Ken Burns Shows the Revolution Was No Storybook Fight

Ken Burns' new documentary, The American Revolution, is poised to reshape how viewers see the nation's founding conflict, writes George Will in a column for the Washington Post. Its six two-hour episodes, launching Sunday on PBS, present a "bewildering, sometimes dismaying, but ultimately exhilarating" take on the war, writes Will. In his view, Burns and co-creators Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt don't flinch from the war's complexities. They note that the American Revolution was as much a civil war as a revolution, with neighbors and even families split between Loyalists and Patriots.

Native Americans were inevitable losers, Will writes, certain to see their land taken from them regardless of who emerged the victor. They weren't the only players with very little. The documentary spotlights how America's fight for independence was largely waged by the "poorest of the poor—jobless laborers and landless tenants, second and third sons without hope of an inheritance, debtors and British deserters, indentured servants and apprentices, felons hoping to win pardons."

But a war that Will argues has "done more to improve the course of human events than any other event in history" was decided by mostly small and brief battles, where the number of Americans killed typically measured in the low hundreds. Compare that to the nearly 20,000 British soldiers who died on day one of WWI's Battle of the Somme. Will's ultimate take? "Consider this documentary the unofficial beginning of our 250th birthday party. ... For six nights, the view from the hilltop is riveting." (Read his full column here.)