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Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply. If you were looking for me yesterday, I was in, ironically enough, in Pennsylvania at Washington's crossing and going over the Battle of Trenton and the historic crossing of the Delaware and it was cold. And I would say it was about 15 degrees with wind chill factor and I was thinking about George Washington had to do this in the middle of a nor'easter which works to his advantage. Many of his soldiers demoralized and depleted looking at the end of their service and didn't have any shoes and they had to get in boats, make their way across the Delaware River, knock away the ice multiple times and then walk 9 miles and take out the Hessian soldiers who were hired to fight for the British and they did it and they won. That is part of the American story that Ken Burns has been chronicling without peer and informing and entertaining us for decades. Now he's got a brand-new six-part 12-hour documentary coming out calling the American Revolution.
It's going to air in November to mark the beginning of the war 1775 and Ken Burns tells that story. The award-winning documentary filmmaker joins us now. Ken, welcome back. Thanks, Brian.
It's great to be with you. Boy, I really felt the cold when you were talking about Washington's Crossing. We did a lot of filming there and just try to imagine what it might have been like back then just on Christmas Day making that unbelievable arduous trip. The series, I'm so excited to share it with you.
We're just 15 blocks, I'm right now 15 blocks south of you on 6th and I'm trying to finish up the film and we've got another six months to go on it. We just had a screening and everybody's response was really, really terrific even to the uncompleted film and that's one of the more powerful scenes. They had three different parts of his army that were going to cross and two of them couldn't get across and so he was the only one that could get across. Of course, he wasn't standing up in the boat as we think so. The only two American guests, not casualties or a handful of casualties, but the only two American guests were two people who froze to death when they just stopped in the middle of the night in the middle of this raging storm and just because they couldn't go on any further and fell asleep. Yeah, it's pretty amazing to go out there and see stuff. You can really picture because of the tower that they built in 1930 what exactly Washington was looking at and how dire things looked after the Battle of Long Island, the Battle of New York that they lost and they barely escaped with their Continental Army intact.
That's exactly right. I think people would be surprised to learn that the Battle of Long Island or the Battle of Brooklyn Heights is the largest battle of the entire revolution and it is a stunning and stinging defeat for Washington who had miscalculated and left one of four passes along the Gowanus sort of rise there. The Jamaica pass unopened and the British got around him and flanked him and it was only because of a rain and then fog that came up that he was able to evacuate from Brooklyn Heights. Otherwise, the revolution might have ended right then and there and so he loses again at Kips Bay. He loses again at White Plains. He's rushing across New Jersey and as you said, the enlistments are running out and he's not going to have anybody anymore.
And he feels like he has to do something. So he turns around and recrosses the Delaware River of course from Pennsylvania and it's just one of these heroic, heroic moments that gives a little bit of a spark to the American cause which could not be bleaker at this moment because of what's gone on. But you write about the revolution which I wasn't invited to that screening and I'm forever going to be hurt but I want to go to your next one. But the screening, but you write that this was a war but the American Revolution was a war for independence.
We got it. A civil war because not everybody was on board. There were loyalists, the loyalists to the crown and a world war that impacted millions from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond.
Explain that. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I mean, my first big war that I did was, as you know, and we've talked about it ever since, was on the Civil War and then that came out 35 years ago. You know, I wasn't going to do another war and then I got sucked into doing one on the history of World War II, a big one called The War and before the ink was dry on that, we said we'd do Vietnam and before the ink was dry on Vietnam in 2015, we said we're going to do revolution. We've been working on it now for 10 years and the thing that we do is we accept the violence of World War II, all the 20th century wars, we accept the violence of the Civil War and yet we protect the revolution as almost as if it's like a bug in amber or it's a, you know, a baseball card in Lucite that, you know, don't want it to be at all handled. And it's just supposed to be about great ideas, which is, of course, what it is, the most important ideas, the greatest aspirations of humankind are expressed in this, but it is a bloody, bloody Civil War. So we know what the revolution is. It changes for the first time. People are going to be not subjects, but citizens.
They're going to be able to control their destiny. It's the most profound and important and consequential revolution in American history. Then it's a civil war because we don't want to admit it, but there's lots of people, at least a fifth of the population are loyalists and they are killing us and patriots are killing them. But it is families are torn apart.
We like to say brother against brother in the Civil War. Maybe that happened six times, but it happened in every family in the revolution. Benjamin Franklin's own son, who was the royal governor of New Jersey, was deposed, spent time in jail. And when he was released, they assumed he'd sail for London. He started a terrorist organization to fight other patriot terrorist organizations.
He was killing patriots while patriots were killing. I mean, it's particularly in New Jersey and particularly in South Carolina. It is about as bad as you could get in terms of the Civil War. And then you realize that it isn't just us separating from Britain. There's this huge geopolitical thing. Our revolution really begins when Britain, be careful what you wish for, with our help, because they're our parents, wins what we call the French and Indian War, which was a global war called the Seven Years War. And so all of a sudden you have Britain dominant and they can't afford to keep their territory. They've got huge war debt. And so they don't want to let settlers go beyond the Appalachian Mountains.
You've got many native nations that are engaged with this that have been made promises to. All of a sudden France comes in and Spain comes in and Netherlands comes in on our side. And all of a sudden, Britain, who's just trying to keep their least profitable colonies, the 13 American seaboard colonies, are the least profitable.
Only Virginia and South Carolina are profitable. But we're the most populous and we buy things and we make things and we trade things and we drink tea and sugar and all this sort of stuff. They get kind of overwhelmed and realize, oh my God, with France in now and Spain in now, Gibraltar is in question.
Sumatra is in question. The subcontinent India is in question. And their most profitable North American colonies are the ones in Jamaica and Barbados. And they're threatened now by all of these geopolitical stuff. So all of a sudden, you know, what begins as a disagreement between Englishmen over Indian land and taxes and representation blows up into this global war that has unbelievable consequences. And if you remember, it's so important that you bring this up because the French India War, 1754 to 1763, we're fighting with the British. Washington is with the British.
He's trying to get it. He's got a British command. So we know these guys. They know each other.
You have no idea how much it is. There's the really the French and Indian war starts when the British commandeer the Virginia militia and they go out with some Indian allies to find a French and an Indian camp in what is, you know, the wilds of the whole Ohio River Valley. And they sneak up to the camp and they fire into them. And if one observer is correct, the first person to fire in was a 22 year old militia officer named George Washington. He is the person who fires the first start in a conflagration that we call the French and Indian war that will become what is a global conflict called the Seven Years War. And then later on, he's captured and defeated.
The only time he ever surrenders in his life, he then is given another chance and he expertly, you know, exits himself from another ambush where Braddock is killed at Pittsburgh. And he wants a commission in the British Army and they don't want to give it to him. He's just an American.
And the snobbery, the kind of infuriating snobbery about what he was is the first like, oh, along with the larger issues of, you know, Britain is now that the most far flung empire on earth. Be careful what you wish for, because how do you pay for it? How do you protect the citizens, particularly those who want to spill over the Appalachians and just take Indian land? And the Native Americans are, of course, you know, particularly disposed having their homelands, which they've had for tens of thousands of years, disrupted. So you've got this great dynamic that's going on.
And while you want to say it's just about powdered wigs in Philadelphia thinking great thoughts, and it is the dynamic of what's going on. You know, the Brits try a strategy once the war is beginning, where even though they're totally committed to slavery, the man who issues this proclamation, Lord Dunmore, says, if you're a slave of a patriot, of a rebel, you can, I will give you your freedom. If you're a slave of a loyalist, you can't have your freedom.
Oh, and by the way, I'm not giving up my place. So what you have is the dynamic of slavery is suddenly 20 percent of the American population is black. And so a lot.
There are some free blacks and runaways, obviously, and enslaved people who then become their own dynamic force in the history of the same age. So it cannot be more interesting. And by the way, that screening was an internal screening. We'll invite you in when we feel like we can show our dirty laundry. I felt crushed for a moment.
I was no longer in the cool crowd. No, no, no, brother. No, no, no.
So can hang hang out one second if you could. I want a little bit more about this beginning again to review. Doesn't come out till November, but it's the American Revolution, the name of the series. It is a six part, 12 hour series directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, written by Jeffrey Ward.
More more of a glimpse into that series. And as we come up on year 250, what we can expect as a country. Don't move.
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That's oracle.com slash cain. Few more minutes with Ken Burns. He's pumped up, but he's always pumped up, but he's got a brand new six part, 12 hour documentary called The American Revolution.
And essentially, it's it's even got him excited. Doesn't come out till November. We want to get ahead of it a little, because remember, the war started, you know, we have the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But Ken, the war starts in 1775. It's April. This April 19th is when Lexington and Concord takes place. And we wanted to honor that, that the 250th anniversary of the title of our film, The American Revolution, is this year. And that's an important thing to do. And as you know, in in July 4th, we'll be leading up to 2026.
The 250 is you always have a danger that things get simplified and drowned in sort of trife and drum treacle. And we forget the complex and inspirational message of it. So this is a film about the American Revolution. It'll cover all the battles, you know, from Trenton to Bunkers Hill to, you know, Lexington and Concord, but also Calpens and Guilford Court House in South Carolina, Charleston, you know, Yorktown, of course, Brandywine.
All of these battles will be there. But we thought it would be good to have this lead off the beginnings of the celebration so that we could really be versed in the complexity of it. And that just enormously complicated and thrilling story that is the American Revolution. So, so, Ken, I think it's so important that people understand our unique history and be proud of it. It doesn't mean everything's perfect.
It's a journal. No, no, no. We call, as you know, we took this before. I call balls and strikes. You know, if Washington makes a mistake, we tell it.
If this happens, we say it. But at the same time, you know, it can't just be a pendulum swinging backwards, either all good or it's all bad. Both of those do not give a full picture of it. If you pretend it's all just, you know, light and beauty and whatever, you've missed it. And you've missed great drama and great characters and great complications and in stories and individuals and character. And if you just make it all bad and revisionist, you've thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
Right. So, Ken, do you think we're over with the fever broke? We're done with condemning America.
We're done with pulling down statues. We're now understanding them that nobody on a pedestal is perfect. But these are the extraordinary things for the most case in their time. The historian Jane Kaminsky says it really well. You know, as we're dealing and have to deal with the fact that George Washington, the father of our country, without whom many historians in our film and in fact, African-American historians say we don't have a country without him.
He's the leader. You know, they don't believe in great men series of history. But guess what?
This is a great man who did that. When we deal with the fact that he owned other human beings, you just say you don't tear it down. We're all you know, these are not perfect marble figures. It's not just people that tend to just complexes. You are complex and I'm complex. Do we have contradictions? Walt Whitman said yes.
You know, I contradict myself. So all of that is part of calling balls and strikes. You know, you take, you know, a Reggie Jackson or a Mickey Mandel or a Babe Ruth. They strike out a lot. They also hit a lot of home runs.
So what are you going to tell? We're going to tell the home runs, but we're also going to tell the strikeouts. And it doesn't diminish in any way the importance of these figures at all.
Right. And can finally, I really believe we're going to celebrate 250 in America. I remember 70.
I was only in sixth grade, but I remember 1776 or 1776 everything. Are you concerned at all that we're not going to fully understand how great this country is? No, I think that that and that's why I really wanted to have this come out ahead of time because I think the greatness comes from the complexity. I believe that this film and the 250 can help bring us together. Everything we do now is divided.
It's all about, you know, red state or blue state, young or old, gay or straight, you know, rich or poor, East or whatever it is. We're always trying to find out what divides us and what we share in common. As you know, as good as me is, is, is, is our shared history. That's what we have.
And when we can seal ownership with it, whoever you are within this story of America, it gets you a chance to sort of kick away all of the stuff that we use on a daily basis to sort of beat up score points on the other side and things like that. And I think we have the opportunity to come together. Ken Burns, Can't Wait for the American Revolution, six part, 12 hour documentary coming out in November. Thanks so much for the for the unique preview, Ken. Thank you. It's my pleasure, Brian. Take care. All right. It's really nice to share this time and give that exclusive look. Wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
