The American Revolution
July 4, 2026, 250 years of American independence, the semiquincentennial. The day a lot of people and countries thought would never come. It’s a good thing that it did. A whole host of movies and TV shows have been made about the American Revolution, from a Disney show in the late 50s about General Francis ‘Swamp Fox’ Marion, with the title role played by a very young Leslie Neilson, to the musical and movie 1776 to The Patriot in the early 2000s starring Mel Gibson in the leading role. There is a gamut of shows to pique anyone’s interest.
The newest entry, debuting in November 2025, is a documentary, The American Revolution, by Ken Burns. It is longer than Burns’ past documentaries by two hours. Instead of five days at two hours apiece, it’s six days at two hours apiece. Considering that the Revolutionary War period stretched from the Townshend Acts of 1767, through the fighting, and ending with the Constitution going into effect in 1789, that extra two hours was needed.
The filmmaker, Ken Burns, is well known for his work and his politics. His first documentary, The Brooklyn Bridge, was aired in 1981 and nominated for an Academy Award in 1982. He didn’t win. He is quite liberal and does not hide that fact. He doesn’t apologize for being a liberal either. You may not agree with him, but at least he’s honest about his politics; he doesn’t allow his politics to influence his documentaries. His supporters applaud him; his critics call foul. When The American Revolution first aired, there were complimentary reviews from the usual companies like NPR: “Ken Burns’ American Revolution will make you think differently about U.S. history.”
There were middle-of-the-road reviews, like Indie Wire’s, “The American Revolution Review: In Divided Times, Ken Burns Trumpets a Unifying Dictum: No Kings”. Of course, there were plenty of negative reviews, Washington Monthly’s article, “What’s Wrong with The American Revolution by Ken Burns,” or the Wall Street Journal’s contribution, “The American Revolution Review: Ken Burns Static Story”, calling the documentary “slow and sanctimonious”.
Having watched the documentary myself, I thought it was on the same level as the rest of his work, very good and very detailed. Since he was covering 26 years of history, it was going to be slow; that’s a matter of fact, not opinion. I have taught U.S. History at the college level for well over a decade. I have a master’s degree in history, a bachelor’s degree in Humanities, and a teaching certification in two states in six separate subjects. I have had articles in academic journals and magazines discussing how to use historical media in the classroom. I think I can put my bona fides up against the Wall Street Journal, or any other news organization, any day of the week.
What probably causes a lot of the criticism is something fairly simple. He tells the story of the American Revolution, warts and all. There are no sacred cows in his telling. No one is held up as someone needing to be worshipped or deified, and that’s a good thing. There is already far too much mythologizing in the telling of the story of the American Revolution. It is not needed. The events are already dramatic enough, but people like their ‘stories’ of specific events in American history, and they like them told a certain way. When the story isn’t told the way they like, they complain about it not being the truth.
Wrap Magazine’s review of the documentary contained the following quote: “What distinguishes The American Revolution from many portrayals of the era is its refusal to mythologize its subject matter.” That is the perfect explanation of what made the documentary so good. The entire Revolutionary War period is full of real people with real problems and how they’re dealing with those problems. Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha, had four miscarriages, and some of her children did not live long after birth. Each pregnancy she had was a threat to her health.
John Adams all but destroyed his law practice, the only way he had to feed his family, by defending the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre. George Washington was never able to father children. Ben Franklin’s son, William, was the royal governor of New Jersey. He was captured by the patriots and eventually went into exile. Franklin and his son never reconciled. Burns shows all of those problems. He doesn’t hide them. Another quote from the same article states, “Patriotism here is not blind devotion based on a high school textbook, but an act of reckoning that seeks to tell the truth from various angles.”
Burns does so, skillfully covering everything and everyone. Free blacks and slaves, white men and women, rich and poor, Native Americans; everyone is looked at. Naturally, far more time is devoted to the battles and the events surrounding them than the everyday person in society, but, again, that is as it should be.
Confession time. I have an ancestor who fought in the American Revolution. My grandmother did the genealogy way back in the day, after my grandfather retired from the Army as an officer after serving in both world wars. My patriot was a private from South Carolina. I don’t know much about him beyond his name and what colony he came from. I assume he survived to the end of the Revolutionary War, or I wouldn’t be here. Either that or he had children before he left to go fight.
While I don’t know much about him, I do know that he put his life on hold to go fight for the land he lived on and wanted to defend. I wondered what made him a patriot and not a Loyalist? I’ve wondered how many battles he fought in? What kind of family did he leave behind? Was he scared? Did he panic and run? Was he wounded during the fighting? Did he suffer? Most soldiers died from infection during the Revolutionary War. Antibiotics were at least 100 years in the future, and even basic hygiene, such as washing your hands between treating people, was nonexistent.
My ancestor is what made the American Revolution happen. He and thousands upon thousands of men who stopped their lives to defend their families and went off to be shot at, frozen, captured, starved, etc. You ask yourself why? Why did they join? Was it worth it? Burns answers that question fully through the use of letters, journals from both sides, paintings, and artifacts preserved from that time. The one thing Burns did not have was photographs. Photography did not exist in the 18th century. The very first “photos” didn’t exist until the 1830’s when Louis Daguerre, along with Nicéphore Níepce created the daguerreotype. A main source of information for any researcher simply didn’t exist. The lack of photographs doesn’t slow Burns down at all. He used the other forms of media mentioned above to tell the story.
What a story it is! Great triumph, crushing defeat, one often directly after the other. Sometimes multiple times. You witness the absolute arrogance of the British and the pettiness of the French. France joined the fighting after the colonists proved they could win. They joined simply to stick it to Great Britain. The British had thrown them out of North America at the end of the Seven Years’ War, and they wanted revenge, simple as that. A lot of the great events in history happened just like that. Someone wants revenge on someone else.
Yes, it is a lot of time in front of the TV, but it is time well spent because the story of the American Revolution is the story of us, the story of the U.S. A fact easily seen in the masterful hands of Ken Burns. Watch The American Revolution and be amazed.
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