The American Revolution PBS Documentary Episode 4

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

Conquer by a Drawn Game (January 1777 – February 1778)

VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

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

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https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-4-conquer-by-a-drawn-game/