‘With ‘The American Revolution’ series, director Ken Burns warns against the tendency to judge heroes of the past through the eyes of the present’
Ken Burns began working on his documentary a year before the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, in December 2015. Ten years later, his work – a masterful six-episode series dedicated to the American War of Independence (1775-1783) – has aired at a radically different moment. No longer is the United States celebrating a multiracial nation moving toward that “more perfect union” promised by the Founding Fathers; instead, minorities are being pushed to the margins of the national narrative. As the country prepares to celebrate, in the summer of 2026, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, divisions over the nation’s identity only continue to deepen.
The six episodes of the series The American Revolution, directed by Burns with Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, were broadcast between November 16 and 21 on PBS, the public broadcast station accused by Congressional Republicans of pro-Democrat bias, to the point that they cut its funding in July. Burns, who has chronicled American wars for 35 years – from the Civil War (1861-1865) to Vietnam (1964-1975) – went on a promotional tour through 32 cities and gave countless interviews. He sought to defuse accusations of “wokeness” and avoided mentioning the president’s name. His ambition: unity.
In his series, the director does not shy away from the original sin of the American Republic: slavery, and the hypocrisy of the Founders who declared that “all men are created equal” while refusing to free their own slaves. After July 4, 1776, it would take 89 more years to abolish slavery and 144 more years to grant women the right to vote, he points out.
‘A history of division’
Burns does not hide the fact that, beyond the revolt against taxes imposed by Britain and the noble ideals of justice and liberty professed by the Founders, it was the desire for territorial expansion that motivated the New World rebels, while the British Crown had banned any colonization west of the Appalachians, on Native American land. From the opening footage, Burns highlights that Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), one of the architects of independence, drew inspiration from the confederation of Iroquois nations, a proposal Republicans deem absurd.
You have 43.78% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
