140: The American Revolution Within The Whimsical World of Ken Burns, Pt. 1

What happens when a twelve-hour history epic meets two hosts who love maps, motives, and messy truths? We dove into the first two parts of PBS’s American Revolution and came up with a sharper, more honest read: there’s real value in the battle maps, the troop movements, and the logistics that make Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill feel tangible. But there’s also a framing choice that changes everything—less about English liberties, more about equality—and that shift colors Washington’s introduction, Jefferson’s contradictions, and how the documentary asks us to weigh ideals against interests.

We start with the early case for union: Franklin’s “Join, or Die,” the Iroquois Confederacy as political inspiration, and why the colonies were more rivals than teammates. Then we follow the money and the maps. The 1763 Proclamation Line strangled elite land speculation west of the Appalachians, pulling Virginia’s planter class and New England’s merchants toward the same fight for leverage. The film nails the military spine—Henry Knox’s impossible cannon haul from Ticonderoga, the brutal math at Bunker Hill, the strategic obsession with the Hudson–Lake Champlain corridor—while stumbling when every beat becomes a litmus test. Washington, introduced first as a slaveholder, is historically accurate yet context-poor; Benedict Arnold, by contrast, is drawn with nuance: daring, wounded, essential, then embittered.

We also zoom out to the British view: the empire’s real prize was the Caribbean and the southern colonies, not a rebellious Boston. Add in the Hessians, smallpox, and Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, and you get a war shaped as much by disease and manpower as by declarations. Our take: the Revolution reads truer as a fight to preserve inherited English rights than as an egalitarian crusade, and the documentary works best when it lets those competing truths coexist. If you’re curious where the storytelling soars, where it stumbles, and what got left out—Magna Carta to Mayflower, local governance to militia culture—this breakdown is for you.

If you enjoyed the conversation, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves early America, and leave a quick review—what did the doc nail, and what did it miss?

Transcript

Cold Open And Inside Jokes

SPEAKER_04 0:54

Going to the Lorda. Lord knows. Hey fans, that's uh our friend from the show, Hani L. Katib, bringing in the uh little co-ro co-writing, co-writing with uh Charles Guteau for the intro music on this one. Did you get approval from them? Who? Hani L. Kateib or Charles Guteau? The estate of Charles Guteau. Wonder if he left his estate the same way that Thomas Jefferson left his. Something tells me he was more of a net night a net zero kind of guy instead of an in-depth, right? Yep. Come into this world, leave this world the way you came into it. I'd say so. You mean go to the Lordy the same way that you came into it? Oh, poor Charlie. Charlie good Charlie go Charlie Get Out? Charlie Get Out. I still haven't released that episode. I think I need to do that still. I have to go through it. Just listen to a little snippet of it before we got on air here. But I haven't gone through it. I think we kind of missed the mark. It's already been out for over a month. Or almost a month. You know? Do you think? There's other things shows people could have been catching up on. Yeah, but the whole excitement of it being released and new on Netflix, now that's all past, and that's like now we have to, oh hey, remember that show that came out a month ago? Well, here we're gonna talk about it, you know. You have like a short, I feel like you have a short window to release things right after something comes out, or you have to wait like 25 years, like revolution with Al Pacino. Or however long that was. That was probably 30 years. When did that movie come out? The 80s, mid-80s. Yeah. Right right after heat or something, wasn't it? Like 10 years before he didn't do another movie for like six. He didn't do another film for like six years because it was so bad. Well, but it was sandwiched between like good movies, or it was like right after Scarface, or like he it wasn't like he was begging for work. He was he was in the heat of his run. He could have done anything he wanted. And that included crappy British portrayal of the American Revolution. Yeah.

In-Studio Banter And Thanksgiving Detour

SPEAKER_04 3:25

So fans were at um were in studio, special in studio uh episode. Uh John's in town. In the town that we live in, we don't want to say, because you know, the fans would go crazy. Following on the heels of uh It was right after Scarface that came out. That was his next film. That was his follow-up effort. Wow. Some would say he knocked it out of the park. Took a couple rope making classes. Yeah. Yeah. So um how was your Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving was great. I had it with uh my wife, her family, and my uh my immediate family. It was good. That was yours. It was good. Had some chef boy RD for dinner. Special request. That's all we had. No turkey. Been a rough year for the fam. Since we haven't been able to release so many episodes. New content. I haven't been able to provide the same way. We lost a couple fans here and there, so we had those little mini raviolis. You know what goes into them now? You watched how it's made, right? You can now make some you can make them yourself. Yeah, but not at the not at the speed and pace that they can make them in the factories. I never ate it growing up. That was not something that was allowed in our house. Yeah. Uh I don't know. I kind of wish I didn't watch it because they mix like carrots in with the meat. That's that that's puts you off. I don't like carrots. At all? Cooked or uncooked? I like uncooked carrots, but cooked carrots, nah, that ain't for me. It's all blended together. I know. I guess I've never had it. I had spaghettios. It's kind of the same premise, no. Yeah. Have you had spaghettios? That I had, yeah, sometimes growing up. Really? No. Wow. I had to go behind. Behind the you were well while you were watching taxicab confessions up. Eating spaghetti. Hey, I had my routines. Eating spaghettios and watching uh taxi cab confessions on HBO, fuzzed out. Or did you have HBO? I had HBO. You had HBO? Growing up, yeah. We always had HBO. Wow. Jeez. I think they had Prism and then like in 1992 they went to HBO. Who's they? My parents. Oh, okay. I didn't record buying it. No, shocking. You probably wouldn't buy it now. Well.

Setting The Stage: PBS And Funders

SPEAKER_04 6:33

Speaking of which, fans were here to talk about something that was free to the public. Made available by the on the backs of the taxpayers. I mean it cost you twelve hours. Maybe. PBS released, as we teased on the podcast, PBS released a six-part 12-hour marathon of a documentary series called The American Revolution made possible by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt. And the and the donors that were Better Angel Society. The Blavotnik Family Foundation. You found all of them? David M. Rubinstein. I wonder where David Rubinstein's family comes from. Eric and Wendy Schmidt. Kenneth C. Griffith Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Jenny and Jonathan Levine and the Crimson Lion Foundation. That's most PBS content, I feel like. They always have some family fund. I don't know who would want to leave all their money to missed opportunity for the Nailing History podcast to have gotten her name out there. How much do you think it would have cost to like get our name on the credits? I don't think PBS is a cheap looking for cheap advertising.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

Yeah, they are. They're looking for any amount of money they can possibly scrounge up.

SPEAKER_04 8:23

I don't know if Ken Burns put his nose up at it. My guess would be yes, based off of this uh documentary that he put together here. The Better Angel Society was the highlight. Uh they were the main but then the last episode they started they they went heavy with the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Museum of the American Revolution. And Mount Vernon. And Mount Vernon. Everyone was waiting for the last one. Yeah, they were like, alright, time to pull out the big guns, I guess. Daughters of the American Revolution one was pretty good. I find it's yeah. Better Angel Society is a 501c organization dedicated to engaging Americans with their history through documentary film. What's the uh what's their rating? Where's their money go? Ken Burns is the first person on here. According to their website, they support Ken Burns and Florentine films.

SPEAKER_03 9:23

Gee, something shady going on there, maybe. Linda.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

Maybe that's something we need to maybe release the release those files. The release the uh angel, what is it? Better Angel Society. Release the Better Angel Society files. That's what we that's what Congress should be fighting for. Did you imagine? That's what happened. Ken Burns gets caught up in the imagine if Ken Burns is like the highlight of the Epstein files when they finally release them. That's why he released this documentary before November. He got it out before. Yeah, you'd think that he would have waited until like, you know, the 4th of July or something, but for some reason they had to release it before the Epstein files got got released. Interesting. I don't know if many people are talking about that, but you heard it here first. Everything's a smoke screen. We need everything out there, or Ken, go release it. Yeah, Ken, release this piece of documentary that everyone's going to get all their panties on to bunch over, so then they don't think about the they'll be worrying about how people are saying the Native Americans formed our government instead of instead of uh who who's on the Epstein list. We need the distraction, Ken, and then Ken like just Ken just comes to the rescue. He just, you know, as he's you know, just I got it, I got it. I'll slap this together in about three months, is what it seems like. Better Angels together. The better angels, I bet there's some shady business going on there. Quote of

Expectations vs. Reality Of A 12-Hour Doc

SPEAKER_04 10:55

Abraham Lincoln's, by the way, if anyone's wondering why it's named that from his first inaugural address. Oh, what is it? What's the quote? The mystic cords of memory will yet swell the chorus of the union when against touched, when again touched, as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature. Wow. That's a pretty that's good for them. That's a good name. Wish we could have been that clever when we started our podcast name. I don't know the context in which they're going for, but so John and I watched it. It was a tough watch. It was like back in history, it was like felt like being back in history class, but we got through it and took a I got John, I I got John, I shockingly he listened to me, and um almost as shockingly he was watching this at first, not taking any notes. We knew that we were gonna be talking about it, and um he didn't uh he was I I finally you know we were talking about it. I said, I sure hope you're taking notes. And then, you know, we were talking about this whole thing last night a little bit. He said, Well, I have notes starting starting at episode two because I wasn't taking notes until you said something. So yeah. Well, we all I just like, what were you did? You think you would have remembered the whole 12 hours and your thoughts of the whole 12 hours to be able to talk about it, that you didn't have to take notes? There would be a certain recall on the key points. Well, we did have a we did do a good job of remembering our trip to Monticello. It came up, it came. Episode one, anyway. Everyone knows all that stuff. That's the stuff they always talk about. What how the Native Americans form our deck di our democracy? Yes. That's what really hit that hit the airwave. So let's get started. Uh episode one, American Revolution by Ken Burns. Who looks like a goofball.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

Do you think he dyes his hair? Yes. You think so? A little bit, like I feel like he should color his beard more.

SPEAKER_04 13:04

Like, do he likes you? I don't know if the chicks really dig the look of the of the the black hair and the gray beard. Unless he's just trying to look smug. I don't know. Well, he's never going to come on our show now. I shouldn't have said anything. I like when he's got like the long flow. Like, look. Like that might be his best look. That's like very high school, I feel like. Like we're high school with guys who had hairs like that. Yeah, I feel like he needs a like a little small hoop earring in his left ear when he's got his hair looking like that, right? Yeah. And a leather jacket with a pack of smokes rolled up his sleeves like a greaser. No, that's not what it is. I don't know why I said that. Well, should we give our fans before we get into it? So Ken, anyone who doesn't know Ken Burns, he's he came on the scene, he splashed on the scene back in 1990. He splashed on the scene, huh? It was it took the country by storm, far more than the American Revolution. I think this one's a little more divisive. But Ken Burns started, kind of really made his way into the American, you know, uh uh society. Like we all know about him because of the Civil War, which came out in 1990. Well, he won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1981. So that was nine years earlier. Yeah, but yeah, I gotcha. Civil War, he did one on the Vietnam War, he did the one on 2007 on the war, World War II, and then he's done like random things on like baseball, prohibition, Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson, two episodes, 1997. And then he's like sponsored a few in the back end too, like one on the white on the Wild West. So he's always done with PBS, he's always releasing on PBS. I feel like this got a good this this had some good uh lead up to it, I feel like, you know. Like I feel like people were excited, people were talking. I mean, maybe just because that's what I get on my Twitter feed. On the Nailing History podcast Twitter feed is a lot of history talk. It's like history talk and then like random, like AI, like 40 plus year old women saying, like, hey, I'm 40 with two kids.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

Does that mean you won't date me or something? It's like really weird. I don't know. That's all that's what my oldest is. Ken Burris has that problem too, bro.

SPEAKER_04 15:41

I'm sure. But like, uh, yeah. I think the build-up, there was a little bit of a build-up, I think. Well, people are excited about the birthday, the big birthday coming up. It's too coming up on 250. 250 is a big deal. It's not quite as cool as 200, but 250. It might be the only milestone birthday that we're here for alive. Yeah. I mean, we'll be eight almost 90 at 300.

Episode One: Iroquois, Join Or Die, Franklin

SPEAKER_04 16:10

Enjoy it while you can, smoke them while you got them. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people, this is might be their last hurrah. With the the just missed out on the bicentennial, and you know, 250 is as good as we're gonna get. So, and what do we're gonna what are we gonna have? A UFC match on the front lawn of the White House or something something's going on crazy. So maybe this is all that we got to remember the history. You think Ken will be there? Ken's it fighting, I think. It's gonna be Ken Burns versus Brian McClanahan. Fight to the death. We got an AI, we got an AI uh prompt coming soon for that. Brian McClanahan is John's libertarian guru on YouTube. He's not libertarian. He's not hardcore. No, he's not. Yeah, yeah. He's an originalist. Okay. Meaning he thinks that interpretation of the Constitution today, you always have to ask yourself, well, what did the founding fathers mean? And Matt doesn't seem to think that that matters. Well, no one really cares though either. Well, we know that now. Ken Burns obviously does that at the liberties he's taken. He's not a libertarian. It's a small government mindset, but that's because that's what the govern the founders, many of them. He's a bozo, and him and Ken Burns are like would be Arch nemesis if Ken Burns would even give him the light of day. He that no way Ken Burns knows that guy exists.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

And John sent me a video of this guy, and he's like talking, kind of talking smack on the Ken Burns documentary, but he never even watched it. He hadn't even watched it yet.

SPEAKER_04 17:49

He's like, Oh, I haven't watched it yet. I might do a live reaction video of it. So, like a 12-hour episode coming from Prime McClanahan soon. How much is he gonna charge for that, you think? Patreon only, probably. I'd say so. Ten bucks a month. And then he's like, I haven't watched it, but I'm gonna give you I'm gonna talk 40 minutes on my opinion about how you know Thomas Jefferson, you know. Well, he's seen the Civil War, he's seen other Ken Byrne films. So he knows a lot of the documentarians that he interviewed. He calls them bozos. Annette Gordon Reed is one of these ladies in the Ken Burns documentary. Oh, is she? Well, let's get started. First episode is called In Order to Be Free, from May 1754 to May 1775. Yep, and from the jump, he stumbles out the gate, in my opinion. Well, that's pretty much it. Most of it's funny because most of the negative press or whatever that you see on in Twitter or like just in general, is about literally the first probably two minutes of the show. So I feel like that's all that anyone's watching. Like, I I don't know. I would like to know what percentage of people who started this documentary actually finished it. It's pretty it has to be low. Very low. It's it's under 20%. Because, first of all, as we're talking about this, I just have to say that what I realized as we're watching it is like this isn't like a bingeable series. It's not made to binge, you know, it's not like Netflix dropped some like and everyone's talking about it, you know. And I think a depth by lightning. There's some people who thought that that's what they were gonna get out of it, I think, is like, oh, something like, you know, I'm gonna get hooked to it. This isn't Joe Exotic talking about, you know, killing Carol Baskin or or uh Stephen Avery, you know, killing that lady and trying to get away with it. I don't know if you even know the making of murderer, but you know, like I think people Some people thought that they were going to get something that, like, oh, I'm going to be hooked on, but it's not that at all. It's dry, it's slow. And I think part of the the the issue that a lot of people had. Now, this isn't something that we're going to get into right now, but what I realized is there's a lot of um there's a lot of repet repetition of like re-talking about things over and over and over again. And some of the things are annoying that he's talking about or annoys us. And it gets annoying where you're like, he's bringing it up. But when you're watching this, you have to realize that like it's an educational tool to somewhat, you know, like teachers can use this to play in their class. Some of them, some of it would be good to play. And so you have to set the stage and like set the you know, you have to you have to set the scene, so so to speak, um every time you're talking about. So like you're talking about Saratoga, and you might have to mention how there's there were slaves fight free men, free black men and slaves fighting because, you know, because even though you talked about it when, you know, yeah, and during um it's an educational program, so there's always a need to set up the context because yeah, a teacher may be a teacher in the world. You're only you only want to play, yeah, like, oh, here, here's a snippet of Saratoga. You're not gonna play the 12-hour episode. I mean, if I was a teacher, maybe I would. I mean, think about it. 12 hours, that's 12 classes. That's basically a whole syllabus if you're teaching a war a class on the American Revolution, which you could very well do. If you figure right now it's December, if I'm a history teacher, I'm trying to get to Christmas break. So, like, you play an hour, you play 45 minutes. I mean, how long is a history class? 45 minutes in high school? Yeah. So what's 12 hours

Washington’s Early Missteps And Motives

SPEAKER_04 21:40

divided by 45? I mean, how many classes is that? I think you if you played this in 45 minute increments, I mean it would take 14 classes. I think it would take you to it would take you to Christmas. Yeah. Maybe that's what he had in mind. I I wouldn't be against it. All history teachers around the country were like, if you could pull what when do you want a documentator drop? Oh, it's gotta be mid-November because I don't feel I'm creating papers and I just gotta put something on for it. Yeah, then I can just put this on and and skip through it. Put them to sleep. Yeah, get a month and a half off, basically. But anyway, so so that's just to set the stage of like it's hard to it's hard to rate this on an entertainment level. That's for sure. Because it's not meant to be dropped on Netflix, it was dropped on PBS. And for people that went in expecting I think a lot of people did a page turner. Yeah, like, oh, I'm excited for the next episode. Like I I like when I was when I was watching it, I'm like like episode three is over, you're just like, oh, what time is it? All right, I guess I can watch the like you weren't like I need to know what happens next.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Wait.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

Yeah, it's like, oh my god, they're on their way. Oh, it's cold out. It's winter. What are they gonna do? I need to go to the next episode.

SPEAKER_04 23:03

I need to figure out how they get through the winter of 78. I do feel like in some of the um in some of the build-up. I think I watched an interview because I I think Theo Vaughn had interviewed him like a month ago. He did. And he talked about the talk was kind of about how like it's a different perspective. I mean, this is always the thing. What's the sell? He was kind of selling. Well, you might come people might come away. They think they know what they know about the American Revolution, but there's a here are these different can these angles that you could take now. And I don't I don't I don't know what angle. I mean the angle was well, I mean, we'll get into it, but the angle was basically the Founding Fathers were a bunch of rich shads, and England basically just decided to they it was their choice to to stop the war at the end. The whole time you're There was a lot of praising of the British as it was the whole time you're watching it, you're like, I think they're gonna end this on like a sad note, like, yeah, and by the way, and wom wam wom England lost the world. Well, if the British actually won, all of these minorities in the today's US would be better, well better. Well, we we went over what would happen. We went over what would have happened in an episode. Did we ever release that? I don't think we talked about the groups that he was talking about in the show. Sorry. We not intentional. What do you mean? I I really think the general like the subcont the sub-level takeaway is that they're upset the British didn't win. Yeah. I think they're kind of yeah, the bit's basically like, oh, it wasn't that bad for the British, but actually, oh, all these things went down and Native Americans probably would have been better off. A lot of uh a lot of a lot of liberties taken, a lot of uh history, you know, hindsight 2020 kind of going on. Oh yeah, for sure. That's the whole nature of pushing an agenda through a 12-hour documentary. But it was like interesting. I have to give it I'll just speak kind of a higher level, I will say overall. Because it does go through the society the social, societal stuff, but he does do a half decent job. As someone I've read, you know, some military books on the Civil War, and you know, you oftentimes wonder like, what do these troop movements look like? I don't I can't visualize when they say taking this hill or moving there. And I did I did appreciate how he drew each battle. Oh, that was pretty cool. I don't know how I the whole time I'm watching that, I'm like, how did they know? Like, how do they do that? Just like studying the maps. Yeah. Those are the unsung heroes that probably don't get interviewed. Like, imagine the guys who were like, here, make a graphic of this battle, and like they have to go through all of this like old maps and old letters that you can barely read, and like they're in this like room. Ken's probably paying them like minimum wage. Don't come out until you got me Saratoga. I want Bunker Hill to it to the T. I want I don't want it. I don't want anyone questioning. I don't want them questioning the battles because they're going to be questioning everything else. So that will say that. That was cool. Yeah, yeah, you're right. I did think, I did think, I'm like, man, how do they do that? Like, what kind of maps are written? Like, do they would they like I feel like now, obviously, present day, it's easy. They probably just have like GPS trackers on it. Like, if they were to have this now, they'd have like GPS trackers, whatever, and they'd be able to do it right away. I think like I always thought, like, oh yeah, definitely like World War II, they would have after action reports. I mean, that's just based off of watching Band of Brothers. There was that one episode where Winters was writing the after, remember that? Yeah. So I guess that's real. And then, but then you kind of think of it from a more present-day, but you never really think about like, did were did these guys actually like document after-action reports

Land Speculation, 1763 Line, And Class

SPEAKER_04 26:55

of the American Revolution? Or was it word of mouth? Word of mouth. I think it'd be word of mouth. There would have been some eyewitness accounts, and I think there has to be some liberty taken as to exactly where certain troop movements were. I just feel like for me overall, the setting up like the theater of the war itself, like the major army components of moving them down the w down the coast or Washington's troops moving from here to here. Like, I didn't really know that up until watching this documentary. Like how they had New York. I didn't know the whole timeline. I just knew like, oh, the winner of 77, 78 was Valley Forge, Saratoga was, you know, a little before that, Yorktown was a couple years after. Like I knew the timeline, but the actual like how did the troops get to where they were? Yeah. I didn't know all that. I think you did a good set. We might do a little interactive PBS, PBS at the end of this, at the end of this thing, there's a little might have a quiz at the end. On the uh time on the timeline of the wars, they got a little uh they got a little interactive game for we should have an interactive game for each other. I think we'll I think we will. We'll have a little competition maybe. I've played around with it already. It's fun. It's fun. So alright, so let's just get uh I mean I took notes, but they're they are like just stream of consciousness sentences with like Well, uh just kind of rewinding back to you. Like we certainly don't have to go through the history of the American Revolution because we're not experts like Ken Burns is. Not experts or all the historians he had on. Yeah. But just back to your point, I will think I think you know the first two minutes that you mentioned about people on the internet kind of give griping on about so that's a let's should we get into that? Let's talk about it. I've got my yeah, two cents on the So the first so what what really hit the airwaves, what really hit the hit the the critics, you know, um was I mean I think it was I don't know if it was the opening scene. Now I have a note that says opening with a Thomas Paine quote, nice touch. I don't know what the Thomas Paine quote was, but it opened up with a Thomas Paine quote who wrote Common Sense. Right. So that was I thought that was a nice touch. Probably one of the biggest radicals of the American Revolutionary Period. Yeah, but also kind of a loser. They painted him as a bit of a loser. Like failed something or another, but he could write well. And wrote like the second most read book in the country after the Bible. That got released on my birthday. Nice. Which is a pretty big deal. Now I got, you know, I got uh Richard Nixon, Dave Matthews, Muggsy Bogues, uh Jimmy Page. Jimmy Page, Kate Middleton, and now Common Sense. What a day to be born. It was a great day to be born. Very famous, very famous day. Someday they're gonna say, and that guy who hosted Nailing History probably won't even know my name. I think that, yeah, they have it. I saw on YouTube that you can watch the first 10 minutes of the documentary, and I think he probably did that intentionally, knowing that no one's gonna get through those 10 minutes. I don't know many people did. I mean, so let's stop beating around the bush. My second note is Ben Franklin copying the Indians democracy, join the union or die cut up snake. So fan, yeah. So for any of our fans who haven't watched it, so this it starts in like 19 1754, which is like just before the Seven Years' War, right? AK the French and Indian War, right? Yeah. So the context opens up with the Iroquois who are a Native American group primarily centered in central New York. I think it's well from Western New York all the way through like what is Vermont, you had these different and up into Canada. There's six nations, six tribes, and basically they'd formed a confederacy. Democracy. No, democracy. It was called the Iroquois Confederacy. And that goes back, what did they say, hundreds of years? Maybe. And basically it was a group these they all had they were all Iroquois, so that was like the overarching like group of Indians that they were. So it was a alliance of the Mohawk, the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tescarora. And they were formed to end conflict, promote and promote peace among themselves. Uh started an upstate New York, and basically they made the conclusion that Ben Franklin studied this confederation that these tribes put together, and that's why we ended up getting the Federal Republic we now we have. We said democracy, but the nature of the constitution that would eventually come about was this relationship between the states and the government, like having this. But I think the point was to bring up that like even in the even in the before the French and Indian War, like very far before we even like declared our independence, there was a thought that like we need to be together, like the these are the colonies need to have some kind of relation. Yes, because he came up with that in the 1750s, right? Saying that join or die, and that's

Battle Maps And How The War Moves

SPEAKER_04 32:20

where the snake came from. The snake cut up the cut-up snake that's like join the union or die, and then the snake's cut up into 13 different pieces. I don't know, I don't really understand the symbolism there. Aside from, you know, the 13 colonies and the snake being it's not a very powerful snake if it's diced up into 13. I guess it's dead, probably. So then my next note is uh Paul Giamatti reprising his role as John Adams, which I didn't know that was the case. I I never looked that up. Is that the case? Did he voice John Adams? He was John Adams in the show. Yeah, and I think he was John Adams' voice in this, too, right? Okay. Um I got the great shots of the old Appalachian Mountains. Beautiful. When they're talking about the Native Americans getting kicked out of them. It's pretty good. Um, this was something that I didn't really remember or didn't know that I thought was interesting. Um, talking about how so George, I think we I don't have we talked on the podcast about George Washington starting the Seven Years' War. I think it was unknowingly. Yeah, I think we did. So what I didn't realize is so he where was he? He was at Fort Duquesne Duquesne and he accidentally shot at some French soldiers, and then they came back and fought him, and then that was basically the start of the Seven Years' War. Or the French and Indian War. They were pushed back, and then yeah, he went back there again with Braddock, General Braddock, the following year. And then Braddock got overrun, and I think it was like a full retreat, yeah. Well, in any case, I didn't realize that he George Washington wanted a commission, a royal commission for his work in the Seven Years' War, and when they said no, he started hating, he he felt like the British were like sticking their nose up at him. That was pretty cool. A little militia leader, yeah. You're a colonial, yeah. They stuck their thumb, they're like, nah, nah, nah. Yeah, no, you think you did anything for us, like nah. Kind of like a Charles Guteau, I guess. They kind of treated him, kind of treated him a little bit like Charles Guteau. Like George Washington's like, I won that war for you guys, and they're like, No, you didn't. That could have been a good what if. What if he got that commission? What if George Washington got that British officership? Wow. Maybe that is like the real fork in the road. That might be. Might be. So yeah, so he was all upset about that, and uh part of the reason why he had some disdain for the for the British government, but I also found out that all of and I don't this is kind of where they're painting this picture of like, yeah, you know, this whole thought, and like maybe this is where maybe this is the angle that Ken Burns was taking that you don't really know, but it's like kind of a negative look at it, is like you think that these four that our founding fathers were all about freedom, democracy, you know, putting their middle finger up at Big Brother over the pond across the pond, but he goes to talk about how like all of these, and I think that was this episode, is where all these founding fathers owned land. So what we've talked about before is the what was it, the proclamation of 1763 or whatever, where they they cut off the at the Appalachian. The England said you can't go across the Appalachians because we can't protect you. Right. And uh and that also upset these founding fathers who had owned land prospecting. Yeah, they were prospecting because they everyone uh speculating. Um everyone was saying that, like, oh, the land that that's that's the ticket.

SPEAKER_03 36:07

Like, I feel like land west of the Appalachians was the Bitcoin of the day.

SPEAKER_04 36:14

Where, like, you know, get in on that, you'll make a ton of money, and then when this proclamation of 1763 came out, where like it just took the money from those guys, and that was they kind of painted the picture like that was the first straw for like to get the higher up people, yeah. To get it to become more of a you're kind of withholding my English liberties from it, you're you're taking my own property, and there's yeah, those the the influential types in the society, yeah. Um which is something that like you don't really hear about. Well, I thought was interesting. I mean, I

Narration, Voices, And Framing Choices

SPEAKER_04 36:55

so like it they kind of painted it like, okay, so at first it was like the it was like the hierarchy of America that were upset with England because like why why would like the working class even care about that? On the day-to-day, it'd probably be irrelevant. So then I think like this hierarchy is like then they they you kind of figure it's like and this is a whole different way to look at it, is like so. Then England's protected, so then the whole story goes, England's protecting the you know, they have the proclamation of seven 1763, right? Am I right with that? They have that going on, and then in order to afford the defense of the of the mountains and the whatever the colonial soldiers, that's when they start taxing with the Stamp Act and all this stuff, and that's what gets the working class people upset, is because you know, then it's starting to dig into their pockets. So it had to go from the rich and like no one would care, and then I feel like the rich, maybe led by my king, my king, uh John Hancock, started kind of maybe they started like kind of twisting the knife a little bit and kind of like doing a little bit of rabble rousing and like, hey, yeah, can you believe they're making us pay for the you know, because they had ulterior motives. And that was kind of the painting that the picture that's getting painted. And maybe there was a there's some uh truth to that. Yeah, it definitely was conveyed as a way for I don't know. It was I didn't do a great job though of juxtaposing why the Virginians, because most of those guys that were land speculating to the West were Virginians. Right. That wasn't necessarily the gripe of New Englanders who would have been more of the merchant class. With the stamped act, the stamp act, the sugar act, the tea. And they never really yeah, I guess they never really like intertwine, like you know, they never really painted, I guess to that end, like, you know, maybe down in Virginia, the rich people the rich guys like Thomas Jefferson and and uh freaking, you know, George Washington and I guess James Madison. Yeah. They did talk about the southern colonies just enough from the perspective of the British that they were the most profitable for the British overall. And so New England, while a thorn in the side was not as a big of a deal to the greater British Empire that Georgia and the Yeah, but they were more of like that nagging, like, hey, stop taxing us, stop taxing us, stop taxing us. And so then yeah, it opens up with join or die, gives the context of they get the West Indies. I did like the Caribbean, it mentions how the British Empire was very reliant on their southern colonies, not just including those in North America, but also in the Caribbean. Yeah, they drive that home a lot. And he talks about the disun be the colonies being. Disunited definitely explains that pretty well. Of like, you know, Virginians didn't give a shit about New Englanders and vice versa. And my question though is he he explained why they did it, but I don't think he made a a really great point of saying why they felt throughout the course of the war that they had more of an intrinsic bond as the war progressed. I think he did. I don't think I don't think so. I think he said, like because you know you're you're you're suffering together. That's where the bond came in. Not getting paid. But then as the war went on, all the troops that made up the army were like working class people. And so the rich ones eventually started bailing on it. They didn't make up the ranks in the army. Became a poor man's war as it progressed. Made a point of driving that home. Well, it's pretty true. But I gotta hear um Vincent Brown's bringing the heat with those dreadlocks. The historian. He had silver, silver dreadlocks. He's a man. Vinny Brown looked pretty cool. I gotta note here, land and liberty intertwined. That was a quote where Americans felt that owning land meant being free. That was

Lexington, Concord, And New England Militias

SPEAKER_04 41:20

a big deal up in like New England. Well, that goes back to Well, that goes even back to that's probably a commonality with a lot of the colonies because in England, for centuries, millennia, people were tenant farmers on a landlord's and that's where people saw America being you know to own land was to own your own liberty, yeah. Which they're definitely trying to get away from that today. Yeah. Funny how a bunch of communists make a documentary and they talk about why land is so important to the freedom. Yeah, and then you know, but yeah, but but also you can't buy your own land, so I guess you can't be free anymore. You're just dealing with an HOA. How free is anyone in this world? Yeah, well, when you don't Little mini governments. Um John Hancock was looking good. Tom Hanks made an appearance. He's good, he's he voices some real randos. A few different people, yeah. Ben Franklin's voice is whack. I have that note. Whoever they had talking to Ben Franklin was sounded like Walter Cronkite, but I think he's dead. No, he was no, he was Ben Franklin and Liberty's Kids. Was he? Yeah. I don't know who voiced him in this. It's just like made it Peter Coyote was a narrator. I guess we should have said that. That's a great name. Is he a Native American? Peter Coyote? Stand by. Patrick Henry at the Continental. This is what I didn't understand. Patrick, Patrick Henry at the Continental Congress, first Continental Congress. I'm not a Virginian, but an American. Your boy Patrick Henry saying that?

SPEAKER_03 42:58

Do you think that's true?

SPEAKER_04 43:00

Maybe he's just trying to rabble rouse, dude. I mean, maybe he didn't think that, but he's like, I gotta get New England to fight this war so I can start getting land over on the other side of the speculating. I gotta start speculating. I think they took liberty. I think they took us certain took it out of context. I'll give it that much. I will give it that much. You think so? Just yep, just a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 43:26

I mean, you were that was your big thing is Patrick Henry would have, you know, he's a Virginian before he's an American.

SPEAKER_04 43:34

That's true. They even said though, Thomas Jefferson.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

I haven't you directly quoted saying Patrick Henry was the Gavin Newsom of his day.

SPEAKER_04 43:47

In Virginia. Yeah. So Peter Coyote is Jewish, by the way. He took the name out of a deep interest in Native American and other cultures. Oh wait, it's not his real name? He was a father was a Sephari Jew and his mother was Ashkenazi Jewish. Wait, what was there's what was his what's his birth name? He adopted there. He adopted the name after meeting a Puate Shoshone shaman in 1967 and has called himself a Hopi Jew Buddhist at times. Robert Peter Cohen. Wow, how did these two meet, huh? Like the uh the John the John Lennon and Paul McCarty of our day. Of PBS documentaries. Ken Burns and Peter Coyote. Coyote. He was part of an anarchist improv group in Haight Ashbury in the mid-60s during the summer of love. Where are you reading this? On his Wikipedia now. Do you think he wrote his own Wikipedia? I don't know. But they definitely I think I read an article that was saying like having him narrate, he's narrated a few Ken Burns documentaries, and they kind of he's got a good voice, got a great narration. But it it sounds so definitive. Like his voice has like an air of authority to it that it sounds like everything he's saying is true, baked in facts. Like like Patrick Henry saying he's an American. Yep. I bet a lot of people didn't question it. Did you question it when you heard it? Do you even have that written down? It raised an eyebrow. Well, I didn't start taking notes to episode two. So no. But I did remember I raised I raised an eyebrow. Then I fell asleep during the Battle of Concord. Didn't not that much happen. Like a couple guys died. Lectington and Concord? That's when that was the one where um Paul Revere ran like the Paul Revere's ride. He went one way and then Dawes went another. Yeah. Daws got caught. Yeah. And it wasn't that the British are coming, it was the regulars are coming. Meaning the red coats. Meaning like the regulars standing on British. I mean, that was the first battle. I mean, it's pretty cool. It was a good one. Because that was the the they were stopped the militia was stockpiling gunpowder and munitions in Lexington or Concord, one of one of the two. I think they had to get to But then already at that point, wasn't Washington on his way? And then he came up from New York from Philadelphia.

What The Doc Skips: Magna Carta To Mayflower

SPEAKER_04 46:35

This was 75. But he was already up there before the independence. They didn't call independence yet before he was already leading the Continental Army. And he was set up there, and as a Virginian, he comes in and was like, I don't know what's going on here. These New Englanders, they elect their own, they elect their own officers. He thought it was very weird. Who, Washington? That was a thing New England units did, new militia units. They would elect their own officers, and that goes back. Again, I think they could have done a good little Albion Seed shout out in the beginning of this documentary. Well, you were upset that it didn't start that it started in 17 in the 1750s. I was gonna say that, yeah. But like I think that's the show is about the American Revolution. It's not about the formate. I mean, if they started in Jamestown, I mean, come on. No, but if they wanted to, if they wanted to set the narrative, use the Ben Franklin, you know, snake reference, like that could be the opener and give context to well what were these different regions like at the time of Ben Franklin writing, or what led up to that could have been his time to explain the major differences between each region. That's all. And he could have mentioned the Magna Carta's influence and the English Bill of Rights. No Magna Carta no Mayflower Doctrine. I mean Yeah. Like the actual British constitution, English constitutions that these men and their fathers and fathers' fathers knew about. Nope, the Indians. Yeah, it was the Native Americans. That was my biggest, yeah. But it had decent enough. The first episode was fine. Episode two was trash. Episode two was by far the worst episode. If I were to recommend anybody to watch this, I would just tell them to skip episode two because it doesn't really cover much. It's very heavy on slavery. Well, it was heavy on it because it was well asylum. It was called Asylum for Mankind timeline. May 1775 to July 1776. So I think the drive that he kind of tried to get in with this episode was, you know, the lead up to the Declaration of Independence and what the Declaration of Independence meant, and what it strove and what people think it stroves and what and what it didn't mean. And what it didn't mean. Thomas Jefferson not living on his ideals is what it didn't mean. This was the most like idealistic or like idealistic or critically this the most critically idealistic episode of the six. That was like not talking much about the battles. I mean, yeah, there was some of it, but it's a shame because like it was one of the big I mean it was Bunker Hill was this episode. And Bunker Hill was super interesting. I didn't, yeah. I But it was such a footnote on this episode, it felt like because they start so they started off, I mean, right away. Yeah, I have that. Bunker Hill coverage was great. It opens at Fort Fort Ticonderoga with Benedict Arnold, and they're really setting up Benedict Arnold to be like this great guy and this huge part of the revolution. Which he is, yeah. He is, but you you can tell they're already putting in the seed, like, yeah, yeah, this guy, this this is your guy, and then he's gonna bail on you guys. They kind of keep like Benedict Arnold was a great American during the war, and then when he got to the point of switching sides, they tried to paint it in a well, wouldn't you do the same thing? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Based on this like snubbing, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're already they're playing they're painting that picture. Because I think they're but and to that end though, a lot of people don't know how important Ben McDonald was. I think like growing up, or like you you hear about obviously it's a phrase that you use, which whatever, but like you just kind of think he was just a random soldier that just switched sides. He could have been killed multiple times and he would be considered an American hero. Like he would be like a humorous or somebody died during the war. Yeah. Like other American revolutionary heroes if he died. Yeah. One of the engagements. Hale. Yeah. They talked about him. That must have been episode one. I have mine here. The big thing, a big movement here I got is when Bunker Hill was going down, all the fighting was in Boston. The British

Episode Two: Ticonderoga To Bunker Hill

SPEAKER_04 50:45

were basically laying siege. The British were in the town of Boston. They needed the guns in Charlestown, which is north of Boston. That's the most across the river, the Charles River into Jane Charlestown. Henry Knox, who was an artillery, who basically learned all of his artillery knowledge and reading books, he would go on to become the first Secretary of War. He was basically tasked to go up to Fort Ticonderoga after Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen captured it and basically drag those cannons. Yeah. That was crazy. I was like, holy. We drew that drive. We did the drive. Did we? We drove up the Hudson River past Fort Ticonderoga. Did we? Yeah, and I was like, oh, Fort Ticonderoga, you just blew right past it. Probably said, hey, is that what they named the pencils after? And then kept driving. Which I was thinking about that. Why are they named Fort You know Ticonderoga pencils? Why are they named that? Because and like the boxes have like a Revolutionary War soldier on them. Like they lean into it. It's named after the town because high quality graphite for the pencils was discovered and mine there. Wow. That was cool. Yeah, that was that was cool. I think I fell asleep a couple times while with the Ticonderoga with that talk. I had to keep rewinding it. But um they the thing that just really grinded my gears of this episode, and again, it you you can't talk about this time period without talking about slavery, and not to say that it's anything that you want to ignore or that it was a good thing, or it like, you know, whatever. But like they literally introduced George Washington as a slave owner before anything else. Kind of. They talked to him about starting the Seven Years' War, getting upset with Britain, but then like they don't talk they don't mention him again until they mention him as introducing him as the commander of the army. And I think I have a direct quote that says, one of America's richest men, the beneficiary of scores of indentured servants and over 300 slaves. That's how they introduced George Washington as the commander of the army. I just like And as they did that, they had like the build, like the lean up like camera like on his chest as the camera rose to like his face.

SPEAKER_03 53:05

And they're just when they when they say slaves, it's on his face.

SPEAKER_04 53:08

300 slave owners, and it's just his eyes are at level with the camera. It's just like, what are you gonna do about it? Like, oh geez, okay. Yeah, it was like I remember I was watching this at the gym, and I just couldn't believe I was couldn't believe what I was hearing. I've never heard him get described like that. Just kind of like, you know, I mean I've what I've heard more so that they didn't really lean into too much. I mean, they kind of did, was that he married wealth. Yeah. I I feel like that's more of where he became rich. His wife owned far more slaves than he was. And she was like way richer than him. Martha, yeah. But um not that it we're not scoring who owned, yeah, irrelevant. But yeah, they they talk about that. They talk about George Washington being disgusted with the blacks mingling with the whites in the army. They talk about that this episode. A lot of people would have had that thought. I think to be it, you would have been the minority to think that just co-mingling would have been acceptable. Yeah, like I feel like they put that all on Washington. I think they're just breaking him down. Because I mean, to some end, you do have this, there is this folklore of like that this was he was like this great, great guy, which he probably was. I I probably wouldn't want to hang out with George Washington. No, you want to think that you would that he would be like one of the boys, but like he was probably a dick. But they said he was enigmatic, and when you were around him, he did exuberate an air of like he brought out the best in those around him. Yeah, in his office. In silence, and you know, but that didn't come again. If you only watch an episode or two, you didn't get to that part because they didn't say that until like episode five. When like Lafayette was here, like they didn't say that until way down the track when it's like he was enigmatic, he was he was a shot. Well, I think they I think they brought it up, it was a battle of monmouth. I think Monmouth, yeah. Mommouth's my one of my favorite. I mean, we've talked about that on the show before. Mommouth's my favorite story is George Washington, where he like basically showed up on the scene and like basically turned his men from retreating. Yeah. Which they yeah, they didn't they kind of went light on that too. We'll get to that. But yeah, it's that talk, it's a talk about more slave talk. British were this is this was a quote that was kind of lame. Brit Britain was unevenly committed to slavery while the US was fully committed. Yeah. I remember that quote. Yeah, and that was kind of like, oh, okay. You had to pick one would you rather live under? So again, go with the British. Yeah, right. They're kind of yeah, right. They're yeah, and that's that's and the British would end slavery in the British Empire in the 18th, 19th century. So again, they kind of they don't say that in the documentary, but it's like if you keep following the history forward, like the British do end slavery in the Empire, and the US still has it. Even though they still profited from it after they ended it by trading with America, but the slave when they still got cheap cotton. Yes, that's true. That's true. So defeat the factories. I think they

Washington Introduced As Slaveholder

SPEAKER_04 56:05

there was a there was a bit of well, when you fast forward to the Civil War, they were almost supporting the Confederate States because they wanted the slavery as much as the Southern states did. So cotton diplomacy. They got a Lord Dunmore shot shout out, our boy. Yep. I had here Typhus decimates Lord Dunmore's runaway slave regiments. So a lot of uh he put out a proclamation. They made it, they did make a point to be fair. They said that he Lord Dunmore was not an emancipationist. Lord Dunmore was the governor of Virginia, Virginia, and we went to see his house in Williamsburg. He got it looks great in a kilt. He's got a very Scottish. He had like a kilt with like plat, like he he's a bozo, this guy. And he basically had a he had to get on the run at the end. He kind of blew it big time. He had to run, and basically he did put out a proclamation, Lord Dunmore's proclamation, saying if basically it was a war, it was a war aim, any slave that were to fight with him and the British for twelve minimum of twelve months would earn their freedom. Yes. And so a bunch of people from Virginia slaves ran off, left their masters, ran off with them. But then apparently, I have my notes, they typhus ended up killing a bunch of them, they ended up on an island, and then they said some patriots showed up there and it was just like bodies strewn everywhere, like of dead slaves. Really? Like skeletons hanging out of the ground, like just typhus and typhwood killed a bunch of them. Backfire. They did talk about the smallpox epidemic that Washington was very hesitant to get vaxxed. I think they kind of threw that dig at him too. Oh, Mr. Anta Vax. George Washington over here. So you get the reason the reason it's a very political narrative. It's a bit of a political very but the reason that he didn't want to vax his soldiers was because he didn't want them out of commission. That's right. But he didn't they kind of made him a little short-sighted in that regard. You also put leeches in there. He also used leeches to blood lead, which killed him. Well, that killed him. He wasn't he wasn't Mr. Maybe he wasn't Mr. Science. I don't know if George was a big Mr. Science guy. I think he was more of a He did breed dogs. He got he bred the American Foxhound, which was on the dog show yesterday. He was a dog breeder. Cool. They're good looking dogs. Wait, they did talk about Montreal, which was a big whoop, that was a big boo-boo, which Benedict Arnold led. Yeah. And they that was I dozed off. That was a tough slog. I dozed off after I got dozed off after Benedict got got in the leg when the Patriots got on in Quebec. Potentially the 14th colony, somebody said. So they went up to they went up to this is all before the Declaration of Independence. 1775. You don't realize how much action happened before that, too. Kind of think that nothing happened. Like you think about the Boston Massacre, Declaration of Independence, then the war almost. But they went up to the whole thing, the start of the war, they wanted to, they really wanted to pret if there was a fight for the Hudson River was like the biggest the the the gem of the gem of the war because the England felt as though if they had the Hudson River kind of split New England in half. Split New England in half. It was effectively the Mississippi. It was the Mississippi of the eighteenth century. You literally could go up the New York Harbor, up into the Hudson, which would take you up to Lake Champlain, which would then eventually get into I think the St. Lawrence waterway. You take that all the way out to Nova Scotia. You're in the ocean. Yeah. So like that waterway goes back centuries of importance to the French, to the English.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:07

It is the essential kind of water route. So Montreal is on that in Quebec. It's on the that that river sit that water system. Yeah. So they felt like maybe they'd be able to, if they took Quebec, they were kind of all in a high off of Fort Ticonderoga. So they send Little Benedict up there and they blew it big time. Yeah, try to get the French on their side, the French Catholics. I feel like they would probably saw it was felt half-assed, convincing a bunch of Protestants from America coming up trying to pitch French Catholics that will treat you better than the British. Yeah. I think they were very skeptical. But the British were already there, and that's kind of what surprised them a bit, I think. And I also have here in my notes that uh Darren Bonaparte, aka the Blowhard, claims Native American native warriors were sent to kick out Americans. He was Darren Bonaparte, was he the guy who kept who was like white but was talking like he was an Indian? Yeah, he kept saying we in the collective third first person. I have a note in here. He basically was saying, like the Native American tribes in the in that area too, they all came together and they basically just pushed the Americans out down the down back into the into New York. Yeah.

Dunmore, Smallpox, And Enlistment

SPEAKER_04 1:01:20

He was an asshole. After dark, maybe. What was his name? Darren Bonaparte. Not one reference to Napoleon Bonaparte in the whole thing either, which I couldn't believe.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:31

Like did you look him up? I know he's married to the Mohawk lady, I think. You think you're married?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:42

Got an article in the Wampom Chronicle here. Wampum Chronicle. A really sweet website. Just so angry. I mean, I get it. Again, if you're Native American, it's like your ancestors. I mean we brought we brought it up that I was Native Americans at Monticello weren't didn't seem too happy that we were taking a trip with. So yeah, he they yeah, so where did it end? Episode two. Episode two and well, first of all, it's episode and they introdu they also introduced Thomas Jefferson and voicing him was Jeff Daniels, maybe. I don't know. I didn't look it, I didn't want to look it up because I wanted to look it up here. Is it Jeff Dani? Was it Jeff Daniels? Which I found very strange because Jeff Daniels does not have a southern accent at all, and I feel like Thomas Jefferson would have had a fairly big Southern accent, but I'm not seeing Jeff Daniels here. Maybe it wasn't him. And now all you see is it had to have been, yeah, Jeff Daniels. Four episodes. It had to have been him.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:59

He's Jeff Daniels.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:04

Jeff Daniels' voice of Thomas Jefferson. No Southern accent, I found that strange. You know, like I feel like there could have, you know, it didn't feel legit. Um Thomas Jefferson living up to his not living up to his ideals makes an appearance, even mentions, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:22

It ended with him writing the Declaration of Independence. And this was another thing that like didn't have to be so we get it. We get it. We might have the same notes. We might have the same copy. Own slaves, we get it. But they write, yeah. Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence. They show that house that uh, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:44

We've we've tried to a couple times um that they've rebuilt over the uh what what was it?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:49

It was a uh grocery store. What grocery store was it? Turned into they they turned it into some kind of corner market and then you know ended up able to get rebuilt it for the business.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:01

But now I think it's got yeah, and then I think now it's got some structural issues, and that you're not allowed inside. But anyway, they have uh my note says, and I don't remember exactly how they said it, but they mentioned a Hemings boy slave waited on him while he wrote the declar the declaration of independence. He brought him hella tea. I said Hemings family talked about while he's drafting Declaration, of course, dot dot dot owner of hundreds of human beings, dot dot dot. TJ can't catch a break. Yeah, that was weird. Like they had to throw Hemings in because you're saying Hemings, oh Sally Hemings of Sally Hemings too?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:36

I get that, but like, dude, I mean there he's talking about writing the Declaration of Independence, and they're basically saying he's writing all men are created equal while this Hemings boy is like serving him tea the whole time. Like he stayed up all night because of the tea that this Hemings boy would bring him. It was so weird. It was so weird. It was so weird, like just completely sh on him.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:06

He got it way worse than Washington overall on the duck. He got it way worse than Washington. You think so? Just because he didn't fight either. Well, you that well, there was no, yeah, they kind of I think I have that in here is like they they show him like up on Monet, they show Monticello, and you know how we talked about like he wanted to make it look modest, but man, they're showing like they go from one scene of like talking about how the soldiers were eating their own boots because they were starving, to like they would go from that scene and then cut to like and then Thomas Jefferson and Monticello, and they would show his house and it was like beautiful and in the mountains, and like okay, like they basically Thomas Jefferson got waited on, wrote the declaration of dependence, and then poof, was gone. That was like pretty much his whole thing. Mentioned his governorship in Virginia and how he had the fleet of Richmond. Yeah, how he nearly picked him up. Oh, in Charlottesville. No, they almost got him in Charlottesville. Well, I think they almost got him at Monticello. Yeah, but he slipped out in the slip. Which I don't remember hearing about that when we took that tour. I guess I did find it relevant. I guess. Um, I I haven't so I have a note, fell asleep probably four times trying to finish this one, episode two. I remember I kept falling asleep. I could not get through it. I kept falling asleep. I kept falling asleep. Is Maggie Blackhawk in English Warren, an Elizabeth Warren type Indian? Oh, ouch. I don't know if you can say that. Like two percent. Well, I thought about that with Donnie Bonaparte or what's his name? Darren.

Quebec Disaster And Benedict Arnold

SPEAKER_04 1:06:42

They're married, I think. Aren't they? Are they? They are married? I have here Republicus. I don't know. I don't think why did you say uh? I don't know. I'm trying to tell you my next note. I said Republicus Republicus gives name of United States of America. That was mentioned in a newspaper, must have been in the world. Oh, like that was when it was that was when it was named. The Brits couldn't fill the ranks, so in come the Hessians. Yes. So the Hessians basically were sold. These guys were basically part of They were basically mercenaries, mercenaries, but not of their necessarily of their own accord. It was like the townlets and the principalities in Germany, because Germany was a unified state yet. Basically, their own little kings and dukes would like send them over here. Which was in the movie Revolution, which we also saw the statue in the they had a they had a remake of it in the Museum of the American Revolution. Really? I don't remember. You remember you it was very anatomically correct.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:48

Don't you remember that?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:56

They gave the horse the Mussolini treatment, I'll say that much. It's a lot of bullets. Yeah, that was cool. Yeah, I remember I remember that from the museum learning that. It says here, my last note on episode two King George believed the American insurrection could lead to the collapse of the entire British Empire. I don't know if that's a little hyperbolic or if it's the. Because it did. I mean eventually. No, there was a second English Empire when you had Australia. I think that would explain why they kind of they had the noose a little tighter around their colonies after the fact. Yeah. They did make a point of like the American colonies were like kind of a they were more decentralized just by the nature of what the empire was up until they Well, I think they they also like they also like superimposed England on the size of the colonies, and it's like Yeah. It freaking dwarfs it. Yeah. And they basically but again they made the point they were secondary. Oh, the English didn't care. They had India to worry about. Oh yeah, that was a huge part. The West Indies, the Caribbean Islands, far more important. And if they had to worry about anything in North America, like I was saying earlier, it would be the Southern Colony, Georgia and the Carolinas. Yeah. Yeah, they they make a point that they didn't care about New England, which they were all I don't know, presb uh not Presbyterian, congregationalists. They were town folk. They were the rebel rousers of the 17th century. That's why I do think they could have done more to like tell who are these people that populate these different regions, because the New Englanders primarily were they were like the radicals of the in England. And they didn't like the British monarchy back when they were in England, let alone a hundred years later. Oh, that was too. I got John Peters here, Vermont loyaltist, bitched out. That was another minute I had. What did he do? He was the one that they elected him and they went to the Continental Congress, and he was like, no, I don't think we should stay. And then they basically kicked him out, went back to Vermont, was getting like harassed on his way back home. No, I think we should stay, you mean? Like he was like he was a loyalist. Yeah. Well, at first he was not. Yeah. I feel like he was like not at first, and then wasn't a loyalist, but there's like there weren't like patriots that were hard patriots at that point yet either. There were people like, well, it can go either way. John Dickinson would be perfect example. Like once it was set in stone that they were gonna that they were gonna break apart, people picked their final. That's your boy. That's your boy. One of them. He got a mention here or there, didn't he? John Dickinson was not discussed. A little bit. He's a Quaker. Author of the pen penman of the American Revolution was not mentioned at all in this documentary. When was John Dickinson talked about as the penman of the American Revolution? They talked about Thomas Paine a lot, and I think because he's the most radical of them, and Ken Burns and Peter Kennedy. They mentioned John Dickinson as a Quaker who joined the war. But they didn't talk about his writings that were like super. No, but they they kind of talked about how the Quakers were you googling it? He's called the penman of the American Revolution. Okay, great. Oh you're so smart. You're so smart. Is that what you want me to? Is that what you want to hear? You're so smart. He's the penman fans, fans, if you heard it here, John knows that John Dickinson was the penman of the American Revolution. He knows more than Ken Burns and Donnie Bonaparte. I'm just saying every time they had someone referring to like gripes to like Donnie Bonaparte? Darren.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:41

Darren Bonaparte.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:42

No, but just every time they had some transgression, like it was always it was always Thomas Paine. That was like the guy that everything that was referencing as the other people had more crit had criticism of him that weren't as extremist as Thomas Paine. That's all I'm trying to say. Epitode 2 was kind of terrible. I did enjoy learning more about the invasion of Quebec. And that really set him back. That was tough. That was a tough L. That

British Priorities: Caribbean And The South

SPEAKER_04 1:12:10

was basically like tough L to take. I think there was a there was a bit of uh cockiness to the brut the the conf the colonials. They thought the French were gonna come. Yeah. They thought they were gonna they had them hook, line, and sinker for sure. Yeah. I think they thought, oh, why wouldn't the British the French have to hate, they're the eternal enemies of the British. Why wouldn't they join these American upstarts? But then I think they were the British were well, obviously. Well the French were like, we're still Catholic. You're Protestant. You're not you're why do you think we're just gonna join you? So what happened in Quebec? They showed up and like their the like the townspeople like fought against them too, right? Isn't that what kind of happened? They weren't expecting like they weren't expecting a resistance. I think they were expecting far more open arms from the French population. But it was more like they fought against them. Yeah, I think they were thrown back a little bit at the resistance by them. Which makes sense. I think it's an American like why would we trade one tyrant for another? Why do you think we would just naturally want to be we would want to be our own thing? Like maybe we want the colonies. The French? The French. Can you imagine? All of North America? I'll tell you. There was a time it probably could have happened. Well, so that's episode two. I have did I say I fell asleep four times? Yeah, I did say that. Yes. Um reiterate it. I have a note in here saying I'm starting to think to myself maybe George Washington was a bit of a dickhead. Like it really had you thinking. That's the same take we got when we went down to Charlottesville. I know. They're doing a good job of it. And like you kind of think maybe they were. But that's maybe they were at it. They can be, but you that's not the buttons you still have to answer the one. Well, why are they considered important? Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. I I mean I get it. I think just shows their humanness. I think I I'm fine with the one guy made a great point. There was I forget the guy's name. I said I wasn't a big fan of him. There was a gentleman in an interviewer who said, I don't believe I'm not a big proponent of uh the great men theory. Like uh like kind of mythological, making like myths out of great men, mythological. And he said that about Washington. He was like, Yeah, he wasn't while he wasn't this great mythology, mythological hero, like he was a like a great leader. Uh-huh. You gotta give it to them for standing up to Britain. I mean, I think that's that's the point that's that's so romanticized about it is like underdog story, you know, these guys saying, like, we're not taking this anymore. I don't know. But again, going back to the very beginning, a lot of the stuff I listen to, and the podcaster I listened to, who would go to Brian McClanahan? He would say that the biggest reason that a lot of these founders were going against the British is that the British weren't hanging up to the holding up to their end of the bargain anymore of holding on to these ancient liberties that as free Englishmen they've had and they've earned over centuries going back to the Magna Carta, going back to the English Bill of Rights. And that's why I think it w they talked more about it just being revolutionary and standing up because we don't have representation in Parliament. Yeah, that was part of it. Well, I don't think I think this documentary does a good job of going beyond that. I think just in general, you mostly talk about it as a the Stamp Act, the intolerable, like, you know, all this like just getting beat down by the British the British government. But I think I think this paints the picture of like, yeah, these guys were just like they were mad that they were getting treated poorly by their government, not so much like like you said, like the land not being able to l like losing their freedom. They thought that they were able to have their freedom for that. That's what they were promised to come up by coming over here, I guess. Not what they were promised, but they saw themselves as free Englishmen. Right. With but those in England didn't see them that way. They saw them as colonists that were by the time of this war should fall under the purview of the Parliament and the King. But George Washington and those in New England even in Pennsylvania, they would say, Well, we've had these our fathers, father, oh you know, we've centuries as Englishmen ourselves, we see ourselves as no different than you do. So I don't think Ken Burns really made a point of that. He kept harping more on equality as being the key founding element of this country. Which it wasn't. And that's like great for them. I know you don't think that. I know the propositionation myth, you didn't like to talk about that. You think it's irrelevant, but the fact of the matter is no one would have said that they were equal. They weren't fighting for the equality of all races or all this or even moving in that trend moving in that direction. Well, they were fighting for independence. So that they could they maintain their English liberties. That if the government that gave them their English liberties, or they would say that the society which fostered these English liberties and this idea of freedom and liberty, if they can't guarantee these things anymore, well then we will go our own way.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:24

So it

Equality Narrative vs. English Liberties

SPEAKER_02 1:17:25

was a conservative in nature, it wasn't Go Your Own Way. Is that what that song's about? Go your own way.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:33

I got a cool back.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:34

Anyway, back to Thunder The British Empire. So that's episode two.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:44

You want to take a you want to take a break? Maybe this could be one episode. Yeah. And then we'll then we'll break it up into two episodes, two episode batches, maybe. Take a little bit of a break. Maybe you can rejuvenate, start loosening up a little bit. You're starting to tighten up a little bit. Oh no. You're starting to tighten up a little bit. I think what happened was you started talking about the French, and that just gets you that gets you tight. Oh no. So we've made it to episode two ends with the Declaration of Independence being signed, I believe. That's how episode two ends, and that's where we're gonna end this podcast. Just for the episode, not permanently, not yet, at least.