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.

♪

Jane Kamensky, voice-over: I think to believe in America

rooted in the American Revolution

is to believe in possibility.

That, to me, is the extraordinary thing

about the Patriot side of the fight.

I think everybody on every side, including people

who were denied even the ownership of themselves,

had the sense of possibility worth fighting for.

♪

The American Revolution changed the world.

It's not just about the birth of the United States.

It has ramifications across the globe,

so studying the American Revolution,

understanding it,

and putting it in a global context, I think,

is vitally important for us to understand

why we are where we are now.

[Gunfire and shouting]

♪

Voice: Our country was thrown

into great confusion by the long continuance of the war.

[Church bell ringing]

The churches in Virginia were almost entirely shut up,

and its holy ordinances unobserved.

Most of our men were engaged in the war.

Our town had now become a garrison.

Betsy Ambler.

♪

Narrator: Betsy Ambler of Yorktown, Virginia,

had been 10 when the war began.

She was now 15 and had lived most of the intervening years

away from home.

By the spring of 1780,

she was back in Yorktown with her family.

Life there had changed.

The most populated parts of Virginia all lay within reach

of the Royal Navy and any troops the British might land.

Governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Assembly

chose to move the capital from nearby Williamsburg to Richmond,

and, since Betsy Ambler's father

had been appointed to the state government,

her family would have to leave Yorktown again.

♪

George Washington had long known

that Yorktown was particularly vulnerable.

As early as 1777, he had warned a Virginia militia commander

against stationing troops there.

♪

Voice: I can by no means think

it would be prudent to have

any considerable stationary force at Yorktown.

Being upon a narrow neck of land,

it would be in danger of being cut off.

The enemy might very easily throw up a few ships

and land a body of men there who would oblige them to surrender. [Washington]

♪

♪

Narrator: In late May of 1780,

shortly after the British capture

of Charles Town, South Carolina, an elite Loyalist group

of green-clad cavalry and mounted infantry

called the British Legion were in hot pursuit

of Continental soldiers fleeing north.

Their commander was a 25-year-old English officer...

Banastre Tarleton,

handsome, rakish, ruthless,

and determined to make himself a celebrated soldier.

"Tarleton," wrote the British chronicler Horace Walpole,

"boasts of having butchered more men

and lain with more women than anybody" in the army.

Tarleton caught up with the rebels

near the North Carolina border, a region called the Waxhaws,

and demanded they surrender.

Voice: You will order every person under your command

to pile his arms in one hour.

If you are rash enough to reject these terms,

the blood be upon your head. [Tarleton]

[Gunfire]

The Patriots chose to fight.

Tarleton's men quickly overwhelmed them.

Some who dropped their weapons and asked for quarter

received none.

"They refused my terms," Tarleton wrote.

"I have cut 170 officers and men to pieces."

♪

He may have destroyed the last Continental force

in South Carolina, but he had also helped inspire

local Patriots to oppose British occupation.

When they went into battle over the coming months,

many would be eager to deal out

what they called "Tarleton's Quarter"

to any Loyalist unlucky enough to fall into their hands.

♪

Vincent Brown: That war in South Carolina is bloody.

It's a guerrilla conflict.

It's sometimes brother against brother

in this backwoods warfare.

♪

It's an ugly, ugly, ugly conflict,

and if one wants a national origin story

that's clean and neat

and tells you very clearly who the good guys are

and who the bad guys are, the American Revolution

in South Carolina is not that story.

[Brass band playing "The British Grenadiers"]

♪

Christopher Brown: The British government was very good

at seizing and occupying cities.

Newport, Philadelphia, New York, Charles Town, Savannah...

These are the kind of main ports

that throughout the war Britain could secure,

but holding those places were not holding America.

Pacifying an entire countryside is an entirely different task

than seizing strategic positions.

Narrator: General Charles Cornwallis

had been left in charge in the South with clear orders

from General Henry Clinton back in New York.

He was not to move on to North Carolina and Virginia

until South Carolina was completely pacified.

It was to be the first full-scale military occupation

of an entire colony in North America.

♪

From Charles Town, British troops

quickly occupied posts in a great arc

from Savannah and Augusta in Georgia

through the village called Ninety Six to Camden

and then to Georgetown, 60 miles up the coast from Charles Town.

When the British take the decision to move the war

decisively to the South,

I think they're trying to exploit the fact that

there are smaller numbers of White colonists

and larger numbers of slaves in those territories

and the colonists will be more vulnerable.

Voice: Their property, slaves,

we need not seek.

It flies to us, and famine follows.

Their trade we can annihilate,

and when an army cannot find subsistence,

on what hope shall a people resist?

Major John Andre.

♪

Voice: I determined to go to Charles Town

and throw myself into the hands of the English.

They received me readily,

and I began to feel the happiness of liberty,

of which I knew nothing before.

Boston King.

Voice: I have been robbed

and deserted by my slaves.

I would sell some of my Negroes, but the slaves in this country

in general have behaved so infamously,

their value is so trifling

that it must be absolute ruin to sell at this time.

Eliza Lucas Pinckney.

Narrator: At his headquarters in New York,

General Clinton continued to believe

most South Carolinians were Loyalists.

He had insisted that Patriots swear allegiance to the Crown

or be considered as enemies and treated accordingly.

Those who did swear allegiance were swiftly disillusioned

as their Loyalist neighbors began to settle old scores.

Those "insurgents" who refused the oath

and dared to take up arms against the King,

Tarleton told General Cornwallis,

"don't deserve" leniency

and would get none from him or his men.

Conway: The oath of allegiance was really going too far

because it obliged them to publicly identify

as on the British side,

but I think the fundamental problem is that the British

are reluctant to restore civil government

in the territories they occupy.

They maintain military government,

and, of course, that reinforces the American claim

that the British are set on imposing despotism

on the colonies.

[Chickens clucking]

Voice: Times began to be troublesome,

and people began to divide into parties.

♪

Those that had been good friends in times past

became enemies.

They began to watch each other with jealous eyes.

James Collins.

Narrator: 16-year-old James Collins lived

on his family's farm just below the North Carolina border.

His father Daniel was an Irish immigrant

who loathed the British and encouraged his son

to become a collector of news,

a spy, reporting on his Loyalist neighbors.

[Horse whinnies]

Christopher Brown: One of the things that happens in wartime

is, people who are really good politicians,

they create binaries.

You're either with us or you're against us.

The fact of the matter is,

in real life, that's actually not true.

There's often more than two possibilities.

There were a lot of people in 13 colonies

who actually didn't care that much about the outcome.

They just wanted it over.

Conway: The British are heavily reliant

on recruiting Loyalists as soldiers,

and Loyalists are often very embittered...

♪

And, of course,

if you've got soldiers who are keen on revenge,

they're not the ideal instruments of pacification.

♪

Narrator: On June 22, 1780,

James Collins' father was among the men gathered

at a tiny settlement called Brown's Crossroads,

summoned there by Captain Christian Huck,

a Loyalist with a well-earned reputation for cruelty.

He was there to administer the Oath of Allegiance.

[Men shouting]

Narrator: Captain Huck stunned the crowd by warning

that "even if the rebels were as thick as the trees

"and Jesus Christ would come down and lead them,

he [would still] defeat them."

His audience, Presbyterians all, considered that blasphemy.

We must fight, James' father said as soon as he got home,

"or submit and be slaves."

He went off to join the Patriot militia the next morning.

James went, too, carrying an ancient shotgun.

♪

For the next few weeks, Christian Huck continued

to burn homes, menace women, and murder rebels.

In July, after he took a Patriot family hostage,

the Collinses' militia caught up to him

and killed him along with many of his men.

New volunteers were now swelling Patriot ranks.

By early August, Cornwallis had to admit

that the whole country he had claimed to have pacified

is in an absolute state of rebellion.

[Cannon fires]

Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock,

Blue Savannah and Black Mingo Creek,

Tearcoat Swamp and Halfway Swamp,

Horse Shoe and Quinby Bridge...

The battles and skirmishes that would take place

in South Carolina between 1780 and 1781,

102 of them by one count,

would yield nearly 1/5 of all the battlefield deaths

suffered during the entire war...

[Cannon fires]

and nearly all those American casualties

would come at the hands of other Americans.

[Cannon fires]

Maya Jasanoff: Violence is radicalizing.

It is polarizing,

and it happens in the Revolution

to people on both sides of the equation

that when they are victims of violence,

they will then become perpetrators of violence.

♪

Voice: There was no one about in the streets,

only a few sad and frightened faces in the windows.

I talked to some of the principal citizens,

informing them that this was but the vanguard

of a much larger force on the way

and that our King had decided to uphold them

with all his power and strength.

General Rochambeau.

Narrator: On July 11, 1780,

5 French warships and a host of transport vessels

had emerged from the fog that blanketed the harbor

at Newport, Rhode Island,

and some 4,600 officers and men

under the Comte de Rochambeau came ashore.

Rhode Islanders still remembered

that the last French fleet that came had abandoned them,

and Protestant residents weren't sure

if these Catholic foreigners had come to help or conquer them...

♪

But when the French commander promised that his men

would pay for everything they needed in silver coin,

not worthless Continental paper, a French officer remembered,

"their countenances brightened...

at this mention of hard money."

The next day, General Rochambeau wrote to Washington,

"Here we are, sir, at your orders."

♪

Meanwhile, Congress, without consulting George Washington,

had now appointed General Horatio Gates,

the hero of Saratoga,

commander of the whole Southern Department.

In late July, he and several aides rode into a camp

of 1,200 Continentals from Maryland and Delaware

that stretched along the deep river

at Cox's Mill in North Carolina.

Gates' objective was Camden, South Carolina,

a British outpost and supply depot

in the center of the state.

When he reached Rugeley's Mill, 12 miles north of Camden,

Gates had convinced himself

that he had 7,000 soldiers at his disposal.

♪

In fact, he had just over 3,000 men,

Continentals and militia,

and by then, Cornwallis had reached Camden

with reinforcements.

At 10 P.M. on the night of August 15, 1780,

Gates started south toward Camden.

By sheer coincidence, Cornwallis chose

to lead his men north on the same sandy road

that evening, hoping to surprise Gates.

[Shouting and gunfire]

At about 2 A.M. on August 16,

mounted scouts from the two armies collided.

There was a brief exchange of fire.

They separated and prepared for battle.

[Gunfire ends]

At dawn, Cornwallis followed the British custom

of placing his best troops on his right.

Gates, who was himself

an ex-British officer

and should have known better,

unaccountably assigned

his least experienced men

to face them...

Militiamen, many of whom

had never been in combat.

As the Patriots tried to form their lines,

a long, red wall of chanting British regulars

began storming toward them.

The militia broke and ran.

[Shouting and gunfire]

Voice: I confess I was among the first that fled.

The cause of that I cannot tell

except that everyone I saw was about to do the same.

I threw away my gun.

Private Garrett Watts.

[Cannon fires]

Narrator: Continentals on the right did hold for a time.

Gates' second in command, General Johann de Kalb,

a Bavarian-born volunteer,

was shot, slashed, and bayoneted again and again

but managed to order one counterattack after another

until he was finally knocked to the ground, mortally wounded.

His men too began to run.

♪

General Gates witnessed none of this.

Shortly after the shooting began,

he had fled the battlefield on horseback

and stayed on the run until he reached

Hillsborough, North Carolina, 180 miles away.

♪

The defeat at Camden and the story of Gates' flight

ruined his reputation.

When it came time to name a successor,

Congress would defer to George Washington.

♪

Although South Carolina was not pacified,

General Cornwallis was impatient to invade North Carolina,

the next step on the road to the biggest prize... Virginia

and what he hoped would be the total subjugation

of the Southern states.

[Horse whinnies]

[Fife and drums playing]

Iris de Rode: Washington's reputation in France

is an interesting one.

In France, he is revered. He is admired.

People love George Washington

in ways that sometimes seems exaggerated, but it's true.

They admire him not just because he's a general

and they respect the military side,

but it's more that he's a symbol for a Republican leader.

For the French, Washington became a symbol

of what was possible in an egalitarian world

where even a farmer could become a general,

so they admire him for that military talent that he had,

which was not based on aristocracy, titles, or money.

He was there because of his talent.

Narrator: On September 21, 1780,

Washington and 4 of his closest aides

met in Hartford, Connecticut,

with General Rochambeau and his entourage.

The French army remained in Newport.

Washington's army was arrayed around New York.

For two days, the allied commanders discussed

what steps they might take together to defeat the British.

♪

Washington and Rochambeau agreed

that the most important objective

was still New York City,

but before an assault could take place,

they would need to have naval superiority

and a far larger combined army.

Washington begged Rochambeau to ask his king for more help.

Rochambeau said he would try.

[Bird screeches]

Voice: I have observed in this war

we have sometimes been in the south

when we should have been in the north

and oftener in the north

when we should have been in the south,

but should we ever possess the Hudson River,

we can reduce the northern provinces.

General Henry Clinton.

♪

Narrator: On September 25, Washington and his staff

inspected the fortifications at West Point on the Hudson.

They were scheduled to dine with the general

whom Washington had just appointed commander of the fort,

one of his best soldiers... Benedict Arnold.

♪

Washington had been startled

by what poor condition the fortifications were in

and concerned that Arnold had not been there to greet him.

He was not at his headquarters, either,

when his commander arrived for dinner.

Voice: No one could give me any information

where he was.

The impropriety of his conduct

when he knew I was to be there struck me very forcibly.

I had not the least idea of the real cause. [Washington]

♪

Narrator: That evening, when his trusted aide

Alexander Hamilton brought him a bundle of papers,

Washington discovered the real cause.

Benedict Arnold... The commander of West Point,

the place Washington considered

the most important post in America...

Had deserted and fled to the British that morning.

Worse still, he had planned to surrender the fort

and all the men stationed in it to the enemy.

Few soldiers had contributed more to the Revolutionary cause

than Benedict Arnold.

Time and again, he had exhibited extraordinary initiative

and bravery on the battlefield

and was severely wounded twice... At Quebec and Saratoga.

Nathaniel Philbrick: He had done all these miracles

on the battlefield, but he was not seeing

any of the recognition he believed he deserved.

"Why am I doing this? I've lost my personal finances.

I've destroyed my body. For what?"

Narrator: Two years earlier, Washington had made Arnold

military commander in Philadelphia.

It had not gone well.

He used his position to profit

from the sale of confiscated Loyalist property.

He had also settled into the same mansion

the British commander had occupied

and was accused of being far too close

to wealthy merchants suspected of Loyalist sympathies.

♪

Philbrick: While Arnold is in the midst

of this terrible frustration in Philadelphia,

he falls in love with a young woman named Peggy Shippen,

whose family is of Loyalist sympathies,

who had gotten to know the British officers

during the British occupation of Philadelphia quite well,

and one of them was a Major Andre,

who, just as it so happened,

would become the head of the British spy network,

and whether or not Peggy was the one

who made this all happen,

soon after the two of them are married,

Arnold begins to make overtures to the British.

Narrator: In the strictest secrecy,

he began to communicate through Major John Andre

that he'd gone to war only to redress

legitimate American grievances, not independence,

and had been appalled when Congress allied itself

with Catholic France, which he believed

was the enemy of liberty and Protestantism.

He now volunteered to enlist in the King's service,

either as an officer in the British Army

or by cooperating on some concerted plan

to sabotage the Revolutionary cause.

For 17 months, coded messages had gone back and forth

before a concrete plan could be agreed upon.

♪

Arnold was to persuade Washington

to give him command of West Point

and all the American outposts on the Hudson

and then weaken their defenses so that General Clinton's forces

could sail up the river and take them all.

In exchange, Arnold was to be made a general

in the British service, and paid 20,000 British pounds

plus £500 a year for the rest of his life.

Clinton's forces were poised to move up the Hudson.

All that then remained was for Andre and Arnold

to meet and work out a few final details.

Andre had explicit orders.

He was not to cross into rebel territory,

dress as a civilian, or carry any papers.

He disobeyed all 3,

and on his way back to the British lines,

Andre was captured by 3 New York militiamen

with incriminating documents hidden in his stockings

in Benedict Arnold's handwriting.

♪

Philbrick: This came as a devastating blow to Washington,

and it was a blow to the American people

to realize that one of their own,

one of their own that had been a great hero,

could make this decision to turn on all of them.

He was the last person Washington ever thought

would have betrayed him.

Narrator: Because Major Andre had been captured

in civilian clothes, he was hanged as a spy.

Arnold, who managed to escape, got his commission

and was given command of a regiment made up

of Loyalists and deserters from the Continental Army

called the American Legion.

♪

Voice: Since the fall of Lucifer,

nothing has equaled the fall of Arnold.

He will now sink as low as he had been high before,

and as the devil made war upon heaven after his fall,

so I expect Arnold will upon America.

Should he ever fall into our hands,

he will be a sweet sacrifice.

General Nathanael Greene.

♪

♪

Narrator: General Cornwallis' planned invasion

of North Carolina would be a 3-pronged assault.

On the right, a column would seize the port of Wilmington,

ensuring that supplies could flow smoothly inland

from the coast.

In the center, Cornwallis would himself lead

the bulk of his army toward the tiny town of Charlotte,

then just a crossroads and a courthouse.

On the left, Major Patrick Ferguson

and perhaps a thousand Loyalists were to guard his flank

and try to rally more men from the backcountry.

♪

Ferguson, a Scottish-born career soldier

who directed his men in battle with a silver whistle,

led his Loyalist force across the border

into western North Carolina.

He released rebel prisoners and sent them

over the Blue Ridge Mountains with a message

for those Patriots who called themselves the Overmountain Men,

the settlers who had defied the 1763 proclamation

forbidding them to occupy Indian lands.

A British victory was inevitable,

Ferguson told them,

and every man who laid down his arms

would be treated gently and justly...

[Splashing]

but the frontiersmen did not believe him.

News of Tarleton's cruelty and Loyalist abuses was still fresh.

Instead of surrendering,

they came swarming over the mountains after Ferguson,

who realized he was in trouble, changed course,

and moved towards Charlotte.

Along the way, he issued a proclamation

meant to rally Loyalists.

Voice: Gentlemen, if you choose to be pissed upon

forever and ever by a set of mongrels, say so at once

and let your women turn their backs upon you

and look out for real men to protect them.

If you wish or deserve to live and bear the name of man,

grasp your arms in a moment and run to camp.

The Backwater-men have crossed the mountains. [Ferguson]

♪

Edward Lengel: That's the wrong tone to take

when you're communicating

with these backcountry over-the-mountain men,

these Scots-Irish settlers.

♪

Narrator: Just inside South Carolina,

Ferguson unaccountably decided to make a stand

on a hill grandly named King's Mountain.

Nearly a thousand Patriot militia...

Half Overmountain Men

and half from the Virginia and Carolina backcountry,

including James Collins... Were right behind him.

♪

Voice: Each leader made a short speech

in his own way to his men,

desiring every coward to be off immediately.

Here, I confess, I would have willingly been excused. [Collins]

Narrator: On October 7, 1780,

as they waited for the signal to start up the hillside,

Collins recalled, each man threw 4 or 5 musket balls

into his mouth to stave off thirst and speed reloading.

[Gunfire]

The Patriots attacked with terrifying ferocity.

[Whooping and gunfire]

Voice: They appeared like so many devils

from the infernal regions.

They were the most powerful-looking men

ever beheld... Tall, raw-boned, and sinewy

with long, matted hair,

such men as were never before seen in the Carolinas.

Drury Mathis.

[Whistle blowing]

Narrator: As the Patriots closed in on the summit,

Ferguson continued to ride from point to point,

waving his saber, blowing his whistle,

trying to get his Loyalists to hold on.

Several balls slammed into him at once.

He tumbled from his saddle, his foot caught in the stirrup,

and he was dragged back and forth along the ground

until his men could grab the reins.

[Horse whinnies]

Ferguson had been the only British soldier

in the battle that day.

Everyone else on both sides was an American.

[Shouting and gunfire]

The Loyalists surrendered.

♪

Voice: The dead lay in heaps on all sides

while the groans of the wounded were heard in every direction.

"Great God," said I,

"Is this the fate of mortals?

Was it for this cause that man was brought into the world?"

♪

We proceeded to bury the dead, but it was badly done.

The hogs in the neighborhood gathered into the place

to devour the flesh of men, and the wolves became so plenty

that it was dangerous for anyone to be out at night.

Private James Collins.

Lengel: After Kings Mountain,

Patriots murder many of their captives.

If they see somebody among the captives

who gives them a dirty look, they'll say,

"Oh, I know that guy.

"He burned a farm just over the next hill,

"and he killed somebody's family.

Let's string him up,"

and so all kinds of atrocities take place.

Man: Fight back!

Narrator: When Cornwallis learned that the Patriots

had annihilated a thousand-man Loyalist force,

he pulled his army out of Charlotte

and headed back into South Carolina.

[Horse whinnies]

♪

Voice: The women of America,

animated by the purest patriotism,

are sensible of sorrow at this day

in not offering more than barren wishes

for the success of so glorious a Revolution.

If opinion and manners did not forbid us to march to glory

by the same paths as the men, we should at least equal

and sometimes surpass them in our love for the public good.

Esther Reed.

♪

Narrator: In Philadelphia, a prominent woman

named Esther Reed had published a pamphlet

which called upon all women to forego luxuries

and instead raise funds to help the soldiers.

♪

They collected 300,000 Continental dollars,

hoping to split it among the troops.

George Washington vetoed that idea.

They would just buy rum, he said.

What they needed were shirts.

The women would make more than 2,000 of them.

Voice: And see the spirit catching

from state to state.

America will not wear chains

while her daughters are virtuous.

Abigail Adams.

[Wind blowing]

Rick Atkinson: It's quite primitive,

the conditions their soldiers are living in.

A belief in the cause

keeps you putting one foot in front of the other,

but that does not keep you warm.

It does not cool you down in the summer.

It does not feed you, so it's a constant struggle

just day to day exclusive of battle.

Voice: We never stood upon such perilous ground.

Our troops are poorly clothed, badly fed, and worse paid.

They have not seen a paper dollar

in the way of pay for nearly 12 months.

General Anthony Wayne.

♪

Narrator: On New Year's Day 1781,

fueled by rum and righteous indignation,

some 1,500 Pennsylvania Continentals encamped

near Morristown, New Jersey, mutinied.

They killed two officers who tried to stop them,

seized 6 cannon,

and began marching toward Philadelphia

to confront Congress with their grievances,

but before the mutineers could get there,

the Pennsylvania legislature intervened

and agreed to most of their demands,

including the promise of full back pay

and the choice of leaving the army or re-enlisting.

No one was to be punished.

Half the men left the army.

The rest re-enlisted.

3 weeks later, when 3 New Jersey regiments also mutinied,

Washington ordered New England troops to surround them.

The men were assembled and made to look on

as a firing squad of their fellow mutineers

was forced to execute two of the ringleaders.

Philbrick: Washington realized the only thing he could do

was to take them down with terrible brutality.

♪

This was Washington's moment of having to end this

in a very summary fashion.

[Gunshot]

Narrator: "Every thing is now quiet,"

Washington wrote afterwards,

but he feared that unless some way were found

to pay and clothe and supply his men,

there would be still more mutinies.

[Wind blowing]

Voice: Be assured that day does not follow night

more certainly than it brings with it some additional proof

of the impracticality of carrying on the war without aid.

We are at the end of our tether.

Now or never, deliverance must come. [Washington]

[Wind blowing]

♪

Voice: Richmond, Virginia.

War in itself, however distant, is indeed terrible,

but when brought to our very doors,

the reflection is indeed overwhelming.

What a gloomy time do I look forward to.

Already our gentlemen begin to apprehend

that the enemy will advance into the country.

♪

If they do, God knows what will become of us.

Betsy Ambler.

Narrator: Virginia's Patriots weren't ready

to resist an invasion.

Men were refusing conscription.

Wealthy planters had exempted themselves, their sons,

and overseers from serving because, they claimed,

they needed to stay home to keep their slaves in line.

"The Rich wanted the Poor to fight for them,"

one farmer recalled,

"to defend their property

[while] they refused to fight for themselves."

Then, in January of 1781,

Loyalist troops, British regulars,

and German soldiers sailed into Chesapeake Bay

and up the James River.

Their commander was Benedict Arnold,

now a brigadier general in the British Army

and eager to demonstrate his newfound devotion to the Crown.

♪

He and half his men marched toward Richmond,

the new state capital.

At the sight of Arnold's men,

Virginia militiamen, many without arms, melted away.

♪

Many years later, an enslaved member

of Governor Jefferson's household remembered

that "in 10 minutes, not a White man was to be seen in Richmond."

Voice: My mother was so scared,

she didn't know whether to stay indoors or out.

The British formed in line and marched up with drums beating.

It was an awful sight.

Seemed like the day of judgment was come.

Isaac Granger.

♪

Narrator: Arnold's men burned warehouses

filled with salt and tobacco and seized 2,200 small arms,

nearly 40 cannon, and 503 hogsheads of rum.

Even printing presses were, in Arnold's words,

"purified by the flames."

♪

He and his men then moved back down the James,

pillaging as they went,

and settled in for the rest of the winter at Portsmouth,

near the mouth of the Chesapeake,

where they could be supported by the Royal Navy.

Philbrick: To send Benedict Arnold to Virginia

was sending the man Washington most despised to his home state,

and what Washington did was send the officer

that he trusted, in many ways, the most, Lafayette,

to contain this treasonous dog.

Narrator: "Should [Arnold] fall into your hands,"

Washington told the Marquis de Lafayette

when he ordered him south to protect Virginia,

"you will execute... the punishment due

[for] his treason... in the most summary way."

♪

Voice: South Carolina.

When I left the Northern Army, I expected to find

in this Southern Department a thousand difficulties

to which I was a stranger, but the embarrassments

far exceed my utmost apprehension.

I have but a shadow of an army.

Nathanael Greene.

I think Nathanael Greene is the unsung hero

of the American Revolution.

Without Nathanael Greene in the South grinding it out

battle after battle in the war-torn South,

the Revolution could have easily been lost.

♪

Narrator: After the disaster at Camden,

George Washington had sent Nathanael Greene

to replace the disgraced Horatio Gates

as commander of what was left of the southern army.

"I think I am giving you a General,"

Washington told a South Carolina congressman,

"but what can a General do without men,

without arms, without clothing, without provisions?"

♪

Greene's forces were outnumbered by more than two to one.

Nonetheless, he decided to divide his small army.

"It makes the most of my inferior force," he explained,

"for it compels my adversary to divide his."

♪

Greene himself and most of his men marched into South Carolina

to a camp near Cheraw on the Pee Dee River.

Meanwhile, Daniel Morgan led what Greene called

his "Flying Army" west "to annoy the enemy in that quarter"

and "spirit up the people."

♪

[Horse whinnies]

In response, Cornwallis sent Banastre Tarleton

after Daniel Morgan.

Morgan had hoped to get his men safely back

across the broad river before facing his pursuer,

but Tarleton was soon within 5 miles.

♪

Morgan chose to make a stand at the Cowpens,

a rolling meadow 500 yards long and almost as wide

on which herdsmen grazed their cattle on the way to market.

He expected Tarleton to lead a headlong charge into his ranks

and planned to take advantage of his rash opponent.

Daniel Morgan was a master tactician.

His planning for the Battle of Cowpens

is really brilliant in the way that he draws Tarleton

into a trap.

Narrator: Morgan knew that his less-reliable militia,

faced with an onrushing enemy, would likely break and run,

so he would try to turn that weakness into a strength.

For the next day's battle, he would arrange his men

in 3 lines 150 yards apart.

Militiamen would man the first two.

Morgan ordered them to fire just two volleys each

into the oncoming enemy and then retreat behind the third line,

manned by seasoned Continentals.

He hoped the enemy, convinced the militia

were running away again, would charge

and suddenly find themselves under deadly fire

from his most experienced fighters

hidden behind a rise.

♪

Morgan spent the night before the battle

building the militia's confidence.

Voice: He went among the volunteers,

told them to keep in good spirits

and the day would be ours.

"Just hold up your head, boys.

Two fires," he would say, "and you're free,

"and then when you return to your homes,

"how the old folks will bless you

and the girls kiss you for your gallant conduct."

Major Thomas Young.

♪

Lengel: Morgan's recognition of them and their recognition

of Morgan as this crusty backwoodsman

who's just like them

gives them a confidence and an ability to think clearly

and to follow orders in a way

that they would not have done this for anybody else.

[Rooster crows]

Voice: About sunrise on the 17th of January 1781,

the enemy came in full view.

The sight... to me, at least... Seemed somewhat imposing.

They halted for a short time

and then advanced rapidly, as if certain of victory.

Private James Collins.

[Shouting and gunfire]

Narrator: The first line of militia managed to pick off

a few regulars and then, following orders, fell back.

♪

When the enemy came within 50 yards of the second line,

the militia fired two volleys into them,

a "heavy & galling fire,"

Morgan remembered,

that felled 2/3

of Tarleton's infantry officers,

but, just as Tarleton

had assumed it would,

the second line

appeared to fall apart, too.

The British stepped up their pace,

eager to catch the fleeing militia.

Surely, Tarleton thought,

the battle was nearly won.

His men raced up a slope and at its crest

suddenly found themselves face to face

with the third line

and under what a Continental officer remembered

as a "very destructive fire which they little expected."

[Cannon fires]

This time, it was the Patriots who charged with bayonets,

emitting a blood-curdling war cry

they had adapted from Native warriors,

a yell that would reverberate

on Southern battlefields for decades.

[Men whooping]

Voice: Morgan rode up in front

and, waving his sword, cried out,

"Give them one more fire, and the day is ours."

[Sword clangs]

We then advance briskly.

They began to throw down their arms and surrender themselves.

Private James Collins.

Narrator: Meanwhile, American cavalry

attacked the enemy's rear, "shouting and charging,"

one Patriot said, "like madmen."

The British line broke.

It was all over in 35 minutes.

The British lost 300 men killed or wounded.

525 more were taken prisoners.

Tarleton managed to get away, but Daniel Morgan was exultant.

"I have Given him," he said, "a devil of a whipping."

♪

News of Tarleton's defeat stunned General Cornwallis.

Nearly a third of his army was now lost.

He set out to catch the rebel force.

Two months later,

at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina,

Nathanael Greene tried the same tactics against Cornwallis

that Morgan had used against Tarleton.

[Gunfire]

At first, the strategy seemed to work.

Cornwallis' left began to buckle.

If Greene had had reserves, he might have prevailed.

He had no reserves.

Cornwallis won the battle, but he had lost another 500 men.

[Gunshot]

When the news eventually reached Britain,

the leader of the opposition in Parliament was unimpressed.

"Another such victory," he said,

"would destroy the British army."

Cornwallis and his exhausted men staggered east to Wilmington.

He had had enough of the Carolinas.

Cornwallis decided to defy his orders from General Clinton

and lead his army north to link up

with British and Loyalist forces already in Virginia.

Voice: I cannot help expressing my wishes

that the Chesapeake may become the seat of war,

even, if necessary,

at the expense of abandoning New York.

Until Virginia is in a manner subdued,

our hold of the Carolinas must be difficult,

if not precarious.

Lord Cornwallis.

Narrator: On April 25, 1781,

Cornwallis began his northward march.

Word of his disobedience would not reach

Clinton's headquarters in New York for more than a month.

"My wonder at this move... will never cease,"

Clinton wrote when he heard the news,

"but [Cornwallis] has made it.

And we shall say no more but to make the best of it."

♪

Voice: The seat of war is chiefly

in the southern states, and there our enemies

by victories and defeats are wasting daily.

♪

Our own American affairs wear a more pleasing aspect.

Maryland has acceded to the Confederation

at the very time when Britain is deluding herself

with the idea that we are crumbling to pieces.

Abigail Adams.

Narrator: In early 1781, Maryland became the last state

to ratify the Articles of Confederation.

Almost 5 years after declaring their independence,

the United States finally had the kind of confederation

they thought they wanted,

but it was just an alliance, not a central government.

♪

All laws were left to the individual states,

including those governing slavery,

which was still legal everywhere...

♪

But now there were people in all parts of America

looking to abolish it.

They would have their first successes in the North.

♪

Christopher Brown: It's in this moment that the first

antislavery organizations begin to take shape,

especially in those places where slavery

is not terribly important to the social and economic order...

Pennsylvania,

Massachusetts,

Connecticut.

Annette Gordon-Reed: It's easier in the North,

where there are fewer Black people.

The sort of traditional things to say is that

the South was a slave society

and the North was a society with slaves.

Bernard Bailyn: Before the Revolution,

slavery was never a major public issue.

There were people

who spoke against it

and gave good reasons

to what evil it was,

but it was not

a major public issue.

After the Revolution,

there never was a time when it wasn't.

Narrator: In 1780,

Pennsylvania's Gradual Emancipation Act

had said that anyone born into slavery in that state

after the act's adoption

automatically became free at 28,

but any man, woman, or child

enslaved before its passage

remained enslaved

to the end of their lives

unless they bought

their freedom or had

their owner grant it to them.

♪

Voice: Any time,

any time while I was a slave,

if one minute's freedom had been offered to me

and I'd been told I must die at the end of that minute,

I would have taken it

just to stand one minute on God's earth a free woman.

I would. [Elizabeth Freeman (Mumbet)]

Narrator: When an enslaved woman in Western Massachusetts

called Mumbet was struck by her mistress with a kitchen shovel,

she had stalked from the house and refused to return.

Her owner went to court to get her back.

Mumbet's lawyer convinced an all-White jury

that since the preamble

to the new Massachusetts state constitution

declared all men "free and equal"

and since his client was a human being,

she should be free.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed.

Mumbet changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman

and lived nearly 50 years in Stockbridge,

serving her neighbors as a healer, nurse, and midwife.

Her gravestone in a Stockbridge cemetery reads,

"She was born a slave...

yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal."

♪

By the time of her death

in 1829,

all the states from New Jersey

north to New England had called

for the abolition of slavery,

but it would take another generation

and a still more terrible war

to end it everywhere in the United States.

♪

♪

Voice: There are few generals that have run oftener

than I have done,

but I have taken care not to run too far

and commonly have run as fast forward as backward

to convince our enemy that we were like a crab

that could run either way.

Nathanael Greene.

Narrator: One by one, all across the Lower South,

British outposts either surrendered to Patriots

or were abandoned...

Fort Watson, Camden,

Orangeburg, Fort Motte,

Fort Granby, Fort Galphin,

Georgetown, Augusta.

[Cannon fires]

General Greene fought 3 full-scale battles

with the British... At Hobkirk Hill,

Ninety Six, and Eutaw Springs... And lost them all,

but he inflicted such heavy casualties each time

that the enemy was forced to withdraw

closer and closer to Charles Town.

"We fight," Greene said,

"get beat, rise, and fight again."

♪

He couldn't have done it without local Patriot militias.

Francis Marion's outfit eluded British cavalry

by hiding in the swamp so successfully

that Banastre Tarleton said,

"[A]s for this old fox,

the Devil himself could not catch him."

♪

As Britain's grip on the region weakened,

the anarchy that had characterized the backcountry

for months spiraled into chaos.

Partisans on both sides seemed bent

on being more cruel than those on the other.

They tortured and murdered captives,

burned homes and flogged their owners,

raped women and hanged their husbands.

Gangs of bandits held up travelers and plundered farms.

Voice: With us in the North,

the difference is little more than a division of sentiment.

But here, they prosecute each other

with little less than savage fury.

You can have no idea of the distress and misery

that prevail in this quarter.

Nathanael Greene.

♪

Narrator: By the end of the summer of 1781,

the British would be penned up in just 3 coastal towns

in the Carolinas and Georgia...

Wilmington, Charles Town, and Savannah.

London's Southern strategy was falling apart.

♪

Voice: The King has decided that

the principal objective of his arms in America

during the war with the English is to drive them

from the Gulf of Mexico and the banks of the Mississippi,

which should be considered as the bulwark

of the vast empire of New Spain. [Bernardo de Gálvez]

♪

Narrator: Bernardo de Gálvez...

The bold, young governor of Spanish Louisiana...

Saw an opportunity in the American Revolution

to take back West Florida for his king,

even before Spain had entered the war in 1779.

Kathleen DuVal: Bernardo de Gálvez

had big ambitions for Spain,

and he had big ambitions for himself.

He believed that war against Britain

would be his chance to push Spanish colonies

even farther into North America, past Louisiana,

into the rest of the Gulf Coast, the Appalachians,

perhaps most of Eastern North America.

Narrator: As soon as Gálvez heard Spain

had officially entered the war, he left New Orleans

and rallied an army that reflected

the extraordinary diversity of the Gulf Coast...

Spaniards, Frenchmen, Acadians, Irishmen,

Black and biracial men from Africa and the Americas,

Choctaws, Houmas, Alabamas,

men from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Hispaniola,

and a handful of volunteers from the United States.

♪

DuVal: Gálvez began to take British posts.

He took Baton Rouge, Natchez,

and then sailed with his militia

and took the post of Mobile.

Narrator: By the spring of 1781,

Gálvez's only objective left in British West Florida

was its capital and stronghold... Pensacola.

♪

It was defended by local Black and White militiamen;

British, German, and Loyalist soldiers;

and hundreds of Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Muscogee Creeks

who opposed any imperial expansion

that threatened their lands in the southeastern interior.

♪

Gálvez landed his army and began a siege.

For a month and a half, Spanish guns edged closer

and closer to the heart of the British defenses.

[Cannon fires]

Finally, on May 8, 1781,

a shell hit the British gunpowder magazine.

[Explosion]

The explosion killed almost a hundred men,

mostly Loyalist troops,

and blew a wide hole in the fort's walls.

Gálvez's men poured through the gap,

and within hours, the British commander surrendered.

Spanish rule was restored in West Florida

and with it Spanish control of the Gulf of Mexico.

♪

DuVal: West Florida is the first nonrebelling colony

that Britain loses.

After the Spanish victory at Pensacola,

many, many people in Britain think it's time

to stop this war before it gets any worse.

♪

Narrator: Britain was more alone than ever,

at war with the Netherlands now

as well as with France and Spain,

and its West Indian islands and Gibraltar in the Mediterranean

were under attack.

To London, North America mattered less and less,

and General Clinton in New York could do little more

than make sure that city remained in British hands.

De Rode: The British stronghold is in New York.

It's where they won the battle in 1776

against George Washington, which is one of the reasons

George Washington really wants to take New York,

because he feels very humiliated by that specific battle,

so for him since that time, it became almost an obsession.

"If we take New York, we're gonna win this war."

♪

Narrator: When word came that French warships

and more French troops would arrive on the East Coast

sometime that summer, Washington and Rochambeau met again

in Connecticut to discuss where the fleet might, in fact,

do the most good... At New York or in Virginia,

where Cornwallis was now headed.

Washington still favored New York.

Rochambeau told him that he preferred to leave the decision

to the Comte de Grasse, the admiral now commanding

the French fleet in the Caribbean,

but in private letters to de Grasse,

Rochambeau argued that blockading the Chesapeake

should take precedence.

In the meantime, Rochambeau marched his more than 4,000 men

from Newport to join Washington's army

in Westchester County, New York.

The French were stunned by what they saw.

♪

Voice: I cannot too often repeat

how astonished I have been at the American Army.

It is inconceivable that troops nearly naked, badly paid,

and composed of old men, Negroes, and children

should march so well. [Cromot du Bourg]

Voice: The Rhode Island Regiment

includes many Negroes, and that regiment

is the most neatly dressed, the best under arms,

and the most precise in its maneuvers. [Ludwig von Closen]

♪

Narrator: As American and French soldiers probed British defenses

around New York, Washington waited for Admiral de Grasse

to pick his target... New York or Virginia.

♪

On May 20, 1781,

Lord Cornwallis arrived at Petersburg, Virginia.

He commanded some 7,000 British, German, and Loyalist troops.

Benedict Arnold was not among them.

He had been recalled to New York and would eventually

sail for England, never to see his country again.

♪

Cornwallis first tried to hunt down the Marquis de Lafayette,

who had been harassing British forces in Virginia,

but Lafayette managed to slip away.

Voice: You can be entirely calm with regard

to the rapid marches of Lord Cornwallis.

Let him march from St. Augustine to Boston.

What he wins in his front he loses in his rear.

His army will bury itself

without requiring us to fight him. [Lafayette]

♪

Narrator: Cornwallis unleashed two raiding parties

into the heart of Virginia.

250 horsemen, commanded by Banastre Tarleton,

were ordered to try to capture Thomas Jefferson

and the Virginia Assembly, now meeting at Charlottesville,

where Tarleton managed to seize several legislators,

including Daniel Boone from Kentucky County,

but with only moments to spare,

Jefferson escaped his would-be captors on horseback.

♪

Voice: Such terror and confusion.

What an alarming crisis is this.

We were off in a twinkling.

The nearer the mountains, the greater the safety

was the conclusion,

so on we traveled through byways and brambles. [Ambler]

♪

Narrator: Betsy Ambler's family was on the run, too,

eventually finding temporary sanctuary

on a friend's backcountry plantation.

♪

After 3 mostly fruitless weeks

spent marching through the backcountry,

Cornwallis and his men started southeast towards Williamsburg.

Some 4,500 ex-slaves now trailed along behind.

♪

By bringing the war into Virginia,

Cornwallis had provided the largest body

of Black people in North America the possibility of freedom.

Among those who threw in their lot with the British

were 23 from Thomas Jefferson's estates

and 16 from George Washington's Mount Vernon.

Gordon-Reed: What do you do?

Do you stay, or do you take a chance at your freedom

and leave your family?

How many people can go with you?

Sometimes whole families left together.

♪

I would imagine it being frightening

but also a sense of hope because the system

that they were in may be destroyed

and that they may have an opportunity for freedom.

♪

Voice: Has the God who made the White man

and the Black left any record

declaring us a different species?

Are we not sustained by the same power,

supported by the same food, hurt by the same wounds,

pleased with the same delights,

and propagated by the same means?

And should we not then enjoy the same liberty

and be protected by the same laws?

♪

Some consider us as much property as a house or a ship

and think how anxious we must be

to raise ourselves from this degrading state.

James Forten.

Narrator: James Forten was born free in Philadelphia.

At 9, he had been in the crowd at the Pennsylvania State House

that heard the Declaration of Independence

read to the public for the very first time.

Forten took the promise of the Declaration to heart

and never questioned whether its self-evident truths

applied to him.

♪

Now, in the summer of 1781,

Forten was 14, old enough to fight for his country.

With his mother's permission, he went down to the docks,

signed on to a privateer, and set out to sea.

Forten was one of 20 men and boys of color in a crew of 200.

For privateers eager to attract volunteers,

race was no barrier.

♪

His first voyage was a triumph,

but the second was a disaster.

His ship was overtaken and captured by a British warship.

♪

Once aboard, the captain's son befriended him,

and the captain offered to release him

if he were willing to sail with the boy to England.

Forten refused.

He could not turn his back on his country.

[Gulls squawking]

Instead, he joined hundreds of American prisoners

huddled below decks aboard the notorious British

prison ship the "Jersey" moored in the East River off Brooklyn...

Dark, fetid, rife with disease.

[Bell rings]

♪

Meanwhile, starting in June 1781,

Cornwallis began to receive a series

of contradictory communications from General Clinton

back in New York City.

First, Cornwallis was to send nearly half his forces

north to New York, which Clinton still believed

Washington's most likely target.

Then Clinton changed his mind.

Cornwallis was now to send those same troops

to the Delaware Bay, where they might sail north

and threaten Philadelphia.

Finally, with his men aboard boats in Portsmouth

and ready to sail,

Cornwallis was to forget moving them north at all.

Instead, he was to locate and fortify

a deep-water, year-round port in Virginia

suitable for the Royal Navy's largest warships.

Cornwallis' engineers recommended Yorktown.

He arrived there on August 2, 1781.

♪

On August 14, Washington learned

that the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse

was on its way to the Chesapeake, not New York.

♪

Voice: Matters having now come to a crisis

and a decisive plan to be determined on,

I was obliged to give up all idea of attacking New York. [Washington]

de Rode: George Washington is a realistic military man

who knows when to not attack,

and so with the advice of the French

that had much more experience in warfare,

he listens to them and decides to march to the South.

Narrator: Then word arrived from Lafayette

that Cornwallis was establishing his army at Yorktown.

If the French Navy could command the Chesapeake

and keep the British fleet out, Lafayette wrote,

"the British Army would, I think, be ours."

But before Washington could move his army south,

some way had to be found to pay his men.

Congress was broke.

[Horse whinnies]

Voice: My personal credit,

which, thank heaven, I have preserved

through all the tempests of the war,

has been substituted for that which the country has lost.

I am now striving to transfer that credit to the public.

Robert Morris.

Narrator: Washington turned to an old friend,

the richest man in America... Robert Morris.

Morris had again and again used his own money

to supply the Continental Army.

He had also used public funds for personal speculations

and made millions in government contracts.

William Hogeland: Robert Morris was a war profiteer

and mingled public and private funds with unabashed abandon,

and without him, it's not clear at all

that the Revolution would have been won

or even would have been fought very long because

he did front his own money to keep the army in the field.

People said he financed the American Revolution.

That's largely true.

Critics of Morris said that the Revolution financed him,

and that's true, too.

♪

Narrator: Now Morris combined his own funds

with borrowed Spanish gold and silver to pay the men.

Voice: Each of us received

a month's pay.

This was the first that could be called money

which we had received as wages since the year '76.

Joseph Plumb Martin.

[People cheering]

Narrator: Leaving 4,000 Continentals behind,

the French and American armies began to make their way south

in 3 great columns on August 18.

♪

The campaign was an enormous undertaking and a great gamble.

♪

In order to keep Cornwallis from escaping by sea,

French naval forces from both the Caribbean

and Newport, Rhode Island, would have to elude

British warships patrolling the Atlantic coast

and enter the Chesapeake Bay.

At the same time, thousands of French and American troops,

who could not speak one another's language,

would have to continue to make their way together

some 450 miles from Westchester County

to Virginia in the heat of summer.

[Horse nickers]

de Rode: It's hot and humid,

and, as the French write, "infested by mosquitoes,"

and so this is a very complicated march.

You have to think of thousands of men

marching through these little roads.

They have to create bridges.

They have to get obstacles out of the way,

and we're not talking just about men marching.

We have a lot of animals behind them.

♪

In order to not walk in the middle of the day,

they start in the middle of the night,

so it's pitch dark.

You're walking on little paths, probably quite muddy,

and you just walk,

and then for a few hours later, you have to stop

because you have to create your new encampment.

You get some food, which often arrived way too late.

Narrator: To deceive the British into thinking

that he was planning an amphibious assault

on Staten Island or Sandy Hook, Washington had made sure

that false documents suggesting an imminent attack

fell into British hands.

♪

Philbrick: Washington is able to convince Clinton

that he is going to attack New York.

It's a brilliant series of deceptive maneuvers

that Washington is able to pull off.

By the time Clinton realizes that Washington

is not going after him but is on his way south,

Washington is in Philadelphia.

[Gulls squawking]

Narrator: At Yorktown, Cornwallis hated

the kind of defensive war he was being asked to oversee

and considered the port

and Gloucester across the river "dangerous posts,"

since neither commanded the surrounding countryside.

He'd started by fortifying Gloucester.

The work had gone slowly.

He and his men expected a British fleet to arrive

in the York River any day,

but they now heard upsetting rumors

that a French fleet "had left the West Indies

and was approaching the coast of North America."

By late summer, work had begun

on the fortifications at Yorktown itself.

Meanwhile, at Portsmouth,

where some of Cornwallis' men remained,

smallpox was ravaging the former slaves

who had followed the British army there.

What should be done,

the commander at Portsmouth, wrote Cornwallis,

"with the hundreds... that are dying by scores every day?"

Voice: It is shocking to think of the state

of the Negroes, but we cannot bring a number

of sick and useless ones to this place.

♪

I leave it to your humanity to do the best you can for them,

but on your arrival here, we must adopt some plan

to prevent an evil which will certainly produce

some fatal distemper in the army.

Lord Cornwallis.

♪

Narrator: Portsmouth was evacuated,

and the troops joined Cornwallis' army at Yorktown.

♪

It was from there, on the morning of August 30,

that Captain Johann Ewald looked out toward the Chesapeake Bay.

Voice: I could detect 3 heavy vessels in the distance.

We soon had news that the 3 vessels

which lay before our noses were French. [Ewald]

Narrator: Admiral de Grasse was now lying at anchor

just inside the narrow entrance to the Chesapeake Bay

between Cape Charles and Cape Henry.

Philbrick: The Chesapeake is a huge bay,

but its point of access is the two capes.

It's very narrow, and anyone who can control that

controls this huge body of water.

[Horse whinnies]

Narrator: On the morning of September 5,

a dispatch rider caught up with George Washington

near Head of Elk, Maryland,

with the good news that the French fleet had arrived.

♪

That same day, though, sailors aboard de Grasse's flagship

spotted sails approaching from the north.

They were 19 British ships sent from New York

with orders to find and destroy the French fleet.

De Grasse might have stayed where he was,

blocking entrance to the bay, but if he had done so,

the 8 French ships, loaded with heavy siege guns

that were on their way from Newport,

would have been kept out of the Chesapeake.

De Grasse moved out into the open sea to confront his enemy.

♪

The two fleets maneuvered for 6 hours.

Commanders scattered sand across their decks

to absorb the sailors' blood they knew was about to be shed.

♪

At 4:00 in the afternoon, they opened fire.

[Cannon fire continues]

The broadsides continued until dark.

[Man shouts]

Narrator: The result was a standoff,

but the British vessels got the worst of it

and were forced to limp back to New York.

♪

Meanwhile, the French squadron from Newport

carrying the heavy siege guns had slipped unnoticed

into the bay,

and, avoiding Cornwallis' defenses at Yorktown,

sailed up the James River,

and Washington and Rochambeau's armies

were arriving at Williamsburg.

Cornwallis was trapped.

Lengel: From the very beginning, Washington recognized

that this war was going to end when the stars aligned.

He's been waiting for this,

and he snatches at it.

Voice: We prepared to move down

and pay our old acquaintance the British a visit.

I doubt not that their wish

was not to have so many of us come at once,

as their accommodations were rather scanty.

They thought the fewer, the better.

We thought the more, the merrier.

Joseph Plumb Martin.

♪

Narrator: On September 28, 1781, at 5 A.M.,

the French and American armies, now 18,000 strong,

started toward Yorktown.

The allies established a crescent-shaped encampment

around the town...

The French on the left, the Americans on the right.

Washington and Rochambeau set up headquarters

just a few hundred yards apart.

♪

The two commanders rode forward to reconnoiter.

Washington had long understood Yorktown's strategic limitations

and the hole the British had dug for themselves.

♪

800 to 1,000 yards from Yorktown

stood an outer line of trenches and redoubts,

their bases bristling with abatis,

sharpened logs meant to repel invaders.

♪

Black laborers could be seen struggling

to complete an inner ring around the town.

♪

Swamps and marshy creeks made a direct assault impractical.

The allies didn't have time to starve the defenders, either.

The French fleet was due to return to the Caribbean

within weeks.

A traditional, European-style siege seemed to be the answer.

Washington left its planning to the French.

The Americans were "totally ignorant

of the operations of a siege," Rochambeau said.

He had taken part in 14 of them.

♪

At dawn on September 30, French and American troops

edged cautiously toward the outermost British defenses,

expecting stiff resistance.

Instead, they found them empty.

Cornwallis, outnumbered 3 to 1,

had pulled his men back into town.

Lengel: Cornwallis makes a fatal mistake.

He's exhausted. He's depressed.

A commander who otherwise is very effective

is just not at his best.

Narrator: For 5 days and nights, allied soldiers worked

to transform the abandoned British positions

into their own strongholds and to bring up the artillery,

equipment, and entrenching tools needed to dig

their first parallel trench and begin the siege.

♪

British artillery hurled shot and shells

at the Americans and Frenchmen as they worked.

[Men shouting]

Sarah Osborn, the wife of a New Jersey corporal,

was one of the women who carried beef, bread,

and hot coffee to the men as they dug.

One day, she remembered, George Washington happened by

and asked her if she wasn't afraid

of the British cannonballs.

"No," she said,

"It would not do for the men to fight and starve, too."

[Distant explosion]

When the parallel was complete,

it stretched for more than a mile,

a trench 10 feet wide and nearly 4 feet deep.

♪

At 3:00 in the afternoon on October 9,

the French opened fire.

Two hours later, Washington was given the honor

of touching off the first American cannon.

[Man shouting]

Narrator: All along the allied lines,

cannon and mortars began firing into Yorktown.

♪

Voice: The remainder of the night

passed in a dreadful slaughter.

Several parts of the garrison were in flames on this night,

and the whole discovered a view awful and tremendous.

Bartholomew James.

Voice: It was as if one witnessed

the shock of an earthquake.

3,600 shot by the enemy were counted in this 24 hours.

These were fired at the city into our lines

and against the ships in the harbor.

Private Johann Conrad Doehla.

♪

Narrator: By the night of October 11,

the allies had begun digging a second parallel,

but before the noose could be tightened completely,

two enemy redoubts, Numbers Nine and Ten,

had to be taken.

The American target was redoubt Number Ten.

The men were from Lafayette's force.

Alexander Hamilton was in command.

Joseph Plumb Martin and his company led the way.

♪

Voice: We advanced beyond the trenches

and lay down on the ground to await the signal.

Our watchword was "Rochambeau,"

a good watchword, for being pronounced "Rochambeau,"

it sounded, when pronounced quick,

like "Rush on, boys." [Martin]

[Cannon fires]

Narrator: When the signal was given,

Martin and his fellow soldiers rushed forward.

Right behind them came Rhode Islanders,

including many free Black men or former slaves.

♪

The moment they reached the abatis,

the redoubt's defenders began firing down into them.

♪

Voice: But there was no stopping us.

I forced a passage at a place where I saw our shot

had cut away some of the abatis.

While passing, a man at my side received a ball in his head

and fell under my feet, crying out bitterly.

The fort was taken and all quiet in a short time. [Martin]

♪

Narrator: Lafayette sent a dispatch to a French officer

in the column assigned to capture Redoubt Number 9,

saying his men were in his redoubt.

"Where are you?"

"Tell the Marquis I am not in mine,"

the French officer replied, "but will be in 5 minutes."

[Cannon fires]

Voice: There was no mercy that night.

Complaints and groans could be heard everywhere.

Someone called out here, another there,

begging to be killed for the love of God,

as the redoubt was strewn with the dead and wounded,

so much so that we had to walk on them.

Georg Daniel Flohr.

Narrator: The allies lost no time

in rolling their big guns into both redoubts

and opening fire on Yorktown.

Friederike Baer: It was absolutely horrific.

There was no moment to rest.

There was no place to hide.

For days, there was continuous bombardment.

[Shells whooshing]

♪

Narrator: Cornwallis knew his cause was hopeless,

but he could not seem to bear what Banastre Tarleton called

"the mortification of a surrender."

♪

[Snare drum playing]

At about 10:00 in the morning

on October 17, 1781,

a drummer boy appeared on a British parapet,

beating his drum,

the signal that Cornwallis wished to negotiate.

When the thunder of the guns drowned out the drumming,

an officer climbed up next to the boy

and waved a white handkerchief.

Voice: He might have beat away till doomsday

if he had not been sighted by men on the front lines,

but when the firing ceased,

I thought I had never heard a drum equal to it,

the most delightful music to us all.

Ebenezer Denny.

[Snare drum continues]

Narrator: The Battle of Yorktown was over.

The Patriots and their French allies had won.

♪

The world would never be the same.

♪

Surrender negotiations went on for a day and a half.

Cornwallis wanted his British and German soldiers

free to sail home.

Washington refused.

He recalled the disrespectful way

Patriot General Benjamin Lincoln and his men had been treated

after the fall of Charles Town.

Until a formal peace was reached,

the surrendering soldiers were to remain in the United States

as prisoners of war.

Cornwallis had little choice but to agree.

♪

As the British and Germans marched out

of what was left of Yorktown... Their flags cased,

their numbers reduced by wounds and disease...

They had orders to avoid even looking

at the victorious Americans.

Only the French, they'd been told,

were worthy opponents.

Washington and Rochambeau waited on horseback.

Lord Cornwallis was nowhere to be seen.

He claimed to be ill, but, as a professional soldier,

he may simply have been too humiliated

at having to surrender his army to a group of rebels

to make an appearance.

Cornwallis' second in command, General Charles O'Hara,

stood in for him and tried to surrender his sword

to General Rochambeau.

Rochambeau refused to accept it.

"We are subordinate to the Americans," he said.

"General Washington will give you orders."

Washington wouldn't accept it, either.

He passed O'Hara on to his second in command,

Benjamin Lincoln, who formally accepted the sword

and then handed it back, as custom dictated.

♪

Conway: The ultimate humiliation...

Not only having to surrender to the Americans,

but having to surrender

to the second in command of the Americans.

♪

Voice: With what soldiers in the world

could one do what was done by these men?

One can perceive what an enthusiasm

which these poor fellows call liberty can do.

Who would have thought a hundred years ago

that out of this multitude of rabble

would arise a people who could defy kings?

Johann Ewald.

[Church bell ringing]

Voice: This is a blow, my Lord, which gives me

the most serious concern, as it will, in its consequences,

be exceedingly detrimental to the King's interest

in this country.

Henry Clinton.

Narrator: When the Prime Minister, Lord North,

finally heard about the surrender at Yorktown

5 weeks after it happened, he staggered around

as if he'd been hit by a musket ball,

waving his arms and crying out again and again,

"Oh, God, it is all over."

♪

In a speech to Parliament, King George III said

that, while recent events in Virginia had been "unfortunate,"

he remained determined to fight on

"to restore my deluded subjects to that happy

and prosperous condition which they formerly derived

from... obedience to the laws,"

but Britain had grown weary of the war.

♪

Some 50,000 British, German, and Loyalist troops

had lost their lives in North America.

The British national debt had doubled.

Other battlefields seemed more important...

In the Caribbean,

where they would soon destroy Admiral de Grasse's fleet;

in the Mediterranean, where they still held Gibraltar;

and in India,

where they continued to expand their empire.

♪

On February 27, 1782, Parliament voted to halt

all offensive activity in North America.

Lord North's government fell.

Alan Taylor: Could they have kept the war going

from a purely military perspective?

Sure, but politically, the will to fight vanishes,

so the pro-war administration is toppled,

and the King is forced to accept a new government

with a new political coalition that is committed to negotiating

a peace settlement with the American rebels.

♪

Voice: Alas, what remains of Yorktown now,

what had given it its high privilege,

that of being accessible from every quarter,

proved its greatest misfortune.

Its excellent harbor rendered it the port of all others

most favorable for an invading enemy.

Too soon did they avail themselves of it,

and this Eden became desolate.

Betsy Ambler.

Narrator: Betsy Ambler and her family

never returned to Yorktown,

settling permanently in Richmond.

♪

Not long after the surrender,

slaveholders began turning up at Yorktown,

eager to reclaim the surviving runaways

who had fled to the British.

Washington set up two fortified posts

where slaves were to be kept under guard

until their owner came to claim them.

Patriot troops were encouraged to help track them down.

♪

"The Negroes looked condemned," one militiaman remembered,

"for the British had promised them their freedom."

♪

5 enslaved people captured at Yorktown

were returned to Thomas Jefferson.

Two more, both women, were returned

to George Washington's Mount Vernon.

♪

Washington's army soon moved north.

Rochambeau's men marched up to Boston the following year

and sailed away.

♪

Cornwallis' defeated men were marched to prison camps

in the interior.

Eager to get them back, Parliament finally recognized

captured Americans as prisoners of war.

Redcoats and rebels alike could expect to be exchanged.

Jennifer Kreisberg: [Vocalizing "Amazing Grace"]

After 7 months of suffering

aboard the prison ship the "Jersey,"

James Forten was released, emaciated but lucky to be alive.

♪

He walked all the way home to Philadelphia from New York,

most of the way barefoot.

He astonished his mother on arrival.

She had long since given him up for dead.

♪

After the war, Forten would build a great fortune

making sails for the American merchant fleet

and use part of those earnings

to fund the abolitionist movement.

When decades later, a friend urged him to apply

for one of the pensions being granted to war veterans,

Forten refused.

"I was a volunteer, sir," he said.

He didn't want money. He wanted citizenship.

♪

Voice: Our country asserts for itself the glory

of being the freest upon the surface of the globe.

She proclaimed freedom to all mankind.

The brightness of her glory was radiant,

but one dark spot still dimmed its luster.

So much is doing in the world

to ameliorate the condition of mankind,

and the spirit of freedom is marching with rapid strides

and causing tyrants to tremble.

May America awake from the apathy

in which she has long slumbered.

She must sooner or later fall in

with the irresistible current in the cause of liberty.

James Forten.

Jasanoff: Loyalists knew the war was lost,

and the question for them became,

"What's gonna happen to us next?"

and... given the violence, this insurgency,

counterinsurgency, back and forth,

down-and-dirty fighting in the countryside...

Loyalists had every reason to fear

that now that the Patriots were in charge,

they were gonna find themselves

on the rough end of recriminations.

[Pounding on door]

Narrator: Everywhere, Patriots were seeking revenge

on men and women who had once been their neighbors

and fellow subjects of the King.

"The mob," one Loyalist wrote,

"now reigns... fully and uncontrolled."

[Gunshots and shouting]

In Georgia, Patriots hunted down and killed Loyalists

who had sought sanctuary in the swamps.

♪

Other Loyalists were exiled and their property confiscated.

♪

Voice: I cannot say I look back with regret

at the part I took from motives of loyalty,

from love to my country as well as duty to my sovereign,

and, notwithstanding my sufferings,

I would do it again if there was occasion.

John Peters.

[Church bell ringing]

Narrator: John Peters and his wife Ann

settled in Nova Scotia.

Most Loyalists would choose to stay despite the danger

and take their chances,

hoping to resume their old lives in the new country,

but thousands decided to leave.

They huddled together in the last British strongholds

of New York City, Charles Town, and Savannah,

waiting for ships to be found to take them away.

Jasanoff: In an incredible gesture at the end

of the American Revolution, the British government

offers continuing protection to American Loyalists,

and I don't know of any other precedent for this kind

of mass evacuation of civilians organized by a government,

and particularly by the military,

with a view to helping these refugees get started

with a new life somewhere else outside the place

that they had always called home.

Narrator: General Guy Carleton, who had replaced Henry Clinton

as commander of British forces, was expected to move

more than 30,000 troops with their mountains of supplies

as well as 60,000 Loyalists and 15,000 enslaved people

out of the United States.

Carleton began that summer with Savannah.

Some 3,000 Whites and perhaps 5,000 Blacks

sailed to other British colonies.

Charles Town was next...

Almost 11,000 people, Black and White.

Most of them ended up in Jamaica and the Bahamas.

Only New York remained in British hands.

♪

Meanwhile, in Paris, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams,

John Jay, and Henry Laurens

were trying to work out a permanent peace.

Ignoring their instructions to include the French,

whose assistance had ensured their astonishing victory,

the American envoys decided to negotiate alone

with British emissaries.

"Let us be honest and grateful to France," John Jay said,

"but let us think for ourselves."

♪

They had a draft treaty within a week.

Its terms were generous to the Americans,

so generous they would cause the new British government

to fall, as well.

♪

It declared the 13 former colonies "to be free,

Sovereign and independent states"

and set expansive boundaries, stretching all the way

from the Great Lakes to Florida

and from the Appalachians westward to the Mississippi,

a territory larger than England, France, and Spain put together.

British troops were to be withdrawn

with "all convenient Speed" and were barred,

the agreement said, from "carrying away any Negroes

or other Property of the American Inhabitants."

♪

This provisional treaty was signed by the American

and British negotiators on November 30, 1782.

A final comprehensive treaty

would not come for another 9 months.

♪

Joseph Ellis: There's a consensus at the end

among the negotiators, including the Brits,

that we're witnessing the creation of an American empire.

♪

De Rode: Some people would say the British lost the war,

but then they won the aftermath, and France lost that period.

They could not reinvent themselves

in order to prevent their collapse.

The promise of the American Revolution was, of course,

a promise of democracy, of equality, of liberties,

of all these new concepts at a time where in Europe,

there were only monarchies.

The republic had won against the monarchy.

It inspired many.

Narrator: The American Revolution would be

the opening signal for more than two centuries of revolution,

first in Europe, then in the Caribbean,

South America, Asia, and Africa.

Baer: The ideas are very powerful.

When they're talking about liberty,

when they're talking about equality,

when they're talking about opportunity,

the freedom from oppression,

the American Revolutionary movement served as a model

for other societies and communities around the world.

♪

Narrator: But in early 1783 at the Continental Army's

winter encampment at Newburgh, New York,

things were not going well.

An unsigned manifesto began circulating

among Washington's officers openly calling for a mutiny.

If peace really came, they would refuse to disarm

and be free to use the army to force Congress and the states

into providing the back pay they were owed.

[Approaching hoofbeats]

On March 15, at a meeting to hear more about the conspiracy,

officers heard horse's hooves.

[Horse whinnies]

The door flew open.

Washington and his aides entered.

The general stepped to the lectern.

♪

He spoke for 20 minutes, urging his officers

to resist drowning "our rising empire in blood."

Most shifted in their seats, unconvinced.

♪

Then Washington asked if he could read a letter

from a Virginia congressman

who had pledged support for the army.

He stumbled over the first words, paused,

and pulled a pair of spectacles from his coat.

Voice: Gentlemen, you must pardon me.

I have grown gray in your service

and now find myself growing blind. [Washington]

♪

Narrator: The rest of the letter didn't matter.

Many officers, hard men made harder still by battle,

were openly weeping.

The mutiny was over before it could begin.

♪

Voice: The unparalleled perseverance

of the armies of the United States,

through almost every possible suffering and discouragement

for the space of 8 long years,

was little short of a standing miracle.

George Washington.

Narrator: As the Continental Army began to disband,

Washington tried again to persuade Congress

to provide his men with at least 3 months' back pay in cash,

but the best they could do was issue

a blizzard of paper certificates,

vaguely promising to redeem them one day.

♪

Voice: Some of the soldiers went off for home

the same day their fetters were knocked off.

Others stayed and got their final settlement certificates,

which they sold to procure decent clothing

and money sufficient to enable them

to pass with decency through the country

and to appear something like themselves

when they arrived among their friends.

I was among those.

♪

When the country had drained the last drop of service

it could screw out of the poor soldiers,

we returned to drift like old, worn-out horses.

Joseph Plumb Martin.

♪

Ellis: That group of people are ordinary Americans,

below the level of ordinary,

and they won the war because they never left.

They stayed. That was it.

They refused to leave, and, um...

um...

you can sound pretty patriotic,

but I don't think you can be patriotic enough about them.

♪

Voice: We had lived together as a family of brothers

for several years... had shared with each other the hardships,

dangers, and sufferings incident to a soldier's life;

had sympathized with each other in trouble and sickness...

And now we were to be parted forever,

as unconditionally separated as though the grave lay between us. [Martin]

♪

[Gulls squawking]

Narrator: By the spring of 1783, more than 30,000 Loyalists

and almost as many British and German troops

still remained in New York City,

all waiting for ships to take them away,

so many people that General Carleton

could not tell George Washington

precisely when they would all be gone.

Soldiers shipped out for home or the West Indies.

Some Loyalists planned to sail to Quebec or the Bahamas,

but the overwhelming majority...

Nearly 30,000 American men, women, and children...

Resolved to begin their new lives

like John and Ann Peters had, to the north in Nova Scotia.

Of the more than 3,000 Black people

who had also found sanctuary in New York,

half were considered the property of Loyalists

and so would have to accompany their owners

wherever they chose to go...

♪

But most of the rest were runaways,

like Harry Washington,

who had been the property of George Washington,

and Boston King, who had been promised that if they fled

their Patriot owners, they would be free.

That freedom now seemed in peril.

♪

Voice: Peace was restored between America

and Great Britain, which issued universal joy among all parties

except us who had escaped from slavery

and taken refuge in the English army,

for a report prevailed at New York that all slaves

were to be delivered up to their masters.

This dreadful rumor filled us all

with inexpressible anguish and terror,

especially when we saw our masters coming

and seizing upon their slaves in the streets of New York

or even dragging them out of their beds.

Many of the slaves had very cruel masters

so that thoughts of returning home with them

embittered life to us.

For some days, we lost our appetite for food,

and sleep departed from our eyes.

Boston King.

Narrator: From his headquarters up the Hudson,

George Washington continued to insist

every runaway be returned to his or her owner.

General Carleton refused.

"National Honour," he told Washington,

required him to make good on official British pledges

made to persons of "any complexion."

Voice: The English had compassion upon us

in the day of distress.

In consequence of this,

each of us received

a certificate

from the commanding officer

at New York,

which dispelled all our fears. [King]

♪

Narrator: Carleton decreed that any enslaved person

who had left a Patriot owner and served

behind the British lines for 12 months was free.

Disputes between runaways and owners or slave catchers

determined to return them to slavery were adjudicated

by a committee of 4 British officers and 3 Americans

who met weekly at Fraunces Tavern on Pearl Street.

♪

Voice: I came from Virginia.

I was with Lord Dunmore,

washing and ironing in his service.

I came with him to New York

and was in service with him till he went away.

My master came for me.

I told him I would not go with him.

He took my money and stole my child from me

and sent it to Virginia.

Judith Jackson.

♪

Narrator: Judith Jackson won the right to go to Nova Scotia,

but she stayed on in New York,

frantically trying to recover her daughter

until she was forced to sail without her.

♪

[Man shouts]

Narrator: There were more tense moments at dockside.

Before any vessel carrying Black passengers, slave or free,

could leave New York, British and American inspectors

demanded to see their certificates

and entered their names and descriptions

in separate ledgers...

Rhiannon Giddens: [Vocalizing "Dean Cadalan Samhach"]

♪

Narrator: but once underway, Boston King, Harry Washington,

and all the hundreds of other free persons

the British allowed to sail north were filled,

as King wrote, "with joy and gratitude."

♪

In the end, Nova Scotia proved cold and unforgiving.

Black refugees were not made welcome.

♪

Both men would eventually join

nearly 1,200 other African Americans

who emigrated again, this time to Sierra Leone in West Africa,

where they founded a new British colony

with a new capital city they called Freetown.

Voice: If we had the means of publishing

to the world the many acts of treachery and cruelty

committed by them on our women and children,

it would appear that the title of Savages would

with much greater justice be applied to them than to us.

Old Smoke.

Narrator: The 150,000 Native Americans who lived

in the vast territory that was now the United States

were not so much as mentioned in the treaty.

Kreisberg: [Vocalizing "Grief"]

Voice: We were struck with astonishment

at hearing we were forgot.

We could not believe it possible such firm friends

and allies could be so neglected by England,

whom we had served with so much zeal and fidelity.

Thayendanegea, Joseph Brant.

The losers in the negotiation of Paris

are the Native Americans.

I mean, it would be hard-pressed to say that they'd be better off

if the British had won, but they probably would have.

♪

Narrator: The contributions Native Americans had made

to winning American independence would soon be forgotten, too,

including Oneidas, Tuscaroras, Delawares, Catawbas,

and the Indian community at Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

♪

Voice: In this late war, we have suffered much.

Our blood has been spilled with yours,

and many of our young men

have fallen by the side of your warriors.

♪

Almost all those places where your warriors

have left their bones, there our bones are seen also. [Stockbridge petitioners]

♪

Philip Deloria: The Stockbridge Indians, their home,

their land is gonna go away.

They're not gonna be able to hold on to that,

and they are moved to New York.

Then they end up in Wisconsin.

Like so many tribes, right,

they end up being kicked around and moved from place to place.

This is, of course, the story of Native people

relative to the United States.

♪

Voice: Beloved men and warriors

of the United States,

we, the women of the Cherokee Nation,

now speak to you.

We are mothers and have many sons,

some of them warriors and beloved men.

Our cry is all for peace.

♪

This peace must last forever.

Let your women hear our words. [Delegation of Cherokee Women]

[Drum and rattle playing]

Narrator: There would be no peace.

As the United States moved inexorably westward,

Native nations would continue to fight

for their independence for another century.

♪

Native Americans would not become citizens

of the United States until 1924,

and their struggle to remain sovereign would never end.

♪

♪

At 1:00 in the afternoon on November 25, 1783,

George Washington... "straight as a dart,"

an eyewitness recalled, "and as noble as he could be"...

Led a procession of soldiers and civilians down Bowery Lane

and Queen Street, west across Wall Street,

and then down Broadway.

[Fireworks pop and crackle]

The British were finally gone.

Washington was back in the city

he had been forced to abandon in 1776.

New Yorkers celebrated for days with illuminations,

bonfires, and fireworks...

[Fireworks continue]

and now George Washington had one more duty to perform.

He would ride to Annapolis, Maryland,

where the Confederation Congress was now meeting,

and formally resign his commission.

[Trumpet playing "Amazing Grace"]

Ellis: He knew what he was doing.

He walks away from power.

He's not gonna be a Cromwell. He's not gonna be a Caesar.

He's not gonna be what Napoleon is gonna become.

He could have easily become dictator head,

and he had no interest in that whatsoever.

♪

Narrator: Accompanied by two military aides

and his enslaved companion William Lee,

Washington set out right away for Mount Vernon,

hoping to be home for Christmas Eve.

♪

Voice: These are the times

that tried men's souls, and they are over,

and the greatest and completest Revolution the world ever knew

gloriously and happily accomplished.

As United States, we are equal to the importance of the title,

but otherwise we are not.

Our union is the most sacred thing

and that which every man should be most proud and tender of.

Our great title is Americans.

Thomas Paine.

[Drum roll]

Narrator: The war had brought the states together,

but peace soon threatened to tear them apart.

Small states continued to fear large ones.

Northern and Southern states jockeyed for dominance

and quarreled over borders.

Vermonters had already declared themselves a separate republic.

North Carolina's Overmountain settlers were seeking to secede

and form their own state called Franklin.

[Gunfire]

Elsewhere, farmers turned to violence

to protest state taxes they considered unreasonable.

In Massachusetts, protest became insurrection,

Shays' Rebellion put down

only after former comrades in arms fired on each other.

A "cloud of evils," George Washington wrote,

"was threatening the tranquility of the Union."

♪

Voice: Our situation is truly delicate

and critical.

On the one hand, we stand in need

of a strong Federal Government founded on principles

that will support the prosperity and union of the states.

On the other, we have struggled for liberty

and made lofty sacrifices at her shrine,

and there are still many among us who revere her name too much

to relinquish the rights of man for the dignity of government.

Mercy Otis Warren.

♪

Narrator: The new Congress,

created by the Articles of Confederation,

was toothless, saddled with colossal debts,

and incapable of collecting taxes

with which to pay them off.

Christopher Brown: It's not hard to imagine at all

Britain, France, and Spain picking off

individual states to create sort of commercial alliances

or political alliances and military alliances,

as client states, and all kinds of things.

Sounds crazy, but it's no more crazy

to have actually created a federal government

that would actually work, and famously,

a lot of British observers throughout the 1780s...

"Just give them a few years. It's all gonna fall apart."

Philbrick: One of the lessons Washington learned

during the American Revolution is that without

a powerful central government, nothing effective could happen.

The frustrations he experienced

trying to get these 13 colonies to work in unison

and failing every time in the Continental Congress

taught him that something had to change.

♪

Narrator: In late May 1787,

55 delegates met in Philadelphia to draw up a constitution.

Nearly half owned slaves.

30 had served in the war.

George Washington lent his prestige

by agreeing to preside over the convention.

♪

4 months later, they had hammered out

a 4-page document.

To devise a government

that the American people could agree to live under

demanded historic compromises...

Some creative, some tragic.

♪

The Constitution delineated which powers

fell to the central government

and which remained with the states,

a system of shared sovereignty they called federalism.

The architects of the Constitution

divided the federal government into 3 branches...

The legislative, executive, and judicial...

In a delicate balance by which each was meant

to check the others to ensure against overreach

that could result in tyranny.

They feared that a demagogue might incite citizens

into betraying the American experiment.

Alexander Hamilton was concerned that an "unprincipled" man

would "mount the hobby horse of popularity"

and "throw things into confusion."

"In a government like ours," he would write,

no one is "above the law."

[Bell rings]

Voice: I wish the Constitution which is offered

had been made more perfect, but I sincerely believe

it is the best that could be obtained at this time,

and as a constitutional door is opened for amendment hereafter,

the adoption of it is, in my opinion, desirable.

[Washington]

Bailyn: They were trying to create

a system in which you could have

a sufficiently powerful government

that could work properly for its own people

and the great powers of the world

and still retain the freedoms of the individual,

and that is the great issue

that runs all the way through the Revolution.

It's a struggle between the possibilities

of power and of liberty.

♪

Narrator: In order for the Constitution to take effect,

the individual states had to ratify it.

That would foster one of the most extensive

public debates in history.

♪

Gordon-Reed: The people who created the American Revolution

and created the American nation

assumed that Americans would be involved,

that they would be active citizens, not subjects.

Being a citizen requires the kind of participation

in the democracy that keeps it vibrant.

♪

Narrator: In the end, all 13 states

did ratify the Constitution,

but before consenting to live

under the new federal government,

the American people wanted to enshrine the liberties

they had won in the Revolution.

The Constitution was almost immediately amended

with a Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of worship

and the separation of church and state,

freedom of speech and assembly,

the right to keep and bear arms,

trial by jury,

and a ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

James Madison, who wrote the Bill of Rights,

called the Constitution "nothing more than the draft of a plan,

"nothing but a dead letter,

"until life and validity were breathed into it

by the voice of the people."

♪

Vincent Brown: The idea that government derives its authority

from the consent of the governed was pretty radical.

It's still pretty radical.

If we take the words of the Declaration of Independence,

written by Thomas Jefferson... "All men... "

let's say men, women...

"are created free and equal," right...

Jefferson clearly didn't take that seriously as a slaveholder,

but I do,

and I think it's incumbent on all of us

to take those words from Jefferson

and make them real in our own lives,

even if they weren't real in his.

♪

Narrator: When the time came to choose the first president

under the Constitution,

George Washington was the only choice

and won the vote of every single elector.

♪

He was inaugurated in New York City

on April 30, 1789.

John Adams, the first vice president,

thought the chief executive should have a royal,

or at least a princely, title, but for Washington,

President of the United States was honor enough...

[People cheering]

and when he left the presidency in 1797,

King George himself paid tribute.

By surrendering first his military

and then his political power, he said,

George Washington had made himself

"the greatest character of the age."

♪

Voice: Our government daily acquires

strength and stability.

The union is complete.

♪

Nothing hinders our being a very happy and prosperous people,

provided we have wisdom rightly to estimate our blessings

and hearts to improve them.

Abigail Adams.

Rhiannon Giddens: [Vocalizing "Amazing Grace"]

Voice: I will not believe our labors are lost.

I shall not die without a hope

that light and liberty are on steady advance.

♪

And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism

again obscure the science and liberties of Europe,

this country remains to preserve and restore

light and liberty to them.

In short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776,

have spread over too much of the globe

to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism.

Thomas Jefferson.

♪

Atkinson: America is predicated on an idea

that should act as a pole star for us to provide true north,

telling us what it is that we think we can do as a people.

♪

The perpetual challenge of the American experiment

is to draw on those aspirational ideals

and make them our own,

hand them off to our children and our grandchildren,

and to use that as a propulsion system

for being the nation that those forebears

thought we could become.

♪

Voice: The American war is over,

but this is far from being the case

with the American Revolution.

On the contrary,

nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed.

It remains yet to establish and perfect

our new forms of government.

♪

Patriots, come forward!

Your country demands your services.

Hear her proclaiming, in sighs and groans,

in her governments, in her finances,

in her trade, in her manufactures,

in her morals, and in her manners,

"The Revolution is not over!"

Benjamin Rush.

♪

♪

♪

Announcer: Scan this QR code with your smart device

to dive deeper into the story of "The American Revolution"

with interactives, games, classroom materials, and more.

♪

Announcer: "The American Revolution" DVD and Blu-ray,

as well as the companion book and soundtrack,

are available online and in stores.

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,

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.