In our last regular episode, we covered some of the final events of the second session of the first Congress and the mid-term elections that were held mostly in the fall of 1790.
Congress returned for a third session in December of 1790 which met back in Philadelphia.
Coast Guard
Before I get into the third session of Congress, I want to touch on one more event that happened in the second session back in New York. I discussed in earlier episodes that Congress had created a tariff package to begin raising revenue.
The problem with import tariffs, as the leaders well knew from the colonial era, was smuggling. It was pretty easy for merchant vessels to avoid tariffs by offloading goods away from ports and avoiding customs officials. To enforce tariffs, on the recommendation of Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Congress authorized the creation of the Revenue-Marine. Ten ships would be built to control the coast and enforce federal tariffs. Two fire New England, two for New York, one for the Delaware Bay, two for the Chesapeake, and two more for the Carolinas and Georgia.
To get Congressional support, Hamilton had each cutter built in the state where it would be used, thus creating local government jobs. He also had the master of each ship oversee its construction.
These were relatively small ships. Hamilton limited the cost to $1000 each, although several of them exceeded that amount. They were designed to be fast, with shallow drafts, so that they could chase down ships anywhere along the coast. Each ship had a crew of ten and a few swivel guns to ensure compliance.
The US had no navy at the time, and these ships were not designed to confront warships. These were small coastal enforcement vessels under the authority of the Department of Treasury. They would take orders from the local customs house.
The main significance of the Revenue Marine is that they were a forerunner of the US Coast Guard. So the date of its creation: August 4, 1790 is used as the birth date of the US Coast Guard.
Return to Philadelphia
Congress returned for its third session in Philadelphia, in December, 1790. As I said last week, this was after most states had held elections for the Second Congress, so many of those attending this session were lame ducks, although that term was not in use yet. About one third of the House members had either retired or lost reelection, but still returned to continue their work in this First Congress.
When the Continental Congress had met in Philadelphia, they met in what we call today Independence Hall. At the time, it was the Pennsylvania State House. That is, where the state legislature met. It had also been used by Philadelphia city officials.
Because Pennsylvania was trying to convince the US Congress to remain permanently, they were doing everything they could to encourage Congress to stay and be comfortable in Philadelphia. The state had just completed a new county courthouse right next to the State House. They gave this building to Congress, Pennsylvania officials tried to set up the rooms similar to the way they had been in Federal Hall. New chairs and desks were laid out in a similar pattern as they had been in New York. The Senate was decorated with huge portraits of King Louis of France and his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette. These paintings were gifts from the King and Queen.
The House took over all of the first floor. The Senate needed only half of the second floor. Members of both bodies did not have separate offices. Rather, they had desks on the floor of the House and Senate, which they used to keep their papers. They generally sat on the floor all day when Congress was in session. In fact, members were required to remain seated unless speaking. They could not get up and roam around the floor.
The state legislature would continue to meet in the state house, the main building we call Independence Hall today. On the other side of the Hall, officials had built another building which would be used by the Mayor of Philadelphia and other city officials as the new city hall. So federal, state, and local governments all worked together on the same block. The Supreme Court ended up using City Hall when the Justices met in session.
Not only was Congress moving to Philadelphia, so was most of the new executive branch. This influx of people led to overcrowding. Landlords doubled their rental rates, and the city builders went on a housing boom.
Even before Congress arrived, government officials began carting government records and other items from New York to Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania legislature, still hoping to tempt the government to remain permanently, authorized the construction of a large presidential mansion with a dome on top. It was built on the western edge of town, on Ninth Street, about three blocks from Congress. They had gotten as far as setting the cornerstone before the federal government arrived, but the house was not completed for another seven years. It became less urgent when President Washington made clear that he would not live in the new house.
Instead, the President rented the House owned by Robert Morris. It was considered the nicest house in the city. General William Howe had occupied the home during the British army occupation of Philadelphia. The house was just one block north of Congress. Morris, perhaps the wealthiest man in America at the time, had purchased it in 1780. Washington had been a houseguest there during the Constitutional Convention. Morris offered the house to President Washington. Morris moved out entirely and took residence in the house next door. Washington agreed to rent the home. The State of Pennsylvania ended up paying the rent.
Washington’s personal secretary, Tobias Lear, oversaw the move of all of Washington’s furniture and other items, 58 wagon loads, from New York to Philadelphia, setting up the new presidential residence. Washington ordered considerable changes made to the house, including tearing down one wall to add large windows.
James Madison, still a bachelor, rented a room in a boarding House two blocks away from the President. Thomas Jefferson, a widower, also took a small room several blocks away. He rented a house in Market Street, using the upstairs as his residence. The ground floor became the offices for the State Department. Alexander Hamilton moved into a house with his wife and children on Walnut Street. He was only a block from the Treasury department, which continued to expand during the government’s time in Philadelphia. Secretary of War Henry Knox, who was quite wealthy, rented a larger house for his family. The War Department took up temporary quarters in several buildings, including a time in Carpenters Hall, where the First Continental Congress had met years earlier.
Pennsylvania leaders were doing everything they could to accommodate the new federal leaders. They hoped that they could convince them to remain in the city after the planned ten year period expired.
First Bank of the US
Meanwhile, Congress returned to work on December 6, 1790, to begin its third session. Well, it actually had to wait a day before enough members arrived to reach a quorum, but that was better than the weeks that they had to wait to begin the first session back in New York a couple of years earlier.
The biggest item on the agenda became Alexander Hamilton’s proposal to create a national bank. In the 1790s banks were a relatively new concept. The Bank of England was less than 100 years old. The first bank in America was Robert Morris’ Bank of North America, established in 1781.
Banks in this era were not commercial establishments for people to save money, as they are today. The Bank of England was designed to borrow funds from wealthy investors to finance wars or other major government expenses. Investors did not make deposits. Rather, they became shareholders by putting their money into the venture. Because the banks held a large amount of gold and silver, people would accept banknotes as currency, knowing that they could exchange their notes at any time for that gold or silver. The bank could issue more paper money, under the hope that not all note holders would try to exchange them for hard currency all at the same time. This allowed much more money to circulate.
The Bank of England had allowed the government a place to secure money collected from taxes, then borrow much larger sums during wartime to fund the increased costs of the war. It permitted Britain to sustain wars much longer than other European powers, who had to impose massive taxes during wartime.
The Bank of North America, established by Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton in 1781 had tried to do the same thing in America to help finance the Revolution. Bank of North America banknotes held their value, unlike Continental Currency.
Initially, the Bank of North America held a charter from the Confederation Congress, but took criticism that Congress was overreaching its authority and that the bank gave too much power to a few wealthy men. To avoid the criticism of Congressional overreach, the bank got a new charter from the State of Pennsylvania. Even there it had problems as the populist government did not like the power that the bank gave to monied interests in the state.
By this time a second bank had opened in America. The Bank of New York was established after the war, in 1784. A group of New York investors saw how profitable the Bank of North America was in Philadelphia and how the bank made it easier to raise investment money for new commercial projects. Among the original investors in the bank were Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr.
So when it came time to establish a financial system for the new federal government, Hamilton proposed creating a national bank, chartered by Congress. This bank would be set up in ways similar to earlier banks. It would acquire capital both from private investors and from government tax collections. The government could then use much of the money raised to begin paying off its war debt. The bank would also offer loans to private companies. It would provide a paper currency to circulate easily while retaining its value.
Hamilton’s Proposal
Hamilton based his proposal for a national bank based on these earlier models. In his report to Congress, he pointed out that money in the bank would be put to active use in the economy, unlike the traditional pattern of having merchants simply locking up their money in a chest and hiding it away. This would let other people make use of the money right away, while the owner of the money earned interest.
Another advantage would be that the government could gain access to capital very quickly if the need arose. It would make it easier for people to pay taxes. It would improve the credit reputation of the US among both the citizenry and foreign bankers. It would help to lower interest rates given the ease and availability of money available to borrow.
Hamilton wanted the bank to be a public-private partnership. The bank would hold specie from both private investors as well as government tax revenues. He envisioned a capital stock over ten million dollars, offering 25,000 shares in the bank valued at $400 each. Investors could use public debt, that is those old Continental dollars, to pay for up to three-quarters of the purchase price. The rest would have to be paid in specie (gold or silver). Investors would receive interest of 6% per year. That return would encourage investment. When paying out money, it would be in the form of bank notes, allowing the bank to retain specie to maintain public confidence.
Objections
Hamilton’s proposed bank had its opponents. Rather quickly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison became the leaders of the opposition. Neither of them were opponents of banking generally. Jefferson had actually been an investor in the Bank of North America. Madison had expressed some misgivings about the Bank of North America in the Confederation Congress, but ended up voting for it.
Jefferson and Madison had both acquiesced to Hamilton’s debt assumption plan in the earlier session, but both were growing increasingly concerned at just how powerful the federal government was becoming.
The main argument used by the opposition was that the Constitution did not authorize this. Madison reminded his colleagues that the Constitutional Convention had debated and rejected the idea of giving the federal government the power to grant charters or articles of incorporation. His view was that if the authorization for such a power was not in the constitution, then the government did not have that power. Supporters argued that the Constitution’s “necessary and proper” clause granted Congress the power to do anything necessary and proper to carrying out its other duties. Since Congress had authority to collect taxes, spend money, and pay off its debts, a bank would be a key component of that.
Jefferson also noted that the Tenth Amendment reserved undelegated powers to the states, not the federal government. But the Tenth Amendment also had not been ratified yet. The Jefferson-Madison view of interpreting the constitution became known as strict construction. If a power was not expressly delegated, then the government did not have that power.
Hamilton’s loose construction of the Constitution also set a dangerous precedent. If Congress could just make any argument for creating a new thing that had not been explicitly authorized by the Constitution, there would be no stopping point. The government could grow to do just about anything. Even most federalists who wanted a more powerful federal government after the Confederation, feared the idea of a national government with unlimited authority to do anything.
Beyond this legal argument, there were other reasons for opposing the bank. The post-war era had been rife with political dissension between farmers and working people against the wealthy merchants and bankers. This new bank seemed to give special privileges and advantages to a small group of moneyed interests at the expense of everybody else.
In particular, the bank would tend to benefit merchants and businessmen in the cities, at the expense of farmers and others. The vast majority of the population worked as farmers. They had come to see banks as their enemy, making this project highly unpopular. The south especially, where there was very little commercial activity outside of farming was concerned about how much power a bank would move toward northern interests. Some politicians also feared that establishing this bank in Philadelphia might end up being a reason why the government would not want to relocate to the Potomac after the agreed ten year period in Philadelphia.
Opponents also saw the bank as a source of political corruption. It was the case in Britain that members of Parliament often held stock in the Bank of England, which gave them a self-interests position in supporting anything that benefitted the bank. It would almost certainly be the case that members of Congress would invest in the bank and have that same conflict of interest. The idea that the bulk of the nation’s wealth would cause greater wealth to accrue to a small group of wealthy and powerful men, which would disadvantage everyone else.
A bank would also promote speculation. With so much money to be made through investment, Jefferson warned that people would turn their lives toward speculation rather than being productive workers. Speculation, unlike labor, had no benefit to the country and was essentially a form of gambling. It would be destructive of morality.
Debating the Bank
Hamilton had submitted his report in mid-December, 1790, at the beginning of the third session of Congress. The Senate took up the bill first, proposing a twenty year charter for the bank. A minority wanted to limit the charter to ten years, but that effort failed. Relatively quickly, by the end of January, the Senate passed the Bank bill by a vote of ten to six.
The House took up the bill at the beginning of February, when Madison rose to oppose it, raising the issues that I just outlined. Congress was under a pretty strict deadline. Since the first Congress had begun on March 4, 1789, the Congress had to wrap up by that date in 1791. Otherwise, members would serve longer than two years, in violation of the Constitution. At that point, they would have to be replaced by the members who were elected in the most recent elections.
The House debated the bill for just one week. At the end of the week, they called a vote passing overwhelmingly, by a vote of thirty-nine to twenty. Congress waited another week before presenting the bill to President Washington. Both sides used that extra time to draft arguments for their side. The day before the bill reached Washington’s desk Attorney General Edmund Randolph issued an opinion that the bill was unconstitutional.
The day after Washington received the bill, Jefferson presented his own argument that the Bank was unconstitutional. Washington, uncertain what we would do, asked Madison to draft a veto message in case he decided to veto the bill.
Hamilton, raced to complete his own lengthy argument on why the bank was constitutional. The president had ten days to decide whether to sign or veto. Hamilton finally submitted his arguments on day eight. Hamilton essentially argued that the president should defer to the legislature, and that Constitution gave the government power to create entities that were necessary and proper to carrying out their enumerated powers.
The debate over the controversial bill weighed heavily on President Washington. His thought were not really focused on whether the bank was a good idea. He was more concerned about whether he would be violating the Constitution by signing it, or being seen as not deferential enough to the legislature by vetoing it. The bill has passed with nearly two-thirds support in both houses, so an override was quite possible and would be embarrassing. The bill was also particularly unpopular in his home state of Virginia.
Washington considered his options waiting until the last possible minute, but he ended up accepting Hamilton’s arguments and signing the Bill. The Bank of the United States would begin operations a few months later.
Next Week: we take a look at the controversy over Vermont joining the Union as the fourteenth state.
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Next Episode 370 Vermont Joins the Union (coming soon)
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The new US Constitution required that “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct”.
Enacting the Census law
The purpose of the census was to determine how many representatives each state would get. The Constitution had set the original numbers for each state based on their best guess. But a count was needed so that a proper distribution of representatives could take place. The Articles of Confederation had called for earlier census counts, but those were never done.
Plans for a census began almost immediately after the first Congress met. The House formed a committee in May 1789 to begin work on a plan. In January, 1790, shortly after the second session of Congress began, members in the Committee of the Whole began working on a law that would direct how the census would be conducted. James Madison pushed for questions beyond a person’s name, particularly what their occupation was. Madison viewed this as critical information for the legislature. By mid-February, the House voted favorably on a bill that it sent to the Senate.
The Senate removed this requirement, considering it a waste of time and money to track more information than was necessary. The House approved the Senate changes and sent the final bill to President Washington, who signed the law on February 25.
The final bill delivered to Washington did not even require the names of everyone being counted. Instead, only the name of the head of household would be recorded, along with the number of people living in that household. The numbers were broken down into five categories: the number of free white males 16 & older, free white males under 16, the total number of free white females, all other free persons, and slaves. The point of dividing males by age was so that the government would have information about adults who could be soldiers or were in the workforce. That information was not deemed necessary for females.
The category of other free persons referred primarily to black people. It was also used for some Indian households in cases where Native families were living in white communities and were part of the tax base. These free black and Indian households did not need to be divided into any sub-categories such as age or sex. Slaves were counted separately because each slave was only counted as 3/5ths of a person for purposes of determining populations for representatives.
There was no government agency in charge of the Census. Instead, Congress gave the responsibility for obtaining the numbers to the US Marshals. Congress had appointed a US Marshal in each state. Each marshal was authorized to appoint assistants to canvas their districts. Once complete, the assistants had to post copies of their work in two public places so that members of the public could inspect them and make corrections. The assistants had nine months to complete their work. They then submitted their reports to the US Marshal, who had another four months to verify the work. The Marshals would then submit the final count to the US District Court which then forwarded them along to the Secretary of State.
Counting the People
Officials were concerned that the people might resist the census on religious grounds. The Old Testament story of God bringing a plague on Israel for counting the people of Israel might incline some people to believe a census was a sin. See Second Samuel or First Chronicles for the biblical references. There was also the secular concern that a census was the first step toward implementing a tax based on population.
These fears proved largely unfounded. The marshals and assistants did their work promptly, knowing that they would be subject to fines if they missed deadlines. South Carolina had to request an extension after one of the assistants fled to Spanish-controlled Florida and took his documents with him. This required his district to be done again by someone else.
While the count was ongoing a few changes were necessary. The authorizing legislature scheduled the census to begin in August, 1790. Before that date, Rhode Island ratified the Constitution, requiring Congress to make changes to include that state in the count. Just as the Census was wrapping up in early 1791, Vermont also became a state in March of that year, forcing its inclusion. The new state’s count began in April 1791, and had to be done within five months.
The total cost of the Census was around $26,000, which was a pretty substantial amount for the relatively small federal budget. Around 650 people were hired to complete the count. Before the Census, leaders really weren’t sure of the total population size. In December of 1790, President Washington estimated that the count would be over five million people.
The final result reported about 3.9 million Americans. The details were far from uniform. Each census taker used his own pen and paper, meaning there was no uniform size or form to show the results. Some divided up the population by county. Others did so by town. Despite any irregularities, the census finally gave the government definitive numbers to reapportion Congress based on its population.
The Census, however, was not completed in time for the mid-term elections, held in 1790. Each state delegation would remain the same size as it had been in the first Congress, and those sizes had simply been set by the delegates at the Constitutional Convention, based on their best guesses. During the Second Congress, the size of the House grew from the original 65 members to 69, only because of the admission of two more states, Vermont and Kentucky, who each initially received two house members.
When the results of the Census were ready for the 1792 elections, the size of the House at that point increased to 105 members, an increase of 36 members. Virginia’s delegation nearly doubled, going from 10 members to 19. Similarly, Massachusetts went from 8 to 14. Pennsylvania went from 8 to 13. Only one state, Georgia, lost members. The state fell from 2 House members to just 1.
The first census found that New York City was the largest city in the US with a population of 33,000. This is a little misleading because, although Philadelphia was the second largest at about 29,000, 6th place was Northern Liberties with a population of 10,000. Northern Liberties is the area just north of Philadelphia’s city limits at the time. Another town, Southwark, which was the area just south of Philadelphia’s city limits had a population of nearly 6000, meaning that the greater Philadelphia area had well over 45,000 people, much larger than New York City. Boston came in third with 18,000, Charleston was fourth with 16,000, and Baltimore rounded out the top five with nearly 14,000. No other city exceeded 10,000 people.
Benjamin Franklin
Just before the 1790 census took place, the city of Philadelphia shrank by one important number. On April 17, 1790, Benjamin Franklin died. The 84 year old scientist, inventor, diplomat, and political leader had been ill for several years. His last major public appearance had been at the Constitutional Convention nearly three years earlier. Even then his ability to speak or walk had been greatly diminished.
The newspaper that he had founded, the Pennsylvania Gazette said
“The world has been so long in possession of such extraordinary proofs of the singular abilities and virtues of this FRIEND OF MANKIND that it is impossible for a newspaper to increase his fame, or to convey his name to a part of the civilized globe where it is not already known and admired.”
The city held a public funeral for Franklin five days after his death. An estimated 20,000 people turned out for the event. Provost of the University of the State of Pennsylvania William Smith, who had long found himself in political opposition to Franklin, gave Franklin's eulogy in Christ Church. Franklin had also played a major role in founding Philadelphia College, where he had been a trustee. A year following Franklin’s death, the two schools would merge to form the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin was laid to rest in Christ Church Burial Ground, next to the grave of his wife Deborah.
While the funeral was perhaps the largest ever seen in America, there were many notables missing from it. In a time when travel was slow and difficult, it was not the norm for people to travel from other cities to attend funerals. President Washington remained in New York, as did the members of Congress.
When word of Franklin’s passing reached France, the nation went into a state of mourning for the loss of the great man. In America, newspapers across the country mourned his loss, but the government reaction in New York was more mixed.
In the House of Representatives, James Madison asked members to wear symbols of mourning for one month, which was agreed. The Senate, however, refused. Vice President Adams had been a long time foe of Franklin and was not a man given to sentimentality. The Senate refused to engage in any official acts of mourning, and even refused to respond to tributes sent to Congress by France. Personally, the only recorded comment Adams made at the time was a letter to Benjamin Rush, where complained that Franklin and Washington would get too much of the credit for winning the Revolution.
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson had gone to Philadelphia a month before Franklin’s death and had paid him a visit at that time. After his death, Jefferson gave a public eulogy, where he recounted his arrival in France during the war. The French people asked if he was there to replace Franklin. Jefferson recounted his response: “I generally answered ‘no one can replace him, Sir; I am only his successor,’” Jefferson continued in his eulogy saying that "more respect and veneration attached to the character of Doctor Franklin in France than to that of any other person in the same country."
After the Senate voted not to mourn the death of Franklin, Jefferson encouraged Washington to order the executive branch members to go into mourning. Washington refused. The president did not want to set a precedent for all the other founding fathers who probably would soon begin passing. He also felt it was too similar to how European royalty was honored in death. Washington believed such displays were unrepublican. Washington did, however, send a formal note of thanks to the French Assembly for paying homage to Franklin.
Mid-term Elections
The federal government quickly moved on to other business. The government remained focused on passing new laws, but also on the upcoming elections for the Second Congress. As had been the case in the first elections, each state scheduled its own date for elections. New York had held the latest elections of all the states that had ratified the Constitution before the first Congress met. It had held its first elections in March 1789. Its election for the Second Congress was held just over one year later, in April of 1790, four months before the First Congress completed its business, and eight months before the Second Congress could have theoretically convened.
Those who were elected would have to wait while their predecessors completed the second session and went on to participate in a third session of Congress, held in Philadelphia beginning in December of 1790 through March of 1791. In fact, the Second Congress did not begin a regular session until October, 1791, meaning New York’s elected representatives had to wait a year and a half before finally taking their seats.
Why did New York go so early? The state traditionally held its elections in the spring. If they had waited until the following year, the members would not have been elected in time to take their seats at the beginning of the second Congress, if Congress had met on March 4, the first possible day. Although as I said, the House wanted another 9 months after that date before it actually met again in session.
One of the newly elected representatives, James Townsend, died shortly after being elected. The state had time to hold a special election to refill the seat before any other state even held their first elections, and the replacement still sat around for months, waiting for his term to begin. New York’s next congressional elections would be 2 years and 8 months later, moving them closer to the time when elections could be finalized shortly before the new Congress.
The bulk of the states held their elections at various times following the end of the second session In August, 1790 and before the third session began in December. Eight states, beginning with New Hampshire on August 30th and ending with Delaware on November 8, held their elections during this time period. Despite any changes these newly elected members had to sit and wait as those who won the first elections in 1789 returned for a third session of Congress that began on December 6. Three more states, Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina, held their elections while Congress was still sitting in that third session.
Although the Second Congress could have met as early as March, 1791, Pennsylvania did not hold its elections until 7 months later in October. There was a great deal of political fighting over the elections in Pennsylvania. The state had elected its delegation statewide in the first elections. Reformers were able to put in place voting districts for the second elections. Only four of the state’s eight representatives returned for a second term in office.
While Pennsylvania's change was on the high side, more than one-third of incumbents nationwide did not return for a second term. In Maryland, only one of the six representatives was reelected. Two others retired, and three lost their bids for reelection. Another Pennsylvanian, former General Anthony Wayne, had moved to Georgia and was elected to Congress from that state in one of the most hard fought elections that year..
Changes in the Senate were not nearly as stark. Only one-third of the senators were up for reconsideration. Since Senators were appointed rather than elected, there was little worry for most of them. One significant change came in New York where the state legislature replaced former General Philip Schuyler, Hamilton’s father-in-law, with his political opponent Aaron Burr.
In Virginia, James Monroe once again ran for the house seat occupied by James Madison. In that first election, Monroe was the favorite. This time, it wasn’t even close, with Madison receiving nearly 98% of the vote. Monroe received an appointment to the Senate following the death of Senator William Grayson.
Congress Leaves New York
When Congress completed its second session in August of 1790, it had already been decided that this would be the end of its stay in New York. The Grand Compromise, in which members agreed to move the permanent capital to the banks of the Potomac, also agreed to an immediate move back to Philadelphia.
When the Senators and Representatives completed their session, they agreed to meet for a third session in Philadelphia beginning in December. The Congressional session ended on August 12, 1790. The members packed up and left New York City for the final time.
George Washington, who had just moved into a larger house in New York a few months earlier, spent several more weeks in the city. He packed up his household during the last two weeks of August, and left for home before the end of the month. He travelled with Martha, his two grandchildren, various aids, and the slaves who had attended to him in New York City. His return home to Mount Vernon for the first time since he had come to New York to be sworn in as President. This would also mark the last time George Washington would ever see New York City.
Washington had suffered through two life-threatening illnesses during his stay in New York. He had also flirted with the idea of resigning the presidency and returning to retirement. Washington believed he had gotten the new government off to a good start, and was not really looking forward to two more years of government service.
In the end, everyone told him that he had to remain in office, so his dream of retirement got pushed back a little further. But Washington was able to enjoy several months back at Mount Vernon during the fall. He also took some time to travel up the Potomac River, looking at sites for the new capital. Washington had pretty much decided on the area around Georgetown, but he looked at areas further upriver in order to unnerve Georgetown land owners and keep their land prices from going too high before agents for the federal government could buy them.
By November, Washington was planning to return to Philadelphia begin that ten year period where that city would serve as the federal capital.
Next week, we cover the move back to Philadelphia, and one of the most controversial issues that would vex the third session: the First Bank of the United States.
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American Revolution Podcast is distributed 100% free of charge. If you can chip in to help defray my costs, I'd appreciate whatever you can give. Make a one time donation through my PayPal account. You may also donate via Venmo (@Michael-Troy-20).
You can support the American Revolution Podcast as a Patreon subscriber. This is an option making monthly pledges. Patreon support will give you access to ad-free episodes, podcast extras, and help make the podcast a sustainable project.
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Heads of families at the first census of the United States taken in the year 1790: Maryland, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907. Vol. 2 & Vol. 3* There are publications for all states in the 1790 census published in 1907 and available. These links for Maryland are listed as an example. You can search archive.org for more state results if that interests you.
The new Ken Burns documentary on the American Revolution is due to be released on November 16th, 2025. The 12-hour production will be broken up into six 2-hour episodes taking viewers through through the Revolutionary War. Ken Burns is, of course, well known for his earlier works covering things like the Civil War, the Vietnam War, and other topics such as Prohibition, baseball, and jazz. Sarah Botstein has worked on at least seven previous Ken Burns documentaries, including the ones on Vietnam, Prohibition, and Jazz. The two, along with co-producer David Schmidt, teamed up to produce this upcoming documentary covering the American Revolution. I had the opportunity to sit down with Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein earlier this month to discuss the American Revolution with them. What follows is a transcript of our discussion on Zoom.
MT: Sarah, Ken, welcome to the American Revolution Podcast.
KB: Thank you.
SB: Thank you.
MT: So, both of you have produced a great many historical documentaries which we're all have enjoyed over the years. What drew you to the American Revolution as a subject?
KB: Well, it's our founding story. It's our founding creation myth, as Rick Atkinson says in the opening moments of the film. And we've always been drawn to it, have had subjects that have circled around it, from the history of the Shakers to biographies of of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, to other things. but it it sort of held itself away for the obvious reasons that there's no photographs in news real. So, it makes unlike our our series on the Civil War or World War II or the Vietnam War, kind of more provable. It made this a much more daunting challenge. And so it was in 2015 as we were finishing our Vietnam series that I realized looking at maps and and thinking about what we'd learned over the decades of trying to tell complicated stories that we could actually overcome the absence the deficit of of photographs and news reels and tell a comparing compelling narrative that would bring you into the story. And what could be more important than particularly in challenging times than going back and and re-establishing a visceral connection bottom up as well as top down with our founding with the ideals that that created us.
MT: Yeah. In addition to the birth of our country, I think the American Revolution changed the world in a lot of ways. And in fact, you say in your documentary, you know, turns the world upside down. What did you mean when you said that or when it was said in your documentary?
SB: Ken usually has a great way to answer this question. I think before the American Revolution governments and societies were structured quite differently and so subjects became citizens and the world did actually turn upside down. It's a great line both in the play and in the world and I think really apt here. There are parts of our democracy and parts of the way that the history over the 250 years has unfolded that are wonderful unintended consequences of parts of the revolution. But the revolution did remake, in a local and then global context, how governments could be run and function and how people at the margins because we did a conversation last week with the wonderful scholar and thinker Yuval Levin and he said you know the America the Declaration of Independence uses the word all. So once you have the word all regardless of what's happening in that moment you're saying all And then Maggie Blackhawk, who I think is, you know, Ken and I talk about this a lot, is sort of at the heart of the show at the end of the second episode in the Declaration of Independence, says the Declaration was deeply significant to people at the margins who could see and feel that document and push the levers of power. And so over the 250 years, it might have taken us a long time for me to be able to go and vote, for example, but we got there. And that's an inspiring story of what is possible and I think really worth celebrating and it did in fact turn the world upside down.
MT: Yeah, I think that's right. I think a lot of people take for granted today that governments are democratic and even authoritarian governments at least pretend to be democratic. They at least have show elections and things like that. That wasn't even a thing before the American Revolution. Everything everybody had monarchies and that was that was about it. So the American Revolution kind of got the ball rolling on that and of course our country improved over time and other countries around the world were inspired by what we were doing. So, yeah. You touched on the issue of it being very hard to portray the American Revolution because there are no photographs. there's no obviously no video footage. Were there ways you felt maybe constrained in being able to show the brutality of this war and and some of the difficulties? I know paintings are a big part of of of what you do in the documentary, but of course that doesn't really capture the brutality of war. Was that a real struggle for you guys?
KB: I think it's always a struggle whether you've got tons of stuff that proves it. You know, there is such a thing as kind of "war pornography" where people glory in the gore and and it misses the point of what you want to do as you're narrating a complex story. I think the important thing is to first understand that our American Revolution is some not some bloodless gallant mythological story of people on Mount Olympus, i.e. Philadelphia, thinking great thoughts. but in fact a bloody civil war in some ways more bloody for civilians than our Civil War was which was more of a sectional war. We have the proof in the photographs of that. And so our our challenge was to not just animate the paintings but to animate maps and to animate documents to treat the main star of the film which is the extraordinary beauty and majesty and and size of the continent or at least the eastern seaboard of the continent, where the most of the battles take place - to give it a a kind of primacy as a character to take the opacity off the familiar bold-faced top-down names that we all know but don't know, the George Washingtons and the Thomas Jeffersons et al and then to introduce you to dozens and dozens of so-called ordinary people that didn't have their their portraits painted. So, there's there's a lot to do there. And then we've spent years and years and years filming reenactors is not to have them reenact a battle for us, but to give us the stuff, the the critical mass of imagery, mostly impressionistic. You don't see faces, shadows, dawn, dusk, washing blood, women washing blood off a clothes in a stream in a in a river, guns firing, just giving a sense of what it was like so you could remove the onus of not having those pictures. And we we spent nearly a decade trying to do that and and feel really excited. We spent most of the last year out on the road sharing this with audiences of all stripes in every part of the country and the response has been phenomenal. So I think that in some ways we were able to escape the limitations of the absence of of photographs and news reels and make this a real complicated visceral struggle that engages human lives that everybody can identify with. And so part of the scores of individuals we introduce you to are teenagers and and young girls and French and German civilians as well as soldiers and English civilians and soldiers and kings and ministers and the whole variety including loyalists and native people and freed and enslaved black people that are central to the story of this and and just it's impossible if you're going to tell a good story to sort of think that you can leave out any you know one port of of the complexity of it.
MT: You were kind enough to share a preview of the documentary with me and I did get a definitely a sense of that. I especially like the idea of using people who don't we don't aren't remembered by history as you said, people like Joseph Plum Martin or Betsy Ambler, or John Greenwood. They offer a very different perspective obviously than the the so-called great men of the war. Bringing in the loyalists as well I think was very interesting to get their perspective. One of the things I think Britain really counted on when the war got started was that they believed that a great many of the Americans were going to be loyalists and rally around the king and that did happen but not in the numbers that they ever counted on. How do you think that really impacted the course of the war? The fact that they never got the loyalists to join on and what was there a reason why they were unable to encourage loyalists to...
KB: I think there were they got lots of loyalists: thousands, tens of thousands of loyalists to help them. If you take two gigantic battles, the battle of Long Island, the battle of Brandywine, both of which suffer from the patriot point of view from really bad generaling on the part of Washington. He makes tactical errors in both places. In the first case, leaving his left flank and in Brandywine, his right flank exposed. But the British take advantage of that because loyalists take them through there. There are battles in which there's only Americans fighting with the except of a British officer leading the loyalist. The one of the loyalists that we follow in the film is sort of driven because of his loyalist sympathies from his his home and town in what is now Vermont and ends up in Canada and forms a loyalist regiment of which there's legions of them all around and plays a significant role in the battle of Bennington which is a loss for the British. There's lots of, I think, what the main impediment for the British is is I would say the size of the continent, the unpredictability of the weather, the distance from the home office, and the power of the ideas and the sense that you're here imposing your will on us. And those are really, really powerful things. All of those, you know, make it I mean, we have a British soldier. So, in some ways, it's funny. He says, you know, that you The word America takes up no more space on a map than Yorkshire, right? America is much bigger than that.
SB: You also have a soldier saying, "Have you forgot us? Where are you? Here we are." Right? I'm going to steal from Rick Atkinson. And you know, he says, "War never follows the script that you think it might follow." And that's true for both us and for them. And so, nobody knows how it's going to turn out. And they did not understand, as Ken was just saying, the landscape, the weather, and the cause. And those three things with them very far away. You know, it's an unlikely underdog story.
MT: Absolutely. And the geography thing is certainly a major factor, as you say, taking months to get messages or men across the ocean and then back again and the great distances. But the British - both of you have said us and them. I don't think the British saw it as us and them. these were British subjects over here. and we're all us. And they I don't think understood the change of mind, the the the understanding that people had here that they were feeling to themselves to be more Americans. Yes, they were British subjects under the titular authority of the king, but they didn't think of themselves really as British. They were they were beginning to think of themselves as something different even before the war began.
KB: Yeah. Very much so. You know that when the colonists in Boston dumped tea in the harbor, there crudely as Native Americans. This is not to deflect the blame. It's to say we're, as the scholar Phil Deloria says in her film, we're Aboriginal. We're no longer separated. And I think this is a two-way street. The Americans are forever thinking they can't possibly be doing this to us, our parents, our brothers. The British are saying the same thing. They're also very, very brutal, and the way they want to handle this is with extraordinary brutality, and so are the patriots. I think we have to take off the sentimental nostalgic blinders that the revolution always has. And when Benjamin Franklin's son, William, who was the deposed Royal Governor of New Jersey, is imprisoned and then released, expected to go back to England, he starts a terrorist organization killing patriots, just as there were many patriot organizations killing loyalists. And so, you have to get down to that nitty-gritty. It's really bad in New Jersey and South Carolina and the the raids and the um ambush is and the deaths of British and Hessian soldiers coming from brutal American tactics often in in response to the brutality of an occupying army. So it's not that the British are sort of reluctantly prosecuting this war against their own. There's a few instances when how kind of holds up. It could have just wrapped them up at Long Island and doesn't could have done the same thing at White Plains and doesn't. And and you do have a sense that it is your own countrymen. But let's Also remember what the British did to Scotland, what the British did to Ireland. These are a people not afraid to just be butchers of their own people in the most ghastly way. And history tells us this. It's such a complicated story. And what we wanted to communicate is that it doesn't fit nicely even into our more complex ideas about reluctance to fight and and whatever. There are fire eating patriots early on and there are lots of loyalists going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." You know, don't do this. And in Britain, there are people saying, "Let's not be so hard on them. They we understand where they're coming from." And others who are, you know, almost the parody of the Hamilton thing of of King George III, you know, we're going to send you know, kill your friends and family to remind you of our love. That's and that's basically what they said. And so, it's a very, very bloody civil war. And it's important then that we character it not just by giving dimension to the familiar people but as you say John Greenwood the name that you mentioned is 14 years old when he joins the patriot clause. Joseph Martin is 15. Betsy Ambler is 10. She comes from well to-do family but she'll be a refugee for most of the revolution she's from Yorktown and it's close to the to the Chesapeake and it means that they're subject to British raids and so she finds herself and her family for most of what is a very long revolution on the road trying to escape the British or trying to get to some place that feels safe that their mother has had a nervous breakdown, is having children. They're trying to figure out how to grow up in the middle of a revolution. And that's an incredibly important perspective to understand.
MT: Yeah, I think that's true. A lot of people were just really hoping to avoid the violence that was going on. And as you say, there were going a lot of more civilian deaths in the American Revolution than in other wars. Poor Betsy and reminds me a bit of um Wilmer McClean of the Civil War. They tried to escape the war by moving to Yorktown. Like Wilmer McClean moved to Appomattox Courthouse.
KB: They No, they were from Yorktown and they had to leave Yorktown.
MT: Oh, I thought they were living up north.
KB: Came back to it briefly and then the exigencies of the war and not not the sort of final great set piece, but earlier raids that Benedict Arnold with a loyalist group called the American Legion, you can't make this up. Um is is waging war on the Virginia countryside. And so because of her own father's involvement in the government, he they're they're in Williamsburg. They've moved farther into the west. They've come back, but then the capital moves away from there because the British are threatening. So they're they're on the move and they're nowhere near Yorktown when the climactic battle happens. So it's not a it doesn't have a Wilmer McClain stuff, but it does ... I mean we put her in because she's from the place where this whole thing is going to get at least in a military sense resolved. And let's remember it's 6 and 1/2 years after Lexington. And at Lexington, the chances of success are zero. And I think we forget about that. We just presume that George Washington knows he's George Washington. He has no idea that he's George Washington, that there's going to be a the District of Columbia is going to be named after him. There's going to be a tall obelisk in his honor, that he's going to be on the dollar bill in the quarter that there's going to be a state named after him that every practically every other state has a county called that or a town called that that is a consequence of the revolution these were guys that had just said that we pledge our lives our fortunes and our sacred honor and though that can tell us and they didn't know how it was going to turn out even when the French come in and Burgoyne and his loyalist and native and German allies fail at Saratoga and the French say yep we'll come in help you. And then Spain and the Netherlands, making this the fourth global war over the prize of North America. Nobody still knew how it would turn out. And when the British recaptured Savannah and Charleston, it looks really, really, really bleak. And no amount of French help seems to be helping. In the first couple instances, it doesn't help. And then something happens and it's a really, really good story. And you have to do good history is sort of paying attention because if you're telling a story right, meaning you're in the moment, it might not turn out the way you know it did and that keeps people we hope at the edge of their seats.
I see Shelby Foote on your on your on your bookcase. He told me God called me up and he said God is the greatest dramatist you know I mean here's a man who who works you know 20 hours a day for years to keep the war the president and he hears about the surrender and finally feels a few days later he's got enough time to go to the theater can't make that up
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MT: There are aspects even of the American Revolution which if you were reading a book of fiction would think was just silly like the fact that the British at after the Battle of Brooklyn were held back by a strange fog and wind that kept them from trapping the Americans and
KB: and Howe's reluctance to drive the knife in right for whatever reason. You know, Israel Putnam says he's you know a friend or no general at all. I meaning is he traitorous and and it's not - it's just a couple months later or less at what planes he does the same thing. He's got him totally wrapped up and doesn't pursue it.
MT: Yeah, I think the Americans were very lucky to have General Howe in command for the first year or two of the war. In addition to the the traditional civil war aspect of the war, we see a lot of African-Americans, both free and enslaved, and Native Americans taking up positions on either side, mostly with the British, but on both sides. I guess the Native Americans were were certainly interested in who was going to be less threatening to taking their land. The enslaved people I've always had trouble with because neither side really guaranteed them freedom. I'm not sure what - why they understood they were fighting for would improve their lives in any appreciable way.
SB: Well, I think it's hard to really answer why individual people make individual decisions. But I think what we tried to do in the film was show how both the British and the patriots were trying to get those communities on their side and promising all kinds of different versions of a better life. You can, I think, understand why they would side with whichever cause in that moment was promising them some better version of the lives that they had. And that is really really important part of the story that I think few people know for both the enslaved and free black populations and the Native American populations. It's a really important part of the American Revolution. So I hope that in telling those stories both how a community like the Haudenosaunee was split into and itself in a civil war to the incredible Stockbridge Indians who fought with us to the unbelievably complicated and devastating story what happens to the Cherokees, but what Lord Dunmore does, what happens in South Carolina. I mean, Ken, I'm going to toss the ball to you to just talk about James Forten for a second because it's there are different ways to get at how the governments or our beginning governments are trying to entice those populations onto their sides. And then you have heroes like James Forten.
KB: So, this is a story about big ideas, as we've been saying. And the biggest idea is liberty and freedom. And that is going to strike enslaved people more than it's going to probably inspire anybody else. And you're trying to make decisions about what's best for you and your family. So in Virginia, where Lord Dunmore cynically, an owner of of enslaved people, suggests that the British army will free those enslaved people who belong to rebels, not those enslaved people who belong to loyalists, and that many do flock to him. Complete disaster. Disease overtakes them. they're defeated in in various places. But it does suggest that the British might in the short run, even though their entire world economy depends on slavery. And there are 13 colonies which we think are the only colonies they have, ever. There are 13 colonies in the Caribbean that are completely dependent on slave labor. It's where they make their profits and that's what they're very anxious not to lose. Only Virginia and South Carolina are profitable in terms of relative speaking for the obvious reason is they have huge enslaved populations.
If you're going to in say Virginia as Dunmore does offshore deposed in a ship suggests that people going to flock flock to him whether they're you're their masters or rebels are loyalists and as one commentator in film says "how are you going to know?" you know if the if these people are coming to you and then you have people like James Forten who is born free who is 9 years old who he who is present in Philadelphia when the first public reading of the declaration happens and he not for a second he thinks all those self-evident truths are true for him as well and he spends an entire life fighting for the revolution not accepting a pension becoming well to-do funding the abolitionist movement. His granddaughter ends up during the Civil War going down to the sea islands to help the not emancipated yet but freed Africans sort of begin to make a a thing so so Forten, James Forten and his his granddaughter Charlotte are significant in American history.
And then I think the real thing is the native populations. The British had earned the respect of many native people by defeating the French. The native people are not living in some idyllic thing. Each nation is separate and distinct the way France is different from Belgium. They've got their own foreign policy. They've been on the world stage as traders and diplomats for, you know, 150 years. They know these people and they're trying to make good decisions. And what they're most fearful of are what they call in some instances the hated Bostononians. The people who the British have been keeping in check their colonists from flowing over the Appalachians in great numbers and just taking over Indian land. Not just on an individual basis but amidst the speculators like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. This is a very complex dynamics about real estate from people who have a land but don't have titles and sense of property in the same way English-speaking people do or Europeans do.
And so Native Americans are going to make, as Sarah's suggesting, choices that are intensely local. And also, you know, we came across a woman named Rebecca Tanner. she's a Mohegan woman. We presume therefore she is from Connecticut. She lost five sons fighting for the patriot cause. I know of no other patriot mother who lost that many. So it gives you a kind of extraordinary sense of both the large geopolitical sense of the war and your kinds of chess pieces that that nations have always done and played with lives in such an uncaring way. And then the the utter immediacy of a choice. I'm going with the British because I think we can be free. And it "we" means me, my family, my children, my children's children's, my children's children's children. And that as Annette Gordon-Reed, the historian says in our film, this is us. powerful motivator.
And if you're serving people and they're talking about freedom and slavery and and all this sort of stuff, you care about it as much about as what Jane Kamensky, the scholar, says in her film, The Liberty Talk, you care about it as much, if not more than anybody else. So you what you're obligated to do in good storytelling is give agency to all actors.
SB: And I think also, we've talked a lot about this, that you want to give the audience some context, as Ken was just saying, some understanding of why people did and didn't do certain things and some empathy. I think that's really important.
KB: Yeah.
SB: From every ... for every story we're telling and for every perspective.
KB: That's right. Even a loyalist. You get it. They're not the enemy. To be a loyalist is to be a conservative. The British constitutional monarchy is the best form of government on earth. They're right. Why would we throw it all away? My prosperity, my literacy, my my health, my land, all of this has come from that. Why would I invest in this idea that's completely unproven? It's completely understandable. So, if you just call balls and strikes and don't make the other wrong, you just say this is who they are. You can still root for the patriots to win, as we do, you know, as you can say the way the way we use the word "we" and "them."
It's it's still you're not going to make Sarah Fisher a Quaker and her husband from Philadelphia, wrong. They just are. They just happen to be who they happen to be. And you're not going to make a an enslaved American who rushes to Lord Dunmore thinking this is the free ticket. And in some cases, it is. There are enslaved people who end up being freed by the British. And the British insist over Washington's objectives that they leave with all the refugees leaving Charleston and Savannah and particularly New York for Nova Scotia and places in Caribbean after the war and black people do leave as a result of some of those deals. So they were more or less right in making that deal and everybody's got their own calculus and and I think you have to just respect I mean if we're going to love these ideas then you have to respect the agency that these ideas give to individuals to act in what they think is their own best interest whether you're Native American Shawnee or a Delaware that are as distinct from one another and yet ally or as Sarah was saying, the Haudenosaunee, the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy or the Cherokee in the south or other tribes in the Midwest that are involved intimately in this struggle in this global war and and are as important players as the European powers then everybody's get you got to extend to everyone what Thomas Jefferson was saying and what Yuval Levin was reminding us all you know and that "all" is he really just change rocked our boat, right? Because that's that's where the door got opened and you cannot close it when you say all.
MT: Yeah. Something that I guess really struck me when I first started reading about the American Revolution was how uncontroversial slavery was before in the pre-war era. There was a sense, I guess, in life that most people were born into the station that they would live. If you were born a slave, you were born a slave. If you're born an aristocrat, you were born an aristocrat. Whatever.
And the American Revolution changed that idea during the revolution change that? It actually started out, it seemed like in the early colonial protests, we're we're asserting our rights as Englishmen. In other words, we have certain privileges because of who we are and our status in society. And over a course of several years, it changed to all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. That was kind of an idea that blossomed during the war. And yeah, of course, slaves had every incentive to be interested in that new idea. One of the things that struck me though too was there seems to be a tendency to be an effective authoritarian or a king or whatever you want to call them. You have to divide your subjects against one another so that you can come in and be the leader and peacemaker. And it seems like that's . . . the British tried to play that to some extent. They didn't have as much luck as they would have liked getting the colonists to be loyalists. But they did try to encourage black and native Americans to join the fight. against these colonists who they said quite correctly or probably want to take your land and keep you enslaved. Yeah, it was an interesting change that took place over that period of time.
KB: The idea, you know, gets out, right? And so, you're absolutely right. Bernard Bailyn, the late historian, is in our film and makes a really good point about this that before the the Revolution, people spoke about the evils of slavery, but it was generally not that discussed. But the second you start talking about liberty and freedom, the second you start as a rich planter start equating what the British are doing to you as a form of slavery, then the hypocrisy is there and the opening of the door is there. And if somebody like a Jefferson, an owner of hundreds of human beings, gives voice to these enlightenment principles where they're no longer just disagreements between Englishmen, but big, large, big ideas, the biggest ideas there are, stuff, then you have the unintended consequences. The democracy is not the object of the revolution, it's a consequence of it. And a lot of it comes from all of these free electrons happening and all of this stuff as as Sarah was saying, Rick Atkinson saying, everybody has said, anybody who studied war, that the second the first shots are fired, all the plans go out the window. And so what happens is you have a series of unintended consequences. One of which really important one is that the people who do the fighting and dying and winning the revolution are actually not the people meeting in Philadelphia. They are there, of course, the Washingtons and the Hamiltons, but it's so-called ordinary people, teenagers, you know, near well, second and third sons without a chance of an inheritance, Native Americans, freed blacks, and they win the war. Recent immigrants that, you know, and they win the war, and they've got to be given something. So, what they get is the foot in the door, and what we get, not intended at the beginning, is a democracy.
MT: Yeah. And it it began a process, as you say, that took generations to...
KB: that's right
MT: improve on but I think you really see the beginning of the abolitionist movement coming out of the ideals of revolution
SB: 100%
MT: certainly as you said, James Forten personifies that right
SB: Absolutely and and and as Ken was just saying Bernard Bailyn makes the point beautifully and there's a often said that you know our American Revolution was a civil war and our Civil War was our revolution and that is part of that story too
KB: there's a commentator 19th century commentator named John Chapman. He said, "There was never a moment in our history when slavery was not a sleeping serpent. It lay coiled under the table during the deliberations of the constitutional convention. Thereafter, slavery was on everyone's mind, if not always on his tongue, out of the bag." Right? Because once we've adopted the principles of the revolution, slavery is an obvious contradiction to all of that. It's not only it's over. It may take four score in nine years. It's over.
SB: Same with the ladies.
KB: Same with the ladies. And we have not brought that up. And that's just shameful. A majority of the population are women. They are hugely responsible to the success of the pre-revolutionary resistance movement, doing the sacrifices, running the the farms, being present at all of the battles with children, tending to the wounded, burying the dead, articulating with extraordinary force. Abigail Adams may be the best writer of them all as is Mercy Otis Warren, the first historian of the revolution and a a philosopher and a satirist and a poet. And it helps if you're a filmmaker if Meryl Streep reads her her her quotes in our film, but it's you know there it's a central story and always neglected. We see this wars as masculine exercises. So . . .
SB: women are always at the heart of a story of war. No question about it. You really see that here.
MT: Yeah. And I guess we tend to get that because we didn't see a lot of immediate changes for women that took even longer than freeing the slaves,
SB: right? And there aren't actually even archivally - Ken mentioned earlier, you know, the beautiful footage that we filmed of the women at the edge of the water in the sun doing laundry and, you know, washing clothes that had been stained and bandages that had been stained. And one of the reasons we ended up imagining a shoot like that is because there's virtually no paintings of that or renderings of so much of what women did. And we ended up shooting beautiful live cinematography with extraordinary women who spend their time at these reenactments and as part of that kind of living history and they're obviously central to all the living history museums that we were able to film at.
MT: Yeah. I've always been struck by the story of Jemima Warner, which I'm pretty sure did not, was not included in your in your documentary and mostly because there's not solid evidence and proof of of exactly what she did. But she was just an amazing woman. to be a 17-year-old girl who participated in Arnold's march across the wilderness of Maine, when half the army turned back because it was too difficult to make the walk and her active role in assisting the men on the front line at the siege of Quebec and and being shot in the head and killed by the British while doing that. You know, she's just this amazing heroic figure who shows bravery in battle and everything you could want and no one's ever heard of her,
SB: right? But also as as Tim O'Brien told us so beautifully when we started our Vietnam series. Anytime you talk about war, you need to think about every mother who lost a son, every wife who lost a husband, every sister who lost a brother. There are human consequences to those numbers and human beings behind those stories. So you need to show that.
KB: And for every person you can't absolutely positively prove you know that what they did there's a Margaret Corbin at Fort Washington and her her bravery is documented. that her husband is killed and she keeps fighting. It's an amazing amazing thing and she's become so effective that she becomes the center of all the Hessian attention. her her position is where they focus their guns and she's wounded in a couple of places and it's true.
MT: It is an incredible story. I have to admit I've made over 400 episodes on the American Revolution podcast so I'm clearly not good at this. But how did you find your ability to distill this topic into just six episodes there? had to have been interesting topics that you had to leave on the cutting room floor. Were there any difficult debates over what to put in and what to keep out?
KB: Always. That's our process. It's really wonderful. But you're telling a story and it's a coherent story. You're telling it to people who may be ignorant, but you want to draw them into a story because of the absence of photographs and news reels, you can't make it 18 hours the way our Vietnam was or even 15 hours the way our our World War II film called "The War" was so the twelve seemed to be sort of the limit of of being able to bend materials, but we always it's always a process of distillation, right? We we start out with 40 or 50 times the amount of information. We've heard all these stories and you leave without yelling. There are disagreements. You pull stuff out, you put it back in, you take it out again, you leave it out, you're - it then survives because you've mastered the narrative. You just you want to serve the larger story. and you and you're not an encyclopedia, you're a story. And stories involve editing and the sacrifice or let's reverse it and say it's taking one person and letting them be stand in and be signal for hundreds of other people. So you don't have to list every battle. You don't have to list every general. You don't have to list every woman who ever possibly maybe fought in this battle or you have to do this. You just begin to distill over time a process, just like the American process of a more perfect film.
SB: and you know it's additive and subtractive. Ken and I were talking on Saturday. It's it expands and contracts the whole time and Ken is a master storyteller and at the end of the day the films are as long as they sort of need to be given our process and you finally walk away. And that doesn't mean there aren't things later that are still, we're all still thinking about but that's the film that needed to be made and it's the length that it needed to be. It's a funny thing. They We never know exactly how long the films are going to be when we start. We sort of have an idea and sometimes they're longer and sometimes they're shorter. It's really interesting.
MT: Well, you know, as I said, I did get a preview. I think it did come out very well.
KB: Thank you.
MT: But the process, I guess that it just, you know, working on this thing for over 10 years and three co-directors who you had to have fights over various things over the course of or or at least disagreements over the course of. . .
SB: Here's what I here's what I people ask me this. all the time in terms of you know what that process is like to work with Ken and I think it's so you really you have Ken right and then you have Jeff Ward the masterful writer and just distiller of information before it even kind of comes into us into the editing room and David and me. Nut what we bring every day with our editors and just our extraordinary staff is everyone brings their best argument every single day so it's not a disagreement in terms of like I want ahh! No, it's like this feels really interesting to me and here are the reasons why or if we do this we should remember to think about that and if we think about that what does that mean about that and so it's I mean I don't know Ken it's sort of like it's almost sometimes it can be like a debate where you're where you have to literally bring your most convincing argument to each other and then you're also feeling a story and feeling a movie it's not a. . .
KB: I will sometimes say you know that's great but we can't handle it right now. Remind me in 6 months. Don't Don't forget that quote. Don't forget that stuff. I need I've got more important work to do. You're talking to me about a decoration in the attic and I'm trying to get the foundation right. Soon as I get the foundation right, then I can imagine that the house is going to be built and in the house there'll be an attic and that decoration on the attic will be there and then please tell me about that. But right now, I've got to be focused on this. So, it's not at all arguments ever. It's all. . .
SB: I might, you know, we might be like that wall in the wrong place.
KB: That's right.
SB: We got to move it. And how does that It takes a lot of brains and a lot of thinking and a lot of trying. I do think Christopher Brown was traveling with us in Atlanta and he, you know, he was just reminding us that to him it's not surprising that it takes this long to make a six-part 12-hour film because you need to live with it. You need to think about it. You need to consider it. You need to let the film itself live and breathe to get it right. And you can't do that quickly. You can't write a good memo quickly. You can't write a good book quickly. You can't have a good friendship that's quick. You can love somebody quickly, but time will will tell you a lot more. And that's true in making a big film.
KB: It also gives you a chance to listen to the weak voice inside you that. . .
SB: exactly
KB: has been saying for the last six screenings, this isn't quite right. And you've got you're distracted by more important and more immediate things. And all of a sudden, you just wake wake up one morning and go, I've been listening to this voice. It's so weak, but it's saying that this thing that we've just accepted and whatever. It's why in our editing room, our main editing room, we have a neon sign that says "it's complicated" because you want to be able to listen to all those weak voices inside you and to be able to articulate it. And sometimes you forget it. You let it go and and then at the last moment you go, "Wait a second. I can't let it go. We've already locked it, but we're we got to unlock it and fix it." But it also means you take complexity of a story that doesn't fit into traditional storytelling stuff and you have to, you know, destabilize it because reality doesn't fit nicely into the storytelling laws, you know, that Aristotle laid out, that we all still follow. And so, you have to always surrender to what actually happened. Even if it means making a scene that was working perfectly not work as perfectly as it did before, you have to serve the larger truth of it.
MT: You talk about the American Revolution has a story and it is a very interesting and compelling one. Is there something from the American Revolution that you think we still need to keep in mind today in terms of dealing with modern politics and and how the country is working today? Are there are there lessons from the American Revolution that particularly come to mind?
KB: Yeah, all the time, you know, that we you know we are told every day that we're in a a crisis and so I think going back and understanding the origins of of our beginning help us have a perspective on where we are right now and for everybody regardless of what your political persuasion might be and understanding and helps you maybe reinvest in the original ideals that propelled this country into existence.
SB: I would say I think the American Revolution is a really surprising story. It's extremely inspiring. I think it has the possibility to to really ignite patriotism in all of us in really exciting and fun and new ways at a time when I think we need that.
MT: Yeah, I think that's true. Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence something about people are predisposed to to to put up with. . .
KB:All experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable. It just means that everybody's been under the boot of an authoritarian and we're not doing that anymore. We're creating something that's going to require extraordinary diligence. and virtue and lifelong learning. That's the pursuit of happiness. And that's a citizen. And that requires just an unbelievable amount of energy to overcome the inertia of being a subject, putting up with it. And that is one of my most favorite phrases in the Declaration because in there is all that we have to do today. We have to go back and learn. We have to remember and we have to understand that tendency of human beings is to just go okay fine you made the train runs on time we're very very happy about that and then everything else is fine and that when you create - this is a very very complicated with a as Christopher Brown the scholar says in our film a wide variety of people when you start making a "them" of the people that are "us" then you violated the the original compact that Americans made when these 13 disunited colonies filled with wide variety of people in each one and figured out how to come together. That's our that's our job right now.
MT: I think that's right. For me it seems like there's it's always an ongoing struggle to be a free citizen. That's something that people are always going to push back against in the government and we have to push back against them to maintain our freedoms and that's an important thing to always remember that it's an ongoing fight I guess. Well, Ken, Sarah, I really appreciate your time. As I said, I'm looking forward to this documentary. becoming available to the public and everybody being able to enjoy it. I know
KB: November 16th.
MT: November 16th.
SB: Yes. Don't miss it.
KB: Broadcast streaming DVDs, if you know what that is, and Blu-rays and all sorts of stuff.
MT: I'm sure everyone's going to love it. Thanks again for your time today. I appreciate it.
Thanks again for joining my discussion with Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein, co-producers of The American Revolution.
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The American Revolution documentary will air on PBS beginning on November 16, 2025. You can also watch the podcast on the PBS website: https://www.pbs.org/shows or steaming on the PBS App: https://www.pbs.org/pbs-app
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