Original subtitles

Announcer: Major funding

for "The American Revolution"

was provided by The Better Angels Society

and its members

Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine

with the Crimson Lion Foundation

and the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein,

the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation,

the Lilly Endowment,

and by Better Angels Society members:

Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman,

and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst.

Additional support was provided by

The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations,

the Pew Charitable Trusts,

Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling,

the Park Foundation,

and by Better Angels Society members:

Gilchrist and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin,

The Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars,

the Kissick Family Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierley,

John H.N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell,

John and Catherine Debs,

The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund,

and these additional members.

"The American Revolution"

was made possible with support

from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,

and Viewers Like You. Thank You.

Announcer: The American Revolution caused

an impact felt around the world.

The fight would take ingenuity, determination,

and hope for a new tomorrow

to turn the tide of history

and set the American story in motion.

What would you like the power to do?

Bank of America.

[Musket fire]

♪

Voice: Mankind have ever been so prone

to yield implicit obedience to that authority

to which they have long been accustomed

that there are few examples of resistance,

unless the wanton abuse of power has rendered it necessary.

When this is the case,

the feelings of the man and the patriot are awakened,

and both the peasant and the statesman are urged

to struggle even in blood.

No suffering which Britain can inflict

will reduce America to submission.

The thunder of their artillery may lay waste the cities,

but the spirit of the people is unconquerable.

Mercy Otis Warren.

♪

We think about the kind of anticolonial,

insurgent uprisings,

independence movements of the 20th century,

and think of those as being sort of the Third World fighting back

against the sort of imperial colonial powers.

You don't always recognize the fact

that the United States actually started that.

♪

Voice: England is the natural enemy of France.

She is an enemy at once grasping, ambitious,

unjust, and perfidious.

The invariable and most cherished purpose

in her politics has been, if not the destruction of France,

at least her overthrow and her ruin.

Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes.

Narrator: The Comte de Vergennes,

the French foreign minister,

was determined to avenge his country's humiliating defeat

in the Seven Years' War.

He had already persuaded Louis XVI

to open French ports to American merchants

for the selling of American goods

and the buying of French ones,

and even to provide some funds

with which the Americans could purchase guns and ammunition,

provided they did so in secret.

♪

Woman: The French needed to reorganize their army.

They were reforming their navy.

So they did start to send clandestine weapons,

they started to send money, they started to send uniforms

to the "insurgents" in America

because they didn't want to have an open warfare

against the British at the time, yet.

♪

Narrator: At the end of 1776,

the Continental Congress had sent

70-year-old Benjamin Franklin,

the most widely admired American on earth,

to try to talk France into providing much more help.

Franklin understood that the Americans

could not compete with the British Army and Navy

unless France entered the war,

and that the French would not dare do so

unless the Americans showed that they could win.

The last time he had heard from America,

prospects did not look bright.

The "Declaration of Independence"

had proved American seriousness,

but the invasion of Canada had been a disaster,

and British forces had defeated Washington on Long Island,

then driven him out of New York City.

After a secret meeting with Vergennes in Paris

in January of 1777,

Franklin promised that if France and its ally Spain

were to join the Americans,

Britain would be reduced

to a state of "weakness and humiliation."

But continuing reports of American defeats

were not encouraging,

and Vergennes refused to meet again.

He also feared that the thirteen former colonies

would never come together as a nation.

Publicly, Franklin remained optimistic,

but privately, he was anxious for better news from home

that might persuade the French to join the American Revolution.

Voice: Those who live under arbitrary power

do nevertheless approve of liberty and wish for it.

'Tis a common observation here that our cause is

the cause of all mankind,

and that we are fighting for their liberty

in defending our own. [Franklin]

♪

Narrator: Though Benjamin Franklin

did not yet know it,

George Washington's army had stunned the British

and lifted Patriot spirits

by taking the garrison at Trenton, New Jersey,

on the day after Christmas 1776.

[Officer shouts command]

Voice: Though the rebels seem to be ignorant

of the precision, order, and even of the principles

by which large bodies are moved,

they possess some of the requisites

for making good troops,

such as extreme cunning, great industry,

and a spirit of enterprise upon any advantage.

Though it was once the fashion of this army

to treat them in the most contemptible light,

they are now become a formidable army.

Lieutenant William Harcourt.

♪

Narrator: But now the British were on the move again.

General William Howe sent General Charles Cornwallis

and some 9,000 redcoats and Hessians

to recapture Trenton

and trap the rebel army against the Delaware River.

Washington decided to fight rather than retreat.

To do otherwise, he said,

would be to destroy the "dawn of hope."

On January 2, 1777,

he posted 1,000 men along the road from Princeton,

a college town twelve miles away,

with orders to slow Cornwallis' column until evening.

The Patriots contested every inch of ground

as they fell back through Trenton

to join most of Washington's army

arrayed on the south side of the Assunpink Creek.

At dusk, when the advance guard of Cornwallis' column

started across the lone stone bridge over the Assunpink,

American artillery opened up on them

with what Henry Knox proudly called "great vociferation."

Three times, the redcoats tried to cross the bridge.

Three times, American fire hurled them back.

Perhaps one hundred Americans would be killed or wounded

before darkness fell,

but the British lost three times as many.

Cornwallis called a halt.

His forces still outnumbered Washington's,

and the creek was fordable upstream.

"We'll go over," Cornwallis reportedly told his commanders,

"and bag him in the morning."

Washington ordered a small detachment

to stay on their hillside that night,

tending campfires and banging entrenching tools

to make the enemy believe they were digging in.

Meanwhile, the rest of his army would slip silently away,

following unguarded back roads to get behind Cornwallis

and attack his rear guard at Princeton.

At dawn, two British regiments

on their way

to reinforce Cornwallis

saw Americans

marching toward them.

The British "were as much astonished,"

Patriot General Henry Knox would write to his wife Lucy,

"as if an army had dropped perpendicularly upon them."

[Cannonfire]

The British fired their cannon,

then charged with fixed bayonets.

The American Commander, General Hugh Mercer's, horse

was shot out from under him.

He fought with his sword as long as he could

before being mortally wounded by British bayonets.

His men began to fall back.

Washington once again galloped to the front,

ignoring the bullets flying all about him,

exhorting his men to stand and fight.

One of his aides covered his eyes,

fearful of seeing his commander shot from his saddle.

Man: He's really lucky.

Bullets are going all around him,

everybody else is dying, he's never scratched.

He assumes he's never going to be killed.

Now, there's probably a lot of people in war that assume that

and they get killed.

And we never hear about them.

He doesn't believe in God in the total Christian sense,

but he believes in Providence.

Providence. He really thinks the gods, or God,

is on our side and his side.

Narrator: Washington's men held.

Veteran Continentals joined them.

Now it was the Americans' turn to charge.

[Soldiers shouting]

"I never saw men" look "so furious as they did,"

one remembered.

Voice: The fate of this extensive continent

seemed suspended by a single thread.

But happy for us, happy for unborn millions,

that we had a general who knew how to take advantage,

and by a masterful maneuver

frustrated the designs of the enemy.

Lieutenant Samuel Shaw.

Man: George Washington was no military colossus.

He was no Frederick the Great or Napoleon.

His natural instincts, I think,

were to preserve the Americans intact

so they could fight another day.

But this caution

was occasionally complemented by boldness.

For the most part, Washington saw his primary task

as holding the Continental Army together,

because it represented the rebellion.

Without the Continental Army, there would be no United States.

Narrator: Seventy Americans had been killed or wounded

in the Battle of Princeton,

but the enemy had lost another 450...

Killed, wounded, or captured.

By the time Cornwallis realized

Washington had fooled him at Assunpink Creek that morning,

it had been too late to catch him.

And when he and the rest of his army

reached Princeton that evening,

Washington and his army had vanished again.

♪

Voice: Everyone was so frightened that it was completely forgotten

even to obtain information about where the Americans had gone.

But the enemy now had wings, and, it was believed,

had flown to the mountains of Morristown.

Captain Johann Ewald.

Narrator: Morristown, New Jersey, a tiny village

in the heart of the thickly forested Watchung Mountains,

would be Washington's winter headquarters

for the next five months.

It was out of reach of the British Navy

but well suited for raiding British outposts

and for keeping an eye out

for a British advance from New York.

Most of the troops who had offered to stay after Trenton

went home as soon as their reenlistment was up.

By the end of January,

Washington had fewer than 3,000 Continentals in his camp.

But encouraged by Patriot victories

at Trenton and Princeton

and angered by the excesses of British occupation,

New Jersey militiamen now rallied to him.

Voice: They are actuated by resentment now.

And resentment coinciding with principle is

a very powerful motive.

John Adams.

Narrator: Whenever British foraging parties

ventured from their outposts, Patriots attacked them...

[Musket fire]

at Maidenhead and Quibbletown, Bound Brook and Drake's Farm,

Piscataway and English Neighborhood,

and at least 50 other places.

That winter, more British and Hessian troops were killed

fighting over forage than would fall in battle.

Voice: The British lost men who were not easily replaced.

The rebel loss was soon repaired

by drafts from the militia.

It inured them to hardships, and it emboldened them

to look a British or a Hessian soldier in the eye,

whose very face would make a hundred of them run

after the Battle of Brooklyn.

Justice Thomas Jones.

Narrator: And now New Jersey Loyalists found themselves

the targets of vengeful Patriots.

At Morristown, Patriots hanged two Loyalist officers,

and got 33 of their men to enlist in the Continental Army

by threatening to hang them, too.

General Howe's hope of pacifying the state

had brought civil war instead.

[Musket fire]

If one thinks of this as a British Empire

and British subjects,

who are contending for their rights, right,

then it's a civil war.

Then it's family against family,

sometimes brother against brother.

It's hard to tell who the good guys are

and who the bad guys are.

This is a predicament that is incredibly fraught

and incredibly difficult for people to sort out.

Woman: This inability to really figure out

who is the enemy here is a problem.

They're marching through the countryside,

and they don't know.

"This farm, is this farm... Are these Loyalists?

"Are there rebels in there?

Are they going to shoot at us out of the window,"

which does happen.

Who do you trust?

Narrator: The frequent attacks forced the British

to abandon most of their New Jersey outposts.

Winter would end in frustration and failure.

Voice: The next will be a trying campaign.

And as all that is dear and valuable

may depend upon the issue of it,

let us have a respectable army,

such as will be competent to every exigency.

George Washington.

Narrator: Spring was coming.

Armies would soon be again on the move.

And Washington wanted to be ready

for whatever the British were planning next.

Congress had come back to Philadelphia,

but while they were in exile in Baltimore,

it had become clear

that expecting delegates to make instant decisions

about the battlefield was impractical.

They had voted to grant General Washington

total control over his army for a period of six months

and authorized him to imprison without trial

suspected Loyalists or anyone who refused to supply his army.

Some delegates had feared that affording Washington

such powers would make him a dictator,

betraying the principles

for which they were supposed to be fighting.

General Nathanael Greene sought to reassure them.

Voice: I can see no evil nor danger

to the states in delegating such powers to the general.

There was never a man who might seem more safely trusted,

nor a time when there was a louder call. [Greene]

♪

Narrator: Most of Washington's new recruits signed on

for three years and a ten-dollar bonus,

but those who signed up for the duration of the war

were promised a twenty-dollar bonus,

and 100 "free" acres of Indian land when the war was over.

Man: When we think about what was offered

to the Continental soldier,

Indian land at the end of it all...

That land hasn't been taken, ceded, bought.

That land is still Indian land, right?

It tells you that the entire Revolution is premised

on the future possibility.

Narrator: These soldiers were different

from the men who had rallied after Lexington and Concord.

Most of them had been farmers and artisans,

propertied men with taxes to pay, creditors to appease,

crops to sow and harvest.

From now on, the Continental Army

would be made up predominantly of the poorest of the poor...

Jobless laborers and landless tenants,

second and third sons without hope of an inheritance,

debtors and British deserters,

indentured servants and apprentices,

felons hoping to win pardons for their service,

immigrants from Ireland,

and immigrants from Germany,

or their descendants who had never learned English.

John Adams had worried that only "the meanest, idlest,

most intemperate and worthless men" in America

could ever be persuaded to serve more than a year.

But victory would be impossible without them.

When patriotic speeches and free rum

failed to attract enough recruits,

some states instituted drafts.

Names were drawn from a hat. Married men were exempted.

Propertied draftees wanting to avoid service

could hire substitutes at fees to be negotiated

with their replacements.

Epping, New Hampshire,

managed to avoid sending any of its men to war

by paying men from neighboring villages to go.

South Carolina advertised

for "vagrants and idle disorderly persons."

Thousands of African Americans, enslaved and free,

served alongside Whites in units from New England

all the way south to Georgia.

Some volunteered, some were drafted.

Many stood in for their gun-shy enslavers.

Connecticut and Rhode Island would later promise

enslaved recruits their freedom when the war ended.

From 1777 onward, the American Revolution,

begun in part to defend the interests of property-owners,

would be fought

mostly by men who owned little or no property at all.

♪

Voice: Montreal.

Two deserters from the rebel country informed me

that my property had been seized,

and that my wife and the children

had been turned out of my house

and sent off through the woods, snowstorms,

and bad roads.

John Peters.

Narrator: To escape persecution and fight for his king,

the Vermont Loyalist John Peters had fled to Canada in 1776,

leaving behind his wife Ann and their six children.

[Knock on door]

After his defection, Patriots seized his home

and evicted his family.

Carrying their infant son,

Ann Peters managed to get everyone

all the way to Lake Champlain,

where they were spotted by a British boat

and carried north to a rendezvous with John.

They were "naked and dirty," he remembered, but safe.

In the weeks that followed,

John Peters began to recruit American Loyalists

for a new regiment... The Queen's Loyal Rangers.

He would command it, and his now-15-year-old son, John Jr.,

would be among the first to sign up.

♪

Voice: The smallpox has made

such headway in every quarter that I find it impossible

to keep it from spreading through the whole army. [Washington]

Narrator: As fresh recruits made their way

into the Continental Army camps, some carried with them smallpox,

the scourge that had threatened the army

from the beginning of the Revolution.

Washington had always resisted ordering inoculation,

because it took men out of action for weeks.

But now he decided to run the risk.

Voice: I have determined

not only to inoculate all the troops now here

that had not had smallpox

but shall order the doctors to inoculate the recruits

as fast as they come in. [Washington]

Ellis: The British troops were less vulnerable to smallpox

because they had been exposed more to it

in Scotland and Ireland and England.

Washington made a decision that

to serve in the Continental Army,

you had to first undergo inoculation.

And that was probably

the single most important military decision he made.

Narrator: Private Joseph Plumb Martin reenlisted

and received his inoculation that spring

along with 400 other Connecticut recruits

at a Continental Army supply depot

at Peekskill in the Hudson Highlands.

He had been just 15

when he first joined the Connecticut militia.

After enduring combat, cold, hunger,

and a bout of near-fatal illness,

Martin had decided he'd had enough

and left his militia regiment in December.

But life on his grandparents' farm soon bored him,

and when local draftees thought he might be talked into serving

in their place in the Continental Army,

they began bidding against one another.

Voice: I thought I might as well endeavor

to get as much for my skin as I could.

I forget the sum.

They were now freed from any further trouble,

at least for the present,

but I was again a soldier. [Martin]

Narrator: By the middle of May,

Washington's force at Morristown had grown

to nearly 12,000 men.

Voice: There is a clock calm

at this time in the political and military hemispheres.

The surface is smooth and the air serene.

Not a breath, nor a wave.

No news, nor noise.

John Adams.

♪

Voice: By what means, may I ask,

do you expect to conquer America?

If you could not effect it in the summer,

when our army was less than yours,

nor in the winter, when we had none,

how are you to do it?

You cannot be so insensible

as not to see that we have two-to-one the advantage of you,

because we conquer by a drawn game

and you lose by it.

Thomas Paine.

♪

Narrator: In London, Lord George Germain,

the secretary of state for America,

was embarrassed by how long the war was taking

and concerned about growing opposition to it in Parliament.

Germain found the setbacks at Trenton and Princeton

"extremely mortifying,"

thought Sir Guy Carleton's failure

to capture Fort Ticonderoga the previous autumn inexcusable,

believed the Howe brothers' repeated offers of pardons

to rebels "sentimental,"

and insisted they instead force Americans to undergo

what he called

"a lively experience of losses and sufferings."

Conway: Running of the war largely comes down

to Lord George Germain,

who is coordinating and orchestrating

military operations from Britain.

In logistical terms,

fighting a war 3,000 miles from the home islands was

a major enterprise in the days of sailing ships.

Christopher Brown: When the British government

gets information about what's happening on the ground,

they're already weeks out of date.

And then they're issuing orders for things

that will happen two to three months in the future.

You can think about what that means

for actually making decisions.

Narrator: General John Burgoyne, a dashing favorite of the King,

had persuaded Germain to place him in charge

of an army in Canada,

promising to succeed in a second invasion of the Colonies,

where General Carleton had failed.

Voice: I do not conceive any expedition

can be so formidable to the enemy

or so effectual to close the war

as an invasion from Canada by Ticonderoga. [Burgoyne]

Narrator: Burgoyne proposed a three-pronged attack.

He would lead an army south to seize Ticonderoga

and then move on to take Albany;

to the west, a smaller diversionary force

would advance via Lake Ontario and the Mohawk River Valley,

rallying support among Indians and Loyalists as they went;

finally, Sir William Howe was to lead his army

up the Hudson from New York

to complete the juncture of the three forces,

isolating New England.

General Howe had other plans.

Voice: I am fully persuaded

the principal army should act offensively

to get possession of Philadelphia,

where the enemy's chief strength will certainly be collected.

The rebels are at present buoyed up

by hopes of assistance from France.

If that door were shut by any means,

it would, in my opinion, put a stop to the rebellion. [Howe]

♪

In 18th-century European wars,

the capture of an enemy's capital city

usually brought the war to a close.

Of course, America had no capital city

in the sense of Paris in France or London in Britain.

But it did have Philadelphia,

which was seen as the political headquarters of the rebellion.

Howe became obsessed with the capture of Philadelphia

and the defeat of Washington's army.

Narrator: Because Lord Germain had failed to reconcile

the two incompatible strategies,

his two commanders... Howe and Burgoyne...

Would plan two distinct campaigns

in which neither would support the other.

There would be no rendezvous on the Hudson.

But Burgoyne was so sure of success

that even before he set sail,

he had bet the opposition leader in Parliament

a sizeable sum that he would "be home victorious

by Christmas Day" 1777.

Voice: If the frenzy of hostility should remain,

the messengers of justice and of wrath

await them in the field,

and devastation, famine, and every concomitant horror

that a reluctant but indispensable

prosecution of military duty must occasion. [Burgoyne]

♪

Narrator: By the time he reached Quebec,

Burgoyne had convinced himself

that thousands of Native Americans

would join his army.

In fact, no more than 500 men answered his call...

Mohawks, Algonquins, Abenakis, and Wyandots...

Drawn from seven villages along the St. Lawrence River.

They joined him for many reasons:

to seek the honors of war,

to receive British goods in payment of their service,

and out of an eagerness to settle old scores

with the hated people they called Bostonians.

Man: The Hudson River Valley, the Mohawk River Valley,

the Adirondack Mountains, Lake Champlain,

and up to the St. Lawrence River Valley,

that's been the battlefield

for the colonial powers for centuries.

And our people were swept up in it,

and a lot of what happened had more to do

with what kings and queens in Europe were deciding.

A major chess tournament happened here,

and we were the pawns.

Narrator: On June 20, 1777,

Burgoyne's enormous army began moving south on Lake Champlain.

Scores of birch bark canoes

paddled by Native Americans came first.

They were followed by Royal Navy warships

and 200 bateaux

carrying more than 6,500 British and German regulars,

Loyalist troops, and French-speaking Canadians,

along with a number of children and hundreds of women.

Fort Ticonderoga, on the west side of the lake,

was Burgoyne's first target.

It was now linked by a floating bridge

to a separate hilltop fortification on the east side

called Mount Independence.

Determined to take both outposts,

Burgoyne sent forces down each side of the lake by land.

He expected he would have to mount a full-scale siege,

but a British officer quickly spotted

a fatal flaw in the rebel defenses.

About a mile southwest of Ticonderoga

stood a hill that overlooked both forts.

It remained undefended.

If British guns could be hauled to the high ground,

both Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence

would be completely exposed.

When astonished Patriots spotted redcoats

peering down from the hill on the afternoon of July 5th,

American General Arthur St. Clair

ordered both fortifications abandoned.

The next morning, British troops raised the King's colors

above Fort Ticonderoga.

♪

The Americans fled in two directions,

with Burgoyne's men right behind them.

After hours of tramping in the heat,

those Patriots heading east called a temporary halt

at a tiny deserted frontier settlement called Hubbardton.

[Bugle music]

Voice: The morning after our retreat,

orders came very early for the troops to refresh

and be ready for marching.

Some were eating, some were cooking,

and all in a very unfit posture for battle.

[Musket fire, men shouting]

Then there was a cry: "The enemy are upon us!"

Ebenezer Fletcher, 2nd New Hampshire.

Narrator: Ebenezer Fletcher was a sixteen-year-old

from New Ipswich, New Hampshire.

As the menacing line of redcoats moved closer,

firing volleys as they came,

the 2nd New Hampshire fired back and then began to seek cover.

Voice: Many of our party retreated into the woods.

I made shelter for myself and discharged my piece.

But before I had time to reload it,

I received a musket ball in the small of my back

and fell with my gun cocked. [Fletcher]

Narrator: Elsewhere, the fighting intensified.

In the fierce combat that followed,

the Americans more than held their own

against some of Britain's

best-trained professional soldiers.

In the end, the British won,

but they were too tired

to pursue the retreating Americans.

Though in great pain,

Ebenezer Fletcher decided to escape;

he slipped away into the forest,

eluded hungry wolves and bands of Loyalists,

and eventually made it home to New Ipswich, New Hampshire.

Once he healed, he would return to serve out

his three-year enlistment in the Continental Army.

♪

Voice: It does me no injury for my neighbor

to say there are twenty gods or no god.

It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg. [Thomas Jefferson]

[Bell ringing]

Narrator: Most of the revolutionaries

belonged to Protestant denominations,

but there were Catholics and Jews among them, too,

as well as Muslims,

whose faith had crossed the Atlantic on slave ships.

Central to the philosophy

of some of the most influential creators of the United States

was their belief in a Supreme Being

but one who did not interfere in the affairs of men

or distinguish between faiths.

They were deists,

and they believed it was each individual's responsibility

to lead a virtuous life, which could only come from tolerance

and a lifetime of learning: the pursuit of happiness.

♪

Man: The revolutionaries believed

that the American people would have to be educated.

Without education, there could be no virtue in the populace,

and without virtue in the populace,

the government would fail.

Republics are based on authority coming from the bottom up,

not like monarchies from the top down.

So you require an educated, virtuous...

They use that term over and over,

drawing it from antiquity...

Virtuous population to sustain a republican government.

Voice: Our sister states of Pennsylvania

and New York have long subsisted

without any established religion at all.

They have made the happy discovery

that the way to silence religious disputes

is to take no notice of them.

Let us, too, give this experiment fair play.

Thomas Jefferson.

♪

Voice: To Lord Germain,

I have the honor to inform your Lordship

that the enemy were dislodged from Ticonderoga

and Mount Independence, and were driven,

on the same day, beyond Skenesborough on the right

and to Hubbardton on the left.

General John Burgoyne.

♪

Narrator: The armies had been moving at a dizzying pace.

Burgoyne's forces had reached Skenesborough by July 9th,

but they had now outrun their gigantic supply train.

Burgoyne decided to send his guns by water,

south on Lake George.

But his men were to march

through the woods to Fort Edward

on the east bank of the Hudson

just 23 miles away.

General Philip Schuyler,

commander of the Continental Army's Northern Department,

sent axmen into the woods

to slow Burgoyne's overland advance.

He would let the forest fight for him.

The narrow path between Skenesborough and Fort Edward

ran along a twisting stream called Wood Creek.

The Americans felled trees

every few feet on both sides of the road

so that their tangled branches made the path impassable;

they also destroyed some 40 crude bridges

that crossed and recrossed the creek

and used boulders to flood the boggy ground that surrounded it.

It would take Burgoyne's men three exhausting weeks

to turn the path into a road their wagons could navigate.

And he was still a long way from his main objective... Albany.

♪

Voice: O the American war!

I heard, I saw, I felt, smelled, and tasted its woes

for ninety-two long months:

famines, sores, sicknesses, plagues, battles;

houses ransacked and burned; towns depopulated;

gardens made graves.

Roger Lamb.

Narrator: Among the men in Burgoyne's army was

Irish-born Corporal Roger Lamb,

who kept his memories alive in watercolors and in print.

♪

By now, 400 more Native Americans

from the Great Lakes...

Fox, Menominee, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Ho-Chunk...

Had joined Burgoyne.

His Indian allies attacked retreating Patriot forces.

In one instance, they killed 22 men and scalped their corpses

to terrify those sent out in search of them.

Voice: This strikes a panic in our men

which is not to be wondered at,

when we consider the hazards they run

by being fired at from quarters,

and the woods so thick

they can't see three yards before them,

and then to hear the cursed war whoop,

which makes the woods ring for miles.

General John Glover.

Narrator: Settlers were attacked, too,

with little regard for their loyalties.

A young woman named Jane McCrea,

on her way to meet her Loyalist fiancé, was killed.

And when her scalp was brought into Burgoyne's camp,

he threatened to hang the perpetrator.

Deloria: We don't really know much about Jane McCrea.

She seems to have had reddish-brown hair

and been an average person.

But very quickly, Jane McCrea becomes a blonde

and she has very long, beautiful hair.

And she's pure and fair.

And she's been plucked out of life right in her prime.

Darren Bonaparte: It was just too captivating and tragic

and scary a thing.

That became part of the propaganda aspect of the war.

It was used against us.

Deloria: What happens is the American propagandists

are not simply attacking Indians;

they're using it to attack the British themselves

and British policy.

It's that the British sponsor Indian warfare

that kills Jane McCrea,

and that becomes a very, very powerful piece

of cultural argument.

Narrator: Hundreds of Patriot soldiers

continued to flee southward.

By the end of July 1777,

most of what was left of the American forces in the area

had withdrawn to Saratoga,

a small cluster of houses north of Albany.

Voice: To General Washington, our army is weak in numbers.

I foresee that all this part of the country

will soon be in their power

unless we are speedily and largely reinforced.

General Schuyler.

Narrator: Washington had been shocked

to learn of Ticonderoga's fall,

but he also shared Nathanael Greene's view

that "General Burgoyne's triumphs

"may serve to bait his vanity

and lead him on to his total ruin."

To try to bring on that ruin,

Washington took a calculated risk

and sent some of his best officers north...

General Benedict Arnold, whose "conduct and bravery"

he greatly admired, as well as Colonel Daniel Morgan

and his sharpshooting frontiersmen from Virginia.

Voice: General Washington is certainly a most surprising man,

one of nature's geniuses,

a heaven-born general if there is any of that sort.

That a Negro-driver should,

with a ragged banditti of undisciplined people,

the scum and refuse of all nations on Earth,

so long keep a British general at bay...

It is astonishing.

It is too much.

Nicholas Cresswell.

Narrator: Burgoyne remained confident

he would capture Albany.

He assured Lord Germain that the obstacles

the Patriots were placing in the path of his army

were merely acts of "desperation and folly."

He had once hoped to join forces with General Howe

on the Hudson River,

but Howe was already headed for Philadelphia.

♪

Man: General Howe can't go overland through New Jersey

because the Americans are strong enough

that they could really harass the column

that he has to send down there.

So, he decides to send his force by ship.

Narrator: With favorable winds,

it should have taken the fleet a little over a week.

But winds died or blew the wrong way.

Lightning storms split masts and ripped sails.

Water and provisions ran low.

Instead of trying to sail up the Delaware River

under Patriot guns,

the British would go still further south

and approach Philadelphia via the Chesapeake Bay.

Voice: I wish we could but fix upon their object.

Their conduct is really so mysterious

that you cannot reason upon it

so as to form any certain conclusions. [Washington]

Narrator: When Washington finally got word

that the British had entered the Chesapeake,

he realized where they were headed

and hurried his army to defend Philadelphia.

♪

Voice: I think there can be no doubt

that Howe aims at this place.

He gives us an opportunity of exerting the strength

of all the middle states against him,

while New York and New England are destroying Burgoyne.

Now is the time.

Never was so good an opportunity for my countrymen

to turn out and crush

that vaporing, blustering bully to atoms.

John Adams.

[Crows cawing]

Narrator: By early August, General Burgoyne was in trouble.

He had reached the Hudson at Fort Edward,

but he was still 50 miles from Albany.

He would press on,

but to do that, he needed more provisions.

When he heard that only a handful of militia

were guarding a sizable rebel depot at Bennington,

he ordered nearly 800 men...

British, German,

Native-American, French-Canadian,

and Loyalist troops... To seize it.

[Bagpipe music]

The men spoke at least five different languages.

Their commander,

Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum,

was certain his disciplined forces had nothing to fear

from what he called "uncouth militia."

Baer: Baum does not know English.

He doesn't really know the terrain.

There is some confusion about where they're going,

who they're dealing with.

They go out towards Bennington,

and they are met by a large number of Americans

that had assembled there that they just had not anticipated.

Narrator: There were far more than "a handful" of militiamen;

some 1,800 New Englanders and New Yorkers

were waiting for them.

Four miles west of Bennington,

Colonel Baum spread his force in a wide arc

with two strong points... A hastily-built redoubt

atop a forested 300-foot hill in the center,

manned by British and German troops,

and a second redoubt on a less lofty hill

defended by John Peters, who had led his Queen's Loyal Rangers

south from Canada

back to near his old home in Vermont.

On August 16th, at 3:00 in the afternoon,

the Patriot commander, John Stark of New Hampshire...

A hard-fighting veteran

of Breed's Hill, Trenton, and Princeton...

Sent his men forward.

[Musket fire, soldiers shouting]

Narrator: The Germans

were quickly outflanked and outnumbered.

Baum urged his dragoons

to try to cut their way out through the swarming militia.

Moments later he fell, mortally wounded.

Meanwhile, in and around the Loyalist redoubt,

old friends battled one another.

Voice: As the rebels were coming up,

I observed a man fire at me, which I returned.

He loaded again as he came up crying out,

"Peters, you damned Tory, I have got you."

I saw that it was a rebel captain, Jeremiah Post,

an old schoolfellow and playmate and a cousin of my wife's.

He rushed on me with his bayonet,

which entered just below my left breast

but was turned by the bone.

Though his bayonet was in my body,

I felt regret at being obliged to destroy him.

[Weapon fires]

Colonel John Peters, Queen's Loyal Rangers.

[Musket fire]

Narrator: All afternoon, the battle went back and forth.

The Patriots eventually prevailed.

Wounded and with his son by his side,

John Peters led the survivors of his regiment

back to Burgoyne's Army.

Few of Colonel Baum's men escaped death, injury,

or capture.

Prisoners were packed into the Bennington Meeting House,

many badly wounded.

Voice: They were in all stages of suffering,

and some were dying.

Some of their fellow soldiers who were less seriously wounded

would go to a dying comrade,

and, kneeling by his side,

would clasp their hands, bow their heads,

and swaying their bodies up and down,

would mutter prayers in their own language.

And when death came to him, they would pass to another. [Woman]

Narrator: At Bennington,

Burgoyne had lost nearly 15% of his army,

and he had accomplished nothing.

Assurances about the near universality

of Loyalist sentiments were dead wrong.

Voice: The country now abounds

in the most active and most rebellious race

of the continent, and hangs like a gathering storm

upon my left. [Burgoyne]

♪

Voice: Resolved that the flag of the United States

be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white,

that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field,

representing a new constellation. [The Flag Resolution]

♪

Narrator: During a short meeting

devoted mostly to fiscal matters,

the Continental Congress had called for a new flag

to represent their new country.

But two years later,

the committee of Congress overseeing the Army

still regretted that there was as yet no "national standard."

Some militia companies and privateers

designed their own banners

and had their wives and daughters make them.

Although artists often included the Stars and Stripes

in their postwar romantic renderings

of Revolutionary events,

it is not known ever actually to have been flown

by the Continental Army above a battlefield,

nor does anyone know who made the first one.

♪

Voice: We know the Indians now to have

the highest notions of liberty of any people on Earth...

A people who will never consider consequences

when they think their liberty likely to be invaded,

though it may end in their ruin.

George Croghan.

Narrator: The Haudenosaunee was a centuries-old union

comprised of the Six Nations...

Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga,

Tuscarora, Oneida, and Mohawk.

Each was allowed to act in its own interest,

but they were expected to act together

in matters affecting them all.

They likened their confederacy to a "great longhouse."

The Senecas were the keepers of its western door,

the Mohawks... the eastern door.

At the center was Onondaga,

where representatives met around the Great Council Fire.

Man: Normally you hammer things out until everybody says, "OK,

this is what we will do."

And that had endured, right?

Battered and bruised and bombarded

through colonial wars and all the rest of it.

That had endured.

And then the Revolution occurs.

[Cannon firing]

Bonaparte: For us, the Mohawk people, it was survival. Period.

And you didn't know which side was going to be

the best choice.

We kind of gravitated mostly to the British because they

had kind of won our respect, beating the French,

and pretty much having our interests

when they dealt with the regular colonists.

Voice: The disturbances in America

give great trouble to all our nations.

The Mohawks, our particular nation,

have on all occasions shown their zeal and loyalty

to the Great King.

Thayendanegea.

Narrator: No Mohawk man identified more closely

with the British than Thayendanegea,

who was also known as Joseph Brant.

His sister Molly had married

the British superintendent of Indian affairs,

and her connections helped Brant make his name among the English.

He had fought for the Crown in the French and Indian War at 15,

attended an English mission school,

and, in 1776, traveled to London,

where he reaffirmed his people's loyalty to Britain

in an audience with King George III.

Many of the Indian people in this time are

kind of anonymous to us in some ways

because we don't have accurate representations of them,

but one of the major exceptions is Joseph Brant,

who had his portrait painted not once but many, many times.

This is the 18th century.

Not just anybody got their portrait painted.

To have your portrait painted multiple times was unusual.

I think he controlled his space.

"I confound your stereotypical images of savage Indians."

Narrator: Brant had fought against the Patriots

at the Battle of Long Island,

then began traveling from town to town within the Six Nations,

urging the young men to join him.

It was imperative, he told them, to "defend"

our "lands and liberty against the rebels

"who, in a great measure, began the rebellion

to be sole Masters of the Continent."

But suspicious of the way Brant seemed to move

between the Indian and British worlds, more traditional leaders

resented this minor chief's ambition to lead them into war,

and preferred to hold back until it seemed clear

Britain was headed for victory.

And so, when Brant assembled his armed Volunteers,

only a handful were from the Six Nations.

Perhaps 80% of them were Loyalist settlers

disguised as Indians.

♪

In early August, Brant's men were with British forces

as they initiated the second part of Burgoyne's grand scheme

to seize the Hudson and cut off the New England states.

They started by laying siege to Fort Stanwix,

a Patriot outpost far west on the Mohawk River,

a crucial meeting place that connected the Great Lakes

with the East.

The British had believed

the fort was only thinly defended and in disrepair.

Actually, it was held by some 600 Continental soldiers,

and they had been strengthening the fortifications

at the urging of some Oneidas,

who made their homes in the valley

and did not share Joseph Brant's enthusiasm for the Crown.

The American Revolution

was about to plunge the once-united Six Nations

into a civil war of their own.

Calloway: Many Oneidas were closer to the Americans.

Some are intermarried.

Oneida people were, in many cases,

surrounded by American colonists.

Narrator: When an 800-man Patriot militia column

commanded by General Nicholas Herkimer

reached Oriska,

an Oneida settlement on Oriskany Creek

just eight miles from the embattled Fort Stanwix,

sixty Oneida chiefs and warriors joined them.

They were ready to fight alongside their White neighbors

and help thwart the British invasion.

Joseph Brant and his men were waiting for them,

alongside hundreds of other Mohawks, Senecas, and Loyalists.

[Woman singing in Native American language on soundtrack]

On the morning of August 6, 1777,

as Herkimer's long column filed into a ravine

and began splashing across a stream,

Loyalists fired from above,

while hundreds of Native Americans

allied with the British ran down among the startled men,

wielding tomahawks, clubs, and scalping knives.

♪

Bonaparte: It was a slaughter. It was horrific what happened.

And even the Native people who survived the war said

they'd never experienced anything like that.

♪

Narrator: Perhaps as many as 400 Patriot militia lay dead,

including some 30 of their Oneida allies.

Almost 100 of the British forces had been killed or wounded,

65 of whom were Indians.

The Mohawks and Senecas were accustomed to warfare

that yielded far fewer casualties, and were stunned.

Voice: There, I have seen the most dead bodies all over it

that I never did see, and never will again.

I thought, at the time,

the bloodshed a stream running down on the descending ground.

And yet some living crying for help,

but have no mercy on to be spared of them.

Chainbreaker.

♪

Bonaparte: We look back on the Battle of Oriskany

as one of those points where the Longhouse seemed to be burning...

The all-time worst-case scenario,

where we're actually killing each other in combat.

For what? For what?

For somebody else can claim our land?

[Musket fire]

Narrator: Fort Stanwix continued to hold out.

British artillery proved too light

to damage the fort's reinforced walls.

Then word came that General Benedict Arnold

and a large force of Continentals

were on their way to break the siege.

Britain's Native American allies decided to go home.

They wanted time to mourn their dead.

Without them, the cause was lost.

The British withdrew their remaining forces

and returned to Canada.

The other army Burgoyne had once hoped

would meet him at Albany would not be there.

Meanwhile, General Horatio Gates, the new commander

of the Continental Army's Northern Department,

was methodically gathering his forces

near the village of Saratoga to stop Burgoyne.

♪

[Horse clopping]

Voice: Philadelphia is the asylum of the disaffected.

The very air is contagious.

The Quakers in general are wolves in sheep's clothing.

And while they shelter themselves

under the pretext of contentious scruples,

they are the more dangerous.

Philip Schuyler.

Narrator: Philadelphia may have been the place

where the Patriots were trying to form a national government,

but its citizens were deeply divided.

I think one of the really great examples

of the difficulties of any kind of sort of neutral place

is what happens to the Quakers over the course of the war.

The Quakers are famously pacifist.

And that's not good enough in Revolutionary America.

Narrator: When the first anniversary

of American independence was celebrated

in the city that July,

Patriots had called upon homeowners

to place candles in their windows

as a symbol of fidelity to the cause.

Thomas and Sarah Fisher's home on Second Street

remained dark that evening,

and suffered fifteen broken windows.

The Fishers were Quakers and therefore officially neutral.

Their faith, one believer explained, held that

"setting up and putting down of kings and governments

is God's peculiar prerogative."

Patriots routinely raided their shops and warehouses

to supply the Continental Army.

But the Fishers were defiant:

they would not accept Continental money

or pay any tax that supported the war,

and they refused to denounce King George III.

On August 23rd, the Fishers rode out to Stenton,

Sarah's family's country estate near Germanton.

Voice: On the road,

we heard the disagreeable news

that Washington's army is to march that way.

We met numbers of wagons and light horsemen,

and, on our getting to Stenton,

found General Washington's bodyguard

had taken possession of our house.

They behaved civil, were very quiet.

And Washington appeared extremely grave and thoughtful. [Sarah Fisher]

♪

Narrator: On August 24th, Washington paraded his men

through the streets of Philadelphia.

He hoped to persuade its citizens

that his army would be able to defend them.

Many in the crowd cheered; others remained stone-faced.

Among the officers riding alongside Washington that day

was a Frenchman,

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier...

The Marquis de Lafayette.

Congress had just made him a major general.

He was just nineteen years old.

Voice: The welfare of America is

intimately bound up with the happiness of humanity.

She is going to become

the deserving and sure refuge of virtue, of honesty,

of tolerance, of equality, and of a tranquil liberty. [Lafayette]

Woman: Lafayette comes without a word of English

but just with a sense that the American continent is

the continent on which he will make his name,

on which he stakes his glory,

and with a willingness to essentially do

anything that needs to be done

for the sake of American independence.

Narrator: Europe was momentarily at peace,

and Lafayette was just one of many young officers...

From France, Bavaria, Prussia, and Poland...

All eager to show what they could do

on the battlefield in the New World.

But Lafayette stood out.

He was so rich, he bought the ship

in which he and a dozen other would-be officers

had crossed the ocean.

The young man's military experience was minimal,

but his father had been killed by British artillery

when he was two.

"To injure England is to serve my country," he said.

And he was determined to become a real major general,

commanding a division of his own.

De Rode: To George Washington,

Lafayette was interesting.

He had personal money with him that he could invest

to buy uniforms, to buy supplies.

He had a very important network at the French Court

because he was, himself, from a very powerful family.

So, if he could advocate

for the cause of the American Revolution in France,

it could create very important support from Versailles.

Narrator: Washington liked him from the first,

but would not consider giving him a command

until he had seen how he fared in battle.

Until then, he said, Lafayette was to join his staff,

to consider himself part of his military family.

♪

Voice: I feel in a most painful situation between hope and fear.

There must be fighting and very bloody battles, too,

I apprehend.

Why is man called humane when he delights so much

in blood, slaughter, and devastation?

Even those who are styled civilized nations

think this little spot worth contending for, even to blood.

Abigail Adams.

♪

Narrator: On August 25th, after five miserable weeks at sea,

General Howe's 16,000-man army finally began to disembark

near the mouth of the Elk River in Maryland.

Atkinson: This is in the middle of the summer.

It's broiling hot.

These men have been on the ships for weeks.

The horses are dying by the scores.

But they disembark at the head of the Chesapeake Bay.

And now they're looking for the Americans.

Voice: Almost every movement of the war

in North America is an act of enterprise,

clogged with innumerable difficulties.

A knowledge of the country,

intersected, as it everywhere is,

by woods, mountains, waters, or morasses,

cannot be obtained with any degree of precision.

General William Howe.

Narrator: To block the enemy's advance on Philadelphia,

George Washington interposed his 14,000-man army

along Brandywine Creek, some 30 miles west of the city.

The bulk of his force guarded Chad's Ford,

prepared to face Howe's army in the open.

Washington made sure his men understood what was at stake.

Voice: If the enemy is overthrown,

the war is at an end.

One bold stroke

will free the land from devastations and burnings.

If we behave like men, this campaign will be our last. [Washington]

Narrator: General Howe,

now encamped near the village of Kennet Square,

was eager for a climactic battle, too.

He didn't think he could end the rebellion at one blow,

but if he could destroy Washington's army

and then seize Philadelphia,

he would surely make that objective much easier.

His plan was to divide his army and flank Washington's,

just as he had on Long Island the previous summer.

A little less than half his force,

commanded by the German General Knyphausen,

was to move toward Chad's Ford

and keep Washington's army pinned down there,

braced for an all-out attack.

Meanwhile, the rest of General Howe's force,

led by General Cornwallis and Howe himself,

would move north as quietly as possible

to attack the right flank of the rebel army.

That attack was to be the signal

for Knyphausen at Chad's Ford to storm across the Brandywine.

If all went as planned,

General Howe would be able to trap Washington's army

between the two forces.

Washington, again, misreads the ground.

He has made tactical errors earlier in the war

at the Battle of Long Island,

and he makes another one at Brandywine.

He believes that there are no fords up Brandywine Creek

that the British can get across securely

to outflank the Americans.

That's not true. There are fords up there. The British find them.

The British are well-informed.

There are a number of Loyalists who are acting as guides;

they're providing information about the terrain,

about the topography, about, "Here on the map is where you

can get around these American positions."

♪

Narrator: At daybreak on September 11, 1777,

Generals Howe and Cornwallis set out on what would be

a twisting seventeen-mile march to get behind the Americans.

A dense morning fog screened their movements.

General Knyphausen and his column began moving east

soon after,

along the Great Post Road toward Chad's Ford.

[Cannon and musket fire]

Forward elements of the American Army

had felled trees across the road.

Riflemen hidden in the woods fired into the enemy's ranks.

American guns across the creek lobbed shells among them.

But by midmorning,

Knyphausen's men had driven the American advance troops

back across the Brandywine,

ready to storm across the creek when the signal was given.

At his headquarters, General Washington was unsure

what was happening.

And so, he settled in for what he believed would be

an all-out frontal assault across Chad's Ford,

just as Howe wanted him to.

Meanwhile, Howe and Cornwallis' men

had waded across two waist-deep fords far upstream

and marched for hours in intense heat without a break.

The weary British and German troops

halted on the bare slopes of Osborne's Hill to rest.

They stayed there long enough for Washington to finally learn

of the coming attack on his flank and order three brigades

to leave their positions along the river

and form a defensive line at another hill

on which the Birmingham Meeting House stood:

John Sullivan's men from Maryland and Delaware,

William Alexander's from Pennsylvania and New Jersey,

and Adam Stephen's Virginians... Some 3,000 soldiers.

[Cannon and musket fire]

At around 4:00 in the afternoon,

Howe ordered his much larger force forward

in three perfectly disciplined columns.

American marksmen fired into them from an apple orchard.

American artillery tore through their ranks.

The redcoats kept coming.

Sullivan's brigade broke and ran,

but the others held firm.

Voice: There was a most infernal fire

of cannon and musketry,

the most incessant shouting.

"Incline to the right!" "Incline to the left!"

"Halt!" "Fire!" "Charge!"

The balls plowing up the ground.

The trees crackling over one's head.

The branches riven by the artillery.

The leaves falling as in autumn by the grapeshot. [British soldier]

[Soldiers shouting]

Man: A battle like Brandywine saw suffering at every corner.

It was a hellscape in so many different ways.

Cannonballs ripping through the forest;

splinters killing men,

just taking off arms, legs.

[Cannons firing]

Narrator: The outnumbered Americans were driven back

five times, and five times managed to surge forward again

before they finally broke.

Had General Nathanael Greene and his reinforcements

not raced some four miles in less than forty-five minutes

to cover their retreat, it might have become a rout.

Back at Chad's Ford, the sound of the fighting

on Birmingham Hill had been the signal

for General Knyphausen

to send his army streaming across the Brandywine.

The remaining Patriots could not hold.

Washington ordered a retreat.

♪

Night fell.

General Howe lamented that if he had more time,

he could have brought about the rebel army's "total overthrow."

Atkinson: The Americans, only by the grace of darkness, get away.

The British can't chase them any further in the dark.

It's a serious defeat for the Americans.

It is going to open the gateway toward Philadelphia.

♪

Voice: We experienced another drubbing.

But we did, I think, as well as could be expected.

I saw not a despairing look,

nor did I hear a despairing word.

We had our solacing words always ready for each other:

"Come, boys, we shall do better another time."

Such was the spirit of the times.

Captain Enoch Anderson.

♪

Narrator: The spirit of the times was not universal,

as Washington's beaten army stumbled through the dark.

Hundreds of men melted away into the countryside

and headed home,

making an accurate count of casualties impossible.

But more than 1,000 Americans

are thought to have been killed, wounded, or taken captive

during the Battle of Brandywine,

roughly twice as many casualties as the British had suffered.

Voice: Our Americans,

after holding firm for considerable time,

were finally routed.

While I was trying to rally them,

the English honored me with a musket shot,

which wounded me slightly in the leg.

But the wound is nothing.

The ball hit neither bone nor nerve,

and all I have to do for it is to lie on my back for a while.

Marquis de Lafayette.

♪

[Waves breaking, ship's rigging creaking]

Voice: I needed all my courage and tenderness

to keep my resolution of following my husband.

Besides the perils of the sea, I was told that we

would be exposed to be eaten by the savages,

and that people in America lived upon horse flesh and cats.

Baroness Friederike Riedesel.

Narrator: When German General Friedrich Adolph Riedesel

left Europe in 1776

to join General Burgoyne's northern campaign,

he had left his pregnant wife and two small daughters at home.

But as soon as she could, after her third daughter was born,

Baroness Riedesel crossed the Atlantic with all three girls.

In mid-August, she caught up with her husband

and Burgoyne's army at Fort Edward.

Voice: In the beginning, all went well.

We cherished the sweet hope of a sure victory

and of coming into the promised land.

And when on the passage across the Hudson,

General Burgoyne exclaimed, "The English never lose ground,"

our spirits were greatly exhilarated. [Baroness Riedesel]

Narrator: On September 13, 1777,

two days after Washington's defeat

at the Battle of the Brandywine,

General Burgoyne's army in New York

began streaming across the Hudson near Saratoga

on a bridge of boats covered with planks.

Officers and men, women, children, horses, cattle,

wagons, field-pieces...

It took three days for it all to cross.

Waiting for them some 10 miles south of Saratoga were

General Horatio Gates' 6,900 Continentals

and 1,300 militia,

dug in along Bemis Heights, a broad plateau

anchored on the right by the Hudson River

and sheltered on the left by craggy wooded bluffs.

Colonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko,

a Polish volunteer for the Americans,

had chosen the site and laid out brigade encampments,

breastworks, and artillery emplacements

all along the Heights for 3/4 of a mile.

Patriot cannon commanded the river road to Albany.

Officers had a clear view of the rough terrain

across which the British would have to march...

Deep ravines and dense woods,

broken here and there by half-cleared farmers' fields.

Most of Burgoyne's Native scouts had left him by now,

so while he knew the Americans were somewhere ahead of him,

he had no way of knowing how many they were

or precisely how they were positioned.

On September 19th, he resolved to find out

and then try to drive through the rebel lines.

He divided his force into three columns.

Scottish General Simon Fraser, with nearly 3,000 troops,

set out to pinpoint his enemy's flank,

hoping to locate high ground

from which to fire on the rebels.

2,200 soldiers under German General Riedesel

approached along the river road.

Burgoyne himself led the middle column...

Some 1,700 soldiers... to assault

what he guessed was the center of the American lines.

Watching from Bemis Heights,

General Gates was content to wait.

This was his first battlefield command,

and he was a careful, cautious man.

Both Fraser's and Riedesel's columns stalled,

but Burgoyne's men managed to make it through the forest

to a clearing named Freeman's Farm,

where General Benedict Arnold and Daniel Morgan's riflemen

went out to engage them.

[Musket fire]

Atkinson: General Burgoyne asks for reinforcements.

Riedesel, who's a very fine commander,

immediately sends some reinforcements up from the river

to hit the Americans in the American right flank.

And this successfully stops the American momentum.

This First Battle of Saratoga, the Battle of Freeman Farm,

it's a draw, basically.

You can say that the British have been successful

in that they have held onto the ground,

but for the most part, it's inconclusive.

Narrator: Burgoyne had not located the main rebel positions

on Bemis Heights, and had lost 591 men,

nearly twice as many as the Patriots had lost,

and, unlike General Gates,

Burgoyne had no realistic prospect of replacing them.

♪

Voice: I was an eyewitness

of the whole affair

and shivered at every shot, for I could hear everything.

I saw a great number of wounded.

And what was still more harrowing,

they even brought three of them into the house where I was. [Baroness Riedesel]

♪

Woman: Imagine what a battlefield looks like

after a battle.

It has a lot of bodies. It has a lot of blood and gore.

And it was the job of women

to go in and take care of those bodies,

to clean them up, to identify them, if they could,

to see over the burial of bodies.

Part of the work of war is dealing with death.

Voice: Although we repulsed them with loss,

we ourselves were much weakened.

The bodies of the slain

were scarcely covered with the clay.

And the only tribute of respect to fallen officers

was to bury them by themselves,

without throwing them in the common grave.

So destruction comes with rapid wings,

and ruin rushes on like a whirlwind

to sweep the best officers,

and sometimes almost entire battalions,

from their strongest foundations.

Roger Lamb.

♪

Voice: Harassed and exhausted

by perpetual change from bad to worse,

my poor afflicted mother

consented to go beyond the mountains to Winchester.

It was indeed a new world to us...

Rude and wild as nature had made it.

Betsy Ambler.

♪

Narrator: Betsy Ambler and her family from Yorktown, Virginia,

had been on the move since the war began,

trying to find a place

that suited her mother's frail health

and was safe from the British.

For decades, Winchester, Virginia,

in the Shenandoah Valley,

had been an important waystation

on the Great Wagon Road

that settlers followed

through the backcountry

from Philadelphia

to the Carolinas.

Because it was so far inland, Winchester served new purposes:

it was a relatively safe place

for storing military supplies and materiel;

a safe haven for refugees;

and a place to house prisoners of war.

Suspected Loyalists were often exiled to Winchester, too.

Voice: We not unfrequently made acquaintance

with agreeable men who were condemned to banishment

in this dreary place on account of "disaffection,"

as it was called, to the great cause of liberty.

Amongst those proscribed,

genteel Quakers from Philadelphia were numerous. [Ambler]

Narrator: One of those Quakers was

Sarah Fisher's husband Thomas.

As British troops advanced on Philadelphia,

Congress and the local authorities

had convinced themselves that he and seven other wealthy Quakers

were communicating with the enemy.

They had them arrested,

and when they again refused to swear allegiance

to the new government, loaded them into wagons

and sent them off under guard to Winchester.

♪

Now alone in Philadelphia, Sarah Fisher had two small boys

to care for and was nearly eight months' pregnant.

Voice: I feel forlorn and desolate,

and the world appears like a dreary desert,

almost without any visible protecting hand

to guard us from the ravenous wolves and lions

that prowl about for prey,

seeking to devour those harmless innocents

that don't go hand-in-hand with them

in their cruelty and rapine. [Fisher]

Narrator: Her husband's only crime, Sarah Fisher said,

was that he saw himself as a subject of Britain.

But she was cheered to see that rebels and their sympathizers,

including all the members of the Continental Congress,

were now fleeing the city

in fear of the enemy's approach

after the American defeat at Brandywine.

Voice: People in very great confusion,

some flying one way and some another,

as if not knowing where to go or what to do.

Wagons rattling, horses galloping, women running,

children crying, delegates flying,

and altogether the greatest consternation,

fright, and terror that can be imagined. [Fisher]

♪

Narrator: George Washington still hoped somehow

to keep the British from occupying Philadelphia.

He ordered General Anthony Wayne and his Pennsylvania division

to attack the rear of the advancing army.

But local Loyalists alerted General Howe

that Wayne and his men were camped near the Paoli Tavern,

and he sent 1,700 soldiers

to deal with them.

♪

As they approached through the woods

on the night of September 20th,

they were ordered to remove the flints from their muskets

for fear someone's gun would go off

and alert the sleeping rebels.

They fixed bayonets and exploded out of the trees

with what a British officer remembered:

"such a cheer as made the wood echo."

[Sound of musket fire, bayonets stabbing, soldiers shouting]

Voice: The light infantry bayoneted

every man they came up with.

And the cries of the wounded formed altogether

one of the most dreadful scenes I ever beheld.

Every man that fired was instantly put to death.

Lieutenant Martin Hunter.

Narrator: At least 53 Patriots were stabbed to death,

and more than 200 were wounded or captured.

Americans would remember it as the Paoli Massacre.

Washington gave up hope of holding Philadelphia.

♪

Six days after the massacre, September 26, 1777,

General Cornwallis led 3,000 victorious British troops

into Philadelphia.

Voice: About 10 o'clock,

the troops began to enter.

A band of music played a tune,

which I afterwards understood was called

"God save Great George Our King."

Then followed the soldiers, no wanton levity,

or indecent mirth,

but a gravity well becoming the occasion on all their faces.

Sarah Fisher.

Narrator: General Howe,

with 8,000 more troops camped in Germanton,

made his headquarters at Stenton,

Sarah Fisher's country home

that had only a few weeks before been occupied

by George Washington.

At Brandywine, General Howe had repeated the tactics

that had won the Battle of Long Island.

Now Washington hoped to repeat his successful surprise attack

on Trenton by hitting Howe at Germanton in early October.

Washington's plan was ambitious and complicated.

Success would depend on dividing his 11,000-man force

into four separate columns

to undertake miles-long marches at night

on poorly marked roads so as to arrive simultaneously

on the town's northern and western edges

at precisely 5 A.M. on October 4th.

Then, at dawn, they were to storm into town

on four different roads.

It would be the first time

during the Revolution that

Washington dared hurl his army

against the main British force.

[Musket fire]

John Sullivan's and Anthony Wayne's columns

swiftly swept aside British pickets north of the town.

Wayne's men found themselves

face-to-face with the British Light Infantry,

the same soldiers who had massacred

so many of their comrades at Paoli just two weeks earlier.

Voice: Our people pushed on with their bayonets

and took ample vengeance for that night's work.

The rage and fury of the soldiers

were not to be restrained.

[General Anthony Wayne]

Narrator: The Americans continued

to push the British back through the town,

driving them from one fenced yard to the next.

Voice: Fortune smiled on our arms.

The enemy were broke, dispersed, and flying in all quarters.

We were in possession of their whole encampment. [Wayne]

Narrator: In the face of the advancing Americans,

British Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Musgrave

ordered half his regiment... Between 100 and 120 soldiers...

To duck inside the largest house in Germanton,

the home of Benjamin Chew,

the Loyalist ex-chief justice of Pennsylvania.

Its walls were two feet thick.

Musgrave directed his men to block the door

and ground-floor windows with furniture.

Downstairs, his men were to bayonet anyone

who dared try to enter

while others fired into the passing rebels

from the upstairs windows.

Atkinson: Washington is advised, "Bypass them.

Go around them. Isolate them. Keep the momentum going."

Narrator: But Henry Knox insisted

that the house had to be taken right away.

"It would be unmilitary," he said,

"to leave a castle in our rear."

Washington agreed.

[Cannons firing]

Artillery blew in the front door

and damaged statuary in the garden,

but bounced harmlessly off the walls.

Continentals from New Jersey repeatedly stormed the house

and were cut down on the lawn and front steps.

As the siege at the Chew House went on,

the bulk of the American force streamed past,

continuing to drive the British back.

A Patriot victory seemed likely.

Voice: About this time came on perhaps the thickest fog

known in the memory of man,

which, together with the smoke,

brought on almost midnight darkness.

It was not possible to distinguish friend from foe

at five yards distance. [Elias Dayton]

Narrator: When the men who had penetrated the farthest

heard the furious gunfire still coming from the Chew House,

they believed the enemy had somehow gotten behind them.

Now it was the Patriots who began to fall back.

General Cornwallis himself led the counterattack.

His troops freed Musgrave's men from the Chew House

and drove the Americans back along the roads

they'd followed into town.

The British had won... again.

♪

Voice: I rode over the battlefield,

and with surprise and admiration approached the house,

which the brave Colonel Musgrave had defended.

During the battle, some thirty defenders

were killed and wounded.

I counted seventy-five dead Americans.

The rooms of the house were riddled by cannonball

and looked like a slaughterhouse

because of the blood splattered around.

There, the entire English army was saved.

Johann Ewald.

For the Americans, what had been a sure victory...

It looked like they were going to drive the British

back into Philadelphia... becomes a fairly significant defeat.

Washington gets away again,

but there are hundreds of casualties.

The British capture quite a few Americans.

And what had been a glorious morning

turns into a very grim evening.

Narrator: Reporting to Congress,

Washington tried to put the best face he could

on his humiliating defeat.

Voice: Upon the whole, it may be said

the day was rather unfortunate than injurious.

We sustained no material loss of men

and brought off all our artillery, except one piece.

The enemy are nothing the better by the event.

And our troops, who are not in the least dispirited by it,

have gained what all young troops gain by being in actions. [Washington]

He is very good at, I think,

the key tactic for an insurrectionary force,

which is living to fight another day,

and successfully plays a long game

of just not being crushed.

Ellis: Washington's not a great field commander,

but he's resilient,

and he understands the kind of war he's fighting.

At some point, he reaches the insight...

And it's a basic insight... He doesn't have to win.

The British have to win.

He only has not to lose.

♪

Voice: The colonies had grown up

under constitutions of government so different,

there was so great a variety of religions,

they were composed of so many different nations,

their customs, manners, and habits

had so little resemblance,

their intercourse had been so rare,

and their knowledge of each other so imperfect

that to unite them in the same principles of theory

and the same system of action,

was certainly a very difficult enterprise.

John Adams.

♪

Narrator: After fleeing Philadelphia,

the Continental Congress reconvened

in a small county courthouse in York, Pennsylvania.

The delegates had taken

just 27 days of discussion the previous year

to declare American independence,

but it would take them 526 days

to fashion the Articles of Confederation.

They were meant in part to demonstrate to France

that the thirteen former colonies

could act effectively together,

but the result was not a government.

Woman: They needed to have a way to pay for wars;

they needed to run wars.

They needed to possess Native lands;

they needed to redistribute those lands.

But the Articles had so much political compromise

that it wasn't a functional centralized government.

Narrator: By design,

the Articles of Confederation were weak and constrained.

Each state remained

a more or less independent republic

jealously guarding

its own sovereignty and freedom.

Congress had no power to tax, which meant

it couldn't pay the soldiers in the Continental Army.

And before the Articles could even become operative,

they needed to be ratified

by all the states.

That would take another 39 months.

♪

Voice: The armies were so near

that not a night passed without firing.

No foraging party could be made

without great detachments to cover it.

I do not believe either officer or soldier

ever slept during that interval.

General John Burgoyne.

Narrator: For eighteen days

after the Battle of Freeman's Farm near Saratoga,

the American and British armies strengthened their defenses

and skirmished constantly

but remained precisely

where they had been when the shooting stopped.

Meanwhile, Loyalist refugees

continued to stream into the British camp,

forcing Burgoyne to reduce rations by a third.

Desertions, especially among German troops, rose so fast

that Baron Riedesel promised his soldiers ten guineas

for every would-be deserter they brought back

and five guineas if he had to be shot for resisting.

At 11:00 in the morning on October 7th,

Burgoyne led some 1,500 men out of his camp

and formed a long, thin line

across two unharvested wheat fields

just west of Freeman's Farm,

redcoats on the right, Germans in the center,

elite British grenadiers on the left.

While some of his men harvested the wheat

his encampment desperately needed,

Burgoyne and several of his officers

climbed onto the roof of a log cabin with spyglasses,

trying to see if there was a way around the rebel left.

Tall trees blocked them from seeing anything useful,

but Americans patrolling the no man's land saw them.

[Musket fire]

Shots were exchanged.

From Bemis Heights,

General Gates now ordered Daniel Morgan's corps

and Brigadier General Enoch Poor's brigades

to attack the British on both flanks.

British General Fraser was killed.

The redcoats crumbled.

Then Benedict Arnold galloped onto the battlefield.

He seemed to be everywhere,

leading a charge against the British center,

racing between the armies

through a swarm of musket balls to rally another regiment

so that they could sweep the defenders

from two fortified cabins.

He urged the exhausted men on

to seize a redoubt manned by some 200 German grenadiers.

Voice: You cannot conceive how men looked.

And at first it appeared to me

that if the order came for us to march, I could not do it.

Nathaniel Bacheller.

Narrator: But when Arnold gave the order,

Bacheller and his comrades climbed to their feet

and moved forward again,

shouting as they rushed toward the front of the redoubt.

Arnold rode around it, forced his way inside,

and demanded that its defenders surrender.

Most did surrender or fled,

but one fired a musket ball that shattered Arnold's left leg,

the same leg that had been wounded at Quebec

two years before, and killed his horse, which fell on him.

Unable to move, Arnold continued to shout orders

until the fighting died down

and he could be carried from the field.

"Arnold was our fighting general,"

one of his men remembered.

"He was as brave a man as ever lived."

Philbrick: I think it's safe to say

that Benedict Arnold should be regarded

as the hero of Saratoga.

It was really an aggressive move at the end

that sealed the victory for the Americans.

Narrator: The British stumbled back to Saratoga,

carrying their wounded with them.

[Cannons firing]

Voice: October 10th... Saratoga.

A frightful cannonade began,

principally directed against the house

in which we had sought shelter,

probably because the enemy believed

that all the generals made it their headquarters.

Alas! It harbored none but wounded soldiers or women.

We were finally obliged to take refuge in a cellar.

My children laid down on the earth

with their heads upon my lap.

My own anguish prevented me from closing my eyes.

Eleven cannonballs went through the house,

and we could plainly hear them rolling over our heads.

One poor soldier, whose leg they were about to amputate,

had the other leg taken off by another cannonball

in the very middle of the operation. [Baroness Riedesel]

[Cannons firing]

Narrator: Militiamen continued to stream into Gates' army,

its numbers now swollen to 17,000.

By October 13th, the Americans

had Burgoyne's army completely surrounded.

Voice: Every hour,

the position of the army grew more critical

and the prospect of salvation grew less and less.

Even for the wounded, no spot could be found

which could afford them a safe shelter.

The sick and wounded would drag themselves along

into a quiet corner in the woods, and lie down to die.

General Riedesel.

♪

Conway: Saratoga was a body blow to the British.

It was clear that all of the old assumptions,

that the British Army was a professional force

that would sooner or later

prevail over the amateurish Americans,

all those assumptions were undermined.

The amateurish Americans had actually beaten the British.

For the British, this was not just a military defeat;

it was a psychological blow

of very considerable proportions.

Narrator: That afternoon, Burgoyne gathered his staff.

They were trapped, without food or forage.

They voted to begin negotiations with General Gates.

♪

For three days, messages flew back and forth

between the camps.

Voice: During the time of the cessation

of arms, a soldier in the 9th Regiment

named Maguire came down to the bank of the river

with a number of his companions, who engaged

in conversation with a party of Americans

on the opposite shore.

♪

Maguire suddenly darted like lightning

from his companions, and resolutely plunged

into the stream. [Water splashing]

At the very same moment, one of the American soldiers,

seized with a similar impulse, resolutely dashed

into the water from the opposite shore.

The wondering soldiers on both sides beheld them

eagerly swim towards the middle of the river, where they met.

They hung on each other's necks and wept.

They were brothers.

One was in the British and the other

in the American service, totally ignorant

until that hour that they were engaged

in hostile combat against each other's life.

Roger Lamb.

♪

Narrator: On the morning of October 17th,

Gates' generous terms were accepted.

He and Burgoyne met between their respective lines

and shook hands.

Burgoyne presented his sword to Gates...

Who handed it back, as dictated by military custom.

To his dying day, Burgoyne would blame others

for his defeat... Lord Germain, General Howe,

his Loyalist German and Native allies...

Everyone but himself.

Voice: All the army gave up

and surrendered themselves prisoners of war to our men.

Such a thing was never heard of.

Such a sight was never seen before,

so many men giving in to us.

Exult, oh, Americans

and rejoice and praise the Lord,

who hath done wonderful things for you.

Ezra Tilden.

Narrator: An entire British army had been forced

to lay down its arms... One lieutenant general,

two major generals, three brigadiers,

350 commissioned and staffed officers,

5,900 other ranks,

and some 600 women and children.

Along with them, the Americans seized 30 artillery pieces,

60 wagons, 1,500 swords,

3,400 bayonets,

and 4,600 muskets and rifles.

Burgoyne's Canadian and Loyalist auxiliaries

were to be permitted to make their way north to Canada,

while more than 6,000 British and German prisoners

were to be marched to Boston and sent home from there

to Europe, pledged never to return.

But when they got there, they learned that Congress

had refused to ratify Gates' agreement with Burgoyne.

After months housed in makeshift camps,

they were sent south.

Voice: I never had the least idea

that the creation produced such a sordid set of creatures

in human figure... Poor, dirty, emaciated men,

great numbers of women, who seemed to be the beasts

of burden, and children, some very young infants

who were born on the road.

Hannah Winthrop.

Narrator: The prisoners would eventually be marched

more than 600 miles to Charlottesville, Virginia,

and still later to other camps in Virginia,

Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

Many died.

Hundreds escaped.

Some would rejoin the British army at New York;

others joined the Continental Army

or simply disappeared into the populace.

By the time the remaining prisoners from Saratoga

were released in 1783,

only a few of the 6,000 would be left.

♪

[Distant bird cawing]

Voice: Everything is almost gone

of the vegetable kind, butchers obliged to kill fine milk cows.

One woman walked two miles out of town only for an egg.

Such is the dreadful situation we are reduced to.

Sarah Fisher.

Narrator: At first, Philadelphia Loyalists

had welcomed British troops into their city.

But as it grew colder that autumn, homeowners

would be forced to take officers into their homes,

whether they wanted to or not and, as Sarah Fisher wrote,

there were soon "very bad accounts

"of the licentiousness of the English officers

deluding young girls."

Sarah Fisher felt especially isolated and alone,

but she soon gave birth to a baby daughter,

whom she named Hannah, after her late mother.

American patrols made foraging

in the surrounding countryside dangerous for British troops.

Provisions grew increasingly scarce.

Prices soared.

General Howe had to find a way for the Royal Navy

to ferry food, supplies, and equipment

up the Delaware River to Philadelphia.

American forces occupied

two forts... Fort Mifflin

on Mud Island, and Fort Mercer

at Red Bank on the New Jersey side.

For weeks, the British worked to destroy them.

The besieged Americans, Thomas Paine wrote,

had nothing "to cover them but their bravery."

Joseph Plumb Martin had been among the last Americans

to evacuate Fort Mifflin.

Voice: Every private soldier in an army

thinks his particular services as essential to carry on the war

he's engaged in, as the services of the most influential general.

And why not?

What could officers do without such men?

Nothing at all. [Distant explosions]

Great men get great praise, little men nothing. [Martin]

Narrator: Both forts fell.

The Delaware was now open to British shipping.

Howe's army could safely spend the winter in Philadelphia.

In December, George Washington would lead his army

into winter quarters, a hilly, wooded, remote place

northwest of Philadelphia called Valley Forge.

[Distant bell tolling]

In France, Benjamin Franklin had heard little of what

was happening in America for seven long weeks.

Then, on December 4th,

a rider clattered into his courtyard,

shouting he had important news.

Franklin hurried out to greet him.

"Sir," he asked, "is Philadelphia taken?"

"Yes, sir," the courier answered.

Franklin, dejected, turned to go back inside.

"But, Sir," the rider said.

"I have greater news than that.

"General Burgoyne and his whole army

are prisoners of war."

Just a few months earlier, Franklin had written

that only "a small matter" would be needed

to bring France into the war with Britain.

Clearly, the surrender of an entire British army

was a large matter.

The Comte de Vergennes, the French Foreign Minister,

whose newly rebuilt navy was now ready for war,

saw the victory at Saratoga and the former colonies'

tentative steps toward forming a central government

as the best evidence so far that a French-American alliance

might defeat the British.

Louis XVI agreed.

"America is triumphant," he said,

"and England beaten."

Alan Taylor: Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga

is a crushing blow, and it impresses the French.

But the French are also impressed

by George Washington's survival.

He's still hanging in there.

His army is still fighting.

The British may force their way into Philadelphia,

but they have not destroyed Washington's army.

De Rode: It's quite a risk to send your army to fight

with an army that might never win.

But there's more to the story, because the French

are not just waiting for the victory.

They're waiting for their own army to be ready.

Finally, their navy was ready, their army was ready.

They were strong enough again and felt confident

that this was the right moment to join the rebels.

Narrator: In Paris, on February 6, 1778,

French and American commissioners

would sign two treaties.

The first recognized the independence

of the United States of America and established

commercial relations between the two countries.

The second, the Treaty of Alliance,

promised full support for the American cause

from the French Army and Navy,

as well as its Treasury.

♪

Schiff: The importance of the French alliance,

just in entirely practical terms,

we're talking about what would today be

$25 billion to $30 billion in aid.

We're talking about a war effort

that the colonies could not have provided for themselves.

And the idea that a foreign power bankrolled that effort

and that it would have impossible without them,

that's the chapter we don't like to think too much about

because our sense of our independence is that it's

something that we achieved on our own.

Narrator: Although it would be nearly three months

before the news crossed the Atlantic,

an uprising among British subjects in North America

was about to ignite another global war.

♪

Announcer: Next time on

"The American Revolution"...

Winter at Valley Forge.

Voice: This army must inevitably starve or disperse

in order to obtain subsistence. [George Washington]

Announcer: Alliances are formed...

Colin Calloway: The new United States represents

an existential threat.

Announcer: and the French enter the war.

Kathleen DuVal: Britain knows that

Spain and the Netherlands may be next.

The stakes are big in this war.

Announcer: When "The American Revolution" continues next time.

♪

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♪

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The series is also available with PBS Passport

and on Amazon Prime Video.

♪

Announcer: The American Revolution caused

an impact felt around the world.

The fight would take ingenuity, determination,

and hope for a new tomorrow

to turn the tide of history

and set the American story in motion.

What would you like the power to do?

Bank of America.

Announcer: Major funding

for "The American Revolution"

was provided by The Better Angels Society

and its members

Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine

with the Crimson Lion Foundation

and the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein,

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and by Better Angels Society members:

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and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst.

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the Park Foundation,

and by Better Angels Society members:

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"The American Revolution"

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