Ken Burns' The American Revolution

Last night I watched the 6th episode of Ken Burns' new masterpiece of hisorical documentary, The American Revolution. It has been a passionate interest of mine for decades due to the fact that I was a volunteer for several years at Red Bank Battlefield in National Park, and because I was born in Philadelphia and have been immersed in history since my retirement in 2006.

I always found The American Revolution confusing. I had drawn maps and chronologies to somehow sort out what was going on but it really never emerged from the fog of confusion until I watched this documentary. I have been to many of the nearest most important battle sites from the Revolution such as Morristown which I visited several times including during the big re-enactment event, The Cliveden House in the Battle of Germantown, Valley Forge many times, and of course, the Re-enactment of the Battle of Red Bank which I saw annually and volunteered during (Octobers).

Our Red Bank Battlefield volunteer history club also visited the sites of the Battles of Princeton and Trenton, and we even held in our hands what was claimed to be the skull of Count Von Donop (dna later proved it was not. It was the skull of a Native American Woman). Somehow, I could never get these places in order and I was entirely stumped by Yorktown. (I thought it was all New England and New York) Ken Burns made it all clear at last. He also brought clarity to some of the names and relationships such as the British generals Cornwallis and Howe, and the Continental generals, Greene and Knox, Benedict Arnold and Charles Lee. I actually visited Lee's grave at Christ's Church in Philadelphia. (a passionate atheist his wish was NOT to be buried near a church!)

Themes: One of the things I enjoyed in this monumental undertaking was the use of excerpts from diaries. I had collected and read many of the diaries quoted in the film, the Hessian soldiers, the young soldier, Joseph Plum Martin, the women, Abigail Adams letters, and the writings of the Indigeounos people. Natie Amerians had usually been left out entirely in other depiction of the Revolution or portrayed as merciless savages attacking the frontier folk. This film showed how they were central to the story, and the most impacted by it.

The other theme for me was the suffering. In a time of hand tools, the destruction of hand crafted homes and furnishings, the burning down of entire towns, the destruction of crops and orchards and the starvation that followed. And the suffering of people, young men cut down in their prime by the thousands, entire tribes of Native American peoples slaughtered and displaced. The struggles and terrors of women left alone on farms with children to feed and the constnt threat of marauding foragers who would take the last morsels of food, possible rape and murder the woman and her daughters, and burn down their homes. What a terrible affliction of misery and suffering on people who, like all people in all time, wanted to simply live in peace and survive. Everytime I see a depiction of the suffering at Valley Forge, it literally makes me cry.

This is a huge experiene and one that needs repeating. I am already feeling my clarity and understnding of this vast campaign beginning to cloud. I will watch this 12 hour documentary again, and again, probably every 4th of July, and my unerstanding of what happened will, hopefully grow. So many of the great historians who commented during the film brought out insights that I will ponder and one of them was the impact of this revolution on the revolutions in the 20th century of colonial possessions throwing off the yokes of European conquerors. Just a week ago, I watched a documentary about the Iranian Hostage event, and realized for the first time that what had precipitated it was the attempt of the Iranian revolutionaries to take over the Petroleum processing plant, the biggest in the world, that had been built and owned by Great Britain which took all the profits and kept the Iranians in a kind of peasant/serf vassal relationship.

What I never understood clearly before about the main importance of the locations of the battles was the importance of the shipping ports to re-supply the British forces. I did read a book once that detailed the gargantuan quantities of cattle, pigs, barrels of salted pork and fish, and other supplies needed to feed armies of the size of 20,000 and so on for months, and even years. There isn't much talk about that in most movies and documentaries and I admit when I read the quantities I was astonished. As always - please write to me directily if you wish to share in the conversation as the comments section of blogspot is ruined by spam. My e-mail is wrightj45@yahoo.com Happy Trails to YOU!