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00:00:00Major funding for the American Revolution was provided by the Better Angels Society and its
00:00:05members Jeannie and Jonathan Levine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family
00:00:10Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein, the Robert D. and Patricia
00:00:15E. Kern Family Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and by Better Angels Society members Eric and
00:00:21Wendy Schmidt, Stephen A. Schwarzman, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional
00:00:26support was provided by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Gilbert
00:00:32S. Oman and Martha A. Darling, the Park Foundation, and by Better Angels Society members Gilchrist
00:00:37and Amy Berg, Perry and Donna Golkin, the Michelson Foundation, Jacqueline B. Mars, the Kissick Family
00:00:43Foundation, Diane and Hal Brierly, John H. N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell, John and Catherine
00:00:49Debs, the Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, and these additional members. The American Revolution
00:00:55was made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and viewers like you.
00:01:02The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world. The fight would take ingenuity,
00:01:11determination, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American
00:01:18story in motion. What would you like the power to do? The Bank of America.
00:01:29I think to believe in America rooted in the American Revolution is to believe in possibility.
00:01:48That, to me, is the extraordinary thing about the patriot side of the fight.
00:01:58I think everybody on every side, including people who were denied even the ownership of themselves,
00:02:06had the sense of possibility worth fighting for.
00:02:09The American Revolution changed the world. It's not just about the birth of the United States. It has
00:02:19ramifications across the globe. So studying the American Revolution, understanding it, and putting
00:02:26it in a global context, I think is vitally important for us to understand why we are where we are now.
00:02:42Our country was thrown into great confusion by the long continuance of the war.
00:02:48The churches in Virginia were almost entirely shut up and its holy ordinances unobserved.
00:02:54Most of our men were engaged in the war. Our town had now become a garrison. Betsy Ambler.
00:03:08Betsy Ambler of Yorktown, Virginia, had been 10 when the war began. She was now 15 and had lived most of
00:03:16the intervening years away from home. By the spring of 1780, she was back in Yorktown with her family.
00:03:25Life there had changed. The most populated parts of Virginia all lay within reach of the Royal Navy
00:03:32and any troops the British might land. Governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Assembly
00:03:40chose to move the capital from nearby Williamsburg to Richmond. And since Betsy Ambler's father had been
00:03:46appointed to the state government, her family would have to leave Yorktown again. George Washington had long
00:03:55known that Yorktown was particularly vulnerable. As early as 1777, he had warned of Virginia militia
00:04:03commander against stationing troops there. I can by no means think it would be prudent to have any
00:04:11considerable stationary force at Yorktown. Being upon a narrow neck of land, it would be in danger of
00:04:18being cut off. The enemy might very easily throw up a few ships and land a body of men there who would
00:04:26oblige them to surrender.
00:04:38In late May of 1780, shortly after the British capture of Charleston, South Carolina, an elite
00:04:49loyalist group of green-clad cavalry and mounted infantry called the British Legion were in hot
00:04:55pursuit of continental soldiers fleeing north. Their commander was a 25-year-old English officer,
00:05:03Bannister Tarleton, handsome, rakish, ruthless, and determined to make himself a celebrated soldier.
00:05:11Tarleton wrote the British chronicler, Horace Walpole, boasts of having butchered more men
00:05:18and lain with more women than anybody in the army. Tarleton caught up with the rebels near the North
00:05:25Carolina border, a region called the Waxhaws and demanded they surrender. You will order every
00:05:33person under your command to pile his arms in one hour. If you are rash enough to reject these terms,
00:05:41the blood be upon your head. The Patriots chose to fight. Tarleton's men quickly overwhelmed them.
00:05:52Some who dropped their weapons and asked for quarter received none.
00:05:57They refused my terms, Tarleton wrote. I have cut 170 officers and men to pieces.
00:06:08He may have destroyed the last continental force in South Carolina, but he had also helped inspire
00:06:14local patriots to oppose British occupation. When they went into battle over the coming months,
00:06:20many would be eager to deal out what they called Tarleton's quarter to any loyalist unlucky enough to
00:06:28fall into their hands. That war in South Carolina is bloody. It's a guerrilla conflict. It's sometimes
00:06:37brother against brother in this backwoods warfare. It's an ugly, ugly, ugly conflict. And if one wants
00:06:46a national origin story that's clean and neat and tells you very clearly who the good guys are
00:06:53and who the bad guys are, the American Revolution in South Carolina is not that story.
00:07:02The British government was very good at seizing and occupying cities.
00:07:09Newport, Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, Savannah. These are the kind of main ports that
00:07:16throughout the war, Britain could secure. But holding those places were not holding America.
00:07:23Pacifying an entire countryside is an entirely different task than seizing strategic positions.
00:07:30General Charles Cornwallis had been left in charge in the South with clear orders from General Henry
00:07:36Clinton back in New York. He was not to move on to North Carolina and Virginia until South Carolina was
00:07:44completely pacified. It was to be the first full-scale military occupation of an entire colony in North America.
00:07:55From Charleston, British troops quickly occupied posts in a great arc from Savannah and Augusta in Georgia
00:08:03through the village called 96 to Camden and then to Georgetown, 60 miles up the coast from Charleston.
00:08:11When the British take the decision to move the war decisively to the South, I think they're trying
00:08:16to exploit the fact that there are smaller numbers of white colonists and larger numbers of slaves in
00:08:22those territories and the colonists will be more vulnerable. Their property, slaves, we need not seek.
00:08:31It flies to us and famine follows. Their trade we can annihilate. And when an army cannot find subsistence,
00:08:39on what hope shall a people resist? Major John Andre.
00:08:47I determined to go to Charleston and throw myself into the hands of the English.
00:08:53They received me readily and I began to feel the happiness of liberty, of which I knew nothing before.
00:09:00I had been robbed and deserted by my slaves. I would sell some of my Negroes, but the slaves in this
00:09:10country in general have behaved so infamously. Their value is so trifling that it must be absolute ruin
00:09:17to sell at this time. Eliza Lucas Pickney. At his headquarters in New York, General Clinton
00:09:25continued to believe most South Carolinians were loyalists. He had insisted that patriots swear
00:09:31allegiance to the crown or be considered as enemies and treated accordingly. Those who did swear
00:09:39allegiance were swiftly disillusioned as their loyalist neighbors began to settle old scores.
00:09:47Those insurgents who refused the oath and dared to take up arms against the king, Tarleton told
00:09:53General Cornwallis don't deserve leniency and would get none from him or his men.
00:10:01The oath of allegiance was really going too far because it obliged them to publicly identify
00:10:07as on the British side. But I think the fundamental problem is that the British are reluctant to
00:10:17restore civil government in the territories they occupy. They maintain military government and of
00:10:23course that reinforces the American claim that the British are set on imposing despotism on the colonies.
00:10:31Times began to be troublesome and people began to divide into parties. Those that had been good friends
00:10:40in times past became enemies. They began to watch each other with jealous eyes. James Collins.
00:10:5016 year old James Collins lived on his family's farm just below the North Carolina border.
00:10:56His father, Daniel, was an Irish immigrant who loathed the British and encouraged his son to become
00:11:03a collector of news, a spy reporting on his loyalist neighbors.
00:11:10One of the things that happens in wartime is people who are really good politicians,
00:11:15they create binaries. You're either with us or you're against us. The fact of the matter is in real life
00:11:22that's actually not true. There's often more than two possibilities. There are a lot of people in 13
00:11:27colonies who actually didn't care that much about the outcome. They just wanted it over.
00:11:32The British are heavily reliant on recruiting loyalists as soldiers and loyalists are often very
00:11:41embittered. And of course if you've got soldiers who are keen on revenge they're not the ideal instruments
00:11:49of pacification. On June 22nd 1780, James Collins' father was among the men gathered at a tiny settlement
00:11:59called Brown's Crossroads, summoned there by Captain Christian Huck, a loyalist with a well-earned
00:12:06reputation for cruelty. He was there to administer the oath of allegiance. Captain Huck stunned the crowd
00:12:14by warning that even if the rebels were as thick as the trees and Jesus Christ would come down and lead
00:12:21them, he would still defeat them. His audience, Presbyterians all, considered that blasphemy.
00:12:31We must fight, James' father said, as soon as he got home or submit and be slaves. He went off to join the
00:12:38Patriot militia the next morning. James went too, carrying an ancient shotgun.
00:12:47For the next few weeks, Christian Huck continued to burn homes, menace women and murder rebels.
00:12:55In July, after he took a Patriot family hostage, the Collins' militia caught up to him and killed him,
00:13:02along with many of his men. New volunteers were now swelling Patriot ranks. By early August,
00:13:11Cornwallis had to admit that the whole country he had claimed to have pacified is in an absolute state
00:13:18of rebellion. Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock, Blue Savannah and Black Mingo Creek,
00:13:26Tearcoat Swamp and Halfway Swamp, Horseshoe and Quimby Bridge. The battles and skirmishes that would take
00:13:34place in South Carolina between 1780 and 1781, 102 of them by one count, would yield nearly one-fifth of
00:13:44all the battlefield deaths suffered during the entire war. And nearly all those American casualties would
00:13:53come at the hands of other Americans. Violence is radicalizing. It is polarizing. And it happens
00:14:03in the revolution to people on both sides of the equation, that when they are victims of violence,
00:14:10they will then become perpetrators of violence.
00:14:12There was no one about in the streets, only a few sad and frightened faces in the windows.
00:14:24I talked to some of the principal citizens, informing them that this was but the vanguard of a much larger
00:14:29force on the way, and that our king had decided to uphold them with all his power and strength.
00:14:35General Rochambeau.
00:14:40On July 11th, 1780, five French warships and a host of transport vessels had emerged from the fog that
00:14:48blanketed the harbor at Newport, Rhode Island, and some 4,600 officers and men under the Comte de Rochambeau
00:14:56came ashore. Rhode Islanders still remembered that the last French fleet that came had abandoned them,
00:15:04and Protestant residents weren't sure if these Catholic foreigners had come to help or conquer them.
00:15:13But when the French commander promised that his men would pay for everything they needed
00:15:18in silver coin, not worthless continental paper, a French officer remembered their countenances
00:15:25brightened at this mention of hard money. The next day, General Rochambeau wrote to Washington,
00:15:33here we are, sir, at your orders.
00:15:39Meanwhile, Congress, without consulting George Washington, had now appointed General Horatio Gates,
00:15:45the hero of Saratoga, commander of the whole Southern Department.
00:15:51In late July, he and several aides rode into a camp of 1,200 continentals from Maryland and Delaware
00:15:58that stretched along the deep river at Cox's Mill in North Carolina. Gates' objective was Camden,
00:16:06South Carolina, a British outpost and supply depot in the center of the state.
00:16:12When he reached Rugeley's Mill, 12 miles north of Camden, Gates had convinced himself that he had 7,000
00:16:20soldiers at his disposal. In fact, he had just over 3,000 men, continentals and militia. And by then,
00:16:30Cornwallis had reached Camden with reinforcements. At 10 p.m. on the night of August 15, 1780, Gates started
00:16:40south toward Camden. By sheer coincidence, Cornwallis chose to lead his men north on the same sandy road
00:16:48that evening, hoping to surprise Gates. At about 2 a.m. on August 16, mounted scouts from the two armies
00:16:59collided. There was a brief exchange of fire. They separated and prepared for battle.
00:17:05At dawn, Cornwallis followed the British custom of placing his best troops on his right. Gates,
00:17:15who was himself an ex-British officer and should have known better, unaccountably assigned his least
00:17:21experienced men to face them. Militiamen, many of whom had never been in combat. As the Patriots tried to
00:17:31form their lines, a long red wall of chanting British regulars began storming toward them. The
00:17:38militia broke and ran. I confess I was among the first that fled. The cause of that I cannot tell,
00:17:46except that everyone I saw was about to do the same. I threw away my gun. Private Garrett Watts.
00:17:53Continentals on the right did hold for a time. Gates's second in command, General Johan de Kalb,
00:18:03a Bavarian-born volunteer, was shot, slashed, and bayoneted again and again, but managed to order
00:18:11one counterattack after another until he was finally knocked to the ground, mortally wounded.
00:18:17His men, too, began to run. General Gates witnessed none of this. Shortly after the shooting began,
00:18:27he had fled the battlefield on horseback and stayed on the run until he reached Hillsborough, North Carolina,
00:18:34180 miles away. The defeat at Camden and the story of Gates's flight ruined his reputation.
00:18:45When it came time to name a successor, Congress would defer to George Washington. Although South
00:18:52Carolina was not pacified, General Cornwallis was impatient to invade North Carolina. The next step
00:18:59on the road to the biggest prize, Virginia, and what he hoped would be the total subjugation of the
00:19:06southern states. Washington's reputation in France is an interesting one. In France, he is revered,
00:19:17he is admired. People love George Washington in ways that sometimes seems exaggerated. But it's true,
00:19:24they admire him not just because he's a general and they respect the military side, but it's more that
00:19:30he's a symbol for a Republican leader. For the French, Washington became a symbol of what was possible in
00:19:36an egalitarian world where even a farmer could become a general. So they admire him for that military
00:19:42talent that he had, which was not based on aristocracy titles or money. He was there because of his talent.
00:19:50On September 21st, 1780, Washington and four of his closest aides met in Hartford, Connecticut,
00:19:58with General Rochambeau and his entourage. The French army remained in Newport. Washington's army was arrayed
00:20:06around New York. For two days, the Allied commanders discussed what steps they might take together to
00:20:13defeat the British. Washington and Rochambeau agreed that the most important objective was still New York
00:20:21City. But before an assault could take place, they would need to have naval superiority and a far larger
00:20:29combined army. Washington begged Rochambeau to ask his king for more help. Rochambeau said he would try.
00:20:39I have observed in this war we have sometimes been in the south when we should have been in the north,
00:20:45and oftener in the north when we should have been in the south. But should we ever possess the Hudson
00:20:50River? We can reduce the northern provinces. General Henry Clinton.
00:20:58On September 25th, Washington and his staff inspected the fortifications at West Point on
00:21:04the Hudson. They were scheduled to dine with the general whom Washington had just appointed commander
00:21:11of the fort, one of his best soldiers, Benedict Arnold. Washington had been startled by what poor
00:21:19condition the fortifications were in and concerned that Arnold had not been there to greet him.
00:21:25He was not at his headquarters either when his commander arrived for dinner.
00:21:31No one could give me any information where he was. The impropriety of his conduct,
00:21:36when he knew I was to be there, struck me very forcibly.
00:21:40I had not the least idea of the real cause. That evening, when his trusted aide Alexander
00:21:48Hamilton brought him a bundle of papers, Washington discovered the real cause.
00:21:55Benedict Arnold, the commander of West Point, the place Washington considered the most important post in
00:22:03America, had deserted and fled to the British that morning. Worse still, he had planned to surrender
00:22:11the fort and all the men stationed in it to the enemy. Few soldiers had contributed more to the
00:22:19revolutionary cause than Benedict Arnold. Time and again, he had exhibited extraordinary initiative and
00:22:26bravery on the battlefield and was severely wounded twice, at Quebec and Saratoga.
00:22:34He had done all these miracles on the battlefield, but he was not seeing any of the recognition he
00:22:40believed he deserved. Why am I doing this? I've lost my personal finances. I've destroyed my body. For what?
00:22:49Two years earlier, Washington had made Arnold military commander in Philadelphia. It had not gone well.
00:22:57He used his position to profit from the sale of confiscated loyalist property. He had also settled
00:23:04into the same mansion the British commander had occupied and was accused of being far too close
00:23:11to wealthy merchants suspected of loyalist sympathies.
00:23:15While Arnold is in the midst of this terrible frustration in Philadelphia, he falls in love
00:23:25with a young woman named Peggy Shippen, whose family is of loyalist sympathies, who had gotten to know
00:23:32the British officers during the British occupation of Philadelphia quite well. And one of them was a Major
00:23:39Andre, who just as it so happened, would become the head of the British spy network.
00:23:46And whether or not Peggy was the one who made this all happen,
00:23:52soon after the two of them are married, Arnold begins to make overtures to the British.
00:23:59In the strictest secrecy, he began to communicate through Major John Andre
00:24:04that he'd gone to war only to redress legitimate American grievances, not independence, and had
00:24:12been appalled when Congress allied itself with Catholic France, which he believed was the enemy of
00:24:18liberty and Protestantism. He now volunteered to enlist in the King's service, either as an officer in the
00:24:26British army or by cooperating on some concerted plan to sabotage the revolutionary cause.
00:24:35For 17 months, coded messages had gone back and forth before a concrete plan could be agreed upon.
00:24:46Arnold was to persuade Washington to give him command of West Point and all the American
00:24:52outposts on the Hudson and then weaken their defenses so that General Clinton's forces could sail up the
00:24:59river and take them all. In exchange, Arnold was to be made a general in the British service and paid
00:25:0720,000 British pounds plus 500 pounds a year for the rest of his life. Clinton's forces were poised to move up
00:25:16the Hudson. All that then remained was for Andre and Arnold to meet and work out a few final details.
00:25:25Andre had explicit orders. He was not to cross into rebel territory, dress as a civilian, or carry any
00:25:33papers. He disobeyed all three. And on his way back to the British lines, Andre was captured by three New York
00:25:41militiamen with incriminating documents hidden in his stockings in Benedict Arnold's handwriting.
00:25:50This came as a devastating blow to Washington. And it was a blow to the American people to realize
00:25:57that one of their own, one of their own that had been a great hero, could make this decision to turn on
00:26:05all of them. He was the last person Washington ever thought would have betrayed him.
00:26:12Because Major Andre had been captured in civilian clothes, he was hanged as a spy.
00:26:19Arnold, who managed to escape, got his commission and was given command of a regiment made up of
00:26:26loyalists and deserters from the Continental Army called the American Legion.
00:26:31Since the fall of Lucifer, nothing has equaled the fall of Arnold. He will now sink as low as he had
00:26:41been high before. And as the devil made war upon heaven after his fall, so I expect Arnold will upon
00:26:48America. Should he ever fall into our hands, he will be a sweet sacrifice. General Nathaniel Green
00:27:01General Cornwallis' planned invasion of North Carolina would be a three-pronged assault.
00:27:12On the right, a column would seize the port of Wilmington, ensuring that supplies could flow smoothly
00:27:18inland from the coast. In the center, Cornwallis would himself lead the bulk of his army toward the tiny
00:27:25town of Charlotte, then just a crossroads and a courthouse. On the left, Major Patrick Ferguson and
00:27:34perhaps a thousand loyalists were to guard his flank and try to rally more men from the back country.
00:27:41Ferguson, a Scottish-born career soldier who directed his men in battle with the Silver
00:27:47Whistle, led his loyalist force across the border into western North Carolina. He released rebel prisoners
00:27:56and sent them over the Blue Ridge Mountains with a message for those patriots who called themselves
00:28:02the Over Mountain Men, the settlers who had defied the 1763 proclamation forbidding them to occupy
00:28:09Indian lands. A British victory was inevitable, Ferguson told them, and every man who laid down his arms would be
00:28:18treated gently and justly. But the frontiersmen did not believe him. News of Tarleton's cruelty and loyalist
00:28:27abuses was still fresh. Instead of surrendering, they came swarming over the mountains after Ferguson,
00:28:35who realized he was in trouble, changed course, and moved toward Charlotte. Along the way,
00:28:42he issued a proclamation meant to rally loyalists. Gentlemen, if you choose to be pissed upon forever
00:28:51and ever by a set of mongrels, say so at once and let your women turn their backs upon you and look out
00:28:58for real men to protect them. If you wish or deserve to live and bear the name of men,
00:29:04grasp your arms in a moment and run to camp. The backwater men have crossed the mountains.
00:29:12That's the wrong tone to take when you're communicating with these back country over
00:29:19the mountain men, these Scots-Irish settlers. Just inside South Carolina, Ferguson unaccountably
00:29:28decided to make a stand on a hill grandly named King's Mountain. Nearly a thousand Patriot militia,
00:29:36half over mountain men and half from the Virginia and Carolina back country, including James Collins,
00:29:43were right behind him. Each leader made a short speech in his own way to his men, desiring every
00:29:50coward to be off immediately. Here, I confess, I would have willingly been excused.
00:29:56On October 7th, 1780, as they waited for the signal to start up the hillside, Collins recalled,
00:30:04each man threw four or five musket balls into his mouth to stave off thirst and speed reloading.
00:30:13The Patriots attacked with terrifying ferocity.
00:30:16They appeared like so many devils from the infernal regions. They were the most powerful-looking men ever
00:30:25beheld. Tall, raw-boned, and sinewy with long matted hair. Such men as were never before seen in the
00:30:34Carolinas. Drury Mathis. As the Patriots closed in on the summit, Ferguson continued to ride from point
00:30:44to point, waving his saber, blowing his whistle, trying to get his loyalists to hold on.
00:30:51Several balls slammed into him at once. He tumbled from his saddle. His foot caught in the stirrup,
00:30:58and he was dragged back and forth along the ground until his men could grab the reins.
00:31:05Ferguson had been the only British soldier in the battle that day.
00:31:09Ferguson had been the only British soldier in the battle that day. Everyone else on both sides was an
00:31:13American. The loyalists surrendered.
00:31:22The dead lay in heaps on all sides, while the groans of the wounded were heard in every direction.
00:31:28Great God, said I, is this the fate of mortals? Was it for this cause that man was brought into the world?
00:31:35We proceeded to bury the dead, but it was badly done. The hogs in the neighborhood gathered into
00:31:44the place to devour the flesh of men, and the wolves became so plenty that it was dangerous for anyone to
00:31:49be out at night. Private James Collins.
00:31:55After Kings Mountain, Patriots murder many of their captives. If they see somebody among the captives who
00:32:04gives them a dirty look, they'll say, oh, I know that guy. He burned a farm just over the next hill,
00:32:11and he killed somebody's family. Let's string him up. And so all kinds of atrocities take place.
00:32:21When Cornwallis learned that the Patriots had annihilated a thousand-man loyalist force,
00:32:26he pulled his army out of Charlotte and headed back into South Carolina.
00:32:36The women of America, animated by the purest patriotism, are sensible of sorrow at this day,
00:32:43in not offering more than barren wishes for the success of so glorious a revolution.
00:32:49If opinion and manners did not forbid us to march to glory by the same paths as the men,
00:32:56we should at least equal and sometimes surpass them in our love for the public good.
00:33:03Esther Reed.
00:33:08In Philadelphia, a prominent woman named Esther Reed had published a pamphlet which called upon all
00:33:14women to forego luxuries and instead raise funds to help the soldiers.
00:33:22They collected 300,000 continental dollars, hoping to split it among the troops.
00:33:28George Washington vetoed that idea. They would just buy rum, he said. What they needed were shirts.
00:33:38The women would make more than 2,000 of them.
00:33:44And see the spirit catching from state to state. America will not wear chains while her daughters are
00:33:51virtuous. Abigail Adams.
00:33:58It's quite primitive, the conditions their soldiers are living in. A belief in the cause keeps you putting
00:34:06one foot in front of the other. But that does not keep you warm. It does not cool you down in the
00:34:11summer. It does not feed you. So it's a constant struggle just day to day, exclusive of battle.
00:34:22We never stood upon such perilous ground.
00:34:24Our troops are poorly clothed, badly fed and worse paid. They have not seen a paper dollar in the way of
00:34:33pay for nearly 12 months. General Anthony Wayne.
00:34:38On New Year's Day 1781, fueled by rum and righteous indignation, some 1500 Pennsylvania
00:34:50continentals encamped near Morristown, New Jersey, mutinied. They killed two officers who tried to
00:34:57stop them, seized six cannon, and began marching toward Philadelphia to confront Congress with their
00:35:05grievances. But before the mutineers could get there, the Pennsylvania legislature intervened and agreed
00:35:13to most of their demands, including the promise of full back pay and the choice of leaving the army
00:35:20or re-enlisting. No one was to be punished. Half the men left the army. The rest re-enlisted.
00:35:32Three weeks later, when three New Jersey regiments also mutinied, Washington ordered New England troops to
00:35:39surround them. The men were assembled and made to look on as a firing squad of their fellow mutineers was
00:35:48forced to execute two of the ringleaders. Washington realized the only thing he could do was to take
00:35:55them down with terrible brutality. This was Washington's moment of having to end this in a very summary fashion.
00:36:06Everything is now quiet, Washington wrote afterwards. But he feared that unless some way were found to pay
00:36:14and clothe and supply his men, there would be still more mutinies. Be assured that day does not follow
00:36:22night more certainly, and it brings with it some additional proof of the impracticality of carrying
00:36:29on the war without aid. We are at the end of our tether. Now or never, deliverance must come.
00:36:44Richmond, Virginia. War in itself, however distant, is indeed terrible. But when brought to our very doors,
00:36:56the reflection is indeed overwhelming. What a gloomy time do I look forward to.
00:37:03Already our gentlemen begin to apprehend that the enemy will advance into the country.
00:37:08If they do, God knows what will become of us. Betsy Hambler.
00:37:17Virginia's patriots weren't ready to resist an invasion. Men were refusing conscription.
00:37:24Wealthy planters had exempted themselves, their sons and overseers from serving,
00:37:29because they claimed they needed to stay home to keep their slaves in line.
00:37:33The rich wanted the poor to fight for them, one farmer recalled, to defend their property,
00:37:40while they refused to fight for themselves.
00:37:44Then in January of 1781, Loyalist troops, British regulars and German soldiers,
00:37:52sailed into Chesapeake Bay and up the James River.
00:37:56Their commander was Benedict Arnold, now a brigadier general in the British Army,
00:38:02and eager to demonstrate his newfound devotion to the crown.
00:38:07He and half his men marched toward Richmond, the new state capital.
00:38:13At the sight of Arnold's men, Virginia militiamen, many without arms, melted away.
00:38:19Many years later, an enslaved member of Governor Jefferson's household remembered that in 10 minutes,
00:38:28not a white man was to be seen in Richmond.
00:38:32My mother was so scared. She didn't know whether to stay indoors or out.
00:38:37The British formed in line and marched up with drums beaten.
00:38:41It was an awful sight. Seemed like the day of judgment was come.
00:38:45Isaac Granger.
00:38:49Arnold's men burned warehouses filled with salt and tobacco, and seized 2,200 small arms,
00:38:56nearly 40 cannon, and 503 hogsheads of rum.
00:39:02Even printing presses were, in Arnold's words, purified by the flames.
00:39:07He and his men then moved back down the James, pillaging as they went, and settled in for the
00:39:16rest of the winter at Portsmouth, near the mouth of the Chesapeake, where they could be supported by the Royal Navy.
00:39:23To send Benedict Arnold to Virginia was sending the man Washington most despised to his home state.
00:39:34And what Washington did was send the officer that he trusted in many ways the most, Lafayette, to contain this treasonous dog.
00:39:45Should Arnold fall into your hands, Washington told the Marquis de Lafayette when he ordered him south to protect Virginia,
00:39:54you will execute the punishment due for his treason in the most summary way.
00:39:59South Carolina.
00:40:04When I left the Northern Army, I expected to find in this Southern Department a thousand difficulties to which I was a stranger.
00:40:13But the embarrassments far exceed my utmost apprehension.
00:40:18I have but a shadow of an army.
00:40:21Nathaniel Green.
00:40:22I think Nathaniel Green is the unsung hero of the American Revolution.
00:40:30Without Nathaniel Green in the south grinding it out battle after battle in the war-torn south,
00:40:36the revolution could have easily been lost.
00:40:41After the disaster at Camden, George Washington had sent Nathaniel Green to replace the disgraced
00:40:47Horatio Gates as commander of what was left of the Southern Army.
00:40:52I think I am giving you a general, Washington told a South Carolina congressman.
00:40:58But what can a general do without men, without arms, without clothing, without provisions?
00:41:06Green's forces were outnumbered by more than two to one.
00:41:11Nonetheless, he decided to divide his small army.
00:41:14It makes the most of my inferior force, he explained, for it compels my adversary to divide his.
00:41:24Green himself and most of his men marched into South Carolina to a camp near Chiraw on the Pee Dee River.
00:41:32Meanwhile, Daniel Morgan led what Green called his flying army west to annoy the enemy in that quarter
00:41:40and spirit up the people.
00:41:45In response, Cornwallis sent Bannister Tarleton after Daniel Morgan.
00:41:52Morgan had hoped to get his men safely back across the broad river before facing his pursuer,
00:41:58but Tarleton was soon within five miles.
00:42:00Morgan chose to make a stand at the Cowpens, a rolling meadow 500 yards long and almost as wide,
00:42:11on which herdsmen grazed their cattle on the way to market.
00:42:15He expected Tarleton to lead a headlong charge into his ranks and planned to take advantage of his rash opponent.
00:42:23Daniel Morgan was a master tactician.
00:42:27His planning for the Battle of Cowpens is really brilliant in the way that he draws Tarleton into a trap.
00:42:36Morgan knew that his less reliable militia, faced with an onrushing enemy, would likely break and run.
00:42:43So he would try to turn that weakness into a strength.
00:42:48For the next day's battle, he would arrange his men in three lines, 150 yards apart.
00:42:54Militiamen would man the first two.
00:42:58Morgan ordered them to fire just two volleys each into the oncoming enemy,
00:43:03and then retreat behind the third line, manned by seasoned continentals.
00:43:08He hoped the enemy, convinced the militia were running away again, would charge,
00:43:15and suddenly find themselves under deadly fire from his most experienced fighters, hidden behind a rise.
00:43:27Morgan spent the night before the battle building the militia's confidence.
00:43:31He went among the volunteers, told them to keep in good spirits and the day would be ours.
00:43:40Just hold up your head, boys. Two fires, he would say, and you're free.
00:43:45And then when you return to your homes, how the old folks will bless you.
00:43:50And the girls kiss you for your gallant conduct.
00:43:55Major Thomas Young.
00:43:56Morgan's recognition of them and their recognition of Morgan as this crusty backwoodsman who's just like them,
00:44:08gives them a confidence and an ability to think clearly and to follow orders
00:44:13in a way that they would not have done this for anybody else.
00:44:20About sunrise on the 17th of January, 1781, the enemy came in full view.
00:44:26The sight, to me at least, seemed somewhat imposing.
00:44:30They halted for a short time and then advanced rapidly, as if certain of victory.
00:44:36Private James Collins.
00:44:37The first line of militia managed to pick off a few regulars and then following orders fell back.
00:44:48When the enemy came within 50 yards of the second line, the militia fired two volleys into them.
00:44:55A heavy and galling fire, Morgan remembered, that felled two thirds of Tarleton's infantry officers.
00:45:02But just as Tarleton had assumed it would, the second line appeared to fall apart too.
00:45:09The British stepped up their pace, eager to catch the fleeing militia.
00:45:15Surely, Tarleton thought, the battle was nearly won.
00:45:18His men raced up a slope, and at its crest, suddenly found themselves face to face with the third line,
00:45:27and under what a continental officer remembered as a very destructive fire, which they little expected.
00:45:34This time, it was the Patriots who charged with bayonets.
00:45:40Emitting a blood-curdling war cry, they had adapted from native warriors.
00:45:45A yell that would reverberate on southern battlefields for decades.
00:45:50Morgan rode up in front, and waving his sword, cried out,
00:45:55give them one more fire, and the day is ours.
00:45:59We then advanced briskly.
00:46:01They began to throw down their arms and surrender themselves.
00:46:04Private James Collins.
00:46:07Meanwhile, American cavalry attacked the enemy's rear, shouting and charging, one Patriot said, like madmen.
00:46:16The British line broke.
00:46:17It was all over in 35 minutes.
00:46:22The British lost 300 men killed or wounded.
00:46:26525 more were taken prisoners.
00:46:31Tarleton managed to get away, but Daniel Morgan was exultant.
00:46:36I have given him, he said, a devil of a whipping.
00:46:42News of Tarleton's defeat stunned General Cornwallis.
00:46:45Nearly a third of his army was now lost.
00:46:49He set out to catch the rebel force.
00:46:53Two months later, at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina, Nathaniel Green tried the same
00:46:59tactics against Cornwallis that Morgan had used against Tarleton.
00:47:04At first, the strategy seemed to work.
00:47:08Cornwallis' left began to buckle.
00:47:11If Green had had reserves, he might have prevailed.
00:47:15He had no reserves.
00:47:19Cornwallis won the battle, but he had lost another 500 men.
00:47:24When the news eventually reached Britain, the leader of the opposition in parliament was unimpressed.
00:47:33Another such victory, he said, would destroy the British army.
00:47:37Cornwallis and his exhausted men staggered east to Wilmington.
00:47:44He had had enough of the Carolinas.
00:47:47Cornwallis decided to defy his orders from General Clinton and lead his army north
00:47:53to link up with British and loyalist forces already in Virginia.
00:47:59I cannot help expressing my wishes that the Chesapeake may become the seat of war,
00:48:03even, if necessary, at the expense of abandoning New York.
00:48:08Until Virginia is in a manner subdued, our hold of the Carolinas must be difficult,
00:48:13if not precarious.
00:48:16Lord Cornwallis.
00:48:17On April 25th, 1781, Cornwallis began his northward march.
00:48:25Word of his disobedience would not reach Clinton's headquarters in New York for more than a month.
00:48:32My wonder at this move will never cease, Clinton wrote when he heard the news.
00:48:37But Cornwallis has made it, and we shall say no more but to make the best of it.
00:48:47The seat of war is chiefly in the southern states.
00:48:53And there, our enemies, by victories and defeats, are wasting daily.
00:48:59Our own American affairs wear a more pleasing aspect.
00:49:03Maryland has acceded to the Confederation at the very time when Britain is deluding herself
00:49:08with the idea that we are crumbling to pieces. Abigail Adams.
00:49:13In early 1781, Maryland became the last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.
00:49:23Almost five years after declaring their independence,
00:49:26the United States finally had the kind of confederation they thought they wanted.
00:49:32But it was just an alliance, not a central government.
00:49:36All laws were left to the individual states, including those governing slavery,
00:49:44which was still legal everywhere.
00:49:47But now there were people in all parts of America looking to abolish it.
00:49:53They would have their first successes in the north.
00:49:56It's in this moment that the first anti-slavery organizations begin to take shape,
00:50:04especially in those places where slavery is not terribly important to the social and economic order.
00:50:10Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut.
00:50:14It's easier in the north where there are fewer black people.
00:50:20The sort of traditional things to say is that the south was a slave society,
00:50:25and the north was a society with slaves.
00:50:28Before the revolution, slavery was never a major public issue.
00:50:36There were people who spoke against it and gave good reasons to what evil it was,
00:50:42but it was not a major public issue.
00:50:47After the revolution, there never was a time when it wasn't.
00:50:51In 1780, Pennsylvania's Gradual Emancipation Act had said that anyone born into slavery in that state,
00:51:01after the act's adoption, automatically became free at 28.
00:51:07But any man, woman, or child enslaved before its passage remained enslaved to the end of their lives,
00:51:14unless they bought their freedom or had their owner granted to them.
00:51:21Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me,
00:51:29and I'd been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it.
00:51:35Just to stand one minute on God's earth of free woman, I would.
00:51:44When an enslaved woman in western Massachusetts called Mumbet was struck by her mistress with a kitchen shovel,
00:51:51she had stalked from the house and refused to return.
00:51:55Her owner went to court to get her back.
00:51:59Mumbet's lawyer convinced an all-white jury that since the preamble to the new Massachusetts state
00:52:05constitution declared all men free and equal, and since his client was a human being,
00:52:12she should be free.
00:52:13The Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed.
00:52:18Mumbet changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman and lived nearly 50 years in Stockbridge,
00:52:25serving her neighbors as a healer, nurse, and midwife.
00:52:30Her gravestone in a Stockbridge cemetery reads,
00:52:33she was born a slave, yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal.
00:52:43By the time of her death in 1829, all the states from New Jersey, north to New England,
00:52:50had called for the abolition of slavery.
00:52:52But it would take another generation and a still more terrible war to end it everywhere in the United States.
00:53:10There are few generals that have run oftener than I have done,
00:53:14but I have taken care not to run too far, and commonly have run as fast forward as backward,
00:53:21to convince our enemy that we were like a crab that could run either way.
00:53:26Nathaniel Green
00:53:29One by one, all across the lower south, British outposts either surrendered to patriots or were abandoned.
00:53:38Fort Watson, Camden, Orangeburg, Fort Mott, Fort Granby, Fort Galfin, Georgetown, Augusta.
00:53:49General Green fought three full-scale battles with the British at Hopkirk Hill, 96, and Utah Springs, and lost them all.
00:53:59But he inflicted such heavy casualties each time that the enemy was forced to withdraw closer and closer to Charleston.
00:54:09We fight, Green said. Get beat. Rise and fight again.
00:54:16He couldn't have done it without local patriot militias.
00:54:20Francis Marion's outfit eluded British cavalry by hiding in the swamp so successfully that Bannister Tarleton said,
00:54:28As for this old fox, the devil himself could not catch him.
00:54:34As Britain's grip on the region weakened, the anarchy that had characterized the back country for months spiraled into chaos.
00:54:43Partisans on both sides seemed bent on being more cruel than those on the other.
00:54:50They tortured and murdered captives, burned homes, and flogged their owners, raped women, and hanged their husbands.
00:54:58Gangs of bandits held up travelers and plundered farms.
00:55:05With us in the North, the difference is little more than a division of sentiment.
00:55:09But here, they prosecute each other with little less than savage fury.
00:55:14You can have no idea of the distress and misery that prevail in this quarter.
00:55:19Nathaniel Green
00:55:20By the end of the summer of 1781, the British would be penned up in just three coastal towns in the Carolinas and Georgia.
00:55:32Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah.
00:55:36London's southern strategy was falling apart.
00:55:39The king has decided that the principal objective of his arms in America during the war with the English is to drive them from the Gulf of Mexico and the banks of the Mississippi,
00:55:56which should be considered as the bulwark of the vast empire of New Spain.
00:56:01Bernardo de Galvez, the bold young governor of Spanish Louisiana, saw an opportunity in the American Revolution to take back West Florida for his king, even before Spain had entered the war in 1779.
00:56:18Bernardo de Galvez had big ambitions for Spain and he had big ambitions for himself.
00:56:26He believed that war against Britain would be his chance to push Spanish colonies even farther into North America, past Louisiana, into the rest of the Gulf Coast, the Appalachians, perhaps most of eastern North America.
00:56:44As soon as Galvez heard Spain had officially entered the war, he left New Orleans and rallied an army that reflected the extraordinary diversity of the Gulf Coast.
00:56:56Spaniards, Spaniards, Spaniards, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Acadians, Irishmen, black and biracial men from Africa and the Americas, Choctaws, Homers, Alabamas, men from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Hispaniola, and a handful of volunteers from the United States.
00:57:17Galvez began to take British posts.
00:57:22He took Baton Rouge, Natchez, and then sailed with his militia and took the post of Mobile.
00:57:29By the spring of 1781, Galvez's only objective left in British West Florida was its capital and stronghold, Pensacola.
00:57:40It was defended by local black and white militiamen, British, German, and loyalist soldiers, and hundreds of Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Muscogee Creeks who opposed any imperial expansion that threatened their lands in the southeastern interior.
00:57:59Galvez landed his army and began a siege.
00:58:06For a month and a half, Spanish guns edged closer and closer to the heart of the British defenses.
00:58:14Finally, on May 8th, 1781, a shell hit the British gunpowder magazine.
00:58:21The explosion killed almost 100 men, mostly loyalist troops, and blew a wide hole in the fort's walls.
00:58:30Galvez's men poured through the gap, and within hours, the British commander surrendered.
00:58:37Spanish rule was restored in West Florida, and with it, Spanish control of the Gulf of Mexico.
00:58:46West Florida is the first non-rebellion colony that Britain loses.
00:58:52After the Spanish victory at Pensacola, many, many people in Britain think it's time to stop this war before it gets any worse.
00:59:03Britain was more alone than ever, at war with the Netherlands now, as well as with France and Spain.
00:59:11And its West Indian islands and Gibraltar in the Mediterranean were under attack.
00:59:16To London, North America mattered less and less.
00:59:21And General Clinton in New York could do little more than make sure that city remained in British hands.
00:59:28The British stronghold is in New York.
00:59:32It's where they won the battle in 1776 against George Washington,
00:59:36which is one of the reasons George Washington really wants to take New York,
00:59:39because he feels very humiliated by that specific battle.
00:59:43So for him, since that time, it became almost an obsession.
00:59:47If we take New York, we're going to win this war.
00:59:50When word came that French warships and more French troops would arrive on the East Coast sometime that summer,
00:59:59Washington and Rochambeau met again in Connecticut to discuss where the fleet might in fact do.
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