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00:00Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
00:30A fifth-generation Bostonian, Hutchinson has enjoyed good fortune and political success.
00:37The king has appointed him chief justice and lieutenant governor of Massachusetts.
00:42For years, Thomas Hutchinson has been one of the colony's most admired citizens.
00:49Until now.
00:54Hutchinson's life is about to take a dramatic and ugly turn.
00:58An angry mob is surging through Boston.
01:02Hutchinson is about to find out that he's the man thereafter.
01:06He's the man in charge of the intolerable new policies imposed on the colonies by their British rulers.
01:14Tax policies that have incited an increasingly violent rebellion among the people.
01:20A rebellion against a tax imposed not by their own local representatives, but by Parliament, 3,000 miles away in
01:29England.
01:30Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson is duty-bound to enforce this controversial new tax.
01:37Though he personally opposes it, he is being denounced as a traitor.
01:48Massachusetts has never seen a mob as violent as this.
01:55They're not just angry about the money.
01:57They're angry at the assault on their autonomy by English rulers who neither know them nor represent them.
02:03The revolt spreads like an epidemic through all 13 colonies.
02:08It's hard to imagine that the fallout from this tax will ignite a social revolution unlike any the world has
02:16ever seen.
02:27Across the Atlantic, England's King George III is losing his patience.
02:32His colonies are acting like petulant children.
02:36These are his subjects.
02:38Englishmen, born in America, but Englishmen just the same.
02:42He is their ruler, and it's because of them that his empire is going broke.
02:50A decade ago, he sent British troops across the ocean to defend the colonies against French settlers and their Indian
02:57allies.
02:59The war went on for seven years, and it cost England 60 million pounds, money it now desperately needs.
03:07There's a sense that after the Seven Years' War that America ought to pay its way a little bit.
03:14That expenses to protect North America should, in part, be raised in North America.
03:21Parliament's solution is unprecedented.
03:25The Stamp Act of 1765 directly taxes colonies by having them pay for stamps that must be affixed to virtually
03:33every piece of paper they touch.
03:36From official documents, to play cards, to play cards, to play cards.
03:43It goes badly from the start.
03:46The colonists resent not only paying the tax, but also having it imposed by a faraway parliament, where no one
03:53represents them.
03:54Though the crown appoints colonial governors and high officials, each colony is long accustomed to ruling itself and levying its
04:03own taxes.
04:05The Americans believed that over 150 years of being colonists, they had, in a sense, created a nation within the
04:12British Empire.
04:13They had free assemblies, democratically elected.
04:16They had free and independent and very good newspapers.
04:19They had their own tax system.
04:25It wasn't just paying a little bit of money.
04:27The notion was that other people were making them pay money.
04:31So it's an emotional issue.
04:33Who's in control here?
04:34We want to control our own lives, which includes, of course, our own pocketbooks.
04:39In 1765, a new generation of colonists is rushing headlong down an uncharted path to an unknown end.
04:47And the Stamp Act is what starts it.
04:52Much of the spirit, if not the exact words, is, don't you see what they're up to?
04:59Don't you see what's going on?
05:01There's a strategy at work here to gradually erode America to do next.
05:07For the British, the tax isn't about eroding liberties.
05:11It's about money.
05:15Stoking the colonial reaction is a powerful underground movement known as the Sons of Liberty.
05:22They meet secretly in taverns across the colonies and come up with every tactic they can to keep government officials
05:29from collecting England's tax.
05:32People really started forming alliances between kind of street theater, street gangs, and merchants, and artisans, and figuring out ways
05:42to all work towards the common cause, which is to repeal the Stamp Act.
05:48Soon enough, things begin to get ugly. Intimidation is a favorite weapon.
05:53Those who remain loyal to the king, known as loyalists or Tories, often find themselves terrorized by these self-anointed
06:01patriots.
06:03They often use very dramatic techniques, tar and feathering, for instance. This is a great way to humiliate people.
06:11First, you're stripped naked. The bucket of tar is heated, and you're coated with tar.
06:16And then they put these feathers, these goose feathers, all over you, and you're all hot, and you're branching about
06:21like a silly goose.
06:22After a display like this, how is this person going to publicly oppose the patriot position?
06:28A loyalist printer in New York City publishes a loyalist newspaper, and they come in and smash his printing press,
06:38while they are also proclaiming free speech as a principle to fight for.
06:44That's the nature of war and the nature of revolution.
06:50While the angry rabble takes to the streets, men of property and education use printing presses and politics to denounce
06:57the Stamp Act tax.
07:02One of the most outspoken is 29-year-old John Adams, a bright, ambitious attorney, who brings logic and intellect
07:11to this very emotional argument.
07:13He drafts anti-tax resolutions for some 40 Massachusetts assemblies.
07:19We have always understood it to be a grand and fundamental principle of the English Constitution,
07:25that no free man should be subject to any tax to which he has not given his own consent.
07:32John Adams.
07:33Adams has always envisioned great things for himself, and the cause of liberty presents the opportunity of a lifetime.
07:41His wife, Abigail, is his trusted confidant and partner in all things, great and small.
07:49I think it's hard to overestimate the importance of Abigail Adams.
07:52I mean, not only is she more than an equal partner to her husband, but she comes to this contest
08:00with really perfectly formed ideas about which she feels passionately.
08:03She's an enormous influence on her husband.
08:06One day, these two will be counted among the founders of a new nation.
08:11For now, John Adams is one of many voices of protest in a Stamp Act rebellion that engulfs all 13
08:19colonies.
08:23Down in Virginia, a fiery young legislator named Patrick Henry ups the ante.
08:31Resolved that the inhabitants of this colony are not bound to yield obedience to any law or ordinance designed to
08:39impose any taxation whatsoever other than the laws of their own General Assembly.
08:44Patrick Henry.
08:46Patrick Henry.
08:47In other words, no taxation without representation.
08:51Henry's Virginia Resolves become a radical touchstone for all the colonies.
09:04Three thousand miles away in London, another important player in the colonial drama, America's Benjamin Franklin, is doing what he
09:12does best, playing chess, flirting with a pretty young thing, and keeping an eye on developments for his countrymen.
09:22Franklin becomes the point man.
09:24He is the man in England who is there essentially trying to hammer out some kind of compromise on issues
09:30of taxation with the crown.
09:33At 59, Franklin is the most famous American in the world.
09:37He has spent the better part of two decades in England as a trade representative and the colony's unofficial ambassador,
09:44wooing and wowing a London society with his wit and wisdom.
09:51This is the Philadelphia printer and writer who created Poor Richard's Almanac, the colony's best-selling annual, rich with homespun
09:59advice.
10:01He is the scientist who famously flew a kite to experiment with electricity, who invented the lightning rod and the
10:08bifocal.
10:10A self-made man who went from lowly apprentice to wealthy entrepreneur, Franklin is the embodiment of what it means
10:17to be an American.
10:19Yet he adores England, the mother country, and especially London.
10:23He's absolutely in his element. This is where the great center of science is at this point.
10:27It's like being in the city as opposed to having been in the country. He's really hit the right group
10:33of people.
10:34And he's very much, he raises down as the happiest years of his life.
10:38Now the uprising at home has put Franklin at center stage, a place he generally enjoys.
10:45London's baffled politicians come pounding on his door, desperate for a solution to the problem, hoping he can use his
10:52considerable influence to bring the colonists to their senses.
10:58But it's business, not politics, that settles the matter. The decisive blow is the blow to the British pocketbook.
11:10North American merchants said, well, okay, while the stamp act is in place, we're just not going to trade with
11:15you.
11:16It's a way of getting merchants in England to say, if this is going to ruin business, then the stamp
11:23act's got to go.
11:23Now England's merchants and bankers are feeling the pinch from the loss of business created by colonial boycotts.
11:31And they too start railing against the stamp act.
11:35The tax crisis has become just too big a headache.
11:39And in March 1766, a beleaguered parliament finally repeals the stamp act.
11:48Unbelievably, the people of the colonies have forced the world's greatest power to back down.
11:54The rebel colonists can celebrate their first sweet taste of victory and of power.
12:01But the battles are far from over.
12:04England still needs the money and still needs to show who's boss.
12:08Over the next four years, parliament devises new taxes, which trigger renewed upheaval and end up being repealed.
12:17As this seemingly endless cycle continues, England dispatches two military regiments to Massachusetts from New York to keep order, adding
12:26fuel to the fire.
12:30In 1768, four more regiments sail from England on a collision course with America.
12:46Boston, 1770.
12:481,000 British troops occupy this city of 15,000.
12:53It is a volatile brew.
12:56Boston is an accident waiting to happen.
12:59Literally.
13:00Conditions are right.
13:02We've got an indigenous population that is very, very sensitive to having British soldiers quartered amongst them.
13:10You have all of these British regiments in Boston.
13:14This is something that the Bostonians simply chafe under.
13:20Resentment grows against the soldiers in Boston's streets.
13:25On the night of March 5th, a band of local patriots heckles a British sentry standing guard at the customs
13:31house.
13:33At first, they merely hurl insults.
13:35But soon, they're hurling snowballs.
13:38And eight more soldiers come to the aid of their comrade.
13:44You have a group of men who are egging on British soldiers, looking for ways to kind of stir up
13:51a fight.
13:52And now they've created the antagonists that they've been trying to gin up.
13:59Hundreds more colonists pour into the street.
14:03They launch a barrage of ice, oyster shells, and rocks at the soldiers.
14:12The guards panic.
14:13Their guns go off.
14:18When it's over, five civilians lay dead on the frozen street.
14:25It was a tragically predictable sort of event.
14:28It's one of those situations in which the soldiers that are there to impose order are actually that seat of
14:35discontent that's going to produce disorder.
14:38Within hours of the deadly shootings, the Patriot's spin machine roars into high gear.
14:43A tragic accident is recast as a murderous crime against the colonial people in what becomes known as the Boston
14:52Massacre.
14:59This was not remotely a massacre.
15:02This was a case in which a mob assailed a small detachment of British soldiers, which may have panicked but
15:08had very legitimate cause to fear for their well-being.
15:12But that's not how it's portrayed to the outside world.
15:15A local silversmith and artisan named Paul Revere renders an exaggerated version of the event that makes it look like
15:23an unprovoked slaughter by the British soldiers.
15:27Boston papers are quick to print and distribute Revere's version.
15:31And this becomes the Patriot image of the Boston Massacre, which shows the British lined up in a row firing
15:39their muskets all at once as if they got the command to fire, which didn't happen that way.
15:46The first to die in the gunfire is a black man, a sailor and runaway slave named Crispus Attucks.
15:54He is widely viewed as the first martyr of the American Revolution.
16:02In this explosive atmosphere, the public outcry pressures the British to pull their troops out of Boston.
16:09The soldiers responsible for the so-called massacre are put on trial for murder, and they are hard pressed to
16:15find an attorney to take their case.
16:17Surprisingly, one of Boston's most vocal patriots steps forward, John Adams.
16:24Adams is willing to risk everything, his and his family's safety, and his reputation as an ardent advocate of colonial
16:31rights.
16:32But he believes passionately in the right to a fair trial.
16:36Without human rights, the Patriot cause isn't worth fighting.
16:42It was one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered.
16:46Judgment of death against these soldiers would have been a foul stain upon this country.
16:52John Adams.
16:55Adams wins an acquittal for seven of the soldiers, and light sentences for the other two.
17:01Only his unquestioned devotion to the Patriot cause keeps him from being branded a traitor.
17:06The crisis is resolved.
17:09For now.
17:13Back in England, the colonial rebellion becomes a national preoccupation.
17:18Over the next three years, Parliament keeps trying to impose its authority with new laws and new taxes.
17:26As each new law inflames the rebellion, it ends up getting repealed.
17:31Except for one.
17:34A tax on tea.
17:35The principle involved is that Parliament is sovereign, it can pass laws on whatever it wants.
17:41So we're going to just keep this one in place, just because, to assert the fact that we can do
17:47this.
17:47The Tea Act puts only a three-penny tax per pound on the drink of choice for most Americans.
17:54It's hardly a burden, but in the current climate, a three-penny tax still equals oppression.
18:01It's all that militant patriots need to strike another blow against the Empire.
18:10Feathers and coal dust are their weapons.
18:13On December 16th, 1773, the Sons of Liberty enlist 50 men to darken their faces, stick feathers in their hair,
18:23and arm themselves with hatchets and a bad impersonation of Mohawk Indians.
18:295,000 people follow them down to Boston Harbor and watch as they climb aboard a merchant ship loaded with
18:36tea from England.
18:38With British soldiers absent since the Boston Massacre, there is no one to stop them.
18:46342 crates of tea worth 10,000 British pounds are cast overboard.
18:53This wanton act of sabotage, which becomes known as the Boston Tea Party, will soon push the two sides to
19:00the brink of war.
19:03The British reaction was disgust and outraged.
19:09From a British point of view, you had an entire colony running amok.
19:15And the British government, after the Tea Act, frankly said, we've had enough.
19:20We've had enough with Massachusetts, and we're going to clamp down on it.
19:23And we're going to make Massachusetts an example of what happens if you defy the authority of Parliament.
19:30At that very same time, the British discover yet another outrage committed by an American,
19:36someone they thought they could trust, Benjamin Franklin.
19:41Over a year ago, Franklin was passed a stolen packet of confidential letters written to a British official by Massachusetts
19:49Governor Thomas Hutchinson.
19:52Ever since Stamp Act rioters tore down Hutchinson's house nine years earlier,
19:57He had tried to juggle serving his king with serving his angry fellow citizens.
20:03The letters given to Franklin exposed Hutchinson's true loyalist sympathies.
20:10There must be an abridgment of what are called English liberties.
20:14I wish for the good of the colony to see some further restraint of liberty rather than the connection with
20:20the parent state should be broken.
20:22Franklin sent the incriminating letters to colonial assemblymen in Massachusetts, who had recently made them public as irrefutable proof of
20:33Hutchinson's treachery against the Patriot cause.
20:38The reaction in the colonies was torrential.
20:42Mobs burned Hutchinson's effigy. The press vilified him.
20:47By December, when the Patriot raiders throw the Boston Tea Party, they have destroyed Hutchinson's long career as a public
20:54servant.
20:58Within six months, Thomas Hutchinson will pack up his family and sail to England.
21:03The relentless strife that has set American against American will force this man, long devoted to colonial causes, into exile.
21:13Heartbroken, he will never again set foot in his beloved homeland.
21:24Now, in London in January 1774, Benjamin Franklin is summoned to appear before the King's Council.
21:33On the heels of the recent looting of the tea in Boston Harbor, Franklin's recently revealed role in the Hutchinson
21:39fiasco is more than British officials can tolerate.
21:42He must answer for his sins and the sins of his countrymen.
21:48Franklin is dressed down by the Solicitor General of England for a full hour in the strongest possible language.
21:54It's really abusive language. In front of a crowd is going wild at this venomous attack.
22:00And Franklin stands, stock still in this humiliating moment, you know, head erect and doesn't say a word for an
22:07hour.
22:10Many people have dated that as the moment at which Franklin becomes a revolutionary.
22:16Franklin the revolutionary is done with England.
22:19And England is done with him.
22:22Parliament punishes Massachusetts with a vengeance.
22:25It revokes the colony's 80-year-old charter, dissolves its local assemblies,
22:30and after a four-year absence, sends 3,000 troops to reoccupy Boston.
22:37The crown now runs Massachusetts.
22:41These people had been meeting in town meetings for 150 years.
22:45When they can no longer decide their own fate, they said, this is the end.
22:50People throughout Massachusetts rose up as one and said, no way.
22:56There is no turning back for either side.
22:59The tension between the people of Massachusetts and the British troops becomes unbearable.
23:04It's only a matter of time before someone fires the shot that will echo around the world.
23:21Boston, August 10th, 1774.
23:25John Adams is donning a new suit.
23:27And if he's not careful, the British will bury him in it.
23:32The patriot leader is heading for a secret meeting in Philadelphia
23:35that will change the course of history and could cost him his life.
23:42Adams is one of four men representing Massachusetts at the First Continental Congress,
23:48an unprecedented and, as far as the king is concerned,
23:51illegal meeting of delegates from up and down the colonies.
23:5655 delegates of America's best and brightest
23:59who gather to come up with a unified strategy
24:02to oppose Britain's increasing encroachment on their liberties.
24:06If the king had his way, they would all hang for treason.
24:11That illustrates how strongly they felt
24:14that they must take steps to remove themselves
24:17from what they saw as the arbitrary power of the British crown.
24:23Britain has already suspended Massachusetts' constitution
24:26and imposed martial law there.
24:29The other colonies fear that it's only a matter of time
24:32before they all meet the same fate.
24:34Even though these colonies have different economic interests,
24:37they have different political histories,
24:39they have different populations,
24:41they recognize that in our relationship with Britain,
24:44we have much in common.
24:46Not all of these people have met each other.
24:48Most have heard about each other.
24:49Now they're eager to meet each other, see what's going to happen.
24:52People know that there's going to be moderates and not-so-moderates,
24:56and there's already kind of little factions forming.
25:01Joining John Adams from Massachusetts is another radical,
25:0437-year-old John Hancock,
25:07a wealthy Boston merchant who has been using
25:10his considerable fortune to fuel the cause.
25:13Pennsylvania has sent a moderate lawyer,
25:16John Dickinson, 42,
25:18whose widely read essays back in the 60s
25:21helped launch the anti-tax movement.
25:24From Virginia comes Patrick Henry,
25:26the volatile young orator
25:28whose Virginia resolves helped stamp out the Stamp Act.
25:32And also from Virginia,
25:34a wealthy 42-year-old planter
25:36and veteran of the Seven Years' War,
25:39George Washington.
25:47One of the problems is they all thought of themselves
25:50as Pennsylvanians, Rhode Islanders, South Carolinians,
25:54much more than they thought of themselves as Americans.
25:58Patrick Henry really just electrifies everyone
26:02when he says,
26:03I am no longer a Virginian.
26:05I am now an American.
26:10John Adams says the trick is to get 13 clocks to strike
26:15all at the same time,
26:1613 ships to sail in the same formation.
26:20It's not easy.
26:24Thirteen conspirators against the Crown.
26:27Finally, after two months of arguing and pontificating,
26:31the Congress adjourns with a unified message for England.
26:35Until colonial rights are restored,
26:38all 13 colonies will halt all trade with Great Britain.
26:42Local militias are to arm and stand in readiness.
26:49As one might expect,
26:51kings don't do well with ultimatums.
26:54No one tells the King of England what to do.
26:57The die is now cast.
27:00The colonies must either submit or triumph.
27:03I do not wish to come to severe measures,
27:05but we must not retreat.
27:07I trust they will come to submit.
27:10He makes the assumption
27:12that a simple show of force, of military might,
27:16will be enough to scare the rebels back to their senses.
27:22Not likely.
27:24Certainly not in Boston.
27:26The city is a tinderbox waiting to explode.
27:29The British have turned it into a virtual police state.
27:33They have sealed off Boston Harbor,
27:35disbanded the colonial assemblies,
27:37and forced locals to house British troops.
27:41The man in charge is Commanding General Thomas Gage.
27:44His orders are to quash the rebellion.
27:47And while he has the guns,
27:49the rebels have the numbers.
27:52He repeatedly asks the crown for a larger army.
27:56Thomas Gage only has 3,000 soldiers in Boston.
28:01He's looking at 5,000 in Worcester County,
28:054,000 in Plymouth, all over like this.
28:08He's looking at this, he says,
28:09what am I going to do with my 3,000 people
28:12against force like this?
28:14He's playing a losing hand.
28:16He can't do anything for which he is called an old woman.
28:21He's very much a man in between.
28:23He's a military officer who is charged with a political task
28:27for which he's not really equipped to handle.
28:30With Hutchinson's departure,
28:32Gage is now Massachusetts governor
28:33and commander of an occupying army
28:36that no longer faces a small rebellion.
28:39It is a population in uprising.
28:44They start smuggling cannons out of Boston,
28:47and they start purchasing arms,
28:49and the militiamen start training,
28:51and they form the Minutemen.
28:53They actually sign associations,
28:55I will mobilize on a minute's notice.
28:58This is no longer a skirmish over taxes.
29:02The patriots believe their way of life,
29:04their liberty, and their property are at stake.
29:07Nothing short of war will settle it.
29:11In April 1775,
29:13Gage gets orders from England
29:15to break the uneasy stalemate.
29:17He will send a full force out to the countryside
29:20to seize a huge store of rebel ammunition.
29:24Unknown to Gage, Parliament, King George, or anyone else,
29:28the fate of the British Empire hangs on this decision.
29:41April 18th, 1775.
29:45British troops are on the march.
29:48Colonial militia are arming and stockpiling ammunition
29:51for what many fear is an inevitable showdown.
29:56British Commander General Thomas Gage has ordered his soldiers
30:00to capture a huge hidden store of gunpowder in Concord,
30:03a Massachusetts village 20 miles west of Boston.
30:08The British detachment that marches out of Boston,
30:11roughly 800 soldiers, march out knowing that the countryside
30:16is on the verge of armed action.
30:19Once Gage sends that mission out,
30:22he really has set into motion a chain of events
30:25that is beyond his ability to control.
30:30The British are indeed coming.
30:35The news starts leaking out, and people start mobilizing.
30:39They're ready.
30:42Out into the countryside to spread the word goes Paul Revere,
30:46whose engraving of the Boston massacre
30:48fanned the flames of outrage five years earlier.
30:53Poems and school books will one day mythologize Revere's midnight ride
30:57as if he were the lone, heroic messenger.
31:00But in fact, he is just one part of a whole system of communication.
31:06Paul Revere is one of dozens, then scores,
31:09and literally hundreds of messengers going every which way.
31:14Bells are ringing.
31:16Shots are being fired.
31:17So before dawn, hours before dawn,
31:20the whole countryside is mobilized and knows what's happening.
31:25They arrange a signal.
31:27One lantern light in Boston's Old North Church
31:30if the British are coming by land,
31:32and two if by boat.
31:38British troops rowed to the Cambridge side of the Charles River
31:41and wade through reeds and thick marshland
31:44to begin their overnight march to Concord.
31:50At around one in the morning at Lexington, Massachusetts,
31:54farmers, blacksmiths, and shopkeepers gather to intercept the British
31:58at Lexington Green.
32:02130 civilians, some too old, some too young,
32:06most with no formal military experience.
32:09stand ready to risk it all against the world's most feared army.
32:14These were men who literally felt under attack.
32:18And in fact, they were under attack.
32:20The British army were walking out to seize colonial property
32:25and they felt compelled to defend it.
32:282 a.m.
32:29After an hour of waiting, no sign of the British.
32:33The night's chill sends many home.
32:36Others choose nearby Buckman's Tavern to await another alarm.
32:43Most hoping it will never come.
32:574.30 a.m.
32:59Drums announced that the British are on their way.
33:08I'm sure the mud on Lexington Green was extremely tense.
33:13The best trained, most professional army in the world
33:18is bearing down on them.
33:20So even though they were fired up with a great sense of injustice,
33:24they were probably nervous.
33:26And if they weren't, they should have been.
33:32That's it!
33:34Stand back, lads!
33:36Stand back!
33:48Stand back!
33:54Stand back!
33:55Take care!
33:55Hold!
33:57Right!
33:58Face!
33:59Stand back!
34:04Stand back!
34:07Both sides eye each other suspiciously.
34:10Both sides not wanting to take a misstep.
34:14All of a sudden, a single shot is fired.
34:18Nobody knows who fired the shot.
34:21After the war and investigations, nobody ever found out.
34:24As soon as that shot was fired, both sides commenced firing at will.
34:29And the American Revolution was on.
34:35Concentric!
34:37Fire!
34:39Track!
34:41Fire!
34:45Quickly!
34:47Reefence!
34:48Fire!
34:55In less than two minutes, eight militiamen lay dead, ten wounded.
35:00C'est parti.
35:30...from degenerating into war has just about passed.
35:36The conflict calls Benjamin Franklin home from London.
35:40After nearly 20 years in England, he is leaving for good.
35:44No longer loyal and no longer welcome.
35:47Branded a revolutionary traitor by the British,
35:50Franklin will set sail for his Philadelphia home
35:53to take a seat in the Continental Congress.
35:58A man of peace, he will now have to counsel war
36:01as he helps his fellow delegates navigate the new and bloody conflict
36:05that threatens to blow America apart.
36:18April 19th, 1775, Lexington, Massachusetts.
36:23For the first time ever, British soldiers and colonial citizens
36:27have stood face to face and fired upon each other.
36:31Eight colonists lay dead.
36:34But it's not over.
36:37The British continue their advance to get what they came for,
36:40the colonial ammunition stored in nearby Concord.
36:47along the way, detachments of redcoats storm into local homes
36:51and ransack for weapons.
37:01The word spreads and militia from all over the area
37:05rush toward Concord to head off the British.
37:07This time, it's the Americans who are coming.
37:14They find not just the Concord militiamen,
37:17but all sorts of other militiamen coming and still coming
37:21and still coming and still coming.
37:22The British are certain they can swat these militia away like pesky flies
37:26and find that they cannot, that they've encountered hard-fighting men.
37:30The British are badly outnumbered.
37:33They are forced to retreat.
37:3716 miles separate them from the safety of Boston.
37:4116 miles.
37:42On foot, they are sitting ducks for armed and angry colonials.
37:47It is a trauma they won't soon forget.
37:50All the hills on either side of us were covered with rebels
37:53so that they kept the road always lying and a very hot fire on us
37:57without intermission.
37:59Henry de Bernier, British soldier.
38:1220 hours of constant barrage bring heavy losses to the beleaguered British.
38:1873 dead, 174 wounded and 26 missing.
38:24The Americans suffer 49 killed with 40 wounded and 5 missing.
38:30By the time British soldiers get back to Boston,
38:33the colonials have the city surrounded
38:35with militia from neighbouring colonies on their way.
38:39Gage and his troops are trapped with their backs to the sea.
38:44The rebels have added insult to outrage.
38:47They have possessed the roads and other communications
38:50by which the town of Boston was supplied with provisions.
38:53And with a preposterous parade of military arrangement,
38:57they have effected to hold the army besieged.
39:00Thomas Gage.
39:04Three weeks later, on May 10th, 1775,
39:09Benjamin Franklin is back home in Philadelphia,
39:12just as the Continental Congress is called back into emergency session.
39:17The bloodshed in Massachusetts demands a new colonial strategy.
39:22Assembling a Continental Army
39:24and complete independence from England are subjects now on the table.
39:30The delegates eagerly await the thoughts of their venerated elder statesman,
39:35Benjamin Franklin,
39:36only to find him unusually quiet and withdrawn.
39:41The long voyage from England has made him ill,
39:44but it is the short trip he will soon make
39:47that troubles Franklin most.
39:53Franklin is headed to a confrontation with his only son,
39:5743-year-old William.
40:00The rift in the colonies has brought a terrible split between father and son.
40:06William Franklin has been New Jersey's royal governor for over a decade.
40:10A post granted him by the king,
40:13owing in no small part to being Benjamin's son.
40:18William is vehemently opposed to the rebellion
40:20and unalterably devoted to the king.
40:24Now his father will make one last attempt to win him over to the Patriot side.
40:34Once they were as close as a father and son could be.
40:38It was William who held the kite during his father's famous experiment with lightning.
40:43It was William who was his father's constant companion in the early days in England.
40:48But now, neither the strife in the colonies,
40:52nor the humiliation heaped upon his father by the British,
40:56turns William away from the king.
40:59Now father and son must choose between country and family.
41:03But neither will bend.
41:05Like the growing civil war between patriots and loyalists,
41:10reconciliation between father and son is no longer possible.
41:17There were two sides to this issue.
41:19Most people could have seen both sides.
41:20Everyone had reasons to see those sides.
41:22Franklin isn't buying it.
41:23And he gives his son, he's absolutely unyielding with his son.
41:28Nothing has ever hurt me so much and affected me with such keen sensation
41:33as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son.
41:38And not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me in a cause
41:42wherein my good fame, fortune, and life were all at stake.
41:47When I think about Benjamin Franklin, the great revolutionary,
41:51and his son, the leader of those conservative loyalists,
41:54it seems very strange to me that the old man should be the radical
41:58and the young man should be the conservative.
42:01Once they were inseparable.
42:03Now the wound between father and son will never heal.
42:07William Franklin doesn't get very good press in the American textbooks,
42:12but you know there were many others just like William Franklin.
42:15Which side are you on?
42:17That became the question.
42:20The political argument that tears the Franklins apart
42:23will also be replayed in thousands of colonial families.
42:27Politics have become intensely personal.
42:31Every American had to choose.
42:34Do I support the patriots?
42:35Do I support the loyalists?
42:37Is there any neutral ground between them?
42:40A bitter time is coming when everyone must choose sides,
42:45when fathers may have to fight sons,
42:47when brother may fight brother.
42:51There are twice as many patriots in the colonies as loyalists,
42:55but more than half the population just wants to be left alone.
42:59In the coming months and years,
43:01no one can remain on the sidelines.
43:05The ship has sailed.
43:07The revolution is on an irreversible course.
43:10It will take sturdy leadership from men
43:13as different in temperament as the people they represent.
43:17Whether they know it or not,
43:18these are the men of destiny
43:20who will guide the American people into their uncertain future.
43:26And these are the men who will shed their blood
43:30and give their lives to make it happen.
43:33Yeah.
43:44Yeah, the workers
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