The American Revolution PBS Documentary Episode 5

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

The Soul of All America (December 1777 – May 1780)

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. [Cannon fire] ♪ Voice: I have of late lost a great many intimate friends. The numbers of fine young men from 15 to 5 and 20 with loss of limbs hurts me beyond conception, and I every day curse Columbus and all the discoverers of this diabolical country. In what manner the Parliament will act on this occasion we cannot conceive. Major John Bowater. ♪ Voice: You cannot--I venture to say, you cannot conquer America. My lords, in 3 campaigns, we have done nothing and suffered much. [Gavel bangs] You may swell every expense and every effort, pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow, traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country. Your efforts are forever vain and impotent. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms-- never, never, never. [Men shouting] William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. [Gavel bangs] ♪ [Distant cannon fire] ♪ [Fife and drums playing] Jane Kamensky: The American Revolution is, on the one hand, an intensely local war, and, on the other hand, a great global war. As a global war, the American Revolution continues the series of wars among empires for the prize of North America. Britain, Spain, France are all seeking some form of victory or advantage... ♪ but the beginning of 1778, the rebellious United States' cause is at the thread end of its ability to continue to exist. ♪ 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 cover his nakedness. His whole appearance pictures a person forsaken and discouraged. Dr. Albigence Waldo, surgeon, First Connecticut Infantry. ♪ Narrator: The weary Continentals whom George Washington led into winter quarters at Valley Forge in December of 1777, were, a visitor, said, just "a skeleton of an army." They'd been fighting and marching for months, but many hadn't been paid since August. Nearly 3,000 of them were officially unfit for duty. Over the next 6 months, 2,500 soldiers would die, mostly from typhus, typhoid, influenza, and dysentery. Clothing 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. ♪ Voice: I am now convinced that unless some great change takes place, this army must inevitably be reduced to one or the other of these things-- starve, dissolve, or disperse in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can. George Washington, headquarters at the Valley Forge. ♪ 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 Philadelphia. Washington himself called it "a dreary kind of place," but he chose it because it was close enough to Philadelphia to move quickly against British foragers when they dared venture out of the city and far enough from it to make surprise attacks unlikely. Pennsylvania legislators complained that instead of withdrawing to Valley Forge, Washington should be about the business of recapturing Philadelphia. Voice: I can assure those gentlemen that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw 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 blankets. It would give me infinite pleasure to afford protection to every individual and to every spot of ground in the whole of the United States. Nothing is more my wish, but this is not possible with our present force. George Washington. [Canon fire in distance] ♪ [Fire crackling] Voice: I'd experienced what I thought sufficient of the hardships of military life the year before, but we were now absolutely in danger of perishing, and that too in the midst of a plentiful country. Joseph Plumb Martin. [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. ♪ Now huddled in tattered canvas tents at Valley Forge, soldiers went for days with nothing to eat but fire cakes-- just flour and water baked on hot stones. Several days went by when many soldiers had no food at all. There was talk of mutiny. Rick Atkinson: The apparatus of war supporting the army has come unglued. All of these support functions that help keep an army thriving, keep it healthy, have really begun to implode. Narrator: Congress, still in exile in York, Pennsylvania, told Washington to commandeer food and fodder from the surrounding countryside, but he resisted, worried it might turn civilians against the cause. Instead, he tried to purchase everything his men needed, but the steady depreciation of Continental currency made that problematic. William Hogeland: Nothing like the American Revolutionary War had been fought. No public project like it had been undertaken before, and it was incredibly expensive. What happens with a paper currency if it isn't well-supported and isn't handled properly is, it depreciates wildly against gold and silver. It was useless as a currency, and in that sense, the Congress went broke. ♪ Stephen 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, selling goods and services to the British Army. Narrator: Washington's army was dwindling again. Men simply went home. Hundreds enlisted in Loyalist regiments. Others joined roving outlaw bands that looted isolated farmhouses. Still others made their way to Philadelphia to surrender, hoping they would be treated better as prisoners of war than as soldiers at Valley Forge. Washington's officers were leaving, too. Voice: 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 spending what they have in the defense of their country. Thomas Nelson. ♪ Narrator: Over the coming months, more than 500 of Washington's officers would resign. To add to his troubles, some members of Congress and a handful of commanders had begun whispering that he had proved himself weak and indecisive in battle. If the Revolution were to succeed, some argued, command of the Continental Army should pass to Horatio Gates, who had recently accepted the surrender of an entire British army at Saratoga. ♪ Voice: I did not solicit this command, but accepted it after much entreaty. As 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 safe arrival in the Holy Land. George Washington. Narrator: Until that moment came, Washington would work tirelessly, first to maintain, and then to improve his army. Shelter came first. He ordered the men to cut down trees, dismantle farmers' outbuildings and fences, and bang together row upon row of log huts, perhaps 2,000 of them, each one 14 by 16 feet and meant to house 12 men. ♪ Valley Forge would for a time be the fourth largest city in America-- 20,000 men, women, and children from all 13 states. For many, English was not their native language. They spoke German, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Dutch, Swedish, French, Mohican, Oneida, Wolof, Kikongo, and more. Nearly 10% were African American, most of whom served alongside whites in integrated regiments. Some 60 men were enrolled in a brand-new all-Black company belonging to the First Rhode Island Regiment. The state legislature promised those who were enslaved their freedom at war's end and pledged to pay compensation to those whose property they had been. ♪ Among the Native American soldiers and scouts at Valley Forge were Tuscaroras, Oneidas, as well as Mohicans and Wappingers from Stockbridge, Massachusetts. ♪ The hundreds 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. When men 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. ♪ Narrator: Martha Washington joined her husband at Valley Forge. At least 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. 8 of General Washington's closest aides were crowded in there, as well, among them, two especially idealistic young officers in their early 20s-- John Laurens and the Marquis de Lafayette. ♪ Iris de Rode: As soon as Lafayette arrived, he starts to look 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. He really starts to believe in the cause for equalities, for liberties. ♪ 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. From Valley Forge, the young Laurens wrote to his father. Voice: I would solicit you to seed me a number of your able-bodied men slaves instead of leaving me a fortune. I would bring about a twofold good. First, I would advance those who are unjustly deprived of the rights of mankind, and I would reinforce the defenders of liberty with a number of gallant soldiers. ♪ 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. John Laurens. Narrator: Henry Laurens rejected his son's proposal. Freeing some slaves, he said, would simply "render Slavery more irksome to those who remained in it." ♪ [Wind blowing] In February, the bad conditions at Valley Forge grew still worse. Some 1,000 soldiers would sicken and die that month. Voice: I was called to relieve a soldier thought to be dying. He was an Indian, an excellent soldier. He has fought for those very people who disinherited his forefathers. Having finished his pilgrimage, he was discharged from the war of life and death. His memory ought to be respected more than those rich ones who supply the world with nothing better than money and vice. Dr. Albigence Waldo. [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 whatever they could find and handing out promissory notes in exchange. ♪ Voice: The militia and some regular troops on one side, and Loyalist refugees with the Englishmen on the other, were constantly roving about, plundering and destroying everything in a barbarous manner. Everywhere distrust, fear, hatred and abominable selfishness were met with. Reverend Nils Collin. ♪ Narrator: Nils Collin was a Swedish missionary sent to America to serve as rector of the Swedish Church in Swedesboro, New Jersey. Since he considered himself a subject of the Swedish monarch, his conscience would not allow him to swear allegiance to the British king or to ally himself with the Patriot cause. He vowed to remain neutral, but bands of American and British soldiers and their sympathizers took turns occupying the town, seizing livestock and provisions, and punishing those who stood in their way. ♪ Voice: Many members of the congregation suffered injury in various ways by this frenzy. Dr. Otto's house was burnt down by Loyalist refugees. James Stillman lost most of his cattle. Sutherland, a Scotchman, together with a young Swede, Hendrickson, were taken to New York as prisoners. ♪ On the opposite side, the militia pillaged the following-- Jacob and Anders Jones, who had traded with the English; a sea captain, Jan Cox, whose beds were cut up and his China, tea tables, and bureaus smashed. From all this it is apparent how terrible this civil war raged, party hatred flamed in the hearts of my people. Some would not go to church because the sight of their enemy aroused the memory of the evils they had suffered. Nils Collin. 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. Most people tried to let it pass. They tried to get out of the way. Kamensky: It's common individuals, ordinary individuals asking the question that I think we all ask about politics every day-- "What does this have to do with me?" ♪ Voice: Girls at the age of 12 and 13 require a mother's care. A girl of 13, left without an advisor and fancying herself a woman, stands on a precipice that trembles beneath her. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: Betsy Ambler and her younger sister Mary spent that winter in Winchester, Virginia. They were left with an aunt and uncle while their parents and little sisters headed southeast to avoid the cold. Betsy spent much of her time trying to win the attention of "charming young..." Continental "officers." "Here," she said, "was a fine field open for a romantic girl." Voice: Early in the spring, our good father returned. And though he treated us himself as children, he saw that we had been considered of an age to attract too much attention. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: The Ambler family would be reunited, and they would be returning to Yorktown, what Betsy called her "beloved birthplace." Her father's finances had been hit hard by the war. He and his two daughters had to make the long, dusty trip home in a wagon, not a coach. "We were rather ashamed of our cavalry," Betsy remembered. Voice: The only possible good from the entire change in our circumstances was that we were made acquainted with the manner and situation of our country, which we otherwise should never have known. We were forced to industry and to endeavor by amiable and agreeable conduct to make amends for the loss of fortune. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: When the Amblers finally got to Yorktown, they settled not in "our former mansion," she recalled, but in a much smaller house on the edge of town. [Birds chirping] Voice: My imagination frequently recurs to that enchanting spot situated on a little eminence overlooking a smiling meadow, where a gentle stream meandering round the sloping hill was lost in one of the noblest rivers in our country. Here, my sister and myself often wandered, gathering wildflowers to adorn our hair, till we almost fancied ourselves heroines. Betsy Ambler. [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 acquired authority and confidence by being in his orbit. I think he had the effect of pulling out some of the best in the people who were around him. Narrator: To provide his army with the reliable logistical support it desperately needed, Washington insisted that Congress appoint as quartermaster general the officer he trusted most-- Nathanael Greene, but Greene was a fighting general. He knew there was more combat ahead and wanted to be in on what he called "the mischief." Atkinson: Greene says, nobody in history has ever heard of a "quartermaster." He doesn't want the job, but he takes the job. Like Washington, he's got a brain built for executive action, and he's good at being the quartermaster. Narrator: Thanks to Nathanael Greene's mastery of logistics and Washington's appeals to state governors, by the end of March 1778, herds of cattle and sheep were plodding toward Valley Forge from several directions, along with wagon trains filled with everything from barrels of nails to brand-new uniforms and crates of bayonets and muskets. [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 convalescents all converged on Valley Forge, Washington wanted every man in his newly reorganized army to undergo formal military training to end what he called the confusion that had too often undercut its performance on the battlefield. The man he picked to oversee that task was a newcomer to America-- Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben. Voice: Never before or since have I had such an impression of the ancient fabled God of War as when I looked on the baron. The trappings of his horse, the enormous holsters of his pistols all seemed to favor the idea. He seemed to me a perfect personification of Mars. Private Ashbel Green. Narrator: Steuben claimed to be a baron, a lieutenant general in the Prussian Army, and a close aide to Frederick the Great. He really 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 short by an accusation that he had taken familiarities with young boys. In America, he said, he wanted to put his "talents in the arts of war in the service of a republic." ♪ Steuben was hot-tempered, and his English was initially limited to a single word--"goddamn." Voice: When some movement or maneuver was not performed to his mind, he began to swear in German, then in French, and then in both languages together. When he had exhausted his artillery of foreign oaths, he would call to his aides, "Come and swear for me in English. These fellows won't do what I bid them." Peter Stephen Du Ponceau. Edward Lengel: Baron von Steuben is really a comical figure when he arrives at camp. The men make fun of him, but he is a man who you need pulling the men together and giving them a sense of common purpose. After the men have drilled with him for a little while, they stop laughing. [Man shouting orders] Narrator: But for all his bluster, Steuben grasped the character of the men he was to work with. "The genius of this nation is not to be compared... with the Prussians, Austrians or French," he wrote to an old friend back home. "You say to your soldier, 'Do this,' and he does it," but here, "I am obliged to say, "'This is the reason why you ought to do that,' and then he does it." ♪ 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 more quickly, and to become proficient with the bayonet, the weapon that had once terrified them when in British or Hessian hands. As skills improved, so did morale. ♪ By spring, the danger of mutiny had eased. So had the mutterings about Washington's leadership. He was, it was clear, indispensable to the cause of liberty. ♪ That year, a German-language almanac published in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, would call Washington Des Landes Vater-- "the Country's Father." ♪ He was the glue that held people together. These 13 colonies had to come together, and he was the person to do it. We would not have had a country without him. I don't know, actually. I mean, you know-- God, I can't believe I'm saying this because I'm not a huge fan of "great man" theories of history or explanations of history, but let's put it this way. It's easy to see the American effort for independence failing without Washington's leadership. ♪ [Gull squawks] Narrator: After midnight on April 23, 1778, 31 sailors and Marines from the 20-gun Continental Navy sloop "Ranger," tossing in the Irish Sea, climbed into two longboats and began rowing toward the port of Whitehaven on the western coast of England. Their Scottish-born commander knew these waters well. He'd begun his seafaring career there as a 13-year-old apprentice seaman named John Paul Jr. In the intervening years, he had sailed aboard slave ships, risen to command merchant vessels, and then, after killing a crewman, fled to America. There, he changed his name to John Paul Jones and volunteered to join the fledgling Continental Navy. Voice: I resolved to make the greatest efforts to bring to an end the barbarous ravages to which the English turned in America by making good fire in England of shipping. John Paul Jones. Narrator: When Jones' men reached the Whitehaven wharf, they found more than 200 vessels moored in its harbor. As Jones worked to get a fire going aboard a boat loaded with coal, angry townspeople raced to the waterfront. Voice: I stood between them and the ship of fire with a pistol in my hand and ordered them to retire, which they did with precipitation. The flames had already caught the rigging and begun to ascend the main mast. It was time to retire. John Paul Jones. Narrator: Jones and his men made it back to the Ranger and sailed away. [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. Jones understood his impact on British public opinion. Mothers began warning their children to be good, or the fearsome "Pirate" John Paul Jones would get them. ♪ Voice: What was done is sufficient to show that not all their boasted navy can protect their own coasts and that the scenes of distress which they have occasioned in America may soon be brought home to their own doors. John Paul Jones. ♪ Voice: What a miraculous change in the political world-- the government of France an advocate for liberty, espousing the cause of Protestants, and risking a war to secure their independence; Britain at war with America, France in alliance with her. These, my friend, are astonishing changes. Elbridge Gerry. Narrator: It had taken nearly 3 months for word of the new military alliance with France to reach Washington. The French would be sending soldiers and the fleet. His army would no longer be alone. "This...great... glorious...news," he said, "must put the independency of America out of all manner of dispute." [Snare drum playing] Washington was eager now to test his newly disciplined army against the enemy. Voice: The enemy imagined Philadelphia to be of more importance to us than it really was and to that belief added the absurd idea that the soul of all America was centered there and would be conquered there. Thomas Paine. ♪ Narrator: The British, German, and Loyalist troops penned up in Philadelphia had had a hard winter, too. They had subsisted on half-rations. Wounded troops occupied every public building in town except the State House, where the Declaration of Independence had been signed, which was crowded with Patriot prisoners. ♪ 1777 had ended badly for the British. General Burgoyne had surrendered an entire army at Saratoga. General 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 all its imperial holdings-- in India, Africa, Ireland, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, as well as in North America. Kathleen DuVal: The French decide to enter the war, and that changes everything for Britain. Britain knows that Spain and the Netherlands may be next. Suddenly, those 13 colonies that were rebelling are kind of the small potatoes of the war. They could lose their profitable plantation islands. They could lose Jamaica. The stakes are big in this war, and the 13 colonies have become just a tiny corner of it. ♪ Narrator: Lord North, the British prime minister, dispatched peace commissioners to America that spring, armed with a series of concessions aimed at ending the fighting, everything the Americans had been demanding for years. All they had to do was renounce independence. What they're offering is basically terms that would have been acceptable to the colonists in 1774 or 1775. Narrator: Congress would not hear of it. The very idea of dependence, its president, Henry Laurens, said, "is inadmissible." British negotiators responded with a warning. Americans could now expect far harsher treatment than any they had yet received, and they had appointed a new commander to deliver that treatment. Voice: On the 10th of May, Sir Henry Clinton arrived at Philadelphia, relieving Sir William Howe as commander in chief. Captain Johann Ewald. Atkinson: Henry Clinton is a formidable military officer. He's had a lot of combat experience, but he's a very, very difficult personality. He's easily aggrieved. He carries his grievances and grudges with him. He will be the British commander in chief longer than any other general in the American Revolution, for 4 years. Narrator: General Henry Clinton, who had been fighting in America since Bunker's Hill, had hoped to be relieved. Instead, he would be asked to do at least as much as his predecessor had been asked to do and to do it with far fewer men. His new orders were to send 8,000 of his soldiers to protect British interests in Florida and the Caribbean. He was to leave the rest of the New England and Mid-Atlantic states in Patriot hands for the most part and eventually mount seaborne assaults on the 4 Southern Colonies. Clinton concluded he first had to get his army back to New York, which meant evacuating Philadelphia that had been taken just 9 months earlier. Most of his men, he decided, would have to march to New York. He had too few ships to carry his entire army as well as some 3,000 Loyalists now eager to leave with him. Voice: All of the loyal inhabitants who had taken our protection lamented that they now had to give up all their property. Brave people who have rendered such good service to the King are being left behind. God alone knows what will happen to them. Johann Ewald. Maya Jasanoff: Philadelphia has its population turned inside out a couple of different times in the Revolution. New York City has its population turned around, a kind of back-and-forth of Loyalist 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 they're going to do next. ♪ Voice: Philadelphia, June 18th. This morning when we arose, there was not one redcoat to be seen. Colonel Gordon and some others had not been gone a quarter of an hour before the Americans entered the city. Elizabeth Drinker. Narrator: To act as military governor of Philadelphia, George Washington selected General Benedict Arnold, still suffering from war wounds so severe that he could not mount a horse. He was to restore order and preserve tranquility. Philadelphia was now almost unrecognizable. Retreating redcoats had looted homes, desecrated churches, felled orchards for firewood, and in the houses they had used as barracks, cut holes in the floor to serve as privies. Returning Patriot refugees were enraged at what had been done to their city and were eager to punish anyone who had collaborated with the occupiers. The homes and property of scores of accused Tories would be confiscated. 23 men were tried for treason. Two Quakers were hanged. Nathaniel Philbrick: Philadelphia was divided between the Loyalists and the Patriots, who were at each other's throats. It would have required someone of great tact and sympathy to keep the lid on this city. That was not Arnold. Narrator: By June 18, 1778, most of Clinton's army was in New Jersey and had begun its march toward New York, some 90 miles away. They moved in two great columns-- more than 18,000 soldiers, nearly 2,000 noncombatants, 46 artillery pieces, and 5,000 horses. The next morning, George Washington led his army out of Valley Forge for the first time in months and began shadowing the British as they moved east, looking for an opportunity to strike. Atkinson: Washington has decided that he is not going to directly intercept this column, which is very strong. He wants to nick at them and--and peck at them from the rear and make life miserable for them and watch for an opening. Narrator: Once again, New Jersey militia made the British passage as painful as possible, felling trees across the roads, destroying bridges, flooding streams to make fording difficult, and picking off individual soldiers by ambush. ♪ Voice: The whole province was in arms, following us with Washington's army, constantly surrounding us on our marches and besieging our camps. Each step cost human blood. Johann Ewald. [Thunder] Narrator: The weather added to their misery-- heat that soared above 90 degrees, sudden downpours that turned sandy roads into bogs, followed by dense humidity, swarms of mosquitoes, and still more heat. 20 British soldiers died of heat exhaustion on a single day. As many as 500 men are thought to have deserted during the march, most of them Hessians, blending into German-speaking communities nearby. [Birds chirping] ♪ On the morning of June 24, 1778, Americans otherwise disconnected by the vastness of their continent witnessed an otherworldly phenomenon at roughly the same time as the moon eclipsed the sun. ♪ Indians and Spanish colonists in Mexico and Texas saw it first. When it reached Spanish New Orleans and British Mobile, the flags of empire flew in sudden darkness for more than 4 minutes. The total eclipse lasted even longer for the Muscogee Creeks on the Chattahoochee River and for the "Maroon" communities of self-emancipated former slaves hidden in the Great Dismal Swamp. ♪ When mid-morning darkness descended on the Virginia capital at Williamsburg, "Lightening buggs were seen as at Night." ♪ The same darkness briefly enveloped Washington's army as it followed the British into New Jersey. "Had this happened upon such an occasion in "olden time," Private Joseph Plumb Martin remembered, "it would have been considered ominous, either of good or bad fortune, but we took no notice of it." ♪ Martin had been detached from his Connecticut regiment and assigned to join fast-moving light infantry with orders to follow the enemy closely enough to capture stragglers and welcome deserters. The day after the eclipse, Clinton decided to head east towards Sandy Hook, a Loyalist stronghold from which royal transports could ferry his men to New York. He merged his two divisions into one column, and, he recalled, hoping that "Mr. Washington 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 insult." He put General Charles Cornwallis in charge of that force. ♪ At Hopewell, Washington convened a council of war. General Nathanael Greene, back in the field, was eager for a fight. Voice: If we suffer the enemy to pass through the Jerseys without attempting anything upon them, I think we shall ever regret it. People expect something from us, and our strength demands it. Nathanael Greene. Narrator: But most commanders urged caution. Major General Charles Lee-- Washington's second in command, captured two years before and only recently exchanged-- was especially adamant in his opposition. Sending Americans against British regulars would be "criminal," he said, but when Washington decided to send forward 4,500 troops anyway, Lee insisted seniority required that he lead them. If he weren't given command, he said, he would be "disgraced." Washington relented and ordered Lee to follow Cornwallis' elite rearguard and look for an opportunity to attack. ♪ [Indistinct conversation] Narrator: The British left their encampment around Monmouth Court House well before dawn on Sunday, June 28th. [Gunfire] By mid-morning, Lee's men had formed west of the British line, trying piecemeal to attack and dislodge Cornwallis' forces. All their efforts proved futile. [Shouting and gunfire] Narrator: As the Patriots struggled in the increasingly brutal heat, Clinton sent an entire division to reinforce Cornwallis. More than 10,000 British, German, and Loyalist troops counterattacked. Atkinson: Things go south in a hurry for the Americans. Lee loses control, and the next thing you know, this American advance guard, the vanguard that's supposed to be attacking, is fleeing. Lengel: They're confused. They begin falling back, but then Washington appears. The knowledge of his presence causes the retreat to stop instantaneously without even having said a word. Those who witnessed this moment said that it was like a bolt of electricity shot through the forces once they realized that Washington was there. Voice: His presence stopped the retreat. His fine appearance on horseback, his calm courage gave him the air best calculated to excite enthusiasm. He rode all along the lines amid the shouts of the soldiers, cheering them by his voice and example. Marquis de Lafayette. Lengel: Washington gives some orders. The men get back into line... [Gunshot] and they face down the British attack, and they don't break. Man: Fire! ♪ [Men shouting commands] Narrator: General Steuben's training had paid off. The British launched a series of assaults. General Henry Clinton himself led one of them, sword in hand. ♪ Colonels Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr both had horses shot out from under them, but the Americans held. Atkinson: Washington places his defenses in a way that stops the British assault. He's got good ground for his artillery. He's hammering the British. [Men shouting] ♪ Narrator: The artillery duel continued for two hours. Infantry on both sides sought whatever cover they could. Voice: With the thermometer at 96, what could be done in a hot pine barren loaded with everything that the poor soldier carries? It breaks my heart that I was obliged under those cruel circumstances to attempt it. General Henry Clinton. ♪ Narrator: Finally, at around 3:45, Clinton ordered a stop to the firing. With his supply train now well on its way towards Sandy Hook and safety, he reluctantly began to withdraw his exhausted troops. Washington's men were worn out, too. The heat, Joseph Plumb Martin remembered, was like "the mouth of [an]...oven." [Insect buzzing] Voice: It was generally understood the battle was to be renewed at the dawn of day, but at the dawn of day, I heard the shout of victory-- "The British are gone." Dr. William Read. ♪ Narrator: The Battle of Monmouth had left some 362 of Washington's men and 411 of Clinton's dead, wounded, or missing. Corpses, swollen and blackening in the heat, sprawled everywhere. Both sides claimed victory. ♪ Clinton's column reached Sandy Hook without serious interruption and embarked for Staten Island. His 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. "It is glorious for America," a New Jersey colonel wrote his wife. At least one British officer admitted his army had endured "a handsome flogging." Although 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 would be more than 3 years before George Washington would personally lead his troops into battle again. ♪ Serena Zabin: What he learns over the course of the war is that there are other ways to perform his leadership that's not actually by doing something big and bold but that waiting and holding back and containment can also be a way of showing his strength. [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 my country for the wealth of the Indies, or be any other than an American. Abigail Adams. ♪ Stacy Schiff: One of the great blessings here is how much time John spends in Philadelphia with Abigail back in Massachusetts because from that, we have really the most detailed, richest correspondence of the Revolutionary years. Narrator: In the summer of 1778, Abigail and John Adams were apart, as they almost always were during the war. She was at their home in Braintree, Massachusetts, managing the household, and he was newly arrived in Paris, sent by Congress to join Benjamin Franklin and the American delegation to France. ♪ There, on the Fourth of July, Adams and Franklin hosted a modest celebration on the second anniversary of American independence. Voice: We had the honor of the company of all the American gentlemen and ladies in and about Paris with a few of the French gentlemen in the neighborhood. They were not ministers of state, nor ambassadors, nor princes, nor dukes, nor peers, nor marquises, nor cardinals, nor archbishops, nor bishops. John Adams. Narrator: 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. They were interrupted by what one of them called "a crowd of the vulgar" outside mocking the pretensions of the wealthy. DuVal: 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. It's not true. There have always been 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 of the opportunity, some of the promise of the United States, is built on slavery and taking Native land. ♪ Narrator: Late the same evening of July 4th, in the heart of the continent, Virginia militia under Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark reached British-held Kaskaskia, a mostly French-speaking village on the Mississippi River. Man: Ready! [Gunshots] Narrator: In the dead of night, Clark's men overwhelmed the town's defenses. Woman: [Vocalizing] Narrator: The next morning, he notified the terrified townspeople that the King of France had joined the Americans. Clark 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. It was a bloodless start to what would become Clark's bloody campaign to conquer Indian country east of the Mississippi. [Snare drum playing] [Gulls squawking] The French fleet Washington had been waiting for finally appeared off New York in the week after Independence Day-- 12 ships of the line, 4 frigates, and over 4,000 French marines, all commanded by Vice Admiral Charles Henri, Comte d'Estaing, a veteran of warfare against Britain in India and Sumatra. De Rode: D'Estaing is a French aristocrat. He considers himself quite superior to these American "ragtag" army and is looking at them and thinks, "How am I gonna work with these people?" Because he thought, "I'm the French admiral. I know what to do here, so they better listen to me." Narrator: 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. Because d'Estaing had convinced himself that his heaviest ships would run aground trying to enter New York Harbor, he decided to move against the British garrison at Newport, Rhode Island, instead. It was to be a coordinated assault with American ground forces under General John Sullivan, but neither commander spoke the other's language. Sullivan, the son of Irish indentured servants, loathed aristocrats like the French commander, who, in turn, found Sullivan crude and inept. [Cannon fire] It all went wrong. Without informing the French, Sullivan advanced a day earlier than had been planned. When a British fleet appeared offshore, d'Estaing sailed out to do battle... [Thunder] but a howling storm scattered and seriously damaged both fleets. De Rode: 18th-century warfare is mainly based on the weather. You could have no alternative. If there is a big storm coming in, you can't do anything besides getting just wiped away. Admiral d'Estaing had to go for repairs in Boston. [Cannon fire] Lengel: The French, in essence, leave the Americans in the lurch. Sullivan is barely able to extract his forces from what could have been a catastrophe. ♪ Narrator: The first joint French-American operation had failed. Once the repairs were finished in Boston, d'Estaing would set sail for the French West Indies without even bothering to tell Washington he was leaving. French ships would be available to the Americans only during the late summer and early fall, when hurricanes threatened the Caribbean. The American Revolution was important to France only when its successes deepened Britain's failures and Washington knew he could not win the decisive battle without French help. Lengel: Anti-French 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. He thought he was gonna be strung up. [Man shouts] ♪ Voice: I, with 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. Some of the bodies had been so slightly buried that the dogs or hogs or both had dug them out of the ground. Here were Hessian skulls. Poor fellows! They were left unburied in a foreign land. They had perhaps as near and dear friends to lament their sad destiny as the Americans who laid buried near them. They should have kept at home. Joseph Plumb Martin. ♪ Narrator: By the fall of 1778, Washington's army was arrayed in an arc from Middlebrook, New Jersey, to Danbury, Connecticut. He would remain within striking distance of New York City, determined to recapture the place he had been forced to abandon in 1776. [Shouting and gunfire] For months, his and Clinton's armies had probed one another's lines. On a single summer afternoon near Kingsbridge, a Maryland patrol ambushed 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. They "have fought and bled by our side," Washington said. "We consider them as our friends and brothers." ♪ 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. The world was motionless and silent. Chaplain Timothy Dwight. ♪ 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 by either army but plundered by both again and again. ♪ Roving bands of lawless raiders prowled the countryside rustling livestock, extorting cash, looting and burning homes, raping women. Voice: This year has not been a very glorious one to America. Our enemies, however, have nothing to boast of since they have not gained one inch of territory more than they possessed a year ago and are at least Philadelphia out of pocket. What the winter may produce I know not. I wish it would give us peace but do not expect it. Abigail Adams. Women: ♪ Sit down, servant, sit down... ♪ Taylor: It's pretty clear the British are not gonna win the war in New England. They're not gonna get enough popular support, probably not gonna win the war in the Middle Atlantic region either. Woman: ♪ I know you tired... ♪ Taylor: The great potential place where their relatively more reduced forces can have more leverage is the South, so the goal is just see what you can retain. You probably can't keep all of these 13 colonies. Maybe you can keep the most valuable of these colonies. Woman: ♪ I know you're mighty tired... ♪ Conway: The Southern Colonies are seen as an integrated part of an economic system that generates great power and wealth for Britain, so keeping the Southern Colonies with their ability to provision the West Indian islands, and particularly 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. Woman: ♪ Sit down ♪ Narrator: After General Clinton learned the French fleet had sailed away from Boston, he prepared for the invasion of the South that London had ordered him to undertake. ♪ Jasanoff: Another reason that the British pursue a Southern strategy after Saratoga is that they assume that there are many more Loyalists in the South who will come to their aid. There was also, of course, the question of the enslaved population. Voice: A great majority of the inhabitants of North and South Carolina are loyal subjects. It 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. But the instant that the King's troops are put in motion in those colonies, these poor slaves would be ready to rise upon their rebel masters. Moses Kirkland. So the Southern Strategy was to recapture the Southern Colonies 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 British Army could continue moving north. Narrator: from New York, General Clinton sent a squadron south to try to capture Savannah, the capital of Georgia and its only city of any size. ♪ With the help of an African American river pilot named Sampson, the British fleet sailed up the Savannah River and began disembarking below the city at dawn on December 29, 1778. ♪ Some 700 Continental troops and 150 local militia were waiting. The British commander saw that a direct assault was certain to be bloody. ♪ 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. [Gunfire] The Patriots panicked. British troops chased them through the town. 83 Americans were killed and 30 more drowned trying to swim across the Yamacraw Creek. 453 surrendered. The British lost just 7 dead. ♪ Over the weeks that followed, The British captured Augusta and reimposed royal rule in Georgia. "I have," their commander boasted, "ripped one star and one stripe from the rebel flag." [Bird squawks] Voice: My disposition always active, I could not content myself at home while my fellow countrymen were fighting the battles of my country. John Greenwood. ♪ Narrator: In January of 1779, the teenaged fifer John Greenwood decided to try something new. He would sign onto a Boston privateer, hoping both to strike more blows at the British and to make a fortune for himself. He chose the 18-gun, 130-man "Cumberland" because its commander was Captain John Manley, who had been the most successful sea raider in the Continental Navy for years and who was now a civilian only because there were too few naval vessels for him to have one to command. Atkinson: The Americans have no navy to speak of. Congress asks that 13 frigates be built. None of those frigates really get into action in a meaningful way. The British have 400 warships. What the Americans do have are privateers. Philbrick: Privateers made warfare a for-profit endeavor, and so you had countless sailors in New England and up and down the coast, volunteering to go out in privateers, take British vessels, and make them money from what they got from them. Narrator: Profits from privateering attracted a host of Revolutionary leaders, including Generals Nathanael Greene, Henry Knox, and George Washington himself. Investors 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. Voice: Every ship had the right or took it to wear what kind of fancy flag the captain pleased. Captain Manley's flag was a very singular one, with a pine tree painted green and under the tree the representation of a large rattlesnake cut into 13 pieces, then in large black letters, "Join or Die." John Greenwood. [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. John Greenwood and the "Cumberland" set out for the Caribbean, the most profitable hunting ground. Americans had already seized so many British merchant ships that they had reduced the sugar trade by 2/3. ♪ The "Cumberland's" voyage went smoothly at first. They easily commandeered a British ship loaded with soldiers and wine. A few days later, they came within sight of the port of Bridgetown on the island of Barbados... but the next morning, a British Navy frigate called the "Pomona" bore down on them with 36 guns and a crew of 300. [Cannon fire] British cannonballs tore through the "Cumberland's" sails and rigging. One shot went "through and through" the hull, Greenwood remembered, causing the whole ship to shudder. There was nothing else to do but surrender. ♪ The Americans spent 5 grim months in the Bridgetown jail before they were exchanged. ♪ John Greenwood would serve on at least 4 more privateers before the Revolution ended. He was captured and imprisoned 3 more times and somehow survived it all. ♪ After the war, John Greenwood would become a prominent Manhattan dentist. His most celebrated patient was his old commander, George Washington, for whom he fashioned dentures of human and horse's teeth and ivory from a hippopotamus. [Bird squawks] Voice: You ask me, "Can the enemy continue to prosecute the war?" I answer, "Can we carry on the war much longer?" Certainly, no. The true point of light, then, in which to place and consider this matter is not simply whether Great Britain can carry on the war, but whose finances-- theirs or ours-- is most likely to fail. George Washington. Narrator: General Washington spent the first 5 weeks of 1779 in Philadelphia, summoned there by Congress. It was not a happy visit. "I never was much...afraid of the enemy's arms," Washington wrote a friend, but he did fear that people were wearying of 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 quarrels." The value of Continental currency was melting "like snow before a hot sun," he complained, so that "a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions." Christopher 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 the war-- uniforms, guns, paying the men, replacing the ones who die, replacing the ones who desert. Britain has the money, but it starts to look a little bit like a sunk-cost problem. "Are we going to continue to pour money into an effort when there's no end in view?" ♪ Hogeland: One of the critical ways by which the Revolutionary War was funded was debt. There were a number of ways to raise money, but the best ways were to borrow, so you had to go to lenders, largely a merchant class, but also planters and even some prosperous farmers. It was a bit of a risky speculation because getting paid back and getting your interest paid would depend upon winning this extremely unlikely war. Nonetheless, that was a pretty good way of raising money to fight the Revolution, and it created an entire class of American lenders with strong interests in creating a very strong government because that was the only way they could see themselves getting paid their interest. ♪ Voice: Shall we at last become the victims of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it, heaven. Forbid it all. Our cause is noble. It is the cause of mankind, and the danger to it springs from ourselves. George Washington. ♪ Voice: When we took up the hatchet and struck the Virginians, our nation was alone and surrounded by them, and after we had lost some of our best warriors, we were forced to leave our towns, and now we live in the grass as you see us, but we are not yet conquered. Dragging Canoe. ♪ Colin Calloway: Indian Country is a mosaic of multiple Indigenous nations, each one of whom is pursuing its own interests and its own foreign policy. Woman: [Singing in Native language] Narrator: In the Ohio River Valley, the Delawares and their Shawnee allies had a long, contentious history with their expansionist neighbors. When the Revolution began, both nations struggled to stay out of it, but after Virginia militiamen violated a truce, most Shawnees sided with the British. In 1778, White Eyes, a Delaware war chief who leaned toward supporting the United States, went to Pittsburgh to negotiate with the Americans. ♪ The resulting Treaty of Fort Pitt seemed like a landmark agreement. Philip Deloria: The Fort Pitt Treaty is a really formal, legalistic document. An article near 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 possibility that Indian people could be part of the American republic. Narrator: White Eyes was made a colonel in the Continental Army and accompanied an American expedition against the British at Fort Detroit... [Gunfire] but somewhere along the way, Patriot militiamen killed him. With his death, the Americans had lost their best Indian ally in the Ohio Country, and the promise of the treaty was forgotten. [Horse neighs] In a council at Detroit, a delegation of Shawnees and Delawares promised the British that they would take up the tomahawk, "sharpen" it, "and strike against our Common Enemy." Calloway: The British have been telling them all along, "Don't trust the Americans because the Americans are out to take your land and to kill you." Voice: I always knew they were for open war but never before could get a proper excuse for exterminating them. To excel them in barbarity is the only way to make war and gain a name among the Indians. The cries of the widows and the fatherless on the frontiers required their blood from my hands. George Rogers Clark. ♪ Michael Witgen: George Rogers Clark is an Indian fighter and an Indian hater. He imagines himself as sort of seeking justice for white settlers who've died on the frontier at the hands of Native people, and he imagines himself as sort of the avenging angel of these communities. There is, to be sure, lots of violence in this backcountry, in part because white settlers are squatting on Native territory. ♪ Narrator: In February of 1779, Clark led his Virginians east from the Mississippi to take British outposts and destroy any Indians who dared support the enemy. His first target was Fort Vincennes on the Wabash River in what is now Indiana. There, he had 4 bound Indian captives lined up in full view of the fort and then hacked to death. Clark warned that if Vincennes did not surrender, all its defenders would suffer the same fate. The British commander gave up. Then Clark sent an ultimatum to any Indians tempted to make war on American settlers. Voice: I don't care whether you are for peace or war, as I glory in war. This is the last speech you may ever expect. The next thing will be the tomahawk, and you may expect in 4 moons to see your women and children given to the dogs to eat while those nations that have kept their words with me will flourish and grow like the willow trees on the riverbanks. George Rogers Clark. Narrator: Your "Name 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." Clark would not listen. Native people from the Smoky Mountains to the Great Lakes were now coming together to forget former quarrels and unite against the United States. Calloway: Most Native Americans recognize that the new United States represents an existential 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. Narrator: By the spring of 1779, hundreds of people, Indians and settlers, had been killed in the West. ♪ Deloria: There's a randomness to this, as well. "Those Indians killed some people over there, so we're gonna kill these Indians," but they didn't have anything 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 violence that happens here. ♪ 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 people, the Revolution was just one chapter in their struggle for independence. That war would rage on for decades. ♪ [Gulls squawking] Voice: If the enemy have it in their power to press us hard this campaign, I know not what may be the consequence. George Washington. Narrator: Like Washington, British General Clinton was stretched thin, too, and could only take small-scale actions. [Cannon fire] In May of 1779, he ordered raids in the Chesapeake Bay to destroy Virginia shipyards, dry docks, and tobacco warehouses. 17 ships were needed just to carry the loot back to New York. A few weeks later, he dispatched ships to sail up the Hudson and capture two forts-- at Stony Point and Verplanck's Point. The ease with which those forts fell convinced Washington to strengthen fortifications 10 miles to the north at a narrow curve in the river called West Point. Washington believed West Point "the most important post in America." The Polish engineer Colonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko was given the task of designing a series of interlocking fortifications on both sides of the river. An enormous chain weighing 65 tons and covered by gun batteries at both ends had been installed to block hostile passage. ♪ In early July, Clinton ordered another expedition against the Patriot privateering that had taken such a toll on British shipping, burning Norwalk, Fairfield, and New Haven. ♪ It had been more than a year since the Battle of Monmouth. Washington remained eager to take back New York, but he didn't have the men or the ships. Still, he understood it would be damaging 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-picked force of 1,350 men to attack Stony Point on the Hudson. Under the cover of darkness, they took it. [Musket fire] [Sword is drawn from scabbard] "The fort & garrison are ours," Wayne reported back to Washington at 2:00 in the morning. "Our officers & men behaved like men who were determined to be free." ♪ Meanwhile, when enslaved African Americans from New England to Georgia learned that summer that General Clinton had issued a proclamation promising "refuge" within the British Army to "any Negro" who was "the property of a Rebel," many of them began to see the British flag as a symbol of hope. ♪ Like Lord Dunmore before him, Clinton was no abolitionist. He 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. The British commander's motives 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 children, and their children's children. Vincent Brown: We know that about 15,000 Black people actually joined the British or ran away to the British lines versus about 5,000 ultimately entering the Patriot cause, and that's because, for many of those enslaved people, the British represented freedom. The Patriots did not. That's a hard story to tell to Americans. ♪ Man: Fire! [Cannon fire] [Men shouting] Narrator: In June 1779, King Carlos III of Spain joined France in the war against England. His 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 entrance to the Mediterranean. ♪ For the Spanish king, like the French king, the American Revolution was useful only to undercut Britain. Christopher Brown: This is not about securing American independence. This is about cutting Britain's economic commercial might down to size, but it's risky, though, especially for Spain, because Spain has a empire in the Americas that looks a little bit like Britain's North American empire only much larger and many, many, many more people. And so you encourage a colonial independence movement in the British Empire, who's to say your own people won't get the same idea? Narrator: Given the sudden widening of the global war, the opposition in Parliament called upon King George to direct measures for restoring peace to America. He would not hear of it. Voice: The present contest with America I cannot help seeing as the most serious in which any country was ever engaged. Step by step, the demands of America have risen. Independence is their object. Should America succeed in that, the West Indies must follow. Ireland must soon be a separate state. Then this island would be reduced to itself and soon would be a poor island indeed. King George III. [Gull squawking] Voice: "London Morning Post." John Paul Jones resembles a Jack o' Lantern to mislead our mariners and terrify our coasts. He's no sooner seen than lost. ♪ Narrator: John Paul Jones was now in command of another ship-- a slow, battered French merchant vessel. He fitted it out with 40 old French guns, gathered a 320-man crew from 8 different countries, and renamed it the "Bonhomme Richard" after the French version of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack." ♪ In August, the "Richard" and several smaller warships sailed all the way around the British Isles in search of merchant prizes. Jones took 17 ships, captured 100 British sailors, and locked them up below his decks. ♪ 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. He signaled his squadron to form a line of battle. When they failed to respond, the "Bonhomme Richard" alone engaged the "Serapis," the larger of the two Royal Navy escort ships. Commanded by Richard Pearson, a veteran sailor, the British vessel was a fast, new 44-gun frigate. [Cannon fire] As the battle began, hundreds of English villagers lined the cliffs, hoping to see a British man-of-war destroy the dreaded rebel they called "Pirate Jones." [Men shouting] Narrator: A British broadside caused cannon on the "Richard's" lower gun deck to explode, killing men and putting the rest of the battery out of action. At one point, the "Serapis" rammed the "Richard." Their rigging became entangled, and before the British ship could break free, Jones ordered his men to throw grappling hooks, locking the two ships together gunport to gunport. [Cannon fire] Their crews fired into each other at point-blank range. The "Bonhomme Richard" took the worst of it-- half the crew dead or wounded, fires raging everywhere, decks slippery with blood, seawater rushing 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 the British ship. [Explosions] It set off explosions from one end of the "Serapis" to the other. [Explosions continue] Half its crew were dead or wounded. Captain Pearson surrendered. Jones clambered aboard the British warship and sailed it into neutral Dutch waters. The "Bonhomme Richard" sank the next day. In Paris, John Paul Jones was hailed as a hero. He met Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, and when he heard that George III had knighted Captain Pearson for fighting so valiantly, Jones was unimpressed. "Should I have the good fortune to fall in with him again," he said, "I'll make him a lord." ♪ [Rattle and 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. Old Smoke. Jennifer Kreisberg: [Singing "Grief" in Native language] Narrator: Back in the summer of 1777, the British and their Mohawk and Seneca allies had prevailed over their enemies in their ambush near Oriskany Creek. [Gunfire] Over the months that followed, New York and Pennsylvania saw raid after raid, skirmish after skirmish. Patriots drove Loyalists from their homes. Loyalists and their Indian allies burned settlements at Cherry Valley and in the Wyoming Valley. Hundreds died on both sides. Atkinson: It has gotten to the point where Washington is under intense pressure from Congress, from the state of New York, from the state of Pennsylvania, to do something about it, and because the war has kind of gone fallow in the North after Monmouth, he agrees that he will put together a punitive expedition against the Indians led by one of his major generals, John Sullivan, to drive them away from the frontier. ♪ Calloway: One of the things that I think is always on Washington's mind during this war is the end of the war, so Washington basically realizes, "We're gonna win independence because France is in the war, "Spain's in the war, and we need to make sure "that we can present a legitimate and robust claim to western land." One of the foundational truths of American history is that this is a nation built on Indian land, and Washington would not dispute that, I think, for a minute. Narrator: Washington's orders to General Sullivan in May of 1779 had been clear and uncompromising. Voice: The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more that the country may not merely be overrun, but destroyed. You will not by any means listen to any overture for peace before the total ruin of their settlements is affected. George Washington. Narrator: The Continental Army invaded from 3 sides. In early August, Colonel Daniel Brodhead led 600 men northward from Fort Pitt to destroy the Seneca villages along the upper Allegheny River. Sullivan and 3 Continental brigades started north along the Susquehanna, while another moved west from the Mohawk Valley. At the end of the month their combined forces-- 4,500 men--began marching north. ♪ Witgen: They don't find destitute villages or scattered villages of savage people. They find what, to them, are undoubtedly easily recognizable prosperous villages. They're cedar-planked buildings, multiple-story buildings, often with chimneys, often with glass windows. [Child speaking] Witgen: These people have material wealth that they've accumulated over the years, and they have houses that look like something that people on the Eastern Seaboard would inhabit. [Gunfire] ♪ Narrator: On August 29th, some 600 Senecas, Mohawks, Cayugas, Delawares, and Loyalists tried to halt the invasion and were defeated. ♪ Voice: We sent out a small party to look for some of the dead Indians. They found them and skinned two of them from their hips down for boot legs-- one pair for the major, the other for myself. Lieutenant William Barton. [Man shouting orders] Voice: Our brigade destroyed about 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, cucumbers, squash, and watermelons, and the enemy looking at us from the hills. Lieutenant Erkuries Beatty. Voice: 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. Dr. Jabez Campfield. Narrator: When some soldiers asked General Sullivan if he wouldn't at least spare fruit orchards that had taken years to grow, he refused. "The Indians," he said, "shall see that there is malice enough "in our hearts to destroy everything that contributes to their support." ♪ Deloria: The Sullivan expedition ends up mapping New York for future settlement. Everybody kind of moves through New York and says, "Wow. These apple orchards are so great, "these cornfields are so fantastic, I'm coming back here at the end of this," right? And so in many ways, it is not only a military campaign. It's a scouting expedition for future settlement. Narrator: The troops torched village after village-- Catherine's Town, Appletown, Cayuga Town, Kanadaseaga, Canandaigua, Honeoye. By then, Sullivan was within miles of Little Beard's Town, which he had been told was the grand capital of Indian Country. Little Beard's Town was the home of Mary Jemison, who had been adopted years earlier by Senecas after her Irish parents had been killed during a raid. Voice: He was about to march to our town when our Indians resolved to give him battle on the way. They sent all the women and children into the woods. And then, well-armed, they set out to face the conquering enemy. Mary Jemison. ♪ Narrator: A scouting party of 26 Continentals, guided by an Oneida scout and commanded by Lieutenant Thomas Boyd, was advancing ahead of the main column on September 13th, when they stumbled into a Seneca and Loyalist ambush. [Gunfire] 16 men were encircled. 14 were killed and scalped. Boyd and another man were captured. ♪ The next day, Sullivan's main army reached Little Beard's Town. Voice: On entering the town, we found the body of Lieutenant Boyd and another rifleman in a most terrible, mangled condition. They was both stripped naked and their heads cut off. Erkuries Beatty. Narrator: Sullivan's men buried what was left of their companions, looted and burned all 128 dwellings in Little Beard's Town, and then spent 8 hours methodically uprooting and destroying crops. By the end, Sullivan reported to Washington that his army had burned a total of 40 towns. Farther to the west, Colonel Brodhead had destroyed 10 more. ♪ Most of the Seneca refugees made their way to Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario, where some 5,000 men, women, and children belonging to a host of nations huddled together in muddy camps. ♪ Voice: We of the Six Nations have been much cast down by the great loss we have sustained. But yet we do not despair. We are determined to persevere in the cause we have engaged in. We hope to be able to survive the winter, and then we mean once more to meet our enemies and see whether we are to live or die. And if such is the will of the Great Spirit, we will leave our bones with those of the rest of our brethren, rather than evacuate our country or give our enemies room to say we fled from them. Twethorechte. ♪ Narrator: The damage Patriot campaigns did to Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Mohawk homelands was profound and permanent. Some Haudenosaunee would come to call George Washington "the Town Destroyer" and would remember the American Revolution as "the Whirlwind." ♪ [Waves breaking] In the late summer of 1779, both George Washington and British General Henry Clinton believed that the long-awaited all-out American assault on British-occupied New York City could finally be just weeks away. Each had learned that the French fleet was sailing back north from the West Indies. Neither was sure where it was headed. Clinton ordered all British troops to withdraw from occupied Newport to strengthen New York's defenses. Washington readied plans for a siege of the city and called upon 5 neighboring states to provide him with more militia, but French Admiral d'Estaing never came. Instead, he appeared 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 recapture the rest of Georgia. ♪ Aboard were 4,000 French troops, including 750 "free men of color," Black and mixed-race troops from what would one day be called Haiti. ♪ While d'Estaing waited for his American allies to join the siege, he surrounded Savannah with heavy artillery and demanded its surrender. The outnumbered British refused, stalling for time until reinforcements of their own could reach the city. As they braced for an attack, redcoats and Loyalist troops and scores of Savannah's free and enslaved residents had time to complete two defensive lines around the city. [Cannon fire] After Continentals and Patriot militiamen arrived from Charleston, d'Estaing led a direct assault on October 9th. Some Americans became mired in a rice field. [Shouting and gunfire] French troops in white uniforms proved easy targets. British guns sent grapeshot, nails, and chunks of iron tearing through the attackers. The ditch, a British officer remembered, was chock full of their dead. [Gunfire continues] De Rode: For the French-American alliance, it is quite the defeat. People do lose their trust in the availabilities of the French to help the Americans. They were very happy to have signed an alliance with them, but the first campaigns, plural, completely failed. Narrator: D'Estaing, who had been wounded twice, sailed away to France. The American commander General Benjamin Lincoln limped back to Patriot-controlled Charleston. Voice: You know the importance of Charleston. It is the bond that binds 3 states to the authority of Congress. If the enemy possessed themselves of this town, there will be no living for honest Patriots. David Ramsay. ♪ Atkinson: The winter of 1779-1780, probably the harshest winter in North America in the 18th century. ♪ New York Harbor froze over solidly. You could drag cannon from the tip of Manhattan Island to Staten Island. You could cross the Hudson River on foot, and the winter was all the worse in Upstate New York for the Indians. Voice: That winter was the most severe that I have witnessed since my remembrance. The snow fell about 5 feet deep and remained so. Almost all the game upon which we depended perished and reduced us almost to starvation. Mary Jemison. ♪ Narrator: For General Washington and most of his army at winter quarters in and around Morristown, New Jersey, the temperature rarely rose above zero. It was "cold enough to cut a man in two," Joseph Plumb Martin remembered. ♪ Joseph Ellis: The winter in New Jersey at Morristown was worse than Valley Forge. The enthusiasm for the war had begun to wane years before, and it continued to wane each year. Voice: We were absolutely literally starved. I did not put a single morsel into my mouth for 4 days except a little black birch bark. I 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. Joseph Plumb Martin. Narrator: To add to their misery, the men of Joseph Plumb Martin's 8th Connecticut Regiment had not been paid for months. By spring, they had had enough. ♪ Voice: The men now saw no other alternative but to starve to death or break up the army. This was a hard matter for the soldiers to think upon. They were truly patriotic. They loved their country, and they had already suffered everything short of death in its cause. What was to be done? [Joseph Plumb Martin] Narrator: The 4th and 8th Connecticut Regiments planned to desert. When a colonel tried to talk them out of it, someone stabbed him with a bayonet. A Pennsylvania regiment was rushed in to surround them, and its colonel managed to talk the men into staying on. In the end, Martin wrote, "We were unwilling to desert "the cause of our country when in distress. We knew her cause involved our own." ♪ Voice: This is the most important hour Britain ever knew. If we lose it, we shall never see such another. Henry Clinton. Narrator: It had now been 21 months since General Clinton was ordered to take the Carolinas. On the day after Christmas 1779, leaving enough of a force behind to defend New York, Clinton finally sailed south for Charleston. Atkinson: Every farthing of the wealth in South Carolina is built on the back of slavery. That's one of the reasons why South Carolina and the other Southern states have robust militias. It is not to repel foreign invaders. It's to suppress potential slave insurrections. Narrator: Charleston was one of the largest cities in the United States, home to 12,000 people, half of them enslaved. If it could be captured, the British believed, a Loyalist majority in the Carolinas would rally to the Crown. Lengel: Charleston has resisted British attacks before. There's a sense of confidence that it'll be able to resist British attacks again. Americans are almost delusional about it. They don't look the facts in the face of how vulnerable Charleston really is. The geography is impossible. Charleston is really out on a limb. The British are gonna cut this place off, and they're gonna capture it. Congress, instead of recognizing this fact, they keep sending more and more men to defend Charleston. They send the best that the Continental Army has. It's a mistake. ♪ Narrator: Some 30 miles southwest of the city on February 11, 1780, Clinton began landing his troops. As the British army marched toward Charleston, first hundreds, then thousands of enslaved men, women, and children fled their plantations to join them. ♪ It would be more than a month before Clinton's forces could form a line a mile and a half north of the rebel fortifications and begin a European-style siege. ♪ More British troops from New York and Savannah would swell the British army to more than 10,000, roughly twice as large as the force with which Patriot General Benjamin Lincoln hoped somehow to defend the city. Desperate for reinforcements, Lincoln suggested arming enslaved men and was told no. Whites feared giving weapons to Black people, and, besides, slave owners did not want their property killed or maimed in battle. Militia from the backcountry were also reluctant to come to the crowded city. They feared smallpox and were unmoved by the plight of planters and merchants whose wealth and political power they had long resented. ♪ On April 1, 1780, the British began constructing the first of a series of parallels, sequential support trenches that would allow them to inch closer and closer to the city. ♪ A week later, British warships forced their way into Charleston Harbor and took command of it. General Clinton called upon the rebels to surrender in order to save the town and its people from what he called "havock and desolation." General Lincoln refused. Man: Fire! Narrator: The British opened fire. [Cannon fire] The Americans fired back. Man: Fire! Narrator: The guns would continue day and night for a month. [Men shouting] ♪ As each blasted at the other, the British parallels moved closer to the American lines-- 800 yards... 450 yards... 250. ♪ There was no escape. General Lincoln asked that his surrendering men be granted the usual honors of war, but General Clinton refused: Rebels deserved no such honors. ♪ Lengel: When Charleston falls, it's a body blow to the Revolution and to the American cause. It's a humiliation because we've lost not only Charleston, but we've lost some of the best troops that we have, and the British in their surrender terms really drive home that humiliation. ♪ Narrator: It was the worst defeat suffered by the Patriots during the Revolution. An entire army was captured, 5,618 men by Clinton's count, including Benjamin Lincoln and 6 other generals, along with more than 300 cannon, 376 barrels of gunpowder, and 5,916 muskets. ♪ Hundreds of South Carolinians streamed into the occupied city from the countryside, eager now to swear allegiance to the Crown. ♪ Voice: To Lord Germain-- With the greatest pleasure, I report to your Lordship that the inhabitants from every quarter declare their allegiance to the King, and offer their services in arms in support of his government. In many instances, they have brought prisoners, their former oppressors or leaders, and I may venture to assert that there are few men in South Carolina who are not either our prisoners or in arms with us. Henry Clinton. [Birds chirping] Narrator: General Clinton and 4,000 troops returned to New York, leaving General Charles Cornwallis in command of the southern theater. A few more such victories, British commanders believed, and the Loyalty to the Crown of all the Southern Colonies would be reconfirmed. "The English lion," a German officer wrote, "has awakened from his sleep." ♪ Voice: Unless Congress is vested with powers competent to the great purposes of war, our cause is lost. We can no longer drudge on in the old way. I see one head gradually changing into 13. I see one army branching into thirteen-- and am fearful of the consequences of it. George Washington. [Wind blowing] ♪ ♪ Announcer: Next time on "The American Revolution"... The shock of treason. Joseph Ellis: He was the last person Washington ever thought would have betrayed him. Announcer: The South explodes in battle. Vincent Brown: It's sometimes brother against brother in this backwoods warfare. It's an ugly conflict. Announcer: And a new nation rises. Voice: Who would have thought that out of this multitude of rabble would arise a people who could defy kings? [Johann Ewald] [Men shouting] Announcer: Don't miss the conclusion of "The American Revolution" 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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