The American Revolution PBS Documentary Episode 6

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

The Most Sacred Thing (May 1780 – Onward)

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. ♪ Jane Kamensky, voice-over: I think to believe in America rooted in the American Revolution is to believe in possibility. That, to me, is the extraordinary thing about the Patriot side of the fight. I think everybody on every side, including people who were denied even the ownership of themselves, had the sense of possibility worth fighting for. ♪ The American Revolution changed the world. It's not just about the birth of the United States. It has ramifications across the globe, so studying the American Revolution, understanding it, and putting it in a global context, I think, is vitally important for us to understand why we are where we are now. [Gunfire and shouting] ♪ Voice: Our country was thrown into great confusion by the long continuance of the war. [Church bell ringing] The churches in Virginia were almost entirely shut up, and its holy ordinances unobserved. Most of our men were engaged in the war. Our town had now become a garrison. Betsy Ambler. ♪ Narrator: Betsy Ambler of Yorktown, Virginia, had been 10 when the war began. She was now 15 and had lived most of the intervening years away from home. By the spring of 1780, she was back in Yorktown with her family. Life there had changed. The most populated parts of Virginia all lay within reach of the Royal Navy and any troops the British might land. Governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Assembly chose to move the capital from nearby Williamsburg to Richmond, and, since Betsy Ambler's father had been appointed to the state government, her family would have to leave Yorktown again. ♪ George Washington had long known that Yorktown was particularly vulnerable. As early as 1777, he had warned a Virginia militia commander against stationing troops there. ♪ Voice: I can by no means think it would be prudent to have any considerable stationary force at Yorktown. Being upon a narrow neck of land, it would be in danger of being cut off. The enemy might very easily throw up a few ships and land a body of men there who would oblige them to surrender. [Washington] ♪ ♪ Narrator: In late May of 1780, shortly after the British capture of Charles Town, South Carolina, an elite Loyalist group of green-clad cavalry and mounted infantry called the British Legion were in hot pursuit of Continental soldiers fleeing north. Their commander was a 25-year-old English officer-- Banastre Tarleton, handsome, rakish, ruthless, and determined to make himself a celebrated soldier. "Tarleton," wrote the British chronicler Horace Walpole, "boasts of having butchered more men and lain with more women than anybody" in the army. Tarleton caught up with the rebels near the North Carolina border, a region called the Waxhaws, and demanded they surrender. Voice: You will order every person under your command to pile his arms in one hour. If you are rash enough to reject these terms, the blood be upon your head. [Tarleton] [Gunfire] The Patriots chose to fight. Tarleton's men quickly overwhelmed them. Some who dropped their weapons and asked for quarter received none. "They refused my terms," Tarleton wrote. "I have cut 170 officers and men to pieces." ♪ He may have destroyed the last Continental force in South Carolina, but he had also helped inspire local Patriots to oppose British occupation. When they went into battle over the coming months, many would be eager to deal out what they called "Tarleton's Quarter" to any Loyalist unlucky enough to fall into their hands. ♪ Vincent Brown: That war in South Carolina is bloody. It's a guerrilla conflict. It's sometimes brother against brother in this backwoods warfare. ♪ It's an ugly, ugly, ugly conflict, and if one wants a national origin story that's clean and neat and tells you very clearly who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, the American Revolution in South Carolina is not that story. [Brass band playing "The British Grenadiers"] ♪ Christopher Brown: The British government was very good at seizing and occupying cities. Newport, Philadelphia, New York, Charles Town, Savannah-- these are the kind of main ports that throughout the war Britain could secure, but holding those places were not holding America. Pacifying an entire countryside is an entirely different task than seizing strategic positions. Narrator: General Charles Cornwallis had been left in charge in the South with clear orders from General Henry Clinton back in New York. He was not to move on to North Carolina and Virginia until South Carolina was completely pacified. It was to be the first full-scale military occupation of an entire colony in North America. ♪ From Charles Town, British troops quickly occupied posts in a great arc from Savannah and Augusta in Georgia through the village called Ninety Six to Camden and then to Georgetown, 60 miles up the coast from Charles Town. When the British take the decision to move the war decisively to the South, I think they're trying to exploit the fact that there are smaller numbers of White colonists and larger numbers of slaves in those territories and the colonists will be more vulnerable. Voice: Their property, slaves, we need not seek. It flies to us, and famine follows. Their trade we can annihilate, and when an army cannot find subsistence, on what hope shall a people resist? Major John Andre. ♪ Voice: I determined to go to Charles Town and throw myself into the hands of the English. They received me readily, and I began to feel the happiness of liberty, of which I knew nothing before. Boston King. Voice: I have been robbed and deserted by my slaves. I would sell some of my Negroes, but the slaves in this country in general have behaved so infamously, their value is so trifling that it must be absolute ruin to sell at this time. Eliza Lucas Pinckney. Narrator: At his headquarters in New York, General Clinton continued to believe most South Carolinians were Loyalists. He had insisted that Patriots swear allegiance to the Crown or be considered as enemies and treated accordingly. Those who did swear allegiance were swiftly disillusioned as their Loyalist neighbors began to settle old scores. Those "insurgents" who refused the oath and dared to take up arms against the King, Tarleton told General Cornwallis, "don't deserve" leniency and would get none from him or his men. Conway: The oath of allegiance was really going too far because it obliged them to publicly identify as on the British side, but I think the fundamental problem is that the British are reluctant to restore civil government in the territories they occupy. They maintain military government, and, of course, that reinforces the American claim that the British are set on imposing despotism on the colonies. [Chickens clucking] Voice: Times began to be troublesome, and people began to divide into parties. ♪ Those that had been good friends in times past became enemies. They began to watch each other with jealous eyes. James Collins. Narrator: 16-year-old James Collins lived on his family's farm just below the North Carolina border. His father Daniel was an Irish immigrant who loathed the British and encouraged his son to become a collector of news, a spy, reporting on his Loyalist neighbors. [Horse whinnies] Christopher Brown: One of the things that happens in wartime is, people who are really good politicians, they create binaries. You're either with us or you're against us. The fact of the matter is, in real life, that's actually not true. There's often more than two possibilities. There were a lot of people in 13 colonies who actually didn't care that much about the outcome. They just wanted it over. Conway: The British are heavily reliant on recruiting Loyalists as soldiers, and Loyalists are often very embittered... ♪ and, of course, if you've got soldiers who are keen on revenge, they're not the ideal instruments of pacification. ♪ Narrator: On June 22, 1780, James Collins' father was among the men gathered at a tiny settlement called Brown's Crossroads, summoned there by Captain Christian Huck, a Loyalist with a well-earned reputation for cruelty. He was there to administer the Oath of Allegiance. [Men shouting] Narrator: Captain Huck stunned the crowd by warning that "even if the rebels were as thick as the trees "and Jesus Christ would come down and lead them, he [would still] defeat them." His audience, Presbyterians all, considered that blasphemy. We must fight, James' father said as soon as he got home, "or submit and be slaves." He went off to join the Patriot militia the next morning. James went, too, carrying an ancient shotgun. ♪ For the next few weeks, Christian Huck continued to burn homes, menace women, and murder rebels. In July, after he took a Patriot family hostage, the Collinses' militia caught up to him and killed him along with many of his men. New volunteers were now swelling Patriot ranks. By early August, Cornwallis had to admit that the whole country he had claimed to have pacified is in an absolute state of rebellion. [Cannon fires] Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock, Blue Savannah and Black Mingo Creek, Tearcoat Swamp and Halfway Swamp, Horse Shoe and Quinby Bridge-- the battles and skirmishes that would take place in South Carolina between 1780 and 1781, 102 of them by one count, would yield nearly 1/5 of all the battlefield deaths suffered during the entire war... [Cannon fires] and nearly all those American casualties would come at the hands of other Americans. [Cannon fires] Maya Jasanoff: Violence is radicalizing. It is polarizing, and it happens in the Revolution to people on both sides of the equation that when they are victims of violence, they will then become perpetrators of violence. ♪ Voice: There was no one about in the streets, only a few sad and frightened faces in the windows. I talked to some of the principal citizens, informing them that this was but the vanguard of a much larger force on the way and that our King had decided to uphold them with all his power and strength. General Rochambeau. Narrator: On July 11, 1780, 5 French warships and a host of transport vessels had emerged from the fog that blanketed the harbor at Newport, Rhode Island, and some 4,600 officers and men under the Comte de Rochambeau came ashore. Rhode Islanders still remembered that the last French fleet that came had abandoned them, and Protestant residents weren't sure if these Catholic foreigners had come to help or conquer them... ♪ but when the French commander promised that his men would pay for everything they needed in silver coin, not worthless Continental paper, a French officer remembered, "their countenances brightened... at this mention of hard money." The next day, General Rochambeau wrote to Washington, "Here we are, sir, at your orders." ♪ Meanwhile, Congress, without consulting George Washington, had now appointed General Horatio Gates, the hero of Saratoga, commander of the whole Southern Department. In late July, he and several aides rode into a camp of 1,200 Continentals from Maryland and Delaware that stretched along the deep river at Cox's Mill in North Carolina. Gates' objective was Camden, South Carolina, a British outpost and supply depot in the center of the state. When he reached Rugeley's Mill, 12 miles north of Camden, Gates had convinced himself that he had 7,000 soldiers at his disposal. ♪ In fact, he had just over 3,000 men, Continentals and militia, and by then, Cornwallis had reached Camden with reinforcements. At 10 P.M. on the night of August 15, 1780, Gates started south toward Camden. By sheer coincidence, Cornwallis chose to lead his men north on the same sandy road that evening, hoping to surprise Gates. [Shouting and gunfire] At about 2 A.M. on August 16, mounted scouts from the two armies collided. There was a brief exchange of fire. They separated and prepared for battle. [Gunfire ends] At dawn, Cornwallis followed the British custom of placing his best troops on his right. Gates, who was himself an ex-British officer and should have known better, unaccountably assigned his least experienced men to face them-- militiamen, many of whom had never been in combat. As the Patriots tried to form their lines, a long, red wall of chanting British regulars began storming toward them. The militia broke and ran. [Shouting and gunfire] Voice: I confess I was among the first that fled. The cause of that I cannot tell except that everyone I saw was about to do the same. I threw away my gun. Private Garrett Watts. [Cannon fires] Narrator: Continentals on the right did hold for a time. Gates' second in command, General Johann de Kalb, a Bavarian-born volunteer, was shot, slashed, and bayoneted again and again but managed to order one counterattack after another until he was finally knocked to the ground, mortally wounded. His men too began to run. ♪ General Gates witnessed none of this. Shortly after the shooting began, he had fled the battlefield on horseback and stayed on the run until he reached Hillsborough, North Carolina, 180 miles away. ♪ The defeat at Camden and the story of Gates' flight ruined his reputation. When it came time to name a successor, Congress would defer to George Washington. ♪ Although South Carolina was not pacified, General Cornwallis was impatient to invade North Carolina, the next step on the road to the biggest prize--Virginia and what he hoped would be the total subjugation of the Southern states. [Horse whinnies] [Fife and drums playing] Iris de Rode: Washington's reputation in France is an interesting one. In France, he is revered. He is admired. People love George Washington in ways that sometimes seems exaggerated, but it's true. They admire him not just because he's a general and they respect the military side, but it's more that he's a symbol for a Republican leader. For the French, Washington became a symbol of what was possible in an egalitarian world where even a farmer could become a general, so they admire him for that military talent that he had, which was not based on aristocracy, titles, or money. He was there because of his talent. Narrator: On September 21, 1780, Washington and 4 of his closest aides met in Hartford, Connecticut, with General Rochambeau and his entourage. The French army remained in Newport. Washington's army was arrayed around New York. For two days, the allied commanders discussed what steps they might take together to defeat the British. ♪ Washington and Rochambeau agreed that the most important objective was still New York City, but before an assault could take place, they would need to have naval superiority and a far larger combined army. Washington begged Rochambeau to ask his king for more help. Rochambeau said he would try. [Bird screeches] Voice: I have observed in this war we have sometimes been in the south when we should have been in the north and oftener in the north when we should have been in the south, but should we ever possess the Hudson River, we can reduce the northern provinces. General Henry Clinton. ♪ Narrator: On September 25, Washington and his staff inspected the fortifications at West Point on the Hudson. They were scheduled to dine with the general whom Washington had just appointed commander of the fort, one of his best soldiers-- Benedict Arnold. ♪ Washington had been startled by what poor condition the fortifications were in and concerned that Arnold had not been there to greet him. He was not at his headquarters, either, when his commander arrived for dinner. Voice: No one could give me any information where he was. The impropriety of his conduct when he knew I was to be there struck me very forcibly. I had not the least idea of the real cause. [Washington] ♪ Narrator: That evening, when his trusted aide Alexander Hamilton brought him a bundle of papers, Washington discovered the real cause. Benedict Arnold-- the commander of West Point, the place Washington considered the most important post in America-- had deserted and fled to the British that morning. Worse still, he had planned to surrender the fort and all the men stationed in it to the enemy. Few soldiers had contributed more to the Revolutionary cause than Benedict Arnold. Time and again, he had exhibited extraordinary initiative and bravery on the battlefield and was severely wounded twice-- at Quebec and Saratoga. Nathaniel Philbrick: He had done all these miracles on the battlefield, but he was not seeing any of the recognition he believed he deserved. "Why am I doing this? I've lost my personal finances. I've destroyed my body. For what?" Narrator: Two years earlier, Washington had made Arnold military commander in Philadelphia. It had not gone well. He used his position to profit from the sale of confiscated Loyalist property. He had also settled into the same mansion the British commander had occupied and was accused of being far too close to wealthy merchants suspected of Loyalist sympathies. ♪ Philbrick: While Arnold is in the midst of this terrible frustration in Philadelphia, he falls in love with a young woman named Peggy Shippen, whose family is of Loyalist sympathies, who had gotten to know the British officers during the British occupation of Philadelphia quite well, and one of them was a Major Andre, who, just as it so happened, would become the head of the British spy network, and whether or not Peggy was the one who made this all happen, soon after the two of them are married, Arnold begins to make overtures to the British. Narrator: In the strictest secrecy, he began to communicate through Major John Andre that he'd gone to war only to redress legitimate American grievances, not independence, and had been appalled when Congress allied itself with Catholic France, which he believed was the enemy of liberty and Protestantism. He now volunteered to enlist in the King's service, either as an officer in the British Army or by cooperating on some concerted plan to sabotage the Revolutionary cause. For 17 months, coded messages had gone back and forth before a concrete plan could be agreed upon. ♪ Arnold was to persuade Washington to give him command of West Point and all the American outposts on the Hudson and then weaken their defenses so that General Clinton's forces could sail up the river and take them all. In exchange, Arnold was to be made a general in the British service, and paid 20,000 British pounds plus £500 a year for the rest of his life. Clinton's forces were poised to move up the Hudson. All that then remained was for Andre and Arnold to meet and work out a few final details. Andre had explicit orders. He was not to cross into rebel territory, dress as a civilian, or carry any papers. He disobeyed all 3, and on his way back to the British lines, Andre was captured by 3 New York militiamen with incriminating documents hidden in his stockings in Benedict Arnold's handwriting. ♪ Philbrick: This came as a devastating blow to Washington, and it was a blow to the American people to realize that one of their own, one of their own that had been a great hero, could make this decision to turn on all of them. He was the last person Washington ever thought would have betrayed him. Narrator: Because Major Andre had been captured in civilian clothes, he was hanged as a spy. Arnold, who managed to escape, got his commission and was given command of a regiment made up of Loyalists and deserters from the Continental Army called the American Legion. ♪ Voice: Since the fall of Lucifer, nothing has equaled the fall of Arnold. He will now sink as low as he had been high before, and as the devil made war upon heaven after his fall, so I expect Arnold will upon America. Should he ever fall into our hands, he will be a sweet sacrifice. General Nathanael Greene. ♪ ♪ Narrator: General Cornwallis' planned invasion of North Carolina would be a 3-pronged assault. On the right, a column would seize the port of Wilmington, ensuring that supplies could flow smoothly inland from the coast. In the center, Cornwallis would himself lead the bulk of his army toward the tiny town of Charlotte, then just a crossroads and a courthouse. On the left, Major Patrick Ferguson and perhaps a thousand Loyalists were to guard his flank and try to rally more men from the backcountry. ♪ Ferguson, a Scottish-born career soldier who directed his men in battle with a silver whistle, led his Loyalist force across the border into western North Carolina. He released rebel prisoners and sent them over the Blue Ridge Mountains with a message for those Patriots who called themselves the Overmountain Men, the settlers who had defied the 1763 proclamation forbidding them to occupy Indian lands. A British victory was inevitable, Ferguson told them, and every man who laid down his arms would be treated gently and justly... [Splashing] but the frontiersmen did not believe him. News of Tarleton's cruelty and Loyalist abuses was still fresh. Instead of surrendering, they came swarming over the mountains after Ferguson, who realized he was in trouble, changed course, and moved towards Charlotte. Along the way, he issued a proclamation meant to rally Loyalists. Voice: Gentlemen, if you choose to be pissed upon forever and ever by a set of mongrels, say so at once and let your women turn their backs upon you and look out for real men to protect them. If you wish or deserve to live and bear the name of man, grasp your arms in a moment and run to camp. The Backwater-men have crossed the mountains. [Ferguson] ♪ Edward Lengel: That's the wrong tone to take when you're communicating with these backcountry over-the-mountain men, these Scots-Irish settlers. ♪ Narrator: Just inside South Carolina, Ferguson unaccountably decided to make a stand on a hill grandly named King's Mountain. Nearly a thousand Patriot militia-- half Overmountain Men and half from the Virginia and Carolina backcountry, including James Collins-- were right behind him. ♪ Voice: Each leader made a short speech in his own way to his men, desiring every coward to be off immediately. Here, I confess, I would have willingly been excused. [Collins] Narrator: On October 7, 1780, as they waited for the signal to start up the hillside, Collins recalled, each man threw 4 or 5 musket balls into his mouth to stave off thirst and speed reloading. [Gunfire] The Patriots attacked with terrifying ferocity. [Whooping and gunfire] Voice: They appeared like so many devils from the infernal regions. They were the most powerful-looking men ever beheld-- tall, raw-boned, and sinewy with long, matted hair, such men as were never before seen in the Carolinas. Drury Mathis. [Whistle blowing] Narrator: As the Patriots closed in on the summit, Ferguson continued to ride from point to point, waving his saber, blowing his whistle, trying to get his Loyalists to hold on. Several balls slammed into him at once. He tumbled from his saddle, his foot caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged back and forth along the ground until his men could grab the reins. [Horse whinnies] Ferguson had been the only British soldier in the battle that day. Everyone else on both sides was an American. [Shouting and gunfire] The Loyalists surrendered. ♪ Voice: The dead lay in heaps on all sides while the groans of the wounded were heard in every direction. "Great God," said I, "Is this the fate of mortals? Was it for this cause that man was brought into the world?" ♪ We proceeded to bury the dead, but it was badly done. The hogs in the neighborhood gathered into the place to devour the flesh of men, and the wolves became so plenty that it was dangerous for anyone to be out at night. Private James Collins. Lengel: After Kings Mountain, Patriots murder many of their captives. If they see somebody among the captives who gives them a dirty look, they'll say, "Oh, I know that guy. "He burned a farm just over the next hill, "and he killed somebody's family. Let's string him up," and so all kinds of atrocities take place. Man: Fight back! Narrator: When Cornwallis learned that the Patriots had annihilated a thousand-man Loyalist force, he pulled his army out of Charlotte and headed back into South Carolina. [Horse whinnies] ♪ Voice: The women of America, animated by the purest patriotism, are sensible of sorrow at this day in not offering more than barren wishes for the success of so glorious a Revolution. If opinion and manners did not forbid us to march to glory by the same paths as the men, we should at least equal and sometimes surpass them in our love for the public good. Esther Reed. ♪ Narrator: In Philadelphia, a prominent woman named Esther Reed had published a pamphlet which called upon all women to forego luxuries and instead raise funds to help the soldiers. ♪ They collected 300,000 Continental dollars, hoping to split it among the troops. George Washington vetoed that idea. They would just buy rum, he said. What they needed were shirts. The women would make more than 2,000 of them. Voice: And see the spirit catching from state to state. America will not wear chains while her daughters are virtuous. Abigail Adams. [Wind blowing] Rick Atkinson: It's quite primitive, the conditions their soldiers are living in. A belief in the cause keeps you putting one foot in front of the other, but that does not keep you warm. It does not cool you down in the summer. It does not feed you, so it's a constant struggle just day to day exclusive of battle. Voice: We never stood upon such perilous ground. Our troops are poorly clothed, badly fed, and worse paid. They have not seen a paper dollar in the way of pay for nearly 12 months. General Anthony Wayne. ♪ Narrator: On New Year's Day 1781, fueled by rum and righteous indignation, some 1,500 Pennsylvania Continentals encamped near Morristown, New Jersey, mutinied. They killed two officers who tried to stop them, seized 6 cannon, and began marching toward Philadelphia to confront Congress with their grievances, but before the mutineers could get there, the Pennsylvania legislature intervened and agreed to most of their demands, including the promise of full back pay and the choice of leaving the army or re-enlisting. No one was to be punished. Half the men left the army. The rest re-enlisted. 3 weeks later, when 3 New Jersey regiments also mutinied, Washington ordered New England troops to surround them. The men were assembled and made to look on as a firing squad of their fellow mutineers was forced to execute two of the ringleaders. Philbrick: Washington realized the only thing he could do was to take them down with terrible brutality. ♪ This was Washington's moment of having to end this in a very summary fashion. [Gunshot] Narrator: "Every thing is now quiet," Washington wrote afterwards, but he feared that unless some way were found to pay and clothe and supply his men, there would be still more mutinies. [Wind blowing] Voice: Be assured that day does not follow night more certainly than it brings with it some additional proof of the impracticality of carrying on the war without aid. We are at the end of our tether. Now or never, deliverance must come. [Washington] [Wind blowing] ♪ Voice: Richmond, Virginia. War in itself, however distant, is indeed terrible, but when brought to our very doors, the reflection is indeed overwhelming. What a gloomy time do I look forward to. Already our gentlemen begin to apprehend that the enemy will advance into the country. ♪ If they do, God knows what will become of us. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: Virginia's Patriots weren't ready to resist an invasion. Men were refusing conscription. Wealthy planters had exempted themselves, their sons, and overseers from serving because, they claimed, they needed to stay home to keep their slaves in line. "The Rich wanted the Poor to fight for them," one farmer recalled, "to defend their property [while] they refused to fight for themselves." Then, in January of 1781, Loyalist troops, British regulars, and German soldiers sailed into Chesapeake Bay and up the James River. Their commander was Benedict Arnold, now a brigadier general in the British Army and eager to demonstrate his newfound devotion to the Crown. ♪ He and half his men marched toward Richmond, the new state capital. At the sight of Arnold's men, Virginia militiamen, many without arms, melted away. ♪ Many years later, an enslaved member of Governor Jefferson's household remembered that "in 10 minutes, not a White man was to be seen in Richmond." Voice: My mother was so scared, she didn't know whether to stay indoors or out. The British formed in line and marched up with drums beating. It was an awful sight. Seemed like the day of judgment was come. Isaac Granger. ♪ Narrator: Arnold's men burned warehouses filled with salt and tobacco and seized 2,200 small arms, nearly 40 cannon, and 503 hogsheads of rum. Even printing presses were, in Arnold's words, "purified by the flames." ♪ He and his men then moved back down the James, pillaging as they went, and settled in for the rest of the winter at Portsmouth, near the mouth of the Chesapeake, where they could be supported by the Royal Navy. Philbrick: To send Benedict Arnold to Virginia was sending the man Washington most despised to his home state, and what Washington did was send the officer that he trusted, in many ways, the most, Lafayette, to contain this treasonous dog. Narrator: "Should [Arnold] fall into your hands," Washington told the Marquis de Lafayette when he ordered him south to protect Virginia, "you will execute... the punishment due [for] his treason... in the most summary way." ♪ Voice: South Carolina. When I left the Northern Army, I expected to find in this Southern Department a thousand difficulties to which I was a stranger, but the embarrassments far exceed my utmost apprehension. I have but a shadow of an army. Nathanael Greene. I think Nathanael Greene is the unsung hero of the American Revolution. Without Nathanael Greene in the South grinding it out battle after battle in the war-torn South, the Revolution could have easily been lost. ♪ Narrator: After the disaster at Camden, George Washington had sent Nathanael Greene to replace the disgraced Horatio Gates as commander of what was left of the southern army. "I think I am giving you a General," Washington told a South Carolina congressman, "but what can a General do without men, without arms, without clothing, without provisions?" ♪ Greene's forces were outnumbered by more than two to one. Nonetheless, he decided to divide his small army. "It makes the most of my inferior force," he explained, "for it compels my adversary to divide his." ♪ Greene himself and most of his men marched into South Carolina to a camp near Cheraw on the Pee Dee River. Meanwhile, Daniel Morgan led what Greene called his "Flying Army" west "to annoy the enemy in that quarter" and "spirit up the people." ♪ [Horse whinnies] In response, Cornwallis sent Banastre Tarleton after Daniel Morgan. Morgan had hoped to get his men safely back across the broad river before facing his pursuer, but Tarleton was soon within 5 miles. ♪ Morgan chose to make a stand at the Cowpens, a rolling meadow 500 yards long and almost as wide on which herdsmen grazed their cattle on the way to market. He expected Tarleton to lead a headlong charge into his ranks and planned to take advantage of his rash opponent. Daniel Morgan was a master tactician. His planning for the Battle of Cowpens is really brilliant in the way that he draws Tarleton into a trap. Narrator: Morgan knew that his less-reliable militia, faced with an onrushing enemy, would likely break and run, so he would try to turn that weakness into a strength. For the next day's battle, he would arrange his men in 3 lines 150 yards apart. Militiamen would man the first two. Morgan ordered them to fire just two volleys each into the oncoming enemy and then retreat behind the third line, manned by seasoned Continentals. He hoped the enemy, convinced the militia were running away again, would charge and suddenly find themselves under deadly fire from his most experienced fighters hidden behind a rise. ♪ Morgan spent the night before the battle building the militia's confidence. Voice: He went among the volunteers, told them to keep in good spirits and the day would be ours. "Just hold up your head, boys. Two fires," he would say, "and you're free, "and then when you return to your homes, "how the old folks will bless you and the girls kiss you for your gallant conduct." Major Thomas Young. ♪ Lengel: Morgan's recognition of them and their recognition of Morgan as this crusty backwoodsman who's just like them gives them a confidence and an ability to think clearly and to follow orders in a way that they would not have done this for anybody else. [Rooster crows] Voice: About sunrise on the 17th of January 1781, the enemy came in full view. The sight--to me, at least-- seemed somewhat imposing. They halted for a short time and then advanced rapidly, as if certain of victory. Private James Collins. [Shouting and gunfire] Narrator: The first line of militia managed to pick off a few regulars and then, following orders, fell back. ♪ When the enemy came within 50 yards of the second line, the militia fired two volleys into them, a "heavy & galling fire," Morgan remembered, that felled 2/3 of Tarleton's infantry officers, but, just as Tarleton had assumed it would, the second line appeared to fall apart, too. The British stepped up their pace, eager to catch the fleeing militia. Surely, Tarleton thought, the battle was nearly won. His men raced up a slope and at its crest suddenly found themselves face to face with the third line and under what a Continental officer remembered as a "very destructive fire which they little expected." [Cannon fires] This time, it was the Patriots who charged with bayonets, emitting a blood-curdling war cry they had adapted from Native warriors, a yell that would reverberate on Southern battlefields for decades. [Men whooping] Voice: Morgan rode up in front and, waving his sword, cried out, "Give them one more fire, and the day is ours." [Sword clangs] We then advance briskly. They began to throw down their arms and surrender themselves. Private James Collins. Narrator: Meanwhile, American cavalry attacked the enemy's rear, "shouting and charging," one Patriot said, "like madmen." The British line broke. It was all over in 35 minutes. The British lost 300 men killed or wounded. 525 more were taken prisoners. Tarleton managed to get away, but Daniel Morgan was exultant. "I have Given him," he said, "a devil of a whipping." ♪ News of Tarleton's defeat stunned General Cornwallis. Nearly a third of his army was now lost. He set out to catch the rebel force. Two months later, at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina, Nathanael Greene tried the same tactics against Cornwallis that Morgan had used against Tarleton. [Gunfire] At first, the strategy seemed to work. Cornwallis' left began to buckle. If Greene had had reserves, he might have prevailed. He had no reserves. Cornwallis won the battle, but he had lost another 500 men. [Gunshot] When the news eventually reached Britain, the leader of the opposition in Parliament was unimpressed. "Another such victory," he said, "would destroy the British army." Cornwallis and his exhausted men staggered east to Wilmington. He had had enough of the Carolinas. Cornwallis decided to defy his orders from General Clinton and lead his army north to link up with British and Loyalist forces already in Virginia. Voice: I cannot help expressing my wishes that the Chesapeake may become the seat of war, even, if necessary, at the expense of abandoning New York. Until Virginia is in a manner subdued, our hold of the Carolinas must be difficult, if not precarious. Lord Cornwallis. Narrator: On April 25, 1781, Cornwallis began his northward march. Word of his disobedience would not reach Clinton's headquarters in New York for more than a month. "My wonder at this move... will never cease," Clinton wrote when he heard the news, "but [Cornwallis] has made it. And we shall say no more but to make the best of it." ♪ Voice: The seat of war is chiefly in the southern states, and there our enemies by victories and defeats are wasting daily. ♪ Our own American affairs wear a more pleasing aspect. Maryland has acceded to the Confederation at the very time when Britain is deluding herself with the idea that we are crumbling to pieces. Abigail Adams. Narrator: In early 1781, Maryland became the last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. Almost 5 years after declaring their independence, the United States finally had the kind of confederation they thought they wanted, but it was just an alliance, not a central government. ♪ All laws were left to the individual states, including those governing slavery, which was still legal everywhere... ♪ but now there were people in all parts of America looking to abolish it. They would have their first successes in the North. ♪ Christopher Brown: It's in this moment that the first antislavery organizations begin to take shape, especially in those places where slavery is not terribly important to the social and economic order-- Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut. Annette Gordon-Reed: It's easier in the North, where there are fewer Black people. The sort of traditional things to say is that the South was a slave society and the North was a society with slaves. Bernard Bailyn: Before the Revolution, slavery was never a major public issue. There were people who spoke against it and gave good reasons to what evil it was, but it was not a major public issue. After the Revolution, there never was a time when it wasn't. Narrator: In 1780, Pennsylvania's Gradual Emancipation Act had said that anyone born into slavery in that state after the act's adoption automatically became free at 28, but any man, woman, or child enslaved before its passage remained enslaved to the end of their lives unless they bought their freedom or had their owner grant it to them. ♪ Voice: Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me and I'd been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it just to stand one minute on God's earth a free woman. I would. [Elizabeth Freeman (Mumbet)] Narrator: When an enslaved woman in Western Massachusetts called Mumbet was struck by her mistress with a kitchen shovel, she had stalked from the house and refused to return. Her owner went to court to get her back. Mumbet's lawyer convinced an all-White jury that since the preamble to the new Massachusetts state constitution declared all men "free and equal" and since his client was a human being, she should be free. The Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed. Mumbet changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman and lived nearly 50 years in Stockbridge, serving her neighbors as a healer, nurse, and midwife. Her gravestone in a Stockbridge cemetery reads, "She was born a slave... yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal." ♪ By the time of her death in 1829, all the states from New Jersey north to New England had called for the abolition of slavery, but it would take another generation and a still more terrible war to end it everywhere in the United States. ♪ ♪ Voice: There are few generals that have run oftener than I have done, but I have taken care not to run too far and commonly have run as fast forward as backward to convince our enemy that we were like a crab that could run either way. Nathanael Greene. Narrator: One by one, all across the Lower South, British outposts either surrendered to Patriots or were abandoned-- Fort Watson, Camden, Orangeburg, Fort Motte, Fort Granby, Fort Galphin, Georgetown, Augusta. [Cannon fires] General Greene fought 3 full-scale battles with the British-- at Hobkirk Hill, Ninety Six, and Eutaw Springs-- and lost them all, but he inflicted such heavy casualties each time that the enemy was forced to withdraw closer and closer to Charles Town. "We fight," Greene said, "get beat, rise, and fight again." ♪ He couldn't have done it without local Patriot militias. Francis Marion's outfit eluded British cavalry by hiding in the swamp so successfully that Banastre Tarleton said, "[A]s for this old fox, the Devil himself could not catch him." ♪ As Britain's grip on the region weakened, the anarchy that had characterized the backcountry for months spiraled into chaos. Partisans on both sides seemed bent on being more cruel than those on the other. They tortured and murdered captives, burned homes and flogged their owners, raped women and hanged their husbands. Gangs of bandits held up travelers and plundered farms. Voice: With us in the North, the difference is little more than a division of sentiment. But here, they prosecute each other with little less than savage fury. You can have no idea of the distress and misery that prevail in this quarter. Nathanael Greene. ♪ Narrator: By the end of the summer of 1781, the British would be penned up in just 3 coastal towns in the Carolinas and Georgia-- Wilmington, Charles Town, and Savannah. London's Southern strategy was falling apart. ♪ Voice: The King has decided that the principal objective of his arms in America during the war with the English is to drive them from the Gulf of Mexico and the banks of the Mississippi, which should be considered as the bulwark of the vast empire of New Spain. [Bernardo de Gálvez] ♪ Narrator: Bernardo de Gálvez-- the bold, young governor of Spanish Louisiana-- saw an opportunity in the American Revolution to take back West Florida for his king, even before Spain had entered the war in 1779. Kathleen DuVal: Bernardo de Gálvez had big ambitions for Spain, and he had big ambitions for himself. He believed that war against Britain would be his chance to push Spanish colonies even farther into North America, past Louisiana, into the rest of the Gulf Coast, the Appalachians, perhaps most of Eastern North America. Narrator: As soon as Gálvez heard Spain had officially entered the war, he left New Orleans and rallied an army that reflected the extraordinary diversity of the Gulf Coast-- Spaniards, Frenchmen, Acadians, Irishmen, Black and biracial men from Africa and the Americas, Choctaws, Houmas, Alabamas, men from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Hispaniola, and a handful of volunteers from the United States. ♪ DuVal: Gálvez began to take British posts. He took Baton Rouge, Natchez, and then sailed with his militia and took the post of Mobile. Narrator: By the spring of 1781, Gálvez's only objective left in British West Florida was its capital and stronghold--Pensacola. ♪ It was defended by local Black and White militiamen; British, German, and Loyalist soldiers; and hundreds of Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Muscogee Creeks who opposed any imperial expansion that threatened their lands in the southeastern interior. ♪ Gálvez landed his army and began a siege. For a month and a half, Spanish guns edged closer and closer to the heart of the British defenses. [Cannon fires] Finally, on May 8, 1781, a shell hit the British gunpowder magazine. [Explosion] The explosion killed almost a hundred men, mostly Loyalist troops, and blew a wide hole in the fort's walls. Gálvez's men poured through the gap, and within hours, the British commander surrendered. Spanish rule was restored in West Florida and with it Spanish control of the Gulf of Mexico. ♪ DuVal: West Florida is the first nonrebelling colony that Britain loses. After the Spanish victory at Pensacola, many, many people in Britain think it's time to stop this war before it gets any worse. ♪ Narrator: Britain was more alone than ever, at war with the Netherlands now as well as with France and Spain, and its West Indian islands and Gibraltar in the Mediterranean were under attack. To London, North America mattered less and less, and General Clinton in New York could do little more than make sure that city remained in British hands. de Rode: The British stronghold is in New York. It's where they won the battle in 1776 against George Washington, which is one of the reasons George Washington really wants to take New York, because he feels very humiliated by that specific battle, so for him since that time, it became almost an obsession. "If we take New York, we're gonna win this war." ♪ Narrator: When word came that French warships and more French troops would arrive on the East Coast sometime that summer, Washington and Rochambeau met again in Connecticut to discuss where the fleet might, in fact, do the most good-- at New York or in Virginia, where Cornwallis was now headed. Washington still favored New York. Rochambeau told him that he preferred to leave the decision to the Comte de Grasse, the admiral now commanding the French fleet in the Caribbean, but in private letters to de Grasse, Rochambeau argued that blockading the Chesapeake should take precedence. In the meantime, Rochambeau marched his more than 4,000 men from Newport to join Washington's army in Westchester County, New York. The French were stunned by what they saw. ♪ Voice: I cannot too often repeat how astonished I have been at the American Army. It is inconceivable that troops nearly naked, badly paid, and composed of old men, Negroes, and children should march so well. [Cromot du Bourg] Voice: The Rhode Island Regiment includes many Negroes, and that regiment is the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in its maneuvers. [Ludwig von Closen] ♪ Narrator: As American and French soldiers probed British defenses around New York, Washington waited for Admiral de Grasse to pick his target-- New York or Virginia. ♪ On May 20, 1781, Lord Cornwallis arrived at Petersburg, Virginia. He commanded some 7,000 British, German, and Loyalist troops. Benedict Arnold was not among them. He had been recalled to New York and would eventually sail for England, never to see his country again. ♪ Cornwallis first tried to hunt down the Marquis de Lafayette, who had been harassing British forces in Virginia, but Lafayette managed to slip away. Voice: You can be entirely calm with regard to the rapid marches of Lord Cornwallis. Let him march from St. Augustine to Boston. What he wins in his front he loses in his rear. His army will bury itself without requiring us to fight him. [Lafayette] ♪ Narrator: Cornwallis unleashed two raiding parties into the heart of Virginia. 250 horsemen, commanded by Banastre Tarleton, were ordered to try to capture Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Assembly, now meeting at Charlottesville, where Tarleton managed to seize several legislators, including Daniel Boone from Kentucky County, but with only moments to spare, Jefferson escaped his would-be captors on horseback. ♪ Voice: Such terror and confusion. What an alarming crisis is this. We were off in a twinkling. The nearer the mountains, the greater the safety was the conclusion, so on we traveled through byways and brambles. [Ambler] ♪ Narrator: Betsy Ambler's family was on the run, too, eventually finding temporary sanctuary on a friend's backcountry plantation. ♪ After 3 mostly fruitless weeks spent marching through the backcountry, Cornwallis and his men started southeast towards Williamsburg. Some 4,500 ex-slaves now trailed along behind. ♪ By bringing the war into Virginia, Cornwallis had provided the largest body of Black people in North America the possibility of freedom. Among those who threw in their lot with the British were 23 from Thomas Jefferson's estates and 16 from George Washington's Mount Vernon. Gordon-Reed: What do you do? Do you stay, or do you take a chance at your freedom and leave your family? How many people can go with you? Sometimes whole families left together. ♪ I would imagine it being frightening but also a sense of hope because the system that they were in may be destroyed and that they may have an opportunity for freedom. ♪ Voice: Has the God who made the White man and the Black left any record declaring us a different species? Are we not sustained by the same power, supported by the same food, hurt by the same wounds, pleased with the same delights, and propagated by the same means? And should we not then enjoy the same liberty and be protected by the same laws? ♪ Some consider us as much property as a house or a ship and think how anxious we must be to raise ourselves from this degrading state. James Forten. Narrator: James Forten was born free in Philadelphia. At 9, he had been in the crowd at the Pennsylvania State House that heard the Declaration of Independence read to the public for the very first time. Forten took the promise of the Declaration to heart and never questioned whether its self-evident truths applied to him. ♪ Now, in the summer of 1781, Forten was 14, old enough to fight for his country. With his mother's permission, he went down to the docks, signed on to a privateer, and set out to sea. Forten was one of 20 men and boys of color in a crew of 200. For privateers eager to attract volunteers, race was no barrier. ♪ His first voyage was a triumph, but the second was a disaster. His ship was overtaken and captured by a British warship. ♪ Once aboard, the captain's son befriended him, and the captain offered to release him if he were willing to sail with the boy to England. Forten refused. He could not turn his back on his country. [Gulls squawking] Instead, he joined hundreds of American prisoners huddled below decks aboard the notorious British prison ship the "Jersey" moored in the East River off Brooklyn-- dark, fetid, rife with disease. [Bell rings] ♪ Meanwhile, starting in June 1781, Cornwallis began to receive a series of contradictory communications from General Clinton back in New York City. First, Cornwallis was to send nearly half his forces north to New York, which Clinton still believed Washington's most likely target. Then Clinton changed his mind. Cornwallis was now to send those same troops to the Delaware Bay, where they might sail north and threaten Philadelphia. Finally, with his men aboard boats in Portsmouth and ready to sail, Cornwallis was to forget moving them north at all. Instead, he was to locate and fortify a deep-water, year-round port in Virginia suitable for the Royal Navy's largest warships. Cornwallis' engineers recommended Yorktown. He arrived there on August 2, 1781. ♪ On August 14, Washington learned that the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse was on its way to the Chesapeake, not New York. ♪ Voice: Matters having now come to a crisis and a decisive plan to be determined on, I was obliged to give up all idea of attacking New York. [Washington] de Rode: George Washington is a realistic military man who knows when to not attack, and so with the advice of the French that had much more experience in warfare, he listens to them and decides to march to the South. Narrator: Then word arrived from Lafayette that Cornwallis was establishing his army at Yorktown. If the French Navy could command the Chesapeake and keep the British fleet out, Lafayette wrote, "the British Army would, I think, be ours." But before Washington could move his army south, some way had to be found to pay his men. Congress was broke. [Horse whinnies] Voice: My personal credit, which, thank heaven, I have preserved through all the tempests of the war, has been substituted for that which the country has lost. I am now striving to transfer that credit to the public. Robert Morris. Narrator: Washington turned to an old friend, the richest man in America-- Robert Morris. Morris had again and again used his own money to supply the Continental Army. He had also used public funds for personal speculations and made millions in government contracts. William Hogeland: Robert Morris was a war profiteer and mingled public and private funds with unabashed abandon, and without him, it's not clear at all that the Revolution would have been won or even would have been fought very long because he did front his own money to keep the army in the field. People said he financed the American Revolution. That's largely true. Critics of Morris said that the Revolution financed him, and that's true, too. ♪ Narrator: Now Morris combined his own funds with borrowed Spanish gold and silver to pay the men. Voice: Each of us received a month's pay. This was the first that could be called money which we had received as wages since the year '76. Joseph Plumb Martin. [People cheering] Narrator: Leaving 4,000 Continentals behind, the French and American armies began to make their way south in 3 great columns on August 18. ♪ The campaign was an enormous undertaking and a great gamble. ♪ In order to keep Cornwallis from escaping by sea, French naval forces from both the Caribbean and Newport, Rhode Island, would have to elude British warships patrolling the Atlantic coast and enter the Chesapeake Bay. At the same time, thousands of French and American troops, who could not speak one another's language, would have to continue to make their way together some 450 miles from Westchester County to Virginia in the heat of summer. [Horse nickers] de Rode: It's hot and humid, and, as the French write, "infested by mosquitoes," and so this is a very complicated march. You have to think of thousands of men marching through these little roads. They have to create bridges. They have to get obstacles out of the way, and we're not talking just about men marching. We have a lot of animals behind them. ♪ In order to not walk in the middle of the day, they start in the middle of the night, so it's pitch dark. You're walking on little paths, probably quite muddy, and you just walk, and then for a few hours later, you have to stop because you have to create your new encampment. You get some food, which often arrived way too late. Narrator: To deceive the British into thinking that he was planning an amphibious assault on Staten Island or Sandy Hook, Washington had made sure that false documents suggesting an imminent attack fell into British hands. ♪ Philbrick: Washington is able to convince Clinton that he is going to attack New York. It's a brilliant series of deceptive maneuvers that Washington is able to pull off. By the time Clinton realizes that Washington is not going after him but is on his way south, Washington is in Philadelphia. [Gulls squawking] Narrator: At Yorktown, Cornwallis hated the kind of defensive war he was being asked to oversee and considered the port and Gloucester across the river "dangerous posts," since neither commanded the surrounding countryside. He'd started by fortifying Gloucester. The work had gone slowly. He and his men expected a British fleet to arrive in the York River any day, but they now heard upsetting rumors that a French fleet "had left the West Indies and was approaching the coast of North America." By late summer, work had begun on the fortifications at Yorktown itself. Meanwhile, at Portsmouth, where some of Cornwallis' men remained, smallpox was ravaging the former slaves who had followed the British army there. What should be done, the commander at Portsmouth, wrote Cornwallis, "with the hundreds...that are dying by scores every day?" Voice: It is shocking to think of the state of the Negroes, but we cannot bring a number of sick and useless ones to this place. ♪ I leave it to your humanity to do the best you can for them, but on your arrival here, we must adopt some plan to prevent an evil which will certainly produce some fatal distemper in the army. Lord Cornwallis. ♪ Narrator: Portsmouth was evacuated, and the troops joined Cornwallis' army at Yorktown. ♪ It was from there, on the morning of August 30, that Captain Johann Ewald looked out toward the Chesapeake Bay. Voice: I could detect 3 heavy vessels in the distance. We soon had news that the 3 vessels which lay before our noses were French. [Ewald] Narrator: Admiral de Grasse was now lying at anchor just inside the narrow entrance to the Chesapeake Bay between Cape Charles and Cape Henry. Philbrick: The Chesapeake is a huge bay, but its point of access is the two capes. It's very narrow, and anyone who can control that controls this huge body of water. [Horse whinnies] Narrator: On the morning of September 5, a dispatch rider caught up with George Washington near Head of Elk, Maryland, with the good news that the French fleet had arrived. ♪ That same day, though, sailors aboard de Grasse's flagship spotted sails approaching from the north. They were 19 British ships sent from New York with orders to find and destroy the French fleet. de Grasse might have stayed where he was, blocking entrance to the bay, but if he had done so, the 8 French ships, loaded with heavy siege guns that were on their way from Newport, would have been kept out of the Chesapeake. de Grasse moved out into the open sea to confront his enemy. ♪ The two fleets maneuvered for 6 hours. Commanders scattered sand across their decks to absorb the sailors' blood they knew was about to be shed. ♪ At 4:00 in the afternoon, they opened fire. [Cannon fire continues] The broadsides continued until dark. [Man shouts] Narrator: The result was a standoff, but the British vessels got the worst of it and were forced to limp back to New York. ♪ Meanwhile, the French squadron from Newport carrying the heavy siege guns had slipped unnoticed into the bay, and, avoiding Cornwallis' defenses at Yorktown, sailed up the James River, and Washington and Rochambeau's armies were arriving at Williamsburg. Cornwallis was trapped. Lengel: From the very beginning, Washington recognized that this war was going to end when the stars aligned. He's been waiting for this, and he snatches at it. Voice: We prepared to move down and pay our old acquaintance the British a visit. I doubt not that their wish was not to have so many of us come at once, as their accommodations were rather scanty. They thought the fewer, the better. We thought the more, the merrier. Joseph Plumb Martin. ♪ Narrator: On September 28, 1781, at 5 A.M., the French and American armies, now 18,000 strong, started toward Yorktown. The allies established a crescent-shaped encampment around the town-- the French on the left, the Americans on the right. Washington and Rochambeau set up headquarters just a few hundred yards apart. ♪ The two commanders rode forward to reconnoiter. Washington had long understood Yorktown's strategic limitations and the hole the British had dug for themselves. ♪ 800 to 1,000 yards from Yorktown stood an outer line of trenches and redoubts, their bases bristling with abatis, sharpened logs meant to repel invaders. ♪ Black laborers could be seen struggling to complete an inner ring around the town. ♪ Swamps and marshy creeks made a direct assault impractical. The allies didn't have time to starve the defenders, either. The French fleet was due to return to the Caribbean within weeks. A traditional, European-style siege seemed to be the answer. Washington left its planning to the French. The Americans were "totally ignorant of the operations of a siege," Rochambeau said. He had taken part in 14 of them. ♪ At dawn on September 30, French and American troops edged cautiously toward the outermost British defenses, expecting stiff resistance. Instead, they found them empty. Cornwallis, outnumbered 3 to 1, had pulled his men back into town. Lengel: Cornwallis makes a fatal mistake. He's exhausted. He's depressed. A commander who otherwise is very effective is just not at his best. Narrator: For 5 days and nights, allied soldiers worked to transform the abandoned British positions into their own strongholds and to bring up the artillery, equipment, and entrenching tools needed to dig their first parallel trench and begin the siege. ♪ British artillery hurled shot and shells at the Americans and Frenchmen as they worked. [Men shouting] Sarah Osborn, the wife of a New Jersey corporal, was one of the women who carried beef, bread, and hot coffee to the men as they dug. One day, she remembered, George Washington happened by and asked her if she wasn't afraid of the British cannonballs. "No," she said, "It would not do for the men to fight and starve, too." [Distant explosion] When the parallel was complete, it stretched for more than a mile, a trench 10 feet wide and nearly 4 feet deep. ♪ At 3:00 in the afternoon on October 9, the French opened fire. Two hours later, Washington was given the honor of touching off the first American cannon. [Man shouting] Narrator: All along the allied lines, cannon and mortars began firing into Yorktown. ♪ Voice: The remainder of the night passed in a dreadful slaughter. Several parts of the garrison were in flames on this night, and the whole discovered a view awful and tremendous. Bartholomew James. Voice: It was as if one witnessed the shock of an earthquake. 3,600 shot by the enemy were counted in this 24 hours. These were fired at the city into our lines and against the ships in the harbor. Private Johann Conrad Doehla. ♪ Narrator: By the night of October 11, the allies had begun digging a second parallel, but before the noose could be tightened completely, two enemy redoubts, Numbers Nine and Ten, had to be taken. The American target was redoubt Number Ten. The men were from Lafayette's force. Alexander Hamilton was in command. Joseph Plumb Martin and his company led the way. ♪ Voice: We advanced beyond the trenches and lay down on the ground to await the signal. Our watchword was "Rochambeau," a good watchword, for being pronounced "Rochambeau," it sounded, when pronounced quick, like "Rush on, boys." [Martin] [Cannon fires] Narrator: When the signal was given, Martin and his fellow soldiers rushed forward. Right behind them came Rhode Islanders, including many free Black men or former slaves. ♪ The moment they reached the abatis, the redoubt's defenders began firing down into them. ♪ Voice: But there was no stopping us. I forced a passage at a place where I saw our shot had cut away some of the abatis. While passing, a man at my side received a ball in his head and fell under my feet, crying out bitterly. The fort was taken and all quiet in a short time. [Martin] ♪ Narrator: Lafayette sent a dispatch to a French officer in the column assigned to capture Redoubt Number 9, saying his men were in his redoubt. "Where are you?" "Tell the Marquis I am not in mine," the French officer replied, "but will be in 5 minutes." [Cannon fires] Voice: There was no mercy that night. Complaints and groans could be heard everywhere. Someone called out here, another there, begging to be killed for the love of God, as the redoubt was strewn with the dead and wounded, so much so that we had to walk on them. Georg Daniel Flohr. Narrator: The allies lost no time in rolling their big guns into both redoubts and opening fire on Yorktown. Friederike Baer: It was absolutely horrific. There was no moment to rest. There was no place to hide. For days, there was continuous bombardment. [Shells whooshing] ♪ Narrator: Cornwallis knew his cause was hopeless, but he could not seem to bear what Banastre Tarleton called "the mortification of a surrender." ♪ [Snare drum playing] At about 10:00 in the morning on October 17, 1781, a drummer boy appeared on a British parapet, beating his drum, the signal that Cornwallis wished to negotiate. When the thunder of the guns drowned out the drumming, an officer climbed up next to the boy and waved a white handkerchief. Voice: He might have beat away till doomsday if he had not been sighted by men on the front lines, but when the firing ceased, I thought I had never heard a drum equal to it, the most delightful music to us all. Ebenezer Denny. [Snare drum continues] Narrator: The Battle of Yorktown was over. The Patriots and their French allies had won. ♪ The world would never be the same. ♪ Surrender negotiations went on for a day and a half. Cornwallis wanted his British and German soldiers free to sail home. Washington refused. He recalled the disrespectful way Patriot General Benjamin Lincoln and his men had been treated after the fall of Charles Town. Until a formal peace was reached, the surrendering soldiers were to remain in the United States as prisoners of war. Cornwallis had little choice but to agree. ♪ As the British and Germans marched out of what was left of Yorktown-- their flags cased, their numbers reduced by wounds and disease-- they had orders to avoid even looking at the victorious Americans. Only the French, they'd been told, were worthy opponents. Washington and Rochambeau waited on horseback. Lord Cornwallis was nowhere to be seen. He claimed to be ill, but, as a professional soldier, he may simply have been too humiliated at having to surrender his army to a group of rebels to make an appearance. Cornwallis' second in command, General Charles O'Hara, stood in for him and tried to surrender his sword to General Rochambeau. Rochambeau refused to accept it. "We are subordinate to the Americans," he said. "General Washington will give you orders." Washington wouldn't accept it, either. He passed O'Hara on to his second in command, Benjamin Lincoln, who formally accepted the sword and then handed it back, as custom dictated. ♪ Conway: The ultimate humiliation-- not only having to surrender to the Americans, but having to surrender to the second in command of the Americans. ♪ Voice: With what soldiers in the world could one do what was done by these men? One can perceive what an enthusiasm which these poor fellows call liberty can do. Who would have thought a hundred years ago that out of this multitude of rabble would arise a people who could defy kings? Johann Ewald. [Church bell ringing] Voice: This is a blow, my Lord, which gives me the most serious concern, as it will, in its consequences, be exceedingly detrimental to the King's interest in this country. Henry Clinton. Narrator: When the Prime Minister, Lord North, finally heard about the surrender at Yorktown 5 weeks after it happened, he staggered around as if he'd been hit by a musket ball, waving his arms and crying out again and again, "Oh, God, it is all over." ♪ In a speech to Parliament, King George III said that, while recent events in Virginia had been "unfortunate," he remained determined to fight on "to restore my deluded subjects to that happy and prosperous condition which they formerly derived from...obedience to the laws," but Britain had grown weary of the war. ♪ Some 50,000 British, German, and Loyalist troops had lost their lives in North America. The British national debt had doubled. Other battlefields seemed more important-- in the Caribbean, where they would soon destroy Admiral de Grasse's fleet; in the Mediterranean, where they still held Gibraltar; and in India, where they continued to expand their empire. ♪ On February 27, 1782, Parliament voted to halt all offensive activity in North America. Lord North's government fell. Alan Taylor: Could they have kept the war going from a purely military perspective? Sure, but politically, the will to fight vanishes, so the pro-war administration is toppled, and the King is forced to accept a new government with a new political coalition that is committed to negotiating a peace settlement with the American rebels. ♪ Voice: Alas, what remains of Yorktown now, what had given it its high privilege, that of being accessible from every quarter, proved its greatest misfortune. Its excellent harbor rendered it the port of all others most favorable for an invading enemy. Too soon did they avail themselves of it, and this Eden became desolate. Betsy Ambler. Narrator: Betsy Ambler and her family never returned to Yorktown, settling permanently in Richmond. ♪ Not long after the surrender, slaveholders began turning up at Yorktown, eager to reclaim the surviving runaways who had fled to the British. Washington set up two fortified posts where slaves were to be kept under guard until their owner came to claim them. Patriot troops were encouraged to help track them down. ♪ "The Negroes looked condemned," one militiaman remembered, "for the British had promised them their freedom." ♪ 5 enslaved people captured at Yorktown were returned to Thomas Jefferson. Two more, both women, were returned to George Washington's Mount Vernon. ♪ Washington's army soon moved north. Rochambeau's men marched up to Boston the following year and sailed away. ♪ Cornwallis' defeated men were marched to prison camps in the interior. Eager to get them back, Parliament finally recognized captured Americans as prisoners of war. Redcoats and rebels alike could expect to be exchanged. Jennifer Kreisberg: [Vocalizing "Amazing Grace"] After 7 months of suffering aboard the prison ship the "Jersey," James Forten was released, emaciated but lucky to be alive. ♪ He walked all the way home to Philadelphia from New York, most of the way barefoot. He astonished his mother on arrival. She had long since given him up for dead. ♪ After the war, Forten would build a great fortune making sails for the American merchant fleet and use part of those earnings to fund the abolitionist movement. When decades later, a friend urged him to apply for one of the pensions being granted to war veterans, Forten refused. "I was a volunteer, sir," he said. He didn't want money. He wanted citizenship. ♪ Voice: Our country asserts for itself the glory of being the freest upon the surface of the globe. She proclaimed freedom to all mankind. The brightness of her glory was radiant, but one dark spot still dimmed its luster. So much is doing in the world to ameliorate the condition of mankind, and the spirit of freedom is marching with rapid strides and causing tyrants to tremble. May America awake from the apathy in which she has long slumbered. She must sooner or later fall in with the irresistible current in the cause of liberty. James Forten. Jasanoff: Loyalists knew the war was lost, and the question for them became, "What's gonna happen to us next?" and--given the violence, this insurgency, counterinsurgency, back and forth, down-and-dirty fighting in the countryside-- Loyalists had every reason to fear that now that the Patriots were in charge, they were gonna find themselves on the rough end of recriminations. [Pounding on door] Narrator: Everywhere, Patriots were seeking revenge on men and women who had once been their neighbors and fellow subjects of the King. "The mob," one Loyalist wrote, "now reigns... fully and uncontrolled." [Gunshots and shouting] In Georgia, Patriots hunted down and killed Loyalists who had sought sanctuary in the swamps. ♪ Other Loyalists were exiled and their property confiscated. ♪ Voice: I cannot say I look back with regret at the part I took from motives of loyalty, from love to my country as well as duty to my sovereign, and, notwithstanding my sufferings, I would do it again if there was occasion. John Peters. [Church bell ringing] Narrator: John Peters and his wife Ann settled in Nova Scotia. Most Loyalists would choose to stay despite the danger and take their chances, hoping to resume their old lives in the new country, but thousands decided to leave. They huddled together in the last British strongholds of New York City, Charles Town, and Savannah, waiting for ships to be found to take them away. Jasanoff: In an incredible gesture at the end of the American Revolution, the British government offers continuing protection to American Loyalists, and I don't know of any other precedent for this kind of mass evacuation of civilians organized by a government, and particularly by the military, with a view to helping these refugees get started with a new life somewhere else outside the place that they had always called home. Narrator: General Guy Carleton, who had replaced Henry Clinton as commander of British forces, was expected to move more than 30,000 troops with their mountains of supplies as well as 60,000 Loyalists and 15,000 enslaved people out of the United States. Carleton began that summer with Savannah. Some 3,000 Whites and perhaps 5,000 Blacks sailed to other British colonies. Charles Town was next-- almost 11,000 people, Black and White. Most of them ended up in Jamaica and the Bahamas. Only New York remained in British hands. ♪ Meanwhile, in Paris, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens were trying to work out a permanent peace. Ignoring their instructions to include the French, whose assistance had ensured their astonishing victory, the American envoys decided to negotiate alone with British emissaries. "Let us be honest and grateful to France," John Jay said, "but let us think for ourselves." ♪ They had a draft treaty within a week. Its terms were generous to the Americans, so generous they would cause the new British government to fall, as well. ♪ It declared the 13 former colonies "to be free, Sovereign and independent states" and set expansive boundaries, stretching all the way from the Great Lakes to Florida and from the Appalachians westward to the Mississippi, a territory larger than England, France, and Spain put together. British troops were to be withdrawn with "all convenient Speed" and were barred, the agreement said, from "carrying away any Negroes or other Property of the American Inhabitants." ♪ This provisional treaty was signed by the American and British negotiators on November 30, 1782. A final comprehensive treaty would not come for another 9 months. ♪ Joseph Ellis: There's a consensus at the end among the negotiators, including the Brits, that we're witnessing the creation of an American empire. ♪ de Rode: Some people would say the British lost the war, but then they won the aftermath, and France lost that period. They could not reinvent themselves in order to prevent their collapse. The promise of the American Revolution was, of course, a promise of democracy, of equality, of liberties, of all these new concepts at a time where in Europe, there were only monarchies. The republic had won against the monarchy. It inspired many. Narrator: The American Revolution would be the opening signal for more than two centuries of revolution, first in Europe, then in the Caribbean, South America, Asia, and Africa. Baer: The ideas are very powerful. When they're talking about liberty, when they're talking about equality, when they're talking about opportunity, the freedom from oppression, the American Revolutionary movement served as a model for other societies and communities around the world. ♪ Narrator: But in early 1783 at the Continental Army's winter encampment at Newburgh, New York, things were not going well. An unsigned manifesto began circulating among Washington's officers openly calling for a mutiny. If peace really came, they would refuse to disarm and be free to use the army to force Congress and the states into providing the back pay they were owed. [Approaching hoofbeats] On March 15, at a meeting to hear more about the conspiracy, officers heard horse's hooves. [Horse whinnies] The door flew open. Washington and his aides entered. The general stepped to the lectern. ♪ He spoke for 20 minutes, urging his officers to resist drowning "our rising empire in blood." Most shifted in their seats, unconvinced. ♪ Then Washington asked if he could read a letter from a Virginia congressman who had pledged support for the army. He stumbled over the first words, paused, and pulled a pair of spectacles from his coat. Voice: Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind. [Washington] ♪ Narrator: The rest of the letter didn't matter. Many officers, hard men made harder still by battle, were openly weeping. The mutiny was over before it could begin. ♪ Voice: The unparalleled perseverance of the armies of the United States, through almost every possible suffering and discouragement for the space of 8 long years, was little short of a standing miracle. George Washington. Narrator: As the Continental Army began to disband, Washington tried again to persuade Congress to provide his men with at least 3 months' back pay in cash, but the best they could do was issue a blizzard of paper certificates, vaguely promising to redeem them one day. ♪ Voice: Some of the soldiers went off for home the same day their fetters were knocked off. Others stayed and got their final settlement certificates, which they sold to procure decent clothing and money sufficient to enable them to pass with decency through the country and to appear something like themselves when they arrived among their friends. I was among those. ♪ When the country had drained the last drop of service it could screw out of the poor soldiers, we returned to drift like old, worn-out horses. Joseph Plumb Martin. ♪ Ellis: That group of people are ordinary Americans, below the level of ordinary, and they won the war because they never left. They stayed. That was it. They refused to leave, and, um... um... you can sound pretty patriotic, but I don't think you can be patriotic enough about them. ♪ Voice: We had lived together as a family of brothers for several years--had shared with each other the hardships, dangers, and sufferings incident to a soldier's life; had sympathized with each other in trouble and sickness-- and now we were to be parted forever, as unconditionally separated as though the grave lay between us. [Martin] ♪ [Gulls squawking] Narrator: By the spring of 1783, more than 30,000 Loyalists and almost as many British and German troops still remained in New York City, all waiting for ships to take them away, so many people that General Carleton could not tell George Washington precisely when they would all be gone. Soldiers shipped out for home or the West Indies. Some Loyalists planned to sail to Quebec or the Bahamas, but the overwhelming majority-- nearly 30,000 American men, women, and children-- resolved to begin their new lives like John and Ann Peters had, to the north in Nova Scotia. Of the more than 3,000 Black people who had also found sanctuary in New York, half were considered the property of Loyalists and so would have to accompany their owners wherever they chose to go... ♪ but most of the rest were runaways, like Harry Washington, who had been the property of George Washington, and Boston King, who had been promised that if they fled their Patriot owners, they would be free. That freedom now seemed in peril. ♪ Voice: Peace was restored between America and Great Britain, which issued universal joy among all parties except us who had escaped from slavery and taken refuge in the English army, for a report prevailed at New York that all slaves were to be delivered up to their masters. This dreadful rumor filled us all with inexpressible anguish and terror, especially when we saw our masters coming and seizing upon their slaves in the streets of New York or even dragging them out of their beds. Many of the slaves had very cruel masters so that thoughts of returning home with them embittered life to us. For some days, we lost our appetite for food, and sleep departed from our eyes. Boston King. Narrator: From his headquarters up the Hudson, George Washington continued to insist every runaway be returned to his or her owner. General Carleton refused. "National Honour," he told Washington, required him to make good on official British pledges made to persons of "any complexion." Voice: The English had compassion upon us in the day of distress. In consequence of this, each of us received a certificate from the commanding officer at New York, which dispelled all our fears. [King] ♪ Narrator: Carleton decreed that any enslaved person who had left a Patriot owner and served behind the British lines for 12 months was free. Disputes between runaways and owners or slave catchers determined to return them to slavery were adjudicated by a committee of 4 British officers and 3 Americans who met weekly at Fraunces Tavern on Pearl Street. ♪ Voice: I came from Virginia. I was with Lord Dunmore, washing and ironing in his service. I came with him to New York and was in service with him till he went away. My master came for me. I told him I would not go with him. He took my money and stole my child from me and sent it to Virginia. Judith Jackson. ♪ Narrator: Judith Jackson won the right to go to Nova Scotia, but she stayed on in New York, frantically trying to recover her daughter until she was forced to sail without her. ♪ [Man shouts] Narrator: There were more tense moments at dockside. Before any vessel carrying Black passengers, slave or free, could leave New York, British and American inspectors demanded to see their certificates and entered their names and descriptions in separate ledgers... Rhiannon Giddens: [Vocalizing "Dean Cadalan Samhach"] ♪ Narrator: but once underway, Boston King, Harry Washington, and all the hundreds of other free persons the British allowed to sail north were filled, as King wrote, "with joy and gratitude." ♪ In the end, Nova Scotia proved cold and unforgiving. Black refugees were not made welcome. ♪ Both men would eventually join nearly 1,200 other African Americans who emigrated again, this time to Sierra Leone in West Africa, where they founded a new British colony with a new capital city they called Freetown. Voice: If we had the means of publishing to the world the many acts of treachery and cruelty committed by them on our women and children, it would appear that the title of Savages would with much greater justice be applied to them than to us. Old Smoke. Narrator: The 150,000 Native Americans who lived in the vast territory that was now the United States were not so much as mentioned in the treaty. Kreisberg: [Vocalizing "Grief"] Voice: We were struck with astonishment at hearing we were forgot. We could not believe it possible such firm friends and allies could be so neglected by England, whom we had served with so much zeal and fidelity. Thayendanegea, Joseph Brant. The losers in the negotiation of Paris are the Native Americans. I mean, it would be hard-pressed to say that they'd be better off if the British had won, but they probably would have. ♪ Narrator: The contributions Native Americans had made to winning American independence would soon be forgotten, too, including Oneidas, Tuscaroras, Delawares, Catawbas, and the Indian community at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. ♪ Voice: In this late war, we have suffered much. Our blood has been spilled with yours, and many of our young men have fallen by the side of your warriors. ♪ Almost all those places where your warriors have left their bones, there our bones are seen also. [Stockbridge petitioners] ♪ Philip Deloria: The Stockbridge Indians, their home, their land is gonna go away. They're not gonna be able to hold on to that, and they are moved to New York. Then they end up in Wisconsin. Like so many tribes, right, they end up being kicked around and moved from place to place. This is, of course, the story of Native people relative to the United States. ♪ Voice: Beloved men and warriors of the United States, we, the women of the Cherokee Nation, now speak to you. We are mothers and have many sons, some of them warriors and beloved men. Our cry is all for peace. ♪ This peace must last forever. Let your women hear our words. [Delegation of Cherokee Women] [Drum and rattle playing] Narrator: There would be no peace. As the United States moved inexorably westward, Native nations would continue to fight for their independence for another century. ♪ Native Americans would not become citizens of the United States until 1924, and their struggle to remain sovereign would never end. ♪ ♪ At 1:00 in the afternoon on November 25, 1783, George Washington-- "straight as a dart," an eyewitness recalled, "and as noble as he could be"-- led a procession of soldiers and civilians down Bowery Lane and Queen Street, west across Wall Street, and then down Broadway. [Fireworks pop and crackle] The British were finally gone. Washington was back in the city he had been forced to abandon in 1776. New Yorkers celebrated for days with illuminations, bonfires, and fireworks... [Fireworks continue] and now George Washington had one more duty to perform. He would ride to Annapolis, Maryland, where the Confederation Congress was now meeting, and formally resign his commission. [Trumpet playing "Amazing Grace"] Ellis: He knew what he was doing. He walks away from power. He's not gonna be a Cromwell. He's not gonna be a Caesar. He's not gonna be what Napoleon is gonna become. He could have easily become dictator head, and he had no interest in that whatsoever. ♪ Narrator: Accompanied by two military aides and his enslaved companion William Lee, Washington set out right away for Mount Vernon, hoping to be home for Christmas Eve. ♪ Voice: These are the times that tried men's souls, and they are over, and the greatest and completest Revolution the world ever knew gloriously and happily accomplished. As United States, we are equal to the importance of the title, but otherwise we are not. Our union is the most sacred thing and that which every man should be most proud and tender of. Our great title is Americans. Thomas Paine. [Drum roll] Narrator: The war had brought the states together, but peace soon threatened to tear them apart. Small states continued to fear large ones. Northern and Southern states jockeyed for dominance and quarreled over borders. Vermonters had already declared themselves a separate republic. North Carolina's Overmountain settlers were seeking to secede and form their own state called Franklin. [Gunfire] Elsewhere, farmers turned to violence to protest state taxes they considered unreasonable. In Massachusetts, protest became insurrection, Shays' Rebellion put down only after former comrades in arms fired on each other. A "cloud of evils," George Washington wrote, "was threatening the tranquility of the Union." ♪ Voice: Our situation is truly delicate and critical. On the one hand, we stand in need of a strong Federal Government founded on principles that will support the prosperity and union of the states. On the other, we have struggled for liberty and made lofty sacrifices at her shrine, and there are still many among us who revere her name too much to relinquish the rights of man for the dignity of government. Mercy Otis Warren. ♪ Narrator: The new Congress, created by the Articles of Confederation, was toothless, saddled with colossal debts, and incapable of collecting taxes with which to pay them off. Christopher Brown: It's not hard to imagine at all Britain, France, and Spain picking off individual states to create sort of commercial alliances or political alliances and military alliances, as client states, and all kinds of things. Sounds crazy, but it's no more crazy to have actually created a federal government that would actually work, and famously, a lot of British observers throughout the 1780s-- "Just give them a few years. It's all gonna fall apart." Philbrick: One of the lessons Washington learned during the American Revolution is that without a powerful central government, nothing effective could happen. The frustrations he experienced trying to get these 13 colonies to work in unison and failing every time in the Continental Congress taught him that something had to change. ♪ Narrator: In late May 1787, 55 delegates met in Philadelphia to draw up a constitution. Nearly half owned slaves. 30 had served in the war. George Washington lent his prestige by agreeing to preside over the convention. ♪ 4 months later, they had hammered out a 4-page document. To devise a government that the American people could agree to live under demanded historic compromises-- some creative, some tragic. ♪ The Constitution delineated which powers fell to the central government and which remained with the states, a system of shared sovereignty they called federalism. The architects of the Constitution divided the federal government into 3 branches-- the legislative, executive, and judicial-- in a delicate balance by which each was meant to check the others to ensure against overreach that could result in tyranny. They feared that a demagogue might incite citizens into betraying the American experiment. Alexander Hamilton was concerned that an "unprincipled" man would "mount the hobby horse of popularity" and "throw things into confusion." "In a government like ours," he would write, no one is "above the law." [Bell rings] Voice: I wish the Constitution which is offered had been made more perfect, but I sincerely believe it is the best that could be obtained at this time, and as a constitutional door is opened for amendment hereafter, the adoption of it is, in my opinion, desirable. [Washington] Bailyn: They were trying to create a system in which you could have a sufficiently powerful government that could work properly for its own people and the great powers of the world and still retain the freedoms of the individual, and that is the great issue that runs all the way through the Revolution. It's a struggle between the possibilities of power and of liberty. ♪ Narrator: In order for the Constitution to take effect, the individual states had to ratify it. That would foster one of the most extensive public debates in history. ♪ Gordon-Reed: The people who created the American Revolution and created the American nation assumed that Americans would be involved, that they would be active citizens, not subjects. Being a citizen requires the kind of participation in the democracy that keeps it vibrant. ♪ Narrator: In the end, all 13 states did ratify the Constitution, but before consenting to live under the new federal government, the American people wanted to enshrine the liberties they had won in the Revolution. The Constitution was almost immediately amended with a Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of worship and the separation of church and state, freedom of speech and assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, trial by jury, and a ban on cruel and unusual punishment. James Madison, who wrote the Bill of Rights, called the Constitution "nothing more than the draft of a plan, "nothing but a dead letter, "until life and validity were breathed into it by the voice of the people." ♪ Vincent Brown: The idea that government derives its authority from the consent of the governed was pretty radical. It's still pretty radical. If we take the words of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson-- "All men--" let's say men, women-- "are created free and equal," right-- Jefferson clearly didn't take that seriously as a slaveholder, but I do, and I think it's incumbent on all of us to take those words from Jefferson and make them real in our own lives, even if they weren't real in his. ♪ Narrator: When the time came to choose the first president under the Constitution, George Washington was the only choice and won the vote of every single elector. ♪ He was inaugurated in New York City on April 30, 1789. John Adams, the first vice president, thought the chief executive should have a royal, or at least a princely, title, but for Washington, President of the United States was honor enough... [People cheering] and when he left the presidency in 1797, King George himself paid tribute. By surrendering first his military and then his political power, he said, George Washington had made himself "the greatest character of the age." ♪ Voice: Our government daily acquires strength and stability. The union is complete. ♪ Nothing hinders our being a very happy and prosperous people, provided we have wisdom rightly to estimate our blessings and hearts to improve them. Abigail Adams. Rhiannon Giddens: [Vocalizing "Amazing Grace"] Voice: I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance. ♪ And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism. Thomas Jefferson. ♪ Atkinson: America is predicated on an idea that should act as a pole star for us to provide true north, telling us what it is that we think we can do as a people. ♪ The perpetual challenge of the American experiment is to draw on those aspirational ideals and make them our own, hand them off to our children and our grandchildren, and to use that as a propulsion system for being the nation that those forebears thought we could become. ♪ Voice: The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government. ♪ Patriots, come forward! Your country demands your services. Hear her proclaiming, in sighs and groans, in her governments, in her finances, in her trade, in her manufactures, in her morals, and in her manners, "The Revolution is not over!" Benjamin Rush. ♪ ♪ ♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device to dive deeper into the story of "The American Revolution" with interactives, games, classroom materials, and more. ♪ Announcer: "The American Revolution" DVD and Blu-ray, as well as the companion book and soundtrack, are available online and in stores. The series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video. ♪ Announcer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity, determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America. Announcer: Major funding for "The American Revolution" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley, John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine Debs, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. "The American Revolution" was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Viewers Like You. Thank You.

URL
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-6-the-most-sacred-thing/

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflects the original. In Congress, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

URL

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript