BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 4.7.23//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:http://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 5 DTSTAMP:20251118T053607Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:591-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":troy@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n The American Revolution\n\n A Film By\n\n Ken Burns\, Sar ah Botstein &\; David Schmidt\n\n\n\n The Soul of All America (December 1777 – May 1780)\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n VIDEO\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n T RANSCRIPT\n\n\n\n Announcer: Major funding for \"The American Revolution\" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jon athan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Fou ndation.\n\nMajor funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein\, the R obert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation\, the Lilly Endowment\, an d by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt\, Stephen A. Sc hwarzman\, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst.\n\nAdditional sup port was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations\, the Pew Charita ble 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 Kissic k Family Foundation\, Diane and Hal Brierley\, John H.N.\n\nFisher and Jen nifer Caldwell\, John and Catherine Debs\, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund\, and these additional members.\n\n\"The American Revolution\" was m ade possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting\, a nd Viewers Like You.\n\nThank You.\n\nAnnouncer: The American Revolution c aused an impact felt around the world.\n\nThe fight would take ingenuity\, determination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history a nd set the American story in motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power to d o?\n\nBank of America.\n\n[Cannon fire] ♪ Voice: I have of late lost a g reat many intimate friends.\n\nThe numbers of fine young men from 15 to 5 and 20 with loss of limbs hurts me beyond conception\, and I every day cur se Columbus and all the discoverers of this diabolical country.\n\nIn what manner the Parliament will act on this occasion we cannot conceive.\n\nMa jor John Bowater.\n\n♪ Voice: You cannot--I venture to say\, you cannot conquer America.\n\nMy lords\, in 3 campaigns\, we have done nothing and s uffered much.\n\n[Gavel bangs] You may swell every expense and every effor t\, pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow\, traffic a nd barter with every little pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country.\n\nYour efforts are foreve r vain and impotent.\n\nIf I were an American\, as I am an Englishman\, wh ile a foreign troop was landed in my country\, I never would lay down my a rms-- never\, never\, never.\n\n[Men shouting] William Pitt\, Earl of Chat ham.\n\n[Gavel bangs] ♪ [Distant cannon fire] ♪ [Fife and drums playin g] Jane Kamensky: The American Revolution is\, on the one hand\, an intens ely local war\, and\, on the other hand\, a great global war.\n\nAs a glob al war\, the American Revolution continues the series of wars among empire s for the prize of North America.\n\nBritain\, Spain\, France are all seek ing some form of victory or advantage... ♪ but the beginning of 1778\, t he rebellious United States' cause is at the thread end of its ability to continue to exist.\n\n♪ Voice: There comes a soldier\, his bare feet are seen through his worn-out shoes\, his legs nearly naked from the tattered remains of an only pair of stockings\, his breeches not sufficient to cov er his nakedness.\n\nHis whole appearance pictures a person forsaken and d iscouraged.\n\nDr.\n\nAlbigence Waldo\, surgeon\, First Connecticut Infant ry.\n\n♪ Narrator: The weary Continentals whom George Washington led int o winter quarters at Valley Forge in December of 1777\, were\, a visitor\, said\, just \"a skeleton of an army.\"\n\nThey'd been fighting and marchi ng for months\, but many hadn't been paid since August.\n\nNearly 3\,000 o f them were officially unfit for duty.\n\nOver the next 6 months\, 2\,500 soldiers would die\, mostly from typhus\, typhoid\, influenza\, and dysent ery.\n\nClothing was so scarce that when a man died\, what was left of his uniform was washed and carefully preserved so that another member of his unit might be at least a little warmer.\n\n♪ Voice: I am now convinced t hat unless some great change takes place\, this army must inevitably be re duced to one or the other of these things-- starve\, dissolve\, or dispers e in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.\n\nGeorge Wa shington\, headquarters at the Valley Forge.\n\n♪ Narrator: Valley Forge took its name from an abandoned ironworks that stood at the intersection of a small creek and the Schuylkill River some 20 miles northwest of Phila delphia.\n\nWashington himself called it \"a dreary kind of place\,\" but he chose it because it was close enough to Philadelphia to move quickly ag ainst British foragers when they dared venture out of the city and far eno ugh from it to make surprise attacks unlikely.\n\nPennsylvania legislators complained that instead of withdrawing to Valley Forge\, Washington shoul d be about the business of recapturing Philadelphia.\n\nVoice: I can assur e those gentlemen that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to d raw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside than to occupy a cold\, bleak hill and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blan kets.\n\nIt would give me infinite pleasure to afford protection to every individual and to every spot of ground in the whole of the United States.\ n\nNothing is more my wish\, but this is not possible with our present for ce.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\n[Canon fire in distance] ♪ [Fire crackling] Voice: I'd experienced what I thought sufficient of the hardships of mili tary life the year before\, but we were now absolutely in danger of perish ing\, and that too in the midst of a plentiful country.\n\nJoseph Plumb Ma rtin.\n\n[Horse neighs] Narrator: Private Joseph Plumb Martin had survived the Battles of Long Island\, Kips Bay\, the disaster at Germantown\, and the siege of Fort Mifflin\, and he was still just 17.\n\n♪ Now huddled i n tattered canvas tents at Valley Forge\, soldiers went for days with noth ing to eat but fire cakes-- just flour and water baked on hot stones.\n\nS everal days went by when many soldiers had no food at all.\n\nThere was ta lk of mutiny.\n\nRick Atkinson: The apparatus of war supporting the army h as come unglued.\n\nAll of these support functions that help keep an army thriving\, keep it healthy\, have really begun to implode.\n\nNarrator: Co ngress\, still in exile in York\, Pennsylvania\, told Washington to comman deer food and fodder from the surrounding countryside\, but he resisted\, worried it might turn civilians against the cause.\n\nInstead\, he tried t o purchase everything his men needed\, but the steady depreciation of Cont inental currency made that problematic.\n\nWilliam Hogeland: Nothing like the American Revolutionary War had been fought.\n\nNo public project like it had been undertaken before\, and it was incredibly expensive.\n\nWhat h appens with a paper currency if it isn't well-supported and isn't handled properly is\, it depreciates wildly against gold and silver.\n\nIt was use less as a currency\, and in that sense\, the Congress went broke.\n\n♪ S tephen Conway: The British Army\, on the contrary\, has lots of hard cash\ , and lots of Americans who are not politically interested one way or the other see opportunities for commercial benefit-- selling products\, sellin g goods and services to the British Army.\n\nNarrator: Washington's army w as dwindling again.\n\nMen simply went home.\n\nHundreds enlisted in Loyal ist regiments.\n\nOthers joined roving outlaw bands that looted isolated f armhouses.\n\nStill others made their way to Philadelphia to surrender\, h oping they would be treated better as prisoners of war than as soldiers at Valley Forge.\n\nWashington's officers were leaving\, too.\n\nVoice: The number of resignations in the Virginia Line is induced by officers finding that every man who remains at home is making a fortune whilst they are sp ending what they have in the defense of their country.\n\nThomas Nelson.\n \n♪ Narrator: Over the coming months\, more than 500 of Washington's off icers would resign.\n\nTo add to his troubles\, some members of Congress a nd a handful of commanders had begun whispering that he had proved himself weak and indecisive in battle.\n\nIf the Revolution were to succeed\, som e argued\, command of the Continental Army should pass to Horatio Gates\, who had recently accepted the surrender of an entire British army at Sarat oga.\n\n♪ Voice: I did not solicit this command\, but accepted it after much entreaty.\n\nAs soon as the public gets dissatisfied with my service\ , I shall quit the helm with as much satisfaction and retire to a private station with as much content as ever the weariest pilgrim felt upon his sa fe arrival in the Holy Land.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\nNarrator: Until that moment came\, Washington would work tirelessly\, first to maintain\, and then to improve his army.\n\nShelter came first.\n\nHe ordered the men to cut down trees\, dismantle farmers' outbuildings and fences\, and bang tog ether row upon row of log huts\, perhaps 2\,000 of them\, each one 14 by 1 6 feet and meant to house 12 men.\n\n♪ Valley Forge would for a time be the fourth largest city in America-- 20\,000 men\, women\, and children fr om all 13 states.\n\nFor many\, English was not their native language.\n\n They spoke German\, Irish\, Scots\, Welsh\, Dutch\, Swedish\, French\, Moh ican\, Oneida\, Wolof\, Kikongo\, and more.\n\nNearly 10% were African Ame rican\, most of whom served alongside whites in integrated regiments.\n\nS ome 60 men were enrolled in a brand-new all-Black company belonging to the First Rhode Island Regiment.\n\nThe state legislature promised those who were enslaved their freedom at war's end and pledged to pay compensation t o those whose property they had been.\n\n♪ Among the Native American sol diers and scouts at Valley Forge were Tuscaroras\, Oneidas\, as well as Mo hicans and Wappingers from Stockbridge\, Massachusetts.\n\n♪ The hundred s of women who lived among the soldiers did the men's laundry\, nursed the sick and wounded\, and cared for an unknown number of children.\n\nWhen m en went to war\, they were gone and so was whatever pay they were going to get\, and many women just could not survive on their own\, and so it was actually better for everybody when women traveled with the armies.\n\n♪ Narrator: Martha Washington joined her husband at Valley Forge.\n\nAt leas t 8 servants-- men and women\, white and Black\, enslaved and free-- lived alongside the Washingtons in a stone house they rented from the family of the mill owner who had built it.\n\n8 of General Washington's closest aid es were crowded in there\, as well\, among them\, two especially idealisti c young officers in their early 20s-- John Laurens and the Marquis de Lafa yette.\n\n♪ Iris de Rode: As soon as Lafayette arrived\, he starts to lo ok around and get inspired by everything he sees\, and he's young\, and he 's excited to be in this new country in what\, to him\, is the New World\, and he's going to explore and understand.\n\nHe really starts to believe in the cause for equalities\, for liberties.\n\n♪ Narrator: John Laurens of South Carolina was the son of Henry Laurens\, the current president of Congress and one of the biggest slave traders in North America.\n\nFrom V alley Forge\, the young Laurens wrote to his father.\n\nVoice: I would sol icit you to seed me a number of your able-bodied men slaves instead of lea ving me a fortune.\n\nI would bring about a twofold good.\n\nFirst\, I wou ld advance those who are unjustly deprived of the rights of mankind\, and I would reinforce the defenders of liberty with a number of gallant soldie rs.\n\n♪ My dearest friend and father\, I hope that my plan for serving my country and the oppressed Negro race will not appear to you the chimera of a young mind\, but a laudable sacrifice of private interest to justice and the public good.\n\nJohn Laurens.\n\nNarrator: Henry Laurens rejected his son's proposal.\n\nFreeing some slaves\, he said\, would simply \"ren der Slavery more irksome to those who remained in it.\"\n\n♪ [Wind blowi ng] In February\, the bad conditions at Valley Forge grew still worse.\n\n Some 1\,000 soldiers would sicken and die that month.\n\nVoice: I was call ed to relieve a soldier thought to be dying.\n\nHe was an Indian\, an exce llent soldier.\n\nHe has fought for those very people who disinherited his forefathers.\n\nHaving finished his pilgrimage\, he was discharged from t he war of life and death.\n\nHis memory ought to be respected more than th ose rich ones who supply the world with nothing better than money and vice .\n\nDr.\n\nAlbigence Waldo.\n\n[Chickens clucking] Narrator: Desperate to feed his hungry men\, Washington now organized what was called the Great Forage\, more than 1\,500 men in all\, to scour the countryside in eastern Pennsylvania\, western New Jersey\, Delaware\, and Maryland\, seizing wha tever they could find and handing out promissory notes in exchange.\n\n♪ Voice: The militia and some regular troops on one side\, and Loyalist ref ugees with the Englishmen on the other\, were constantly roving about\, pl undering and destroying everything in a barbarous manner.\n\nEverywhere di strust\, fear\, hatred and abominable selfishness were met with.\n\nRevere nd Nils Collin.\n\n♪ Narrator: Nils Collin was a Swedish missionary sent to America to serve as rector of the Swedish Church in Swedesboro\, New J ersey.\n\nSince he considered himself a subject of the Swedish monarch\, h is conscience would not allow him to swear allegiance to the British king or to ally himself with the Patriot cause.\n\nHe vowed to remain neutral\, but bands of American and British soldiers and their sympathizers took tu rns occupying the town\, seizing livestock and provisions\, and punishing those who stood in their way.\n\n♪ Voice: Many members of the congregati on suffered injury in various ways by this frenzy.\n\nDr.\n\nOtto's house was burnt down by Loyalist refugees.\n\nJames Stillman lost most of his ca ttle.\n\nSutherland\, a Scotchman\, together with a young Swede\, Hendrick son\, were taken to New York as prisoners.\n\n♪ On the opposite side\, t he militia pillaged the following-- Jacob and Anders Jones\, who had trade d with the English\; a sea captain\, Jan Cox\, whose beds were cut up and his China\, tea tables\, and bureaus smashed.\n\nFrom all this it is appar ent how terrible this civil war raged\, party hatred flamed in the hearts of my people.\n\nSome would not go to church because the sight of their en emy aroused the memory of the evils they had suffered.\n\nNils Collin.\n\n Vincent Brown: Given the choice to fight for the Patriot cause or join the British effort to suppress the Patriots\, most people stood to the side.\ n\nMost people tried to let it pass.\n\nThey tried to get out of the way.\ n\nKamensky: It's common individuals\, ordinary individuals asking the que stion that I think we all ask about politics every day-- \"What does this have to do with me?\"\n\n♪ Voice: Girls at the age of 12 and 13 require a mother's care.\n\nA girl of 13\, left without an advisor and fancying he rself a woman\, stands on a precipice that trembles beneath her.\n\nBetsy Ambler.\n\nNarrator: Betsy Ambler and her younger sister Mary spent that w inter in Winchester\, Virginia.\n\nThey were left with an aunt and uncle w hile their parents and little sisters headed southeast to avoid the cold.\ n\nBetsy spent much of her time trying to win the attention of \"charming young...\" Continental \"officers.\"\n\n\"Here\,\" she said\, \"was a fine field open for a romantic girl.\"\n\nVoice: Early in the spring\, our goo d father returned.\n\nAnd though he treated us himself as children\, he sa w that we had been considered of an age to attract too much attention.\n\n Betsy Ambler.\n\nNarrator: The Ambler family would be reunited\, and they would be returning to Yorktown\, what Betsy called her \"beloved birthplac e.\"\n\nHer father's finances had been hit hard by the war.\n\nHe and his two daughters had to make the long\, dusty trip home in a wagon\, not a co ach.\n\n\"We were rather ashamed of our cavalry\,\" Betsy remembered.\n\nV oice: The only possible good from the entire change in our circumstances w as that we were made acquainted with the manner and situation of our count ry\, which we otherwise should never have known.\n\nWe were forced to indu stry and to endeavor by amiable and agreeable conduct to make amends for t he loss of fortune.\n\nBetsy Ambler.\n\nNarrator: When the Amblers finally got to Yorktown\, they settled not in \"our former mansion\,\" she recall ed\, but in a much smaller house on the edge of town.\n\n[Birds chirping] Voice: My imagination frequently recurs to that enchanting spot situated o n a little eminence overlooking a smiling meadow\, where a gentle stream m eandering round the sloping hill was lost in one of the noblest rivers in our country.\n\nHere\, my sister and myself often wandered\, gathering wil dflowers to adorn our hair\, till we almost fancied ourselves heroines.\n\ nBetsy Ambler.\n\n[Officer saying commands] Christopher Brown: Washington had this really interesting quality of being able to project authority and confidence and allowing that to spill out into others\, so that they acqu ired authority and confidence by being in his orbit.\n\nI think he had the effect of pulling out some of the best in the people who were around him. \n\nNarrator: To provide his army with the reliable logistical support it desperately needed\, Washington insisted that Congress appoint as quarterm aster general the officer he trusted most-- Nathanael Greene\, but Greene was a fighting general.\n\nHe knew there was more combat ahead and wanted to be in on what he called \"the mischief.\"\n\nAtkinson: Greene says\, no body in history has ever heard of a \"quartermaster.\"\n\nHe doesn't want the job\, but he takes the job.\n\nLike Washington\, he's got a brain buil t for executive action\, and he's good at being the quartermaster.\n\nNarr ator: Thanks to Nathanael Greene's mastery of logistics and Washington's a ppeals to state governors\, by the end of March 1778\, herds of cattle and sheep were plodding toward Valley Forge from several directions\, along w ith wagon trains filled with everything from barrels of nails to brand-new uniforms and crates of bayonets and muskets.\n\n[Snare drum playing] Now that his men were better fed\, clothed\, and equipped and their ranks were swelling as fresh recruits\, recalled regulars\, and returning convalesce nts all converged on Valley Forge\, Washington wanted every man in his new ly reorganized army to undergo formal military training to end what he cal led the confusion that had too often undercut its performance on the battl efield.\n\nThe man he picked to oversee that task was a newcomer to Americ a-- Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben .\n\nVoice: Never before or since have I had such an impression of the anc ient fabled God of War as when I looked on the baron.\n\nThe trappings of his horse\, the enormous holsters of his pistols all seemed to favor the i dea.\n\nHe seemed to me a perfect personification of Mars.\n\nPrivate Ashb el Green.\n\nNarrator: Steuben claimed to be a baron\, a lieutenant genera l in the Prussian Army\, and a close aide to Frederick the Great.\n\nHe re ally was a baron\, though a penniless one\, and he had served in Frederick 's headquarters for a time\, but his army career in Europe had been cut sh ort by an accusation that he had taken familiarities with young boys.\n\nI n America\, he said\, he wanted to put his \"talents in the arts of war in the service of a republic.\"\n\n♪ Steuben was hot-tempered\, and his En glish was initially limited to a single word--\"goddamn.\"\n\nVoice: When some movement or maneuver was not performed to his mind\, he began to swea r in German\, then in French\, and then in both languages together.\n\nWhe n he had exhausted his artillery of foreign oaths\, he would call to his a ides\, \"Come and swear for me in English.\n\nThese fellows won't do what I bid them.\"\n\nPeter Stephen Du Ponceau.\n\nEdward Lengel: Baron von Ste uben is really a comical figure when he arrives at camp.\n\nThe men make f un of him\, but he is a man who you need pulling the men together and givi ng them a sense of common purpose.\n\nAfter the men have drilled with him for a little while\, they stop laughing.\n\n[Man shouting orders] Narrator : But for all his bluster\, Steuben grasped the character of the men he wa s to work with.\n\n\"The genius of this nation is not to be compared... wi th the Prussians\, Austrians or French\,\" he wrote to an old friend back home.\n\n\"You say to your soldier\, 'Do this\,' and he does it\,\" but he re\, \"I am obliged to say\, \"'This is the reason why you ought to do tha t\,' and then he does it.\"\n\n♪ Steuben taught the men to march at a \" common step\" of 75 paces a minute and a \"quick step\" of 120 paces\, to move in columns rather than straggle in single file\, to shift into battle line and back again when under fire\, to load and fire musket volleys mor e quickly\, and to become proficient with the bayonet\, the weapon that ha d once terrified them when in British or Hessian hands.\n\nAs skills impro ved\, so did morale.\n\n♪ By spring\, the danger of mutiny had eased.\n\ nSo had the mutterings about Washington's leadership.\n\nHe was\, it was c lear\, indispensable to the cause of liberty.\n\n♪ That year\, a German- language almanac published in Lancaster\, Pennsylvania\, would call Washin gton Des Landes Vater-- \"the Country's Father.\"\n\n♪ He was the glue t hat held people together.\n\nThese 13 colonies had to come together\, and he was the person to do it.\n\nWe would not have had a country without him .\n\nI don't know\, actually.\n\nI mean\, you know-- God\, I can't believe I'm saying this because I'm not a huge fan of \"great man\" theories of h istory or explanations of history\, but let's put it this way.\n\nIt's eas y to see the American effort for independence failing without Washington's leadership.\n\n♪ [Gull squawks] Narrator: After midnight on April 23\, 1778\, 31 sailors and Marines from the 20-gun Continental Navy sloop \"Ran ger\,\" tossing in the Irish Sea\, climbed into two longboats and began ro wing toward the port of Whitehaven on the western coast of England.\n\nThe ir Scottish-born commander knew these waters well.\n\nHe'd begun his seafa ring career there as a 13-year-old apprentice seaman named John Paul Jr.\n \nIn the intervening years\, he had sailed aboard slave ships\, risen to c ommand merchant vessels\, and then\, after killing a crewman\, fled to Ame rica.\n\nThere\, he changed his name to John Paul Jones and volunteered to join the fledgling Continental Navy.\n\nVoice: I resolved to make the gre atest efforts to bring to an end the barbarous ravages to which the Englis h turned in America by making good fire in England of shipping.\n\nJohn Pa ul Jones.\n\nNarrator: When Jones' men reached the Whitehaven wharf\, they found more than 200 vessels moored in its harbor.\n\nAs Jones worked to g et a fire going aboard a boat loaded with coal\, angry townspeople raced t o the waterfront.\n\nVoice: I stood between them and the ship of fire with a pistol in my hand and ordered them to retire\, which they did with prec ipitation.\n\nThe flames had already caught the rigging and begun to ascen d the main mast.\n\nIt was time to retire.\n\nJohn Paul Jones.\n\nNarrator : Jones and his men made it back to the Ranger and sailed away.\n\n[Cannon fire] The next day\, they engaged a British warship\, the \"Drake\,\" and after a battle that Jones remembered as \"warm\, close\, and obstinate\,\ " captured it and its crew and brought it into the French port of Brest.\n \nJones understood his impact on British public opinion.\n\nMothers began warning their children to be good\, or the fearsome \"Pirate\" John Paul J ones would get them.\n\n♪ Voice: What was done is sufficient to show tha t not all their boasted navy can protect their own coasts and that the sce nes of distress which they have occasioned in America may soon be brought home to their own doors.\n\nJohn Paul Jones.\n\n♪ Voice: What a miraculo us change in the political world-- the government of France an advocate fo r liberty\, espousing the cause of Protestants\, and risking a war to secu re their independence\; Britain at war with America\, France in alliance w ith her.\n\nThese\, my friend\, are astonishing changes.\n\nElbridge Gerry .\n\nNarrator: It had taken nearly 3 months for word of the new military a lliance with France to reach Washington.\n\nThe French would be sending so ldiers and the fleet.\n\nHis army would no longer be alone.\n\n\"This...gr eat... glorious...news\,\" he said\, \"must put the independency of Americ a out of all manner of dispute.\"\n\n[Snare drum playing] Washington was e ager now to test his newly disciplined army against the enemy.\n\nVoice: T he enemy imagined Philadelphia to be of more importance to us than it real ly was and to that belief added the absurd idea that the soul of all Ameri ca was centered there and would be conquered there.\n\nThomas Paine.\n\n ♪ Narrator: The British\, German\, and Loyalist troops penned up in Phil adelphia had had a hard winter\, too.\n\nThey had subsisted on half-ration s.\n\nWounded troops occupied every public building in town except the Sta te House\, where the Declaration of Independence had been signed\, which w as crowded with Patriot prisoners.\n\n♪ 1777 had ended badly for the Bri tish.\n\nGeneral Burgoyne had surrendered an entire army at Saratoga.\n\nG eneral Howe might have occupied Philadelphia\, and his subordinates still held New York City and Newport\, but they controlled little else\, and now \, with the French joining the war\, Britain would be required to defend a ll its imperial holdings-- in India\, Africa\, Ireland\, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean\, as well as in North America.\n\nKathleen DuVal: The F rench decide to enter the war\, and that changes everything for Britain.\n \nBritain knows that Spain and the Netherlands may be next.\n\nSuddenly\, those 13 colonies that were rebelling are kind of the small potatoes of th e war.\n\nThey could lose their profitable plantation islands.\n\nThey cou ld lose Jamaica.\n\nThe stakes are big in this war\, and the 13 colonies h ave become just a tiny corner of it.\n\n♪ Narrator: Lord North\, the Bri tish prime minister\, dispatched peace commissioners to America that sprin g\, armed with a series of concessions aimed at ending the fighting\, ever ything the Americans had been demanding for years.\n\nAll they had to do w as renounce independence.\n\nWhat they're offering is basically terms that would have been acceptable to the colonists in 1774 or 1775.\n\nNarrator: Congress would not hear of it.\n\nThe very idea of dependence\, its presi dent\, Henry Laurens\, said\, \"is inadmissible.\"\n\nBritish negotiators responded with a warning.\n\nAmericans could now expect far harsher treatm ent than any they had yet received\, and they had appointed a new commande r to deliver that treatment.\n\nVoice: On the 10th of May\, Sir Henry Clin ton arrived at Philadelphia\, relieving Sir William Howe as commander in c hief.\n\nCaptain Johann Ewald.\n\nAtkinson: Henry Clinton is a formidable military officer.\n\nHe's had a lot of combat experience\, but he's a very \, very difficult personality.\n\nHe's easily aggrieved.\n\nHe carries his grievances and grudges with him.\n\nHe will be the British commander in c hief longer than any other general in the American Revolution\, for 4 year s.\n\nNarrator: General Henry Clinton\, who had been fighting in America s ince Bunker's Hill\, had hoped to be relieved.\n\nInstead\, he would be as ked to do at least as much as his predecessor had been asked to do and to do it with far fewer men.\n\nHis new orders were to send 8\,000 of his sol diers to protect British interests in Florida and the Caribbean.\n\nHe was to leave the rest of the New England and Mid-Atlantic states in Patriot h ands for the most part and eventually mount seaborne assaults on the 4 Sou thern Colonies.\n\nClinton concluded he first had to get his army back to New York\, which meant evacuating Philadelphia that had been taken just 9 months earlier.\n\nMost of his men\, he decided\, would have to march to N ew York.\n\nHe had too few ships to carry his entire army as well as some 3\,000 Loyalists now eager to leave with him.\n\nVoice: All of the loyal i nhabitants who had taken our protection lamented that they now had to give up all their property.\n\nBrave people who have rendered such good servic e to the King are being left behind.\n\nGod alone knows what will happen t o them.\n\nJohann Ewald.\n\nMaya Jasanoff: Philadelphia has its population turned inside out a couple of different times in the Revolution.\n\nNew Y ork City has its population turned around\, a kind of back-and-forth of Lo yalist and Patriot residents\, depending on which army is in charge\, and when an army leaves\, the population that had come in order to live under their protection have to sort of fumble and figure out what it is that the y're going to do next.\n\n♪ Voice: Philadelphia\, June 18th.\n\nThis mor ning when we arose\, there was not one redcoat to be seen.\n\nColonel Gord on and some others had not been gone a quarter of an hour before the Ameri cans entered the city.\n\nElizabeth Drinker.\n\nNarrator: To act as milita ry governor of Philadelphia\, George Washington selected General Benedict Arnold\, still suffering from war wounds so severe that he could not mount a horse.\n\nHe was to restore order and preserve tranquility.\n\nPhiladel phia was now almost unrecognizable.\n\nRetreating redcoats had looted home s\, desecrated churches\, felled orchards for firewood\, and in the houses they had used as barracks\, cut holes in the floor to serve as privies.\n \nReturning Patriot refugees were enraged at what had been done to their c ity and were eager to punish anyone who had collaborated with the occupier s.\n\nThe homes and property of scores of accused Tories would be confisca ted.\n\n23 men were tried for treason.\n\nTwo Quakers were hanged.\n\nNath aniel Philbrick: Philadelphia was divided between the Loyalists and the Pa triots\, who were at each other's throats.\n\nIt would have required someo ne of great tact and sympathy to keep the lid on this city.\n\nThat was no t Arnold.\n\nNarrator: By June 18\, 1778\, most of Clinton's army was in N ew Jersey and had begun its march toward New York\, some 90 miles away.\n\ nThey moved in two great columns-- more than 18\,000 soldiers\, nearly 2\, 000 noncombatants\, 46 artillery pieces\, and 5\,000 horses.\n\nThe next m orning\, George Washington led his army out of Valley Forge for the first time in months and began shadowing the British as they moved east\, lookin g for an opportunity to strike.\n\nAtkinson: Washington has decided that h e is not going to directly intercept this column\, which is very strong.\n \nHe wants to nick at them and--and peck at them from the rear and make li fe miserable for them and watch for an opening.\n\nNarrator: Once again\, New Jersey militia made the British passage as painful as possible\, felli ng trees across the roads\, destroying bridges\, flooding streams to make fording difficult\, and picking off individual soldiers by ambush.\n\n♪ Voice: The whole province was in arms\, following us with Washington's arm y\, constantly surrounding us on our marches and besieging our camps.\n\nE ach step cost human blood.\n\nJohann Ewald.\n\n[Thunder] Narrator: The wea ther added to their misery-- heat that soared above 90 degrees\, sudden do wnpours that turned sandy roads into bogs\, followed by dense humidity\, s warms of mosquitoes\, and still more heat.\n\n20 British soldiers died of heat exhaustion on a single day.\n\nAs many as 500 men are thought to have deserted during the march\, most of them Hessians\, blending into German- speaking communities nearby.\n\n[Birds chirping] ♪ On the morning of Jun e 24\, 1778\, Americans otherwise disconnected by the vastness of their co ntinent witnessed an otherworldly phenomenon at roughly the same time as t he moon eclipsed the sun.\n\n♪ Indians and Spanish colonists in Mexico a nd Texas saw it first.\n\nWhen it reached Spanish New Orleans and British Mobile\, the flags of empire flew in sudden darkness for more than 4 minut es.\n\nThe total eclipse lasted even longer for the Muscogee Creeks on the Chattahoochee River and for the \"Maroon\" communities of self-emancipate d former slaves hidden in the Great Dismal Swamp.\n\n♪ When mid-morning darkness descended on the Virginia capital at Williamsburg\, \"Lightening buggs were seen as at Night.\"\n\n♪ The same darkness briefly enveloped Washington's army as it followed the British into New Jersey.\n\n\"Had thi s happened upon such an occasion in \"olden time\,\" Private Joseph Plumb Martin remembered\, \"it would have been considered ominous\, either of go od or bad fortune\, but we took no notice of it.\"\n\n♪ Martin had been detached from his Connecticut regiment and assigned to join fast-moving li ght infantry with orders to follow the enemy closely enough to capture str agglers and welcome deserters.\n\nThe day after the eclipse\, Clinton deci ded to head east towards Sandy Hook\, a Loyalist stronghold from which roy al transports could ferry his men to New York.\n\nHe merged his two divisi ons into one column\, and\, he recalled\, hoping that \"Mr.\n\nWashington might possibly be induced to commit himself\" to battle\, \"[I placed] the elite of my army between him and my [supply train]... to defend it from i nsult.\"\n\nHe put General Charles Cornwallis in charge of that force.\n\n ♪ At Hopewell\, Washington convened a council of war.\n\nGeneral Nathana el Greene\, back in the field\, was eager for a fight.\n\nVoice: If we suf fer the enemy to pass through the Jerseys without attempting anything upon them\, I think we shall ever regret it.\n\nPeople expect something from u s\, and our strength demands it.\n\nNathanael Greene.\n\nNarrator: But mos t commanders urged caution.\n\nMajor General Charles Lee-- Washington's se cond in command\, captured two years before and only recently exchanged-- was especially adamant in his opposition.\n\nSending Americans against Bri tish regulars would be \"criminal\,\" he said\, but when Washington decide d to send forward 4\,500 troops anyway\, Lee insisted seniority required t hat he lead them.\n\nIf he weren't given command\, he said\, he would be \ "disgraced.\"\n\nWashington relented and ordered Lee to follow Cornwallis' elite rearguard and look for an opportunity to attack.\n\n♪ [Indistinct conversation] Narrator: The British left their encampment around Monmouth Court House well before dawn on Sunday\, June 28th.\n\n[Gunfire] By mid-m orning\, Lee's men had formed west of the British line\, trying piecemeal to attack and dislodge Cornwallis' forces.\n\nAll their efforts proved fut ile.\n\n[Shouting and gunfire] Narrator: As the Patriots struggled in the increasingly brutal heat\, Clinton sent an entire division to reinforce Co rnwallis.\n\nMore than 10\,000 British\, German\, and Loyalist troops coun terattacked.\n\nAtkinson: Things go south in a hurry for the Americans.\n\ nLee loses control\, and the next thing you know\, this American advance g uard\, the vanguard that's supposed to be attacking\, is fleeing.\n\nLenge l: They're confused.\n\nThey begin falling back\, but then Washington appe ars.\n\nThe knowledge of his presence causes the retreat to stop instantan eously without even having said a word.\n\nThose who witnessed this moment said that it was like a bolt of electricity shot through the forces once they realized that Washington was there.\n\nVoice: His presence stopped th e retreat.\n\nHis fine appearance on horseback\, his calm courage gave him the air best calculated to excite enthusiasm.\n\nHe rode all along the li nes amid the shouts of the soldiers\, cheering them by his voice and examp le.\n\nMarquis de Lafayette.\n\nLengel: Washington gives some orders.\n\nT he men get back into line... [Gunshot] and they face down the British atta ck\, and they don't break.\n\nMan: Fire!\n\n♪ [Men shouting commands] Na rrator: General Steuben's training had paid off.\n\nThe British launched a series of assaults.\n\nGeneral Henry Clinton himself led one of them\, sw ord in hand.\n\n♪ Colonels Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr both had ho rses shot out from under them\, but the Americans held.\n\nAtkinson: Washi ngton places his defenses in a way that stops the British assault.\n\nHe's got good ground for his artillery.\n\nHe's hammering the British.\n\n[Men shouting] ♪ Narrator: The artillery duel continued for two hours.\n\nIn fantry on both sides sought whatever cover they could.\n\nVoice: With the thermometer at 96\, what could be done in a hot pine barren loaded with ev erything that the poor soldier carries?\n\nIt breaks my heart that I was o bliged under those cruel circumstances to attempt it.\n\nGeneral Henry Cli nton.\n\n♪ Narrator: Finally\, at around 3:45\, Clinton ordered a stop t o the firing.\n\nWith his supply train now well on its way towards Sandy H ook and safety\, he reluctantly began to withdraw his exhausted troops.\n\ nWashington's men were worn out\, too.\n\nThe heat\, Joseph Plumb Martin r emembered\, was like \"the mouth of [an]...oven.\"\n\n[Insect buzzing] Voi ce: It was generally understood the battle was to be renewed at the dawn o f day\, but at the dawn of day\, I heard the shout of victory-- \"The Brit ish are gone.\"\n\nDr.\n\nWilliam Read.\n\n♪ Narrator: The Battle of Mon mouth had left some 362 of Washington's men and 411 of Clinton's dead\, wo unded\, or missing.\n\nCorpses\, swollen and blackening in the heat\, spra wled everywhere.\n\nBoth sides claimed victory.\n\n♪ Clinton's column re ached Sandy Hook without serious interruption and embarked for Staten Isla nd.\n\nHis objective was to get his army to New York\, and he had done so. .. ♪ but when the fighting ended\, Washington's men held the field.\n\n\ "It is glorious for America\,\" a New Jersey colonel wrote his wife.\n\nAt least one British officer admitted his army had endured \"a handsome flog ging.\"\n\nAlthough there would be fierce fighting and many skirmishes in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states\, Monmouth would be the last major battle fought in the North during the American Revolution... ♪ and it w ould be more than 3 years before George Washington would personally lead h is troops into battle again.\n\n♪ Serena Zabin: What he learns over the course of the war is that there are other ways to perform his leadership t hat's not actually by doing something big and bold but that waiting and ho lding back and containment can also be a way of showing his strength.\n\n[ Clock ticking] Voice: Cruel as this war has been and separated as I am on account of it from the dearest connection in life\, I would not exchange m y country for the wealth of the Indies\, or be any other than an American. \n\nAbigail Adams.\n\n♪ Stacy Schiff: One of the great blessings here is how much time John spends in Philadelphia with Abigail back in Massachuse tts because from that\, we have really the most detailed\, richest corresp ondence of the Revolutionary years.\n\nNarrator: In the summer of 1778\, A bigail and John Adams were apart\, as they almost always were during the w ar.\n\nShe was at their home in Braintree\, Massachusetts\, managing the h ousehold\, and he was newly arrived in Paris\, sent by Congress to join Be njamin Franklin and the American delegation to France.\n\n♪ There\, on t he Fourth of July\, Adams and Franklin hosted a modest celebration on the second anniversary of American independence.\n\nVoice: We had the honor of the company of all the American gentlemen and ladies in and about Paris w ith a few of the French gentlemen in the neighborhood.\n\nThey were not mi nisters of state\, nor ambassadors\, nor princes\, nor dukes\, nor peers\, nor marquises\, nor cardinals\, nor archbishops\, nor bishops.\n\nJohn Ad ams.\n\nNarrator: Thousands of miles west of Paris in Philadelphia\, where the Continental Congress had just returned from exile\, General Benedict Arnold presided over a feast and entertainment for the city's political\, military\, and merchant leaders.\n\nThey were interrupted by what one of t hem called \"a crowd of the vulgar\" outside mocking the pretensions of th e wealthy.\n\nDuVal: I think the American Revolution creates an idea that there is no class in the United States\, that we\, in our founding moment\ , decided to do away with that.\n\nIt's not true.\n\nThere have always bee n wide varieties in wealth and power in the United States\, and there were more opportunities in the colonies than there were in Europe\, but some o f the opportunity\, some of the promise of the United States\, is built on slavery and taking Native land.\n\n♪ Narrator: Late the same evening of July 4th\, in the heart of the continent\, Virginia militia under Lieuten ant Colonel George Rogers Clark reached British-held Kaskaskia\, a mostly French-speaking village on the Mississippi River.\n\nMan: Ready!\n\n[Gunsh ots] Narrator: In the dead of night\, Clark's men overwhelmed the town's d efenses.\n\nWoman: [Vocalizing] Narrator: The next morning\, he notified t he terrified townspeople that the King of France had joined the Americans. \n\nClark guaranteed they would be free to practice their Catholic faith\, since all religions would be tolerated in America\, provided they agreed to bow to the authority of the United States.\n\nIt was a bloodless start to what would become Clark's bloody campaign to conquer Indian country eas t of the Mississippi.\n\n[Snare drum playing] [Gulls squawking] The French fleet Washington had been waiting for finally appeared off New York in th e week after Independence Day-- 12 ships of the line\, 4 frigates\, and ov er 4\,000 French marines\, all commanded by Vice Admiral Charles Henri\, C omte d'Estaing\, a veteran of warfare against Britain in India and Sumatra .\n\nDe Rode: D'Estaing is a French aristocrat.\n\nHe considers himself qu ite superior to these American \"ragtag\" army and is looking at them and thinks\, \"How am I gonna work with these people?\"\n\nBecause he thought\ , \"I'm the French admiral.\n\nI know what to do here\, so they better lis ten to me.\"\n\nNarrator: Washington hoped a coordinated attack with this new French force could trap Clinton in New York\, take back the city\, and \, by so doing\, persuade Britain that further prosecution of the war was hopeless.\n\nBecause d'Estaing had convinced himself that his heaviest shi ps would run aground trying to enter New York Harbor\, he decided to move against the British garrison at Newport\, Rhode Island\, instead.\n\nIt wa s to be a coordinated assault with American ground forces under General Jo hn Sullivan\, but neither commander spoke the other's language.\n\nSulliva n\, the son of Irish indentured servants\, loathed aristocrats like the Fr ench commander\, who\, in turn\, found Sullivan crude and inept.\n\n[Canno n fire] It all went wrong.\n\nWithout informing the French\, Sullivan adva nced a day earlier than had been planned.\n\nWhen a British fleet appeared offshore\, d'Estaing sailed out to do battle... [Thunder] but a howling s torm scattered and seriously damaged both fleets.\n\nDe Rode: 18th-century warfare is mainly based on the weather.\n\nYou could have no alternative. \n\nIf there is a big storm coming in\, you can't do anything besides gett ing just wiped away.\n\nAdmiral d'Estaing had to go for repairs in Boston. \n\n[Cannon fire] Lengel: The French\, in essence\, leave the Americans in the lurch.\n\nSullivan is barely able to extract his forces from what cou ld have been a catastrophe.\n\n♪ Narrator: The first joint French-Americ an operation had failed.\n\nOnce the repairs were finished in Boston\, d'E staing would set sail for the French West Indies without even bothering to tell Washington he was leaving.\n\nFrench ships would be available to the Americans only during the late summer and early fall\, when hurricanes th reatened the Caribbean.\n\nThe American Revolution was important to France only when its successes deepened Britain's failures and Washington knew h e could not win the decisive battle without French help.\n\nLengel: Anti-F rench feeling runs so high after this that Lafayette said he never at any point in the war felt that his life was at so much risk as it was when he walked down the streets of Boston after this catastrophe at Rhode Island.\ n\nHe thought he was gonna be strung up.\n\n[Man shouts] ♪ Voice: I\, wi th some of my comrades who were in the Battle of White Plains in the year '76\, saw a number of the graves of those who fell in that battle.\n\nSome of the bodies had been so slightly buried that the dogs or hogs or both h ad dug them out of the ground.\n\nHere were Hessian skulls.\n\nPoor fellow s!\n\nThey were left unburied in a foreign land.\n\nThey had perhaps as ne ar and dear friends to lament their sad destiny as the Americans who laid buried near them.\n\nThey should have kept at home.\n\nJoseph Plumb Martin .\n\n♪ Narrator: By the fall of 1778\, Washington's army was arrayed in an arc from Middlebrook\, New Jersey\, to Danbury\, Connecticut.\n\nHe wou ld remain within striking distance of New York City\, determined to recapt ure the place he had been forced to abandon in 1776.\n\n[Shouting and gunf ire] For months\, his and Clinton's armies had probed one another's lines. \n\nOn a single summer afternoon near Kingsbridge\, a Maryland patrol ambu shed a German unit\, killing 6 and wounding 6 more\, and Loyalist cavalry ambushed and hacked to death most of the Stockbridge Indians who had been with Washington's army since 1775.\n\nThey \"have fought and bled by our s ide\,\" Washington said.\n\n\"We consider them as our friends and brothers .\"\n\n♪ Voice: On the great road from New York to Boston\, not a single solitary traveler was visible from week to week or from month to month.\n \nThe world was motionless and silent.\n\nChaplain Timothy Dwight.\n\n♪ Narrator: Before the Revolution\, Westchester County in New York had been one of the wealthiest in the colonies\, but for nearly two years now\, it had been a part of what was called the \"Neutral Ground\,\" uncontrolled b y either army but plundered by both again and again.\n\n♪ Roving bands o f lawless raiders prowled the countryside rustling livestock\, extorting c ash\, looting and burning homes\, raping women.\n\nVoice: This year has no t been a very glorious one to America.\n\nOur enemies\, however\, have not hing to boast of since they have not gained one inch of territory more tha n they possessed a year ago and are at least Philadelphia out of pocket.\n \nWhat the winter may produce I know not.\n\nI wish it would give us peace but do not expect it.\n\nAbigail Adams.\n\nWomen: ♪ Sit down\, servant\ , sit down... ♪ Taylor: It's pretty clear the British are not gonna win the war in New England.\n\nThey're not gonna get enough popular support\, probably not gonna win the war in the Middle Atlantic region either.\n\nWo man: ♪ I know you tired... ♪ Taylor: The great potential place where t heir relatively more reduced forces can have more leverage is the South\, so the goal is just see what you can retain.\n\nYou probably can't keep al l of these 13 colonies.\n\nMaybe you can keep the most valuable of these c olonies.\n\nWoman: ♪ I know you're mighty tired... ♪ Conway: The South ern Colonies are seen as an integrated part of an economic system that gen erates great power and wealth for Britain\, so keeping the Southern Coloni es with their ability to provision the West Indian islands\, and particula rly their plantation economies\, is seen as a vital British interest\, and that\, more than anything else\, is why the war shifts to the South from 1778.\n\nWoman: ♪ Sit down ♪ Narrator: After General Clinton learned t he French fleet had sailed away from Boston\, he prepared for the invasion of the South that London had ordered him to undertake.\n\n♪ Jasanoff: A nother reason that the British pursue a Southern strategy after Saratoga i s that they assume that there are many more Loyalists in the South who wil l come to their aid.\n\nThere was also\, of course\, the question of the e nslaved population.\n\nVoice: A great majority of the inhabitants of North and South Carolina are loyal subjects.\n\nIt is also well known that the principal resources for carrying on the rebellion are drawn from the labor of an incredible multitude of Negroes in the Southern Colonies.\n\nBut th e instant that the King's troops are put in motion in those colonies\, the se poor slaves would be ready to rise upon their rebel masters.\n\nMoses K irkland.\n\nSo the Southern Strategy was to recapture the Southern Colonie s one by one\, starting with Georgia\, and move up the coast\, and in each place\, they hoped to put Loyalists in charge\, and that way\, the Britis h Army could continue moving north.\n\nNarrator: from New York\, General C linton sent a squadron south to try to capture Savannah\, the capital of G eorgia and its only city of any size.\n\n♪ With the help of an African A merican river pilot named Sampson\, the British fleet sailed up the Savann ah River and began disembarking below the city at dawn on December 29\, 17 78.\n\n♪ Some 700 Continental troops and 150 local militia were waiting. \n\nThe British commander saw that a direct assault was certain to be bloo dy.\n\n♪ Then Quamino Dolly\, an elderly enslaved man\, led part of the British force through a swamp that allowed them to get behind the startled Americans and open fire.\n\n[Gunfire] The Patriots panicked.\n\nBritish t roops chased them through the town.\n\n83 Americans were killed and 30 mor e drowned trying to swim across the Yamacraw Creek.\n\n453 surrendered.\n\ nThe British lost just 7 dead.\n\n♪ Over the weeks that followed\, The B ritish captured Augusta and reimposed royal rule in Georgia.\n\n\"I have\, \" their commander boasted\, \"ripped one star and one stripe from the reb el flag.\"\n\n[Bird squawks] Voice: My disposition always active\, I could not content myself at home while my fellow countrymen were fighting the b attles of my country.\n\nJohn Greenwood.\n\n♪ Narrator: In January of 17 79\, the teenaged fifer John Greenwood decided to try something new.\n\nHe would sign onto a Boston privateer\, hoping both to strike more blows at the British and to make a fortune for himself.\n\nHe chose the 18-gun\, 13 0-man \"Cumberland\" because its commander was Captain John Manley\, who h ad been the most successful sea raider in the Continental Navy for years a nd who was now a civilian only because there were too few naval vessels fo r him to have one to command.\n\nAtkinson: The Americans have no navy to s peak of.\n\nCongress asks that 13 frigates be built.\n\nNone of those frig ates really get into action in a meaningful way.\n\nThe British have 400 w arships.\n\nWhat the Americans do have are privateers.\n\nPhilbrick: Priva teers made warfare a for-profit endeavor\, and so you had countless sailor s in New England and up and down the coast\, volunteering to go out in pri vateers\, take British vessels\, and make them money from what they got fr om them.\n\nNarrator: Profits from privateering attracted a host of Revolu tionary leaders\, including Generals Nathanael Greene\, Henry Knox\, and G eorge Washington himself.\n\nInvestors shared the profits from the sale of captured cargo with the officers and men who took them\, like the crew of the \"Cumberland\,\" John Greenwood's ship.\n\nVoice: Every ship had the right or took it to wear what kind of fancy flag the captain pleased.\n\nC aptain Manley's flag was a very singular one\, with a pine tree painted gr een and under the tree the representation of a large rattlesnake cut into 13 pieces\, then in large black letters\, \"Join or Die.\"\n\nJohn Greenwo od.\n\n[Cannon fire] Narrator: Over the course of the Revolution\, some 1\ ,700 American privateers are thought to have prowled the seas\, capturing nearly 2\,000 British vessels.\n\nJohn Greenwood and the \"Cumberland\" se t out for the Caribbean\, the most profitable hunting ground.\n\nAmericans had already seized so many British merchant ships that they had reduced t he sugar trade by 2/3.\n\n♪ The \"Cumberland's\" voyage went smoothly at first.\n\nThey easily commandeered a British ship loaded with soldiers an d wine.\n\nA few days later\, they came within sight of the port of Bridge town on the island of Barbados... but the next morning\, a British Navy fr igate called the \"Pomona\" bore down on them with 36 guns and a crew of 3 00.\n\n[Cannon fire] British cannonballs tore through the \"Cumberland's\" sails and rigging.\n\nOne shot went \"through and through\" the hull\, Gr eenwood remembered\, causing the whole ship to shudder.\n\nThere was nothi ng else to do but surrender.\n\n♪ The Americans spent 5 grim months in t he Bridgetown jail before they were exchanged.\n\n♪ John Greenwood would serve on at least 4 more privateers before the Revolution ended.\n\nHe wa s captured and imprisoned 3 more times and somehow survived it all.\n\n♪ After the war\, John Greenwood would become a prominent Manhattan dentist .\n\nHis most celebrated patient was his old commander\, George Washington \, for whom he fashioned dentures of human and horse's teeth and ivory fro m a hippopotamus.\n\n[Bird squawks] Voice: You ask me\, \"Can the enemy co ntinue to prosecute the war?\"\n\nI answer\, \"Can we carry on the war muc h longer?\"\n\nCertainly\, no.\n\nThe true point of light\, then\, in whic h to place and consider this matter is not simply whether Great Britain ca n carry on the war\, but whose finances-- theirs or ours-- is most likely to fail.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\nNarrator: General Washington spent the f irst 5 weeks of 1779 in Philadelphia\, summoned there by Congress.\n\nIt w as not a happy visit.\n\n\"I never was much...afraid of the enemy's arms\, \" Washington wrote a friend\, but he did fear that people were wearying o f the war that had gone on for 4 years and still had no end in sight\, and Congress seemed mired\, he said\, in \"party disputes and personal quarre ls.\"\n\nThe value of Continental currency was melting \"like snow before a hot sun\,\" he complained\, so that \"a wagon load of money will scarcel y purchase a wagon load of provisions.\"\n\nChristopher Brown: On both the North American side and on the British side\, there is an exhaustion that is settling in and an economic reality for both-- the American side\, the question of coming up with the resources every year to be able to fight t he war-- uniforms\, guns\, paying the men\, replacing the ones who die\, r eplacing the ones who desert.\n\nBritain has the money\, but it starts to look a little bit like a sunk-cost problem.\n\n\"Are we going to continue to pour money into an effort when there's no end in view?\"\n\n♪ Hogelan d: One of the critical ways by which the Revolutionary War was funded was debt.\n\nThere were a number of ways to raise money\, but the best ways we re to borrow\, so you had to go to lenders\, largely a merchant class\, bu t also planters and even some prosperous farmers.\n\nIt was a bit of a ris ky speculation because getting paid back and getting your interest paid wo uld depend upon winning this extremely unlikely war.\n\nNonetheless\, that was a pretty good way of raising money to fight the Revolution\, and it c reated an entire class of American lenders with strong interests in creati ng a very strong government because that was the only way they could see t hemselves getting paid their interest.\n\n♪ Voice: Shall we at last beco me the victims of our own abominable lust of gain?\n\nForbid it\, heaven.\ n\nForbid it all.\n\nOur cause is noble.\n\nIt is the cause of mankind\, a nd the danger to it springs from ourselves.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\n♪ V oice: When we took up the hatchet and struck the Virginians\, our nation w as alone and surrounded by them\, and after we had lost some of our best w arriors\, we were forced to leave our towns\, and now we live in the grass as you see us\, but we are not yet conquered.\n\nDragging Canoe.\n\n♪ C olin Calloway: Indian Country is a mosaic of multiple Indigenous nations\, each one of whom is pursuing its own interests and its own foreign policy .\n\nWoman: [Singing in Native language] Narrator: In the Ohio River Valle y\, the Delawares and their Shawnee allies had a long\, contentious histor y with their expansionist neighbors.\n\nWhen the Revolution began\, both n ations struggled to stay out of it\, but after Virginia militiamen violate d a truce\, most Shawnees sided with the British.\n\nIn 1778\, White Eyes\ , a Delaware war chief who leaned toward supporting the United States\, we nt to Pittsburgh to negotiate with the Americans.\n\n♪ The resulting Tre aty of Fort Pitt seemed like a landmark agreement.\n\nPhilip Deloria: The Fort Pitt Treaty is a really formal\, legalistic document.\n\nAn article n ear the end of the treaty says\, \"Oh\, and by the way\, when this is all over\, \"Indians can have a state like other states\, and the Delaware\"-- this is the treaty with the Delaware-- \"the Delaware will be the head of the state\,\" and so it's making this very interesting promise of the poss ibility that Indian people could be part of the American republic.\n\nNarr ator: White Eyes was made a colonel in the Continental Army and accompanie d an American expedition against the British at Fort Detroit... [Gunfire] but somewhere along the way\, Patriot militiamen killed him.\n\nWith his d eath\, the Americans had lost their best Indian ally in the Ohio Country\, and the promise of the treaty was forgotten.\n\n[Horse neighs] In a counc il at Detroit\, a delegation of Shawnees and Delawares promised the Britis h that they would take up the tomahawk\, \"sharpen\" it\, \"and strike aga inst our Common Enemy.\"\n\nCalloway: The British have been telling them a ll along\, \"Don't trust the Americans because the Americans are out to ta ke your land and to kill you.\"\n\nVoice: I always knew they were for open war but never before could get a proper excuse for exterminating them.\n\ nTo excel them in barbarity is the only way to make war and gain a name am ong the Indians.\n\nThe cries of the widows and the fatherless on the fron tiers required their blood from my hands.\n\nGeorge Rogers Clark.\n\n♪ M ichael Witgen: George Rogers Clark is an Indian fighter and an Indian hate r.\n\nHe imagines himself as sort of seeking justice for white settlers wh o've died on the frontier at the hands of Native people\, and he imagines himself as sort of the avenging angel of these communities.\n\nThere is\, to be sure\, lots of violence in this backcountry\, in part because white settlers are squatting on Native territory.\n\n♪ Narrator: In February o f 1779\, Clark led his Virginians east from the Mississippi to take Britis h outposts and destroy any Indians who dared support the enemy.\n\nHis fir st target was Fort Vincennes on the Wabash River in what is now Indiana.\n \nThere\, he had 4 bound Indian captives lined up in full view of the fort and then hacked to death.\n\nClark warned that if Vincennes did not surre nder\, all its defenders would suffer the same fate.\n\nThe British comman der gave up.\n\nThen Clark sent an ultimatum to any Indians tempted to mak e war on American settlers.\n\nVoice: I don't care whether you are for pea ce or war\, as I glory in war.\n\nThis is the last speech you may ever exp ect.\n\nThe next thing will be the tomahawk\, and you may expect in 4 moon s to see your women and children given to the dogs to eat while those nati ons that have kept their words with me will flourish and grow like the wil low trees on the riverbanks.\n\nGeorge Rogers Clark.\n\nNarrator: Your \"N ame Strikes Terror to both English and Indians\,\" one of Clark's captains told him\, but \"if there's not a stop put to Killing Indian friends\, we must Expect to have all foes.\"\n\nClark would not listen.\n\nNative peop le from the Smoky Mountains to the Great Lakes were now coming together to forget former quarrels and unite against the United States.\n\nCalloway: Most Native Americans recognize that the new United States represents an e xistential threat to them\, their way of life\, and their sovereignty\, so it makes sense for Indian people-- for most Indian people-- to side with the British as the best bet to preserve their own independence and protect their land.\n\nNarrator: By the spring of 1779\, hundreds of people\, Ind ians and settlers\, had been killed in the West.\n\n♪ Deloria: There's a randomness to this\, as well.\n\n\"Those Indians killed some people over there\, so we're gonna kill these Indians\,\" but they didn't have anythin g to do with it\, so you never quite know who's gonna come after you\, and you never know what the logic is\, and there's\, most of the time\, not a logic about why kill that person and not kill this person\, so it's very uncertain kind of terrain\, and I think it breeds an intense kind of viole nce that happens here.\n\n♪ Narrator: A Shawnee boy named Tecumseh\, one of the war's many refugees\, would never forget the devastation that the American Revolution had brought to his country\, but for him and his peopl e\, the Revolution was just one chapter in their struggle for independence .\n\nThat war would rage on for decades.\n\n♪ [Gulls squawking] Voice: I f the enemy have it in their power to press us hard this campaign\, I know not what may be the consequence.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\nNarrator: Like Washington\, British General Clinton was stretched thin\, too\, and could only take small-scale actions.\n\n[Cannon fire] In May of 1779\, he ordere d raids in the Chesapeake Bay to destroy Virginia shipyards\, dry docks\, and tobacco warehouses.\n\n17 ships were needed just to carry the loot bac k to New York.\n\nA few weeks later\, he dispatched ships to sail up the H udson and capture two forts-- at Stony Point and Verplanck's Point.\n\nThe ease with which those forts fell convinced Washington to strengthen forti fications 10 miles to the north at a narrow curve in the river called West Point.\n\nWashington believed West Point \"the most important post in Ame rica.\"\n\nThe Polish engineer Colonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko was given the ta sk of designing a series of interlocking fortifications on both sides of t he river.\n\nAn enormous chain weighing 65 tons and covered by gun batteri es at both ends had been installed to block hostile passage.\n\n♪ In ear ly July\, Clinton ordered another expedition against the Patriot privateer ing that had taken such a toll on British shipping\, burning Norwalk\, Fai rfield\, and New Haven.\n\n♪ It had been more than a year since the Batt le of Monmouth.\n\nWashington remained eager to take back New York\, but h e didn't have the men or the ships.\n\nStill\, he understood it would be d amaging to his army's reputation if he did not strike back somewhere\, so on the night of July 15th\, he ordered General Anthony Wayne and a hand-pi cked force of 1\,350 men to attack Stony Point on the Hudson.\n\nUnder the cover of darkness\, they took it.\n\n[Musket fire] [Sword is drawn from s cabbard] \"The fort &\; garrison are ours\,\" Wayne reported back to Wa shington at 2:00 in the morning.\n\n\"Our officers &\; men behaved like men who were determined to be free.\"\n\n♪ Meanwhile\, when enslaved Af rican Americans from New England to Georgia learned that summer that Gener al Clinton had issued a proclamation promising \"refuge\" within the Briti sh Army to \"any Negro\" who was \"the property of a Rebel\,\" many of the m began to see the British flag as a symbol of hope.\n\n♪ Like Lord Dunm ore before him\, Clinton was no abolitionist.\n\nHe decreed that any Black man captured while serving with the rebel army was to be sold as a slave\ , and the profit divided among his captors.\n\nThe British commander's mot ives were exclusively military-- to strip rebels of their human \"property \" and assemble a big workforce to support his army... but for many Black Americans\, their war was about ending slavery for themselves\, their chil dren\, and their children's children.\n\nVincent Brown: We know that about 15\,000 Black people actually joined the British or ran away to the Briti sh lines versus about 5\,000 ultimately entering the Patriot cause\, and t hat's because\, for many of those enslaved people\, the British represente d freedom.\n\nThe Patriots did not.\n\nThat's a hard story to tell to Amer icans.\n\n♪ Man: Fire!\n\n[Cannon fire] [Men shouting] Narrator: In June 1779\, King Carlos III of Spain joined France in the war against England. \n\nHis goal was to recapture for his empire everything Spain had lost to Britain during the Seven Years' War and to add to it\, as well\, including Gibraltar\, the British-held spit of land that controlled the narrow entr ance to the Mediterranean.\n\n♪ For the Spanish king\, like the French k ing\, the American Revolution was useful only to undercut Britain.\n\nChri stopher Brown: This is not about securing American independence.\n\nThis i s about cutting Britain's economic commercial might down to size\, but it' s risky\, though\, especially for Spain\, because Spain has a empire in th e Americas that looks a little bit like Britain's North American empire on ly much larger and many\, many\, many more people.\n\nAnd so you encourage a colonial independence movement in the British Empire\, who's to say you r own people won't get the same idea?\n\nNarrator: Given the sudden wideni ng of the global war\, the opposition in Parliament called upon King Georg e to direct measures for restoring peace to America.\n\nHe would not hear of it.\n\nVoice: The present contest with America I cannot help seeing as the most serious in which any country was ever engaged.\n\nStep by step\, the demands of America have risen.\n\nIndependence is their object.\n\nSho uld America succeed in that\, the West Indies must follow.\n\nIreland must soon be a separate state.\n\nThen this island would be reduced to itself and soon would be a poor island indeed.\n\nKing George III.\n\n[Gull squaw king] Voice: \"London Morning Post.\"\n\nJohn Paul Jones resembles a Jack o' Lantern to mislead our mariners and terrify our coasts.\n\nHe's no soon er seen than lost.\n\n♪ Narrator: John Paul Jones was now in command of another ship-- a slow\, battered French merchant vessel.\n\nHe fitted it o ut with 40 old French guns\, gathered a 320-man crew from 8 different coun tries\, and renamed it the \"Bonhomme Richard\" after the French version o f Benjamin Franklin's \"Poor Richard's Almanack.\"\n\n♪ In August\, the \"Richard\" and several smaller warships sailed all the way around the Bri tish Isles in search of merchant prizes.\n\nJones took 17 ships\, captured 100 British sailors\, and locked them up below his decks.\n\n♪ Late in the afternoon on September 23rd\, just off the chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head\, Jones caught up with a convoy of some 40 British supply ships.\n\n He signaled his squadron to form a line of battle.\n\nWhen they failed to respond\, the \"Bonhomme Richard\" alone engaged the \"Serapis\,\" the lar ger of the two Royal Navy escort ships.\n\nCommanded by Richard Pearson\, a veteran sailor\, the British vessel was a fast\, new 44-gun frigate.\n\n [Cannon fire] As the battle began\, hundreds of English villagers lined th e cliffs\, hoping to see a British man-of-war destroy the dreaded rebel th ey called \"Pirate Jones.\"\n\n[Men shouting] Narrator: A British broadsid e caused cannon on the \"Richard's\" lower gun deck to explode\, killing m en and putting the rest of the battery out of action.\n\nAt one point\, th e \"Serapis\" rammed the \"Richard.\"\n\nTheir rigging became entangled\, and before the British ship could break free\, Jones ordered his men to th row grappling hooks\, locking the two ships together gunport to gunport.\n \n[Cannon fire] Their crews fired into each other at point-blank range.\n\ nThe \"Bonhomme Richard\" took the worst of it-- half the crew dead or wou nded\, fires raging everywhere\, decks slippery with blood\, seawater rush ing in through holes blasted in the hull-- but then a sailor high in the \ "Richard's\" rigging managed to lob a grenade down the main hatchway of th e British ship.\n\n[Explosions] It set off explosions from one end of the \"Serapis\" to the other.\n\n[Explosions continue] Half its crew were dead or wounded.\n\nCaptain Pearson surrendered.\n\nJones clambered aboard the British warship and sailed it into neutral Dutch waters.\n\nThe \"Bonhomm e Richard\" sank the next day.\n\nIn Paris\, John Paul Jones was hailed as a hero.\n\nHe met Louis XVI and his queen\, Marie Antoinette\, and when h e heard that George III had knighted Captain Pearson for fighting so valia ntly\, Jones was unimpressed.\n\n\"Should I have the good fortune to fall in with him again\,\" he said\, \"I'll make him a lord.\"\n\n♪ [Rattle a nd drum playing] Voice: We do not mean to let the enemy penetrate into our country\, for we well know that as far as they set their foot\, they will claim the country is conquered.\n\nOld Smoke.\n\nJennifer Kreisberg: [Sin ging \"Grief\" in Native language] Narrator: Back in the summer of 1777\, the British and their Mohawk and Seneca allies had prevailed over their en emies in their ambush near Oriskany Creek.\n\n[Gunfire] Over the months th at followed\, New York and Pennsylvania saw raid after raid\, skirmish aft er skirmish.\n\nPatriots drove Loyalists from their homes.\n\nLoyalists an d their Indian allies burned settlements at Cherry Valley and in the Wyomi ng Valley.\n\nHundreds died on both sides.\n\nAtkinson: It has gotten to t he point where Washington is under intense pressure from Congress\, from t he state of New York\, from the state of Pennsylvania\, to do something ab out it\, and because the war has kind of gone fallow in the North after Mo nmouth\, he agrees that he will put together a punitive expedition against the Indians led by one of his major generals\, John Sullivan\, to drive t hem away from the frontier.\n\n♪ Calloway: One of the things that I thin k is always on Washington's mind during this war is the end of the war\, s o Washington basically realizes\, \"We're gonna win independence because F rance is in the war\, \"Spain's in the war\, and we need to make sure \"th at we can present a legitimate and robust claim to western land.\"\n\nOne of the foundational truths of American history is that this is a nation bu ilt on Indian land\, and Washington would not dispute that\, I think\, for a minute.\n\nNarrator: Washington's orders to General Sullivan in May of 1779 had been clear and uncompromising.\n\nVoice: The immediate objects ar e the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the captu re of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible.\n\nIt will be es sential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting m ore that the country may not merely be overrun\, but destroyed.\n\nYou wil l not by any means listen to any overture for peace before the total ruin of their settlements is affected.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\nNarrator: The C ontinental Army invaded from 3 sides.\n\nIn early August\, Colonel Daniel Brodhead led 600 men northward from Fort Pitt to destroy the Seneca villag es along the upper Allegheny River.\n\nSullivan and 3 Continental brigades started north along the Susquehanna\, while another moved west from the M ohawk Valley.\n\nAt the end of the month their combined forces-- 4\,500 me n--began marching north.\n\n♪ Witgen: They don't find destitute villages or scattered villages of savage people.\n\nThey find what\, to them\, are undoubtedly easily recognizable prosperous villages.\n\nThey're cedar-pla nked buildings\, multiple-story buildings\, often with chimneys\, often wi th glass windows.\n\n[Child speaking] Witgen: These people have material w ealth that they've accumulated over the years\, and they have houses that look like something that people on the Eastern Seaboard would inhabit.\n\n [Gunfire] ♪ Narrator: On August 29th\, some 600 Senecas\, Mohawks\, Cayu gas\, Delawares\, and Loyalists tried to halt the invasion and were defeat ed.\n\n♪ Voice: We sent out a small party to look for some of the dead I ndians.\n\nThey found them and skinned two of them from their hips down fo r boot legs-- one pair for the major\, the other for myself.\n\nLieutenant William Barton.\n\n[Man shouting orders] Voice: Our brigade destroyed abo ut 150 acres of the best corn that I ever saw-- some of the stalks grew 16 feet high-- besides great quantities of beans\, potatoes\, pumpkins\, cuc umbers\, squash\, and watermelons\, and the enemy looking at us from the h ills.\n\nLieutenant Erkuries Beatty.\n\nVoice: There is something so cruel in destroying the habitations of any people\, however mean they may be\, that I might say the prospect hurts my feelings.\n\nDr.\n\nJabez Campfield .\n\nNarrator: When some soldiers asked General Sullivan if he wouldn't at least spare fruit orchards that had taken years to grow\, he refused.\n\n \"The Indians\,\" he said\, \"shall see that there is malice enough \"in o ur hearts to destroy everything that contributes to their support.\"\n\n ♪ Deloria: The Sullivan expedition ends up mapping New York for future s ettlement.\n\nEverybody kind of moves through New York and says\, \"Wow.\n \nThese apple orchards are so great\, \"these cornfields are so fantastic\ , I'm coming back here at the end of this\,\" right?\n\nAnd so in many way s\, it is not only a military campaign.\n\nIt's a scouting expedition for future settlement.\n\nNarrator: The troops torched village after village-- Catherine's Town\, Appletown\, Cayuga Town\, Kanadaseaga\, Canandaigua\, Honeoye.\n\nBy then\, Sullivan was within miles of Little Beard's Town\, w hich he had been told was the grand capital of Indian Country.\n\nLittle B eard's Town was the home of Mary Jemison\, who had been adopted years earl ier by Senecas after her Irish parents had been killed during a raid.\n\nV oice: He was about to march to our town when our Indians resolved to give him battle on the way.\n\nThey sent all the women and children into the wo ods.\n\nAnd then\, well-armed\, they set out to face the conquering enemy. \n\nMary Jemison.\n\n♪ Narrator: A scouting party of 26 Continentals\, g uided by an Oneida scout and commanded by Lieutenant Thomas Boyd\, was adv ancing ahead of the main column on September 13th\, when they stumbled int o a Seneca and Loyalist ambush.\n\n[Gunfire] 16 men were encircled.\n\n14 were killed and scalped.\n\nBoyd and another man were captured.\n\n♪ The next day\, Sullivan's main army reached Little Beard's Town.\n\nVoice: On entering the town\, we found the body of Lieutenant Boyd and another rifl eman in a most terrible\, mangled condition.\n\nThey was both stripped nak ed and their heads cut off.\n\nErkuries Beatty.\n\nNarrator: Sullivan's me n buried what was left of their companions\, looted and burned all 128 dwe llings in Little Beard's Town\, and then spent 8 hours methodically uproot ing and destroying crops.\n\nBy the end\, Sullivan reported to Washington that his army had burned a total of 40 towns.\n\nFarther to the west\, Col onel Brodhead had destroyed 10 more.\n\n♪ Most of the Seneca refugees ma de their way to Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario\, where some 5\,000 men\, wom en\, and children belonging to a host of nations huddled together in muddy camps.\n\n♪ Voice: We of the Six Nations have been much cast down by th e great loss we have sustained.\n\nBut yet we do not despair.\n\nWe are de termined to persevere in the cause we have engaged in.\n\nWe hope to be ab le to survive the winter\, and then we mean once more to meet our enemies and see whether we are to live or die.\n\nAnd if such is the will of the G reat Spirit\, we will leave our bones with those of the rest of our brethr en\, rather than evacuate our country or give our enemies room to say we f led from them.\n\nTwethorechte.\n\n♪ Narrator: The damage Patriot campai gns did to Seneca\, Cayuga\, Onondaga\, and Mohawk homelands was profound and permanent.\n\nSome Haudenosaunee would come to call George Washington \"the Town Destroyer\" and would remember the American Revolution as \"the Whirlwind.\"\n\n♪ [Waves breaking] In the late summer of 1779\, both Ge orge Washington and British General Henry Clinton believed that the long-a waited all-out American assault on British-occupied New York City could fi nally be just weeks away.\n\nEach had learned that the French fleet was sa iling back north from the West Indies.\n\nNeither was sure where it was he aded.\n\nClinton ordered all British troops to withdraw from occupied Newp ort to strengthen New York's defenses.\n\nWashington readied plans for a s iege of the city and called upon 5 neighboring states to provide him with more militia\, but French Admiral d'Estaing never came.\n\nInstead\, he ap peared at the mouth of the Savannah River with 32 warships to join forces with southern Patriots who had already retaken Augusta and were eager to r ecapture the rest of Georgia.\n\n♪ Aboard were 4\,000 French troops\, in cluding 750 \"free men of color\,\" Black and mixed-race troops from what would one day be called Haiti.\n\n♪ While d'Estaing waited for his Ameri can allies to join the siege\, he surrounded Savannah with heavy artillery and demanded its surrender.\n\nThe outnumbered British refused\, stalling for time until reinforcements of their own could reach the city.\n\nAs th ey braced for an attack\, redcoats and Loyalist troops and scores of Savan nah's free and enslaved residents had time to complete two defensive lines around the city.\n\n[Cannon fire] After Continentals and Patriot militiam en arrived from Charleston\, d'Estaing led a direct assault on October 9th .\n\nSome Americans became mired in a rice field.\n\n[Shouting and gunfire ] French troops in white uniforms proved easy targets.\n\nBritish guns sen t grapeshot\, nails\, and chunks of iron tearing through the attackers.\n\ nThe ditch\, a British officer remembered\, was chock full of their dead.\ n\n[Gunfire continues] De Rode: For the French-American alliance\, it is q uite the defeat.\n\nPeople do lose their trust in the availabilities of th e French to help the Americans.\n\nThey were very happy to have signed an alliance with them\, but the first campaigns\, plural\, completely failed. \n\nNarrator: D'Estaing\, who had been wounded twice\, sailed away to Fran ce.\n\nThe American commander General Benjamin Lincoln limped back to Patr iot-controlled Charleston.\n\nVoice: You know the importance of Charleston .\n\nIt is the bond that binds 3 states to the authority of Congress.\n\nI f the enemy possessed themselves of this town\, there will be no living fo r honest Patriots.\n\nDavid Ramsay.\n\n♪ Atkinson: The winter of 1779-17 80\, probably the harshest winter in North America in the 18th century.\n\ n♪ New York Harbor froze over solidly.\n\nYou could drag cannon from the tip of Manhattan Island to Staten Island.\n\nYou could cross the Hudson R iver on foot\, and the winter was all the worse in Upstate New York for th e Indians.\n\nVoice: That winter was the most severe that I have witnessed since my remembrance.\n\nThe snow fell about 5 feet deep and remained so. \n\nAlmost all the game upon which we depended perished and reduced us alm ost to starvation.\n\nMary Jemison.\n\n♪ Narrator: For General Washingto n and most of his army at winter quarters in and around Morristown\, New J ersey\, the temperature rarely rose above zero.\n\nIt was \"cold enough to cut a man in two\,\" Joseph Plumb Martin remembered.\n\n♪ Joseph Ellis: The winter in New Jersey at Morristown was worse than Valley Forge.\n\nTh e enthusiasm for the war had begun to wane years before\, and it continued to wane each year.\n\nVoice: We were absolutely literally starved.\n\nI d id not put a single morsel into my mouth for 4 days except a little black birch bark.\n\nI saw several of the men roast their old shoes and eat them \, and I was afterwards informed that some of the officers killed and ate a favorite little dog that belonged to one of them.\n\nJoseph Plumb Martin .\n\nNarrator: To add to their misery\, the men of Joseph Plumb Martin's 8 th Connecticut Regiment had not been paid for months.\n\nBy spring\, they had had enough.\n\n♪ Voice: The men now saw no other alternative but to starve to death or break up the army.\n\nThis was a hard matter for the so ldiers to think upon.\n\nThey were truly patriotic.\n\nThey loved their co untry\, and they had already suffered everything short of death in its cau se.\n\nWhat was to be done?\n\n[Joseph Plumb Martin] Narrator: The 4th and 8th Connecticut Regiments planned to desert.\n\nWhen a colonel tried to t alk them out of it\, someone stabbed him with a bayonet.\n\nA Pennsylvania regiment was rushed in to surround them\, and its colonel managed to talk the men into staying on.\n\nIn the end\, Martin wrote\, \"We were unwilli ng to desert \"the cause of our country when in distress.\n\nWe knew her c ause involved our own.\"\n\n♪ Voice: This is the most important hour Bri tain ever knew.\n\nIf we lose it\, we shall never see such another.\n\nHen ry Clinton.\n\nNarrator: It had now been 21 months since General Clinton w as ordered to take the Carolinas.\n\nOn the day after Christmas 1779\, lea ving enough of a force behind to defend New York\, Clinton finally sailed south for Charleston.\n\nAtkinson: Every farthing of the wealth in South C arolina is built on the back of slavery.\n\nThat's one of the reasons why South Carolina and the other Southern states have robust militias.\n\nIt i s not to repel foreign invaders.\n\nIt's to suppress potential slave insur rections.\n\nNarrator: Charleston was one of the largest cities in the Uni ted States\, home to 12\,000 people\, half of them enslaved.\n\nIf it coul d be captured\, the British believed\, a Loyalist majority in the Carolina s would rally to the Crown.\n\nLengel: Charleston has resisted British att acks before.\n\nThere's a sense of confidence that it'll be able to resist British attacks again.\n\nAmericans are almost delusional about it.\n\nTh ey don't look the facts in the face of how vulnerable Charleston really is .\n\nThe geography is impossible.\n\nCharleston is really out on a limb.\n \nThe British are gonna cut this place off\, and they're gonna capture it. \n\nCongress\, instead of recognizing this fact\, they keep sending more a nd more men to defend Charleston.\n\nThey send the best that the Continent al Army has.\n\nIt's a mistake.\n\n♪ Narrator: Some 30 miles southwest o f the city on February 11\, 1780\, Clinton began landing his troops.\n\nAs the British army marched toward Charleston\, first hundreds\, then thousa nds of enslaved men\, women\, and children fled their plantations to join them.\n\n♪ It would be more than a month before Clinton's forces could f orm a line a mile and a half north of the rebel fortifications and begin a European-style siege.\n\n♪ More British troops from New York and Savann ah would swell the British army to more than 10\,000\, roughly twice as la rge as the force with which Patriot General Benjamin Lincoln hoped somehow to defend the city.\n\nDesperate for reinforcements\, Lincoln suggested a rming enslaved men and was told no.\n\nWhites feared giving weapons to Bla ck people\, and\, besides\, slave owners did not want their property kille d or maimed in battle.\n\nMilitia from the backcountry were also reluctant to come to the crowded city.\n\nThey feared smallpox and were unmoved by the plight of planters and merchants whose wealth and political power they had long resented.\n\n♪ On April 1\, 1780\, the British began construct ing the first of a series of parallels\, sequential support trenches that would allow them to inch closer and closer to the city.\n\n♪ A week late r\, British warships forced their way into Charleston Harbor and took comm and of it.\n\nGeneral Clinton called upon the rebels to surrender in order to save the town and its people from what he called \"havock and desolati on.\"\n\nGeneral Lincoln refused.\n\nMan: Fire!\n\nNarrator: The British o pened fire.\n\n[Cannon fire] The Americans fired back.\n\nMan: Fire!\n\nNa rrator: The guns would continue day and night for a month.\n\n[Men shoutin g] ♪ As each blasted at the other\, the British parallels moved closer t o the American lines-- 800 yards... 450 yards... 250.\n\n♪ There was no escape.\n\nGeneral Lincoln asked that his surrendering men be granted the usual honors of war\, but General Clinton refused: Rebels deserved no such honors.\n\n♪ Lengel: When Charleston falls\, it's a body blow to the Re volution and to the American cause.\n\nIt's a humiliation because we've lo st not only Charleston\, but we've lost some of the best troops that we ha ve\, and the British in their surrender terms really drive home that humil iation.\n\n♪ Narrator: It was the worst defeat suffered by the Patriots during the Revolution.\n\nAn entire army was captured\, 5\,618 men by Clin ton's count\, including Benjamin Lincoln and 6 other generals\, along with more than 300 cannon\, 376 barrels of gunpowder\, and 5\,916 muskets.\n\n ♪ Hundreds of South Carolinians streamed into the occupied city from the countryside\, eager now to swear allegiance to the Crown.\n\n♪ Voice: T o Lord Germain-- With the greatest pleasure\, I report to your Lordship th at the inhabitants from every quarter declare their allegiance to the King \, and offer their services in arms in support of his government.\n\nIn ma ny instances\, they have brought prisoners\, their former oppressors or le aders\, and I may venture to assert that there are few men in South Caroli na who are not either our prisoners or in arms with us.\n\nHenry Clinton.\ n\n[Birds chirping] Narrator: General Clinton and 4\,000 troops returned t o New York\, leaving General Charles Cornwallis in command of the southern theater.\n\nA few more such victories\, British commanders believed\, and the Loyalty to the Crown of all the Southern Colonies would be reconfirme d.\n\n\"The English lion\,\" a German officer wrote\, \"has awakened from his sleep.\"\n\n♪ Voice: Unless Congress is vested with powers competent to the great purposes of war\, our cause is lost.\n\nWe can no longer dru dge on in the old way.\n\nI see one head gradually changing into 13.\n\nI see one army branching into thirteen-- and am fearful of the consequences of it.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\n[Wind blowing] ♪ ♪ Announcer: Next tim e on \"The American Revolution\"... The shock of treason.\n\nJoseph Ellis: He was the last person Washington ever thought would have betrayed him.\n \nAnnouncer: The South explodes in battle.\n\nVincent Brown: It's sometime s brother against brother in this backwoods warfare.\n\nIt's an ugly confl ict.\n\nAnnouncer: And a new nation rises.\n\nVoice: Who would have though t that out of this multitude of rabble would arise a people who could defy kings?\n\n[Johann Ewald] [Men shouting] Announcer: Don't miss the conclus ion of \"The American Revolution\" next time.\n\n♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of \"The Amer ican Revolution\" with interactives\, games\, classroom materials\, and mo re.\n\n♪ Announcer: \"The American Revolution\" DVD and Blu-ray\, as wel l as the companion book and soundtrack\, are available online and in store s.\n\nThe series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime V ideo.\n\n♪ Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt arou nd the world.\n\nThe fight would take ingenuity\, determination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power to do?\n\nBank of America.\n\ nAnnouncer: 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.\n\nMajor funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein\, the Robert D. and Patr icia E. Kern Family Foundation\, the Lilly Endowment\, and by Better Angel s Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt\, Stephen A. Schwarzman\, and Ke nneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst.\n\nAdditional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations\, the Pew Charitable Trusts\, Gilb ert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling\, the Park Foundation\, and by Better A ngels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg\, Perry and Donna Golkin\, T he Michelson Foundation\, Jacqueline B. Mars\, the Kissick Family Foundati on\, Diane and Hal Brierley\, John H.N.\n\nFisher and Jennifer Caldwell\, John and Catherine Debs\, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund\, and these additional members.\n\n\"The American Revolution\" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting\, and Viewers Like Y ou.\n\nThank You.\n\n\n\n\n URL\n\n https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american -revolution-episode-5-the-soul-of-all-america/\n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251120 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR