BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 4.7.23//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:The American Revolution PBS Documentary Episode 6 DTSTAMP:20251118T053638Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:592-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":troy@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n The American Revolution\n\n A Film By\n\n Ken Burns\, Sar ah Botstein &\; David Schmidt\n\n\n\n The Most Sacred Thing (May 1780 – Onward)\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n VIDEO\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n TRANSCRI PT\n\n\n\n Announcer: Major funding for \"The American Revolution\" was pr ovided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan L avine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation .\n\nMajor funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein\, the Robert D . and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation\, the Lilly Endowment\, and by Be tter Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt\, Stephen A. Schwarzma n\, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst.\n\nAdditional support wa s provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations\, the Pew Charitable Tru sts\, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling\, the Park Foundation\, and b y Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg\, Perry and Donna Golkin\, The Michelson Foundation\, Jacqueline B. Mars\, the Kissick Famil y Foundation\, Diane and Hal Brierley\, John H.N.\n\nFisher and Jennifer C aldwell\, John and Catherine Debs\, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund\, and these additional members.\n\n\"The American Revolution\" was made pos sible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting\, and View ers Like You.\n\nThank You.\n\nAnnouncer: The American Revolution caused a n impact felt around the world.\n\nThe fight would take ingenuity\, determ ination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power to do?\n\nB ank of America.\n\n♪ Jane Kamensky\, voice-over: I think to believe in A merica rooted in the American Revolution is to believe in possibility.\n\n That\, to me\, is the extraordinary thing about the Patriot side of the fi ght.\n\nI think everybody on every side\, including people who were denied even the ownership of themselves\, had the sense of possibility worth fig hting for.\n\n♪ The American Revolution changed the world.\n\nIt's not j ust about the birth of the United States.\n\nIt has ramifications across t he globe\, so studying the American Revolution\, understanding it\, and pu tting it in a global context\, I think\, is vitally important for us to un derstand why we are where we are now.\n\n[Gunfire and shouting] ♪ Voice: Our country was thrown into great confusion by the long continuance of th e war.\n\n[Church bell ringing] The churches in Virginia were almost entir ely shut up\, and its holy ordinances unobserved.\n\nMost of our men were engaged in the war.\n\nOur town had now become a garrison.\n\nBetsy Ambler .\n\n♪ Narrator: Betsy Ambler of Yorktown\, Virginia\, had been 10 when the war began.\n\nShe was now 15 and had lived most of the intervening yea rs away from home.\n\nBy the spring of 1780\, she was back in Yorktown wit h her family.\n\nLife there had changed.\n\nThe most populated parts of Vi rginia all lay within reach of the Royal Navy and any troops the British m ight land.\n\nGovernor 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 w ould have to leave Yorktown again.\n\n♪ George Washington had long known that Yorktown was particularly vulnerable.\n\nAs early as 1777\, he had w arned a Virginia militia commander against stationing troops there.\n\n♪ Voice: I can by no means think it would be prudent to have any considerab le stationary force at Yorktown.\n\nBeing upon a narrow neck of land\, it would be in danger of being cut off.\n\nThe enemy might very easily throw up a few ships and land a body of men there who would oblige them to surre nder.\n\n[Washington] ♪ ♪ Narrator: In late May of 1780\, shortly afte r the British capture of Charles Town\, South Carolina\, an elite Loyalist group of green-clad cavalry and mounted infantry called the British Legio n were in hot pursuit of Continental soldiers fleeing north.\n\nTheir comm ander was a 25-year-old English officer-- Banastre Tarleton\, handsome\, r akish\, ruthless\, and determined to make himself a celebrated soldier.\n\ n\"Tarleton\,\" wrote the British chronicler Horace Walpole\, \"boasts of having butchered more men and lain with more women than anybody\" in the a rmy.\n\nTarleton caught up with the rebels near the North Carolina border\ , a region called the Waxhaws\, and demanded they surrender.\n\nVoice: You will order every person under your command to pile his arms in one hour.\ n\nIf you are rash enough to reject these terms\, the blood be upon your h ead.\n\n[Tarleton] [Gunfire] The Patriots chose to fight.\n\nTarleton's me n quickly overwhelmed them.\n\nSome who dropped their weapons and asked fo r quarter received none.\n\n\"They refused my terms\,\" Tarleton wrote.\n\ n\"I have cut 170 officers and men to pieces.\"\n\n♪ He may have destroy ed the last Continental force in South Carolina\, but he had also helped i nspire local Patriots to oppose British occupation.\n\nWhen 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.\n\n♪ Vincent Brown: That war in South Carolina is bloody.\ n\nIt's a guerrilla conflict.\n\nIt's sometimes brother against brother in this backwoods warfare.\n\n♪ It's an ugly\, ugly\, ugly conflict\, and if one wants a national origin story that's clean and neat and tells you v ery clearly who the good guys are and who the bad guys are\, the American Revolution in South Carolina is not that story.\n\n[Brass band playing \"T he British Grenadiers\"] ♪ Christopher Brown: The British government was very good at seizing and occupying cities.\n\nNewport\, Philadelphia\, Ne w York\, Charles Town\, Savannah-- these are the kind of main ports that t hroughout the war Britain could secure\, but holding those places were not holding America.\n\nPacifying an entire countryside is an entirely differ ent task than seizing strategic positions.\n\nNarrator: General Charles Co rnwallis had been left in charge in the South with clear orders from Gener al Henry Clinton back in New York.\n\nHe was not to move on to North Carol ina and Virginia until South Carolina was completely pacified.\n\nIt was t o be the first full-scale military occupation of an entire colony in North America.\n\n♪ From Charles Town\, British troops quickly occupied posts in a great arc from Savannah and Augusta in Georgia through the village c alled Ninety Six to Camden and then to Georgetown\, 60 miles up the coast from Charles Town.\n\nWhen the British take the decision to move the war d ecisively to the South\, I think they're trying to exploit the fact that t here are smaller numbers of White colonists and larger numbers of slaves i n those territories and the colonists will be more vulnerable.\n\nVoice: T heir property\, slaves\, we need not seek.\n\nIt flies to us\, and famine follows.\n\nTheir trade we can annihilate\, and when an army cannot find s ubsistence\, on what hope shall a people resist?\n\nMajor John Andre.\n\ n♪ Voice: I determined to go to Charles Town and throw myself into the h ands of the English.\n\nThey received me readily\, and I began to feel the happiness of liberty\, of which I knew nothing before.\n\nBoston King.\n\ nVoice: I have been robbed and deserted by my slaves.\n\nI 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.\n\nEliza Lucas Pinckney.\n\nNarrator: At his headquarte rs in New York\, General Clinton continued to believe most South Carolinia ns were Loyalists.\n\nHe had insisted that Patriots swear allegiance to th e Crown or be considered as enemies and treated accordingly.\n\nThose who did swear allegiance were swiftly disillusioned as their Loyalist neighbor s began to settle old scores.\n\nThose \"insurgents\" who refused the oath and dared to take up arms against the King\, Tarleton told General Cornwa llis\, \"don't deserve\" leniency and would get none from him or his men.\ n\nConway: The oath of allegiance was really going too far because it obli ged them to publicly identify as on the British side\, but I think the fun damental problem is that the British are reluctant to restore civil govern ment in the territories they occupy.\n\nThey maintain military government\ , and\, of course\, that reinforces the American claim that the British ar e set on imposing despotism on the colonies.\n\n[Chickens clucking] Voice: Times began to be troublesome\, and people began to divide into parties.\ n\n♪ Those that had been good friends in times past became enemies.\n\nT hey began to watch each other with jealous eyes.\n\nJames Collins.\n\nNarr ator: 16-year-old James Collins lived on his family's farm just below the North Carolina border.\n\nHis father Daniel was an Irish immigrant who loa thed the British and encouraged his son to become a collector of news\, a spy\, reporting on his Loyalist neighbors.\n\n[Horse whinnies] Christopher Brown: One of the things that happens in wartime is\, people who are real ly good politicians\, they create binaries.\n\nYou're either with us or yo u're against us.\n\nThe fact of the matter is\, in real life\, that's actu ally not true.\n\nThere's often more than two possibilities.\n\nThere were a lot of people in 13 colonies who actually didn't care that much about t he outcome.\n\nThey just wanted it over.\n\nConway: The British are heavil y reliant on recruiting Loyalists as soldiers\, and Loyalists are often ve ry embittered... ♪ and\, of course\, if you've got soldiers who are keen on revenge\, they're not the ideal instruments of pacification.\n\n♪ Na rrator: On June 22\, 1780\, James Collins' father was among the men gather ed at a tiny settlement called Brown's Crossroads\, summoned there by Capt ain Christian Huck\, a Loyalist with a well-earned reputation for cruelty. \n\nHe was there to administer the Oath of Allegiance.\n\n[Men shouting] N arrator: Captain Huck stunned the crowd by warning that \"even if the rebe ls were as thick as the trees \"and Jesus Christ would come down and lead them\, he [would still] defeat them.\"\n\nHis audience\, Presbyterians all \, considered that blasphemy.\n\nWe must fight\, James' father said as soo n as he got home\, \"or submit and be slaves.\"\n\nHe went off to join the Patriot militia the next morning.\n\nJames went\, too\, carrying an ancie nt shotgun.\n\n♪ For the next few weeks\, Christian Huck continued to bu rn homes\, menace women\, and murder rebels.\n\nIn July\, after he took a Patriot family hostage\, the Collinses' militia caught up to him and kille d him along with many of his men.\n\nNew volunteers were now swelling Patr iot ranks.\n\nBy early August\, Cornwallis had to admit that the whole cou ntry he had claimed to have pacified is in an absolute state of rebellion. \n\n[Cannon fires] Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock\, Blue Savannah and Black Mingo Creek\, Tearcoat Swamp and Halfway Swamp\, Horse Shoe and Quinby Bri dge-- the battles and skirmishes that would take place in South Carolina b etween 1780 and 1781\, 102 of them by one count\, would yield nearly 1/5 o f all the battlefield deaths suffered during the entire war... [Cannon fir es] and nearly all those American casualties would come at the hands of ot her Americans.\n\n[Cannon fires] Maya Jasanoff: Violence is radicalizing.\ n\nIt is polarizing\, and it happens in the Revolution to people on both s ides of the equation that when they are victims of violence\, they will th en become perpetrators of violence.\n\n♪ Voice: There was no one about i n the streets\, only a few sad and frightened faces in the windows.\n\nI t alked 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 deci ded to uphold them with all his power and strength.\n\nGeneral Rochambeau. \n\nNarrator: On July 11\, 1780\, 5 French warships and a host of transpor t 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 Rochamb eau came ashore.\n\nRhode 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 t hey needed in silver coin\, not worthless Continental paper\, a French off icer remembered\, \"their countenances brightened... at this mention of ha rd money.\"\n\nThe next day\, General Rochambeau wrote to Washington\, \"H ere we are\, sir\, at your orders.\"\n\n♪ Meanwhile\, Congress\, without consulting George Washington\, had now appointed General Horatio Gates\, the hero of Saratoga\, commander of the whole Southern Department.\n\nIn l ate July\, he and several aides rode into a camp of 1\,200 Continentals fr om Maryland and Delaware that stretched along the deep river at Cox's Mill in North Carolina.\n\nGates' objective was Camden\, South Carolina\, a Br itish outpost and supply depot in the center of the state.\n\nWhen he reac hed Rugeley's Mill\, 12 miles north of Camden\, Gates had convinced himsel f that he had 7\,000 soldiers at his disposal.\n\n♪ In fact\, he had jus t over 3\,000 men\, Continentals and militia\, and by then\, Cornwallis ha d reached Camden with reinforcements.\n\nAt 10 P.M.\n\non the night of Aug ust 15\, 1780\, Gates started south toward Camden.\n\nBy sheer coincidence \, Cornwallis chose to lead his men north on the same sandy road that even ing\, hoping to surprise Gates.\n\n[Shouting and gunfire] At about 2 A.M.\ n\non August 16\, mounted scouts from the two armies collided.\n\nThere wa s a brief exchange of fire.\n\nThey separated and prepared for battle.\n\n [Gunfire ends] At dawn\, Cornwallis followed the British custom of placing his best troops on his right.\n\nGates\, who was himself an ex-British of ficer and should have known better\, unaccountably assigned his least expe rienced men to face them-- militiamen\, many of whom had never been in com bat.\n\nAs the Patriots tried to form their lines\, a long\, red wall of c hanting British regulars began storming toward them.\n\nThe militia broke and ran.\n\n[Shouting and gunfire] Voice: I confess I was among the first that fled.\n\nThe cause of that I cannot tell except that everyone I saw w as about to do the same.\n\nI threw away my gun.\n\nPrivate Garrett Watts. \n\n[Cannon fires] Narrator: Continentals on the right did hold for a time .\n\nGates' second in command\, General Johann de Kalb\, a Bavarian-born v olunteer\, was shot\, slashed\, and bayoneted again and again but managed to order one counterattack after another until he was finally knocked to t he ground\, mortally wounded.\n\nHis men too began to run.\n\n♪ General Gates witnessed none of this.\n\nShortly 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.\n\n♪ The defeat at Camde n and the story of Gates' flight ruined his reputation.\n\nWhen it came ti me to name a successor\, Congress would defer to George Washington.\n\n♪ Although South Carolina was not pacified\, General Cornwallis was impatie nt to invade North Carolina\, the next step on the road to the biggest pri ze--Virginia and what he hoped would be the total subjugation of the South ern states.\n\n[Horse whinnies] [Fife and drums playing] Iris de Rode: Was hington's reputation in France is an interesting one.\n\nIn France\, he is revered.\n\nHe is admired.\n\nPeople love George Washington in ways that sometimes seems exaggerated\, but it's true.\n\nThey admire him not just b ecause he's a general and they respect the military side\, but it's more t hat he's a symbol for a Republican leader.\n\nFor 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 talen t that he had\, which was not based on aristocracy\, titles\, or money.\n\ nHe was there because of his talent.\n\nNarrator: On September 21\, 1780\, Washington and 4 of his closest aides met in Hartford\, Connecticut\, wit h General Rochambeau and his entourage.\n\nThe French army remained in New port.\n\nWashington's army was arrayed around New York.\n\nFor two days\, the allied commanders discussed what steps they might take together to def eat the British.\n\n♪ Washington and Rochambeau agreed that the most imp ortant objective was still New York City\, but before an assault could tak e place\, they would need to have naval superiority and a far larger combi ned army.\n\nWashington begged Rochambeau to ask his king for more help.\n \nRochambeau said he would try.\n\n[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 sout h\, but should we ever possess the Hudson River\, we can reduce the northe rn provinces.\n\nGeneral Henry Clinton.\n\n♪ Narrator: On September 25\, Washington and his staff inspected the fortifications at West Point on th e Hudson.\n\nThey were scheduled to dine with the general whom Washington had just appointed commander of the fort\, one of his best soldiers-- Bene dict Arnold.\n\n♪ Washington had been startled by what poor condition th e fortifications were in and concerned that Arnold had not been there to g reet him.\n\nHe was not at his headquarters\, either\, when his commander arrived for dinner.\n\nVoice: No one could give me any information where h e was.\n\nThe impropriety of his conduct when he knew I was to be there st ruck me very forcibly.\n\nI had not the least idea of the real cause.\n\n[ Washington] ♪ Narrator: That evening\, when his trusted aide Alexander H amilton brought him a bundle of papers\, Washington discovered the real ca use.\n\nBenedict Arnold-- the commander of West Point\, the place Washingt on considered the most important post in America-- had deserted and fled t o the British that morning.\n\nWorse still\, he had planned to surrender t he fort and all the men stationed in it to the enemy.\n\nFew soldiers had contributed more to the Revolutionary cause than Benedict Arnold.\n\nTime and again\, he had exhibited extraordinary initiative and bravery on the b attlefield and was severely wounded twice-- at Quebec and Saratoga.\n\nNat haniel Philbrick: He had done all these miracles on the battlefield\, but he was not seeing any of the recognition he believed he deserved.\n\n\"Why am I doing this?\n\nI've lost my personal finances.\n\nI've destroyed my body.\n\nFor what?\"\n\nNarrator: Two years earlier\, Washington had made Arnold military commander in Philadelphia.\n\nIt had not gone well.\n\nHe used his position to profit from the sale of confiscated Loyalist property .\n\nHe had also settled into the same mansion the British commander had o ccupied and was accused of being far too close to wealthy merchants suspec ted of Loyalist sympathies.\n\n♪ Philbrick: While Arnold is in the midst of this terrible frustration in Philadelphia\, he falls in love with a yo ung woman named Peggy Shippen\, whose family is of Loyalist sympathies\, w ho had gotten to know the British officers during the British occupation o f 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\, an d whether or not Peggy was the one who made this all happen\, soon after t he two of them are married\, Arnold begins to make overtures to the Britis h.\n\nNarrator: In the strictest secrecy\, he began to communicate through Major John Andre that he'd gone to war only to redress legitimate America n grievances\, not independence\, and had been appalled when Congress alli ed itself with Catholic France\, which he believed was the enemy of libert y and Protestantism.\n\nHe now volunteered to enlist in the King's service \, either as an officer in the British Army or by cooperating on some conc erted plan to sabotage the Revolutionary cause.\n\nFor 17 months\, coded m essages had gone back and forth before a concrete plan could be agreed upo n.\n\n♪ Arnold was to persuade Washington to give him command of West Po int and all the American outposts on the Hudson and then weaken their defe nses so that General Clinton's forces could sail up the river and take the m all.\n\nIn exchange\, Arnold was to be made a general in the British ser vice\, and paid 20\,000 British pounds plus £500 a year for the rest of h is life.\n\nClinton's forces were poised to move up the Hudson.\n\nAll tha t then remained was for Andre and Arnold to meet and work out a few final details.\n\nAndre had explicit orders.\n\nHe was not to cross into rebel t erritory\, dress as a civilian\, or carry any papers.\n\nHe 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 B enedict Arnold's handwriting.\n\n♪ 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\, coul d make this decision to turn on all of them.\n\nHe was the last person Was hington ever thought would have betrayed him.\n\nNarrator: Because Major A ndre had been captured in civilian clothes\, he was hanged as a spy.\n\nAr nold\, who managed to escape\, got his commission and was given command of a regiment made up of Loyalists and deserters from the Continental Army c alled the American Legion.\n\n♪ Voice: Since the fall of Lucifer\, nothi ng has equaled the fall of Arnold.\n\nHe will now sink as low as he had be en high before\, and as the devil made war upon heaven after his fall\, so I expect Arnold will upon America.\n\nShould he ever fall into our hands\ , he will be a sweet sacrifice.\n\nGeneral Nathanael Greene.\n\n♪ ♪ Na rrator: General Cornwallis' planned invasion of North Carolina would be a 3-pronged assault.\n\nOn the right\, a column would seize the port of Wilm ington\, ensuring that supplies could flow smoothly inland from the coast. \n\nIn the center\, Cornwallis would himself lead the bulk of his army tow ard the tiny town of Charlotte\, then just a crossroads and a courthouse.\ n\nOn the left\, Major Patrick Ferguson and perhaps a thousand Loyalists w ere to guard his flank and try to rally more men from the backcountry.\n\n ♪ Ferguson\, a Scottish-born career soldier who directed his men in batt le with a silver whistle\, led his Loyalist force across the border into w estern North Carolina.\n\nHe released rebel prisoners and sent them over t he Blue Ridge Mountains with a message for those Patriots who called thems elves the Overmountain Men\, the settlers who had defied the 1763 proclama tion forbidding them to occupy Indian lands.\n\nA British victory was inev itable\, Ferguson told them\, and every man who laid down his arms would b e treated gently and justly... [Splashing] but the frontiersmen did not be lieve him.\n\nNews of Tarleton's cruelty and Loyalist abuses was still fre sh.\n\nInstead of surrendering\, they came swarming over the mountains aft er Ferguson\, who realized he was in trouble\, changed course\, and moved towards Charlotte.\n\nAlong the way\, he issued a proclamation meant to ra lly Loyalists.\n\nVoice: Gentlemen\, if you choose to be pissed upon forev er 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.\n\nIf you wish or deserve to live and bear the name of man\, grasp your arms in a mo ment and run to camp.\n\nThe Backwater-men have crossed the mountains.\n\n [Ferguson] ♪ Edward Lengel: That's the wrong tone to take when you're co mmunicating with these backcountry over-the-mountain men\, these Scots-Iri sh settlers.\n\n♪ Narrator: Just inside South Carolina\, Ferguson unacco untably decided to make a stand on a hill grandly named King's Mountain.\n \nNearly a thousand Patriot militia-- half Overmountain Men and half from the Virginia and Carolina backcountry\, including James Collins-- were rig ht behind him.\n\n♪ Voice: Each leader made a short speech in his own wa y to his men\, desiring every coward to be off immediately.\n\nHere\, I co nfess\, I would have willingly been excused.\n\n[Collins] Narrator: On Oct ober 7\, 1780\, as they waited for the signal to start up the hillside\, C ollins recalled\, each man threw 4 or 5 musket balls into his mouth to sta ve off thirst and speed reloading.\n\n[Gunfire] The Patriots attacked with terrifying ferocity.\n\n[Whooping and gunfire] Voice: They appeared like so many devils from the infernal regions.\n\nThey were the most powerful-l ooking men ever beheld-- tall\, raw-boned\, and sinewy with long\, matted hair\, such men as were never before seen in the Carolinas.\n\nDrury Mathi s.\n\n[Whistle blowing] Narrator: As the Patriots closed in on the summit\ , Ferguson continued to ride from point to point\, waving his saber\, blow ing his whistle\, trying to get his Loyalists to hold on.\n\nSeveral balls slammed into him at once.\n\nHe 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.\n\n[Horse whinnies] Ferguson had been the o nly British soldier in the battle that day.\n\nEveryone else on both sides was an American.\n\n[Shouting and gunfire] The Loyalists surrendered.\n\n ♪ Voice: The dead lay in heaps on all sides while the groans of the woun ded were heard in every direction.\n\n\"Great God\,\" said I\, \"Is this t he fate of mortals?\n\nWas it for this cause that man was brought into the world?\"\n\n♪ We proceeded to bury the dead\, but it was badly done.\n\ nThe 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.\n\nPrivate James Collins.\n\nLengel: After Kings Mount ain\, Patriots murder many of their captives.\n\nIf they see somebody amon g the captives who gives them a dirty look\, they'll say\, \"Oh\, I know t hat guy.\n\n\"He burned a farm just over the next hill\, \"and he killed s omebody's family.\n\nLet's string him up\,\" and so all kinds of atrocitie s take place.\n\nMan: Fight back!\n\nNarrator: When Cornwallis learned tha t the Patriots had annihilated a thousand-man Loyalist force\, he pulled h is army out of Charlotte and headed back into South Carolina.\n\n[Horse wh innies] ♪ Voice: The women of America\, animated by the purest patriotis m\, are sensible of sorrow at this day in not offering more than barren wi shes for the success of so glorious a Revolution.\n\nIf opinion and manner s did not forbid us to march to glory by the same paths as the men\, we sh ould at least equal and sometimes surpass them in our love for the public good.\n\nEsther Reed.\n\n♪ 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.\n\n♪ They collected 300\,000 Continental dollars\, hoping to split it among the tro ops.\n\nGeorge Washington vetoed that idea.\n\nThey would just buy rum\, h e said.\n\nWhat they needed were shirts.\n\nThe women would make more than 2\,000 of them.\n\nVoice: And see the spirit catching from state to state .\n\nAmerica will not wear chains while her daughters are virtuous.\n\nAbi gail Adams.\n\n[Wind blowing] Rick Atkinson: It's quite primitive\, the co nditions their soldiers are living in.\n\nA belief in the cause keeps you putting one foot in front of the other\, but that does not keep you warm.\ n\nIt does not cool you down in the summer.\n\nIt does not feed you\, so i t's a constant struggle just day to day exclusive of battle.\n\nVoice: We never stood upon such perilous ground.\n\nOur troops are poorly clothed\, badly fed\, and worse paid.\n\nThey have not seen a paper dollar in the wa y of pay for nearly 12 months.\n\nGeneral Anthony Wayne.\n\n♪ Narrator: On New Year's Day 1781\, fueled by rum and righteous indignation\, some 1\ ,500 Pennsylvania Continentals encamped near Morristown\, New Jersey\, mut inied.\n\nThey killed two officers who tried to stop them\, seized 6 canno n\, 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-enlisti ng.\n\nNo one was to be punished.\n\nHalf the men left the army.\n\nThe re st re-enlisted.\n\n3 weeks later\, when 3 New Jersey regiments also mutini ed\, Washington ordered New England troops to surround them.\n\nThe men we re assembled and made to look on as a firing squad of their fellow mutinee rs was forced to execute two of the ringleaders.\n\nPhilbrick: Washington realized the only thing he could do was to take them down with terrible br utality.\n\n♪ This was Washington's moment of having to end this in a ve ry summary fashion.\n\n[Gunshot] Narrator: \"Every thing is now quiet\,\" Washington wrote afterwards\, but he feared that unless some way were foun d to pay and clothe and supply his men\, there would be still more mutinie s.\n\n[Wind blowing] Voice: Be assured that day does not follow night more certainly than it brings with it some additional proof of the impractical ity of carrying on the war without aid.\n\nWe are at the end of our tether .\n\nNow or never\, deliverance must come.\n\n[Washington] [Wind blowing] ♪ Voice: Richmond\, Virginia.\n\nWar in itself\, however distant\, is in deed terrible\, but when brought to our very doors\, the reflection is ind eed overwhelming.\n\nWhat a gloomy time do I look forward to.\n\nAlready o ur gentlemen begin to apprehend that the enemy will advance into the count ry.\n\n♪ If they do\, God knows what will become of us.\n\nBetsy Ambler. \n\nNarrator: Virginia's Patriots weren't ready to resist an invasion.\n\n Men were refusing conscription.\n\nWealthy planters had exempted themselve s\, their sons\, and overseers from serving because\, they claimed\, they needed to stay home to keep their slaves in line.\n\n\"The Rich wanted the Poor to fight for them\,\" one farmer recalled\, \"to defend their proper ty [while] they refused to fight for themselves.\"\n\nThen\, in January of 1781\, Loyalist troops\, British regulars\, and German soldiers sailed in to Chesapeake Bay and up the James River.\n\nTheir commander was Benedict Arnold\, now a brigadier general in the British Army and eager to demonstr ate his newfound devotion to the Crown.\n\n♪ He and half his men marched toward Richmond\, the new state capital.\n\nAt the sight of Arnold's men\ , Virginia militiamen\, many without arms\, melted away.\n\n♪ Many years later\, an enslaved member of Governor Jefferson's household remembered t hat \"in 10 minutes\, not a White man was to be seen in Richmond.\"\n\nVoi ce: My mother was so scared\, she didn't know whether to stay indoors or o ut.\n\nThe British formed in line and marched up with drums beating.\n\nIt was an awful sight.\n\nSeemed like the day of judgment was come.\n\nIsaac Granger.\n\n♪ Narrator: Arnold's men burned warehouses filled with salt and tobacco and seized 2\,200 small arms\, nearly 40 cannon\, and 503 hog sheads of rum.\n\nEven printing presses were\, in Arnold's words\, \"purif ied by the flames.\"\n\n♪ He and his men then moved back down the James\ , pillaging as they went\, and settled in for the rest of the winter at Po rtsmouth\, near the mouth of the Chesapeake\, where they could be supporte d by the Royal Navy.\n\nPhilbrick: To send Benedict Arnold to Virginia was sending the man Washington most despised to his home state\, and what Was hington did was send the officer that he trusted\, in many ways\, the most \, Lafayette\, to contain this treasonous dog.\n\nNarrator: \"Should [Arno ld] fall into your hands\,\" Washington told the Marquis de Lafayette when he ordered him south to protect Virginia\, \"you will execute... the puni shment due [for] his treason... in the most summary way.\"\n\n♪ Voice: S outh Carolina.\n\nWhen I left the Northern Army\, I expected to find in th is Southern Department a thousand difficulties to which I was a stranger\, but the embarrassments far exceed my utmost apprehension.\n\nI have but a shadow of an army.\n\nNathanael Greene.\n\nI think Nathanael Greene is th e unsung hero of the American Revolution.\n\nWithout Nathanael Greene in t he South grinding it out battle after battle in the war-torn South\, the R evolution could have easily been lost.\n\n♪ Narrator: After the disaster at Camden\, George Washington had sent Nathanael Greene to replace the di sgraced Horatio Gates as commander of what was left of the southern army.\ n\n\"I think I am giving you a General\,\" Washington told a South Carolin a congressman\, \"but what can a General do without men\, without arms\, w ithout clothing\, without provisions?\"\n\n♪ Greene's forces were outnum bered by more than two to one.\n\nNonetheless\, he decided to divide his s mall army.\n\n\"It makes the most of my inferior force\,\" he explained\, \"for it compels my adversary to divide his.\"\n\n♪ Greene himself and m ost of his men marched into South Carolina to a camp near Cheraw on the Pe e Dee River.\n\nMeanwhile\, Daniel Morgan led what Greene called his \"Fly ing Army\" west \"to annoy the enemy in that quarter\" and \"spirit up the people.\"\n\n♪ [Horse whinnies] In response\, Cornwallis sent Banastre Tarleton after Daniel Morgan.\n\nMorgan had hoped to get his men safely ba ck across the broad river before facing his pursuer\, but Tarleton was soo n within 5 miles.\n\n♪ Morgan chose to make a stand at the Cowpens\, a r olling meadow 500 yards long and almost as wide on which herdsmen grazed t heir cattle on the way to market.\n\nHe expected Tarleton to lead a headlo ng charge into his ranks and planned to take advantage of his rash opponen t.\n\nDaniel Morgan was a master tactician.\n\nHis planning for the Battle of Cowpens is really brilliant in the way that he draws Tarleton into a t rap.\n\nNarrator: 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.\n\nFor the next day's battle\, he would arr ange his men in 3 lines 150 yards apart.\n\nMilitiamen would man the first two.\n\nMorgan ordered them to fire just two volleys each into the oncomi ng enemy and then retreat behind the third line\, manned by seasoned Conti nentals.\n\nHe hoped the enemy\, convinced the militia were running away a gain\, would charge and suddenly find themselves under deadly fire from hi s most experienced fighters hidden behind a rise.\n\n♪ Morgan spent the night before the battle building the militia's confidence.\n\nVoice: He we nt among the volunteers\, told them to keep in good spirits and the day wo uld be ours.\n\n\"Just hold up your head\, boys.\n\nTwo fires\,\" he would say\, \"and you're free\, \"and then when you return to your homes\, \"ho w the old folks will bless you and the girls kiss you for your gallant con duct.\"\n\nMajor Thomas Young.\n\n♪ Lengel: Morgan's recognition of them and their recognition of Morgan as this crusty backwoodsman who's just li ke them gives them a confidence and an ability to think clearly and to fol low orders in a way that they would not have done this for anybody else.\n \n[Rooster crows] Voice: About sunrise on the 17th of January 1781\, the e nemy came in full view.\n\nThe sight--to me\, at least-- seemed somewhat i mposing.\n\nThey halted for a short time and then advanced rapidly\, as if certain of victory.\n\nPrivate James Collins.\n\n[Shouting and gunfire] N arrator: The first line of militia managed to pick off a few regulars and then\, following orders\, fell back.\n\n♪ When the enemy came within 50 yards of the second line\, the militia fired two volleys into them\, a \"h eavy &\; galling fire\,\" Morgan remembered\, that felled 2/3 of Tarlet on's infantry officers\, but\, just as Tarleton had assumed it would\, the second line appeared to fall apart\, too.\n\nThe British stepped up their pace\, eager to catch the fleeing militia.\n\nSurely\, Tarleton thought\, the battle was nearly won.\n\nHis men raced up a slope and at its crest s uddenly found themselves face to face with the third line and under what a Continental officer remembered as a \"very destructive fire which they li ttle expected.\"\n\n[Cannon fires] This time\, it was the Patriots who cha rged with bayonets\, emitting a blood-curdling war cry they had adapted fr om Native warriors\, a yell that would reverberate on Southern battlefield s for decades.\n\n[Men whooping] Voice: Morgan rode up in front and\, wavi ng his sword\, cried out\, \"Give them one more fire\, and the day is ours .\"\n\n[Sword clangs] We then advance briskly.\n\nThey began to throw down their arms and surrender themselves.\n\nPrivate James Collins.\n\nNarrato r: Meanwhile\, American cavalry attacked the enemy's rear\, \"shouting and charging\,\" one Patriot said\, \"like madmen.\"\n\nThe British line brok e.\n\nIt was all over in 35 minutes.\n\nThe British lost 300 men killed or wounded.\n\n525 more were taken prisoners.\n\nTarleton managed to get awa y\, but Daniel Morgan was exultant.\n\n\"I have Given him\,\" he said\, \" a devil of a whipping.\"\n\n♪ News of Tarleton's defeat stunned General Cornwallis.\n\nNearly a third of his army was now lost.\n\nHe set out to c atch the rebel force.\n\nTwo months later\, at the Battle of Guilford Cour thouse in North Carolina\, Nathanael Greene tried the same tactics against Cornwallis that Morgan had used against Tarleton.\n\n[Gunfire] At first\, the strategy seemed to work.\n\nCornwallis' left began to buckle.\n\nIf G reene had had reserves\, he might have prevailed.\n\nHe had no reserves.\n \nCornwallis won the battle\, but he had lost another 500 men.\n\n[Gunshot ] When the news eventually reached Britain\, the leader of the opposition in Parliament was unimpressed.\n\n\"Another such victory\,\" he said\, \"w ould destroy the British army.\"\n\nCornwallis and his exhausted men stagg ered east to Wilmington.\n\nHe had had enough of the Carolinas.\n\nCornwal lis decided to defy his orders from General Clinton and lead his army nort h to link up with British and Loyalist forces already in Virginia.\n\nVoic e: I cannot help expressing my wishes that the Chesapeake may become the s eat of war\, even\, if necessary\, at the expense of abandoning New York.\ n\nUntil Virginia is in a manner subdued\, our hold of the Carolinas must be difficult\, if not precarious.\n\nLord Cornwallis.\n\nNarrator: On Apri l 25\, 1781\, Cornwallis began his northward march.\n\nWord of his disobed ience would not reach Clinton's headquarters in New York for more than a m onth.\n\n\"My wonder at this move... will never cease\,\" Clinton wrote wh en he heard the news\, \"but [Cornwallis] has made it.\n\nAnd we shall say no more but to make the best of it.\"\n\n♪ Voice: The seat of war is ch iefly in the southern states\, and there our enemies by victories and defe ats are wasting daily.\n\n♪ Our own American affairs wear a more pleasin g aspect.\n\nMaryland has acceded to the Confederation at the very time wh en Britain is deluding herself with the idea that we are crumbling to piec es.\n\nAbigail Adams.\n\nNarrator: In early 1781\, Maryland became the las t state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.\n\nAlmost 5 years after d eclaring their independence\, the United States finally had the kind of co nfederation they thought they wanted\, but it was just an alliance\, not a central government.\n\n♪ 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 i t.\n\nThey would have their first successes in the North.\n\n♪ Christoph er Brown: It's in this moment that the first antislavery organizations beg in to take shape\, especially in those places where slavery is not terribl y important to the social and economic order-- Pennsylvania\, Massachusett s\, Connecticut.\n\nAnnette Gordon-Reed: It's easier in the North\, where there are fewer Black people.\n\nThe sort of traditional things to say is that the South was a slave society and the North was a society with slaves .\n\nBernard Bailyn: Before the Revolution\, slavery was never a major pub lic issue.\n\nThere were people who spoke against it and gave good reasons to what evil it was\, but it was not a major public issue.\n\nAfter the R evolution\, there never was a time when it wasn't.\n\nNarrator: In 1780\, Pennsylvania's Gradual Emancipation Act had said that anyone born into sla very in that state after the act's adoption automatically became free at 2 8\, but any man\, woman\, or child enslaved before its passage remained en slaved to the end of their lives unless they bought their freedom or had t heir owner grant it to them.\n\n♪ Voice: Any time\, any time while I was a slave\, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me and I'd been tol d I must die at the end of that minute\, I would have taken it just to sta nd one minute on God's earth a free woman.\n\nI would.\n\n[Elizabeth Freem an (Mumbet)] Narrator: When an enslaved woman in Western Massachusetts cal led Mumbet was struck by her mistress with a kitchen shovel\, she had stal ked from the house and refused to return.\n\nHer owner went to court to ge t her back.\n\nMumbet's lawyer convinced an all-White jury that since the preamble to the new Massachusetts state constitution declared all men \"fr ee and equal\" and since his client was a human being\, she should be free .\n\nThe Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed.\n\nMumbet changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman and lived nearly 50 years in Stockbridge\, serving her neighbors as a healer\, nurse\, and midwife.\n\nHer gravestone in a Stockb ridge cemetery reads\, \"She was born a slave... yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal.\"\n\n♪ By the time of her death in 1829\, al l the states from New Jersey north to New England had called for the aboli tion of slavery\, but it would take another generation and a still more te rrible war to end it everywhere in the United States.\n\n♪ ♪ Voice: Th ere are few generals that have run oftener than I have done\, but I have t aken care not to run too far and commonly have run as fast forward as back ward to convince our enemy that we were like a crab that could run either way.\n\nNathanael Greene.\n\nNarrator: One by one\, all across the Lower S outh\, British outposts either surrendered to Patriots or were abandoned-- Fort Watson\, Camden\, Orangeburg\, Fort Motte\, Fort Granby\, Fort Galph in\, Georgetown\, Augusta.\n\n[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 To wn.\n\n\"We fight\,\" Greene said\, \"get beat\, rise\, and fight again.\" \n\n♪ He couldn't have done it without local Patriot militias.\n\nFranci s Marion's outfit eluded British cavalry by hiding in the swamp so success fully that Banastre Tarleton said\, \"[A]s for this old fox\, the Devil hi mself could not catch him.\"\n\n♪ As Britain's grip on the region weaken ed\, the anarchy that had characterized the backcountry for months spirale d into chaos.\n\nPartisans on both sides seemed bent on being more cruel t han those on the other.\n\nThey tortured and murdered captives\, burned ho mes and flogged their owners\, raped women and hanged their husbands.\n\nG angs of bandits held up travelers and plundered farms.\n\nVoice: With us i n the North\, the difference is little more than a division of sentiment.\ n\nBut here\, they prosecute each other with little less than savage fury. \n\nYou can have no idea of the distress and misery that prevail in this q uarter.\n\nNathanael Greene.\n\n♪ Narrator: By the end of the summer of 1781\, the British would be penned up in just 3 coastal towns in the Carol inas and Georgia-- Wilmington\, Charles Town\, and Savannah.\n\nLondon's S outhern strategy was falling apart.\n\n♪ Voice: The King has decided tha t the principal objective of his arms in America during the war with the E nglish is to drive them from the Gulf of Mexico and the banks of the Missi ssippi\, which should be considered as the bulwark of the vast empire of N ew Spain.\n\n[Bernardo de Gálvez] ♪ Narrator: Bernardo de Gálvez-- the bold\, young governor of Spanish Louisiana-- saw an opportunity in the Am erican Revolution to take back West Florida for his king\, even before Spa in had entered the war in 1779.\n\nKathleen DuVal: Bernardo de Gálvez had big ambitions for Spain\, and he had big ambitions for himself.\n\nHe bel ieved that war against Britain would be his chance to push Spanish colonie s even farther into North America\, past Louisiana\, into the rest of the Gulf Coast\, the Appalachians\, perhaps most of Eastern North America.\n\n Narrator: As soon as Gálvez heard Spain had officially entered the war\, he left New Orleans and rallied an army that reflected the extraordinary d iversity 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 hand ful of volunteers from the United States.\n\n♪ DuVal: Gálvez began to t ake British posts.\n\nHe took Baton Rouge\, Natchez\, and then sailed with his militia and took the post of Mobile.\n\nNarrator: By the spring of 17 81\, Gálvez's only objective left in British West Florida was its capital and stronghold--Pensacola.\n\n♪ It was defended by local Black and Whit e militiamen\; British\, German\, and Loyalist soldiers\; and hundreds of Choctaws\, Chickasaws\, and Muscogee Creeks who opposed any imperial expan sion that threatened their lands in the southeastern interior.\n\n♪ Gál vez landed his army and began a siege.\n\nFor a month and a half\, Spanish guns edged closer and closer to the heart of the British defenses.\n\n[Ca nnon fires] Finally\, on May 8\, 1781\, a shell hit the British gunpowder magazine.\n\n[Explosion] The explosion killed almost a hundred men\, mostl y Loyalist troops\, and blew a wide hole in the fort's walls.\n\nGálvez's men poured through the gap\, and within hours\, the British commander sur rendered.\n\nSpanish rule was restored in West Florida and with it Spanish control of the Gulf of Mexico.\n\n♪ DuVal: West Florida is the first no nrebelling colony that Britain loses.\n\nAfter the Spanish victory at Pens acola\, many\, many people in Britain think it's time to stop this war bef ore it gets any worse.\n\n♪ Narrator: Britain was more alone than ever\, at war with the Netherlands now as well as with France and Spain\, and it s West Indian islands and Gibraltar in the Mediterranean were under attack .\n\nTo London\, North America mattered less and less\, and General Clinto n in New York could do little more than make sure that city remained in Br itish hands.\n\nde Rode: The British stronghold is in New York.\n\nIt's wh ere they won the battle in 1776 against George Washington\, which is one o f the reasons George Washington really wants to take New York\, because he feels very humiliated by that specific battle\, so for him since that tim e\, it became almost an obsession.\n\n\"If we take New York\, we're gonna win this war.\"\n\n♪ Narrator: When word came that French warships and m ore French troops would arrive on the East Coast sometime that summer\, Wa shington and Rochambeau met again in Connecticut to discuss where the flee t might\, in fact\, do the most good-- at New York or in Virginia\, where Cornwallis was now headed.\n\nWashington still favored New York.\n\nRocham beau told him that he preferred to leave the decision to the Comte de Gras se\, the admiral now commanding the French fleet in the Caribbean\, but in private letters to de Grasse\, Rochambeau argued that blockading the Ches apeake should take precedence.\n\nIn the meantime\, Rochambeau marched his more than 4\,000 men from Newport to join Washington's army in Westcheste r County\, New York.\n\nThe French were stunned by what they saw.\n\n♪ V oice: I cannot too often repeat how astonished I have been at the American Army.\n\nIt is inconceivable that troops nearly naked\, badly paid\, and composed of old men\, Negroes\, and children should march so well.\n\n[Cro mot 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.\n\n[Ludwig von Closen] ♪ Narrator: As Ame rican and French soldiers probed British defenses around New York\, Washin gton waited for Admiral de Grasse to pick his target-- New York or Virgini a.\n\n♪ On May 20\, 1781\, Lord Cornwallis arrived at Petersburg\, Virgi nia.\n\nHe commanded some 7\,000 British\, German\, and Loyalist troops.\n \nBenedict Arnold was not among them.\n\nHe had been recalled to New York and would eventually sail for England\, never to see his country again.\n\ n♪ Cornwallis first tried to hunt down the Marquis de Lafayette\, who ha d been harassing British forces in Virginia\, but Lafayette managed to sli p away.\n\nVoice: You can be entirely calm with regard to the rapid marche s of Lord Cornwallis.\n\nLet him march from St.\n\nAugustine to Boston.\n\ nWhat he wins in his front he loses in his rear.\n\nHis army will bury its elf without requiring us to fight him.\n\n[Lafayette] ♪ Narrator: Cornwa llis unleashed two raiding parties into the heart of Virginia.\n\n250 hors emen\, commanded by Banastre Tarleton\, were ordered to try to capture Tho mas Jefferson and the Virginia Assembly\, now meeting at Charlottesville\, where Tarleton managed to seize several legislators\, including Daniel Bo one from Kentucky County\, but with only moments to spare\, Jefferson esca ped his would-be captors on horseback.\n\n♪ Voice: Such terror and confu sion.\n\nWhat an alarming crisis is this.\n\nWe were off in a twinkling.\n \nThe nearer the mountains\, the greater the safety was the conclusion\, s o on we traveled through byways and brambles.\n\n[Ambler] ♪ Narrator: Be tsy Ambler's family was on the run\, too\, eventually finding temporary sa nctuary on a friend's backcountry plantation.\n\n♪ After 3 mostly fruitl ess weeks spent marching through the backcountry\, Cornwallis and his men started southeast towards Williamsburg.\n\nSome 4\,500 ex-slaves now trail ed along behind.\n\n♪ By bringing the war into Virginia\, Cornwallis had provided the largest body of Black people in North America the possibilit y of freedom.\n\nAmong those who threw in their lot with the British were 23 from Thomas Jefferson's estates and 16 from George Washington's Mount V ernon.\n\nGordon-Reed: What do you do?\n\nDo you stay\, or do you take a c hance at your freedom and leave your family?\n\nHow many people can go wit h you?\n\nSometimes whole families left together.\n\n♪ I would imagine i t 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 .\n\n♪ Voice: Has the God who made the White man and the Black left any record declaring us a different species?\n\nAre we not sustained by the sa me power\, supported by the same food\, hurt by the same wounds\, pleased with the same delights\, and propagated by the same means?\n\nAnd should w e not then enjoy the same liberty and be protected by the same laws?\n\n ♪ Some consider us as much property as a house or a ship and think how a nxious we must be to raise ourselves from this degrading state.\n\nJames F orten.\n\nNarrator: James Forten was born free in Philadelphia.\n\nAt 9\, he had been in the crowd at the Pennsylvania State House that heard the De claration of Independence read to the public for the very first time.\n\nF orten took the promise of the Declaration to heart and never questioned wh ether its self-evident truths applied to him.\n\n♪ Now\, in the summer o f 1781\, Forten was 14\, old enough to fight for his country.\n\nWith his mother's permission\, he went down to the docks\, signed on to a privateer \, and set out to sea.\n\nForten was one of 20 men and boys of color in a crew of 200.\n\nFor privateers eager to attract volunteers\, race was no b arrier.\n\n♪ His first voyage was a triumph\, but the second was a disas ter.\n\nHis ship was overtaken and captured by a British warship.\n\n♪ O nce 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.\n\nForten refused.\n\nHe could not turn his back on his country.\n\n[Gulls squawkin g] 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.\n\n[Bell rings] ♪ Meanwhile\, starting in June 1781\, Cornwallis began to receive a seri es of contradictory communications from General Clinton back in New York C ity.\n\nFirst\, Cornwallis was to send nearly half his forces north to New York\, which Clinton still believed Washington's most likely target.\n\nT hen Clinton changed his mind.\n\nCornwallis was now to send those same tro ops to the Delaware Bay\, where they might sail north and threaten Philade lphia.\n\nFinally\, with his men aboard boats in Portsmouth and ready to s ail\, Cornwallis was to forget moving them north at all.\n\nInstead\, he w as to locate and fortify a deep-water\, year-round port in Virginia suitab le for the Royal Navy's largest warships.\n\nCornwallis' engineers recomme nded Yorktown.\n\nHe arrived there on August 2\, 1781.\n\n♪ On August 14 \, Washington learned that the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse was on its way to the Chesapeake\, not New York.\n\n♪ Voice: Matters having no w come to a crisis and a decisive plan to be determined on\, I was obliged to give up all idea of attacking New York.\n\n[Washington] de Rode: Georg e Washington is a realistic military man who knows when to not attack\, an d so with the advice of the French that had much more experience in warfar e\, he listens to them and decides to march to the South.\n\nNarrator: The n word arrived from Lafayette that Cornwallis was establishing his army at Yorktown.\n\nIf the French Navy could command the Chesapeake and keep the British fleet out\, Lafayette wrote\, \"the British Army would\, I think\ , be ours.\"\n\nBut before Washington could move his army south\, some way had to be found to pay his men.\n\nCongress was broke.\n\n[Horse whinnies ] Voice: My personal credit\, which\, thank heaven\, I have preserved thro ugh all the tempests of the war\, has been substituted for that which the country has lost.\n\nI am now striving to transfer that credit to the publ ic.\n\nRobert Morris.\n\nNarrator: Washington turned to an old friend\, th e richest man in America-- Robert Morris.\n\nMorris had again and again us ed his own money to supply the Continental Army.\n\nHe had also used publi c funds for personal speculations and made millions in government contract s.\n\nWilliam Hogeland: Robert Morris was a war profiteer and mingled publ ic and private funds with unabashed abandon\, and without him\, it's not c lear at all that the Revolution would have been won or even would have bee n fought very long because he did front his own money to keep the army in the field.\n\nPeople said he financed the American Revolution.\n\nThat's l argely true.\n\nCritics of Morris said that the Revolution financed him\, and that's true\, too.\n\n♪ Narrator: Now Morris combined his own funds with borrowed Spanish gold and silver to pay the men.\n\nVoice: Each of us received a month's pay.\n\nThis was the first that could be called money which we had received as wages since the year '76.\n\nJoseph Plumb Martin. \n\n[People cheering] Narrator: Leaving 4\,000 Continentals behind\, the F rench and American armies began to make their way south in 3 great columns on August 18.\n\n♪ The campaign was an enormous undertaking and a great gamble.\n\n♪ In order to keep Cornwallis from escaping by sea\, French naval forces from both the Caribbean and Newport\, Rhode Island\, would ha ve to elude British warships patrolling the Atlantic coast and enter the C hesapeake Bay.\n\nAt the same time\, thousands of French and American troo ps\, who could not speak one another's language\, would have to continue t o make their way together some 450 miles from Westchester County to Virgin ia in the heat of summer.\n\n[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.\n\nYou have to think of thousands of men marching through these little roads.\n\nThey have to create bridges.\n\nThey have to get obstacles out of the way\, and we're not talking just about men mar ching.\n\nWe have a lot of animals behind them.\n\n♪ In order to not wal k in the middle of the day\, they start in the middle of the night\, so it 's pitch dark.\n\nYou're walking on little paths\, probably quite muddy\, and you just walk\, and then for a few hours later\, you have to stop beca use you have to create your new encampment.\n\nYou get some food\, which o ften arrived way too late.\n\nNarrator: To deceive the British into thinki ng that he was planning an amphibious assault on Staten Island or Sandy Ho ok\, Washington had made sure that false documents suggesting an imminent attack fell into British hands.\n\n♪ Philbrick: Washington is able to co nvince Clinton that he is going to attack New York.\n\nIt's a brilliant se ries of deceptive maneuvers that Washington is able to pull off.\n\nBy the time Clinton realizes that Washington is not going after him but is on hi s way south\, Washington is in Philadelphia.\n\n[Gulls squawking] Narrator : At Yorktown\, Cornwallis hated the kind of defensive war he was being as ked to oversee and considered the port and Gloucester across the river \"d angerous posts\,\" since neither commanded the surrounding countryside.\n\ nHe'd started by fortifying Gloucester.\n\nThe work had gone slowly.\n\nHe 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 W est Indies and was approaching the coast of North America.\"\n\nBy late su mmer\, work had begun on the fortifications at Yorktown itself.\n\nMeanwhi le\, at Portsmouth\, where some of Cornwallis' men remained\, smallpox was ravaging the former slaves who had followed the British army there.\n\nWh at should be done\, the commander at Portsmouth\, wrote Cornwallis\, \"wit h the hundreds...that are dying by scores every day?\"\n\nVoice: It is sho cking to think of the state of the Negroes\, but we cannot bring a number of sick and useless ones to this place.\n\n♪ I leave it to your humanity to do the best you can for them\, but on your arrival here\, we must adop t some plan to prevent an evil which will certainly produce some fatal dis temper in the army.\n\nLord Cornwallis.\n\n♪ Narrator: Portsmouth was ev acuated\, and the troops joined Cornwallis' army at Yorktown.\n\n♪ It wa s from there\, on the morning of August 30\, that Captain Johann Ewald loo ked out toward the Chesapeake Bay.\n\nVoice: I could detect 3 heavy vessel s in the distance.\n\nWe soon had news that the 3 vessels which lay before our noses were French.\n\n[Ewald] Narrator: Admiral de Grasse was now lyi ng at anchor just inside the narrow entrance to the Chesapeake Bay between Cape Charles and Cape Henry.\n\nPhilbrick: The Chesapeake is a huge bay\, but its point of access is the two capes.\n\nIt's very narrow\, and anyon e who can control that controls this huge body of water.\n\n[Horse whinnie s] Narrator: On the morning of September 5\, a dispatch rider caught up wi th George Washington near Head of Elk\, Maryland\, with the good news that the French fleet had arrived.\n\n♪ That same day\, though\, sailors abo ard de Grasse's flagship spotted sails approaching from the north.\n\nThey were 19 British ships sent from New York with orders to find and destroy the French fleet.\n\nde Grasse might have stayed where he was\, blocking e ntrance to the bay\, but if he had done so\, the 8 French ships\, loaded w ith heavy siege guns that were on their way from Newport\, would have been kept out of the Chesapeake.\n\nde Grasse moved out into the open sea to c onfront his enemy.\n\n♪ The two fleets maneuvered for 6 hours.\n\nComman ders scattered sand across their decks to absorb the sailors' blood they k new was about to be shed.\n\n♪ At 4:00 in the afternoon\, they opened fi re.\n\n[Cannon fire continues] The broadsides continued until dark.\n\n[Ma n shouts] Narrator: The result was a standoff\, but the British vessels go t the worst of it and were forced to limp back to New York.\n\n♪ Meanwhi le\, the French squadron from Newport carrying the heavy siege guns had sl ipped unnoticed into the bay\, and\, avoiding Cornwallis' defenses at York town\, sailed up the James River\, and Washington and Rochambeau's armies were arriving at Williamsburg.\n\nCornwallis was trapped.\n\nLengel: From the very beginning\, Washington recognized that this war was going to end when the stars aligned.\n\nHe's been waiting for this\, and he snatches at it.\n\nVoice: We prepared to move down and pay our old acquaintance the B ritish a visit.\n\nI doubt not that their wish was not to have so many of us come at once\, as their accommodations were rather scanty.\n\nThey thou ght the fewer\, the better.\n\nWe thought the more\, the merrier.\n\nJosep h Plumb Martin.\n\n♪ Narrator: On September 28\, 1781\, at 5 A.M.\, the French and American armies\, now 18\,000 strong\, started toward Yorktown. \n\nThe allies established a crescent-shaped encampment around the town-- the French on the left\, the Americans on the right.\n\nWashington and Roc hambeau set up headquarters just a few hundred yards apart.\n\n♪ The two commanders rode forward to reconnoiter.\n\nWashington had long understood Yorktown's strategic limitations and the hole the British had dug for the mselves.\n\n♪ 800 to 1\,000 yards from Yorktown stood an outer line of t renches and redoubts\, their bases bristling with abatis\, sharpened logs meant to repel invaders.\n\n♪ Black laborers could be seen struggling to complete an inner ring around the town.\n\n♪ Swamps and marshy creeks m ade a direct assault impractical.\n\nThe allies didn't have time to starve the defenders\, either.\n\nThe French fleet was due to return to the Cari bbean within weeks.\n\nA traditional\, European-style siege seemed to be t he answer.\n\nWashington left its planning to the French.\n\nThe Americans were \"totally ignorant of the operations of a siege\,\" Rochambeau said. \n\nHe had taken part in 14 of them.\n\n♪ At dawn on September 30\, Fren ch and American troops edged cautiously toward the outermost British defen ses\, expecting stiff resistance.\n\nInstead\, they found them empty.\n\nC ornwallis\, outnumbered 3 to 1\, had pulled his men back into town.\n\nLen gel: Cornwallis makes a fatal mistake.\n\nHe's exhausted.\n\nHe's depresse d.\n\nA commander who otherwise is very effective is just not at his best. \n\nNarrator: 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 fir st parallel trench and begin the siege.\n\n♪ British artillery hurled sh ot and shells at the Americans and Frenchmen as they worked.\n\n[Men shout ing] Sarah Osborn\, the wife of a New Jersey corporal\, was one of the wom en who carried beef\, bread\, and hot coffee to the men as they dug.\n\nOn e day\, she remembered\, George Washington happened by and asked her if sh e wasn't afraid of the British cannonballs.\n\n\"No\,\" she said\, \"It wo uld not do for the men to fight and starve\, too.\"\n\n[Distant explosion] When the parallel was complete\, it stretched for more than a mile\, a tr ench 10 feet wide and nearly 4 feet deep.\n\n♪ At 3:00 in the afternoon on October 9\, the French opened fire.\n\nTwo hours later\, Washington was given the honor of touching off the first American cannon.\n\n[Man shouti ng] Narrator: All along the allied lines\, cannon and mortars began firing into Yorktown.\n\n♪ Voice: The remainder of the night passed in a dread ful slaughter.\n\nSeveral parts of the garrison were in flames on this nig ht\, and the whole discovered a view awful and tremendous.\n\nBartholomew James.\n\nVoice: It was as if one witnessed the shock of an earthquake.\n\ n3\,600 shot by the enemy were counted in this 24 hours.\n\nThese were fir ed at the city into our lines and against the ships in the harbor.\n\nPriv ate Johann Conrad Doehla.\n\n♪ Narrator: By the night of October 11\, th e 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.\n\nThe American target was redoubt Number Ten.\n\nThe men wer e from Lafayette's force.\n\nAlexander Hamilton was in command.\n\nJoseph Plumb Martin and his company led the way.\n\n♪ Voice: We advanced beyond the trenches and lay down on the ground to await the signal.\n\nOur watch word was \"Rochambeau\,\" a good watchword\, for being pronounced \"Rocham beau\,\" it sounded\, when pronounced quick\, like \"Rush on\, boys.\"\n\n [Martin] [Cannon fires] Narrator: When the signal was given\, Martin and h is fellow soldiers rushed forward.\n\nRight behind them came Rhode Islande rs\, including many free Black men or former slaves.\n\n♪ The moment the y reached the abatis\, the redoubt's defenders began firing down into them .\n\n♪ Voice: But there was no stopping us.\n\nI forced a passage at a p lace where I saw our shot had cut away some of the abatis.\n\nWhile passin g\, a man at my side received a ball in his head and fell under my feet\, crying out bitterly.\n\nThe fort was taken and all quiet in a short time.\ n\n[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.\n\n\"Where are you?\"\n\n\"Tell the Marquis I am not in mine\ ,\" the French officer replied\, \"but will be in 5 minutes.\"\n\n[Cannon fires] Voice: There was no mercy that night.\n\nComplaints and groans coul d be heard everywhere.\n\nSomeone called out here\, another there\, beggin g to be killed for the love of God\, as the redoubt was strewn with the de ad and wounded\, so much so that we had to walk on them.\n\nGeorg Daniel F lohr.\n\nNarrator: The allies lost no time in rolling their big guns into both redoubts and opening fire on Yorktown.\n\nFriederike Baer: It was abs olutely horrific.\n\nThere was no moment to rest.\n\nThere was no place to hide.\n\nFor days\, there was continuous bombardment.\n\n[Shells whooshin g] ♪ Narrator: Cornwallis knew his cause was hopeless\, but he could not seem to bear what Banastre Tarleton called \"the mortification of a surre nder.\"\n\n♪ [Snare drum playing] At about 10:00 in the morning on Octob er 17\, 1781\, a drummer boy appeared on a British parapet\, beating his d rum\, the signal that Cornwallis wished to negotiate.\n\nWhen the thunder of the guns drowned out the drumming\, an officer climbed up next to the b oy and waved a white handkerchief.\n\nVoice: He might have beat away till doomsday if he had not been sighted by men on the front lines\, but when t he firing ceased\, I thought I had never heard a drum equal to it\, the mo st delightful music to us all.\n\nEbenezer Denny.\n\n[Snare drum continues ] Narrator: The Battle of Yorktown was over.\n\nThe Patriots and their Fre nch allies had won.\n\n♪ The world would never be the same.\n\n♪ Surre nder negotiations went on for a day and a half.\n\nCornwallis wanted his B ritish and German soldiers free to sail home.\n\nWashington refused.\n\nHe recalled the disrespectful way Patriot General Benjamin Lincoln and his m en had been treated after the fall of Charles Town.\n\nUntil a formal peac e was reached\, the surrendering soldiers were to remain in the United Sta tes as prisoners of war.\n\nCornwallis had little choice but to agree.\n\n ♪ 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.\n\nOnly the Fre nch\, they'd been told\, were worthy opponents.\n\nWashington and Rochambe au waited on horseback.\n\nLord Cornwallis was nowhere to be seen.\n\nHe c laimed to be ill\, but\, as a professional soldier\, he may simply have be en too humiliated at having to surrender his army to a group of rebels to make an appearance.\n\nCornwallis' second in command\, General Charles O'H ara\, stood in for him and tried to surrender his sword to General Rochamb eau.\n\nRochambeau refused to accept it.\n\n\"We are subordinate to the Am ericans\,\" he said.\n\n\"General Washington will give you orders.\"\n\nWa shington wouldn't accept it\, either.\n\nHe passed O'Hara on to his second in command\, Benjamin Lincoln\, who formally accepted the sword and then handed it back\, as custom dictated.\n\n♪ Conway: The ultimate humiliati on-- not only having to surrender to the Americans\, but having to surrend er to the second in command of the Americans.\n\n♪ Voice: With what sold iers in the world could one do what was done by these men?\n\nOne can perc eive what an enthusiasm which these poor fellows call liberty can do.\n\nW ho would have thought a hundred years ago that out of this multitude of ra bble would arise a people who could defy kings?\n\nJohann Ewald.\n\n[Churc h bell ringing] Voice: This is a blow\, my Lord\, which gives me the most serious concern\, as it will\, in its consequences\, be exceedingly detrim ental to the King's interest in this country.\n\nHenry Clinton.\n\nNarrato r: When the Prime Minister\, Lord North\, finally heard about the surrende r at Yorktown 5 weeks after it happened\, he staggered around as if he'd b een hit by a musket ball\, waving his arms and crying out again and again\ , \"Oh\, God\, it is all over.\"\n\n♪ In a speech to Parliament\, King G eorge III said that\, while recent events in Virginia had been \"unfortuna te\,\" 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.\n\n♪ Some 50\,000 British\, German\, and Loyalist troops had lost their lives i n North America.\n\nThe British national debt had doubled.\n\nOther battle fields seemed more important-- in the Caribbean\, where they would soon de stroy Admiral de Grasse's fleet\; in the Mediterranean\, where they still held Gibraltar\; and in India\, where they continued to expand their empir e.\n\n♪ On February 27\, 1782\, Parliament voted to halt all offensive a ctivity in North America.\n\nLord North's government fell.\n\nAlan Taylor: Could they have kept the war going from a purely military perspective?\n\ nSure\, but politically\, the will to fight vanishes\, so the pro-war admi nistration is toppled\, and the King is forced to accept a new government with a new political coalition that is committed to negotiating a peace se ttlement with the American rebels.\n\n♪ Voice: Alas\, what remains of Yo rktown now\, what had given it its high privilege\, that of being accessib le from every quarter\, proved its greatest misfortune.\n\nIts excellent h arbor rendered it the port of all others most favorable for an invading en emy.\n\nToo soon did they avail themselves of it\, and this Eden became de solate.\n\nBetsy Ambler.\n\nNarrator: Betsy Ambler and her family never re turned to Yorktown\, settling permanently in Richmond.\n\n♪ Not long aft er the surrender\, slaveholders began turning up at Yorktown\, eager to re claim the surviving runaways who had fled to the British.\n\nWashington se t up two fortified posts where slaves were to be kept under guard until th eir owner came to claim them.\n\nPatriot troops were encouraged to help tr ack them down.\n\n♪ \"The Negroes looked condemned\,\" one militiaman re membered\, \"for the British had promised them their freedom.\"\n\n♪ 5 e nslaved people captured at Yorktown were returned to Thomas Jefferson.\n\n Two more\, both women\, were returned to George Washington's Mount Vernon. \n\n♪ Washington's army soon moved north.\n\nRochambeau's men marched up to Boston the following year and sailed away.\n\n♪ Cornwallis' defeated men were marched to prison camps in the interior.\n\nEager to get them ba ck\, Parliament finally recognized captured Americans as prisoners of war. \n\nRedcoats and rebels alike could expect to be exchanged.\n\nJennifer Kr eisberg: [Vocalizing \"Amazing Grace\"] After 7 months of suffering aboard the prison ship the \"Jersey\,\" James Forten was released\, emaciated bu t lucky to be alive.\n\n♪ He walked all the way home to Philadelphia fro m New York\, most of the way barefoot.\n\nHe astonished his mother on arri val.\n\nShe had long since given him up for dead.\n\n♪ After the war\, F orten would build a great fortune making sails for the American merchant f leet and use part of those earnings to fund the abolitionist movement.\n\n When decades later\, a friend urged him to apply for one of the pensions b eing granted to war veterans\, Forten refused.\n\n\"I was a volunteer\, si r\,\" he said.\n\nHe didn't want money.\n\nHe wanted citizenship.\n\n♪ V oice: Our country asserts for itself the glory of being the freest upon th e surface of the globe.\n\nShe proclaimed freedom to all mankind.\n\nThe b rightness of her glory was radiant\, but one dark spot still dimmed its lu ster.\n\nSo much is doing in the world to ameliorate the condition of mank ind\, and the spirit of freedom is marching with rapid strides and causing tyrants to tremble.\n\nMay America awake from the apathy in which she has long slumbered.\n\nShe must sooner or later fall in with the irresistible current in the cause of liberty.\n\nJames Forten.\n\nJasanoff: Loyalists knew the war was lost\, and the question for them became\, \"What's gonna happen to us next?\"\n\nand--given the violence\, this insurgency\, counte rinsurgency\, back and forth\, down-and-dirty fighting in the countryside- - Loyalists had every reason to fear that now that the Patriots were in ch arge\, they were gonna find themselves on the rough end of recriminations. \n\n[Pounding on door] Narrator: Everywhere\, Patriots were seeking reveng e on men and women who had once been their neighbors and fellow subjects o f the King.\n\n\"The mob\,\" one Loyalist wrote\, \"now reigns... fully an d uncontrolled.\"\n\n[Gunshots and shouting] In Georgia\, Patriots hunted down and killed Loyalists who had sought sanctuary in the swamps.\n\n♪ O ther Loyalists were exiled and their property confiscated.\n\n♪ Voice: I cannot say I look back with regret at the part I took from motives of loy alty\, from love to my country as well as duty to my sovereign\, and\, not withstanding my sufferings\, I would do it again if there was occasion.\n\ nJohn Peters.\n\n[Church bell ringing] Narrator: John Peters and his wife Ann settled in Nova Scotia.\n\nMost Loyalists would choose to stay despite the danger and take their chances\, hoping to resume their old lives in t he new country\, but thousands decided to leave.\n\nThey huddled together in the last British strongholds of New York City\, Charles Town\, and Sava nnah\, waiting for ships to be found to take them away.\n\nJasanoff: In an incredible gesture at the end of the American Revolution\, the British go vernment 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 outs ide the place that they had always called home.\n\nNarrator: General Guy C arleton\, who had replaced Henry Clinton as commander of British forces\, was expected to move more than 30\,000 troops with their mountains of supp lies as well as 60\,000 Loyalists and 15\,000 enslaved people out of the U nited States.\n\nCarleton began that summer with Savannah.\n\nSome 3\,000 Whites and perhaps 5\,000 Blacks sailed to other British colonies.\n\nChar les Town was next-- almost 11\,000 people\, Black and White.\n\nMost of th em ended up in Jamaica and the Bahamas.\n\nOnly New York remained in Briti sh hands.\n\n♪ Meanwhile\, in Paris\, Benjamin Franklin\, John Adams\, J ohn Jay\, and Henry Laurens were trying to work out a permanent peace.\n\n Ignoring their instructions to include the French\, whose assistance had e nsured their astonishing victory\, the American envoys decided to negotiat e alone with British emissaries.\n\n\"Let us be honest and grateful to Fra nce\,\" John Jay said\, \"but let us think for ourselves.\"\n\n♪ They ha d a draft treaty within a week.\n\nIts terms were generous to the American s\, so generous they would cause the new British government to fall\, as w ell.\n\n♪ It declared the 13 former colonies \"to be free\, Sovereign an d independent states\" and set expansive boundaries\, stretching all the w ay from the Great Lakes to Florida and from the Appalachians westward to t he Mississippi\, a territory larger than England\, France\, and Spain put together.\n\nBritish troops were to be withdrawn with \"all convenient Spe ed\" and were barred\, the agreement said\, from \"carrying away any Negro es or other Property of the American Inhabitants.\"\n\n♪ This provisiona l treaty was signed by the American and British negotiators on November 30 \, 1782.\n\nA final comprehensive treaty would not come for another 9 mont hs.\n\n♪ Joseph Ellis: There's a consensus at the end among the negotiat ors\, including the Brits\, that we're witnessing the creation of an Ameri can empire.\n\n♪ de Rode: Some people would say the British lost the war \, but then they won the aftermath\, and France lost that period.\n\nThey could not reinvent themselves in order to prevent their collapse.\n\nThe p romise 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.\n\nThe republic had won against th e monarchy.\n\nIt inspired many.\n\nNarrator: The American Revolution woul d be the opening signal for more than two centuries of revolution\, first in Europe\, then in the Caribbean\, South America\, Asia\, and Africa.\n\n Baer: The ideas are very powerful.\n\nWhen they're talking about liberty\, when they're talking about equality\, when they're talking about opportun ity\, the freedom from oppression\, the American Revolutionary movement se rved as a model for other societies and communities around the world.\n\ n♪ Narrator: But in early 1783 at the Continental Army's winter encampme nt at Newburgh\, New York\, things were not going well.\n\nAn unsigned man ifesto began circulating among Washington's officers openly calling for a mutiny.\n\nIf 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 p ay they were owed.\n\n[Approaching hoofbeats] On March 15\, at a meeting t o hear more about the conspiracy\, officers heard horse's hooves.\n\n[Hors e whinnies] The door flew open.\n\nWashington and his aides entered.\n\nTh e general stepped to the lectern.\n\n♪ He spoke for 20 minutes\, urging his officers to resist drowning \"our rising empire in blood.\"\n\nMost sh ifted in their seats\, unconvinced.\n\n♪ Then Washington asked if he cou ld read a letter from a Virginia congressman who had pledged support for t he army.\n\nHe stumbled over the first words\, paused\, and pulled a pair of spectacles from his coat.\n\nVoice: Gentlemen\, you must pardon me.\n\n I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.\n\n[W ashington] ♪ Narrator: The rest of the letter didn't matter.\n\nMany off icers\, hard men made harder still by battle\, were openly weeping.\n\nThe mutiny was over before it could begin.\n\n♪ Voice: The unparalleled per severance of the armies of the United States\, through almost every possib le suffering and discouragement for the space of 8 long years\, was little short of a standing miracle.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\nNarrator: As the Co ntinental Army began to disband\, Washington tried again to persuade Congr ess 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 pr omising to redeem them one day.\n\n♪ Voice: Some of the soldiers went of f for home the same day their fetters were knocked off.\n\nOthers stayed a nd got their final settlement certificates\, which they sold to procure de cent clothing and money sufficient to enable them to pass with decency thr ough the country and to appear something like themselves when they arrived among their friends.\n\nI was among those.\n\n♪ When the country had dr ained the last drop of service it could screw out of the poor soldiers\, w e returned to drift like old\, worn-out horses.\n\nJoseph Plumb Martin.\n\ n♪ Ellis: That group of people are ordinary Americans\, below the level of ordinary\, and they won the war because they never left.\n\nThey stayed .\n\nThat was it.\n\nThey refused to leave\, and\, um... um... you can sou nd pretty patriotic\, but I don't think you can be patriotic enough about them.\n\n♪ Voice: We had lived together as a family of brothers for seve ral years--had shared with each other the hardships\, dangers\, and suffer ings incident to a soldier's life\; had sympathized with each other in tro uble and sickness-- and now we were to be parted forever\, as unconditiona lly separated as though the grave lay between us.\n\n[Martin] ♪ [Gulls s quawking] Narrator: By the spring of 1783\, more than 30\,000 Loyalists an d 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 C arleton could not tell George Washington precisely when they would all be gone.\n\nSoldiers shipped out for home or the West Indies.\n\nSome Loyalis ts planned to sail to Quebec or the Bahamas\, but the overwhelming majorit y-- 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 Scoti a.\n\nOf 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 ha ve 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 th ey fled their Patriot owners\, they would be free.\n\nThat freedom now see med in peril.\n\n♪ Voice: Peace was restored between America and Great B ritain\, which issued universal joy among all parties except us who had es caped from slavery and taken refuge in the English army\, for a report pre vailed at New York that all slaves were to be delivered up to their master s.\n\nThis dreadful rumor filled us all with inexpressible anguish and ter ror\, especially when we saw our masters coming and seizing upon their sla ves in the streets of New York or even dragging them out of their beds.\n\ nMany of the slaves had very cruel masters so that thoughts of returning h ome with them embittered life to us.\n\nFor some days\, we lost our appeti te for food\, and sleep departed from our eyes.\n\nBoston King.\n\nNarrato r: From his headquarters up the Hudson\, George Washington continued to in sist every runaway be returned to his or her owner.\n\nGeneral Carleton re fused.\n\n\"National Honour\,\" he told Washington\, required him to make good on official British pledges made to persons of \"any complexion.\"\n\ nVoice: The English had compassion upon us in the day of distress.\n\nIn c onsequence of this\, each of us received a certificate from the commanding officer at New York\, which dispelled all our fears.\n\n[King] ♪ Narrat or: Carleton decreed that any enslaved person who had left a Patriot owner and served behind the British lines for 12 months was free.\n\nDisputes b etween runaways and owners or slave catchers determined to return them to slavery were adjudicated by a committee of 4 British officers and 3 Americ ans who met weekly at Fraunces Tavern on Pearl Street.\n\n♪ Voice: I cam e from Virginia.\n\nI was with Lord Dunmore\, washing and ironing in his s ervice.\n\nI came with him to New York and was in service with him till he went away.\n\nMy master came for me.\n\nI told him I would not go with hi m.\n\nHe took my money and stole my child from me and sent it to Virginia. \n\nJudith Jackson.\n\n♪ Narrator: Judith Jackson won the right to go to Nova Scotia\, but she stayed on in New York\, frantically trying to recov er her daughter until she was forced to sail without her.\n\n♪ [Man shou ts] Narrator: There were more tense moments at dockside.\n\nBefore any ves sel carrying Black passengers\, slave or free\, could leave New York\, Bri tish and American inspectors demanded to see their certificates and entere d their names and descriptions in separate ledgers... Rhiannon Giddens: [V ocalizing \"Dean Cadalan Samhach\"] ♪ Narrator: but once underway\, Bost on King\, Harry Washington\, and all the hundreds of other free persons th e British allowed to sail north were filled\, as King wrote\, \"with joy a nd gratitude.\"\n\n♪ In the end\, Nova Scotia proved cold and unforgivin g.\n\nBlack refugees were not made welcome.\n\n♪ Both men would eventual ly join nearly 1\,200 other African Americans who emigrated again\, this t ime to Sierra Leone in West Africa\, where they founded a new British colo ny with a new capital city they called Freetown.\n\nVoice: If we had the m eans of publishing to the world the many acts of treachery and cruelty com mitted 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.\ n\nOld Smoke.\n\nNarrator: The 150\,000 Native Americans who lived in the vast territory that was now the United States were not so much as mentione d in the treaty.\n\nKreisberg: [Vocalizing \"Grief\"] Voice: We were struc k with astonishment at hearing we were forgot.\n\nWe could not believe it possible such firm friends and allies could be so neglected by England\, w hom we had served with so much zeal and fidelity.\n\nThayendanegea\, Josep h Brant.\n\nThe losers in the negotiation of Paris are the Native American s.\n\nI mean\, it would be hard-pressed to say that they'd be better off i f the British had won\, but they probably would have.\n\n♪ 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.\n\n ♪ Voice: In this late war\, we have suffered much.\n\nOur blood has been spilled with yours\, and many of our young men have fallen by the side of your warriors.\n\n♪ Almost all those places where your warriors have le ft their bones\, there our bones are seen also.\n\n[Stockbridge petitioner s] ♪ Philip Deloria: The Stockbridge Indians\, their home\, their land i s gonna go away.\n\nThey're not gonna be able to hold on to that\, and the y are moved to New York.\n\nThen they end up in Wisconsin.\n\nLike so many tribes\, right\, they end up being kicked around and moved from place to place.\n\nThis is\, of course\, the story of Native people relative to the United States.\n\n♪ Voice: Beloved men and warriors of the United State s\, we\, the women of the Cherokee Nation\, now speak to you.\n\nWe are mo thers and have many sons\, some of them warriors and beloved men.\n\nOur c ry is all for peace.\n\n♪ This peace must last forever.\n\nLet your wome n hear our words.\n\n[Delegation of Cherokee Women] [Drum and rattle playi ng] Narrator: There would be no peace.\n\nAs the United States moved inexo rably westward\, Native nations would continue to fight for their independ ence for another century.\n\n♪ Native Americans would not become citizen s of the United States until 1924\, and their struggle to remain sovereign would never end.\n\n♪ ♪ At 1:00 in the afternoon on November 25\, 178 3\, George Washington-- \"straight as a dart\,\" an eyewitness recalled\, \"and as noble as he could be\"-- led a procession of soldiers and civilia ns down Bowery Lane and Queen Street\, west across Wall Street\, and then down Broadway.\n\n[Fireworks pop and crackle] The British were finally gon e.\n\nWashington was back in the city he had been forced to abandon in 177 6.\n\nNew Yorkers celebrated for days with illuminations\, bonfires\, and fireworks... [Fireworks continue] and now George Washington had one more d uty to perform.\n\nHe would ride to Annapolis\, Maryland\, where the Confe deration Congress was now meeting\, and formally resign his commission.\n\ n[Trumpet playing \"Amazing Grace\"] Ellis: He knew what he was doing.\n\n He walks away from power.\n\nHe's not gonna be a Cromwell.\n\nHe's not gon na be a Caesar.\n\nHe's not gonna be what Napoleon is gonna become.\n\nHe could have easily become dictator head\, and he had no interest in that wh atsoever.\n\n♪ Narrator: Accompanied by two military aides and his ensla ved companion William Lee\, Washington set out right away for Mount Vernon \, hoping to be home for Christmas Eve.\n\n♪ Voice: These are the times that tried men's souls\, and they are over\, and the greatest and complete st Revolution the world ever knew gloriously and happily accomplished.\n\n As United States\, we are equal to the importance of the title\, but other wise we are not.\n\nOur union is the most sacred thing and that which ever y man should be most proud and tender of.\n\nOur great title is Americans. \n\nThomas Paine.\n\n[Drum roll] Narrator: The war had brought the states together\, but peace soon threatened to tear them apart.\n\nSmall states c ontinued to fear large ones.\n\nNorthern and Southern states jockeyed for dominance and quarreled over borders.\n\nVermonters had already declared t hemselves a separate republic.\n\nNorth Carolina's Overmountain settlers w ere seeking to secede and form their own state called Franklin.\n\n[Gunfir e] Elsewhere\, farmers turned to violence to protest state taxes they cons idered unreasonable.\n\nIn Massachusetts\, protest became insurrection\, S hays' Rebellion put down only after former comrades in arms fired on each other.\n\nA \"cloud of evils\,\" George Washington wrote\, \"was threateni ng the tranquility of the Union.\"\n\n♪ Voice: Our situation is truly de licate and critical.\n\nOn the one hand\, we stand in need of a strong Fed eral Government founded on principles that will support the prosperity and union of the states.\n\nOn the other\, we have struggled for liberty and made lofty sacrifices at her shrine\, and there are still many among us wh o revere her name too much to relinquish the rights of man for the dignity of government.\n\nMercy Otis Warren.\n\n♪ Narrator: The new Congress\, created by the Articles of Confederation\, was toothless\, saddled with co lossal debts\, and incapable of collecting taxes with which to pay them of f.\n\nChristopher Brown: It's not hard to imagine at all Britain\, France\ , and Spain picking off individual states to create sort of commercial all iances or political alliances and military alliances\, as client states\, and all kinds of things.\n\nSounds crazy\, but it's no more crazy to have actually created a federal government that would actually work\, and famou sly\, a lot of British observers throughout the 1780s-- \"Just give them a few years.\n\nIt's all gonna fall apart.\"\n\nPhilbrick: One of the lesso ns Washington learned during the American Revolution is that without a pow erful central government\, nothing effective could happen.\n\nThe frustrat ions he experienced trying to get these 13 colonies to work in unison and failing every time in the Continental Congress taught him that something h ad to change.\n\n♪ Narrator: In late May 1787\, 55 delegates met in Phil adelphia to draw up a constitution.\n\nNearly half owned slaves.\n\n30 had served in the war.\n\nGeorge Washington lent his prestige by agreeing to preside over the convention.\n\n♪ 4 months later\, they had hammered out a 4-page document.\n\nTo devise a government that the American people cou ld agree to live under demanded historic compromises-- some creative\, som e tragic.\n\n♪ The Constitution delineated which powers fell to the cent ral government and which remained with the states\, a system of shared sov ereignty they called federalism.\n\nThe architects of the Constitution div ided the federal government into 3 branches-- the legislative\, executive\ , and judicial-- in a delicate balance by which each was meant to check th e others to ensure against overreach that could result in tyranny.\n\nThey feared that a demagogue might incite citizens into betraying the American experiment.\n\nAlexander Hamilton was concerned that an \"unprincipled\" man would \"mount the hobby horse of popularity\" and \"throw things into confusion.\"\n\n\"In a government like ours\,\" he would write\, no one is \"above the law.\"\n\n[Bell rings] Voice: I wish the Constitution which i s offered had been made more perfect\, but I sincerely believe it is the b est 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\, d esirable.\n\n[Washington] Bailyn: They were trying to create a system in w hich you could have a sufficiently powerful government that could work pro perly for its own people and the great powers of the world and still retai n the freedoms of the individual\, and that is the great issue that runs a ll the way through the Revolution.\n\nIt's a struggle between the possibil ities of power and of liberty.\n\n♪ Narrator: In order for the Constitut ion to take effect\, the individual states had to ratify it.\n\nThat would foster one of the most extensive public debates in history.\n\n♪ Gordon -Reed: The people who created the American Revolution and created the Amer ican nation assumed that Americans would be involved\, that they would be active citizens\, not subjects.\n\nBeing a citizen requires the kind of pa rticipation in the democracy that keeps it vibrant.\n\n♪ Narrator: In th e end\, all 13 states did ratify the Constitution\, but before consenting to live under the new federal government\, the American people wanted to e nshrine the liberties they had won in the Revolution.\n\nThe 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.\n\nJames Madison\, who wrote the Bill of Rig hts\, called the Constitution \"nothing more than the draft of a plan\, \" nothing but a dead letter\, \"until life and validity were breathed into i t by the voice of the people.\"\n\n♪ Vincent Brown: The idea that govern ment derives its authority from the consent of the governed was pretty rad ical.\n\nIt's still pretty radical.\n\nIf we take the words of the Declara tion of Independence\, written by Thomas Jefferson-- \"All men--\" let's s ay men\, women-- \"are created free and equal\,\" right-- Jefferson clearl y 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.\n\n♪ 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 el ector.\n\n♪ He was inaugurated in New York City on April 30\, 1789.\n\nJ ohn Adams\, the first vice president\, thought the chief executive should have a royal\, or at least a princely\, title\, but for Washington\, Presi dent of the United States was honor enough... [People cheering] and when h e left the presidency in 1797\, King George himself paid tribute.\n\nBy su rrendering first his military and then his political power\, he said\, Geo rge Washington had made himself \"the greatest character of the age.\"\n\n ♪ Voice: Our government daily acquires strength and stability.\n\nThe un ion is complete.\n\n♪ Nothing hinders our being a very happy and prosper ous people\, provided we have wisdom rightly to estimate our blessings and hearts to improve them.\n\nAbigail Adams.\n\nRhiannon Giddens: [Vocalizin g \"Amazing Grace\"] Voice: I will not believe our labors are lost.\n\nI s hall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance.\ n\n♪ 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.\n\nIn short\, the flames kindled on th e 4th of July\, 1776\, have spread over too much of the globe to be exting uished by the feeble engines of despotism.\n\nThomas Jefferson.\n\n♪ Atk inson: 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.\n\n♪ 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 s ystem for being the nation that those forebears thought we could become.\n \n♪ Voice: The American war is over\, but this is far from being the cas e with the American Revolution.\n\nOn the contrary\, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed.\n\nIt remains yet to establish and perf ect our new forms of government.\n\n♪ Patriots\, come forward!\n\nYour c ountry demands your services.\n\nHear her proclaiming\, in sighs and groan s\, in her governments\, in her finances\, in her trade\, in her manufactu res\, in her morals\, and in her manners\, \"The Revolution is not over!\" \n\nBenjamin Rush.\n\n♪ ♪ ♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your s mart device to dive deeper into the story of \"The American Revolution\" w ith interactives\, games\, classroom materials\, and more.\n\n♪ Announce r: \"The American Revolution\" DVD and Blu-ray\, as well as the companion book and soundtrack\, are available online and in stores.\n\nThe series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video.\n\n♪ Announ cer: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world.\n\nTh e fight would take ingenuity\, determination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power to do?\n\nBank of America.\n\nAnnouncer: Major f unding for \"The American Revolution\" was provided by The Better Angels S ociety and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion F oundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation.\n\nMajor funding was also p rovided 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 wi th Griffin Catalyst.\n\nAdditional support was provided by The Arthur Vini ng Davis Foundations\, the Pew Charitable Trusts\, Gilbert S. Omenn and Ma rtha A. Darling\, the Park Foundation\, and by Better Angels Society membe rs: Gilchrist and Amy Berg\, Perry and Donna Golkin\, The Michelson Founda tion\, Jacqueline B. Mars\, the Kissick Family Foundation\, Diane and Hal Brierley\, John H.N.\n\nFisher and Jennifer Caldwell\, John and Catherine Debs\, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund\, and these additional members .\n\n\"The American Revolution\" was made possible with support from the C orporation for Public Broadcasting\, and Viewers Like You.\n\nThank You.\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n URL\n\n https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolut ion-episode-6-the-most-sacred-thing/\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n DECLARATION OF IND EPENDENCE\n\n\n\n Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on d isplay in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and p unctuation reflects the original.\n\nIn Congress\, July 4\, 1776\n\nThe un animous 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 t he Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them\, a decent respect to t he opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.\n\nWe hold these truths to be self-evident\, that all men are created equal\, that they are endowed by their Creator w ith certain unalienable Rights\, that among these are Life\, Liberty and t he pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights\, Governments are in stituted among Men\, deriving their just powers from the consent of the go verned\, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of the se 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 o rganizing its powers in such form\, as to them shall seem most likely to e ffect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence\, indeed\, will dictate that Go vernments long established should not be changed for light and transient c auses\; 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 tra in 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 th eir 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.\n\nHe has refus ed his Assent to Laws\, the most wholesome and necessary for the public go od.\n\nHe has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressi ng importance\, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained\; and when so suspended\, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.\n\nHe has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of lar ge districts of people\, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature\, a right inestimable to them and formi dable to tyrants only.\n\nHe has called together legislative bodies at pla ces unusual\, uncomfortable\, and distant from the depository of their pub lic Records\, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.\n\nHe has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly\, for o pposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.\n\n He has refused for a long time\, after such dissolutions\, to cause others to be elected\; whereby the Legislative powers\, incapable of Annihilatio n\, have returned to the People at large for their exercise\; the State re maining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from witho ut\, and convulsions within.\n\nHe has endeavoured to prevent the populati on of these States\; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalizat ion of Foreigners\; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither\, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.\n\nHe has obstructed the Administration of Justice\, by refusing his Assent to L aws for establishing Judiciary powers.\n\nHe has made Judges dependent on his Will alone\, for the tenure of their offices\, and the amount and paym ent of their salaries.\n\nHe has erected a multitude of New Offices\, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people\, and eat out their s ubstance.\n\nHe has kept among us\, in times of peace\, Standing Armies wi thout the Consent of our legislatures.\n\nHe has affected to render the Mi litary independent of and superior to the Civil power.\n\nHe 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 preten ded Legislation:\n\nFor Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:\ n\nFor protecting them\, by a mock Trial\, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:\n\nFor cutti ng off our Trade with all parts of the world:\n\nFor imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:\n\nFor depriving us in many cases\, of the benefits o f Trial by Jury:\n\nFor transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for preten ded offences:\n\nFor abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neigh bouring Province\, establishing therein an Arbitrary government\, and enla rging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrum ent for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:\n\nFor tak ing away our Charters\, abolishing our most valuable Laws\, and altering f undamentally the Forms of our Governments:\n\nFor suspending our own Legis latures\, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.\n\nHe has abdicated Government here\, by declari ng us out of his Protection and waging War against us.\n\nHe has plundered our seas\, ravaged our Coasts\, burnt our towns\, and destroyed the lives of our people.\n\nHe is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death\, desolation and tyranny\, alr eady begun with circumstances of Cruelty &\; perfidy scarcely parallele d in the most barbarous ages\, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilize d nation.\n\nHe has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the h igh Seas to bear Arms against their Country\, to become the executioners o f their friends and Brethren\, or to fall themselves by their Hands.\n\nHe has excited domestic insurrections amongst us\, and has endeavoured to br ing on the inhabitants of our frontiers\, the merciless Indian Savages\, w hose known rule of warfare\, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages \, sexes and conditions.\n\nIn every stage of these Oppressions We have Pe titioned 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.\n\nNor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittis h brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their leg islature 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 th em 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\, the refore\, acquiesce in the necessity\, which denounces our Separation\, and hold them\, as we hold the rest of mankind\, Enemies in War\, in Peace Fr iends.\n\nWe\, therefore\, the Representatives of the united States of Ame rica\, 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 dec lare\, That these United Colonies are\, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States\; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Bri tish 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 Peac e\, contract Alliances\, establish Commerce\, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of t his Declaration\, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Provide nce\, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives\, our Fortunes and our sa cred Honor.\n\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n URL\n\n\n\n https://www.archives.gov/foun ding-docs/declaration-transcript\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251121 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR