It was the American Revolution, “more than any other single event,” the famed historian Gordon Wood once observed, “that made America into the most liberal, democratic and modern nation in the world.” Someone should tell Ken Burns. The famed documentary filmmaker’s latest effort, The American Revolution, fails to capture the grandeur and uniqueness of our nation’s seminal event.
Burns rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, making some truly outstanding documentaries. His works on the American Civil War, the U.S. Congress, and Huey Long, among others, have stood the test of time. He has done much to make history both popular and accessible. However, in more recent years, several of his films have been colored by their presentism and revisionism. His long-awaited examination of the American Revolution is no exception.
Indeed, the film opens with a misleading and historically inaccurate narrative.
“Long before 13 British colonies made themselves into the United States, the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy — Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Oneida, and Mohawk — had created a union of their own that they called the Haudenosaunee — a democracy that had flourished for centuries,” the narrator says.
The documentary then quotes a spokesman for the Iroquois Nation named Canasatego: “We heartily recommend union. We are a powerful confederacy. And by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh strength and power. Therefore, whatever befalls you, never fall out one with another.”
Burns would have viewers believe that Native Americans were responsible for the flowering of American democracy. But as a number of historians and writers have noted, this is entirely false. In fact, the idea that the Iroquois inspired America’s founders is an old theory that was debunked long ago. As the writer Dan McLaughlin put it: “it is agitprop masquerading as scholarship, in the same way that the 1619 Project relied upon cherry-picking scraps of the historical record and hoping nobody noticed the rest of the facts.” Later, Burns claims that George Washington “fired the very first shot” of the French and Indian War, a conflict that helped precipitate the Revolution. But this too is another claim that was long ago dismissed.
Yet, Burns’s gravest sin isn’t the glaring — and, it must be said, intentionally misleading—historical narrative. Rather, it is the film’s insistence on stripping the majesty away from the Revolution and our founders.
Wood, arguably the grand dean of Revolutionary War studies, hardly gets any screen time. Instead, the script and countless commentators routinely appear to constantly connect everything to Native Americans “losing land” or slavery. In fact, neither played a seminal part in the Revolution. To be sure, both played some role, one that was neglected or overlooked for many years. Yet Burns gives them undue prominence and attention. The constant insistence on bringing these topics up makes the film practically unwatchable.
Good history is nuanced. Our Founding Fathers weren’t perfect, a fact that makes them more interesting and their accomplishments all the more amazing. Our revolution was different from others.
As Wood pointed out in his classic book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution: Our leaders “made speeches, not bombs; they wrote learned pamphlets, not manifestos. They were not abstract theorists and they were not social levelers. They did not kill one another; they did not devour themselves.”
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It could very easily have gone another way, as the French Revolution, with all of its bloody excesses, would demonstrate a few years later. In our present era, revolutions — Russian, Chinese, Cuban — precipitate persecution, slaughter, and famine. Instead, the American Revolution birthed an era of freedom and created the greatest force for good that the world has ever known. Other revolutions had Lenin, Mao, and Castro. We had Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton.
Americans are profoundly lucky to have the Founders that we did. Great men who did great things. Burns demeans and debases their accomplishments and what they have meant for the world. Thankfully, his narrative now seems out of lockstep with the direction that the country is now headed. We are a fortunate nation and a fortunate people.
As Washington would say: “The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all of this.”
The writer is a Washington, D.C., based foreign affairs analyst
