The American Experiment (2026) s01e01 Episode Script
Freedom
- [birds singing]
- [soft music playing]
[water splashing softly]
[woman 1] Every day, I wake up
in the United States of America
and know that I have certain freedoms,
should I choose to exert them or not.
I know that my ability
to have those freedoms
did not come from me.
[bell tolling]
It came from people before me.
The value in the stories
of revolutionaries
is that they laid the foundation
for who and what and where we are today,
both the good and the bad.
[dramatic music playing]
[shouting]
[man 1] If I had to use
one word to describe
what's going on in colonial America,
it's "aspiration."
[man 2] For the vast majority
of human existence in our universe,
people have lived
under dictators and bullies and thugs.
[chanting] The Constitution matters!
[Raskin] Democracy is the exception.
Even today on Earth,
democracy is the exception.
Most people are living
under authoritarian despots
and tyrants.
- [Kim Jong Un shouts]
- [crowd cheering]
The American experiment is democracy.
[man 3] Our citizens were fighting
for freedom, for independence,
and this radical idea at the time
that sovereignty lies with the people.
[man 4] To me, it seems
almost like a miracle, really.
[dramatic music continues]
I think that they felt
like they had a real chance
to create something
brand new on this Earth.
[woman 2] The wisdom is wisdom
about power, about how to organize it,
limit it, check it, and bound it,
so it can do good things for a society.
[man 5] They didn't know
what the outcome was when they did it,
but they had such a deep conviction
about freedom,
about independence,
they were willing to step forward
and risk everything.
[dramatic music continues]
We aren't a nation based in blood or soil.
We are based in ideals,
and ideals that are worth fighting for
and worth striving for.
[man 6] America was a country
for the first time
where you would be rewarded
by what you did, not who you were.
It really was.
[man 7] Why do millions of people
from all over the world come to America?
They come to America because here,
anybody can become anything.
- [men shout]
- [music continues]
[woman 3] I think it's
the most worthy experiment
that has ever been conducted
by any group of people.
It was an experiment
that understood it would evolve over time.
[man 8] I think the American experiment
is whether a democracy is sustainable,
that respects basic human rights,
that seems like it's being tested.
I think we're gonna see in this century
whether it passes the test.
[man 9] We're living in a moment
of profound transition
- we haven't fully understood.
- [shouting]
This is actually a time
when the original debates
among the framers
are more relevant than they've been
at any point in my lifetime.
[man 10] The great strength
of history is that it tells us
that one of the great things
that happens in America
is people make a way out of no way.
They find a way to move forward.
They find a way
where there doesn't seem to be
hope to find hope,
where there doesn't seem to be
a possibility to find ways to believe.
[man 11] That's this grand bargain
that we entered into,
And that has worked well for 250 years.
[man 12] History is interred
in the shallowest of graves.
[crowd shouting, fades]
It is always closer to the surface
than we recognize.
[music fades]
[deep string music playing]
[drums thumping dramatically]
[rooster cries]
[man 1] In 1753,
there is no United States.
There's more the 13 British colonies
in North America
along the Atlantic seaboard,
each in their own way,
conducting their own diplomacy,
minding their own futures,
expanding in their own ways.
[music continues]
But they are acting
not as a united set of colonies,
certainly not a United States.
That's not even a dream at this point.
The colonies are themselves
not even united
about how they feel about being British.
The shopkeepers of Boston
and the blue bloods
of Virginia and Georgia
don't see eye to eye
about their role in the British Empire.
[music intensifies]
They still see themselves
not just as British subjects,
but each of them
as kind of citizens of their own country,
called Massachusetts
or Connecticut or New Jersey.
And so it's not really a country.
America in this period
is a sideshow for Great Britain,
who of course is deeply concerned
with its traditional and ancient enemy,
France.
These two great powers
that both feel entitled to rule the world
are starting to do so.
In the colonies,
you've got all of these forces,
converging on the same spot,
which is just west
of the Appalachian Mountains.
Basically, the area around Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, down to Kentucky.
Very fertile land out there,
a lot of promise.
The people who have it want to keep it.
[gentle music playing]
[music fades]
[woman] Native Americans had been
in the Americas
for tens of thousands of years.
There were hundreds and hundreds
of different sovereign native nations
in North America alone.
There were probably
about 50 different language families
spoken in North America.
That's language families, within which
were many different languages.
Most of those language families
were not intelligible to one another.
- [pensive music playing]
- [voices murmuring]
[man 2] These societies
were well-established.
They weren't just nomads wandering around,
desperately surviving day to day.
But they were prosperous
and had settled villages,
settled governments, a way of life,
a culture, religion, et cetera.
[man 3] We had governing systems.
We had lifeways.
We had origin stories.
We had ways of dealing with each other
in terms of civil society,
spiritual aspects of our life.
And so that's important
because that was all here
before anyone set foot
on this continent from Europe.
[Duval] When European colonists came,
they, in some ways were
just another different kind of people.
[Hoskin] It wasn't open warfare
the moment colonists stepped off the boat.
The experience is varied
across Indian country,
but yeah, there was
a degree of assistance.
There was not a firm understanding
among our ancestors
about what exactly
the colonists were there for
and what the consequences
of their presence would be.
They were human beings
that arrived in our land,
and so early on,
there was a degree of hospitality.
[soft pensive music continues]
Settlers, of course,
had this quest for land.
They were after the natural resources
that attend any square inch of land
anywhere on the planet.
[Holton] The Native Americans,
the Shawnees and the Delawares
and the Mingoes and so forth,
they're gonna fight to keep their lands,
which are not only
economically valuable to them, but sacred.
- [eagle shrieks]
- [pensive music continues]
It is one of those circumstances
where somebody who is a minor figure,
but certainly not the leader of a colony,
not the leader of an army,
instigates something that will have
much broader effect across the world.
Throughout history,
we find evidence of some person
who's just in the right
or perhaps the wrong place
at exactly the right time
that leads to something greater.
[pensive music continues]
[man] George Washington is born
in Virginia in 1732.
Virginia at that time
is a colony of Great Britain.
It's been around
for about 125 years or so.
Washington was born as the third son
to a relatively middling planter.
[man] He dies
when Washington's 10 years old.
He loses his father,
who is the primary person
who is going to help guide him
in the world.
It's a huge impact on George Washington.
There's no bigger single event
in George Washington's life,
early life, certainly,
that shaped him
than the death of his father.
It really is the trigger.
[Nichols] Washington grows up, in theory,
as part of a Virginia gentry,
but because of his father's death,
he really isn't well off.
He's not part of the royalty
and the blue bloods of Virginia.
[pensive music continues]
And he actually has a kind of
hardscrabble, by comparison, life
where he has to learn a trade
and he becomes a surveyor.
He's a striver. He's very ambitious.
[music fades]
Washington wanted to be at the center
of his country's story.
And at first, he really didn't care
which country that was.
He was fine being a British subject.
[Bradburn] Washington's half-brothers
were sent to England to a proper school.
- [bells tolling]
- [voices murmuring softly]
George Washington wasn't gonna have
the means to do that.
[Coe] So instead, he turned his gaze
on the Virginia militia
and the British services.
And this was an interesting prospect
for someone like George.
If he was able to make good connections,
then he could rise through the ranks.
[dramatic music playing]
[Holton] I think if you'd met
George Washington
when he was in his 20s or even his 30s,
you might not like him.
The young Washington
had an aggressive instinct
that fit that whole gentry ideal.
Um, you know, "I can jump my horse
over the whole house" sort of attitude.
There was a braggadocio to it.
At the tender age of 21,
Washington got himself sent
by the governor of Virginia
to deliver a message to the French,
west of the Appalachian Mountains,
saying, "This is our land. Leave."
And they just laughed at him.
Three officers told me
that it was their absolute design
to take possession of the Ohio,
and by God, they would do it.
[Holton] He keeps a journal.
And it's one of the few windows
into his mind at that age that we have.
[Washington] The commander told me
that the country belonged to them,
that no Englishman had a right to trade
upon those waters,
and that he had orders
to make every person prisoner
that attempted it
on the Ohio or the waters of it.
[dramatic music playing]
[man] He goes back, reports,
but then he comes back with an army,
both British colonists
and their Native allies.
The French have a party out there.
They call it a diplomatic party.
Washington calls it a spy party.
It went badly.
Rather than trying to resolve
the dispute diplomatically,
shots were fired.
[shouting]
And the leader of this French delegation
gets assassinated by the allies
Washington has with him.
This is an international incident.
[intense music playing]
Washington has just been
the overseer, essentially,
of the assassination of a French diplomat.
This is what today
we would call a war crime.
[music surges, fades]
[birds singing]
And of course,
the killing of French troops,
of a French colonial officer,
means retaliation from the French,
who ultimately force Washington
to pull himself back
and create a defensive fortification
in the Great Meadows,
what becomes Fort Necessity.
It's in a meadow
where it's at the bottom of a bowl,
so it has no strategic defense,
and eventually he's gonna have
to surrender his command.
It's the only time in his life
that he'll surrender.
But it is a humiliating defeat
for George Washington.
And the fallout is
the beginning of a massive world war
between the French and the British.
- [intense music playing]
- [shouting]
It's remarkable.
This backwoods, no-name Virginia colonel
sparks this extraordinary war of empire
that stretches not only over North America
but into Europe itself.
It becomes, in Europe,
known as the Seven Years' War.
Americans call it
the French and Indian War.
[intense music continues]
[Chervinsky] The Seven Years' War
between Great Britain and France
can really be seen as one chapter
in a centuries-long battle
between these two empires
over who is going to be
the supreme empire of the globe.
And in this case, in this chapter,
Great Britain was victorious.
The French just got clobbered
and signed over all of North America
except these two little islands
that nobody's ever heard of
called Saint Pierre and Miquelon,
which are off the coast of Newfoundland.
It's all gone.
[music fades]
[deep music playing]
On the far frontier
of the French and Indian War,
Washington had shown nothing
but loyalty and honor,
courage, and commitment.
And what he wants is a commission
as a regular British officer.
The British think of us as provincials.
You know, we are British subjects
at the time,
but we're filthy colonials.
And Washington keeps coming back
to one of his patrons in Virginia
and wants him to speak up for him
and to get him
that commission that he wants.
And it doesn't happen.
[voices murmuring]
That affects him.
This letter is what we affectionately call
the smoking gun letter.
This is a letter that George Washington
wrote to Governor Dinwiddie.
This was during the Seven Years' War.
And there's one passage in particular
that we attribute as one of the moments,
in which Washington is starting to shift
from a dedicated, loyal Briton
to thinking about independence.
We can't conceive that being Americans
should deprive us
of the benefits of British subjects.
We want nothing but commissions
from His Majesty.
Recounting these services
is highly disagreeable to us,
as it is repugnant to the modesty
becoming the brave,
but we are compelled thereto
by the little notice taken of us.
[Chervinsky] For Washington, someone
who was deeply aware of his reputation,
to have British officials
basically deny his military honor
wasn't just annoying or disadvantageous
to his career prospects,
but it challenged his conception
of who he was as a Virginian and as a man.
I would rather prefer
the great toil of a daily laborer
than serve upon such ignoble terms.
[Holton] Washington was not a man
who dwelled on grievances.
That doesn't mean he ever forgot them.
And he never forgot
about the kind of high-handedness
of the British command.
[Coe] Before the war,
when he has to report back
his travails in the wilds of the Ohio,
Washington has to hand over his journal.
[soft music playing]
Washington's journal is circulated
by the Virginia governor,
and people like it.
This journal is an incredible document.
Washington is not
the most exciting writer in the world,
but his adventures,
there's absolutely no way
to make them sound dull.
There are so many people
who read Washington's journal
like an adventure guide.
I put out my setting pole
to try to stop the raft
that the ice might pass by.
When the rapidity of the stream threw it
with so much violence against the pole
that it jerked me out into ten-feet water.
But I fortunately saved myself
by catching hold of one of the raft logs.
And at the same time, Washington made
a bit of a business for himself,
um, speculating in Western land.
He was making money.
[Coe] And he becomes a sort of hot entity
in the colonial dating scene.
Martha Custis, who is this 27-year-old,
very attractive woman.
She was petite, buxom,
and had a lot of power at the time.
She was single, she had been widowed.
She had two young children.
She came with hundreds of acres of land,
hundreds of enslaved people,
and no male heir in sight,
with the exception of
her 4-year-old son, Jackie.
She didn't need any suitors,
and she had turned many away.
But then she hears about Washington.
They marry, and they move to Mount Vernon.
[Bradburn] Mount Vernon is
George Washington's home and estate.
He resigns from the military service.
And for him, he sees that as the end.
That's the end
of his military misadventures.
[music fades]
- [bells tolling]
- [seagulls shrieking]
[eerie music playing]
[woman] Coming out
of the Seven Years' War,
the huge victory that Britain scores
leaves the British Empire
with some challenges
that it has to face.
Victory comes at a price.
It comes at an economic price.
It has a huge war debt to deal with.
It comes with a security risk,
which is that suddenly they have
these big frontiers
that they need to defend in North America.
Not so much against the French,
who they've defeated,
but now this big frontier
that sort of runs along the Appalachians,
on the other side of which
there's a lot of native peoples.
There's the Spanish.
There's other imperial powers
that kind of want to get in on the action.
[music intensifies]
[Keagle] There's always this possibility
of the breakout
of another colonial native conflict
on the frontiers,
because Americans see this period
after the war as an opportunity
to finally consummate
the desire to move further west…
[upbeat march playing]
…to fully claim and inhabit those lands
that Washington was set out
to ensure Britain's claim to.
And that means
that the British are constantly concerned
about another spark
in the western parts of their empire.
[Hoskin] Our interest
was preserving what we had,
and the relationship we had
was with the British Crown.
We were pro-Cherokee.
We were pro-protecting our homeland.
We were pro-giving
at least some benefit of the doubt
to the Crown
that they would adhere to their promises.
The colonists saw themselves
as acquiring more wealth, more land,
and the Crown did what they viewed
as some siding with the Natives,
and they built the barrier.
[music fades]
[man] In order to manage relationships
between the Native Americans
and the white colonists,
the British established what's called
the Proclamation Line of 1763.
[gentle guitar music playing]
[Hoskin] The Royal Proclamation said
that there would not be
an expanse of settlers beyond a line
on the Appalachian Mountains.
And that was important to us
because it was a degree of protection.
- [birds singing]
- [music continues]
[Duval] And so when the British government
declares that British colonists
aren't supposed to settle this land
that was at the heart of this war,
they're outraged.
They think, "Why did we fight that war
to begin with?"
[Bradburn] The only way that Virginians
have been able to make fortunes
for the hundred years before
is by claiming cheap Western land.
Washington is acquiring Western land.
He's been acquiring Indian land
in what's now Kentucky and Ohio,
tens of thousands of acres.
And basically
the Proclamation Line is saying
that land is not gonna be settled.
All of his labor in the war
is uncompensated.
'Cause essentially,
he was being paid in this land
because it's easy
for the Virginia Assembly to give out land
that nobody lives on.
He thinks it's unjust, fundamentally.
Basically, feels like the promises
that were made to him by the British Crown
are being arbitrarily revoked.
To make things worse, they'd left
10,000 of their soldiers behind
at the end of the war
to be there permanently.
Britain is putting these troops
as basically a border wall
between the colonists
and the Native Americans.
It seemed only fair
to make the colonists pay for it.
And there's the fact
that people in Britain have to pay
all these other taxes,
and the colonists are not bearing
their share of the load.
At least the colonists ought to pay
for the expenses of the 10,000 soldiers
who've been left behind.
[drums thump]
[music fades]
The original way
British Parliament tries to deal with that
is through the Stamp Act.
[intense music playing]
[Carp] The Stamp Act is one of the ideas
that Parliament begins to try.
They say,
"What if we came up with these stamps?"
"And we require those stamps
for all legal documents, for newspapers."
And we said
to the American colonists, "Okay."
"In order to conduct
these kinds of business,
you're just gonna have to buy
the stamped paper."
So that's a way
to generate revenue off of the colonies.
The problem is that they go after
some of the most connected people
in the colonies, right?
Like lawyers, tavern owners,
because there were also stamps
on dice and playing cards,
and newspaper publishers.
You have furious denunciations.
Friends and countrymen,
if you comply with the Act
by using stamped papers,
you fix, you rivet perpetual chains
upon your unhappy country.
If you quietly bend your necks
to that yoke,
you prove yourselves
ready to receive any bondage,
to which your lords and masters
shall please to subject you.
[intense music continues]
[Al Gore] This was obviously
a very unique moment in human history.
Several hundred years
before the printing press
had begun to revolutionize
the way human beings shared information,
particularly in Europe
and in the Western part of the world.
They were so learned. It's really shocking
to see exactly how well-read they were.
[Carp] The Americans' reaction
is just fury
throughout the American colonies.
- [music intensifies]
- [crowd shouting]
[music and shouting fade]
[man] How can these
bewigged lords of Parliament
be making decisions across an ocean
about their fellow countrymen
who were living
in a completely different society,
under completely different circumstances?
[Jasanoff] It's a principle
that will undergird
the most famous slogan of this period
among the American revolutionaries,
which is "No taxation
without representation."
Their idea is that
they need to be represented in Parliament
if there's gonna be levies put on them,
if there's gonna be restrictions
put on their trade.
[upbeat folk music playing]
[Carp] Ultimately, you start to see
demonstrations in the streets.
You have the formation
of the Sons of Liberty,
meeting in taverns and deciding,
"Hey, we need to organize
and keep people mobilized
and keep people outraged about this."
- [voices murmuring]
- [music continues]
[Taub] The Sons of Liberty
is a group formed in opposition
to some of these taxations
that the British Parliament is levying
upon the colonies.
[Carp] The Sons of Liberty
were an idea started in New York,
which had a robust tavern culture.
And a group of guys from New York
began kind of traveling up
through Connecticut to Boston.
And along the way, they've encouraged
the formation of these other groups of men
to kind of meet in taverns
and talk about their grievances
against the Stamp Act.
[woman 1] What was kindling
in the American soul
was an unquenchable, parched,
hungry people
for freedom.
For freedom.
And when you think about freedom,
there's freedom to and freedom from.
[music intensifies]
It was freedom from this monarchy
and from all that meant
in terms of restriction
on independence and representation,
including the issue of taxation.
And it was freedom to.
Freedom of association, freedom of speech.
[man] These were people
who had real flaws,
who were really imperfect,
who didn't know
how the story was gonna end,
who certainly weren't supplied
with all the answers.
But they saw the tyranny of monarchy,
and they wanted nothing to do with it.
- [voices murmuring]
- [glasses clinking]
[Carp] One of the supporters
of the Sons of Liberty is John Adams.
[music fades]
[McDonald] John Adams was a cobbler's son
from Braintree, Massachusetts.
- A long day's walk south from Boston.
- [sheep bleating]
[woman 2] He grows up, and at first,
he just wants to be a farmer.
He has zero interest in going to Harvard,
which is what the family
has hoped for him.
And his father says,
"If you wanna be a farmer so badly,
go dig ditches for a day,
and we'll see what you think."
He goes out. He digs ditches.
He enrolls in Harvard shortly after.
[pensive music playing]
Adams really thinks
that by becoming a lawyer,
he is going to mend a lot of flaws,
which is a good attitude to have.
He courts a very promising woman
one town over
named Abigail.
[woman 3] When you read her letters,
it is hard not to like her.
She is witty. She is playful.
[Abigail] My friend, I think
I write to you every day.
Shall not I make my letters very cheap?
Don't you light your pipe with them?
I care not if you do.
'Tis a pleasure to me to write.
[Good] And they kind of trade letters.
She becomes his Miss Adorable,
and they have
some fun early spicy courtship letters,
back and forth.
[Adams] Miss Adorable,
I hereby order you to give him
as many kisses
and as many hours of your company
after nine o'clock
as he shall please to demand
and charge them to my account.
[Abigail] Notwithstanding, we are told
that the giver
is more blessed than the receiver.
I must confess
that I am not of so generous a disposition
in this case
as to give without wishing for a return.
[Good] They get married.
John Adams wanted to be famous.
He wanted to do great things.
Reputation ought to be
the perpetual subject of my thoughts
and aim of my behavior.
How shall I gain a reputation?
How shall I spread an opinion of myself
as a lawyer of distinguished genius,
learning, and virtue?
[Good] John Adams is a very intense guy,
and somebody that had
an enormous amount of personal integrity,
but did not necessarily understand
how to play the political game
as well as other people.
[man] John Adams is my favorite founder
because he's the most ornery.
He's vain. He loses his temper.
He can't control himself.
[woman] I always think of him
as the Rodney Dangerfield of the founding
because he basically says
over and over and over again,
"I don't get no respect!"
"Nobody respects me."
[pensive music playing]
[Holton] John Adams started writing
against the Stamp Act
and was starting to get himself
a pretty good reputation as a patriot.
And he was real explicit about it.
"We're trying to get riots going
in the streets of London."
I won't buy one shilling worth of anything
that comes from old England
till the Stamp Act is appealed.
Nor I won't let
any of my sons and daughters.
I'd rather the Spittlefield weavers,
should pull down
all the houses in old England
and knock the brains out
of all the wicked great men there,
than this country
should lose their liberty.
[Holton] The British were
really flabbergasted
when the colonists rebelled
against the Stamp Act,
but they did so very aggressively.
[voices shouting intensely]
- [music intensifies]
- [shouting continues]
There was one person in each colony
in charge of distributing the tax,
and these guys were attacked,
beaten in some cases,
threatened in every case,
and almost all of them
caved under the pressure and resigned.
And in the places
where they didn't resign,
people took the stamps and burned them.
[Carp] What the British decide to do
is repeal the Stamp Act.
[Hagist] They needed to come up with a way
to generate revenue from the colonies,
these thriving commercial entities
that were bringing no revenue
back to their central government.
Parliament, licking its wounds
after having to give up the Stamp Act,
decided, "Well,
we've got to make the point
that this taxation
without representation nonsense is crazy."
Eventually, the Townsend Acts get passed,
which are just another set
of measures saying,
"What can we impose taxes on to generate
revenue from the colonies somehow?"
There were several different acts,
imposing taxes on several different goods.
And one by one,
they were all protested against.
- [shouting]
- [drums thumping dramatically]
[Jasanoff] There's an increasing
amount of violence.
And as there's violence
that comes into this story,
I think violence always changes
the nature of the discussion.
From the British point of view,
the colonists are just becoming
an increasingly out-of-line group
of violent mobsters.
- [music fades]
- [birds singing]
In 1760, George III came to the throne,
a young man.
[gentle string music playing]
And young men
can often be really attractive figures
for a public to get behind
because they seem energetic
and lively and charismatic.
And he had going for him
his youth, his Britishness.
He ended up being
a very attached family man and father.
He, unlike most of the other men
in his family,
seems to have been faithful to his wife
for the duration of their marriage.
They had a lot of kids.
He presented himself
very much as this guise
of a sort of stolid family man.
He hasn't yet got
his first really major bouts of madness
that we now know to have been caused
by a biological illness that he had.
[gentle music continues]
He was interested in a lot of things.
He was interested in science.
He was interested
in learning about the world.
But being a young king
also has some liabilities.
And one of those liabilities is
when you're young,
you don't have a lot of experience.
[Hagist] He sees himself
as the benevolent father
of the entire empire.
[gentle music continues]
[Jasanoff] The king believes
that the colonies are British
and subject to British law.
And that means,
in large measure, to his law.
And the king is not at all in favor
of giving concessions
to this rabble-rousing group of people
across the Atlantic.
[shouting]
[woman] England's constitution
is unwritten.
And that was part of the problem
that the colonists had with it.
You couldn't point to chapter and verse
and say, "This is unconstitutional here."
They said all the time,
the colonists said,
"These taxes are unconstitutional."
But they couldn't point
to the very text that said so.
[Clinton] I think,
in just a political analysis,
the parliament and King George
were not smart enough
to give a little to keep a lot.
They wouldn't compromise.
[music fades]
[Hagist] So two regiments
of troops were sent
to be quartered in Boston.
One of the British government policies
that colonists in America objected to
was stationing troops in the colonies.
Colonial charters said,
"The colonies will provide
for their own defense."
Now suddenly the government
is sending troops over here.
[Carp] British troops weren't
an uncommon sight in North America,
but they send British troops
to encamp on the common
so that the violence in Boston
will no longer get out of control.
The Bostonians really dislike the idea
that there are these British soldiers
who are effectively there
to push them around
and enforce these laws
that they don't like.
The stationing of British troops
in Boston and in some other communities
inspired great anger and resistance.
One of the hallmarks
of the kind of oppressive ruler
that our founders feared
might emerge sometime in the US
is to put troops in the communities
and turn them against the American people.
That was a key mistake
that King George did.
[woman] The presence
of these British soldiers
and the imposition of these taxes
feels so disturbing, so frustrating,
and so much like authoritarian oversight
that stress is high,
and conflict breaks out.
[eerie music playing]
[Hagist] The population is quite
antagonistic to the British military.
And that all comes to a head
on March 5, 1770.
[Holton] It was provoked
by a pretty trivial thing.
A soldier wouldn't pay
a barber and his apprentice.
[arguing]
They start hassling the sentry
in front of the customs house,
which is where the money,
the king's money, is stored,
that's been collected
from the few legitimate people
or from the sale of contraband property
that's been seized.
[bells tolling]
[McDonald] Suddenly, all the church bells
in Boston start to ring.
When all the church bells start to ring
at a random time
in an 18th-century city made of wood,
people assume the worst.
This is a public emergency,
so people from all over Boston
descend upon the spot
in the middle of their town.
[crowd shouting]
And the crowd gets a bit bolder,
and it gets a little bit more violent.
Other British soldiers see
that this sentry is in distress,
so they send a detachment of men
to stand with him,
with their backs against the wall
of this building.
They have their bayonets fixed.
And the crowd is now massive.
[crowd shouting intensely]
People are shouting,
and people are throwing things.
[Carp] Eventually, something causes
one of those British soldiers to fire.
[man groans]
And all of a sudden there's a volley
of bullets launched into the crowd.
[shouting echoes and fades]
[Holton] The first person to fall was
African-American Crispus Attucks.
[McDonald] And then you have
11 bloody bodies on the ground,
five of whom eventually will die.
This came to be called
the Boston Massacre.
[music fades]
- [soft music playing]
- [echoes of shouting]
[Hagist] It was politicized
and propagandized immediately.
[music intensifies]
It was exactly what the colonists needed
to show that it was a terrible idea
to have soldiers stationed
in the town among the people.
The town of Boston
threw this massive funeral.
[Carp] People in Boston are calling
for the heads of these British soldiers.
[McDonald] Interestingly, John Adams,
who was already a young leader
in the opposition to the British,
he agreed to represent the soldiers.
Not representing the colonists,
who you would think that would be the side
he'd want to represent,
but he understood the principle
that everybody deserves a lawyer.
"These guys are odious,
but I'm going to represent them anyway."
That was a kind of sophistication
among those Bostonians
that's admirable.
[Burns] But the Patriots made sure
that the Boston Massacre
was a match struck to the powder keg.
- [gun blasts]
- [shriek]
[McDonald] The American people
came to believe
that not only have the British
taken their property
through taxes imposed on them
without their consent.
Now the British government
is taking away Americans' very lives.
[music fades]
[Carp] Then Parliament passes
the Tea Act of 1773.
Tea is an addictive substance.
It was a sign of gentility.
It was something that everybody wanted.
[Hagist] Much of the tea
in the American colonies
was being imported,
not necessarily legally,
from non-British colonies
in the Caribbean.
Well, the British government
came up with a superb idea.
They backed a commercial venture
called the East India Company,
which imported tea
from the East Indies to Great Britain.
They'll sell tea to the American colonies
from the East India Company
at a highly discounted rate,
with a tax on it.
The tea will be cheaper
than it's ever been in the colonies.
It was actually a rather good idea.
[gentle orchestral music playing]
Except for a legalistic detail
that the American colonists saw.
This is still the British government
imposing a tax
on colonies in America,
which they believed, legally,
the British government could not do.
Even though it benefited everybody,
it would set a precedent for taxation
in the American colonies.
[crowd shouting]
And the colonists were not having it.
[Georgini] So they pushed back,
and the way they pushed back
is to have a massive town meeting.
They meet at Old South Meeting House,
where they decide
the tea will not be landed,
it will not be received.
[voices arguing]
[Carp] They begin to say,
"You can't let these tea ships land."
"Make those ships turn around
when they get here," etc.
[music building]
[Jasanoff] This leads
to the notorious events,
known as the Boston Tea Party
in December of 1773.
A crew of Sons of Liberty and others
in Native American dress
go and dump the tea in the harbor,
rallied by the crowds.
[Carp] There had been a long tradition
of Americans dressing up
as Native Americans
in order to engage in protest action.
There's something a bit
racially condescending about that,
but I think there's also an element
of kind of identifying with them,
the people of the American continent.
There were 46 tons of tea.
- [shouting]
- [music intensifying]
John Adams is very excited
about the Boston Tea Party.
This destruction of the tea
is so bold, so daring,
so firm, intrepid, and inflexible,
and it must have
so important consequences and so lasting
that I can't but consider it
as an epocha in history.
Taxes and tariffs had a lot to do
with the American Revolution.
Ultimately, it's a principle
that I think animated
a great deal of the American founding.
[man] A tariff's a tax.
They're a tax, they're obviously a tax.
They're paid for by Americans.
When our Founder Fathers
talked about taxation,
they fought the revolution
over taxation without representation.
They dumped the tea in the sea.
[music fades]
[Carp] The British reaction
to the Tea Party
was one of absolute outrage.
[gentle piano music playing]
[Keagle] And that draws
a major response from the British.
They're gonna teach a lesson here.
They're gonna shut down
the port of Boston.
[music intensifies]
[Hagist] The British disbanded
the colonial government
and put in place
a military government in Boston.
Not quite martial law
but pretty close to it.
[dramatic music continues]
It leads to the army
being concentrated in Boston
and the isolation of Boston as a city
which cannot function
as it has done for most of its existence.
They're not just an occasional presence
but an everyday reality of life there.
There's troops on Boston Common.
There's encampments of military forces.
So it is a town under occupation.
[dramatic music continues]
When you have troops
as a constant presence,
it's obviously alarming.
Anyone who has been in a situation
where there is a military presence
would acknowledge that.
To our Founders, the very idea
that agents from the government
could walk around
and demand people account for themselves
and identify themselves
in order to continue
living their lives in freedom,
that would have been appalling
and repulsive.
[music fades]
[Hagist] Citizens of Massachusetts
established their own government.
This is 1774.
There's no war going on yet,
but the protest has gone so far
that the Massachusetts colonists
have set up their own government,
disassociated in any way
with the British government.
[Keagle] And people in Massachusetts,
you know, revolutionaries,
we might call them, begin to spread word,
to communicate with other colonies
in new and important ways
that begin to draw together
many of the different colonial entities
in North America.
There is a sense
that in some ways, Boston's fate
is the potential fate of all colonists.
[unsettling music building]
[voices murmuring]
[Al Gore] When people got together
to discuss the ideas
that others had presented to debate them
and to disagree and agree
where they did agree,
that was something
that was felt to be so precious
that the right of the people to assemble,
even if what they were discussing
might take the conversation
of the democracy
in a direction that the ruler at the time
didn't want it to go in,
they were gonna protect that
no matter what.
[soft string music playing]
And freedom of the press,
freedom of assembly,
freedom of speech, those were bedrock.
Because as they said,
the decent opinion of humanity
is really the lever
that can change the world.
[Chervinsky] For Washington,
it's hard to pinpoint
the exact tipping point
when he would have refused
to go back to being a member
of the British Empire,
but perhaps the most likely option
was the Intolerable Acts,
which basically closed off
the entire Massachusetts colony.
If they could do that to Massachusetts,
then they could also do that to Virginia,
and that was unacceptable.
[Washington] The ministry may rely on it,
but Americans will never be taxed
without their own consent.
That the cause of Boston,
the despotic measures
in respect to it, I mean,
now is and ever will be considered
as the cause of America.
[Bradburn] Public happiness is the goal.
For Washington, it was just
that we could be governed without kings.
That you don't have to have
a strongman ruling
to create justice and order.
He came to believe
that's what they were embarked upon
and that it was hugely important,
not just for his generation alone,
but what he called millions unborn.
[soft string music continues]
[Hagist] The Massachusetts colonists
have reached out
to the other 12 colonies in North America
and asked for their support,
and the other colonies agreed to it.
[music builds]
So the rebellion has begun.
[Holton] In September of 1774,
men from all the colonies except Georgia
gather in Philadelphia
in the First Continental Congress.
A meeting of committees
from the several colonies
on this continent
is highly expedient and necessary.
To deliberate and determine
upon wise and proper measures
to be by them recommended
to all the colonies.
For the recovery and establishment
of their just rights and liberties,
civil and religious,
and the restoration of union and harmony
between Great Britain and the colonies.
[Jasanoff] The First Continental Congress
in 1774
was designed to figure out
some way to work out relations
between the colonies and Britain.
[Keagle] Many of the most prominent people
in America were present.
[music continues building]
[Hagist] The First Continental Congress
was most significant
for bringing these people together.
It starts to create
a sense of national unity.
[Keagle] The colonies insist
they should be able
to govern themselves internally.
Parliament said that it had
the right to rule the colonies
in all cases whatsoever.
The colonists absolutely rejected
that premise.
[Georgini] They create different boycotts,
and they write a letter to the king.
[woman] Most gracious sovereign,
we, your majesty's faithful subjects
of the colonies,
by this, our humble petition,
beg leave to lay our grievances
before the throne.
[upbeat music playing]
[Chervinsky] And it just inflames
their passions even more
on the British side.
A most daring spirit of resistance
and disobedience to the law
still unhappily prevails
in the province of the Massachusetts Bay.
And has, in diverse parts of it,
broke forth in violences
of a very criminal nature.
[music intensifies]
[intense music fades]
[upbeat melody playing]
[Holton] Colonial militias
begin regularly practicing
in anticipation
that violence will break out.
So tensions are at a boiling point.
Fire!
[soft unsettling music playing]
[Hagist] British military officer,
Thomas Gage,
gets put in charge of Massachusetts
as the military governor.
[Keagle] Thomas Gage is somebody
who has a great deal of experience
in North America.
He is here during almost
all of the French and Indian War.
And he's one, I think, that in some ways
is fairly sympathetic to Americans.
He's lived amongst them,
but he is seeing a situation in America
that ultimately he cannot control.
The flames of sedition
had spread universally
throughout the country, beyond conception.
[Hagist] Gage gets intelligence
that there's a lot of
colonial military stores
being built up in Concord, Massachusetts.
Musket balls, maybe gunpowder,
if there is any to be had.
Things that an army needs
to go into the field
are being collected in Concord.
[Keagle] There's provisions
because an army needs food.
There's ammunitions.
There's musket balls. There's spoons.
This doesn't seem much,
but how do you eat in the field?
So there's all this kind of stuff.
There's carriages for cannons.
[unsettling music continues]
All of this material is designed
not just to equip a militia company,
but an army.
[McDonald] The situation, it seems like
it can't possibly get any more dire
until it does.
Gage, acting on orders
that are approved by George III himself,
is going to order British troops
to leave Boston
and march out to Concord, Massachusetts,
to capture arms and artillery pieces
and ammunition
that have been stockpiled
by the Massachusetts militia.
[music continues]
Along the way,
they're going to pass through Lexington,
where Sam Adams and John Hancock,
leaders of the resistance movement,
are staying.
Hopefully they will capture them as well.
[Keagle] This is a situation
where the revolutionaries of Massachusetts
have better intelligence of the British
than vice versa.
The American revolutionaries,
the Provincial Congress
and its agents have a much better network.
One of the leaders of the resistance
in Boston was Dr. Joseph Warren.
And he had received intelligence
that the British would be marching out.
[music fades]
The only thing that wasn't known
was the route that they would take.
Would they proceed by land,
or would they row across
the Charles River?
[gentle music playing]
The signal would be placed in the tower
of the Old North Church in Boston.
If the British were gonna proceed
via the land route,
one lantern would be hung.
If they were going to proceed by boat,
two lanterns would be hung.
[Holton] Warren worked with
a silversmith named Paul Revere,
who already had a reputation
as a renowned express rider,
who had made a number
of very long rides in the colonies
to bring news of an event
from one place to another.
[McDonald] British soldiers
in the middle of the night
row across the back bay of Boston.
Paul Revere and others on horseback
went out through the countryside,
warning people
that the Redcoats are coming out.
[gentle music continues]
[horse neighs loudly]
[Keagle] The British soldiers
of the Revolutionary War
are ultimately human beings
as much as the colonial soldiers.
There are some officers
that volunteer to come with this force
because otherwise they've been sitting
in Boston for months.
They have not been treated well
by the population.
They're disliked. They know that.
Then they march out, cold and wet,
because they've landed
waist-deep in the water
through a countryside
that does not want them there.
They know that the hills
are watching them in so many ways.
When they get to Lexington,
they find that there's a force there.
[dramatic music playing]
[McDonald] Most are farmers.
There are young guys, as young as 16.
There are guys in their 60s.
There are white people.
There are Black people.
There are rich people.
There are poor people.
They refuse to move out of their way.
They stand to their ground.
[dramatic music continues]
[Holton] If I could tell people one thing
about the Battle of Lexington and Concord,
it would be
that neither side wanted a battle.
It just kind of happened.
A shot rang out.
[gunshot echoes]
[shouting]
- [guns shooting]
- [men groaning]
And we'll never know who fired that shot.
The British soldiers killed
eight people in Lexington.
Nobody was killed on the British side.
[dramatic music continues]
[Keagle] The British continue
their march to Concord.
- [music fades]
- [birds singing]
[gentle music playing]
[McDonald] At the North Bridge
on the edge of Concord,
militias gathered to meet the British.
[soft string plucking]
Shots are fired.
[music intensifies]
[Holton] Five people are dead.
[horse neighs]
This is the first killing
of British soldiers by American troops.
[McDonald] The British begin retreating
from Concord back toward Boston.
[Keagle] They enter easily
the most harrowing part
of this experience.
They've kicked the hornet's nest,
and now the entire countryside
is coming up in arms.
The British troops that day
were wildly outnumbered.
Militia was swarming from all over.
Unarmed civilians get killed.
[dramatic music continues]
British soldiers that left that night,
by the time they get back to Charlestown,
especially troops like the light infantry
who are moving in and out of the line,
screening the columns,
have marched maybe 50 miles in a day,
under fire, without sleep.
After they march out of Concord,
they're pursued.
They're shot at.
They're constantly having to turn around,
to fire, to keep moving.
They're running out of ammunition.
During the day,
the British suffered 273 casualties,
and the Americans suffered about 90.
- [music fades]
- [birds singing]
[uplifting music playing]
[Duval] It was the shot
heard round the world,
in the words of the Massachusetts
intellectual Ralph Waldo Emerson.
But who fired that shot?
Was it British? Was it American?
No one ever really knew.
To me, that captures the puzzle,
which is how can these people,
who in many ways were so similar,
have ended up finding themselves
on opposite sides
of an armed confrontation?
[uplifting music continues]
[Carp] Blood is shed, and at that point,
this conflict has now become
something different.
Americans now want
to be able to decide their own fate.
They want to be able to govern
their own dominance of the continent.
- [sheep bleats]
- [birds singing]
They see themselves
as defending their farms and homes
from a British army that has been sent
to enforce a number of unjust laws.
The Battle of Lexington
changed the instruments of warfare
from the pen to the sword.
[uplifting music continues]
[music fades]
[unsettling music playing]
[Holton] After Lexington and Concord,
the British hunkered down in Boston.
That's where they established
their headquarters.
[Keagle] If you know Boston today,
the Boston of the 18th century
is a very different place,
geographically, physically.
[Holton] American militias,
rather than going back to their towns,
established a cordon around Boston.
The Patriots are surrounding
what is really a 1.1-square-mile island.
[gulls squawking]
Boston Harbor was filled
with primarily British warships,
each with cannons
capable of killing many men at a time.
It's an explosion waiting to happen.
[unsettling music continues]
The Americans have learned
that the British are planning an attack.
And to preempt that attack,
they've decided to send out
a group of soldiers towards Charlestown,
a neck of land where there is
what's known as Bunker Hill,
a big hill that dominates the peninsula.
They have instructions to build a redoubt.
A redoubt is an open-air fort
where there are enforced earthen walls
with an opening in the back,
known as the sally port.
And it's there where the men will cluster
and use its walls
as protection against the British.
Their orders are to build a fort
on Bunker Hill.
But for reasons that are still unclear,
the decision is made
not to build a fort on Bunker Hill,
but to move forward
a half mile towards Boston
to a hill known as Breed's Hill.
And this will change everything.
[dramatic music playing]
Building a fort here
will be surely a provocation to the enemy
because a cannon mounted there
can fire on the British in Boston.
The Patriot forces
have stepped on a hornet's nest.
Three pages. Forward!
[Philbrick] No one knows
what's going to happen.
[seagulls shrieking]
The air of anticipation is excruciating
for everyone involved
as they watch the British soldiers
get rowed across the harbor.
[tense music building]
William Howe is
one of the up-and-coming generals
of the British Army.
Howe has begun to move his troops
up the hill towards the redoubt.
The Colonials have sharpshooters
positioned in Charlestown.
And they're firing
on the British soldiers.
So the British burn Charlestown
to the ground.
[cannon fires]
The Patriot forces,
they have very low supplies.
One officer is reputed to have said,
"Don't fire until you see
the whites of their eyes."
The Patriots are all behind something.
The British are wide open.
They let the men come,
and then they unleash.
- [guns shoot]
- [shouting]
It's a killing field.
[dramatic drums thumping]
For Howe, who had known victory
in the past,
this was a life-altering moment.
[drums intensify]
Colonists are firing away, firing away,
killing whoever dares pop their head up.
But eventually,
they start running out of gunpowder.
And here come the British,
who are really angry at this point.
[soldiers shouting]
[screaming]
[grunts]
Each man has lost someone
he knows very well.
And they begin to crowd over the parapet.
[shouting continues]
And they start firing and bayonetting
any Colonial still in the redoubt.
[dramatic beat continues]
It's blood and gore all over the place,
as they stab anyone they can.
- [music plays faster]
- [shouting continues]
[music stops]
The British take the redoubt
and can claim victory
at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
[soft breeze howling]
[Holton] But in order
to conquer Bunker Hill,
those 2,000 British soldiers
had 1,000 casualties killed,
wounded, and captured.
- It was just devastating.
- [gunshots blasting]
[Carp] Bunker Hill puts to rest the notion
that this war might end quickly.
It is a glorious proof of the bravery
of our worthy countrymen.
Considering all the disadvantages
under which they fought,
they really exhibited prodigies of valor.
Your description of the distresses
of the worthy inhabitants of Boston
and the other seaport towns
is enough to melt a heart of stone.
Our consolation must be this, my dear,
that cities may be rebuilt,
and a people reduced to poverty
may acquire fresh property.
But a constitution of government,
once changed from freedom,
can never be restored.
Liberty once lost is lost forever.
[unsettling music playing]
[Gore] Throughout history,
most people had had
to suffer through the indignities
of arbitrary power being used
to make decisions
that they didn't have any part in making.
And I think that our founders felt like,
"We can do this."
["Devil's Spoke" by Laura Marling playing]
[Levin] They were doing
what we're trying to do.
They were trying to allow
a diverse, divided, free society
full of wild, crazy, amazing,
wonderful people to govern themselves.
To live in peace, to be dynamic,
to advance, to progress,
to do well by each other.
That was their goal.
The fear of losing it all
is actually a source of our strength.
I might be a part of this
Ripple on water… ♪
We're never gonna surrender!
…witness me
I'm alone, him and me ♪
[Harris] When we talk about power,
I do believe that we also,
at our founding and still,
also believe in the power of the people.
To speak up and speak out
against the abuses that they see.
We as Americans
come out of a time of great idealism.
The American Revolution
made us who we are.
We are forged out
of not only the soaring rhetoric
and lofty ideals
of the American Revolution,
but also its down and dirty fight.
- [song intensifies]
- [shouting]
All of this can be broken
All of this can be broken ♪
Hold your devil by his spoke
And spin him to the ground ♪
[Keagle] The American experiment,
it was perilous. It was fraught.
It was uncertain.
[Cruz] For most of human history,
the notion of sovereignty
is that sovereignty came from God,
and God gave it to kings,
and kings ruled the people.
They turned that upside down,
and they said
sovereignty starts with the people.
[Raskin] The American experiment
is democracy.
Let's see if we can put government
on a different principle,
which is the consent of the governed
and the unalienable rights of the people.
[woman] The promise of America
resides in freedom.
If you want freedom,
then all of this matters
because our freedom is at stake.
Do you want to be free?
That is the question for people.
Do you want to be free?
What does freedom mean to you?
Those are the only questions that matter.
All of this can be broken
All of this can be broken ♪
Hold your devil by his spoke
And spin him to the ground ♪
But the love of your life lives
But lies no more ♪
And where she lay a flower grows ♪
And the arms that fed
And the babes that wed ♪
And the backs have bled
Keeping her in tow ♪
But I am your keeper ♪
And I hold your face away from light ♪
I am yours 'til they come ♪
I am yours 'til they come ♪
Eye to eye, nose to nose ♪
Ripping off each other's clothes
In the most peculiar way ♪
Eye to eye, nose to nose ♪
Ripping off each other's clothes
In the most peculiar way ♪
[song fades]
[upbeat strumming]
[music fades]
- [soft music playing]
[water splashing softly]
[woman 1] Every day, I wake up
in the United States of America
and know that I have certain freedoms,
should I choose to exert them or not.
I know that my ability
to have those freedoms
did not come from me.
[bell tolling]
It came from people before me.
The value in the stories
of revolutionaries
is that they laid the foundation
for who and what and where we are today,
both the good and the bad.
[dramatic music playing]
[shouting]
[man 1] If I had to use
one word to describe
what's going on in colonial America,
it's "aspiration."
[man 2] For the vast majority
of human existence in our universe,
people have lived
under dictators and bullies and thugs.
[chanting] The Constitution matters!
[Raskin] Democracy is the exception.
Even today on Earth,
democracy is the exception.
Most people are living
under authoritarian despots
and tyrants.
- [Kim Jong Un shouts]
- [crowd cheering]
The American experiment is democracy.
[man 3] Our citizens were fighting
for freedom, for independence,
and this radical idea at the time
that sovereignty lies with the people.
[man 4] To me, it seems
almost like a miracle, really.
[dramatic music continues]
I think that they felt
like they had a real chance
to create something
brand new on this Earth.
[woman 2] The wisdom is wisdom
about power, about how to organize it,
limit it, check it, and bound it,
so it can do good things for a society.
[man 5] They didn't know
what the outcome was when they did it,
but they had such a deep conviction
about freedom,
about independence,
they were willing to step forward
and risk everything.
[dramatic music continues]
We aren't a nation based in blood or soil.
We are based in ideals,
and ideals that are worth fighting for
and worth striving for.
[man 6] America was a country
for the first time
where you would be rewarded
by what you did, not who you were.
It really was.
[man 7] Why do millions of people
from all over the world come to America?
They come to America because here,
anybody can become anything.
- [men shout]
- [music continues]
[woman 3] I think it's
the most worthy experiment
that has ever been conducted
by any group of people.
It was an experiment
that understood it would evolve over time.
[man 8] I think the American experiment
is whether a democracy is sustainable,
that respects basic human rights,
that seems like it's being tested.
I think we're gonna see in this century
whether it passes the test.
[man 9] We're living in a moment
of profound transition
- we haven't fully understood.
- [shouting]
This is actually a time
when the original debates
among the framers
are more relevant than they've been
at any point in my lifetime.
[man 10] The great strength
of history is that it tells us
that one of the great things
that happens in America
is people make a way out of no way.
They find a way to move forward.
They find a way
where there doesn't seem to be
hope to find hope,
where there doesn't seem to be
a possibility to find ways to believe.
[man 11] That's this grand bargain
that we entered into,
And that has worked well for 250 years.
[man 12] History is interred
in the shallowest of graves.
[crowd shouting, fades]
It is always closer to the surface
than we recognize.
[music fades]
[deep string music playing]
[drums thumping dramatically]
[rooster cries]
[man 1] In 1753,
there is no United States.
There's more the 13 British colonies
in North America
along the Atlantic seaboard,
each in their own way,
conducting their own diplomacy,
minding their own futures,
expanding in their own ways.
[music continues]
But they are acting
not as a united set of colonies,
certainly not a United States.
That's not even a dream at this point.
The colonies are themselves
not even united
about how they feel about being British.
The shopkeepers of Boston
and the blue bloods
of Virginia and Georgia
don't see eye to eye
about their role in the British Empire.
[music intensifies]
They still see themselves
not just as British subjects,
but each of them
as kind of citizens of their own country,
called Massachusetts
or Connecticut or New Jersey.
And so it's not really a country.
America in this period
is a sideshow for Great Britain,
who of course is deeply concerned
with its traditional and ancient enemy,
France.
These two great powers
that both feel entitled to rule the world
are starting to do so.
In the colonies,
you've got all of these forces,
converging on the same spot,
which is just west
of the Appalachian Mountains.
Basically, the area around Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, down to Kentucky.
Very fertile land out there,
a lot of promise.
The people who have it want to keep it.
[gentle music playing]
[music fades]
[woman] Native Americans had been
in the Americas
for tens of thousands of years.
There were hundreds and hundreds
of different sovereign native nations
in North America alone.
There were probably
about 50 different language families
spoken in North America.
That's language families, within which
were many different languages.
Most of those language families
were not intelligible to one another.
- [pensive music playing]
- [voices murmuring]
[man 2] These societies
were well-established.
They weren't just nomads wandering around,
desperately surviving day to day.
But they were prosperous
and had settled villages,
settled governments, a way of life,
a culture, religion, et cetera.
[man 3] We had governing systems.
We had lifeways.
We had origin stories.
We had ways of dealing with each other
in terms of civil society,
spiritual aspects of our life.
And so that's important
because that was all here
before anyone set foot
on this continent from Europe.
[Duval] When European colonists came,
they, in some ways were
just another different kind of people.
[Hoskin] It wasn't open warfare
the moment colonists stepped off the boat.
The experience is varied
across Indian country,
but yeah, there was
a degree of assistance.
There was not a firm understanding
among our ancestors
about what exactly
the colonists were there for
and what the consequences
of their presence would be.
They were human beings
that arrived in our land,
and so early on,
there was a degree of hospitality.
[soft pensive music continues]
Settlers, of course,
had this quest for land.
They were after the natural resources
that attend any square inch of land
anywhere on the planet.
[Holton] The Native Americans,
the Shawnees and the Delawares
and the Mingoes and so forth,
they're gonna fight to keep their lands,
which are not only
economically valuable to them, but sacred.
- [eagle shrieks]
- [pensive music continues]
It is one of those circumstances
where somebody who is a minor figure,
but certainly not the leader of a colony,
not the leader of an army,
instigates something that will have
much broader effect across the world.
Throughout history,
we find evidence of some person
who's just in the right
or perhaps the wrong place
at exactly the right time
that leads to something greater.
[pensive music continues]
[man] George Washington is born
in Virginia in 1732.
Virginia at that time
is a colony of Great Britain.
It's been around
for about 125 years or so.
Washington was born as the third son
to a relatively middling planter.
[man] He dies
when Washington's 10 years old.
He loses his father,
who is the primary person
who is going to help guide him
in the world.
It's a huge impact on George Washington.
There's no bigger single event
in George Washington's life,
early life, certainly,
that shaped him
than the death of his father.
It really is the trigger.
[Nichols] Washington grows up, in theory,
as part of a Virginia gentry,
but because of his father's death,
he really isn't well off.
He's not part of the royalty
and the blue bloods of Virginia.
[pensive music continues]
And he actually has a kind of
hardscrabble, by comparison, life
where he has to learn a trade
and he becomes a surveyor.
He's a striver. He's very ambitious.
[music fades]
Washington wanted to be at the center
of his country's story.
And at first, he really didn't care
which country that was.
He was fine being a British subject.
[Bradburn] Washington's half-brothers
were sent to England to a proper school.
- [bells tolling]
- [voices murmuring softly]
George Washington wasn't gonna have
the means to do that.
[Coe] So instead, he turned his gaze
on the Virginia militia
and the British services.
And this was an interesting prospect
for someone like George.
If he was able to make good connections,
then he could rise through the ranks.
[dramatic music playing]
[Holton] I think if you'd met
George Washington
when he was in his 20s or even his 30s,
you might not like him.
The young Washington
had an aggressive instinct
that fit that whole gentry ideal.
Um, you know, "I can jump my horse
over the whole house" sort of attitude.
There was a braggadocio to it.
At the tender age of 21,
Washington got himself sent
by the governor of Virginia
to deliver a message to the French,
west of the Appalachian Mountains,
saying, "This is our land. Leave."
And they just laughed at him.
Three officers told me
that it was their absolute design
to take possession of the Ohio,
and by God, they would do it.
[Holton] He keeps a journal.
And it's one of the few windows
into his mind at that age that we have.
[Washington] The commander told me
that the country belonged to them,
that no Englishman had a right to trade
upon those waters,
and that he had orders
to make every person prisoner
that attempted it
on the Ohio or the waters of it.
[dramatic music playing]
[man] He goes back, reports,
but then he comes back with an army,
both British colonists
and their Native allies.
The French have a party out there.
They call it a diplomatic party.
Washington calls it a spy party.
It went badly.
Rather than trying to resolve
the dispute diplomatically,
shots were fired.
[shouting]
And the leader of this French delegation
gets assassinated by the allies
Washington has with him.
This is an international incident.
[intense music playing]
Washington has just been
the overseer, essentially,
of the assassination of a French diplomat.
This is what today
we would call a war crime.
[music surges, fades]
[birds singing]
And of course,
the killing of French troops,
of a French colonial officer,
means retaliation from the French,
who ultimately force Washington
to pull himself back
and create a defensive fortification
in the Great Meadows,
what becomes Fort Necessity.
It's in a meadow
where it's at the bottom of a bowl,
so it has no strategic defense,
and eventually he's gonna have
to surrender his command.
It's the only time in his life
that he'll surrender.
But it is a humiliating defeat
for George Washington.
And the fallout is
the beginning of a massive world war
between the French and the British.
- [intense music playing]
- [shouting]
It's remarkable.
This backwoods, no-name Virginia colonel
sparks this extraordinary war of empire
that stretches not only over North America
but into Europe itself.
It becomes, in Europe,
known as the Seven Years' War.
Americans call it
the French and Indian War.
[intense music continues]
[Chervinsky] The Seven Years' War
between Great Britain and France
can really be seen as one chapter
in a centuries-long battle
between these two empires
over who is going to be
the supreme empire of the globe.
And in this case, in this chapter,
Great Britain was victorious.
The French just got clobbered
and signed over all of North America
except these two little islands
that nobody's ever heard of
called Saint Pierre and Miquelon,
which are off the coast of Newfoundland.
It's all gone.
[music fades]
[deep music playing]
On the far frontier
of the French and Indian War,
Washington had shown nothing
but loyalty and honor,
courage, and commitment.
And what he wants is a commission
as a regular British officer.
The British think of us as provincials.
You know, we are British subjects
at the time,
but we're filthy colonials.
And Washington keeps coming back
to one of his patrons in Virginia
and wants him to speak up for him
and to get him
that commission that he wants.
And it doesn't happen.
[voices murmuring]
That affects him.
This letter is what we affectionately call
the smoking gun letter.
This is a letter that George Washington
wrote to Governor Dinwiddie.
This was during the Seven Years' War.
And there's one passage in particular
that we attribute as one of the moments,
in which Washington is starting to shift
from a dedicated, loyal Briton
to thinking about independence.
We can't conceive that being Americans
should deprive us
of the benefits of British subjects.
We want nothing but commissions
from His Majesty.
Recounting these services
is highly disagreeable to us,
as it is repugnant to the modesty
becoming the brave,
but we are compelled thereto
by the little notice taken of us.
[Chervinsky] For Washington, someone
who was deeply aware of his reputation,
to have British officials
basically deny his military honor
wasn't just annoying or disadvantageous
to his career prospects,
but it challenged his conception
of who he was as a Virginian and as a man.
I would rather prefer
the great toil of a daily laborer
than serve upon such ignoble terms.
[Holton] Washington was not a man
who dwelled on grievances.
That doesn't mean he ever forgot them.
And he never forgot
about the kind of high-handedness
of the British command.
[Coe] Before the war,
when he has to report back
his travails in the wilds of the Ohio,
Washington has to hand over his journal.
[soft music playing]
Washington's journal is circulated
by the Virginia governor,
and people like it.
This journal is an incredible document.
Washington is not
the most exciting writer in the world,
but his adventures,
there's absolutely no way
to make them sound dull.
There are so many people
who read Washington's journal
like an adventure guide.
I put out my setting pole
to try to stop the raft
that the ice might pass by.
When the rapidity of the stream threw it
with so much violence against the pole
that it jerked me out into ten-feet water.
But I fortunately saved myself
by catching hold of one of the raft logs.
And at the same time, Washington made
a bit of a business for himself,
um, speculating in Western land.
He was making money.
[Coe] And he becomes a sort of hot entity
in the colonial dating scene.
Martha Custis, who is this 27-year-old,
very attractive woman.
She was petite, buxom,
and had a lot of power at the time.
She was single, she had been widowed.
She had two young children.
She came with hundreds of acres of land,
hundreds of enslaved people,
and no male heir in sight,
with the exception of
her 4-year-old son, Jackie.
She didn't need any suitors,
and she had turned many away.
But then she hears about Washington.
They marry, and they move to Mount Vernon.
[Bradburn] Mount Vernon is
George Washington's home and estate.
He resigns from the military service.
And for him, he sees that as the end.
That's the end
of his military misadventures.
[music fades]
- [bells tolling]
- [seagulls shrieking]
[eerie music playing]
[woman] Coming out
of the Seven Years' War,
the huge victory that Britain scores
leaves the British Empire
with some challenges
that it has to face.
Victory comes at a price.
It comes at an economic price.
It has a huge war debt to deal with.
It comes with a security risk,
which is that suddenly they have
these big frontiers
that they need to defend in North America.
Not so much against the French,
who they've defeated,
but now this big frontier
that sort of runs along the Appalachians,
on the other side of which
there's a lot of native peoples.
There's the Spanish.
There's other imperial powers
that kind of want to get in on the action.
[music intensifies]
[Keagle] There's always this possibility
of the breakout
of another colonial native conflict
on the frontiers,
because Americans see this period
after the war as an opportunity
to finally consummate
the desire to move further west…
[upbeat march playing]
…to fully claim and inhabit those lands
that Washington was set out
to ensure Britain's claim to.
And that means
that the British are constantly concerned
about another spark
in the western parts of their empire.
[Hoskin] Our interest
was preserving what we had,
and the relationship we had
was with the British Crown.
We were pro-Cherokee.
We were pro-protecting our homeland.
We were pro-giving
at least some benefit of the doubt
to the Crown
that they would adhere to their promises.
The colonists saw themselves
as acquiring more wealth, more land,
and the Crown did what they viewed
as some siding with the Natives,
and they built the barrier.
[music fades]
[man] In order to manage relationships
between the Native Americans
and the white colonists,
the British established what's called
the Proclamation Line of 1763.
[gentle guitar music playing]
[Hoskin] The Royal Proclamation said
that there would not be
an expanse of settlers beyond a line
on the Appalachian Mountains.
And that was important to us
because it was a degree of protection.
- [birds singing]
- [music continues]
[Duval] And so when the British government
declares that British colonists
aren't supposed to settle this land
that was at the heart of this war,
they're outraged.
They think, "Why did we fight that war
to begin with?"
[Bradburn] The only way that Virginians
have been able to make fortunes
for the hundred years before
is by claiming cheap Western land.
Washington is acquiring Western land.
He's been acquiring Indian land
in what's now Kentucky and Ohio,
tens of thousands of acres.
And basically
the Proclamation Line is saying
that land is not gonna be settled.
All of his labor in the war
is uncompensated.
'Cause essentially,
he was being paid in this land
because it's easy
for the Virginia Assembly to give out land
that nobody lives on.
He thinks it's unjust, fundamentally.
Basically, feels like the promises
that were made to him by the British Crown
are being arbitrarily revoked.
To make things worse, they'd left
10,000 of their soldiers behind
at the end of the war
to be there permanently.
Britain is putting these troops
as basically a border wall
between the colonists
and the Native Americans.
It seemed only fair
to make the colonists pay for it.
And there's the fact
that people in Britain have to pay
all these other taxes,
and the colonists are not bearing
their share of the load.
At least the colonists ought to pay
for the expenses of the 10,000 soldiers
who've been left behind.
[drums thump]
[music fades]
The original way
British Parliament tries to deal with that
is through the Stamp Act.
[intense music playing]
[Carp] The Stamp Act is one of the ideas
that Parliament begins to try.
They say,
"What if we came up with these stamps?"
"And we require those stamps
for all legal documents, for newspapers."
And we said
to the American colonists, "Okay."
"In order to conduct
these kinds of business,
you're just gonna have to buy
the stamped paper."
So that's a way
to generate revenue off of the colonies.
The problem is that they go after
some of the most connected people
in the colonies, right?
Like lawyers, tavern owners,
because there were also stamps
on dice and playing cards,
and newspaper publishers.
You have furious denunciations.
Friends and countrymen,
if you comply with the Act
by using stamped papers,
you fix, you rivet perpetual chains
upon your unhappy country.
If you quietly bend your necks
to that yoke,
you prove yourselves
ready to receive any bondage,
to which your lords and masters
shall please to subject you.
[intense music continues]
[Al Gore] This was obviously
a very unique moment in human history.
Several hundred years
before the printing press
had begun to revolutionize
the way human beings shared information,
particularly in Europe
and in the Western part of the world.
They were so learned. It's really shocking
to see exactly how well-read they were.
[Carp] The Americans' reaction
is just fury
throughout the American colonies.
- [music intensifies]
- [crowd shouting]
[music and shouting fade]
[man] How can these
bewigged lords of Parliament
be making decisions across an ocean
about their fellow countrymen
who were living
in a completely different society,
under completely different circumstances?
[Jasanoff] It's a principle
that will undergird
the most famous slogan of this period
among the American revolutionaries,
which is "No taxation
without representation."
Their idea is that
they need to be represented in Parliament
if there's gonna be levies put on them,
if there's gonna be restrictions
put on their trade.
[upbeat folk music playing]
[Carp] Ultimately, you start to see
demonstrations in the streets.
You have the formation
of the Sons of Liberty,
meeting in taverns and deciding,
"Hey, we need to organize
and keep people mobilized
and keep people outraged about this."
- [voices murmuring]
- [music continues]
[Taub] The Sons of Liberty
is a group formed in opposition
to some of these taxations
that the British Parliament is levying
upon the colonies.
[Carp] The Sons of Liberty
were an idea started in New York,
which had a robust tavern culture.
And a group of guys from New York
began kind of traveling up
through Connecticut to Boston.
And along the way, they've encouraged
the formation of these other groups of men
to kind of meet in taverns
and talk about their grievances
against the Stamp Act.
[woman 1] What was kindling
in the American soul
was an unquenchable, parched,
hungry people
for freedom.
For freedom.
And when you think about freedom,
there's freedom to and freedom from.
[music intensifies]
It was freedom from this monarchy
and from all that meant
in terms of restriction
on independence and representation,
including the issue of taxation.
And it was freedom to.
Freedom of association, freedom of speech.
[man] These were people
who had real flaws,
who were really imperfect,
who didn't know
how the story was gonna end,
who certainly weren't supplied
with all the answers.
But they saw the tyranny of monarchy,
and they wanted nothing to do with it.
- [voices murmuring]
- [glasses clinking]
[Carp] One of the supporters
of the Sons of Liberty is John Adams.
[music fades]
[McDonald] John Adams was a cobbler's son
from Braintree, Massachusetts.
- A long day's walk south from Boston.
- [sheep bleating]
[woman 2] He grows up, and at first,
he just wants to be a farmer.
He has zero interest in going to Harvard,
which is what the family
has hoped for him.
And his father says,
"If you wanna be a farmer so badly,
go dig ditches for a day,
and we'll see what you think."
He goes out. He digs ditches.
He enrolls in Harvard shortly after.
[pensive music playing]
Adams really thinks
that by becoming a lawyer,
he is going to mend a lot of flaws,
which is a good attitude to have.
He courts a very promising woman
one town over
named Abigail.
[woman 3] When you read her letters,
it is hard not to like her.
She is witty. She is playful.
[Abigail] My friend, I think
I write to you every day.
Shall not I make my letters very cheap?
Don't you light your pipe with them?
I care not if you do.
'Tis a pleasure to me to write.
[Good] And they kind of trade letters.
She becomes his Miss Adorable,
and they have
some fun early spicy courtship letters,
back and forth.
[Adams] Miss Adorable,
I hereby order you to give him
as many kisses
and as many hours of your company
after nine o'clock
as he shall please to demand
and charge them to my account.
[Abigail] Notwithstanding, we are told
that the giver
is more blessed than the receiver.
I must confess
that I am not of so generous a disposition
in this case
as to give without wishing for a return.
[Good] They get married.
John Adams wanted to be famous.
He wanted to do great things.
Reputation ought to be
the perpetual subject of my thoughts
and aim of my behavior.
How shall I gain a reputation?
How shall I spread an opinion of myself
as a lawyer of distinguished genius,
learning, and virtue?
[Good] John Adams is a very intense guy,
and somebody that had
an enormous amount of personal integrity,
but did not necessarily understand
how to play the political game
as well as other people.
[man] John Adams is my favorite founder
because he's the most ornery.
He's vain. He loses his temper.
He can't control himself.
[woman] I always think of him
as the Rodney Dangerfield of the founding
because he basically says
over and over and over again,
"I don't get no respect!"
"Nobody respects me."
[pensive music playing]
[Holton] John Adams started writing
against the Stamp Act
and was starting to get himself
a pretty good reputation as a patriot.
And he was real explicit about it.
"We're trying to get riots going
in the streets of London."
I won't buy one shilling worth of anything
that comes from old England
till the Stamp Act is appealed.
Nor I won't let
any of my sons and daughters.
I'd rather the Spittlefield weavers,
should pull down
all the houses in old England
and knock the brains out
of all the wicked great men there,
than this country
should lose their liberty.
[Holton] The British were
really flabbergasted
when the colonists rebelled
against the Stamp Act,
but they did so very aggressively.
[voices shouting intensely]
- [music intensifies]
- [shouting continues]
There was one person in each colony
in charge of distributing the tax,
and these guys were attacked,
beaten in some cases,
threatened in every case,
and almost all of them
caved under the pressure and resigned.
And in the places
where they didn't resign,
people took the stamps and burned them.
[Carp] What the British decide to do
is repeal the Stamp Act.
[Hagist] They needed to come up with a way
to generate revenue from the colonies,
these thriving commercial entities
that were bringing no revenue
back to their central government.
Parliament, licking its wounds
after having to give up the Stamp Act,
decided, "Well,
we've got to make the point
that this taxation
without representation nonsense is crazy."
Eventually, the Townsend Acts get passed,
which are just another set
of measures saying,
"What can we impose taxes on to generate
revenue from the colonies somehow?"
There were several different acts,
imposing taxes on several different goods.
And one by one,
they were all protested against.
- [shouting]
- [drums thumping dramatically]
[Jasanoff] There's an increasing
amount of violence.
And as there's violence
that comes into this story,
I think violence always changes
the nature of the discussion.
From the British point of view,
the colonists are just becoming
an increasingly out-of-line group
of violent mobsters.
- [music fades]
- [birds singing]
In 1760, George III came to the throne,
a young man.
[gentle string music playing]
And young men
can often be really attractive figures
for a public to get behind
because they seem energetic
and lively and charismatic.
And he had going for him
his youth, his Britishness.
He ended up being
a very attached family man and father.
He, unlike most of the other men
in his family,
seems to have been faithful to his wife
for the duration of their marriage.
They had a lot of kids.
He presented himself
very much as this guise
of a sort of stolid family man.
He hasn't yet got
his first really major bouts of madness
that we now know to have been caused
by a biological illness that he had.
[gentle music continues]
He was interested in a lot of things.
He was interested in science.
He was interested
in learning about the world.
But being a young king
also has some liabilities.
And one of those liabilities is
when you're young,
you don't have a lot of experience.
[Hagist] He sees himself
as the benevolent father
of the entire empire.
[gentle music continues]
[Jasanoff] The king believes
that the colonies are British
and subject to British law.
And that means,
in large measure, to his law.
And the king is not at all in favor
of giving concessions
to this rabble-rousing group of people
across the Atlantic.
[shouting]
[woman] England's constitution
is unwritten.
And that was part of the problem
that the colonists had with it.
You couldn't point to chapter and verse
and say, "This is unconstitutional here."
They said all the time,
the colonists said,
"These taxes are unconstitutional."
But they couldn't point
to the very text that said so.
[Clinton] I think,
in just a political analysis,
the parliament and King George
were not smart enough
to give a little to keep a lot.
They wouldn't compromise.
[music fades]
[Hagist] So two regiments
of troops were sent
to be quartered in Boston.
One of the British government policies
that colonists in America objected to
was stationing troops in the colonies.
Colonial charters said,
"The colonies will provide
for their own defense."
Now suddenly the government
is sending troops over here.
[Carp] British troops weren't
an uncommon sight in North America,
but they send British troops
to encamp on the common
so that the violence in Boston
will no longer get out of control.
The Bostonians really dislike the idea
that there are these British soldiers
who are effectively there
to push them around
and enforce these laws
that they don't like.
The stationing of British troops
in Boston and in some other communities
inspired great anger and resistance.
One of the hallmarks
of the kind of oppressive ruler
that our founders feared
might emerge sometime in the US
is to put troops in the communities
and turn them against the American people.
That was a key mistake
that King George did.
[woman] The presence
of these British soldiers
and the imposition of these taxes
feels so disturbing, so frustrating,
and so much like authoritarian oversight
that stress is high,
and conflict breaks out.
[eerie music playing]
[Hagist] The population is quite
antagonistic to the British military.
And that all comes to a head
on March 5, 1770.
[Holton] It was provoked
by a pretty trivial thing.
A soldier wouldn't pay
a barber and his apprentice.
[arguing]
They start hassling the sentry
in front of the customs house,
which is where the money,
the king's money, is stored,
that's been collected
from the few legitimate people
or from the sale of contraband property
that's been seized.
[bells tolling]
[McDonald] Suddenly, all the church bells
in Boston start to ring.
When all the church bells start to ring
at a random time
in an 18th-century city made of wood,
people assume the worst.
This is a public emergency,
so people from all over Boston
descend upon the spot
in the middle of their town.
[crowd shouting]
And the crowd gets a bit bolder,
and it gets a little bit more violent.
Other British soldiers see
that this sentry is in distress,
so they send a detachment of men
to stand with him,
with their backs against the wall
of this building.
They have their bayonets fixed.
And the crowd is now massive.
[crowd shouting intensely]
People are shouting,
and people are throwing things.
[Carp] Eventually, something causes
one of those British soldiers to fire.
[man groans]
And all of a sudden there's a volley
of bullets launched into the crowd.
[shouting echoes and fades]
[Holton] The first person to fall was
African-American Crispus Attucks.
[McDonald] And then you have
11 bloody bodies on the ground,
five of whom eventually will die.
This came to be called
the Boston Massacre.
[music fades]
- [soft music playing]
- [echoes of shouting]
[Hagist] It was politicized
and propagandized immediately.
[music intensifies]
It was exactly what the colonists needed
to show that it was a terrible idea
to have soldiers stationed
in the town among the people.
The town of Boston
threw this massive funeral.
[Carp] People in Boston are calling
for the heads of these British soldiers.
[McDonald] Interestingly, John Adams,
who was already a young leader
in the opposition to the British,
he agreed to represent the soldiers.
Not representing the colonists,
who you would think that would be the side
he'd want to represent,
but he understood the principle
that everybody deserves a lawyer.
"These guys are odious,
but I'm going to represent them anyway."
That was a kind of sophistication
among those Bostonians
that's admirable.
[Burns] But the Patriots made sure
that the Boston Massacre
was a match struck to the powder keg.
- [gun blasts]
- [shriek]
[McDonald] The American people
came to believe
that not only have the British
taken their property
through taxes imposed on them
without their consent.
Now the British government
is taking away Americans' very lives.
[music fades]
[Carp] Then Parliament passes
the Tea Act of 1773.
Tea is an addictive substance.
It was a sign of gentility.
It was something that everybody wanted.
[Hagist] Much of the tea
in the American colonies
was being imported,
not necessarily legally,
from non-British colonies
in the Caribbean.
Well, the British government
came up with a superb idea.
They backed a commercial venture
called the East India Company,
which imported tea
from the East Indies to Great Britain.
They'll sell tea to the American colonies
from the East India Company
at a highly discounted rate,
with a tax on it.
The tea will be cheaper
than it's ever been in the colonies.
It was actually a rather good idea.
[gentle orchestral music playing]
Except for a legalistic detail
that the American colonists saw.
This is still the British government
imposing a tax
on colonies in America,
which they believed, legally,
the British government could not do.
Even though it benefited everybody,
it would set a precedent for taxation
in the American colonies.
[crowd shouting]
And the colonists were not having it.
[Georgini] So they pushed back,
and the way they pushed back
is to have a massive town meeting.
They meet at Old South Meeting House,
where they decide
the tea will not be landed,
it will not be received.
[voices arguing]
[Carp] They begin to say,
"You can't let these tea ships land."
"Make those ships turn around
when they get here," etc.
[music building]
[Jasanoff] This leads
to the notorious events,
known as the Boston Tea Party
in December of 1773.
A crew of Sons of Liberty and others
in Native American dress
go and dump the tea in the harbor,
rallied by the crowds.
[Carp] There had been a long tradition
of Americans dressing up
as Native Americans
in order to engage in protest action.
There's something a bit
racially condescending about that,
but I think there's also an element
of kind of identifying with them,
the people of the American continent.
There were 46 tons of tea.
- [shouting]
- [music intensifying]
John Adams is very excited
about the Boston Tea Party.
This destruction of the tea
is so bold, so daring,
so firm, intrepid, and inflexible,
and it must have
so important consequences and so lasting
that I can't but consider it
as an epocha in history.
Taxes and tariffs had a lot to do
with the American Revolution.
Ultimately, it's a principle
that I think animated
a great deal of the American founding.
[man] A tariff's a tax.
They're a tax, they're obviously a tax.
They're paid for by Americans.
When our Founder Fathers
talked about taxation,
they fought the revolution
over taxation without representation.
They dumped the tea in the sea.
[music fades]
[Carp] The British reaction
to the Tea Party
was one of absolute outrage.
[gentle piano music playing]
[Keagle] And that draws
a major response from the British.
They're gonna teach a lesson here.
They're gonna shut down
the port of Boston.
[music intensifies]
[Hagist] The British disbanded
the colonial government
and put in place
a military government in Boston.
Not quite martial law
but pretty close to it.
[dramatic music continues]
It leads to the army
being concentrated in Boston
and the isolation of Boston as a city
which cannot function
as it has done for most of its existence.
They're not just an occasional presence
but an everyday reality of life there.
There's troops on Boston Common.
There's encampments of military forces.
So it is a town under occupation.
[dramatic music continues]
When you have troops
as a constant presence,
it's obviously alarming.
Anyone who has been in a situation
where there is a military presence
would acknowledge that.
To our Founders, the very idea
that agents from the government
could walk around
and demand people account for themselves
and identify themselves
in order to continue
living their lives in freedom,
that would have been appalling
and repulsive.
[music fades]
[Hagist] Citizens of Massachusetts
established their own government.
This is 1774.
There's no war going on yet,
but the protest has gone so far
that the Massachusetts colonists
have set up their own government,
disassociated in any way
with the British government.
[Keagle] And people in Massachusetts,
you know, revolutionaries,
we might call them, begin to spread word,
to communicate with other colonies
in new and important ways
that begin to draw together
many of the different colonial entities
in North America.
There is a sense
that in some ways, Boston's fate
is the potential fate of all colonists.
[unsettling music building]
[voices murmuring]
[Al Gore] When people got together
to discuss the ideas
that others had presented to debate them
and to disagree and agree
where they did agree,
that was something
that was felt to be so precious
that the right of the people to assemble,
even if what they were discussing
might take the conversation
of the democracy
in a direction that the ruler at the time
didn't want it to go in,
they were gonna protect that
no matter what.
[soft string music playing]
And freedom of the press,
freedom of assembly,
freedom of speech, those were bedrock.
Because as they said,
the decent opinion of humanity
is really the lever
that can change the world.
[Chervinsky] For Washington,
it's hard to pinpoint
the exact tipping point
when he would have refused
to go back to being a member
of the British Empire,
but perhaps the most likely option
was the Intolerable Acts,
which basically closed off
the entire Massachusetts colony.
If they could do that to Massachusetts,
then they could also do that to Virginia,
and that was unacceptable.
[Washington] The ministry may rely on it,
but Americans will never be taxed
without their own consent.
That the cause of Boston,
the despotic measures
in respect to it, I mean,
now is and ever will be considered
as the cause of America.
[Bradburn] Public happiness is the goal.
For Washington, it was just
that we could be governed without kings.
That you don't have to have
a strongman ruling
to create justice and order.
He came to believe
that's what they were embarked upon
and that it was hugely important,
not just for his generation alone,
but what he called millions unborn.
[soft string music continues]
[Hagist] The Massachusetts colonists
have reached out
to the other 12 colonies in North America
and asked for their support,
and the other colonies agreed to it.
[music builds]
So the rebellion has begun.
[Holton] In September of 1774,
men from all the colonies except Georgia
gather in Philadelphia
in the First Continental Congress.
A meeting of committees
from the several colonies
on this continent
is highly expedient and necessary.
To deliberate and determine
upon wise and proper measures
to be by them recommended
to all the colonies.
For the recovery and establishment
of their just rights and liberties,
civil and religious,
and the restoration of union and harmony
between Great Britain and the colonies.
[Jasanoff] The First Continental Congress
in 1774
was designed to figure out
some way to work out relations
between the colonies and Britain.
[Keagle] Many of the most prominent people
in America were present.
[music continues building]
[Hagist] The First Continental Congress
was most significant
for bringing these people together.
It starts to create
a sense of national unity.
[Keagle] The colonies insist
they should be able
to govern themselves internally.
Parliament said that it had
the right to rule the colonies
in all cases whatsoever.
The colonists absolutely rejected
that premise.
[Georgini] They create different boycotts,
and they write a letter to the king.
[woman] Most gracious sovereign,
we, your majesty's faithful subjects
of the colonies,
by this, our humble petition,
beg leave to lay our grievances
before the throne.
[upbeat music playing]
[Chervinsky] And it just inflames
their passions even more
on the British side.
A most daring spirit of resistance
and disobedience to the law
still unhappily prevails
in the province of the Massachusetts Bay.
And has, in diverse parts of it,
broke forth in violences
of a very criminal nature.
[music intensifies]
[intense music fades]
[upbeat melody playing]
[Holton] Colonial militias
begin regularly practicing
in anticipation
that violence will break out.
So tensions are at a boiling point.
Fire!
[soft unsettling music playing]
[Hagist] British military officer,
Thomas Gage,
gets put in charge of Massachusetts
as the military governor.
[Keagle] Thomas Gage is somebody
who has a great deal of experience
in North America.
He is here during almost
all of the French and Indian War.
And he's one, I think, that in some ways
is fairly sympathetic to Americans.
He's lived amongst them,
but he is seeing a situation in America
that ultimately he cannot control.
The flames of sedition
had spread universally
throughout the country, beyond conception.
[Hagist] Gage gets intelligence
that there's a lot of
colonial military stores
being built up in Concord, Massachusetts.
Musket balls, maybe gunpowder,
if there is any to be had.
Things that an army needs
to go into the field
are being collected in Concord.
[Keagle] There's provisions
because an army needs food.
There's ammunitions.
There's musket balls. There's spoons.
This doesn't seem much,
but how do you eat in the field?
So there's all this kind of stuff.
There's carriages for cannons.
[unsettling music continues]
All of this material is designed
not just to equip a militia company,
but an army.
[McDonald] The situation, it seems like
it can't possibly get any more dire
until it does.
Gage, acting on orders
that are approved by George III himself,
is going to order British troops
to leave Boston
and march out to Concord, Massachusetts,
to capture arms and artillery pieces
and ammunition
that have been stockpiled
by the Massachusetts militia.
[music continues]
Along the way,
they're going to pass through Lexington,
where Sam Adams and John Hancock,
leaders of the resistance movement,
are staying.
Hopefully they will capture them as well.
[Keagle] This is a situation
where the revolutionaries of Massachusetts
have better intelligence of the British
than vice versa.
The American revolutionaries,
the Provincial Congress
and its agents have a much better network.
One of the leaders of the resistance
in Boston was Dr. Joseph Warren.
And he had received intelligence
that the British would be marching out.
[music fades]
The only thing that wasn't known
was the route that they would take.
Would they proceed by land,
or would they row across
the Charles River?
[gentle music playing]
The signal would be placed in the tower
of the Old North Church in Boston.
If the British were gonna proceed
via the land route,
one lantern would be hung.
If they were going to proceed by boat,
two lanterns would be hung.
[Holton] Warren worked with
a silversmith named Paul Revere,
who already had a reputation
as a renowned express rider,
who had made a number
of very long rides in the colonies
to bring news of an event
from one place to another.
[McDonald] British soldiers
in the middle of the night
row across the back bay of Boston.
Paul Revere and others on horseback
went out through the countryside,
warning people
that the Redcoats are coming out.
[gentle music continues]
[horse neighs loudly]
[Keagle] The British soldiers
of the Revolutionary War
are ultimately human beings
as much as the colonial soldiers.
There are some officers
that volunteer to come with this force
because otherwise they've been sitting
in Boston for months.
They have not been treated well
by the population.
They're disliked. They know that.
Then they march out, cold and wet,
because they've landed
waist-deep in the water
through a countryside
that does not want them there.
They know that the hills
are watching them in so many ways.
When they get to Lexington,
they find that there's a force there.
[dramatic music playing]
[McDonald] Most are farmers.
There are young guys, as young as 16.
There are guys in their 60s.
There are white people.
There are Black people.
There are rich people.
There are poor people.
They refuse to move out of their way.
They stand to their ground.
[dramatic music continues]
[Holton] If I could tell people one thing
about the Battle of Lexington and Concord,
it would be
that neither side wanted a battle.
It just kind of happened.
A shot rang out.
[gunshot echoes]
[shouting]
- [guns shooting]
- [men groaning]
And we'll never know who fired that shot.
The British soldiers killed
eight people in Lexington.
Nobody was killed on the British side.
[dramatic music continues]
[Keagle] The British continue
their march to Concord.
- [music fades]
- [birds singing]
[gentle music playing]
[McDonald] At the North Bridge
on the edge of Concord,
militias gathered to meet the British.
[soft string plucking]
Shots are fired.
[music intensifies]
[Holton] Five people are dead.
[horse neighs]
This is the first killing
of British soldiers by American troops.
[McDonald] The British begin retreating
from Concord back toward Boston.
[Keagle] They enter easily
the most harrowing part
of this experience.
They've kicked the hornet's nest,
and now the entire countryside
is coming up in arms.
The British troops that day
were wildly outnumbered.
Militia was swarming from all over.
Unarmed civilians get killed.
[dramatic music continues]
British soldiers that left that night,
by the time they get back to Charlestown,
especially troops like the light infantry
who are moving in and out of the line,
screening the columns,
have marched maybe 50 miles in a day,
under fire, without sleep.
After they march out of Concord,
they're pursued.
They're shot at.
They're constantly having to turn around,
to fire, to keep moving.
They're running out of ammunition.
During the day,
the British suffered 273 casualties,
and the Americans suffered about 90.
- [music fades]
- [birds singing]
[uplifting music playing]
[Duval] It was the shot
heard round the world,
in the words of the Massachusetts
intellectual Ralph Waldo Emerson.
But who fired that shot?
Was it British? Was it American?
No one ever really knew.
To me, that captures the puzzle,
which is how can these people,
who in many ways were so similar,
have ended up finding themselves
on opposite sides
of an armed confrontation?
[uplifting music continues]
[Carp] Blood is shed, and at that point,
this conflict has now become
something different.
Americans now want
to be able to decide their own fate.
They want to be able to govern
their own dominance of the continent.
- [sheep bleats]
- [birds singing]
They see themselves
as defending their farms and homes
from a British army that has been sent
to enforce a number of unjust laws.
The Battle of Lexington
changed the instruments of warfare
from the pen to the sword.
[uplifting music continues]
[music fades]
[unsettling music playing]
[Holton] After Lexington and Concord,
the British hunkered down in Boston.
That's where they established
their headquarters.
[Keagle] If you know Boston today,
the Boston of the 18th century
is a very different place,
geographically, physically.
[Holton] American militias,
rather than going back to their towns,
established a cordon around Boston.
The Patriots are surrounding
what is really a 1.1-square-mile island.
[gulls squawking]
Boston Harbor was filled
with primarily British warships,
each with cannons
capable of killing many men at a time.
It's an explosion waiting to happen.
[unsettling music continues]
The Americans have learned
that the British are planning an attack.
And to preempt that attack,
they've decided to send out
a group of soldiers towards Charlestown,
a neck of land where there is
what's known as Bunker Hill,
a big hill that dominates the peninsula.
They have instructions to build a redoubt.
A redoubt is an open-air fort
where there are enforced earthen walls
with an opening in the back,
known as the sally port.
And it's there where the men will cluster
and use its walls
as protection against the British.
Their orders are to build a fort
on Bunker Hill.
But for reasons that are still unclear,
the decision is made
not to build a fort on Bunker Hill,
but to move forward
a half mile towards Boston
to a hill known as Breed's Hill.
And this will change everything.
[dramatic music playing]
Building a fort here
will be surely a provocation to the enemy
because a cannon mounted there
can fire on the British in Boston.
The Patriot forces
have stepped on a hornet's nest.
Three pages. Forward!
[Philbrick] No one knows
what's going to happen.
[seagulls shrieking]
The air of anticipation is excruciating
for everyone involved
as they watch the British soldiers
get rowed across the harbor.
[tense music building]
William Howe is
one of the up-and-coming generals
of the British Army.
Howe has begun to move his troops
up the hill towards the redoubt.
The Colonials have sharpshooters
positioned in Charlestown.
And they're firing
on the British soldiers.
So the British burn Charlestown
to the ground.
[cannon fires]
The Patriot forces,
they have very low supplies.
One officer is reputed to have said,
"Don't fire until you see
the whites of their eyes."
The Patriots are all behind something.
The British are wide open.
They let the men come,
and then they unleash.
- [guns shoot]
- [shouting]
It's a killing field.
[dramatic drums thumping]
For Howe, who had known victory
in the past,
this was a life-altering moment.
[drums intensify]
Colonists are firing away, firing away,
killing whoever dares pop their head up.
But eventually,
they start running out of gunpowder.
And here come the British,
who are really angry at this point.
[soldiers shouting]
[screaming]
[grunts]
Each man has lost someone
he knows very well.
And they begin to crowd over the parapet.
[shouting continues]
And they start firing and bayonetting
any Colonial still in the redoubt.
[dramatic beat continues]
It's blood and gore all over the place,
as they stab anyone they can.
- [music plays faster]
- [shouting continues]
[music stops]
The British take the redoubt
and can claim victory
at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
[soft breeze howling]
[Holton] But in order
to conquer Bunker Hill,
those 2,000 British soldiers
had 1,000 casualties killed,
wounded, and captured.
- It was just devastating.
- [gunshots blasting]
[Carp] Bunker Hill puts to rest the notion
that this war might end quickly.
It is a glorious proof of the bravery
of our worthy countrymen.
Considering all the disadvantages
under which they fought,
they really exhibited prodigies of valor.
Your description of the distresses
of the worthy inhabitants of Boston
and the other seaport towns
is enough to melt a heart of stone.
Our consolation must be this, my dear,
that cities may be rebuilt,
and a people reduced to poverty
may acquire fresh property.
But a constitution of government,
once changed from freedom,
can never be restored.
Liberty once lost is lost forever.
[unsettling music playing]
[Gore] Throughout history,
most people had had
to suffer through the indignities
of arbitrary power being used
to make decisions
that they didn't have any part in making.
And I think that our founders felt like,
"We can do this."
["Devil's Spoke" by Laura Marling playing]
[Levin] They were doing
what we're trying to do.
They were trying to allow
a diverse, divided, free society
full of wild, crazy, amazing,
wonderful people to govern themselves.
To live in peace, to be dynamic,
to advance, to progress,
to do well by each other.
That was their goal.
The fear of losing it all
is actually a source of our strength.
I might be a part of this
Ripple on water… ♪
We're never gonna surrender!
…witness me
I'm alone, him and me ♪
[Harris] When we talk about power,
I do believe that we also,
at our founding and still,
also believe in the power of the people.
To speak up and speak out
against the abuses that they see.
We as Americans
come out of a time of great idealism.
The American Revolution
made us who we are.
We are forged out
of not only the soaring rhetoric
and lofty ideals
of the American Revolution,
but also its down and dirty fight.
- [song intensifies]
- [shouting]
All of this can be broken
All of this can be broken ♪
Hold your devil by his spoke
And spin him to the ground ♪
[Keagle] The American experiment,
it was perilous. It was fraught.
It was uncertain.
[Cruz] For most of human history,
the notion of sovereignty
is that sovereignty came from God,
and God gave it to kings,
and kings ruled the people.
They turned that upside down,
and they said
sovereignty starts with the people.
[Raskin] The American experiment
is democracy.
Let's see if we can put government
on a different principle,
which is the consent of the governed
and the unalienable rights of the people.
[woman] The promise of America
resides in freedom.
If you want freedom,
then all of this matters
because our freedom is at stake.
Do you want to be free?
That is the question for people.
Do you want to be free?
What does freedom mean to you?
Those are the only questions that matter.
All of this can be broken
All of this can be broken ♪
Hold your devil by his spoke
And spin him to the ground ♪
But the love of your life lives
But lies no more ♪
And where she lay a flower grows ♪
And the arms that fed
And the babes that wed ♪
And the backs have bled
Keeping her in tow ♪
But I am your keeper ♪
And I hold your face away from light ♪
I am yours 'til they come ♪
I am yours 'til they come ♪
Eye to eye, nose to nose ♪
Ripping off each other's clothes
In the most peculiar way ♪
Eye to eye, nose to nose ♪
Ripping off each other's clothes
In the most peculiar way ♪
[song fades]
[upbeat strumming]
[music fades]