♪ ♪ Welcome to " This Week in South Carolina" , I'm Gavin Jackson.

Legendary filmmaker, Ken Burns has a new film, " The American Revolution ", debuting in November.

Burns was in Charleston recently, where I sat down with him at the College of Charleston and asked him about the film and what he hopes to accomplish with it.

>> We just want to tell a complicated story of what happened during the American Revolution, and I think that, our views of it have been so sanitized by the fact that it takes place in a photographic era.

So we don't have the proof that photographs and newsreels would represent.

These are people in, in, in tights and breaches and, and powdered wigs.

And so there's a distance, from them.

We were just interested in how we tell the story of the American Revolution, which is, of course, our founding story and engages lots of political, and social things, as well.

It's just we want to tell a complicated story.

The last thing on Earth that we want to do is tell people what they should get out of it.

History is mostly made up of the word story plus hi-, which is a good way to begin a story.

And that's, we'd like to leave it at that.

We've spent nearly a decade, trying to figure out how to tell in six parts and 12 hours, a complicated story of our creation.

Gavin> How do you do, like you were saying, you don't have as much material like you did for the Civil War, the Vietnam War, all these other major documentaries you've done, what are you relying on here?

Is it any different how you're doing this?

Ken> The process is actually remarkably the same.

There is a tyranny to choice as much as there is a tyranny to no choice, meaning photographs.

The process is different.

We had to recalibrate.

I've been someone that has not been interested in re-enactments, per se, and we don't do them in the traditional sense, is that we get people to reenact the Battle of Cowpens.

We've just followed re-enactors, at every time of day and night in every season, from New Hampshire and Maine to Georgia.

And they're dressed in militia and southern militia and continental uniforms, and they're German and they're French and they're British of all different stripes.

And then having said that, we collected a big body of material that would help us, along with paintings and maps and, printed documents, commentary of, of scholars and writers and first person voices of hundreds of people, both well known, of George Washington and John Adams and etc., and people who are much less well known.

And in fact, were completely new to me.

Gavin> And so, when we talk about the war itself, how it started, and this origin story we're talking about of America, did it just come down to taxes?

I mean, what was really the big spark here, what really got this war going in a way that changed the whole face of it?

Ken> It's a variety of things.

Certainly taxation and representation are an important dynamic.

It's also Indian land.

Most of the American colonists are interested in, in moving westward.

New immigrants definitely want to do that.

They want to move into whether they're, and you understand it in a way that your family has in Wales or Ireland or Scotland or England worked the same piece of land for someone else for a thousand years, and you have this opportunity to own your own land.

The only problem is, is that it's, the territory of dozens of Native American nations who have not in any way agreed to sell or to lease or to whatever.

In some cases, the sales and the leases take place, but mostly, it's outright.

You have stealing.

You also have land speculators like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, who are dealing in tens of thousands of acres that they don't actually own, hoping to sell to those very immigrants.

So a lot of it is, is the pressure, the British, when they win the Seven Years War, what we call the French and Indian War, their treasury is bankrupt.

They've got the most far flung empire on earth, and they don't have any way to defend Americans who are increasingly pouring over the Appalachians and and being killed by Indians that are resisting, understandably, the encroachments on their territory.

So they set a line of demarcation in 1763 that says, you can't go over that, which causes incredible internal strife.

So if you add to taxation and representation, which is the grammar school single cause, and is a good one.

If you add Indian land in, you've got a set of complex reasons.

You also have the distance and in the distance the American colonies have sort of developed their own identity.

Let me ask you a question.

How were the colonists, both rich and poor, in Boston, dressed when they dumped the tea in the harbor?

Gavin> As Native Americans?

Ken> As Native Americans.

Why were they dressed as Native Americans?

Gavin> They were trying to frame them or trying to prove a point, I suppose.

Ken> So, that would be what everybody says, that, you know, to try to frame them for this crime.

No, they were saying as the, Phil Deloria the scholar, says in the film, they were trying to prove that they were different from the mother country, that they were Aboriginal.

What would be more Aboriginal and ironic than to dress as the people whose land you were in the process of dispossessing?

But for the purposes of making a statement to, to, to Britain, we are these people is a way of saying we are not you anymore.

And so obviously, the Revolution begins on April 19th at Lexington Green.

But does it, is it December of '73 with the Boston Tea Party?

Is it March of '70 with the Boston Massacre?

Is it this event?

Is it this signing?

Is it that?

Is it this?

Tell a tale see what happens is there's a long series that kind of 20 year run up from the French and Indian War, the Seven Years War, a global war in Europe to, to what is the beginning of our Revolution.

And it's very, very complicated.

And you can begin to see the nuances for the colonists.

They're separate, they're different.

They feel different, and they're beginning to take on an identity.

Gavin> And then when we talk about the fighting itself and how difficult that was, I mean, one day you're neighbors and the next thing, you're fighting each other.

I mean, was there any room to not pick a side or what?

How did the- how did it break down?

Ken> Oh, you know, we we throw out numbers and percentages and they're inaccurate because everything is very, very fluid.

There are times when you could swear that South Carolina was most definitely as everybody had been predicting, Loyalists.

And a few months later not so much.

And, and Cornwallis could complain to England that the whole, province is in rebellion.

So, what you have are your people that are most definitely Loyalists or Tories, and there are people who are Patriots or Rebels, as they're called, or Whigs.

And, then there are people that are disaffected or trying to stay out of it.

And they in some, in some cases have the worst of it, because if you're not one or the other, then you're a suspect to both, as well as to the British.

And so you've got the complicated dynamics.

And let us remember, this is not just our image of the militiamen, the sturdy farmer.

We're talking about enslaved people, free Black population, Native population on the West, but also Native population integrated and involved in the daily life of the colonies.

It's incredibly fluid.

And, and the other thing is, we're not talking about women, majority of the population, they're involved at every angle.

And the resistance in the opposition to the resistance in, you know, accompanying armies on both sides.

We follow, a German officer's wife from Germany to the battle of Saratoga.

We follow, you know, women throughout who are, who are Patriots.

It's, it's a very, very complicated dynamic.

And we owe, we have an obligation to them not to sanitize it, not to romanticize it, not to make it a kind of sentimental thing that is devoid of the violence, but also of the inspiring ideals that are at the heart of our Revolution.

Gavin> And this is the original anti-colonial movement we were talking about too.

Ken> The scholar Christopher Brown says in our film, you know, when we, we think about of the last, you know, particularly in the 20th century, all these anti-colonial movements, happening in the third world, he said, we forget that we invented that.

And we did invent that.

We were the first... and I've, I've been in many situations talking about this where people have, sort of, grilled me about anti-colonialism.

I said, well, United States is the original anti-colonial movement Gavin> To create a government, no one had ever seen before?

Ken> Well, this is the, the miracle of it.

This is the first revolution that had proclaimed the unalienable rights of all people, however limited it's writers felt it was nevertheless a foot in the door.

It was deeply, deeply meaningful to people who weren't going to be extended those rights because you could see and it once you've once you've articulated something, once you've set it, it's going to happen, some, at some point.

I mean, just nobody really spoke before the Revolution, as the historian, the late historian, Bernard Bailyn says in our film about slavery.

But the second the Patriots began using the metaphor of slavery to define what King George and the Parliament was doing to them, then the question of slavery came up.

And and once you say that there's certain universal rights that all men are created equal, you've already opened the door and it's over.

It's done.

Now, unfortunately, it takes fourscore and, you know, nine years for it, for it to be done.

And then it takes an amendment and another amendment and another amendment.

And there are a lot of people today that would say it's still not over.

And so, you know, we're constantly we have with these aspirational documents, just that, aspirations to perfection.

Gavin> I was going to say, what does the Declaration of Independence really mean in this situation?

And how important was it to the Revolutionary War?

Ken> We say pursuit of happiness.

The key is the word pursuit.

We say a more perfect union.

The key is process that we're, we're not, we're not ever getting there.

We're looking for perfection.

You're never going to achieve it, but you have to be moving towards it.

And the periods of our greatest strength have been when we have moved towards it.

And the greatest weakness and fragility is when we have retrenched and taken steps backwards.

And so the Revolution is all a lesson.

The documents are all a lesson.

The formation and the creation of the United States of America are all a lesson in process and, and submitting to the inevitable activity of a process.

Gavin> I have another general question before we get to the South, and this is a really general question.

But how does George Washington manage to do this?

Ken> I don't know, I don't know.

It's, it's... it's pretty amazing.

I mean, I've spent a long time raising money for this film and detailing all of the various characters and all the various groups that are included and how complicated it is, and it's not superficial.

And all of this and someone at one point had the temerity to say with great nervousness, as if to offend whatever sensibilities I might have and, and, and who is emerging as the most important figure?

George Washington, of course.

He's we don't have a country without him.

Let's just say that, we do not have a country.

The United States of America does not exist without him.

Lots of other people.

But he is the principal reason he is, as Annette Gordon-Reed, the historian, says, "the glue that held us together".

We can't imagine what it would have been like without him.

A lot of it has to do with an almost unknowable personality.

He's just diffident.

He's opaque.

He's unreadable.

It also has to do with, his incredible bravery.

You could even say rashness on the battlefield, riding out in the middle of moments that changed the course of the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in New Jersey, of riding out on the, the field at Princeton, where he's recovering their eyes or at Kips Bay in Manhattan, where they're grabbing at the reins of the horse to pull him back.

He's certain to be killed and he makes terrible mistakes, too.

He makes his same blunder twice, with his army at, in Long Island, the biggest battle of the American Revolution.

It's a terrible defeat.

And he makes it again, the same mistake.

Only not the left flank, but the right flank at Brandywine.

But, his perseverance, his, his demeanor, his ability to understand the politics, his ability to inspire human beings, his ability to identify generals and subordinates that are good, his willingness more than anything else, to give up power after the Revolution, to resign his military commission, and then after he is unanimously elected president of the United States to give up after two terms, his, has, is just the tip of the iceberg of this, as he has been called indispensable man.

But, in some ways utterly unknowable.

And the voice we picked to read for him, Josh Brolin, was we deliberately had a kind of opacity to the voice.

As Joe Ellis, the historian says, nobody's going to get in there.

Maybe Martha gets in there, maybe Hamilton, maybe Lafayette.

But, you know, nobody really gets in there.

And that reserve, in that reserve is a great deal of what the mystery of leadership is about.

And as I said, we don't- No, George.

No us.

Gavin> Inspiring for sure.

I mean, it's hard to put, put it down like you said, but, of course, attention turned to the south.

Right.

So can you describe for us, really what the South meant in the in the colonies at the time and what role we played down here when it came to whether the production or the economy or the role meant for the, for the Crown.

Ken> So you think of the Revolution as a symphony in three movements, and the first movement is New England, the second is the Mid-Atlantic.

And then it moved to the south, and it moves to the south for a pretty good reason.

After the surrender at Saratoga, an entire British army surrendering, it brings the French in.

The British are looking too, in some ways, try to figure out the best way to, to go on.

The two most prosperous colonies.

The profit making colonies are Virginia and South Carolina.

They have the most enslaved people.

They're dependent.

They're feeding the Caribbean, as well as generating, a great deal of profits.

And so the idea is that maybe we'll go down and consolidate there.

We may not be able to save all of the other places, but to sort of hold on to these valuable properties here.

They have 13 other colonies in the Caribbean that are far more profitable.

And that's because they have a greater percentage, Jamaica and Barbados, upwards of 90 percent enslaved people.

So you've, you've got these great engines of wealth for the empire of Great Britain and South Carolina and Virginia, particularly represent that.

But they're going to start in Georgia, move to South Carolina.

And once they're pacified, move on to North Carolina and then into Virginia.

That's the reason.

But there's, Georgia works out pretty well for a while, and then there's a gigantic, oops in, in South Carolina.

They...take the biggest prize, the biggest defeat the Americans have in the, in the Revolution is at Charleston.

We surrender an entire army.

It's never happened before.

It doesn't happen afterwards.

And that sort of sets the stage for the British assumption that they can sort of restore South Carolina, but they do it with a military rule that then turns this place into a, just an unbelievable killing field of, of civil war.

Gavin> And that was after 1776 with the battle of Fort Moultrie...?

Ken> So there's a, there's a British expedition in June of '76 that goes down and is not successful.

They limp back to New York and are part of the big battle of Long Island, which the British prevail in.

And they take Manhattan, will have Manhattan until 1783.

But they moved down and in May just a couple days ago by the calendar right now, they forced the surrender of General Benjamin Lincoln.

May of 1780 is when it falls.

And then, be careful what you wish for.

You've got South Carolina, but then it all begins to go undone.

There are victories in the "wash-house" There are victories in...at Camden.

And then, things turn around.

A lot of it has to do with brutal military rule.

A lot of it has to do with treatment by Loyalists of their Patriot neighbors.

And all of a sudden, the pacified territory is most definitely unpacified.

And one fifth of all battlefield deaths in the entire Revolution take place in South Carolina.

That's how bad it is.

Gavin> And you're talking about that period after 1781, when it's really just a brutal time.

But that's also when you see Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, and the guerilla warfare, really Ken> Guerrilla warfare is most evident in a most organized way.

If you can call guerrilla warfare organized here, a little bit in, in New Jersey, but it is in South Carolina, something.

It's Francis Marion.

It's other people who are aiding militia units and continental forces, and they're basically in lots of cases, attacking and losing, attacking and losing and attacking and getting away with some.

There are some really notable victories at Kings Mountain, like Cal Penn's.

But, but mostly it's sort of, picking away at the British Army, which cannot be as easily resupplied as this burgeoning Patriot movement is, because if you're doing the calculus, whether you're Loyalist or disaffected, and you're seeing what's happening, you do not necessarily want to call attention to yourself as being a strong supporter of the king.

And so things are really flipping.

Gavin> We just have a few moments left.

And I want to ask you about just the role that Hollywood plays in making this more dramatic than it is, or maybe as dramatic as it was.

But when we talk about "The Patriot" with Mel Gibson, obviously he was a composite character, his character, and a lot of that was with Francis Marion.

Do you think when we see certain wars, certain events play out in Hollywood, that it helps or hurts educating people, or do you think that just helps get people in the door to learn more, hopefully?

Ken> I think it's more of the latter.

I hope it's more of the latter.

There's some egregious things.

"The Patriot" is not a favorite film of mine.

It's, it's, it's kind of over the top.

And I don't think it does a service.

But if it piques somebody's interest and they want to know more, then it does something.

And let us also remember that, you know, there's a guy who used to take the histories and change characters and change countries, conflate people.

And his name is William Shakespeare.

And we're very happy that he takes those kinds of liberties.

I'm not sure, it's Ridley Scott.

Is that who did "The Patriot"?

-that, that he's in a Shakespearean level.

But I think that that's- we have to, we have to be aware that, sometimes fiction is as powerful a truth as the fact.

I subscribe to the fact that the facts are always much more powerful than fiction, and you can't make this stuff up.

Gavin> I support that.

Ken> And the idea of sanitizing it or making it overly romantic is, is it does a disservice to particularly the sacrifices of those people who, who did fight in it and were willing to risk everything for a completely untried idea, which is freedom and liberty.

Before the United States, everybody was a subject.

After the United States there were a few lucky people who were citizens.

Gavin> And can we have about a minute?

I just want to ask you, do you think it's hard for folks to learn history, to learn the lessons of history, or do we, are we hell-bent on doing it our way, even if it's already been done before?

Ken> Well, it's never, it's not... Human nature doesn't change.

And so we are susceptible to all the things that, as Shakespeare said, the flesh is heir to.

And so all of the qualities of greed and generosity and virtue and venality and selfishness and selflessness are on occasion everywhere.

What the study of history does is it gives you perspective and makes you understand a little bit of the sense that this unchangeable human nature superimposes itself on the seemingly random chaos of events, and we can see patterns.

We can see, as Mark Twain said, rhymes.

And once you've seen those patterns, once you understand the rhymes, then it gives you a kind of perspective that makes your judgments that much more wise than a person who is ignorant of the forces of history.

Gavin> And what do you say to people that might be anxious about the present or the future, when you have studied so many of the major topics of our of our country?

Ken> It's okay to be anxious about the present or the future.

That's, it's pretty anxiety producing and we don't know what's going to happen.

But I can tell you that if you understand how the United States was formed, you will not give up any of the things that we earned in that war.

You will not cede to any authoritarian tendencies, wherever they may be, any inch of territory.

It's just not American to do that.

So there's something incredibly inspirational about it, and it gives you courage.

There...were really, really, really dark days in the Revolution.

And if you were if Las Vegas was around, if there was a betting line, it would be zero chances at, on, on April 19th, 1775 on the Lexington Green.

It was a massacre.

They said disperse.

And they turned around and they started to disperse, and they were shot in the back.

At that moment, the zero chance of the American success.

And somehow, six and a half years later, Cornwallis surrenders to George Washington at Yorktown and we did it.

And it's still a flabbergastingly powerful story.

Gavin> Ken Burns, thank you.

Ken> Thank you.

Gavin> And we'll leave you tonight with a couple of clips from the American Revolution.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.

♪ Stephen Conway> 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.

Stacy Schiff> 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 is a real disbelief that a bunch of ragtag colonists are going to manage to hold their own against trained soldiers.

(Cannons and guns firing) >> I don't know a greater teacher than history.

Sarah Botstein> Film is a powerful teaching tool.

Ken Burns> We bring to life what the country sounded like.

Narrator #1> These are the times that tried men's souls.

Narrator #2> No suffering which Britain can inflict will reduce America to submission.

Ken> You begin to have a visceral sense of what happened, and all of a sudden you realize, they're real people.

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