Crispus Attucks. Lexington and Concord. John Adams. Sam Adams.
How much do you actually remember about the American Revolution from grade school? And how much do you think the average American adult knows?
Filmmaker Sarah Botstein, who with Ken Burns and David Schmidt serves as co-director on the new PBS Documentary, “The American Revolution,” has plenty to say on the subject. Ten years in the making, the six-part series premieres Sunday at 8 p.m.
Asked whether most Americans learned what they needed to about the Revolution in elementary school, Botstein didn’t hesitate. “Definitely not.”
“I do not think Americans know very much about the American Revolution,” said Botstein, who grew up on the Bard College campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, where her father, Leon Botstein, is president. She attended Red Hook public schools and now divides her time between New York City and Tivoli.
“We think we know a lot about it,” she added. “We don’t understand that it was a civil war, that it was a global war, that it took nearly 10 years to fight and win, that we didn’t win alone. I don’t think we understand the centrality of the Native American experience or how both sides manipulated the devastating pieces of our history around slavery. And we don’t fully appreciate how inspiring and complicated our origin story really is.”
She paused, then added with a laugh: “We definitely didn’t learn what we needed to in third grade.”
With “The American Revolution,” Botstein, Burns, and Schmidt seek to fill those gaps, illuminating what remains, 250 years later, the most consequential conflict in U.S. history. The film arrives at a moment when many of the same issues that defined the Revolution, tyranny, representation, and the limits of executive power, are again the subject of bitter national debate.
The American Revolution started on April 19, 1775 and pitted the 13 colonies against Great Britain, whose inhabitants sought independence. Colonial leaders crafted the Declaration of Independence and signed it on July 4, 1776—a milestone whose 250th anniversary will be celebrated in 2026.
The American Revolution was essentially over in late 1781, with the British surrender at Yorktown, Va. On. Sept. 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris ratified the independence of the 13 North American states.
A Hudson Valley Story
The series will strike a chord with viewers in the Hudson Valley, whose terrain once formed the northern front of the 13 colonies and the setting for some of the Revolution’s decisive moments. It also marks another return to the region for Burns, who explored the lives of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in his 2014 PBS documentary “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,” researching extensively at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park.
Botstein served as an advisor on the film. And as someone with enduring ties to the Hudson Valley, the “American Revolution” offers another chance to showcase the region she calls home as she works with the preeminent documentary filmmaker of our time.
“One of the really fun things about making the film was learning how much Dutchess and Ulster counties, from Fort Ticonderoga to south of West Point into New York City played such a central role in the meat of the early part of the war,” Botstein said.
John Iannotti taught social studies at the secondary level from 1975 until his retirement in 2009. His last 29 years were spent at Onteora High School. During his tenure he taught courses in Western Civilization, American Studies, American History, economics and political science.
“As a documentarian, Burns is exemplary, Iannotti said. “We may differ as to conclusions drawn from the historical sources, but as an artist, he is unparalleled. I thoroughly enjoyed his works on the Civil War and baseball.”
And let’s get this out of the way right now, concerning the burning of Kingston in 1777:
“We don’t do a big scene on the burning of Kingston,” Botstein said. “We never pretend to be comprehensive. We can’t possibly be comprehensive.”
Still, the Hudson Valley figures prominently throughout, with filming locations including:
Ulster County
Minnewaska State Park Preserve
Dutchess County
Nine Partners Meeting House
Blithewood (Bard College)
Montgomery Place/Blithewood (Bard College)
Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site
Tivoli Bays
Columbia County
Cheviot Landing
Clermont State Historic Site
Harrier Hill Park
Greene County
RamsHorn-Livingston Audubon Sanctuary
(For the record, Greene County was named for Nathanael Greene, who appears prominently in the film. “We shot a ton of it pretty much off my backyard,” Botstein said of Tivoli.)
History, Reanimated
As in past collaborations, Burns and his team present history with cinematic urgency and emotional clarity. The documentary’s moment-by-moment treatment of the war’s brutal start is gripping, haunting, revelatory and commanding of attention in the vein of a Hollywood blockbuster with A-list, box-office celebrities.
Adding luster to all of this are the voices of well-known personalities, including narrator Peter Coyote, and Meryl Streep, a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, and Paul Giamatti, who assume the roles of historical figures in “The American Revolution.” All three are veterans of working with Burns.
Why, after decades of films, do audiences still turn to Burns and his collaborators to tell the nation’s story?
“We’re interested in the story of us. What makes America a special place? What makes it a complicated place? How to be patriotic and critical and open and to commemorate our history, celebrate the things we’ve done well, look squarely at the things we haven’t,” Botstein said. “That’s human nature.”
She continued: “You cannot do that without telling the story of famous, great people like Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington, and lesser-known people who are just as heroic and important to our history. Tying those two things together is at the heart of what we do.”
A Quick Refresher
And what about that pop quiz from the start of this story? Here are your answers:
Crispus Attucks: According to the National Park Service, “Crispus Attucks, a sailor of mixed African and Indigenous ancestry, died in Boston on March 5, 1770, after British soldiers fired two musket balls into his chest. His death and that of four other men at the hands of the 29th Regiment became known as the Boston Massacre. Death instantly transformed Attucks from an anonymous sailor into a martyr for a burgeoning revolutionary cause.”
Lexington and Concord: The Park Service notes that “Minute Man National Historical Park in Lexington, Lincoln and Concord, Mass., preserves and interprets the sites, structures and landscapes that became the field of battle during the first armed conflict of the American Revolution on April 19, 1775. It was here that British colonists risked their lives and property defending their ideals of liberty and self-determination. The events of that day have been popularized by succeeding generations as the ‘shot heard ’round the world.’ Often referred to as the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the fighting raged over 16 miles from Boston to Concord and involved some 1,700 British regulars and more than 4,000 colonial militia.”
British casualties totaled 273 (73 killed, 174 wounded, 26 missing); colonial casualties, 95 (49 killed, 41 wounded, 5 missing).
John Adams: According to the White House Historical Association, Adams gained prominence after defending the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre, attended the First Continental Congress as a delegate from Massachusetts, served as the nation’s first vice president and was elected its second president.
Samuel Adams: Brewer; delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses; later lieutenant governor and governor of Massachusetts.
John W. Barry is a reporter for The Overlook. Reach him at john@theoverlooknews.com.