Ken Burns' Revolution

Summary

History As It Happens – "Ken Burns' Revolution"

Podcast with Martin Di Caro
Guests: David Schmidt (Co-Director/Producer), Geoffrey Ward (Writer/Historian)
Published: December 4, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode explores Ken Burns’ new documentary The American Revolution, a 12-hour, six-part series airing on PBS. Host Martin Di Caro is joined by David Schmidt (co-director and producer) and Geoffrey Ward (writer/historian), to discuss how the film re-examines the complexities and contested narratives of the American Revolution, aiming to capture the lived experience of ordinary people as well as political elites. The conversation engages with themes of historical memory, inclusivity, the documentary process, and the enduring impact of America’s founding on the nation today as it approaches its 250th anniversary.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

New Approaches to the American Revolution Documentary

• Immersive Scope: The documentary spans the war's global dimensions, civilian experience, indigenous perspectives, and complexities often missed in traditional retellings.
• Visual Storytelling:
  • The filmmakers eschew traditional face-to-face reenactments in favor of evocative visuals: "You're going to see people walking through mud...see the effort that it took." (David Schmidt, 08:31)
  • Use of partial reenactments (hands, weather, movement) but not actor portrayals of Founders to maintain historical immediacy and seriousness.
• Iconic Narrators: Actors like Morgan Freeman, Meryl Streep, and Josh Brolin bring gravitas to historical voices, including less-heard perspectives such as James Forten, an African-American patriot.

Humanizing History: The War’s Everyday Actors

• Narrating the Ordinary: A substantial part of the documentary and discussion centers on the voices and perspectives of regular people—their fears, hardships, humor, and skepticism about the war and its leadership.
  • "It sounds just like a GI in World War II: 'These officers don’t know what they're doing. It’s all up to us.'" (Drew Ski/Geoffrey Ward, 14:04)
• Collecting Diverse Viewpoints:
  • Native American, Black, women’s, Loyalist, and other marginalized experiences are woven in not to check boxes, but "because that's how it really happened." (Geoffrey Ward, 15:53)
  • Emphasis on how "the revolution meant something different to whoever was involved in it"—for enslaved people, for Loyalists, for indigenous communities.

The Complex Scholarship

• Changing Interpretations:
  • Earlier documentaries/book treatments tended to glorify "guys in white wigs having great thoughts," whereas the Burns documentary integrates recent scholarship reflecting broader social realities. (Jeffrey Ward, 15:10–15:53)
• Collaborative Historical Consultation: The team credits a multidisciplinary group of historians for keeping the narrative honest and complex.

Causes of Revolution: Beyond Tax Protests

• Many Causes, Many Experiences:
  • It wasn’t just about taxes; land (especially westward expansion), sovereignty, and local self-determination were potent factors.
  • "For somebody like Harry Washington...it’s about ending slavery. For Dragon Canoe in Cherokee country, it’s about sovereignty." (David Schmidt, 19:40)
  • The British Proclamation of 1763, which banned settlement west of the Appalachians, sparked continued resentment and underpins the colonial urge for expansion.
• The Rubicon Moment: Consensus that the "Coercive Acts"—particularly the heavy-handed British punishment after the Boston Tea Party—galvanized resistance and transformed the crisis into revolution. (22:22–24:43)

The Loyalists and the Civil War Within

• Sympathy for Loyalists: The film works to foster understanding for those who remained loyal to Britain—“a defensible position”—and notes how violence and plunder produced both Loyalists and Patriots. (26:38–27:18)
• A Civil War at Home: Emphasizing that the war included rough violence, property destruction, and deep social disruption—"the fighting is not at home" in most later American wars, but the Revolution was "in everybody’s backyard." (27:54)

Strategic and Military Challenges

• Geographic Scale and Logistical Hardships: Marching distances that seem trivial today were grueling ordeals then: "How would you like to march from Westchester County to Yorktown, Virginia?" (29:22)
• Comparisons to Other Revolutions: Discussion touches on why the American Revolution did not descend into terror as the French Revolution did—attributing this to differences in social structure, city size, and outcomes.

Wrestling with Controversies & Mythmaking

• Iroquois Confederation Influence: Addressed criticism—clarifying they do not claim Franklin copied the Haudenosaunee model, but note the historical proximity of union ideas. (34:00–35:22)
• Dunmore’s Proclamation: Explores the British offer to free enslaved ‘rebel’ people if they joined the royal cause, noting that the event heightened southern white fears and shifted strategic calculus but probably did not cause mass realignment.
  • “It deepened the anger of white Southerners.” (Drew Ski/Geoffrey Ward, 36:13)
• Washington’s Leadership: Recognized for resilience, civilian control, and adaptive strategy (the "Fabian" approach). Praised as a leader who “kept everybody together,” even if he made mistakes in battle. (40:30–41:32)

Lasting Legacies and Modern Resonance

• Revolution as Ongoing Argument: The hosts resist hagiography, stressing how the power lies in the Revolution’s unfinished promises—equality, liberty—and the right of the people to persistently re-negotiate them.
  • “Democracy is a state of perpetual argument. You can be inspired...while also embracing the complexity.” (Jeffrey Ward, 46:21)
• Historical Empathy: Encouragement to approach both contemporary and past figures with humility, recognizing “they did not know what was going to happen on Tuesday, just as we don’t.” (Drew Ski/Geoffrey Ward, 48:11)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Visual Style and Storytelling

• 08:31 – David Schmidt: “We realized...if you’re going to see an eight-year war...it takes an awful lot of human effort. And in order to see that, you need to see people...you’re going to see the effort that it took.”

On the Shift Toward Ordinary People

• 14:04 – Drew Ski/Geoffrey Ward: “It’s often funny, and it’s often ironic and wry, and it sounds just like a GI in World War II...These officers don’t know what they’re doing...Why don’t we get paid again?”

On Complexity of the Revolution

• 19:40 – David Schmidt: “The American Revolution meant something different to whoever was involved in it...it’s about ending slavery for [some], for others it’s about sovereignty.”

On Inclusion & Historical Memory

• 15:10 – Geoffrey Ward: “A film made a while ago would have been the revolution that I remember from school...just those guys in white wigs...We really tried...to include as many different kinds of people on different kinds of stories as we could.”

On the Iroquois Confederation

• 34:00 – David Schmidt: “We’re not trying to say one thing influenced the other necessarily, but the truth is this union existed before...and what we’re getting at here is that here’s a union of six nations that is threatened, maybe even broken, by the American Revolution.”

On Washington’s Leadership & Limits

• 40:30 – Drew Ski/Geoffrey Ward: “To me, the most important thing about Washington is his absolute loyalty to civilian control. That doesn’t happen in revolutions.”

On the Open-endedness of Revolutionary Ideals

• 45:52 – Drew Ski/Geoffrey Ward (quoting Dayton Duncan): “He said he was glad there had not been a press conference after the passage of the Declaration...The first question would have been, ‘What do you mean by all men are equal?’...We are still working on that.”

On Historical Humility

• 48:11 – Drew Ski/Geoffrey Ward: “It’s really important for people to understand that historical figures did not know what was going to happen on Tuesday, just as we don’t...If you accept those things, you realize people now can do great things.”

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 02:06–05:54 – Introduction to the documentary, scope and stakes of the Revolution
• 07:27–10:30 – Visual storytelling & documentary choices
• 10:30–12:46 – Writing the series, synthesizing scholarship, new approaches
• 14:04–17:30 – Representation of ordinary people, new voices and perspectives
• 17:55–20:56 – The Caribbean, economic and global context, land as a fundamental cause
• 21:24–24:43 – From protest to revolution, the tipping points, British responses
• 25:00–28:32 – Loyalists, civil war aspects, civilian experience
• 29:22–32:03 – Logistics, hardship, violence, comparisons with the French Revolution
• 34:00–39:20 – Contested interpretations: Iroquois influence, Dunmore’s Proclamation, African American agency
• 40:30–44:53 – Washington’s strategy, military setbacks and resilience
• 44:53–49:14 – Relevance to today, unity & debate, democracy as ongoing negotiation

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Episode Takeaways

• The American Revolution documentary seeks to restore missing complexity to the founding story, drawing on new scholarship and previously overlooked voices.
• All groups—including Loyalists, enslaved people, Native Americans, women—had a stake in the outcome, and their stories are essential to an honest account.
• The war’s causes and consequences were deeply varied and remain contentious; land, liberty, economic interests, and the global context all played key roles.
• The Revolution’s legacy is ongoing argument and striving for ideals that are not finished—“democracy is a state of perpetual argument”—and the effort to live up to the promises of the Declaration of Independence is far from over.

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“If there’s any reason why I like doing history, it’s that the Declaration of Independence was formally ratified on July 4, 1776. Just 1,337 words that ended with the phrase, ‘We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.’”
— Drew Ski/Geoffrey Ward (49:14)

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For listeners and viewers alike, this episode and the associated documentary encourage a deeper, more inclusive, and ongoing inquiry into America's revolutionary experience and its significance today.

Transcript

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[Jeffrey Ward]

History as it happens December 5, 2025 Ken Burns Revolution.

These are the times that try men's souls, wrote Thomas Paine in the American Crisis. His pamphlet in 1776 the Summer Soldier and the Sunshine Patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country. But but he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. Yet we have this Consolation with us that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives everything its value.

Americans will soon show how much they value their their national origins when celebrating the nation's 250th birthday next year. But you can get started now by watching Ken Burns latest documentary, the American Revolution. Totaling 12 hours over six episodes on PBS. It immerses you in those uncertain and dangerous times when resistance turned into revolt, into a war for independence. A civil war fought between patriots and loyalists won black people free and enslaved. Fought, fought on all sides, as did native peoples. A global war involving the French and Spanish too. The American Revolution on PBS casts a wide net with a remarkable cast. Recognize this voice?

[Drew Ski]

Has the God who made the white man and the black left any record declaring us a different species?

Are we not sustained by the same power, supported by the same food, hurt by the same wounds, pleased with the same delights and propagated by the same means?

And should we not then enjoy the same liberty and be protected by the same laws?

Some consider us as much property as a house or a ship and think how anxious we must be to raise ourselves from this degrading state.

[Jeffrey Ward]

James Fortin that was Morgan Freeman. How about this one?

[Drew Ski]

The unparalleled perseverance of the armies of the United States through almost every possible suffering and discouragement for the space of eight long years was little short of a standing miracle.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Josh Brolin as George Washington.

Everybody, and I mean everyone, lowly farmers, powerful merchants, women, Indians, the enslaved had a stake in this history shaping event. Even if they tried to stay out of the war itself, even if they never picked up a musket, its outcome would affect their material conditions in the here and now. The principles that were fought for the Enlightenment ideal of fundamental human equality articulated in the Declaration of Independence would shape and often test the new nation and is still rippling today. The American Revolution is still important. It affects our lives now. And that's why this documentary matters. We're living in the consequences of the forces set in motion by the creation of the United States after a destructive war with Great Britain from 1775 to 1781. The Treaty of Paris signed in 1783. David Schmidt Co directed and co produced the American Revolution with Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein. Historian Jeffrey Ward was the writer. Our conversation with David Schmidt and Jeffrey Ward next.

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[David Schmidt]

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[Jeffrey Ward]

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Could you be more specific when it's cray venient.

[David Schmidt]

Okay. Like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at am, pm.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can.

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Grab in just a second at a.m. pM.

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[Jeffrey Ward]

Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.

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[Jeffrey Ward]

Good stuff. David Schmidt, welcome to the podcast.

[David Schmidt]

Good to be here.

[Jeffrey Ward]

And Jeffrey Ward, welcome.

[Drew Ski]

Thanks.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Let me just say it's an honor to have you. Congratulations on your terrific documentary. 12 hours long in six episodes. So much for the, you know, supposedly short attention spans of the American public, right?

[David Schmidt]

I hope so. I think there's just so much more to this story than can be fit into a sound bite. And I think people are ready to just sit there and learn.

[Drew Ski]

I think we could have done 24 hours.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Yeah. On just one aspect of the war. The military campaigns, role of women, Native Americans. So why don't we start with then a big question, David, I'll start with you. Your overall approach to the subject matter. We're talking about a sprawling subject. We have to decide what goes in, what goes out. Had to tell this story in pictures because have it on good authority that George Washington's iPhone battery died the day of the Battle of Yorktown, so he was unable to take a video of what was happening there.

[David Schmidt]

My joke is that Benjamin Franklin got too involved in politics and war, so he didn't have time to invent the photograph. You know, I worked on with Ken, a previous film about Benjamin Franklin. Speaking of. And that was Four hours, two episodes. And he's probably the most painted person of the 18th century in North America until George Washington took over from him for that spot. So there still wasn't that much to look at for him. But we made it work by showing in some small reenactments what it took to do the work that he did. So in Benjamin Franklin, that's moving the printing press with his hands, you got to see that effort. You got to see how much that job involves both the mind and the body. We realized that that was working in that film and applied it to this film. So if you're going to see an eight year long war that takes place all across the 13 colonies, but also beyond into the Appalachian, over the Appalachians, into Indian country, along the Gulf coast, in the Caribbean, overseas into Canada, takes an awful lot of human effort, this war effort. And in order to see that, you need to see people. And we're never going to see those people in such a way that, you know, you see their face and you think, what does this guy do for a day job? But you're going to see the effort that it took. You're going to see people walking through mud, you're going to see people walking through snow, you're going to see people making guns.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Yeah, I think you're not showing the faces is more effective. I was glad that you didn't do. And I wasn't expecting this either, you know, reenactments of someone playing Thomas Jefferson person. And that would have been.

[David Schmidt]

It just takes you out and. And one of the things that we're really grateful for is that Buddy Squires, Ken's longtime cinematographer, has the best eye. And so he just shoots some really beautiful footage that your eye can linger on while you listen to Jeff's magnificent words or voices from the 18th century recording their memories. If you're not distracted by what you're looking at, then you can actually pay attention to this really complicated history.

[Jeffrey Ward]

And Jeffrey, as the writer and a historian yourself, you're synthesizing decades of scholarship. I mean, how do you even begin to get your mind wrapped around all of this information? And of course, has to match the pictures and the pacing. Right. When again, there's just so much material to work with.

[Drew Ski]

That's a big question. This is my 20th film with Ken. I think in some ways it was the hardest one. And it's partly because I didn't know anything about this period. I was the editor of American Heritage for several years. I've written a lot about the 19th century, about 20th century politics. When I was editor, we were sort of required to have in every copy, in every issue, a story about colonial times or the revolution. And there was a picture editor on our staff who called it all short pants history. And we were faintly dismissive of it, really, because it seems so remote. All those wigs and buckled shoes and spinning wheels and muskets. And so when I was asked to do this and sort of threw myself into reading, I realized how incredibly alive and human and reachable it actually is, that that film is about real human beings trying to do an incredibly difficult thing on all sides that is very appealing to anybody who likes to write about history and about individual human beings.

[Jeffrey Ward]

An enormous written record is left over from Ordinary People, too. And you have some pretty well known actors, voice actors, doing the voiceover work too.

[Drew Ski]

That helps.

[David Schmidt]

I'll just say that you paint yourself. And I think we all took screenshots. We work with Morgan Freeman over zoom. You don't forget that experience. And not just him, obviously. Matthew Reese was incredible. Meryl Streep, et cetera, et cetera.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Most people who pay attention to this type of stuff are familiar with the quotes of the Founding Fathers that are related in your film. But I was really impressed with Ordinary People's observations. One, their writing was so good and just the way they viewed the war from the eyes of an ordinary person. The violence, the fear, the disruption, the tension. You really capture that, the urgency of the moment.

[David Schmidt]

Yeah, I mean, thank you. But also thanks to that generation who knew they were living through history. Alan Taylor points out in the film that 18th century North America was the most literate place on the earth after Scandinavia, which is something I didn't know going in. They proved it. And there's been a lot of work done in the last, I don't know, several decades to surface that material, scan a lot of the documents and manuscripts. We found some that weren't online, of course, but there's just a lot out there that a lot of people have committed a lot of work to to get available. I'll also just say, okay, George Washington's the person we hear from the most in this film. I don't think I could have named a quote of George Washington's before this that wasn't fake. I, you know, I can't tell a lie, or I chop down that cherry tree or whatever. And it turns out he's actually a pretty good writer, too. And not only that, you get from him, because of course, people kept whatever he wrote. You get his general orders that are like, you know, men, stand strong, be men. This is the time for your country. At the same time, he's writing home to his brother saying, I don't think we're gonna win this. And that is so interesting.

[Drew Ski]

It is. We have a couple of grunts that we follow through. Their writing is wonderful, too. It's not rolling and eloquent and so on. It's real human beings remembering what they did.

[David Schmidt]

And sometimes it's really funny. Especially Joseph Blood Martin.

[Drew Ski]

Exactly. It's often funny, and it's often ironic and wry, and it sounds just like a GI in World War II. These officers don't know what they're doing. It's all up to us. Christ, why don't they feed us more? Why don't we get paid again? They are real human beings having real problems that we can all identify with.

[Jeffrey Ward]

So, Jeffrey, let me ask you a question then about the scholarship that informed your writing. If a documentary like this was made, I don't know, 60 years ago, it would have been a lot different. Probably less emphasis on people who weren't the founding Fathers. You incorporate a lot of the old guard. Bernard Balin, who passed away, was interviewed for this documentary. Gordon Wood is in there. You also have younger scholars, too, who are looking at this war differently through a different prism.

[Drew Ski]

Let me just pay tribute to the group of scholars that helped us. As I said, I've done a lot of films, and we always have academic advisors. And sometimes they are hugely helpful, and sometimes they just are present in order to preen for one another and show that. I've read more books than you have. None of that happened here. These are people who really were interested in getting this story as right as we could get it. And we listened to them and they listened to us. And they were fascinated, I think, all of them, by the sort of process of what you do, what you can include, what you. You can do with pictures, what you can't do. And they were happy to find that we were interested in complicating the story because it is a hugely complicated story with all kinds of different people with all kinds of different interests. You're absolutely right that a film made a while ago would. Would have been the revolution that I remember from school all long ago, which was basically those guys in white wigs having great thoughts with one another and George Washington surviving Valley Forge and Than winning the revolution. I mean, that's sort of what kids come away from in fourth grade. And a lot of people never get much beyond that. And we really tried very hard to Include as many different kinds of people on different kinds of stories as we could. And they did include Native Americans, African Americans, women. Not because we were checking some boxes, but because that's how it really happened, how it really unfolded.

[David Schmidt]

A lot of these people might write about a certain aspect of the war. Kathleen Duvall, for instance, had written specifically about the Gulf coast during the war, but she teaches the American Revolution, so she knows an awful lot more than she's written about. And that's the case for a lot of the other people as well. There are a few people who don't teach the American Revolution who might write about Caribbean history, for instance. And I think they were fascinated to see how their work fit into the larger puzzle. It isn't just a one thing. Of course it's not.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Yeah. Not everyone came out of the revolution.

[David Schmidt]

A winner just because of how it's ingrained in us, from the flag to the Fourth of July to our currency. Maybe you don't question it as much.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Well, the Native American scholars, people who specialize in Native American history is what I mean, who are in the film. I mean, they have a different vantage point.

[David Schmidt]

Colin Calloway was my professor in college, took three classes with him, and he'd always say at the beginning of the term, American history doesn't make any sense without American Indian history. That should be obvious, but I don't think it's ever more obvious than with this film.

[Drew Ski]

David mentioned the Caribbean. One of the surprises to me early on was thanks to them and the stuff they'd written, I had not understood that our war was a sort of a sideshow compared to the economic riches of the Caribbean. We were poor cousins. That remained true through the whole. This whole period. And that system, of course, is based on hideous, hideous slavery.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Well, other than losing their colonies on the mainland, the British came out of the American Revolution pretty strong. They moved to defend those islands in the Caribbean from the French, which is one reason why they gave up on fighting the colonists on the mainland.

[Drew Ski]

Right.

[David Schmidt]

It's all contingent on history. They happen to have a series of wars with France in the next few decades that winning pretty decisively cemented their, whatever we call it, the Second British Empire in a way that they wouldn't have necessarily imagined in 1781. I don't think they thought that they had come out ahead.

[Jeffrey Ward]

No, they probably didn't. So you know about the causes on the Native American theme, Geoffrey, it is taught, and it is, of course accurate, that the revolution is largely the result of a dispute that starts over taxes and then it moves to rights and parliamentary sovereignty, the principle. And wanting self government. Right. But it's also about land, and that involves Indians.

[Drew Ski]

David is better on this subject than I am, but that was another surprise to me. I mean, I really came through this the way a lot of Americans do. And the fact that the British said you could not go beyond the Appalachians infuriated colonists. They joined in this battle that had defeated the French. They thought their reward was going to be that they could spill over the mountains and take land. And the British, not because they loved Indians, but because they couldn't control what would happen if they. If those pioneers went over the mountains, forbade them from doing so. And it enraged people. Among them George Washington. That story is essential to understanding this war and certainly was not taught when I was in school.

[Jeffrey Ward]

The line of Proclamation 1763, the American.

[David Schmidt]

Revolution meant something different to whoever was involved in it. So for somebody like Harry Washington, who's using the crisis of the revolution to win his freedom, it's about ending slavery for him and his posterity. For somebody like Dragon Canoe in Cherokee country, the American Revolution is an opportunity to defend his people's sovereignty and independence. I guess what I'm saying is there's all sorts of things involved. There's home rule, there's empire. There's, in the case of some people who join the fight later on, maybe around the Declaration of Independence, there's the possibility of liberty. It becomes a war for union, independence and republic. But that's not what it is at the beginning. All I can say, full stop, is that the American Revolution began because Boston was occupied by the British. It began to try to get a redress of grievances and bring things back to the way they were. That said, in the 10 years before Lexington and Concord, 12 years before Lexington and Concord, there's a series of moves by the British government that started to infuriate colonists and those involved. The taxes and representation that we're familiar with, and of course, the 1763 proclamation that Jeff was referring to, they didn't stick to that ruling, though. So it was just a thing on paper. And I think it may have hurt the speculators because they couldn't make money off the sales. But the settlers kept going.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Sure, there was no way to enforce it.

[David Schmidt]

I mean, there's no way to enforce it. So again, it's not the cause of the war, but the war is about many things. And also they're paying during the war, they're paying recruits with the promise of Indian land. So in that way, it's also about Indian land. It is about so many things. One thing for sure it is about is the future of the continent of North America. And that can mean all sorts of different things, but one primary thing that that means is land and expansion.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Material interests are there, but ideas as well. Our country is founded on ideas, not an ethnicity, not one religion, not one race. David, based on your answer there, I want to hear from both of you on this. But it's a perfect segue to my next question. When do complaints become protests, become resistance, become revolution? And of course we're talking about a very large geographic area. Some places crossed the Rubicon, so to speak, before others did. I shared with you an article that TH Breen wrote a review for the New York Review of Books of a book written by Mary Beth Norton about the long 1774 how Virginia became a revolutionary colony. Because we all know the war begins in the spring of 1775, the fighting. So you can say, okay, that's the point of no return. Blood has been spilt. But in February 1775, two months before these battles, Parliament had already declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion. And we can also look when news of the Coercive Acts reaches the colonies, May 1774, which was in response to the Boston Tea Party, which had happened in December 1773. Of course, it always takes a long time for information to go back and forth across the ocean. What I'm getting at here is this is my view. The real tipping point here was not just the Boston Tea Party, but the British response to this. When we look at the causes of.

[David Schmidt]

The war, I completely agree.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Yeah, well, because when we look at the causes of the Revolutionary War, only from the position of the colonists and their actions, we lose sight of how they were responding to a very heavy handed, unnecessary response by Parliament and the King. That did not have to be that way. They drove the colonists into revolt.

[David Schmidt]

The Americans have made a discovery, or think they have made one, that we.

[Drew Ski]

Mean to oppress them. We have made a discovery, or think.

[Jeffrey Ward]

We have made one, that they intend.

[Drew Ski]

To rise in rebellion. Our severity has increased their ill behavior.

[David Schmidt]

We know not how to advance, they know not how how to retreat.

[Drew Ski]

Some party must give way.

[David Schmidt]

Edmund Burke I think that that's true. I mean, how can you say what they should have done? Because if they had made this decision earlier, it would have been different. But they dealt in half measures for a long time. They repealed the Stamp act, they repealed the Townsend Acts. Except for tea. And who would have Thought that to them the Rubicon was tea in the harbor. But apparently it was. They reacted with martial law. It's the closing of the port, closing of the representative government. Those are all things that anybody in any colony, not just the 13 colonies that ended up revolting, would have been really ticked off about.

[Jeffrey Ward]

And that's what unifies the colonies too. Why Virginia now would care about what's happening to a.

[David Schmidt]

Absolutely. I mean, they're already caring and they're already communicating. But that is going to get the average Joe to be like, what is happening here? That's immediate. You can understand the impact of that. And closing the port of Boston isn't just punishing Boston, it's punishing all the fishing towns up and down. You know, New England. I can't imagine just being settled without violence after that point.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Revolt, but not necessarily a consensus about going all the way to independence.

[Drew Ski]

And then there's just some basic stuff. I can't quote the guy, David. I think it's a minute man. It's a militia person, in any case, who is asked why he's going to Lexington, Concord or why he's going to Cambridge.

[David Schmidt]

I guess, yeah. And he basically always governed ourselves and we always meant to.

[Drew Ski]

That's right. We always governed ourselves and we always meant to. I mean, that's what a lot of people who didn't have a large view of the world thought. I think those people are not treating us right. We are independent, small eye, independent people.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Jeffrey, how do you feel about the Loyalists?

[Drew Ski]

Well, I'll tell you, one of the things that this show did was make me do sort of family archaeology. I went back into my own family and I've discovered that I am descended from two different revolutionary people. The wonderfully named General Aphrodite ward, who took 300 cattle from East Hannam, Connecticut to Valley Forge, and a guy named John Ward, his cousin, and also my ancestor, who immediately, as soon as the shooting started, joined a Loyalist regiment, served throughout the war, and ended up in New Brunswick because he couldn't stand to live here. I am oddly sympathetic to both of them. The Loyalist position was a perfectly respectable position. Seems to me things were pretty good. I'm only being asked to pay a little tax. Maybe we can persuade them to not do that if we act in a civil manner. And I don't want the world disrupted, and I don't want people who share my view to be mistreated, which Loyalists were. So to me, it becomes a much less black and white war, not because of my ancestors, but because I was just fascinated to find them both.

[Jeffrey Ward]

David, do you want viewers to sympathize with the Loyalists?

[David Schmidt]

I don't want to tell any viewer how to think about anything. I want them to have their own takeaways, and I know that they'll be different from me, and I know that if I watch it again in five years, my own views will be different. That said, this film should allow people the opportunity to at least understand the decisions, the motivations of why people are making the decisions they're making. And like Jeff said, being a Loyalist is a defensible position. It might be a good thought exercise. I don't necessarily need people to do this, but what decision would I make? Well, I can tell you that decision I would make would be entirely dependent on when I'm making that decision and where. If I'm in Boston in 1775, I'm probably a patriot, but there's other situations where that would not have been the case.

[Jeffrey Ward]

A lot of people just wanted to keep their heads down, too, and hope that whatever was happening wouldn't disrupt their lives.

[David Schmidt]

Of course.

[Drew Ski]

Right.

[Jeffrey Ward]

As you make clear in the film, there were not modern logistics. We did not have a large industrial base. Armies lived off the land, which meant.

[Drew Ski]

Pillage, plunder that produced Loyalists or produced patriots, depending on who had burned their barn and took their sheep and molested their women. And both sides did all of those things that brought the war home to people who might have tried to keep their heads down and made them be on one side or another.

[David Schmidt]

I think that one thing that we don't often consider when we think about the American Revolution, we know that the Civil War was fought in North America, obviously, but most of the American wars were not. And so the fighting is not at home. The American Revolution is in everybody's backyard. All the big cities are occupied at one point or another during the war. Armies are marching through all sorts of different territory. So this is at home. If people are concerned that there's too much women's presence in this film, I'll just ask them to remember that this is a war that's impacting all sorts of different civilians, let alone the women that follow the armies. So as much as we can tell their story, we'd like to.

[Jeffrey Ward]

What I really love about your visuals is the use of maps to detail just what it took to get an army into position to fight where you hoped you knew your enemy was based on intelligence or scouts. But I was thinking about this, watching the show, the narration says, and then they marched five miles after Crossing whatever river or nine miles to battle. They marched all night. I'm like, okay, that doesn't seem like a lot. Then I thought about how to march nine miles in whatever shoes these guys had or some cases. It was more than that. There was one scene there, the Battle of. I think it was Brandywine or Germantown, where patriots had to run four miles. Yeah, four miles and 45 minutes to get into position, carrying all the equipment, blazing hot sun, and then had to fight it. Just really incredible to think of it.

[Drew Ski]

How would you like to march from Westchester county to Yorktown, Virginia? That's a hike. And that whole army, both the French and the. And the Continental army, did that.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Because our modern minds, we think of distances of nine miles is nothing. But when you're on foot or on.

[David Schmidt]

A horse, there's actually an interesting moment in the film where somebody in England is talking about how they just don't understand North America. He says, because the word Yorkshire takes up as much space as the word America. We thought they were much the same bigness, but it is as far from London to Venice as it is from Charleston to Boston, basically. I think you could take that to yourself, too, because we know Google Maps and we know driving and all this. They're walking and they're bringing animals behind them and they don't have Gore Tex. They don't have air conditioning. Even when we were out filming in places and it's snowing and we were complaining. You couldn't complain too much because you knew what people actually had to live through back then.

[Jeffrey Ward]

So here's a question. There was so much violence and vandalism, property destruction among colonists, between Loyalists and patriots perpetrated against one another. Very rough treatment. But the American Revolution never turned into terrorism or the French Revolution. We had tarring and feathering, which was awful, but no guillotine. Why do you think that is?

[Drew Ski]

Part of the reason the French Revolution did that is they had city mobs. They had big city mobs. We didn't really have that here. We didn't have the numbers in a city that they did. I also think. I don't know the distinction between an ordinary Frenchman and the aristocracy that ran that place was much worse. At one point, I was working on the book. It's not in the film, but I learned that after, I think it's 1781, you could not be an officer in the French army unless you were the son of aristocrats on both sides of your family. When the Trumbull painted the surrender at Yorktown, and I was working on the captions for the pictures. I found out. I think there are. I'm going to get these numbers wrong, but I think there's six French generals on the left side of that painting. I think four of them were decapitated during the Revolution.

[David Schmidt]

I mean, I think that's a bigger question about the French Revolution than about the American Revolution. And a couple things about it that I'll say is the American Revolution, there's a surrendering side or a side anyway, that signs away that they lost in the French Revolution. It's not quite like that. Also, it's coming from an authoritarian system. So the systems that are going to replace them are also going to maybe try to be authoritarian. Whereas in the United States, they're trying to create these separate governments that coexist. There's an attempt at the start and then it really gets codified by the time of the Constitution to be able to peacefully disagree with each other.

[Drew Ski]

Sure. Not sure. There wasn't terrorism. There was the destruction of Indian people. Surely was terrorism. It seems to me people burned people's houses for miles and miles on both sides. It was really awful.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Our conversation continues.

[Zoe]

Whether you're into unsolved mysteries, solved mysteries, or creating your own mysteries. Amazon Music's got millions of podcast episodes waiting. Just download the Amazon music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad free included with Prime. Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree, Zoe.

[Drew Ski]

This thing weighs a ton of money. Drewski, live with your legs, man.

[David Schmidt]

Santa. Santa, did you get my letter?

[Drew Ski]

He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not.

[Zoe]

Of course he did.

[Drew Ski]

Right, Santa, you know my elf Drewski here, he handles the nice list.

[David Schmidt]

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[Jeffrey Ward]

Right, Mrs. Claus?

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[Drew Ski]

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[David Schmidt]

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[Drew Ski]

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[Jeffrey Ward]

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[David Schmidt]

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[Jeffrey Ward]

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[David Schmidt]

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[Jeffrey Ward]

Visit t mobile.com Here's a couple of bones to pick. Early in your film, you claim that the Iroquois Confederation influenced Ben Franklin when he appeared in Albany in 1754. This is a contested point among historians. What is your argument for that?

[David Schmidt]

I don't think we claim that.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Okay.

[David Schmidt]

Personally, what we're doing in that scene is setting the stage for how important union is. In the first narration, you're going to hear, so you hear Conisatego say, we know our lands have become more valuable. Then you hear the narrator say, long before the United States, there were six nations that had formed a union called the Haudenosaunee. That's true. Then you hear Conisatego say, we are strong because of our union. You guys should have one too. That's obviously a paraphrase. He did not say you guys. And then we say, in 1754, the celebrated printer and philosopher Ben Franklin wanted to form a union of his own. So that's all true. One followed the other. And what we're getting at here is that here's a union of six nations that is threatened, maybe even broken, by the American Revolution. The Union of the Colonies was not possible until the Revolution. And so the theme throughout the series, one of the themes, one of the major themes throughout the series is union. The last episode is called the Most Sacred Thing. That's Thomas Paine referring to the Union is our is the most sacred Thing. So that's what I think that scene's about. It's not trying to say one thing influenced the other necessarily, but the truth is this union existed before Conisatego recommended it for colonists. Ben Franklin tried to do something with colonists. It didn't work. And then that phrase join or die was used during the Revolution. Right.

[Jeffrey Ward]

And I think some of the reaction to this online has been over the top. This takes up about a minute in a 12 hour documentary. So it wasn't a big deal. But I did want to ask you about that next one, the Dunmore Proclamation. Now, you're not saying this was a major turning point in the war, but you do give this a lot of weight with the use of a quote by Rutledge, who is a South Carolinian, not a Virginian, who was in Philadelphia at the time. November of 1775. Lord Dunmore, who was the royal Governor of Virginia, issues his proclamation that the enslaved people of Rebels who reach British lines are free. This story has been told a lot since the 1619 project came out. I thought you gave this Rutledge quote too much emphasis because he was speculating based on secondhand knowledge.

[David Schmidt]

Can you remind us the Rutledge quote is the one that says it has done more to turn.

[Drew Ski]

Yes.

[David Schmidt]

People than any other expedient. Right.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Well, here it is. It's in a private letter. South Carolinian Edward Rutledge, who was among the last to vote for independence, he said of the Dunmore Proclamation, tending in my judgment, tending in my judgment, more effectively to work an eternal separation than any other expedient which could possibly have been thought of.

[Drew Ski]

I don't think the proclamation turned people toward the Patriot cause, but I think it deepened the anger of white Southerners.

[David Schmidt]

It also brought the war to Virginia.

[Drew Ski]

Including George Washington, who wants Dunmore killed because he's so frightened of what will happen in the South. I think the 1619 thing was wrong to make it seem as if it accounted for Virginia patriotism, but it certainly deepened the fear that those people lived in.

[David Schmidt]

Right. And it made it so that the war was in Virginia when previously it was only in Massachusetts. So when the war's on your doorstep, you have to choose a side more often than not.

[Jeffrey Ward]

There's no evidence that any colonists changed their mind or switched sides as a result, going over to the Patriot side. I mean, Dunmore himself reported back. He was able to convince some number of people to stay loyal to the government rather than go to the other side.

[David Schmidt]

So why would you take Dunmore's word over Rutledge's? Doesn't Dunmore have a reason to exaggerate, overstate his case to Britain?

[Jeffrey Ward]

Yeah, he may have exaggerated.

[Drew Ski]

He did that all the time. He claims, except for smallpox, virtually all the slaves in the. In the south would have rallied to him and he could have taken back Virginia. Instead, he stayed on his boat, already lost the colony. It was a desperate and not successful thing, but it did further anger people who were already angry.

[David Schmidt]

And that's certain. It certainly changed the fortunes of a lot of black Virginians.

[Jeffrey Ward]

I think it's a major piece of African American history. But as far as the sweep of the Revolutionary War, I don't think it's very important at all, but I think.

[David Schmidt]

It'S very important because in a lot of contingent ways, it's very important. If they had invested in the south sooner, which they tried to do, this is their precursor in a lot of ways to the Southern strategy, as is Sullivan's campaign of Course, Sullivan's island, that takes place over a day. Dunmore's campaign is months long. The British, by the time of the Southern Strategy, it was too late for them to do what they might have wanted to do. So who knows what could have happened. But I think it's very important. Dunmore's proclamation, for one thing, it's in the Declaration of Independence.

[Jeffrey Ward]

This is what Dunmore reported about his proclamation. And again, he could have been exaggerating here. Says it received an immediate and positive reception when over 100 former rebels signed loyalty pledges the day after he estimated 3,000 Virginians pledged to support the royal government. Which is different than, say, and you're not arguing this, 3,000 Virginians saying, you know, we're on the fence now, we're going to join the rebellion. There's no evidence that any Virginians joined the rebellion as a result of the proclamation. But we agree.

[Drew Ski]

I don't. I don't think either of us is saying that they did. I'm just saying that it gave people an added reason to be willing to join the. The rebel cause, but didn't mean they. They got off the fence to do that. I think these were already people who are angry, and I think Washington is the perfect example if you. He. He was really.

About Dunmore and what he thought it was going to mean. It didn't turn out to mean that. But that's. He can't see in the future, just.

[Jeffrey Ward]

As we can't, George Washington. I really like how you depict Washington in all of this as a strategist, as a tactician, as a politician, as a guy who's in a really difficult situation. You know, he wasn't a great battlefield commander. A lot of what he tried to do did not work. But, you know, I hesitate to come down too hard on Washington for, say, the defeats in New York, where the war could have been over had his army been captured on Long island or after the Brandywine or after Germantown. I mean, I think everyone knows this. He had a really difficult hand to play. To call the Continental army an army at certain points of the war is a stretch.

[Drew Ski]

To me, the most important thing about Washington is his absolute loyalty to civilian control. That doesn't happen in revolutions in rebellions. And he doggedly listened to them even when he thought they were idiots, which he did quite often. Was a dutiful American soldier under civilian control in 1776. That or 1777.

[Jeffrey Ward]

That's amazing to me how he held the army together. They had no money, clothing, food, ammunition. What have you terrible conditions, sleeping outside. And the Congress couldn't give him a penny.

[David Schmidt]

I think it's fair to criticize him for Long island and maybe Brandywine too, or definitely Brandywine too. And so, yeah, I think he's not the greatest battlefield general, but I also think we should give him his due for those 10 crucial days at Trenton and Princeton. Some really wonderful generalship. He also, of course, held people together in Boston and won that siege as well. I think he's a great commander, not necessarily a great general.

[Drew Ski]

Yeah.

[David Schmidt]

Kept everybody together.

[Jeffrey Ward]

He was fighting a modern guerrilla war. As Henry Kissinger once said, guerrillas win by not losing. Seemed that was Washington's approach when he realized that going after the. The main part of the British army was a fruitless endeavor.

[David Schmidt]

Yeah, he claimed to adopt what's called a Fabian strategy, going back to ancient Rome and how they fought Hannibal in the Roman Republic, even. And so he was, especially after Long island, just trying to avoid a major confrontation. But even when he said he was going to do that, I mean, he still did Brandywine, he still did Germantown, he still did Monmouth. It isn't for a couple more years after that. I think a lot of things changed during that war, and a lot of. And part of that was Washington's understanding of the arithmetic of that war.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Did the British lose their chance to win the Revolutionary War if it were winnable on such a large geographic area? Did they lose their chance to win when they allowed Washington to escape Long Island?

[David Schmidt]

There are so many different outcomes that could have happened with this war that are not all or nothing in terms of keeping all 13 colonies on their side. I don't even think that was probably possible at that moment. It would have been a long, protracted struggle for forever, probably. But they would have ended Washington's war and that would have been a big major deal and quite possibly could have held on to a lot of the other colonies. I think they could have held on to the south and New York City virtually till not quite the end of the war, but probably until 1780.

[Jeffrey Ward]

The riddle of General Howe, who's chasing Washington across New York and then into New Jersey, but the battles, plural of Saratoga in 1777. Why did General Howe decide to go to Philadelphia instead of meeting up with Burgoyne, where he was supposed to go, according to Burgoyne, to try to sandwich the Continental army and potentially cut the colonies in half, he goes to Philadelphia.

[Drew Ski]

He thought that a war here would be won the way they were in Europe, by seizing the capital of the. Of the enemy and Philadelphia was that. And he went and took it. Now, it wasn't the kind of capital they had in Europe. That's at least one reason. And Burgoyne, that's a very tangled tale of who knew what, when, whether they were going to meet up. It's not clear.

[David Schmidt]

The latest evidence is that Burgoyne knew before he told his officers.

[Drew Ski]

Yeah.

[David Schmidt]

And still went. So who's to blame for that?

[Drew Ski]

Right.

[David Schmidt]

I don't know. But how, in addition to taking the Capitol, he wanted to destroy Washington's army. Right. And he knew Washington's army would, he was right, would be defending the capital. He just thought they'd defend it longer.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Yeah. Kind of a European approach to fighting wars, you know, capture.

[David Schmidt]

I mean, what's crazy about Howe's campaign is how long he spent on the water trying to get to Philadelphia. Probably hurt him more than anything.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Yeah. With his men and horses suffering in hot ships and dying. I mean, just awful. We're only touching the very tip of the ICEBERG for your 12 hour film, which I want everyone listening to this to watch for themselves. We're living in a very hyper polarized time. Now. I've listened to some of Ken Burns interviews that he's done for the publicity for the show. Origin stories, they can be unifying, but it's hard to find unity in something like a revolutionary war. I don't know. What's your final thoughts on that? And the moment that we're in right now, about to celebrate America 250.

[David Schmidt]

Well, Thanksgiving just happened and we don't have that many topics that we can safely discuss. At the dinner, I was suggesting sports was, was one option and somebody started telling me how much they love Aaron Rodgers. And I told them, okay, sports are not a comfortable subject either. So maybe we have shared history that we can use as a springboard to breaking bread. I don't know. I will say that the eight years of the American Revolution, plus the decade before, decade after, were incredibly uncertain times. And if we're living through uncertain times, which I think we are, we should recognize that in those uncertain times there's an awful lot of possibility. We don't know what the future is going to bring. But we know that they didn't know what the future was going to bring either. And a lot of people went to work and they worked together and they created something, one of the most important.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Events in human history. As Gordon Wood says in the documentary, those words in the Declaration of Independence, we don't have a country or the country that we've come to Know without.

[Drew Ski]

Those words, David's and my mutual friend Dayton Duncan, who was a political operative for many years. He was press secretary for two Democratic candidates for president. He. He said he was glad there had not been a press conference after the passage of the Declaration of Independence, because the first question it would have been, what do you mean by all men are equal? And I think it said, thank God the press was not there because we are still working on that.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Yeah. I don't feel like you have to come away with this from your film wanting unity or having to agree. Democracy is a state of perpetual argument. I think you can be both inspired by the events depicted in your documentary, while also embracing the complexity. I mean, that's what makes it more interesting.

[David Schmidt]

Somebody who had only watched the first episode, texted me, is like, I. It bothers me that differences have to be settled with so much bloodshed. And I said, that's one way to look at it. But keep watching. Because they get through these eight years of war and they try to come up with a system that will allow for, you know, obviously there's a civil war that comes 80 years later, but that can try to allow us to settle disagreements peacefully.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Sure. I prefer peace, too. One of the founding ideas, though, is that a people do have a. Have a right, a natural right to throw off the yoke of an abusive government. And that often does involve violence.

[David Schmidt]

It's right there in the declaration.

[Jeffrey Ward]

Enslaved people would have agreed with that because slavery was a system predicated on violence. And throughout the 20th century, wars of national liberation, the American Revolution, even though that term probably wasn't around then, was a war of national liberation. David, you mentioned Fabian before, where Washington was the Fabian tactics. He wasn't following Mao Zedong or. Or Ho Chi Minh, but same concept.

[Drew Ski]

Right.

[Jeffrey Ward]

We fought a war of national liberation for our rights.

[Drew Ski]

Yeah.

[David Schmidt]

I mean, without a nation, it's nation building. At the same time, it's a lot of things. The American Revolution and what I think above all it is, is a story of people in humanity. And humanity is ugly and is beautiful. All of that is present in that generation. And I think maybe it's helpful to recognize that's the case about people 250 years ago to maybe just be a little bit kinder to each other. I don't know. Who knows?

[Drew Ski]

Yeah, I second that. People tell you that you should study history because it repeats itself. It doesn't really repeat itself, I don't think. But it's really important for people to understand that historical figures did not know what was going to happen on Tuesday, just the way we don't know what's going to happen on Tuesday, that they are flawed, just the way we are flawed. And if you accept those things, you realize that people now can do great things. And if you think of those people as flawless, which is what I was taught in fourth grade, there's no evidence in that, that we can do great things. If there's any reason why I like doing history, it's that the Declaration of Independence was formally ratified on July 4, 1776. Just 1,337 words that ended with the phrase, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

When Rhode island delegate Stephen Hopkins, who had palsy, signed the document, he is said to have remarked, my hand trembles, but my heart does not.

[Jeffrey Ward]

We thank David Schmidt and Jeffrey Ward for their work.

On the next episode of History As It Happens. We'll return to the 20th century Robert McNamara and Vietnam, a new book that I happen to review for responsible statecraft McNamara at war. And our guest will be Frederick why Robert McNamara still matters. That is next, as we report History As It Happens. Make sure to sign up for my free newsletter. Just go to Substack and search for History As It Happens. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to libsynads. Com. That's L I B S Y N Ads Com. Today.