Ken Burns and the American Revolution

No one expects that a bunch of country farmers with muskets are going to hold off a trained army who have orders from an actual general in Boston. There's a real disbelief that a bunch of ragtag colonists are going to manage to hold their own against trained soldiers. Stacy Schiff, the American Revolution. The American Revolution was a bloody civil war that lasted for eight years. It was a time of great division and turmoil in the country that would eventually lead to the establishment of our democracy. In other words, we came out the other side. But that was then. It's become one party defeating the other. The current presidential administration, seems a hell bent on dividing, not only socially, but even economically. People that don't like Trump will say he's very divisive, but those are the same people that say that Biden was great. Americans are anti institutional now. And if you look at data and trust in institutions, we don't trust anything today as much as we trusted it forty years ago, whether it be banks or unions or the media or religion. Whenever I speak my values, I fear that something bad may happen. Instances of political violence also include attacks on local politicians, members of congress and their spouses, and political disagreements that turn deadly. This tension sits on top of pressures more and more people are already feeling, the increasing cost of living, housing shortages, and the erosion of shared spaces where people used to meet across political lines. I don't think I'm alone in feeling that the country is going through some kind of reckoning or rupture, one where our democracy is at stake. As The US prepares to celebrate its two hundred fiftieth anniversary, it's worth looking back at where we started, the real story, the real people who forged The United States into existence, and the chaos, conflict, and compromise they live through. And who better to take that deep dive than this guy? My name is Ken Burns. I'm a documentary filmmaker. I've spent the last ten years working with my colleagues, codirectors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, on a six part twelve hour series called The American Revolution. Ken Burns is one of my favorite filmmakers. And I still remember when I was first introduced to his work back in middle school when I watched his documentary on the Civil War. After that, I was hooked. We even got a chance to interview him on the show a few years back for another great documentary about country music. And now, after watching this new film, I was eager to bring him back and talk to him about his latest documentary. In our conversation, we talk about that intense and deeply divided period in U. S. History and how so many different groups of people and factions still managed to come together around a common cause. It was a messy, uncertain time with no guarantees about the future. First, …