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00:11July 1776, New York.
00:16American revolutionaries attack a statue of King George III.
00:28They hack off the head of the statue.
00:34And declare their independence from Britain and its king.
00:42But what led to this breakup?
00:46What were the bad decisions?
00:48The fatal errors that drove the American colonies to war against Britain?
00:56And how close did we come to a different result?
01:06In this two-part special, I'm reinvestigating one of the most explosive breakups between two nations in history.
01:15This is the Stamp Act. The whole mess starts here, Lucy.
01:19It's a story that's become part of the mythology of both Britain and the United States.
01:26Oh, look at that.
01:28You can just imagine inviting your friends around for a seditious tea party.
01:32Told as a bitter loss of empire.
01:35It was the closest we came to an anarchy.
01:37Or the triumphant birth of a new nation.
01:39He is outnumbered just about two to one.
01:42But 250 years since America's declaration of independence, there's an untold version of the story.
01:52The British perspective.
01:54That's what I want to investigate.
01:57Think James Bond wearing a powdered wig.
02:01Listen to this.
02:02He's giving up the throne.
02:04He's resigning his job.
02:05I'm going to uncover forgotten witnesses.
02:09That's like opening a present.
02:10I'm going to re-examine the original evidence.
02:14Damn you.
02:15Fire.
02:15And follow new clues.
02:19To get closer to the truth.
02:23Historians have very different views.
02:25What do you think?
02:44It's hard to imagine, but 250 years ago, this quiet park in New York saw a revolution catching fire.
02:56A war had begun between Britain and its American colonies.
03:02And a group of new American recruits gathered right here.
03:07Some of them were wearing uniforms given them by the French.
03:11Others were just wearing their own clothes.
03:13And they had all sorts of weapons.
03:16Old rifles, blunderbusses.
03:18Some people had just a pitchfork.
03:21George Washington, their leader, lined them all up.
03:24And he ordered this document to be read to them.
03:28It's the ultimate break-up letter.
03:31It says, America is breaking up with Britain.
03:35The relationship is over.
03:37And we really don't like your king.
03:40This is what it has to say about King George III.
03:43That he wants an absolute tyranny over these states.
03:50Now famous as the Declaration of Independence.
03:55It was the reading of this letter that triggered the crowd to target the statue of George III.
04:02Perched on horseback like a Roman emperor.
04:09Tucked away in a museum off Central Park,
04:14I've discovered there's a weird artifact
04:19that's been preserved from that chaotic day in 1776.
04:29Oh, it's like opening a present.
04:31Can I do it?
04:33Ah, there it is.
04:37This is, it's so weird.
04:40This is the tale of the horse of George III from the statue.
04:46Some other bits survive, but this one's the biggest.
04:49And the tale weighs 60 pounds.
04:55I can see where they've been hacking at it.
04:59Someone's gone, pew, there.
05:01And there too.
05:07This is the most extraordinary thing.
05:14But what happened to the rest of the statue is even more dramatic.
05:21They cut off its head, and the rest of the king's body was chopped up and taken to Connecticut,
05:27where it was melted down and turned into 42,000 musket balls.
05:34It's like the king's own body had been turned into ammunition for the American army to fire at his own
05:41British redcoats.
05:45The destruction of George's statue shows how deep the anger ran, how personal this war had become.
05:53But what drove Britain and America to such a violent breakup?
06:00The story of the American Revolution is usually told as if the outcome were inevitable.
06:07But I'm not so sure.
06:10I'm going to look at the milestones along the way,
06:14and the misunderstandings that blew this relationship apart,
06:19and ask if things could have been different.
06:27I'm beginning my investigation, not in America, but in Britain,
06:32at George III's Astronomical Observatory in Richmond,
06:38a place full of his passions.
06:42This building tells me that George was a man who thirsted for knowledge
06:47about absolutely everything, from the movement of the planets
06:52to the state of things in his new empire.
06:55He personally ordered the purchasing of 300 books about his North American colonies
07:02so that he could read about subjects ranging from their tax laws
07:07to the kind of birds you could hear singing in Massachusetts.
07:18I think there's something here that can help me understand who George was
07:23and how he felt about his American colonies.
07:27Oh, here he is.
07:29Here's George in his coronation portrait.
07:34He looks awfully kingly, doesn't he, in his gold satin suit.
07:37To me, he also looks very fresh-faced and young.
07:45I know George III liked to study.
07:48He liked to be well-informed.
07:50As well as books, he had a huge collection of maps,
07:54many acquired to mark major moments of his reign.
07:59One of those moments came 13 years before the breakup of Britain and America.
08:06This was when Britain beat France in the Seven Years' War.
08:11A victory in which George gained vast territories in North America.
08:19This map, made after the war, absolutely pins down what is British.
08:25The colonies have all got nice, clear, coloured borders.
08:29It's clear that George rules everything down the eastern seaboard,
08:34from Newfoundland down through New England and Pennsylvania,
08:38Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, named after his granddad,
08:41right down to the Bahamas.
08:45The thing is, George had never actually been to America.
08:50Not once.
08:51His relationship with his colonies there was entirely theoretical.
08:58Could it be that there was a gap between his nice,
09:00orderly map and what was really happening?
09:06The American colonies of the 1760s were an integral part of the British Empire.
09:15Each colony had its own local assembly and capital,
09:21but ultimate authority still rested in London.
09:25Ships, goods, and people crisscrossed the Atlantic.
09:31And the red ensign flag of Great Britain flew proudly in every colonial port.
09:38Yet as the colonies prospered, their confidence grew.
09:43They began to want more say in their own affairs.
09:52I want to dig into exactly what they wanted and who was making their case.
10:00One of the most famous of the North American colonists
10:04actually lives here in London for 16 years.
10:08He's so famous that he's still on America's money.
10:13Here he is, $100 bill.
10:15Benjamin Franklin.
10:18This is his house in Craven Street.
10:21And every morning he had quite a strange routine.
10:25He'd come to this window here.
10:27He'd open it up and he'd take what he called an air bath.
10:32He'd let the air wash over him.
10:34But he did it totally naked.
10:37I don't know what the people across the road thought.
10:45Eccentric, yes.
10:47But Franklin was also a shrewd political operator.
10:53He was a media mogul.
10:55He'd run one of America's most influential newspapers.
11:01And when he arrived in London, he clearly made himself feel very comfortable.
11:13Hello, come in.
11:15Thank you so much.
11:16Welcome to Benjamin Franklin's house.
11:23I'm here to see a replica of a game Franklin invented.
11:28A sort of trick he used to play on people here in London.
11:34What have you got in here, Henry?
11:35So, here we have the magical picture game, otherwise known as the treason game.
11:43Essentially, the frame is electrified, so if you can see, the crown is metal, you're going to put your finger
11:49on it, say something critical about the king and see what happens.
11:52Okay.
11:53I don't like the king.
11:55I want to steal his crown.
12:01How much electricity was that?
12:03Um, who knows?
12:05Franklin wrote.
12:05Who knows?
12:06Franklin.
12:07You just tried to kill me.
12:08Franklin wrote that it could potentially be fatal.
12:11So, luckily, you weren't that treasonous, you did survive, but you got a nasty shock.
12:16Yes, don't mess with George III, that's the message of this game.
12:21Surprisingly, Franklin was really quite the royalist, but that's not the only revelation.
12:28Everyone thinks of Benjamin Franklin as American, but that's not really true, is it?
12:33No, not at all.
12:34He was British, and anyone who was living in the colonies was a British citizen,
12:38and they consider themselves to be one of the counties abroad, basically.
12:42When he comes to London, he has a portrait done, and he pretty much presents himself as a British intellectual.
12:49He has a bust of Isaac Newton looking down at him whilst he's reading.
12:54He's wearing a bright blue coat with gold trimmings,
12:58something that would tell the viewer that this is a very important, wealthy individual.
13:04So he can dress to meet the circumstances.
13:06He can.
13:07And he wasn't a huge fan of wigs, for example.
13:10But when he has his portrait done in London, he's wearing a very fancy wig.
13:14When Franklin was living here in this house in London, what was he doing?
13:19He was sent over by the people of Pennsylvania as a colonial agent to represent their interests in Great Britain.
13:26And the Pennsylvanians wanted more power to be moved to America.
13:31Over time, Franklin then becomes a representative of Georgia, New Jersey, Massachusetts.
13:37And eventually he adopts this sort of ambassadorial persona.
13:41He's essentially America's first ambassador, and he's representing all American interests in London.
13:46He's actually a voice in the parliament, able to speak on behalf of North America.
13:52He wasn't a great orator.
13:54His power was in the pen.
13:56So he was writing lots of letters to influential people to try and keep the relationship between America and Britain
14:02as a strong one and as a united one.
14:04He's trying to keep that relationship going.
14:06Like a marriage counsellor?
14:08Very much so, yes.
14:11The charismatic Franklin linked Britain and the 13 American colonies.
14:19He was trying to convince the crown to give America a little more freedom.
14:27But he caught wind of a proposal that would send shockwaves through this finely balanced relationship.
14:39I have an appointment at the National Archives in London to see an infamous document from 1765.
14:48Now, 18th century tax law might not be your idea of wild party times, but I know a man who
14:54absolutely loves this stuff.
14:56Perhaps he can tell me if the first tiny cloud on the horizon for the special relationship was an argument
15:03about money.
15:09Benjamin Franklin himself once wrote,
15:12In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.
15:18Frank, I know you want to take me to that one. You're really excited about that one, aren't you?
15:22I am really excited about that one.
15:25This is one of the most contentious tax documents in history.
15:31This is the Stamp Act.
15:33The Stamp Act. That's a very famous act.
15:35It's very famous. The whole mess starts here, Lucy.
15:38With this role?
15:40With this act. With this act.
15:43Britain had a huge deficit as a result of its victory in the Seven Years' War.
15:47The British national debt prior to the war was about £70 million.
15:54After the war, it's nearly £140 million.
15:57It effectively doubled.
16:00And Britain has a challenge.
16:03What do you do with a massive deficit?
16:05So, let's tax. Let's raise revenue this way.
16:08So, in 1765, Parliament adopted the Stamp Act.
16:13This is an act for applying certain stamp duties in the British colonies.
16:18What are these stamp duties?
16:20A stamp duty is essentially a tax on legal documents.
16:24If you make a will, or you enter into a contract with somebody,
16:28if you buy property, if you sell property,
16:30anything like that, you will have to pay a stamp duty on.
16:32And the way it's implemented, or it's meant to be implemented,
16:35is that you will have to buy specially stamped paper.
16:40Does it go down like a lead balloon?
16:41Yes.
16:42Yes. It's incredibly unpopular.
16:45Each colony in North America had its own assembly.
16:49Yes.
16:50Which levied taxes.
16:51So, they raised taxes locally.
16:53They've got their own tax thing going on already.
16:55For their own government.
16:55Why would you have to pay two lots of taxes?
16:58Well, might you ask that, Lucy?
17:00And many of the American colonists do.
17:01I can see their point.
17:03So, the colonists don't want to pay the Stamp Act.
17:05They do not.
17:05What happens? What do they do?
17:07They protest, they riot, and a Stamp Act Congress meets in New York with representatives from 10 of the colonies.
17:15They lay down their principles.
17:17They say, we have the rights of Englishmen.
17:19That includes no taxation without representation.
17:21We can't be represented in Parliament.
17:23And we're adopting a boycott.
17:25We're going to boycott British and Irish imports until the Stamp Act is repealed.
17:32The initial resistance to the Stamp Act is most bullshit and violent in Boston.
17:40So, the lieutenant governor's house is torn down.
17:43People are beaten up.
17:44People are threatened.
17:46There's a great deal of property damage.
17:47And a group emerges in Boston who will call themselves the Sons of Liberty.
17:53As the tensions over British tax policy and then, really, British rule become more intense,
17:59the Sons of Liberty are there, always organizing the resistance.
18:03What do they do?
18:03Do they have rituals?
18:05One of the things they do is they tar and feather people, which is, you know, it's a form of
18:10torture, actually.
18:11Having hot, being beaten, stripped, and having hot tar poured on your body,
18:15and then covered with feathers, is awful.
18:19But this isn't a revolution yet, is it, by any means?
18:21Not yet. Not by any means.
18:23I mean, one of the things that's really important to bear in mind is they believe they're British.
18:28They don't even believe they're British.
18:30They believe they're English.
18:32They talk about the rights of Englishmen.
18:34This is not a revolution.
18:36They believe they are defending their rights.
18:39What would happen to me if I was in Boston and I tried to go and pay my stamp duty?
18:43Well, you wouldn't, Lucy, because there would be nobody to pay.
18:46It wasn't enforced.
18:48The Stamp Act was a dead letter.
18:49It was supposed to take effect by November of 1765.
18:52The protests were so widespread and so effective that the Stamp Act did not go into effect in America.
18:59Huh.
19:01So in that sense, it failed completely.
19:05Not a cent was collected.
19:09So the Stamp Act, in the end, was just a waste of paper.
19:15This, to me, seems like a moment of absolute mutual incomprehension.
19:21On the one side, we've got George III and his parliament saying, what's the point of even having an empire
19:27if people won't pay their tax?
19:28And on the other side, we've got the North American colonists saying, we do pay our tax to our locally
19:35elected representative assemblies.
19:38What to the British seems logical, to the North Americans seems tyrannical.
19:44And I guess, like when any relationship's starting to go a little bit wrong, both sides can't see why the
19:54other side is quite so angry.
19:58Parliament tabled a debate into this unpopular and totally unprofitable tax.
20:07And one of the people they called as a witness was, of course, Benjamin Franklin.
20:13He played it smart.
20:16Told them the colonies had been perfectly happy before all this.
20:20Governed with a light touch, they were proud to be part of the British Empire.
20:25But now, the taxes have seriously soured the mood.
20:36And amazingly, parliament agrees.
20:39On the 17th of March, 1766, parliament abolishes the hated Stamp Act.
20:46The colonists go wild with gratitude.
20:49There are fireworks and bonfires and parties.
20:55It seems like the British could have averted the American Revolution if they'd just stopped here.
21:05But the British government were obsessed with cutting the national debt.
21:09And they believed the colonists should pay their fair share.
21:16So they drew up a series of plans which would assert their authority across the Atlantic.
21:23It's like parliament was saying, so there, we are in charge of you lot.
21:28And in 1767, parliament imposed new duties or tariffs on things being imported into the colonies.
21:37Things like paper and paint and glass and lead and, crucially, on tea.
21:45I can just imagine how these new tariffs went down.
21:50But I want evidence.
21:54So I've come to Boston, the hub of the protests in the late 1760s,
22:01to meet a historian who's recently uncovered a remarkable diary.
22:07Eva, tell me about this discovery that you've made.
22:10So this is a diary of a New England merchant named Peter Versteel, who travels to London in 1768.
22:16He's leaving Boston at a time when the colonists are extremely upset about British taxation.
22:22And so when he arrives in London, he's very eager to find out what the London populace thinks of these
22:28taxes.
22:28So we've got somebody from the colonies who's gone over to London.
22:32And it's like he's taking the political temperature for us, is he?
22:36Absolutely. He is very interested to see what the people of Britain think of the government's policy towards Americans.
22:45It's like having a fly on the wall in the coffee houses of London.
22:48It really is.
22:49Amazing.
22:50So you can see here.
22:51He's got very neat writing, hasn't he?
22:53Absolutely. It is fairly neat writing, which is always nice for us historians.
22:59This is an account of one of his visits to a disputing club in the evening.
23:04Is that like a debating club?
23:06Exactly. Very popular in London at the time.
23:09In this case, he records that there were 240 attendees at this particular debate.
23:14And the question here was whether Great Britain has the right to tax its American colonies.
23:19He says it was evidently proved to the general satisfaction of the company that it was neither for the interest
23:25nor the honor of Great Britain to tax the Americans at this time.
23:29Well, he would have loved that then, wouldn't he?
23:31He was thrilled.
23:34It's interesting that there are quite a few people on the colonist side, though, in London.
23:38There is. Despite his own bias, I think he really is picking up on a sentiment among a significant portion
23:44of the population.
23:45Does he meet any politicians?
23:47While he's in London, he's extremely excited about one politician in particular, which is John Wilkes.
23:53Oh, John Wilkes. I've heard of him. He was a big radical, wasn't he?
23:57Yes. He's a radical politician that was actually very familiar to Vercel even before he arrives in London.
24:03He's extremely popular amongst American colonists.
24:06Yes.
24:07He's in favor of many of the same things they are.
24:10Taxation without representation.
24:12And he kind of speaks to this general sense of government corruption that Americans are becoming very suspicious of.
24:18Now, this is a bit of a twist.
24:21There wasn't just anger in America about oppressive taxes.
24:26Some of the loudest voices against these tariffs were actually in Britain, led by radical politicians like John Wilkes.
24:36I know where my investigation needs to go next.
24:42Back home to see how Wilkes was pouring fuel on the fire.
24:50What have we got here?
24:53It is a caricature by William Hogarth, superstar artist, and it's of John Wilkes.
25:01I think there has to be a reason that Hogarth had it in for Wilkes so badly that he made
25:06him look like this in his portrait.
25:08And the reasons to do with a series of pamphlets that Wilkes wrote, here they are on the table behind
25:14him.
25:14The pamphlet's called The North Britain, and this particular edition, edition number 17, is the one that had offended Hogarth.
25:24In it, Wilkes had made fun of Hogarth's job as the king's painter.
25:29In edition 45 at The North Britain, Wilkes did something even worse.
25:35He said that the king was just a puppet and that his ministers were making all of the decisions.
25:39The king didn't have any free agency.
25:41He said, I wish as much as any man in the kingdom to see the honour of the crown maintained.
25:47I lament to see it sunk to prostitution.
25:53But there's no getting away from the fact that this was verging upon treason.
25:57The king personally ordered that Wilkes be thrown into the Tower of London.
26:04This had a perverse effect, though.
26:07It turned Wilkes into a martyr, a martyr to the cause of free speech, of freedom and of liberty in
26:16Britain and America.
26:19It's this word, liberty, that became a rallying cry.
26:27Suddenly, everyone unhappy with the political situation in America was shouting it.
26:35And it started to turn up on some very unexpected things.
26:41I'm heading to the People's History Museum in Manchester to examine a very rebellious collection indeed.
26:51Do you know, I can only describe it as John Wilkes' merch.
26:57Off we go.
26:59I love the way that yours are a murderous black.
27:02Yeah, I feel like I could be definitely committing some museum crimes here.
27:05Eh.
27:07Right.
27:08What's in your box? What's in your box?
27:09Well, in the first box, over here, a beautiful plate.
27:16We have this rather gorgeous plate.
27:18As you can see, it's got this amazing phrase on it, Wilkes and Liberty, and then the number 45.
27:24Of course.
27:26That's the edition of Wilkes' magazine, in which he says the king is a puppet of his ministers.
27:33All sorts of objects start to get produced like this with the slogan on it.
27:37He must have been pretty pleased, Wilkes.
27:39Well, I mean, if you look at the plate, he does look very smug.
27:42The next box we have is this one.
27:45What's she got in here?
27:46Which is, again, some objects from that earlier period.
27:49And these are really beautiful.
27:51Oh!
27:52A Wilkes teapot!
27:54A Wilkes teapot.
27:55Oh, look at it. I love it.
27:57Wilkes and Liberty on one side.
27:59Hang on, haven't they spelt his name wrong?
28:01There's his little lid.
28:02Well, you know, 18th century spelling, you've got a bit of leeway.
28:05Oh, imagine if you'd just finished the teapot and then someone came along and proofread it for you.
28:10Absolutely.
28:11Oops, spelt it wrong.
28:13And then we've got this very gorgeous mug.
28:15And what I absolutely love about these is they're so domestic.
28:20You can just imagine sort of inviting your friends around for a sort of seditious tea party.
28:25What's on this side?
28:26Does it say number...
28:28Number 45.
28:29Number 45. Again, it's everywhere. It's a brilliant sort of social media campaign, isn't it?
28:36Absolutely. I mean, you know, you sort of feel that Wilkes today would be going wild on Twitter.
28:41Wilkes and Liberty.
28:43I mean, it's a great slogan.
28:45It very much is about this idea of the freedom of the press.
28:51And, of course, for the American colonists, that's something which they can get behind.
28:55So the American colonists would have quite liked a Wilkes and Liberty teapot of their own.
29:00Well, some of them had them because there's so much traffic between the two countries.
29:05A teapot is quite a sort of domestic thing.
29:08It's a rebellious teapot, but this is a long way from actually fighting people and having an armed revolt, isn't
29:13it?
29:13There are armed uprisings on both sides of the Atlantic in support of Wilkes.
29:18There's riots in London.
29:20There's also riots in America.
29:22Because of Wilkes?
29:23Because of Wilkes.
29:24Wow.
29:25And the Americans write to him and say, you know, the fate of America and Wilkes stands together.
29:31Ah, goodness.
29:35These riots in the name of liberty were clearly spreading fast.
29:42But this looks like a moment when revolution could still have been avoided.
29:50But the king misread the situation.
29:54To George III and his new prime minister, Lord North,
29:59Wilkes and Liberty wasn't just a little light protest.
30:02It was full-on rebellion.
30:05It was firing up these colonists in North America.
30:08It was threatening the integrity of the British Empire itself.
30:15George III studied maps of the East Coast as unrest spread.
30:21But he wasn't really listening to what the colonists actually wanted.
30:25They weren't rebelling against him.
30:29They were demanding an end to unfair taxes.
30:32And they wanted the right to make their own laws.
30:35They still wanted to be part of the British Empire.
30:38Just on more equal terms.
30:41But George and Prime Minister Lord North overreacted.
30:45They came down hard.
30:47On the city they blamed for stirring it all up in the first place.
30:50Boston.
30:55They panicked and sent in the troops.
30:59Three and a half thousand redcoats, to be more accurate.
31:03And that was into a port city with only 16,000 inhabitants.
31:12This changed the nature of the relationship between Britain and America.
31:19George III was putting his troops on the streets to police his people.
31:26To Bostonians, this felt like an invasion.
31:30The city was edging towards martial law.
31:33The soldiers were supposed to be here to keep order during the tax protests.
31:38But there was a problem.
31:40Their pay wasn't very good.
31:42Some of them started taking on second jobs.
31:45Which meant that they were competing with the locals for work.
31:48And they were driving everybody's wages down.
31:52Tensions began to grow.
31:54And quite soon, Boston felt like a pressure cooker that was ready to blow.
32:11March the 5th, 1770, was a day that would become known as the Boston Massacre.
32:22This was the moment when the British Empire turned its guns on its own people.
32:31But was it murder or a tragic misunderstanding?
32:37I'm meeting a history professor who studied first-hand accounts at that day.
32:45So, Rita, you're taking me to the old state house in the center of Boston,
32:50which is very near to where this massacre happened.
32:53How did it all kick off?
32:54There's a sentry standing outside the customs house.
32:57And a couple of apprentices come by.
32:59And they sort of are chatting.
33:00And then they start throwing snowballs at him.
33:03Oh, snowballs.
33:04Snowballs.
33:04And then things that are maybe more than snowballs.
33:07Other things they pick up off the street.
33:09And more and more come.
33:11They were throwing more and more stuff.
33:12He calls for backup.
33:14Yes.
33:14And the captain of the day leads out six or seven other soldiers.
33:19At this point, there's somewhere between 50 and 200 people there.
33:22And very soon after that, someone yells fire.
33:26Fire.
33:27Fire.
33:28That's the actual trigger.
33:29That's the trigger.
33:30But nobody really knows why they yelled fire.
33:33Some people think that it's taunts, that the young people are yelling at the soldiers,
33:37you don't dare fire.
33:38You don't dare fire on us.
33:40And some people think, including some soldiers, that what they heard was a command to fire.
33:45And so all we know is, in fact, there are 11 shots.
33:51And when the smoke clears, three people are dead.
33:55Two more people are dying, bleeding out on the snow in front of the old statehouse,
34:00which is the seat of British imperial power.
34:03The Sons of Liberty, were they causing this?
34:06It's not clear whether they're actually causing the trouble.
34:09They definitely exploit it when it's over, though.
34:13So here's the old statehouse.
34:15Help me visualize the scene.
34:17Well, actually, I could show you an image engraved just a couple of weeks after the shooting.
34:23The bloody massacre.
34:25It's not a neutral image, but it is really very interesting.
34:30The British look like stormtroopers.
34:32They've got their bayonets pointing straight out into the crowd.
34:35They look really mean.
34:38And the captain is safely standing behind them.
34:40So he's out of the line of fire, waving his sword, urging them on.
34:44And then they're shooting at this group of Bostonians who are all really quite nicely dressed,
34:52not a mob.
34:52They are not hooligans.
34:54So he's making very clear who's to blame.
34:56And that's how it comes to be called the Boston Massacre.
35:00Yeah, it's not called the Boston Skirmish or the Boston Brawl.
35:03It's called the Boston Massacre.
35:05It's all in.
35:06Yes.
35:07Serena, this is real violence on the streets of Boston.
35:10What happens next?
35:10Does it get worse?
35:11No, this is actually the opening salvo in a propaganda war.
35:15But there's no more violence.
35:16The violence ends.
35:18Instead, both sides are trying to make an argument for who actually is to blame for the violence that already
35:25did happen.
35:28This etching and the story of the massacre spread rapidly.
35:34I want to contrast how the event was reported in the British and the American press.
35:46Serena's really made me quite suspicious of this picture now showing the Boston Massacre.
35:52It's a work of propaganda, emphasising the cruelty of the British in firing on the unarmed Boston citizens.
36:01I'm interested in how the battle for the control of the narrative was played out in the newspapers.
36:09And one of the key points was the behaviour of this man.
36:13This is Captain Preston.
36:14He's very clearly in the picture giving the order to fire.
36:19He's got his sword up to do so.
36:22But according to this newspaper, the Public Advertiser, which is a London newspaper, it didn't happen quite like that.
36:31They've got access to the testimony of Captain Preston himself.
36:35And he says that when some well-behaved persons asked him if he was going to give the order to
36:43fire, he said,
36:44No, by no means.
36:46I'm not going to do it.
36:48And that's despite the fact that the colonists were hitting his men with sticks and throwing stones at them and
36:55taunting them, calling out,
36:57Damn your bloods.
36:58Why don't you fire?
37:00Captain Preston denies giving the order to fire.
37:05But according to the Boston Gazette, the local paper, things are quite different.
37:11It says here the Bostonians were just throwing harmless snowballs at the soldiers.
37:16But Captain Preston said, Damn you, fire!
37:19Be the consequence what it will.
37:21So we've got two diametrically opposed views of the actions of Captain Preston.
37:28And it's more than that.
37:31These are two different ways of looking at the world.
37:34Things are shaping up into them and us.
37:38And that's a very dangerous place to be.
37:44People were starting to choose sides.
37:50And that included Benjamin Franklin, airbather and fan of King George III and the British Empire.
38:03In September 1773, Franklin published an article in the British press, anonymously.
38:13It was called, Rules by which a great empire may be reduced to a small one.
38:28I've sourced a copy of this article.
38:31It's a masterclass in sarcasm.
38:36He says that if you've got a big empire and you want to turn it into a smaller one,
38:41you should treat it like eating a cake.
38:44You should nibble away at the edges.
38:46And he says that you should do this by treating your colonies really badly.
38:53Even if they've been behaving well, you should suppose them always inclined to revolt.
39:00And you should send soldiers to live amongst the colonists.
39:05And you should suppress them with bullets and bayonets.
39:08By these means, he says, like the husband who ill-uses his wife from suspicion that she's committing adultery.
39:17You may in time convert your suspicions into realities.
39:22You might drive her away.
39:24That's Franklin as marriage guidance counsellor once again.
39:29And this dark joke is coming from Benjamin Franklin, who had been such a super loyalist.
39:36He'd spent years of his life working on this relationship between the colonies and Britain.
39:43It's almost like he hasn't quite said it out loud yet, but he's thinking that maybe the colonies will be
39:51better off without Britain.
40:02Franklin's warning wasn't just a clever metaphor.
40:05It was already coming true.
40:10Across the colonies, resentment was turning into resistance.
40:16And the colonists prepared to take direct action.
40:23On December the 16th, 1773, under cover of darkness, the Boston Sons of Liberty boarded cargo ships and dumped 342
40:36chests of British tea into Boston Harbour.
40:42But the Boston Tea Party was just the beginning.
40:46There were now widespread protests across the colonies.
40:50A wave of defiance swept the entire East Coast.
40:58Even at this late stage, we're essentially talking about a tax protest.
41:04But what the British have missed is the fact that by now, the majority of the colonists have all agreed
41:10that these taxes are a bad thing.
41:12And it isn't just tax, the colonists are starting to see themselves as distinctly different from the British.
41:19Could things be about to boil over?
41:22Well, yes, they could.
41:30British officials in Boston, on behalf of the king, ordered that the leaders of the resistance be arrested.
41:39British troops were sent to the small town of Lexington, where they believed the Massachusetts rebels were hiding.
41:48The ensuing battle between the Redcoats and the locals who refused to give them up marked the official beginning of
41:57what we now call the American Revolution.
42:03In a last bid for peace, the Americans sent George an olive branch, a petition pleading with him to make
42:12concessions.
42:13But was George's mind already made up?
42:16I'm looking through this printed collection of the letters of King George III to his Prime Minister, Lord North.
42:24It's pretty clear he thinks America must be brought to heel.
42:29His language gets pretty tough.
42:31The letters say things like,
42:34Blows must decide between me and the colonists.
42:39And we must master them.
42:42I know I am doing my duty.
42:46And here he says America will be brought to submission.
42:54Now, at his coronation, George had vowed to defend his realm.
42:59And he really was the most conscientious king ever.
43:03And this meant that the colonists were now facing an army whose ultimate leader was absolutely resolute.
43:11George III had become an iron king.
43:18In the summer of 1775, George sent five battalions to Boston, the heart of the fighting.
43:27All along the East Coast, communities were now dividing, neighbour against neighbour, colony against crown.
43:37Do you remember George's map?
43:40Well, British authority was really breaking down.
43:44I want to investigate what happened next in Virginia.
43:48This was one of the oldest colonies and George was really banking on it, staying loyal.
43:52But I know that one of the conflict's turning points happened here.
43:59At the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, I'm meeting a historian to examine newspaper reports from December 1775.
44:08They tell a remarkable story about Lord Dunmore, Britain's royal governor in Virginia.
44:20He was the fourth Earl of Dunmore, known as John Murray, and he was the royal colonial governor of Virginia.
44:28And what was going on in Virginia?
44:30Was it a tough assignment?
44:32Was there rebellion?
44:32He found a colony that was extremely wealthy and that had the largest enslaved people's population in the colonies, in
44:40the 13 colonies.
44:42But at the same time, he was lacking supplies and he didn't have reinforcement.
44:47And he was more or less forced to do, to take initiative.
44:51So what he decided to do is to issue a proclamation.
44:54And this is what the proclamation says.
45:12He is willing to offer freedom to any enslaved people or to indentured servants who'd be willing to join the
45:22British side.
45:24That's a really extraordinary statement, isn't it?
45:27He's saying, look, if you're enslaved and you're on the rebel side, and if you come over to the British
45:32loyalist side, I will give you your freedom.
45:35And do you think he was doing that because he actually believed that they deserved freedom and that slavery was
45:39a bad thing?
45:41No.
45:41Dunmore was calculating.
45:43It was strategic.
45:45What he wanted to do was to have more men fighting on the British side.
45:49And he was backed into a corner.
45:51That's why he made the decision.
45:52Do you know how many formerly enslaved black Virginians joined up who actually, you know, became part of the British
45:59army?
46:00We don't have the exact numbers, but it's between 800 and 2,000 people who joined him.
46:06And he set up a regiment, which was the Ethiopian regiment.
46:12I guess if I were a plantation owner then, and I was feeling pretty loyal to the British, not very
46:18keen on the rebellion, this might tip me over the other way.
46:21Yes, the colonists were absolutely outraged.
46:25They actually believed that enslaved people would be freed by the British all across the colonies.
46:30And therefore, it was an assault on their livelihood, on the economy.
46:35They saw it as an attempt at, you know, stopping their rights to ownership and property.
46:41Say, from the point of view of Lord Dunmore, this seems to me like a total own goal.
46:44Yes, Lord Dunmore didn't think, I think, this through.
46:49He thought about the immediate consequences, but not necessarily the long-term impact on the war after that.
46:58This proclamation had dramatic and far-reaching consequences.
47:05Emancipation was being used as a weapon of war.
47:10And it pushed more southern, slave-owning colonies straight into the revolutionary camp.
47:20By the end of 1775, the colonists were daring to imagine a new America.
47:29Even stitching together their very first flag.
47:37It would become known as the Continental Union flag.
47:41And look what's in the corner.
47:43I think that this flag shows that there was still ambivalence in the minds of the colonists about their identity.
47:50Even though they were now fighting against Britain, they didn't want not to be British.
47:54They just wanted a different relationship with Britain.
47:58What would it take to make them take that final step towards independence?
48:04Or should I say, who would it take?
48:14You might expect the vision for this new America to have come from Benjamin Franklin's masterful pen.
48:21After all, he had a hand in almost everything.
48:27But this time, it wasn't Franklin who lit the fire.
48:32The spark came from an English corset maker from a small Sussex market town.
48:39Hardly anyone in Britain remembers his name today.
48:43But in Lewis, Thomas Paine is still a local hero.
48:48In this house lived Thomas Paine, writer and revolutionary.
48:53I've tracked down someone who can tell me how this Englishman created the blueprint for America.
49:01This man living in Lewis, then, he's a small town person.
49:05Yeah.
49:06Why is this Englishman going to go on and change the fate of America?
49:09I mean, that's the big question.
49:11I mean, we're in Lewis right now, and he's here for six years.
49:14But what he does next is huge.
49:18He boards a ship and he goes to Philadelphia.
49:21And an opportunity comes to him to write articles for the Pennsylvania magazine.
49:26And the articles become increasingly more about independence and the future of the colonies.
49:32And then he starts working on what becomes the first American bestseller, Common Sense.
49:40So this bestselling book, Common Sense, that he's written, what's it actually about?
49:44It's about separation from Britain.
49:47But for that, you need a focal point.
49:49And so it's about getting rid of monarchy.
49:51Because up till this point, the colonists, whilst they were rebelling against Parliament,
49:57they still felt this loyalty to the king.
49:59They viewed themselves as loyal citizens.
50:02I see it here.
50:03He says, first thing you've got to do is get rid of the remains of monarchical tyranny in the person
50:09of the king.
50:10Yeah.
50:11Whoa, that must make George III tremble in his boots.
50:15So would you say, then, we've got all of these colonists who know that they've got to do something,
50:18but they don't quite know what?
50:20And then along comes this clever, prickly man.
50:22And he says, this is the answer.
50:24Get rid of the king.
50:25In a nutshell, yes.
50:27You know, and there's this amazing couple of lines he writes where he says,
50:32should an independency be brought about, we have every opportunity and every encouragement before us
50:37to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth.
50:41But then the zinger is, he says, we have it in our power to begin the world over again.
50:47Now, that is something that is memorable, is repeatable,
50:52and it is repeated in taverns and coffee houses, and it just spreads like wildfire.
50:58You can see why.
50:59It just makes you go, oh, yes.
51:02Oh, yeah, absolutely.
51:03He's been dead for two centuries, but he's making me want to stand up and sing the Star Spangled Banner.
51:07Yeah, yeah.
51:10Common sense came hot off the presses in January of 1776.
51:17Hundreds of thousands of copies were sold, and it convinced Americans that they could no longer be rules by a
51:24king.
51:32It seems to me that this is the moment the colonists finally realise what they want, and will be willing
51:39to fight for.
51:40This is no longer about them changing the way that Britain rules over them.
51:44They're going to fight to be Americans.
51:48It's like the real war for American independence has finally begun.
52:01Back in America, and armed with a new manifesto, Franklin shed his old skin.
52:12He was no longer a British subject, but an American patriot.
52:20Now, alongside four others, he would help create one of the most famous documents in history.
52:27The task of writing the first draft would fall to his compatriot, Thomas Jefferson.
52:36Jefferson really struggled with the drafting of the Declaration of Independence.
52:44He worked on it for a whole month, and you can see here he's been crossing out and revising.
52:50And it does read as if this is the end of a relationship.
52:55It's all about regret and roads not taken.
53:00He says here, we might have been, that's Britain and America, we might have been a free and a great
53:07people together.
53:09But, oh, and listen to this, we must endeavour to forget our former love.
53:17But, when Benjamin Franklin and the other leaders saw this draft, out came the scissors.
53:24They basically deleted all of these sentimental bits.
53:29And the final version was ruthlessly efficient.
53:33There was to be no nostalgia for kings in America.
53:44In telling this story, I've been struck by Britain's stubbornness, sometimes blindness.
53:53But I don't think that George III was a tyrant.
53:56I don't think he had enough power for that.
53:59I do think he was led by ministers who were obsessed with debt and control.
54:05Could things have been different?
54:06Well, yes, they could, if they'd listened to Benjamin Franklin after the Stamp Act, if they'd eased off on the
54:13taxation.
54:14But that's not what happened.
54:16By July 1776, the Americans had written their Declaration of Independence with its promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit
54:25of happiness.
54:26It feels like the revolution has really begun.
54:58And the state of the
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