A decade in the making, “The American Revolution” debuts this Sunday on WHRO and WHRO+.
The six-part series tells the story of the making of the United States through the stories of those who lived during the Revolution.
It’s the latest work by Ken Burns and storytelling partners Sarah Botstein and Williamsburg-born David Schmidt.
The trio was at the Williamsburg Lodge earlier this year for the final “A Common Cause to All” event. It was hosted by the VA250 Commission and Colonial Williamsburg to spark conversation and plans for commemorating the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence next year.
WHRO interviewed Burns and Schmidt about the film.
This interview was edited for time and clarity.
Nick McNamara: What do you think looking back at the nation's founding tells you about where we are and where we're going as a country?
Ken Burns: Well, you know, there's always been divisions. They've been there from the very beginning.
And the great concern was what direction was the country going to go? Are we going to stay British? Are we going to put up with this stuff? Are we going to start a new country? What kind of new country is it going to be? Who were you going to include?
Particularly at this time, we've been working on this for nearly a decade, we had no idea it would coincide with celebrations about the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration.
We're excited by the possibility that by understanding a part of our history, a history that's sort of atrophied in not only our schools but in our general collective consciousness, by reminding people that we have a shared history that we get to reinvigorate the ideals that prompted the founding of the country.
NM: As you look at the history of the time, how does the American Revolution compare to other 18th-century revolutions, such as in Haiti or in France? And how is it unique?
KB: This is the most consequential revolution in the history of the world.
It is the first of them. It's the first to proclaim the unalienable rights of all people. It is the inspiration for most of the other revolutions that will take place within this very complex geopolitical chessboard that involves many empires: British, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch.
And we come out of it taking what are at first complaints about not enjoying the rights of British citizens in England and sort of break them out into, as the historian Christopher Brown says in our film, natural rights. And if they're natural rights, and it's the Enlightenment, all of a sudden you're talking about self-evident truths. And they apply to the French people, as well as to the Haitian people, as well as to people in India and all around the world. But it started here.
NM: I think about this letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams. I believe it's in 1815, and he's responding to a question about who shall write the history of the American Revolution; who can write it? And Jefferson responds, nobody. But that doesn't stop historians from trying. So I'm curious how you take that and how you go about trying to do so?
KB: The person closest to you has an aspect that is inscrutable and unknowable, even with all the proximity and all of the time spent together. So in a way, all history, all biography, is failure; because you can't possibly understand, let alone represent, all that took place.
But we're sort of obligated. Just as all of us are mortal, you can take that depressing news and sit sucking your thumb in a fetal position on the floor, or you could go out and raise babies or tend gardens or make documentary films. So you've got to face the fact that it is, as Jefferson understood, an impossible task, but you have to do it.
And, for us, we would never use the word comprehensive. We would just say that we've spent a decade doing the best we possibly can to communicate this thing that was the invention of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and a lot of other people; to respect not only their visions, but the visions of the ordinary people who actually did the fighting and the dying, and the people who suffered; the loyalists who remained loyal; the Native populations, both within the societies and on the edges of the societies; the free and enslaved and escaped Black populations; women whose rights were not considered at the time of the Constitution; and tell a very complex story that has at its heart the military history that no one ever tells.
NM: Tell me about the importance of Williamsburg in the series, and what it feels like to be able to showcase this place on a national stage?
David Schmidt: This film would not be what it is without my hometown. It wouldn't be what it is without a lot of people's hometowns. But we did film here in Williamsburg more than we filmed anywhere else in the world, and we filmed more on the Virginia Peninsula than anywhere else.
It's not just Williamsburg; it's Jamestown, it's Yorktown, it's Berkeley Plantation, but Williamsburg is really important. It's the only place with this much preserved 18th-century Colonial America that you can get away with a long shot down the street without having to worry about – you still have to worry about some things — but mostly you can get away with it looking like the 18th century.
But also, historically, it's very important. It's where the House of Burgesses met to defy the king for the first time, to say that they were willing to throw in their lot with the city of Boston; initially through fasting and prayer and ultimately through, later on, meeting in Richmond to say let's arm ourselves. Let's join our brethren in Boston and be ready for the fight.
Williamsburg is obviously a very special place for me, but it's naturally a very special place for our film and for our country.
NM: What are some of the places, or maybe scenes, that people might recognize or that were particularly important to you?
DS: One that I didn't mention is that when the Royal Governor Dunmore dissolved the House of Burgesses, the bold names that you've heard of, Patrick Henry and other delegates, met in Williamsburg's Raleigh Tavern and proposed, hey, let's let's head up to Philadelphia and unite all the Colonies in discussion and see what we can do about this. So the common cause of America is born in many different places. One of those is in Virginia's Raleigh Tavern.
And another fun instance for me, personally, is that in 1778, there was a total solar eclipse of the sun that everybody kind of just took a break from this war that they've been fighting to look up into the sky and see something that was completely otherworldly and a shared human experience that everybody could take with no malice, really.
This is just something that we can all experience at the same time, which you could not do otherwise in the vastness of this continent, when there was no telephone, there was no internet. But they could all share this experience together and right in the path of totality was Williamsburg, Virginia, where the Reverend James Madison – not the president, but a relative – said that it was as though we were at night and lightning bugs appeared.
And I just think that that's a fun little nugget of OK, this is this place that we can all walk through. We can all imagine that time and then, just in the middle of the day, we take a time out from the horror of war and see this phenomenon.
NM: How did growing up in Williamsburg shape your approach to history and your approach to your career going forward?
DS: I like to say that I grew up in 1774. I wore the tricorn hat, I wore the leather shoes with brass buckles, stockings, knee breeches, hunting frock. I played the fife and I marched down Duke of Gloucester Street every Saturday afternoon when other people were doing things that normal people do. That was what I did.
So I walked, smelled, saw, heard history and felt it all the time and I loved it. I had four older siblings who loved it too and imposed it on me. And my oldest brother, I was telling Ken today because he got to meet him, made me watch "The Civil War" when I was far too young. And I think those two things together made me want to tell history.
I cannot believe that I fell in with my dream job to get to do this with Ken, with Sarah. To tell our story is something that I really do treasure.
