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Three Big Things I Learned Watching The American Revolutionthat I was never taught in schools
1. The Revolutionary War wasn't just fought with muskets or antique cannons shooting at each other.
There was deadly artillery that could remove a man's arm, leg or head!
2. It wasn't just a war against white people. It was a war against one white-people army, the British and the Germans.
On our side was white people of differing religions, slaves, Indians of all different tribes, and the French. We almost lost, if not for the French, and not ten years later they would overthrow their own monarchy.
3. No history teacher ever, taught me how this one event changed the whole rest of the world from centuries of living under monarchies!
Self Governance.
So Thank You, Ken Burns!
Your Greatest Work To Date!
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Deuxcents
(24,928 posts)I wish this subject was as interesting to me when I was a kid in school..memorizing dates and names and not making the connection wasn’t fun
misanthrope
(9,332 posts)They aren't just an exercise in pedantry. Once you start understanding events and their influences, the general line of dates becomes easier.
B.See
(7,410 posts)Plan on binge watching it, but if it's anything like his Civil War it'll be a masterpiece.
underpants
(194,021 posts)I’m sure he has a better story of it but basically Washington faked that he was going to NYC. Cornwallis was headed that way but the Royal navy couldn’t get into the York River because a storm slowed them down and if they had the French Navy would’ve been shooting fish in a barrel. Cornwallis got trapped and Washington just surge warfared him until he surrendered. Though he didn’t show up to the ceremony.
It was really the only battle Washington won….with the help of Lafayette and Von Steuben (who was gay BTW)
BaronChocula
(3,827 posts)There were plenty of allegations as to why he left Germany. History is pretty complex.
mahina
(20,186 posts)One quibble with your summary though: according to the episode that ran last night on PBS, different tribes of Native Americans were on different sides. He went into some of the actual individuals in the tribes.
I’m astonished that I had never understood the breath and scope of this war.
misanthrope
(9,332 posts)Going back to authoritarian rule. What a waste.
barbtries
(31,002 posts)the inevitability of this - glitch - enduring beyond my lifetime.
realistically i know it's possible but as long as i keep breathing I'll be working to turn it around and reclaim democracy for future generations.
maptap22
(244 posts)George Washington owned more that 300 men, women, and children. I just can't wrap my mind around anyone thinking it was ok to own a human being. All in service of capitalism really. They needed the cheap (no cost) labor. The most profitable states that England ruled had the highest number of slaves. Massachusetts being the least profitable with few slaves and the Carribean islands the most profitable with something like 90% slaves. It is always about $$.
BannonsLiver
(20,134 posts)
Farmer-Rick
(12,321 posts)How well capitalism works with slavery.
BannonsLiver
(20,134 posts)Which was basically that he was Hitler-lite. A total lie.
leftstreet
(38,503 posts)Sadly, Blacks and Native Americans who served were NOT given the bounty-land warrants afforded the white farmer, tradesmen, laborer soldiers.
TommyT139
(2,100 posts)...right from the beginning, where the series starts with how the Six Nations were a model for our govt structure.
It's streamable for free online at PBS. An amazing gift us all.
Srkdqltr
(9,149 posts)Paladin
(32,076 posts)I never would have dreamed that was possible.
ProfessorGAC
(75,356 posts)I tend to lose interest after the 1930s, & especially when they hit the period I witnessed myself.
But, that stuff that happened 100, 120, 160 years ago is fascinating.
He made a show on the dust bowl. Dirt flew all the way to the white house.
Frasier Balzov
(4,741 posts)For mainly two reasons:
1. They perceived strength, command structure and orderly discipline with the British.
2. The rebels (or patriots as they are increasingly being called with each episode) kept homesteading on Indian lands in violation of promises Britain had made.
wolfie001
(6,603 posts)
Ponietz
(4,208 posts)Nothing hunky dory about the founding of the US. A lot of backroom deals. Still dealing with the repercussions today.
Hey Joe
(328 posts)I have learned several details and more obscure historical facts previously unknown to me.
Even the mention of the importance of inoculation against diseases of that period, which I wasn’t aware of.
Hey RFK jr. , you listening?
Hassin Bin Sober
(27,334 posts)As in “hey fake-triots, even George Washington mandated vaccines”
BigmanPigman
(54,402 posts)as well as the narrators. Peter Coyote is always the main voice but I could hear Tom Hanks and Meryll Streep too.
Once photography took over artists lost a lot of work opportunities.
SheilaAnn
(10,599 posts)Mr.Bee
(1,501 posts)The maps and equating them to today's locations!
3Hotdogs
(14,837 posts)The British would have been able to hold the cities, Boston, Phila, NY. But going inland, they would have had trouble supplying troops. This was also in evidence with the times after Brandywine. Then the Brits went foraging, they were attacked.
It was the same with USA and Viet Nam. We held the cities but the V.C. held the countryside.
Rochambeau and De Grasse help put the finishing touch on Cornwallis at Yorktown.
maybe I should have said 'I had no idea the French were even involved at all.'
I have no reason I am just learning these things at 71 years old,
(except maybe being partially educated outside the US).
3Hotdogs
(14,837 posts)I retired as a N.J. high school history teacher. N.J. was "The Crossroads of the Revolution," so I have a deeper understanding of the War For Independence than most.
Mr.Bee
(1,501 posts)that I was partly educated outside the US?
And even a few years in a British school!
I learned a lot about the Middle and Dark Ages,
but I missed out on most of the early American history...
But still never heard how the American Revolution changed the
rest of the world from centuries of living under monarchies!
moniss
(8,465 posts)
Fiorillo
(16 posts)I absolutely love this series, but I sure wish Ken was nicer to the Green Mountain Boys! Sure Ethan Allen liked his likker, but wow.
And then, at the battle of Bennington, no mention of the Green Mountain Boys, under Seth Warner, stopping Baum's reinforcement, thereby enabling Starks victory over a weakened German/British army.
5th great grandfather Asa Briggs was one of them Green Mountain Boys.
Frankly
Mr.Bee
(1,501 posts)Jeremiah Briggs born 1799?
Did a bit of searching, to no avail, but then again, I have limited information on Asa Briggs siblings. 4th great grandmother Charlotte Briggs stated her father was Asa Briggs, a green mountain boy. He shows up in records from Oakham, Vermont, with the boys. That's all I got.
Frankly
Warpy
(114,257 posts)because they had the larger houses in which the British Army was expected to be housed and fed. They owned horses that might be requisitioned at a moment's notice and they were hit hardest by the taxes on luxury goods they could afford but frontier and marginal farmers could not. Rebelling against the crown had been a pretty hard sell outside the big cities and wealthy plantations.
I know because apparently there was on ancestor here, a Dutch descendent of someone awarded a land grant along the Hudson when NY was New Amsterdam and the Dutch were givng tribal land away to each other. The land was hardscrabble glacial moraine like most of New England, but they did find a variety of grape that did well and produced some respectable wines. They were moderately successful, but certainly not enough to consider revolution.
A lot of poor folks joined up for the pay. The rich led the whole thing to lower their taxes. The middle stayed put. The lofty ideals came later, taken from the speeches ofThomas Paine and others they found pr8nted in old broadsides . Burns is correct. It's anice mythology, but it aint necessarily so.
SunSeeker
(57,332 posts)It is pretty clear there was nobody else who could have united the colonies like he did.
And that's what I love about true, thoroughly told history like Ken Burns provides. It's complicated, and all of our heroes were human. But we don't have to lie that our heroes were saints or gods to appreciate what they did for our country. They are still heroes, regardless. Adults should be able to handle the whole picture.
And to me, it is even more inspiring to see the whole picture, and realize such heroes still live among us today. It gives me hope.
AverageOldGuy
(3,190 posts)My memory may be failing me, but, as I recall, prior to WW I, more soldiers died of disease than in combat.
SunSeeker
(57,332 posts)
Jack Valentino
(4,085 posts)prior to the 20th century. When you take a bunch of mostly rural people
who had been isolated and never exposed to a lot of diseases
because of their previously very isolated lives, thus lacking much resistance,
and throw them all together in a confined space, the close contact
allowed infectious diseases to really take off and take a great toll of deaths,
before we had vaccines for most of them....
This was a great scourge to the armies of the American civil war in particular,
because those armies were so much larger than we had ever before assembled...
pansypoo53219
(22,762 posts)
Bayard
(27,919 posts)I am really enjoying it though, like I did the Civil War series. Never saw the one on baseball.
Ken Burns does wonderful work.
elleng
(141,685 posts)*TONIGHT, part 5,The Soul of all AMERICA, 8 - 10 p.m., reruns from 10 - 12, and again tomorrow afternoon.
BHDem53
(1,116 posts)
Collimator
(2,052 posts)Well, they weren't antiques at the time, were they? 
soldierant
(9,165 posts)I don't know about cannons specifically , but explosive devices similar to bombs and grenades had been around for a long time. They did not originate with dynamite, although that did revolutionize them, no pun intended. They used gunpowder. One of them was the petard, which was referred to in Shakespeare's Hamlet, published in 1602. Most people seem to think it was a device which somehow lifted things of the ground, like a rope, maybe a hangman's noose, but it wasn't. "Hoist with his own petard" means "blown up by his own bomb."
hedda_foil
(16,872 posts)He didn't do it because he was fond of American liberty, but to hurt his enemy, England. Unfortunately, his support of our independence left France basically bankrupt, which destabilized their monarchy, leading to the French revolution and the beheading of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Not to mention virtually all of the French royals and nobility.
catchnrelease
(2,116 posts)There was a series on Benjamin Franklin with Michael Douglas in the lead role that really showed what went into the French support for the rebels in the US. It was exactly as you said-- Louis only supported them to weaken the British. The series showed how Franklin basically arm wrestled the French minister (I've forgotten his name) to convince the king to send money, ships and supplies to the colonists. The king was also promised booty from the New World and his loan being repaid...which it never was.
There was a bunch of the program about Franklin's dalliances with various French aristocratic women and I don't know how much of that was made up, but overall I feel like it was a good series. (called Franklin and on Apple TV).
walkingman
(10,157 posts)
ShazamIam
(2,987 posts)valued it for. It was not only a revolution against monarchial power but the revolutionary idea of self governance of the governed.
homegirl
(1,904 posts)"The shot heard round the World" was burned into my brain in grade school. Next year the 250th Anniversary and we are fighting to protect our Democratic Republic!
spike jones
(1,979 posts)On July 4, 1917, Stanton visited the tomb of French Revolution and American Revolution hero Marquis de Lafayette and (according to Pershing) said, "Lafayette, we are here!" to honor the nobleman's assistance during the Revolutionary War and assure the French people that the people of the United States would aid them in World War I.[12] The famous quote is often misattributed to Pershing, but Pershing himself attributed it to Stanton.[12]
madamesilverspurs
(16,443 posts)especially for those of us whose history lessons were delivered by whatever off-season coach was available. My first experience with a genuine for real no kidding teacher of history came in college; he not only knew his stuff, but he'd also written a number of books on the subject. His lectures were downright fascinating. Unfortunately, he retired after the next semester, leaving behind a high bar that others approached but never exceeded.
.
Deminpenn
(17,191 posts)about Washington's decision to have Nathaniel Greene's troops make the Brits chase him all around the South and wear themselves out.
And if the series discusses the British attempt to provoke a civil war between the costal settlers and the Scotch and Irish settlers in the interior.
SunSeeker
(57,332 posts)I've only gotten through episodes 1 & 2, but Burns definitely makes clear that the colonists were in many ways fighting each other, patriots versus loyalists, and abolitionists versus slave owners.
Deminpenn
(17,191 posts)interior settlers, mostly Scotch and Irish, against the costal, mostly English, settlers. It was kind of their last ditch effort to win the war.
Nasruddin
(1,148 posts)The Iroquois Confederation, or most of it, sided with the British. Especially the Mohawks.
I've known this since I was a kid decades ago - it was no secret. I think the Cherokee likewise but learned that later.
SunSeeker
(57,332 posts)I had no idea the colonist had attempted to take over Canada until I watched episode 2.
Jilly_in_VA
(13,592 posts)I wasn't really taught about Native American involvement in the Revolution. Missed it in the first semester of American History in college, too (1961) in the provincial little college I attended before I transferred to UW-Madison. By the time I got to William Appleman Williams' class it was 1861 and after. Dang. Although he was GREAT.
Martin68
(26,701 posts)masmdu
(2,636 posts)Interesting take by Tad Stoermer, historian/academic
Ken Burns’ American Revolution is 1950s History for 2026
Description
Ken Burns’ new documentary looks inclusive because it acknowledges slavery and includes marginalized voices. But it’s actually 1950s Consensus School historiography—Cold War nationalist mythology updated with social history texture. Burns told TIME his goal is proving “The American Revolution is the most important, consequential revolution in history”—the conclusion drives the investigation. That’s not history.
The Consensus School (Hofstadter, Boorstin, Morgan) dominated 1950-1975, teaching Boomers that Americans were unified by founding principles despite surface conflicts. It collapsed in academia but shaped the generation now doing public storytelling—Burns, Spielberg, major filmmakers absorbed this framework young.
Burns anchors his series with Gordon Wood and Joseph Ellis—both complained in 2018 that social history was overshadowing “positive” founding narratives. Serious scholars like Maya Jasanoff, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Christopher Brown provide texture but get slotted into a nationalist framework where marginalized voices matter only insofar as they contributed to “America.”
Modern Revolutionary War historiography asks: whose revolution? Which resistance movements succeeded, which got crushed? It places the Revolution in Atlantic contexts—Dutch Revolt came first, Haiti was more radical, “America” was one contingent outcome. Burns can’t engage this without abandoning American exceptionalism.
This is 1950s history for 2026. The 250th deserves better than nationalist mythology with diversity window-dressing.
Solomon
(12,624 posts)Mr.Bee
(1,501 posts)Along with the letters read.
Mr.Bee
(1,501 posts)of Led Zeppelin?
(Also other voices)
hunter
(40,229 posts)
Journeyman
(15,412 posts)"The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800"
From the liner notes:
Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian Jay Winik masterfully illuminates how their fates combined in one extraordinary moment to change the course of civilization. A sweeping, magisterial drama featuring the richest cast of characters ever to walk upon the world stage, including Washington, Jefferson, Louis XVI, Robespierre, and Catherine the Great, The Great Upheaval is a gripping, epic portrait of this tumultuous decade that will forever transform the way we see America's beginnings and our world
Well worth the time. Illuminating in so many many ways.
cab67
(3,546 posts)Haudenosaunee
(1 post)I am a descendent of the Oneida warriors who fought alongside Gen. Washington and who were responsible (according to President Washington) for saving his army during the winter at Valley Forge. Oneida warriors served this country in every war even though we were not "granted" citizenship until 1924. The "Iroquois Confederacy" continues to exist today as the Haudenosaunee. There are many books recounting our history and the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin website has additional resources available for more information. Yawʌˀ (Thank You)
LetMyPeopleVote
(173,120 posts)
marble falls
(69,608 posts)
SidneyR
(199 posts)the monarchy in Britain was NOT running the country. Parliament was. Americans like to over-simplify things in order to rally around an easy target. The American revolt was about getting out from under the constraints of colonial status, but it was Parliament they opposed. The king was already little more than a national symbol with power that was mostly ceremonial.
jonstl08
(523 posts)Watching this on PBS. Learning a lot that was not taught in history classes. Interesting to learn how a majority of blacks and native Americans fought with the British because they had a better chance of being free under British rule than American.
Mr.Bee
(1,501 posts)Thanks for reminding me. That was mentioned all through the series.
debm55
(53,080 posts)
Emile
(39,400 posts)walking on the treadmill. It was a slow walk, because I haven't been on the treadmill since last winter. The American Revolution did an amazing job of capturing my attention away from walking. When I did look down, I was thrilled to see I had walked two miles.
It's like all of Ken Burns works, it's great.
H2O Man
(78,333 posts)of Indians and human beings who had escaped from the institution of slavery fighting against the colonists as well.
WarGamer
(18,148 posts)And most historians agree... the French Revolution was a failure.
The Reign of Terror... essentially Robespierre's "Gestapo" rounding up people with no due process, violating the very arguments of the Revolution itself... even the early leaders of the Revolution were killed.
The aftermath was 10 years of chaos and conflict internationally... which led to
Napoleon the dictator.
The Revolution divided the French people, leading to multiple Civil wars over the next 100 years.
Oh and not to mention, the revolutionaries destroyed much art and historical structures in their temper tantrums, killed clergy and academics.
But... this romantic fiction about the French Revolution continues.