the late action at Long Isl and has made a considerable impression upon the Public\; the Friends of Mi nistry thinking everything gained\, the Friends of America everything lost .\n\nBecause the last action was in our favor\, we think we are to succeed in the next\, but liberty takes a great deal of killing\, and the courage of freemen is the same thing on both sides of the Atlantic.\n\nThe Americ ans are daily improving in Arms and in Hatred.\n\nWe see only the Beginnin g of Sorrows\;-- Benefit to neither-- Misery to both.\n\n[The Public Adver tiser] Voice: Ticonderoga appears to be the last part of the world that Go d made\, and I have some ground to believe it was finished in the dark\, t hat it was never intended that man should live in it is clear\, for the pe ople who have attempted to make any stay have\, for the most part\, perish ed by pestilence or the sword.\n\nGeneral Anthony Wayne.\n\nNarrator: By t he fall of 1776\, only half of the 11\,000 Americans who manned Ticonderog a and Crown Point on Lake Champlain were fit for duty.\n\nThe smallpox thr eat was lifting\, but thousands still suffered from other diseases.\n\nMor ale was further weakened by antagonism among men from the supposedly Unite d States.\n\nNew Englanders brawled with Pennsylvanians so often that they had been sent to the opposite shore to set up a separate fortification on a hilltop called Mount Independence.\n\nAfter the American retreat from Q uebec City in early 1776\, a British drive down the Hudson seemed inevitab le.\n\nBefore British General Guy Carleton's army could even reach the Hud son\, he had to sail south and seize the two American forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga\, and before he could do that\, he had to put together a fleet at the lake's northern end.\n\nThat had taken months.\n\nCalloway: T his water route is a corridor.\n\nIt's been called the Warpath of Nations\ , where Indian warriors from Canada had raided down the Champlain Valley\, down the Hudson River\, and so this was-- this was like an open door.\n\n Narrator: The Americans had just 4 ships with which to oppose the British fleet.\n\nMany more were needed.\n\nTiconderoga's commander\, a former Bri tish major named Horatio Gates\, appointed his most enterprising officer t o get the job done.\n\nBenedict Arnold was still limping from the wound he 'd received at Quebec and was still angry at having been accused of steali ng supplies during the retreat from Montreal.\n\nGates had dismissed Arnol d's detractors.\n\n\"Men of little merit are ever jealous of those who hav e a great deal.\"\n\nVoice: The enemy will soon have a considerable naval force.\n\nI make no doubt of their soon paying us a visit.\n\nI beg that a t least 100 good seamen may be sent to me as soon as possible.\n\nBenedict Arnold.\n\nNarrator: Arnold transformed the tiny settlement of Skenesboro ugh\, 20 miles below Ticonderoga\, into a bustling shipyard.\n\nHe had hop ed for a fleet of at least 30 vessels but had to settle for just 15.\n\nVo ice: I intend to come up as high as Isle Valcour\, where is a good harbor and where we shall have the advantage of attacking the enemy in the open l ake.\n\n[Arnold] Narrator: When the British flotilla finally started south on Lake Champlain\, Carleton commanded nearly twice as many vessels as Ar nold did\, armed with more than twice as many guns\, manned by 700 seasone d crewmen\, and carrying 10\,000 British and German troops and 400 Native allies.\n\nArnold and his fleet were waiting for them in a cove hidden beh ind Valcour Island.\n\n[Cannonfire] As Carleton's fleet slid past\, 4 Amer ican ships moved out onto the lake to engage the British\, Arnold personal ly directing the guns of his flagship-- the \"Congress.\"\n\n[Gunfire] By evening\, the fleets had fought to a standoff.\n\nThe Americans had lost 2 vessels but succeeded in blowing up a British gunboat.\n\nAs darkness fel l\, Carleton ordered his fleet to keep the Americans trapped so that he co uld destroy them the following day... ♪ but at 7:00\, while fog covered the lake and Carleton and his officers were dining below deck\, Arnold for med his battered ships into a single line and then ordered them with muffl ed oars and in complete silence to glide slowly past the British squadron. \n\n♪ When Carleton finally caught up with them\, they began a running b attle that went on for 2 days.\n\nBritish firepower took a steady toll.\n\ nArnold eventually ordered his flagship and 4 other vessels run aground in Button Mould Bay and set on fire.\n\nHe and his men escaped into the fore st.\n\nWhen they reached Crown Point\, Arnold realized the fortifications there could not withstand a serious British attack and ordered them burned to the ground.\n\n[Flames crackling] \"At 4:00 [in the] morning\, I reach ed [Ticonderoga]\,\" Arnold recalled\, \"exceedingly fatigued and unwell\, having been without sleep or refreshment for near 3 days.\"\n\nVoice: It has pleased Providence to preserve General Arnold.\n\nFew men ever met wit h so many hairbreadth escapes in so short a space of time.\n\nHoratio Gate s.\n\nPhilbrick: The battle was not a victory for the Americans\, but it i s one of the great slugfests of naval warfare\, and it happens on a lake.\ n\nIt convinced the British that it was gonna be much more difficult to ta ke Ticonderoga than they thought.\n\nNarrator: The American force at Ticon deroga had grown to 15\,000\, and its fortifications had been strengthened .\n\nCarleton now believed a long siege would be needed to take it.\n\nThe n it began to snow.\n\nOnce the lake froze\, provisioning his forces would be difficult\, and a retreat would be impossible.\n\nCarleton turned arou nd and withdrew\, eventually going into winter quarters at Quebec City far to the north.\n\nThe British began to plan a second\, more significant in vasion for the next spring.\n\n[Digging] [Man grunts] Voice: The rebels ha ve taken positions upon amazing\, strong hills and works they have all the way to Kingsbridge.\n\nTheir soldiers would rather work than fight.\n\nOu rs would rather fight than work\, but General Howe was determined to not r un our heads against their works.\n\nLoftus Cliffe.\n\nNarrator: For the b etter part of a month\, Washington's and Howe's armies warily faced one an other at Harlem Heights\, \"as quiet\,\" an American lieutenant recalled\, \"as if they were a thousand miles apart.\"\n\nWith little to do\, soldie rs on both sides went into the surrounding countryside\, where they plunde red homes\, terrified civilians\, and then burned their houses to cover up their crimes.\n\nBaer: Plunder is more or less an accepted part of warfar e in the 18th century.\n\nThe British\, the Hessian\, and the American gen erals all worry about that.\n\nWashington worries about that.\n\nHis men p lunder\, and he's like\, \"Can you stop?\n\nPlease don't do this.\n\nYou'r e alienating the people.\"\n\nNarrator: \"Militiamen\,\" Washington compla ined to Congress\, \"were undisciplined\, disobedient\, \"liable to run in stead of fight\, 'hurtful' to the cause.\"\n\nTo make matters worse\, the 12-month enlistments in the Continental Army\, begun in Boston the previou s winter\, would soon be running out.\n\nAt the end of the year\, Washingt on would again have to raise and train a whole new army.\n\nHe understood that appeals to patriotism alone would no longer work.\n\n[Shouting] Voice : When men are irritated and the passions inflamed\, they fly hastily and cheerfully to arms\, but after the first emotions are over\, to expect tha t they are influenced by any other principle than those of interest is to look for what never did and\, I fear\, never will happen.\n\n[Washington] Narrator: Congress agreed to authorize 88 new battalions.\n\nThe number ea ch state was to provide depended on their free populations.\n\nThe states would never come close to meeting those goals.\n\nVoice: The policy of Con gress has been the most absurd and ridiculous imaginable\, pouring in mili tiamen who come and go every month.\n\nPeople coming from home with all th e tender feelings of domestic life are not sufficiently fortified with nat ural courage to stand the shocking scenes of war\, to march over dead men\ , to hear without concern the groanings of the wounded.\n\nI say few men c an stand such scenes unless steeled by habit or fortified by military prid e.\n\nNathanael Greene.\n\n♪ Narrator: On October 11th\, 150 vessels thr eaded their way up the East River and into Long Island Sound with 4\,000 B ritish and Hessian troops.\n\nTheir objective was to get behind Washington 's forces in Northern Manhattan.\n\nTo avoid that\, Washington began a ful l-scale retreat\, following the west bank of the Bronx River for 18 miles north toward the seat of Westchester County-- White Plains.\n\n[Cannonfire ] By the time the British forces got there on October 28th\, the American line stretched for 3 miles through the village\, anchored on the right by the lightly defended Chatterton Hill.\n\n[Gunfire] General Howe sent 2 col umns up the slope.\n\nPatriot militiamen predictably scattered\, but the C ontinentals held.\n\nAs the British approached\, a Connecticut colonel tol d his men\, \"Fire at their legs.\n\n\"One man wounded is better than a de ad one\, \"for it takes two more to carry him off\, and there is 3 gone\,\ " but British artillery took a fearful toll.\n\nVoice: A cannonball cut do wn Lieutenant Young's Platoon\, which was next to that of mine.\n\nThe bal l first took the head of Smith--a stout\, heavy man-- and dashed it open.\ n\nThen it took off Chilson's arm.\n\nIt then took Taylor across the bowel s.\n\nWhat a sight that was to see.\n\nThere was men with their legs and a rms and guns and packs all in a heap.\n\nPrivate Elijah Bostwick.\n\nNarra tor: At day's end\, Washington retreated east of White Plains.\n\nAgain Ge neral Howe made only a halfhearted effort to follow.\n\nBaer: The British essentially let Washington escape once again.\n\nOpportunities to just end this war right now are being wasted.\n\nVoice: Is it through incapacity o r by design of our commander that so many great opportunities are let slip ?\n\nI am inclined to adopt the latter.\n\nCaptain William Bamford.\n\n♪ Conway: There are moments when General Howe in particular seems to hold b ack from delivering the final knockout blow.\n\nThere's that feeling\, the very torn and conflicted feeling\, about whether the Americans are truly enemies or misguided subjects who need to be encouraged to come back into the fold.\n\n[Horse neighs] Narrator: As Howe headed back towards Manhatta n\, Washington crossed the Hudson and headed south.\n\nHe thought it most likely that Howe planned to race across New Jersey and capture Philadelphi a before winter set in.\n\nHe had again misjudged his adversary.\n\nHowe a ctually wanted to take 2 forts on opposite sides of the Hudson that blocke d British ships from going upriver-- Fort Lee in New Jersey and Fort Washi ngton on Manhattan Island\, a crude\, star-shaped earthwork 265 feet above the river.\n\nFort Washington would come first.\n\n[Cannonfire] British g uns pounded the fort and the long line of trenches and redoubts that surro unded it.\n\nThe British troops who attacked from the south and east had c omparatively little trouble driving the defenders back behind the fort's w alls\, but Hessian troops under the command of General Wilhelm von Knyphau sen coming at them from the north had a much tougher task\, climbing a roc ky hillside covered by the tangled branches of felled trees and so steep t hat they had to grab at bushes to pull themselves up\, all under steady fi re from above.\n\nVoice: Before us\, beside\, and upon one another\, we sa w our unfortunate comrades shattered\, dead on the Earth in their own bloo d.\n\nEven the air seemed filled with fear.\n\nLieutenant Johann Friedrich von Bardeleben.\n\nNarrator: Margaret Corbin\, a Pennsylvania artilleryma n's wife\, was standing near her husband when he was mortally wounded.\n\n She stepped in and kept up such deadly fire that her position became a tar get for Hessian guns.\n\nGrapeshot eventually hit her jaw and breast and r endered her left arm useless.\n\n3 years later\, she would become the firs t woman to receive a lifetime disability pension but at half the rate woun ded men received.\n\nAmerican muskets eventually clogged from overuse.\n\n The defenders fell back and were forced to surrender\, nearly 3\,000 men.\ n\nThe British renamed Fort Washington Fort Knyphausen after the victoriou s German general.\n\nAs the battered captives made their 12-mile march sou th to New York City\, British soldiers and Loyalists lined the road\, jeer ing and cursing.\n\nOfficers were often paroled after pledging not to take up arms again\, but enlisted men were given no such option.\n\nInstead\, they were prodded into makeshift prisons already overcrowded with hundreds of prisoners taken at Quebec\, Long Island\, and Kips Bay.\n\n♪ There w ere no blankets\, little firewood\, and sometimes no food.\n\nRats scuttle d over the muddy straw that covered the floors.\n\nVoice: The men's appear ance in general resembled dead corpses more than living men.\n\nIndeed\, g reat numbers had already arrived at their long home\, and the remainder ap peared far advanced on the same journey.\n\nCaptain Jabez Fitch.\n\nNarrat or: Thousands of American prisoners would die by the end of 1776.\n\nBy th en\, the British had begun packing the prisoners into disused transport sh ips anchored in the East River.\n\nConditions there would prove worse than those on land.\n\nAtkinson: They die of exposure.\n\nThey die of malnutri tion.\n\nThey die of disease-- smallpox\, typhus\, typhoid\, dysentery.\n\ nWe have our own prison ships near Albany\, where British soldiers and Loy alists are kept in very awful conditions.\n\nIt's a deplorable part of the story of the American Revolution.\n\n♪ Narrator: Early on November 20\, 1776\, some 5\,000 British and Hessian troops crossed the Hudson and bega n struggling up the slippery\, 440-foot rock face of the New Jersey Palisa des\, so steep the Patriots had not believed anyone could climb it.\n\nThe British commander was General Charles Cornwallis\, who then ordered his m en to start marching south toward Fort Lee\, 6 miles away.\n\nGeneral Nath anael Greene had already begun to evacuate it when the enemy took Fort Was hington.\n\nNow he ordered everyone remaining to leave immediately.\n\n♪ Voice: The rebels fled like scared rabbits.\n\nNot a rascal of them could be seen.\n\nThey have left some poor pork\, a few greasy proclamations\, and some of that scoundrel \"Common Sense\" man's letters\, which we can r ead at our leisure.\n\n[British officer] ♪ Narrator: By evening\, Greene and most of his 2\,000 men managed to link up with Washington's force at New Bridge on the Hackensack River.\n\nVoice: They marched 2 abreast\, loo ked ragged\, some without a shoe to their feet and most of them wrapped in their blankets.\n\nThe next evening\, the British encamped on the other s ide of the Hackensack.\n\nWe could see their fires about 100 yards apart g leaming brilliantly in the gloom of the night\, extending for more than a mile along the river.\n\nReverend Theodore Roneyn.\n\nNarrator: As his arm y retreated across the state\, followed by Cornwallis with a far larger fo rce\, Washington hoped somehow\, somewhere to offer battle\, but Cornwalli s had orders from General Howe to avoid confrontation.\n\nFrom Howe's vant age point\, there was no need for another major battle.\n\nThe rebel army was shrinking daily.\n\nWhat one officer called \"the devil of desertion\" had infected Washington's ranks.\n\nMen were simply drifting away into th e countryside.\n\nWhen Washington called upon the states for 5\,000 more t roops\, he was met mostly by silence.\n\nHis aide-de-camp Joseph Reed expr essed the General's continued frustrations.\n\nVoice: When I look round an d see how few of the numbers who talked so largely of death and honor are around me\, I am lost in wonder.\n\nYour noisy Sons of Liberty are\, I fin d\, the quietest in the field.\n\n[Joseph Reed] ♪ Narrator: To compound things\, Washington's second in command-- General Charles Lee\, who had be en stationed in Westchester County with a sizable force-- responded to Was hington's repeated requests to hurry to his aid with one excuse after anot her.\n\nLee was scornful of Washington\, hoped someday to replace him as c ommander in chief\, and saw himself as not subject to Washington's orders. \n\nOn November 30th\, the British issued a proclamation aimed at restorin g their rule in New Jersey.\n\nAnyone willing to swear \"peaceable obedien ce to His Majesty\" within 60 days would receive \"a free and General Pard on.\"\n\nMore than 3\,000 New Jersey residents took them up on the offer\, and hundreds answered the call for Loyalists to fight alongside the Briti sh regulars.\n\nNew Jersey's Patriot government fled\, but while General H owe was offering pardons\, his soldiers were demanding provisions from civ ilians.\n\n[Pounding on door] Edward Lengel: The people who were really at the sharp end of the sword were the civilians\, and if you think from the point of view of somebody\, say\, a mother of a family-- who's on her far m\, you know that the very little that you have to survive can be destroye d in an instant.\n\n[Glass shattering] Voice: Tories lead the relentless f oreigners to the houses of their neighbors and strip poor women and childr en of everything they have to eat or wear\, and after plundering them in t his sort\, the brutes often ravish the mothers and daughters and compel th e fathers and sons to behold their brutality.\n\nNathanael Greene.\n\nConw ay: As an army is advancing and occupying new territories\, dreadful thing s happen.\n\nWe see lots of instances of rape and sexual assault of women. \n\nSadly\, this is not unusual in all wars.\n\nNarrator: Mary Campbell of Hunterdon County\, New Jersey\, told a judge what British troops had done to her.\n\nVoice: Mary Campbell\, wife of Daniel Campbell\, sayeth that s ometime in December\, a number of soldiers belonging to the King of Great Britain's army came to the house of her father.\n\nTwo of them seized hold of her arms and dragged her out of the house to an old shop near the dwel ling house\, broke open the door\, and pulled her in against all her cries and entreaties and swore if she did not hold her tongue\, they would run her through with a bayonet.\n\n3 of said soldiers successively had knowled ge of the body of this deponent\, she being 5 months and upwards advanced in her pregnancy at that time.\n\nHer mark\, Mary M. Campbell.\n\n♪ Narr ator: At Pennington\, 16 women fled into the woods to escape British soldi ers\, only to be dragged back and repeatedly assaulted.\n\nSuch behavior\, one British officer admitted\, was \"calculated to lose you friends and g ain you enemies.\"\n\nIt did\, and people soon began taking revenge.\n\nNe w Jersey militiamen took up arms again less out of devotion to the revolut ionary cause than out of anger at what was being done to them and their fa milies.\n\n[Gunshot] Voice: It is now very unsafe for us to travel in New Jersey.\n\nThe peasants meet our men alone or in small unarmed groups.\n\n They have their rifles hidden in the bushes or ditches and the like.\n\nWh en they see one or several men belonging to our army\, they shoot them in the head\, then quickly hide their rifles and pretend they know nothing.\n \nCaptain Friedrich von Munchhausen.\n\n♪ ♪ Voice: No lads ever show g reater activity in retreating than we have.\n\nOur soldiers are the best f ellows in the world at this business.\n\nLieutenant Colonel Samuel Webb.\n \nNarrator: Hackensack\, Acquackanonk\, Newark\, Spanktown\, New Brunswick \, Princeton\, Trenton.\n\nIn 12 days\, the Americans fell back some 70 mi les.\n\nOn December 2nd\, Washington began to take his army across the Del aware River into Pennsylvania.\n\nThe news continued to be bad for the Pat riot cause.\n\nGeneral Henry Clinton landed 7\,000 British and Hessian reg ulars at Newport\, Rhode Island\, without firing a shot.\n\nLike New York City and New Jersey\, Rhode Island seemed likely lost.\n\nBritish forces w ere now just 60 miles from Philadelphia\, and the roads leading out of the city were choked with frightened refugees.\n\nCongress denied what it cal led the \"false and malicious\" rumors that it was planning to leave town and then fled to Baltimore.\n\nGeneral Charles Lee had finally given in to Washington's entreaties and had been slowly leading his force across New Jersey.\n\nOn the evening of December 12th\, he slipped away from his enca mpment to an isolated tavern in Basking Ridge.\n\nA Loyalist tipped off th e British.\n\nDragoons surrounded the building and seized the Continental Army's second in command.\n\nOne Hessian captain was exultant-- \"We have captured... the only rebel general whom we had cause to fear\"-- but then General Howe abruptly called off his campaign.\n\nWinter was coming.\n\nTh e Continental Congress was on the run.\n\nThere would be plenty of time th e following year\, he was certain\, to destroy what was left of Washington 's army and permanently end the rebellion.\n\n♪ While Howe and most of h is army withdrew to New York\, he left behind a chain of 17 garrisons stre tching from the Hudson to the Delaware.\n\nAtkinson: Things can hardly loo k darker than they look for Washington and his army and the hopes of the c ause in December of 1776.\n\nAs he gets into Pennsylvania and he's looking back across the Delaware River\, his options are very\, very limited.\n\n He's been evicted from New York.\n\nHis army is down to maybe 3\,000 men.\ n\nHe writes his brother at one point and says\, \"I think the game is pre tty near up.\"\n\nHe doesn't let his men know that he's feeling that despo ndent\, but he's feeling pretty glum.\n\n♪ Narrator: But now his army ha d begun to grow again.\n\nGeneral William Alexander\, who had been freed f rom British captivity\, arrived with a thousand ragged reinforcements.\n\n A thousand Philadelphia militia appeared.\n\nGeneral John Sullivan\, also exchanged\, brought in 2\,000 more men who had served under the captured G eneral Lee.\n\nOn December 22nd\, the 16-year-old fifer John Greenwood and some 600 other New Englanders also staggered into camp.\n\nWashington's a ppeals for help had reached all the way to Ticonderoga\, and these men had been on their way for nearly a month.\n\nWashington now had about 6\,000 men fit for duty.\n\nThe question was what he might do with them in the 10 days remaining before their enlistments ran out and most of his best-trai ned soldiers went home.\n\nVoice: Our cause is desperate and hopeless if w e do not take the opportunity of the collection of troops at present to st rike some stroke.\n\nDelay with us is now equal to total defeat.\n\nJoseph Reed.\n\nNarrator: Washington decided to strike the garrison at Trenton\, New Jersey\, manned by some 1\,500 Hessians under the command of Colonel Johann Rall.\n\nMost of the little town's inhabitants had fled\, and their homes had been turned into barracks.\n\nWashington outlined a bold and am bitious plan of attack that called for 3 simultaneous crossings of the ice -choked Delaware\, all to be launched on Christmas night.\n\n[Drums beatin g rhythmically] 1\,800 Pennsylvanians and Rhode Islanders were to cross do wnriver near Bristol and march toward a second Hessian outpost at Burlingt on.\n\n800 Pennsylvania militia were to cross and hold the bridge over Ass unpink Creek and keep the Hessians from escaping once the battle began.\n\ nIn the main attack\, Washington himself would lead 2\,400 Continentals ac ross the river at McConkey's Ferry and then begin the 9-mile march south t oward their target.\n\nVoice: None knew but the first officers where we we re a-going.\n\nI never heard a soldier say anything nor ever saw him troub le himself about where they led him or where he was.\n\nIt was enough to k now that he must go wherever the officer commanded him.\n\nThrough fire an d water\, it was all the same\, for it was impossible to be in a worse con dition than what they were in.\n\nJohn Greenwood.\n\n♪ Narrator: Thomas Paine\, who had been with Washington's army as it retreated across New Jer sey\, had just published a new essay meant to restore sagging morale calle d \"The American Crisis.\"\n\nBy the time Washington's army got underway o n Christmas\, patriots up and down the river had read and been inspired by it.\n\nVoice: These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldie r and the sunshine patriot will\, in this crisis\, shrink from the service of their country\; but he that stands by it NOW\, deserves the love and t hanks of man and woman.\n\nTyranny\, like hell\, is not easily conquered\; yet we have this consolation with us\, that the harder the conflict\, the more glorious the triumph.\n\n[Paine] Narrator: A freezing rain began to fall at dusk as the Americans clambered into the ferry boats and cargo ves sels that made up Washington's hastily assembled fleet.\n\n♪ The river w as fast-running and filled with swirling\, jagged pieces of floe ice.\n\nS omehow\, Colonel John Glover and his Massachusetts sailors from Marblehead \, the same men who had rescued Washington's army after the Battle of Long Island and stopped the British advance following Kips Bay\, now managed t o get all 2\,400 men\, some 50 horses\, and 18 field pieces across safely. \n\nJohn Greenwood was among the first to step ashore.\n\nVoice: We had to wait for the rest to cross\, so we began to pull down the fences and make fires to warm ourselves\, for the storm came on so fast that it rained\, hailed\, and snowed and froze and blew a hurricane\, so much so\, when I t urned my face toward the fire\, my back was a-freezing.\n\nBy turning roun d and round\, I kept myself from perishing.\n\n[Greenwood] Narrator: Washi ngton hoped that the landing would be completed by midnight so that his me n could reach Trenton before dawn\, but the last boat did not scrape ashor e till 3:00 in the morning.\n\nAnd though Washington did not know it yet\, ice had prevented the two other forces from getting across the river.\n\n If Trenton were to be taken\, it would be up to Washington's force alone.\ n\nAs he and his men finally started toward the town\, the driving snow\, fierce cold\, and hardship of hauling 18 guns along a frozen\, rutted road slowed the advance.\n\nVoice: When we halted in the road\, I sat down on a stump of a tree and was so benumbed with cold\, I wanted to go to sleep. \n\nAnd if I had\, unnoticed\, I should have been frozen to death without knowing it\, but\, as good luck always attended me\, Sergeant Madden came to me and aroused me up and made me walk about.\n\n[Greenwood] Narrator: T wo other soldiers did fall asleep and froze to death.\n\nAt a crossroads\, the column split in two.\n\nWashington went with Nathanael Greene and tur ned left for the Pennington Road.\n\nJohn Sullivan and his men\, including John Greenwood\, continued to the right along the River Road.\n\nEach col umn reached its assigned position outside the still-dozing town just befor e 8:00.\n\n[Men shouting] Nathanael Greene's men began the attack\, chargi ng out of the snow-filled woods.\n\n\"The storm continued with great viole nce\,\" one officer recalled\, \"but was in our backs and consequently in the faces of the enemy.\"\n\n[Gunfire] Hessian pickets spotted them throug h the snow\, opened fire\, then fell back as remaining townspeople watched in terror.\n\nVoice: In the gray dawn came the beating of drums and the s ound of firing.\n\nThe Hessian soldiers quartered in our house hastily dec amped.\n\nAll was uproar and confusion.\n\nMartha Reed.\n\n♪ Narrator: T he German soldiers formed up as best they could\, prepared to fight\, but Henry Knox had positioned cannon and howitzers at the upper end of King an d Queen Streets that ran through the heart of the town\, and when the Germ an commander Johann Rall mounted his horse and ordered his men to charge i nto them\, Knox remembered\, \"these [guns]\, in the twinkling of an eye\, cleared the streets.\"\n\nSome Hessians scattered.\n\nBrief\, fierce fire fights followed.\n\nVoice: My mother and we children hid in the cellar to escape the shots that fell about the house.\n\nOur next-door neighbor was killed on his doorstep\, and a bullet struck the blacksmith as he was in t he act of closing himself in his cellar\, and many other townspeople were injured by chance shots.\n\n[Martha Reed] [Gunshot] Narrator: As Nathanael Greene's column drove through town from the north\, John Sullivan's colum n moved in from the south.\n\nVoice: They made a full fire right at us\, b ut I did not see that they killed anyone.\n\nOrders were given to charge b ayonets and rush on.\n\nAs we came within pistol shot\, they fired again p oint blank at us.\n\nWe dodged\, and they did not hit a man.\n\nBefore the y had time to load again\, we were within 3 feet of them.\n\nThey broke in an instant and ran like so many frightened devils.\n\n[Greenwood] Narrato r: Colonel Rall was shot from his horse\, mortally wounded.\n\nVoice: Fina lly\, they were driven through the town into an orchard beyond.\n\nThe poo r fellows saw themselves completely surrounded.\n\nHenry Knox.\n\n♪ Narr ator: It was all over in less than 45 minutes.\n\n♪ 22 Hessians lay dead or dying in the snow.\n\n83 more were wounded.\n\n900 were captured.\n\nJ ust 2 Americans had died-- those frozen before the battle began\, and only 5 were wounded\, including an artilleryman from Virginia named James Monr oe\, whose life was saved when a local doctor managed to stop the bleeding .\n\n♪ As the Hessian prisoners were marched to Philadelphia\, Washingto n issued a broadside declaring that since they were not volunteers\, but f orced into this war\, they should be seen not as enemies\, but as innocent people.\n\n♪ Baer: The Americans decided very early on to treat German prisoners well.\n\nThat is a strategic decision\, portraying these soldier s as the innocent victims of the contract of two despots.\n\nThey are bein g sent\, sold by their rulers for money to fight in the war that does not concern them.\n\nIn other words\, they are victims of tyranny\, kind of li ke we are.\n\nNarrator: Perhaps 1/4 of the 23\,000 Hessian soldiers who su rvived the war would choose to stay on afterwards and become citizens of t he new nation they'd fought against creating\, and many of those who retur ned home would come back again\, this time with their families.\n\n♪ Voi ce: The small scale of our maps deceived us.\n\nAs the word \"America\" ta kes up no more room than the word \"Yorkshire\,\" we seem to think the ter ritories they represent are much of the same bigness\, though Charleston i s as far from Boston as London from Venice.\n\nWe have undertaken a war ag ainst farmers and farmhouses scattered through a wild waste of continent.\ n\n[British commentator] [Bells ringing] Voice: Philadelphia-- This affair has given new life and spirits to the cause and has lowered the crests of the Tories in this place\, who looked upon the matter as settled and were hourly expecting the King's troops to arrive without molestation.\n\nThin gs begin to wear a better aspect.\n\nGeneral Washington's army has now bec ome respectable.\n\nReverend David Griffith.\n\nNarrator: Washington's arm y may have become respectable\, but it was still about to disintegrate.\n\ nThe Continental regiments from New England-- his most disciplined\, most seasoned soldiers-- were all planning to go home in just 5 days\, leaving him with 1\,400 men with which to face what he feared would be a swift rep risal from the enemy.\n\nHe now had to persuade as many of them as he coul d to remain with him at least a little longer.\n\n♪ On New Year's Eve at Trenton\, Washington asked that all his depleted regiments assemble so th at he could speak to them.\n\nHe praised his men for their courage\, one s ergeant recalled\, and \"in the most affectionate manner entreated us to s tay\,\" but when he finished\, and the drums beat for volunteers\, not a s ingle man stepped forward.\n\nWashington spoke again.\n\n♪ Voice: My bra ve fellows\, you have done all I asked you to do and more than can reasona bly be expected\, but your country is at stake\, your wives\, your houses\ , and all that you hold dear.\n\nYou have worn yourselves out with fatigue and hardships\, but we know not how to spare you.\n\nIf you will consent to stay only one month longer\, you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country\, which you probably never can do under any other circumstances.\n\nThe present is emphatically the crisis which is t o decide our destiny.\n\n[Washington] ♪ Narrator: \"This time\,\" the se rgeant remembered\, \"the soldiers felt the force of the appeal.\n\n\"One said to another\, 'I will remain if you will.'\n\n\"A few stepped forward\ , \"and their example was immediately followed by nearly all who were fit for duty.\"\n\nIn the end\, more than half the New England troops agreed t o fight on for 6 weeks.\n\nOn New Year's Day 1777\, supplemented by scatte red militia and 4 fresh regiments of Continentals from Pennsylvania\, Geor ge Washington again commanded some 6\,500 men.\n\nJohn Greenwood was not a mong them.\n\n♪ Voice: I had the itch then so bad that my breeches stuck to my thighs\, and I had a hundred lice on me.\n\nI told my lieutenant I was going home.\n\nSays he\, \"My God\, you are not\, I hope\, going to le ave us\, \"as you are the life and soul of us.\n\nYou are to be promoted.\ "\n\nI told him I would not stay to be a colonel.\n\n[Greenwood] Narrator: 20 months earlier\, 14-year-old John Greenwood had walked all the way fro m Maine to Massachusetts and joined the American cause\, hoping it would s omehow help him get back to his parents in British-occupied Boston.\n\nNow he would tramp more than 300 miles back home\, where his father saw to it that the boy's clothes were baked in the oven\, and he himself was fumiga ted with sulfur before he could re-enter the home he'd yearned for for so long.\n\nFor now\, the Revolution would have to go on without him\, but it would go on\, thanks to the sacrifices he and his fellow soldiers had mad e and the victory they had won when no victory had seemed possible.\n\n♪ [Drum beating rhythmically] [Rhiannon Giddens humming \"Amazing Grace\"] ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Hmm ♪ ♪ Mm-hmm ♪ ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm mm mm ♪ ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ Announcer: N ext time on \"The American Revolution.\"\n\nBrandywine... Nathaniel Philbr ick: Brandywine was a hellscape in so many ways.\n\nAnnouncer: Germantown. .. and the pivotal battle of Saratoga.\n\n[Gunfire and shouting] Native pe oples are divided.\n\nDarren Bonaparte: We're killing each other.\n\nFor w hat?\n\nSo somebody else can claim our land?\n\nAnnouncer: and the strateg y of a general.\n\nJoseph Ellis: Washington reaches the insight-- he doesn 't have to win.\n\nHe only has not to lose.\n\nAnnouncer: When \"The Ameri can Revolution\" continues next time.\n\n♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of \"The American Rev olution\" with interactives\, games\, classroom materials\, and more.\n\ n♪ Announcer: \"The American Revolution\" DVD and Blu-ray\, as well as t he companion book and soundtrack\, are available online and in stores.\n\n The series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video.\ n\n♪ Mm ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ ♪ ♪ Mm ♪ [Bagpipes stop\, drums continu e] ♪ ♪ Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world.\n\nThe fight would take ingenuity\, determination\, and hope f or a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story i n motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power to do?\n\nBank of America.\n\nA nnouncer: Major funding for \"The American Revolution\" was provided by Th e Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with t he Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation.\n\nMajor f unding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein\, the Robert D. and Patric ia E. Kern Family Foundation\, the Lilly Endowment\, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt\, Stephen A. Schwarzman\, and Kenn eth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst.\n\nAdditional support was provided b y The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations\, the Pew Charitable Trusts\, Gilber t S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling\, the Park Foundation\, and by Better Ang els 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.\n\nFisher and Jennifer Caldwell\, Jo hn and Catherine Debs\, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund\, and these a dditional members.\n\n\"The American Revolution\" was made possible with s upport from the Corporation for Public 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.or g/video/the-american-revolution-episode-3-the-times-that-try-mens-souls/\n \n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251118 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR