A new Ken Burns film is an event. It is announced far in advance and, when it airs, it usually takes over PBS for at least two hours a night for about a week. People post about it on social media. Longtime fans await the iconic voice of Peter Coyote as narrator and the period-appropriate soundtrack. History buffs anticipate these films, historians watch them, and the films help shape the public’s understanding of significant historical events. They even shape public patterns of consumption. Ken Burns’ The Civil War made David McCullough a household voice, and the soundtrack, Ashokan Farewell, became bestselling and Grammy-winning. Country Music increased album sales across the genre.
This time, Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward go back to the very beginning. The American Revolution is twelve hours long and the companion book is 608 pages. Anyone who tries to celebrate or dismiss it in a single sentence has done you and it a disservice. The documentary takes on the familiar narrative and figures, and it does so in ways both traditional and untraditional. The expected historical protagonists are all present. George Washington is front and center, we hear often from and about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, as well as Abigail Adams, Benjamin Rush, and the Marquis de Lafayette. There are patriots and loyalists, and the major battles are all accounted for. Benedict Arnold is still a traitor. Crispus Attucks is still one of the first victims of British brutality. Cornwallis and Tarleton are still villainous.
The American Revolution does not retell the story of the Revolution in a particularly different or dramatic way, yet like all history it is told differently than it would have been at other points in time because of its own present. Many Americans are familiar with the horrific conditions faced by Washington and his men at Valley Forge, but The American Revolution places a big emphasis on weather, the seasons, and smallpox throughout the war, because these were significant factors for all concerned. British soldiers considered the environment in the Americas to be one of their opponents, as explored in Under Alien Skies by Vaughn Scribner. The American Revolution emphasizes diversity in every conceivable way. Yes, we hear more about women and native Americans than in many accounts of the Revolution, but we also hear more about the diversity of places where the war was fought, the diversity of the soldiery, the diversity of types of fighting, and the diversity of American views on the Revolution. As many as a third of Americans may have been loyalists, and even among patriots, most soldiers did not serve for the duration of the war, something emphasized in The American Revolution. We also hear about the diversity of causes wrapped up in the Revolution and the tipping points for more widespread support of the war. We glimpse how the events of the war were experienced by farmers and wives and children not just generals and nobles and legislators.
Is it woke? Unfortunately, this is the question about almost anything these days. No. The National Review thinks it is and has published an essay titled “No, Ken Burns, the United States is not an Iroquois Nation.” But no one who watches all twelve hours would come away with that impression. No one who watches the two-hour episode in which there is a passing reference to similarity between the Iroquois Nation and the possibilities for an American republic would come away with that impression. The American Revolution does include more women and minorities and talk about slavery more than many previous accounts. However, Burns is no Howard Zinn. It would be hard not to talk about the paradoxical role of slavery in the American Revolution when the Founders not only engaged in it but wrote about it in their own complicated ways. Abigail Adams left behind some remarkable correspondence. Native Americans were referenced in the Declaration of Independence. These inclusions are not mere gestures toward the idea of inclusion.
Perhaps all eras include people who want their history to exclusively affirm their present-day political beliefs. The past never provides that; it is always complicated. For however many people will consider this documentary “woke,” there will be an equal number of people who consider it too conservative. Talking about the American soldiers who fought for the duration, Joseph Ellis says on camera “I don’t think you can be patriotic enough about them.” Jane Kamensky says that “to believe in America … is to believe in possibility.” Multiple people suggest that without George Washington, we would have no country at all. And there are instances in the narration that describe weather as “providential,” without qualification. It would be very insincere to suggest that this documentary serves up a leftwing version of the American founding. As always, Burns has interviewed many historians and writers, and they do not all hold the same views as each other or as all possible viewers.
Another significant aspect of The American Revolution is the place it gives the Revolution in world history. Among many historians, the French Revolution is often considered more important. While the American Revolution came first, it is often seen as less universal, it was certainly less radical, and it was less interested in or able to export its values. The French Revolution may have begun striving for constitutional monarchy, but they ended up coining a new year one, setting Europe aflame, and creating a template that many other revolutions have tried to follow. They even gave us the kilogram. But The American Revolution gives primacy to the American Revolution. One of the historians calls it “the most consequential revolution in history.” Another says that it was about “the noblest aspirations of humankind.” And the documentary ends with a quote by Founder Benjamin Rush, saying that the war is over, but the revolution is not.
Ken Burns’ brand of patriotism may not be to everyone’s liking, but he is the most patriotic filmmaker in the country. A Ken Burns documentary is always about America. He has covered the Shakers, the Civil War, baseball, World War II, the Brooklyn Bridge, Jack Johnson (boxer), the National Parks, jazz, the Roosevelts, Prohibition, the Vietnam War, country music, and more. His digital platform UNUM emphasizes that we have “many stories, one nation.” No filmmaker is as concerned with engaging Americans in our own stories and in our own democracy. His longtime collaborator Geoffrey Ward has said of the so-called American experiment, “The American experiment is an experiment. The results are always in doubt. Democracy requires tending.” These films are part of that tending, keeping alive the stories of our past and its significant figures, grounding us in our animating values, not consigning our culture to the dustbin of history or even a dusty shelf.
Arguably no public figure does more to encourage Americans to learn the story of our country and our culture. Any take which overlooks that reality is not worth taking seriously. Some people may find his politics too liberal or conservative, some professional historians believe that his films oversimplify the complexity of the past or that they lack professional objectivity, but no one else has millions of Americans watching twelve hours about the American Revolution. No one else can recruit actors like Paul Giamatti, Claire Danes, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks and historians like Joseph Ellis, Bernard Bailyn, and Gordon Wood to be featured in a PBS documentary. No one else created a camera technique that brings paintings and still photographs to life.
The American Revolution is not perfect. A documentary can be twelve hours long and still leave you wanting more. I think almost anyone would like more about George Washington. Unfortunately, he was a cipher in his own time, extremely private and unknowable to most of his peers. More time could have been spent on some of the battles. We get relatively little about the role of print culture in sparking and sustaining the Revolution. The focus is on events, not religious or Enlightenment ideas. Yet we get quite a bit about the Hessians, we get a lot of Nathanael Greene, and we get more minor figures like the chaplain Philip Vickers Fithian (the subject of a book by John Fea). We get the Battle of Stone Mountain, not just Yorktown. This film has less pathos than some of the others, but it is probably working harder to include a wider range of people and topics. It also comes at a very politically charged moment, making it hard for us to watch it without watching for political bias.
Perhaps the best thing about The American Revolution is the way in which it demonstrates the contingency of the past. There were times that Washington and the other generals did not have the men or supplies needed and things could have turned out differently. The French might not have aided us. What might have happened if Washington had become king or had not stepped down after his second term? The American Revolution was not a fixed set of pre-determined events. It was full of movement and drama and families divided and blood spilled. Actions and individuals were of great consequence. The events of 1754-1780 shaped the future in meaningful ways, just as our actions will shape our future. In the months to come, America will be celebrating its semiquincentennial in earnest. The American Revolution is a good beginning for that because it asks us to reacquaint ourselves with the past, to see what was exciting about what is now familiar, and to take seriously our own actions in the present.
Image Credit: Emanuel Leutze, “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851) via Wikimedia.
