Several people have asked me what I think of the Ken Burns documentary The American Revolution, which has completed its six-episode, 12 hour run on PBS. It remains available for streaming.
It is well worth watching, but it did not hit the heights of cultural experience that The Civil War did back in the early 1990s. I don’t think that is even possible anymore. The vast flood of content of varying quality that is available daily at our fingertips, the shrinking of attention spans, and the coding of virtually everything in highly partisan political terms has made creating a widely shared, deep cultural experience close to impossible.
I dislike crafting detailed reviews, so I’ll just give you a series of impressions from a Frontier Partisans perspective, and a few thoughts on the online reactions I’ve encountered.
Dragging Canoe, from Nadia Dean’s A Demand of Blood.
• I am gratified that Burns and his team recognized the importance of the West in the story of the Revolution. The Cherokee War of 1776 and Dragging Canoe’s resistance, the campaigns of George Rogers Clark in the Illinois Country, the Sullivan Expedition to hit the Seneca in western New York, the role of the Overmountain Men in the critical fight at Kings Mountain, and other elements of frontier warfare are given proper due. The series recognized that the struggle for Liberty was also a struggle for Empire — right from the git-go.
George Rogers Clark takes the surrender of Gov. Henry Hamilton at Fort Sackville.
Burns kicks the whole thing off with a nod to the Haudenosaunee — the League of the Iroquois — and their purported influence as an example of unified, democratic political action North America. That influence is pretty much a myth. Burns is careful not to create a direct causal link between the Haudenosaunee and the founding of the United States, but something is implied there that is misleading. There is no evidence in the Founders’ writings that the confederacy of the Haudenosaunee had any material influence on the creation of our form of government. The Founders were men of the Enlightenment, educated in the classics and obsessed with the history of Greece and Rome. That’s the well from which their democratic and republican ideals sprang.
This particular “centering” of a native mode of government as a model is a bit of revisionist romanticism.
• The emphasis on the war as a brutal and nasty civil war is important, as is the recognition that native people, enslaved people and colonial Loyalists alike acted in accordance with what they saw as their best chance at freedom and self-determination.
• Burns used reenactors mostly impressionistically. This suits his style, but it came across as a little self-consciously “artsy.” It isn’t always effective.
• Some online commentators found the presentation “boring.” I did not. However, Burns’ style is what I would call “stately,” and it may not be as effective as it used to be when we have become accustomed to constant overstimulation.
• Many online critics — coming from a right-wing perspective — dismiss The American Revolution as “woke.” Some of that has to do with the “centering” of native experience and perspectives, but mostly it seems to be due to the focus on slavery and the Black experience of the conflict.
I have become weary and leery of the use of “woke” as a pejorative for anything that addresses fraught matters of race in any serious way. There was an understandable and legitimate negative reaction to the spasm of propagandistic hyper-focus on race that peaked in 2019-21 or so. But that reaction has overcorrected to the point that any highlighting of racial issues draws immediate fire and angry dismissal. It should be self-evident — but isn’t — that while it’s true that not everything can be reduced to race, that doesn’t mean that nothing is about race at all.
Burns does, indeed, place way more emphasis on slavery than we are used to seeing in accounts of the American Revolution — but it is not out of proportion. We’re just not used to it – and for some people it’s an affront. But c’mon people… we have to recognize that fighting for Liberty while simultaneously enslaving many thousands of people created a fundamental contradiction that was forged into the founding of our republic; one which we struggle to this day to reconcile.
Burns has always had a focus on race, and the focus here is valid. The broader focus on the experience of Black people, native peoples and women is simply a recognition that the Revolution touched everyone’s lives — including lives of people who wanted only to steer clear of it.
• Conversely, critics on the left accuse Burns of purveying 1950s-style “nationalist history” with “inclusivity” as “window-dressing.” That is grossly unfair to Burns and his team, and revealing of what I have always found a corrosive narrative that would have us believe that serious imperfections render the whole national project false, and any celebration of our very real accomplishments grotesque. Bah!
As is so often the case, that line of attack ends up ad hominem. One particularly obnoxious professor slagged off participating historians Rick Atkinson and Nathaniel Philbrick for being popular writers instead of “scholars.” We all know where that’s coming from.
Burns and his team have crafted a story that, while not eliding the darker elements, recognizes the Revolution as a watershed moment in human history, an enobling moment for mankind. For those who see America as fundamentally racist and oppressive, that is unforgivable. I am deeply familiar with this thinking; it pervaded my university experience.
I reject both of these lines of criticism — the “woke” and the “nationalist” — and I feel for Burns’ predicament. In some sense, you can’t win, especially with the partisans, because if you don’t tell the story the way they want it told, they will reject it entirely, and attack you personally.
• The American Revolution may suffer a bit for being promoted as an “event.” Expectations — including mine — were raised to a level that the work itself could not sustain. In the main, it is very good. It has shortcomings, both historically and artistically, but I am always bent toward appreciating what something is rather than complaining about what it is not. I am most pleased that an understanding of the Revolutionary War West has been presented to a broad audience. It is well worth the 12-hour investment. However, Burns’ opus is not superior to the major A&E documentary of the 1990s, or to PBS’s own Liberty! of the same era. It cannot be treated on the last, best word on the subject.
*
I have been most impressed with the Worlds Turned Upside Down podcast. No other broad history of the Revolution has been more attuned to the Western Frontier roots of the conflict. Episode 21: The Vengeance does a magnificent job of covering the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the massacre of the family of Mingo diplomat Logan and Lord Dunmore’s War of 1774. It features Robert Parkinson, author of Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier — which is an absolutely mandatory FP book.
Matthew says
I haven’t seen the documentary but the reactions by people on both sides of the political spectrum does not surprise me. People nowadays seem uninterested in nuance and complexity if not HOSTILE to it.
deuce says
I’ve watched 3-4hrs of it (I kept falling asleep). It’s not bad, but isn’t close to THE CIVIL WAR, in my opinion.
I noticed something also spotted by others: Burns consistently elided just HOW black slaves got from their nominal state of freedom in Africa to the holds of the slave ships. Every time, they were “torn” or “kidnapped” without noting WHO exactly was DOING all that ‘tearing’ and ‘kidnapping’. The vital role of the middlemen/women in the process–the rulers of the native African kingdoms–is completely absent. It should be noted that those same kingdoms were selling slaves to Muslim slavers for centuries before European buyers came along. Burns leaving this out EVERY time can’t be a mistake. It’s propaganda.
Joe says
Exactly. I share your view that it’s a flawed but worthwhile series. Completely agree with “we have to recognize that fighting for Liberty while simultaneously enslaving many thousands of people created a fundamental contradiction that was forged into the founding of our republic.”
I think Jefferson’s struggle with slavery really represents the founding of our country and its absolutely correct to dive into that contradiction. And of course we should also take pride that two of the three primary drafters of the Declaration of Independence were outspoken opponents of slavery. Adams viewed the institution as a moral evil, supported gradual emancipation efforts, and of course his son became one of the strongest champions of abolition. Franklin become president of the Pennsylvania Society for Abolition and petitioned Congress to end the slave trade. And Jefferson repeatedly dubbed slavery a “moral depravity” and wrestled with the question the rest of his life. His view, from what I can gather, was that the next generation would “figure it out.” Unfortunately he didn’t realize that kicking the can down the road would require a bloody Civil War, but that’s a different issue (and documentary hah)
I always thought Frederick Douglass brought this issue full circle and sums up my viewpoint that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were fundamentally anti-slavery documents that loudly proclaimed the equality of all men, and that the hypocrisy and sin lay in the founders themselves who were flawed mortal men who simply couldn’t live up to the lofty principles they aspired to. Like so many of us who aspire to live up to ideal standards, we often fall short, but those noble standards are always a beacon of light to guide us in the right direction, just as the Constitution continued to urge the descendants of our founding fathers toward liberty and equality.
JimC says
This.
It has served us well to have been forced — as MLK Jr. put it — to be true to what we put on paper.
Stanley Wheeler says
Well said. I was only able to watch a couple episodes, missing the first one entirely. I thought it lacked the depth of The Civil War, but was informative and worth a watch while recognizing its flaws. Certainly not the magnum opus for which I had hoped.
JimC says
That seems to be a common response. I think a lot of us had our expectations set very high and it just didn’t live up to them.
Jean says
Good thoughts by Jim and all the comments. Burns has done better but this is a very difficult subject today due to the over sensitivity of many people and their lack of more in-depth knowledge of history. Our kids haven’t been learning much history for decades.
Jobert says
It was haunting to hear the echo of Ho Chi Minh—don’t need to win battles; just not lose them. (I recall he said he studied the Am Rev which helped devise his strategy.)
JimC says
Ho’s draft of the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam directly quotes the American Declaration. Some American OSS agents considered Ho a nationalist compatible with, even admiring of, American principles. The brutal, binary logic of the Cold War put the U.S. in opposition to Ho — perhaps inevitably. It’s hard not to ponder on roads not taken there…
JimC says
Posting this on behalf of Lane Batot:
I’ll TRY to compress my many impressions of Ken Burns “The American Revolution” here. One MAJOR thing I must disagree with is of the Iroquois confederation NOT having an influence on our founding fathers. It most certainly did, as did other tribes very Democratic societies, and HAD been influencing the ways European colonists were thinking for many generations!. At one point, speaking specifically of the Iroquois Confederation, and comparing them to the difficulties the 13 British colonies were having forming a constructive alliance, Benjamin Franklin himself said(who was never very complimentary towards the Native Americans!)–paraphrased here–“If a bunch of naked savages can form such a functional alliance, surely we can do it too!” I cannot remember perzackly which of my many books on the Iroquois during this era I read this, but If I remember, I’ll let you know….Further into the subject of this influence, Native American cultures and customs are part-and-parcel of who we became as “Americans”, and it’s hard not to emphasize that enough. Several entire TV series could be done on this subject alone! Not only were their forms of governing themselves noted and emulated–if only subconsciously at times no doubt(and American Indians had more Democratic societies at the time than anything the Europeans had previously encountered), the European colonists emulated forms of dress, hunting techniques, agricultural practices(including the very crops they grew!), and most decidedly FIGHTING techniques, weaponry, and tactics from our native “injuns”! We as Americans are so interwoven with the original Native American cultures, that it is often hard to see where one starts and the other ends–and this includes Native tribes adopting and emulating European practices! Even if just subconsciously for many colonists, who would be reluctant to admit they were influenced by those “naked savages”, we as Americans had already differed so much in just a few generations to think of ourselves as something different and separate from our colonial “masters”. I personally do not think you can emphasize this enough, and most of our written historical accounts gloss over it–I certainly learned little-to-nothing in Grade School about the great Native American influence in our development as a country, until I began reading on my own specific books ON those Native Americans, that luckily got preserved by some European-descended writers! And as for this series being too “woke”–REALLY? What was it, maybe, in total percentage-wise, about 25%? 15%? about the Native American and enslaved African influences/experiences? The MAJORITY of it being the white/European influences(which IS where the majority of records come from, certainly),and THAT is too “woke” for some people? Sheesh! I personally would have preferred MORE of the mostly unknown other influences and experiences–so long as they were FACTUAL. But from what I’ve seen of the anti-woke folks, facts are not something they are much interested in, in promoting their clearly racist agendas! I fully APPRECIATED Ken Burns’ “warts-and-all” depiction of this conflict, and how it was FAR MORE complicated than the romantic notion of it being Patriotic Americans, justly and without blemish, standing up to the tyrannical British overlords–which is the white-washed(literally!) version I was force-fed in Grade School!
John M. says
If we don’t have a national story, then we don’t have a nation. Anyone who is not a child is well aware that our idols have feet of clay, but that doesn’t mean that we teach children that the Founders were villains.
Perhaps some people are overreacting to the ~50 year ongoing effort to rewrite/efface America’s national story, but perhaps as a people we’ve been underreacting for 50 years and some overreaction is necessary if we want to continue to have a nation.
lane batot says
First–thanks Jim, for re-transcribing this! Hope it wasn’t too much trouble. I’m going to try and note the EXACT way my name is recognized on the workplace computer, and copy it for my home computer efforts. We humans may recognize each other, even when wearing different clothes, but these dang computers–every jot and tittle must be EXACT!….But to answer John M.–sure we need a National Story, but it shouldn’t be made up of lies and exclusive to certain participants, or it is simply setting itself up to cause disillusion and division somewhere down the road, which is perzackly what has happened! And sure, we don’t want to get too graphic with the young kids, but we can still water things down and be more truthful and less exclusive, especially since, of course, a lot of those young kids are Native Americans and African Americans…..By High School, and certainly by college, the “warts-and-all” truth should not be glossed over, as they still were during my High School and College years!…..And you said it, not me! Ha! I had to laugh, as although you might not have meant it quite that way, your “mind of a child” comment is so true! Although, in all fairness, I know some sharp-as-tacks young kids, but some very dull adults! Anyhoo, there ARE many adults who just DO NOT want to see anything but the romanticized, white-washed version of things they learned as children, but they should NOT have the power to SUPPRESS the rest of us that, also disillusioned, WANT to know the TRUTH of things! And then there are the anti-woke folks that don’t give a rat’s arse for the truth, they just want their racist agenda to continue to dominate our society, and they have zero qualms lying and cheating, and fomenting all manner of blatant false propaganda to try and achieve that! Those are the ones I will continue to beg-to-differ with, as long as I have breath, and a functioning right index finger!
Wayne says
Thanks for an excellent review by Jim Cornelius. I was initially disappointed by the lack of philosophical examination of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I quickly realized my mistake. He had already covered the intellectual story of the Revolution in his earlier documentaries on Jefferson, Franklin, etc. This documentary was about the war, not philosophy. Burns did an excellent job of explaining the progression of the Revolution from the northeast to the southern colonies, and describing the battles and military leaders on both sides, and the battles they fought.