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00:01Previously on The Revolution
00:04Ethan Allen took all the glory for seizing Fort Ticonderoga from the British,
00:08an affront to Benedict Arnold's honor he won't soon forget.
00:12These really are vain, egotistical men
00:15interested in the accumulation of individual glory.
00:19John Adams anointed a gentleman planter from Virginia
00:22the commander-in-chief of the fledgling Continental Army.
00:26Washington is someone who has nothing to gain from the Revolution
00:29and everything to lose.
00:30Despite their brave defense of Breeds Hill,
00:33Washington's soldiers failed even his worst expectations.
00:37We say that there was an army. There wasn't an army. There was a gaggle.
00:41These men are ragged, getting drunk on duty. It was a mess.
00:58April 1776.
01:03Fresh from their victories in Boston, the Continental Army marches overland toward New York.
01:09Having sent the British running, they are America's surprise heroes.
01:18Now 10,000 strong, a new notion gathers around them.
01:23An idea that will drive the warring British and American armies on a collision course.
01:29America wants independence.
01:34It will take George Washington and his citizen army everything they've got to win it.
01:40The heroes of Massachusetts, now riding high on confidence,
01:45have not even begun to taste the full power of the King's vengeance.
01:53The British are coming back, this time to deliver a more decisive blow.
01:59As they move toward New York by sea, they assemble an armada,
02:03the size of which the world has never seen.
02:09The British commander, General William Howe, fully understands his orders.
02:15What had begun in Massachusetts as an annoying insurgency,
02:19is quickly becoming an expensive and embarrassing war.
02:25It is time to stop it.
02:28Flushed with the idea of superiority after the evacuation of Boston,
02:34the Americans desire decisive action.
02:37Nothing is more sought for by us.
02:40General William Howe.
02:46New York is the perfect place to end this rebellion, one way or another.
02:53The importance of New York City is not lost to either William Howe or George Washington.
03:00Whomever controls New York City will control the Hudson River,
03:04and by extension, have the ability to sever the lines of communication
03:08between New England and the remaining colonies.
03:11This was the grand strategy that was going to subdue the rebellion,
03:15that would break the colonies in half along this river,
03:19that would separate the cockpit of the revolution in Boston
03:23from the cockpit in Virginia, in New York, in New Jersey,
03:28and by that means bring about the collapse of the rebellion.
03:34The conflict that has been fought militarily in Boston
03:37and politically in Philadelphia now comes to New York,
03:41a city already bitterly divided between loyalists and patriots.
03:47Each side, loyalist and patriot, is waiting for the great clash that will decide their fate.
03:55A British victory would likely end the war and return the colonies to the king.
04:01A continental win could set the colonies free.
04:05At stake, liberty.
04:07The word that has been in colonial years since the outset of the year,
04:12when a slim pamphlet set America ablaze.
04:17The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.
04:21Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation.
04:24The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries,
04:28"'Tis time to part."
04:32Finally, someone has given the colonists a vocabulary of revolution.
04:37But who is the author?
04:44The words come anonymously from the most unlikely source.
04:51Not a leading American,
04:53but a young immigrant starting his life over in the New World.
04:57He comes from England with little money,
05:00scant education and few prospects.
05:03But he carries powerful ideas from the European Enlightenment.
05:08Ideas that, when planted in American soil,
05:11will grow into a revolution that will change the world.
05:15The author of this incendiary manifesto,
05:18Thomas Paine.
05:21We don't have a statue of Paine.
05:24He's got to be the only founding father
05:27who has not been commemorated in marble and bronze,
05:34because he was too radical.
05:37Young Tom Paine had never amounted to much in England,
05:40though he had tried his hand at everything.
05:44He had been a house servant, a merchant marine,
05:47and even a corset maker.
05:49In each of these pursuits, he would universally fail.
05:55Paine would discover himself in Philadelphia.
05:58Like many immigrants, it becomes his blank slate,
06:01his chance to start over.
06:06It is this same spirit Paine sees in America.
06:08Restless.
06:10Searching.
06:12Ambitious.
06:13For the raw makings of a new world,
06:16without the burden of kings or powerful churches.
06:22It is a vision Paine turns into 46 simple pages,
06:26plain enough for every farmer, fishmonger,
06:30or founding father to understand.
06:32He calls it, simply,
06:35common sense.
06:37We have it within our power to begin the world over again.
06:42It is not the concern of a day, a year, or an age.
06:45Now is the seed time of continental union.
06:50Common sense conjured up a vision of a very democratic America,
06:56still to be an America in the making.
07:02The pamphlet quickly becomes a sensation.
07:06A best-selling how-to book on making revolution.
07:11Some say 100,000 copies of this were published.
07:15Translate that into population rates today,
07:18that would be like selling 20 million books through Amazon,
07:22Barnes and Noble.
07:23That's an awful lot of communicating.
07:32Colonists now contemplate the once unthinkable,
07:35breaking with the King of England.
07:40Thomas Paine has finally told them what to do.
07:44Begin a new world.
07:46Begin America.
07:57The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.
08:02O ye that love mankind,
08:04ye that dare oppose not only tyranny but the tyrant,
08:08stand forth.
08:10The army now swells with citizen soldiers
08:13ready to fight for Paine's ideals of a new world.
08:17Soldiers like Lieutenant Joseph Hodgkins.
08:21My dearest Sarah,
08:23I hope Providence will provide for us
08:25and carry me through all the troubles we have to meet in the way of our duty
08:29and while we are absent from each other.
08:32A New England cobbler, 32-year-old Hodgkins,
08:35had joined the army to protest colonial rule in his town of Ipswich, Massachusetts.
08:42Now he is pushing farther from his home,
08:45his tiny shoe shop and his wife, Sarah.
08:51I would not have you be uneasy about me.
08:54As I am engaged in this glorious cause,
08:57I am willing to go where I am called.
09:03Yet these citizen soldiers like Hodgkins present their own problem to General George Washington.
09:10Full of ideals, they lack training and experience.
09:15New York will be a battle on a scale none yet know
09:19against the full force of the greatest army in the world.
09:27Washington harbors doubts.
09:30He had very rational fears.
09:32Any man of military experience would look at the task before them
09:35and realize this is not a foregone conclusion that we can achieve victory.
09:41Victory or defeat will soon mean the future of America.
09:46The rebellion begun in Massachusetts over taxes is about to become a revolution for independence.
10:01June 1776.
10:04The debate over America's political future has been pushed to the forefront.
10:10What once was considered an act of mutiny and treason,
10:14now becomes a real possibility.
10:16Even a destiny.
10:19America is talking about liberty.
10:24Suddenly in every tavern, in every meeting house, everywhere people congregate,
10:29they are talking seriously about this idea.
10:33Should we go for independence or not?
10:35And they're talking about the ideas that Paine expresses.
10:40We have a grand, robust national dialogue, such as we've never had before or since,
10:48around a central theme that meant everything to everybody.
10:54The British are intent on stopping it.
10:58Having gathered their strength, they arrive in New York Harbor in dramatic fashion.
11:06With 130 warships and nearly 25,000 men, they put on a show designed to scare even the most avid
11:14rebel.
11:17When the British come in the summer of 1776, it's like Star Wars.
11:24It's the Empire Strikes Back. It's the Death Star.
11:30These multiple acres and acres of white sail coming into the harbor must really have been a sight to behold.
11:37This is the most powerful military nation on Earth that is bringing that power to bear on you.
11:46At his headquarters in Lower New York, Washington has a front row seat.
11:52The enemy will endeavor to intimidate by show and appearance.
11:56But remember, that was so just a cause, victory is most assuredly ours.
12:01General George Washington.
12:05Outwardly, Washington shows a calm face.
12:08Yet inside, he knows that defending New York will be the greatest test he has known.
12:14The Virginia farmer, turned rebel leader, is out of his league.
12:20Washington was faced with a tremendous task.
12:24He had no navy to speak of.
12:26And he was trying to protect a group of islands with hundreds of miles of shoreline against the world's most
12:34powerful naval force.
12:39Miles away in Philadelphia, the reality of the situation is harder to take in.
12:45The great leaders of the revolution, Ben Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock, see what they want to see.
12:54An army that has already stood up to the British.
12:58It pushes them to take the next step, the ultimate step, toward independence.
13:07A Virginia delegate, Richard Henry Lee, throws down the gauntlet.
13:11Why do we longer delay? Why still deliberate?
13:14Let this happy day give birth to an American republic.
13:18If we are not this day wanting in our duty, the names of the American legislators of 1776 will be
13:24placed in posterity.
13:26Richard Henry Lee.
13:28The time is now to make a declaration and commit it to paper.
13:33Congress turns to a young Virginia lawyer, a rising star in American politics.
13:40At 33 years old, Thomas Jefferson is the ideal American.
13:45Bright, ambitious, and a gentleman.
13:49Jefferson was a tall, slender, gentle, engaging man who wanted to be a scholar and never got a chance.
13:58Because he was such a good politician.
14:01Of all the revolutionaries, if I could sit with one at dinner, he'd be the one.
14:06But Jefferson embodies America's deepest conflicts and contradictions.
14:11Having grown up on a wealthy Virginia plantation, he inherited aristocratic credentials.
14:17And the 200 slaves to prove it.
14:21Yet Jefferson holds to an ideal America.
14:24A place of opportunity for everyone.
14:27A place where every American is in charge of his own fate.
14:31The child nation is growing up and longs to move beyond the shadow of its parent.
14:38But they had grown up and they wanted an independent say about how their laws were made and who governed
14:43them.
14:44And Jefferson knew all of that.
14:45He knew that he wasn't writing anything that was revolutionary in the eyes of his own people, only in the
14:50rest of the world.
14:54Mid-June, 1776.
14:58Armed with these notions and a deadline of two weeks, Jefferson locks himself into a Philadelphia boarding house.
15:05He sat in one room in the July sweltering heat of Philadelphia with the flies buzzing all about him.
15:13And he forgot all of that and he just sat down and he wrote and he wrote and he wrote
15:17out of his head.
15:20When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which
15:26they have hitherto remained,
15:28the opinions of mankind impelled him to the change.
15:31Thomas Jefferson.
15:34It is a heady task for a fairly young mind.
15:37Every word must contain a reason to die for.
15:41Every sentence an urgent cause to justify rising up against a king.
15:47Think about it, you know the Declaration of Independence is a terribly radical document.
15:51That document says that if the government isn't treating you the way you think it should, and if you suffer
15:57this mistreatment over a period of time,
15:59you've got the right to rise up and destroy that government, to change it.
16:03That's a radical thing to say.
16:06But Jefferson soon stumbles over the central question of the revolution.
16:11It hangs in the hot air.
16:14Who will become a free American?
16:17In Britain, the elite legislated.
16:20Now, Jefferson's pen could reinvent all that.
16:24Would the new America mean rights for every man, woman, child, and even slave?
16:30Who's in and who's out?
16:31Who's included?
16:32Does this mean everybody?
16:33Does this mean only the rich?
16:35Does this mean property holders?
16:36How far do we go?
16:38Who's included in this new nation?
16:40We hold these truths to be self-evident.
16:43That all men are created equal.
16:45That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
16:49That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
16:54Jefferson reaches for the highest ideals.
16:56But the contradictions of his words come back to haunt him.
17:04All the talk about freedom and liberty, all of this reaches the ears of nearly 500,000 colonists who are
17:14black.
17:15That's one-fifth of the population.
17:19Slavery already divides the colonies.
17:22Now, with the talk of independence, it takes front row.
17:26Some colonists draw the line at giving liberty to slaves.
17:30Others bristle at the hypocrisy of fighting for independence while sanctioning slavery.
17:37Jefferson himself remains divided.
17:40His own slaves watch their fates debated before them.
17:44When Thomas Jefferson, incidentally the holder of over 100 slaves at this moment, wrote,
17:50We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain
17:56inalienable rights.
17:57And among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
18:01You don't think his slave said, right on, John. Right on, Thomas.
18:06That this is precisely what we want.
18:11Many slaves choose not to wait.
18:14From cities and plantations across America, blacks begin an exodus.
18:19They flee.
18:21On Washington's plantation, we know that 17 slaves ran.
18:27Stephen, 20 years old, a cooper by trade.
18:30Deborah, a 16-year-old woman.
18:33Peter, an old man.
18:3523 fled from Jefferson.
18:38These people had made decisions.
18:40What's best for them?
18:42Patriot or loyalist didn't really matter.
18:44What's my best bet?
18:46What does a man like Jefferson make of this?
18:50When the slaves flee?
18:51Well, it throws in his face the notion of the enlightened slave master.
18:59And it comes upon him with great force, I think, if it hadn't before.
19:06There's a fundamental contradiction in this whole revolution project
19:13between fighting for unalienable rights and holding slaves.
19:19He knew that.
19:22Jefferson takes aim at slavery with scathing indictments of its wrongfulness.
19:28He puts them in his draft, yet falls short of calling for the end of slaveholding.
19:36Major battles are looming.
19:38Compromises must be made.
19:43In Philadelphia, his draft will soon be thrown to the varied interests in Congress.
19:49They will tear it apart.
19:54While in New York, the Continental Army prepares to put its life on the line for the dream of independence.
20:12Late June, 1776.
20:16While Congress works on independence in Philadelphia,
20:20a hundred miles north, on the bluffs of Brooklyn Heights,
20:24the Continental Army faces more urgent realities.
20:27Put your backs into it, men!
20:29They dig in for the fight to come.
20:35Every day, they expect an attack.
20:39Every day, it fails to arrive.
20:43Lieutenant Joseph Hodgkins oversees the building of fortifications.
20:49But he grows tired of waiting.
20:53My dear Sarah,
20:54I long to see you and my children,
20:57but when I shall is uncertain.
21:00General Washington is calling in the militia,
21:03and I hope we shall be in readiness to meet our enemy,
21:06Joseph Hodgkins.
21:07While the Americans build fortifications,
21:10the British continue to pour into their camp on Staten Island.
21:15Throughout the summer, their force swells,
21:18as the King sends more ships with more troops.
21:24Washington watches and waits.
21:29The impeccably cool gentleman from Virginia remains perplexed by the British,
21:33who gather strength, but show no sign of attacking.
21:38Day after day, week after week, he can only sit and wonder.
21:45Very unexpectedly to me, another revolving Monday is arrived before an attack upon this city,
21:51or a movement of the enemy.
21:54The reason of this is incomprehensible to me,
21:59General George Washington.
22:04The flotilla of British ships bobs just off the tip of Manhattan,
22:08waiting for even more reinforcements,
22:11biding their time,
22:13wearing down rebel nerves.
22:17What Washington needs is a navy to stand up to the Goliath of the British Empire.
22:24What he gets is a slingshot,
22:27a tiny concept he hopes will have a huge impact.
22:33Its codename, the Turtle.
22:36It's the world's first combat submarine,
22:39designed to harass the world's mightiest navy.
22:42Made of oak, covered in tar,
22:45the tiny craft fits just one person.
22:50With a bicycle-like method,
22:52the engineer propels the vessel underwater.
22:55With a drill, he will fasten kegs of gunpowder and a fuse to his victim's hull.
23:04But the simple weapon is not simple enough.
23:07The Turtle will be used only once during the Battle of New York.
23:11At night, she sneaks up on the British flagship, the Eagle.
23:17But fastening the explosives to the hull proves too difficult.
23:23The Turtle is forced to make a hasty retreat,
23:25spotted and pursued by British longboats.
23:30The keg of gunpowder, the erstwhile torpedo,
23:34floats down the Hudson River,
23:38where it goes off by itself, harmlessly.
23:41A giant column of water shot up as the bomb went off,
23:46and people on the shores were looking on in astonishment.
23:50But that was the end of the experiment.
23:54It will be words, not bombs,
23:57that deliver Britain the strongest blows.
24:02July 1st, 1776.
24:07A draft of the Declaration is delivered to Congress.
24:13The delegates immediately tear into it.
24:19The excruciating part took place after the document was written,
24:24and that was three days of debate in Congress,
24:27in which Congress took out 89 different things,
24:31including any language criticizing the practice of slavery.
24:36And Jefferson just sat there writhing through the whole thing.
24:42The issue of slavery is left for another time.
24:47There are flickers of doubt.
24:49They're bothered by it. They can't fix it.
24:52They kick it down the road.
24:53They basically postpone the problem to be reckoned with on another day.
24:58That day became the Civil War. It was a pretty bad day.
25:03But it's not that they're not bothered by it.
25:05They know what's wrong, they just don't know how to deal with it.
25:12The pressure of time once again intervenes.
25:16On July 2nd, the matter of independence must be put to a vote.
25:21It passes.
25:26The second day of July, 1776,
25:29will be the most memorable in the history of America.
25:33It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade,
25:37with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires,
25:43and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other,
25:46from this time forward forevermore.
25:49John Adams, Congressional Delegate.
25:52Adams is a little off on the date, but close.
25:56Two more days are necessary to hammer out the final declaration.
25:59On July 4th, independence becomes written fact.
26:11Within days, copies travel by horseback throughout the colonies.
26:18No one had set out to create a war of independence,
26:23yet they had delivered one.
26:26In the town squares all over the country,
26:30church bells were ringing,
26:32people were huzzahing,
26:35the crowd was applauding.
26:37People really did believe
26:39the birthday of a new world is at hand.
26:43These united colonies are,
26:45and of right ought to be free and independent states,
26:49absolved from all allegiance to the British crown.
26:52all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain
26:56is and ought to be totally dissolved.
27:00Huzzah!
27:01Huzzah!
27:02Huzzah!
27:04Huzzah!
27:05Huzzah!
27:05Huzzah!
27:06Huzzah!
27:06Huzzah!
27:07For those who had only imagined such a document,
27:10its realization is inspiring,
27:14and sobering.
27:16The delegates who signed their names
27:19know they have just committed treason,
27:22a crime punishable by death.
27:26All of our founding fathers,
27:28they think they're going to hang.
27:29We either hang together or hang separately.
27:31That was literal.
27:33They are outlaws,
27:34and if they fall into the hands of the British army,
27:38they think they're going to swing from a tree.
27:42It is the reckoning at the hands of King George
27:45that is on the minds of the signers,
27:46and for everyone across the colonies
27:49who supports independence.
27:57Huzzah!
27:58Huzzah!
27:59Huzzah!
28:00Huzzah!
28:01Huzzah!
28:02Huzzah!
28:02Huzzah!
28:02Huzzah!
28:02Huzzah!
28:02Huzzah!
28:02Huzzah!
28:02Huzzah!
28:03Huzzah!
28:04Huzzah!
28:07Huzzah!
28:08Huzzah!
28:28Huzzah!
28:28to renegotiate the terms of membership in the empire.
28:34But after that moment, it's about getting the British
28:38to acknowledge independence.
28:41In New York, patriots pull down a statue of King George.
28:48It is a symbolic deed, but a useful one too.
28:54The lead is immediately sent off and melted down
28:57to make musket balls.
29:0142,000 bullets will come out of fallen King George,
29:05and every one of them will be necessary.
29:08The battle they have been waiting for has arrived.
29:12July 12th, 3 p.m.
29:17The British unleash their guns.
29:20Only eight days after the Declaration of Independence,
29:23the British answer with a barrage
29:25only the world's most powerful empire could muster.
29:34Soldiers and citizens alike freeze with fear.
29:42A lot of these soldiers were 16, 17 years old, fresh off the farm.
29:48Some of these American soldiers were drunk in their cups,
29:52as the expression was.
29:53And so it was really kind of a disaster
29:56and a really inauspicious beginning
29:58to the battle for New York for the Americans.
30:05George Washington is furious.
30:15The British have made clear their power.
30:18Now, inexplicably, they stop the attack.
30:25As quickly as the barrage comes, it ends.
30:29It is merely a show of force, a scare tactic,
30:32by the British commander, General William Howe.
30:37In fact, Howe's goal was not to win.
30:39It was to force the Americans to a conference table.
30:45It wasn't about inflicting, crushing military defeat.
30:49It wasn't about humiliating the colonists.
30:52It was about showing them that British liberty
30:54was something worth having.
31:00The British, having amply displayed their might,
31:03now counter with an invitation to talk peace.
31:07But Howe makes a small, yet costly, miscalculation.
31:12The message he sends is addressed simply
31:14to George Washington, a breach of protocol
31:17that is instantly recognizable.
31:22The British are in a very difficult position.
31:24If they address the latter as His Excellency
31:27George Washington commander-in-chief,
31:29they're effectively recognizing the legitimacy
31:32of the Continental Army.
31:33For Washington, this is a critical thing.
31:35He needs to be recognized.
31:38They are equals, after all.
31:41Howe commands an army?
31:42Washington commands an army.
31:45The messenger, and his various letters,
31:48is rebuked several times.
31:54Finally, the letter is accepted.
31:57But by then, Washington wants no part of it.
32:00He sets aside the letter without opening it.
32:05The Americans will not consider negotiating.
32:09So high is the vanity and the insolence of these men.
32:13Their leaders seem to risk everything,
32:15so that blows and war seem inevitable.
32:18Ambrose Searle, British Secretary.
32:26August 12th, 1776.
32:31There will be no peace.
32:37Instead, the Continental soldiers will have to deliver America by war.
32:43The British might will soon return.
32:46But when, and where, remain a mystery.
32:50Joseph Hodgkins redoubles his efforts.
32:54My dear Sarah,
32:55the posts are not going as quickly as I expected.
32:58It is thought this fleet will get all the strength they can before they make an attack on us.
33:03But we are awaiting and expecting them every day.
33:07Joseph Hodgkins.
33:11This will be a different scale of warfare than these soldiers have ever known.
33:16On the eve of battle, some sit down to prepare their wills,
33:20aware that their first real battle with the British may also be their last.
33:30At their camp on Staten Island, the British are not nearly so nervous.
33:41Sure that victory is near,
33:44they bide their time enjoying the fruits of the American continent.
33:50The fair nymphs of this isle are in wonderful tribulation.
33:54As the fresh meat our men have got here has made them as riders, as satyrs.
33:59A girl cannot step into the bushes to pluck a rose,
34:03without running the most imminent risk of being ravished.
34:08Lord Lorden, British officer.
34:14Their leader also takes full advantage of his time.
34:18Having taken one of his officers' wives for a lover,
34:22General William Howe lets the day slip by in his private conquests.
34:29George Washington can afford no such pleasures.
34:33Back in Manhattan, the general is losing his famous cool.
34:38As he waits, he guesses, and second guesses,
34:42every plan and every defense.
34:44He too is about to face the biggest battle of his life.
34:47And it will not be on his terms.
34:50It is the British who are running this show.
34:59Late August.
35:01Long Island.
35:03D-Day.
35:05On a warm August morning, Howe moves his army.
35:12More than 15,000 British soldiers now march toward the American positions.
35:17For the first time in the brand new War of Independence,
35:20the British will test the strength of the American army head on.
35:36The British attack first, with two columns taking the Continentals in a frontal assault.
35:49The two sides face each other in massive lines, often a mere hundred yards apart.
35:58They gave everybody a couple of tots of rum, just to get them liquored up enough to do this.
36:04The Americans didn't have that discipline, they didn't know it.
36:08This is European style warfare.
36:11For nearly all the Continentals, it is their first taste of it.
36:16The person in the 20th or 21st century, looks at those linear battle formations of the 18th century,
36:23as they seem to be struck by the stupidity of these things.
36:26But that really, these tactics and these formations are predicated upon the state of technology at the time.
36:38In open field battles, and in smaller forest skirmishes, the Americans struggle to hold their own.
36:59What they don't know, is that they are fighting a decoy.
37:03The bulk of Howe's army is actually a third flank, marching out and around the American forces.
37:11Washington has not prepared for this.
37:14By 10 AM, the British break through the rear ranks and devastate the lines of the Continental Army.
37:22The worst possible thing that can happen in those situations,
37:25is to have a complete rupturing of your line.
37:28A complete break in which men panic and everybody flees basically for themselves.
37:35It is, without a doubt, the most demoralizing, disheartening sort of experience these soldiers could have possibly felt.
37:43The rebel army, in a state of panic, flees.
37:48Among them, the young Lieutenant Joseph Hodgkins.
37:53He watches his soldiers break, a sight he will never forget.
37:58Loving wife, in the woods and in the night, the enemy marched out two different ways.
38:03We were obliged to go through fire and water.
38:06It seems the day has come that in all probability depends the salvation of this country.
38:26The army straggles back, minus the 300 dead and 1,000 captured.
38:36George Washington watches in shock.
38:41His army had not withstood the battle.
38:45He had failed, and the danger is far from over.
38:54At Brooklyn Heights, the army is trapped on all sides.
38:58The British navy commands the waterways to the west.
39:02From the east and south, Howe's army closes in on the shattered continental defenses.
39:09All looks lost, but the end would not come just yet.
39:16In a last effort to save his army, Washington orders an immediate retreat to start at nightfall.
39:28Under the cover of darkness, the army begins to move, stealthily using every ferry and fishing boat available to them.
39:38All through the night, soldiers are ferried across a narrow slip between Brooklyn and Manhattan.
39:45They soon run out of time, but they get one final providence.
39:52As morning breaks, a strange and eerie fog sets in over New York Harbor, engulfing the area in a near
39:59blackout.
40:00It is their salvation.
40:02The British see and hear nothing.
40:07I could scarcely discern a man at six-yard distance.
40:11In the history of warfare, I do not recollect a more fortunate retreat.
40:16Benjamin Talmadge, Continental Officer
40:26When the fog lifts, the British are met with an empty camp.
40:33The Continental Army, just hours before on the verge of defeat, has vanished overnight.
40:41The failure to capture them and to really put a stop to the war by rounding up the rebel forces
40:48really was perhaps one of the greatest blunders of the war, because it was in New York with the
40:55greatest armada, the greatest number of men that they had at any time during those eight years,
41:00the British lost their best opportunity to win the war at a stroke.
41:10The remains of the rebel army recuperate.
41:15Dispirited and defeated, they can only wonder what will happen next.
41:22Having made it off of Long Island with the others,
41:25Lieutenant Joseph Hodgkins now has a moment to communicate with his wife, Sarah.
41:32Her words are those of many back home across the colonies, a mixture of immediate fears and distant hopes.
41:41My dear husband, I desire to be thankful that you have got off of Long Island.
41:47I think things look very dark on our side, but it has been observed that man's extremity
41:53was God's opportunity. Sarah Hodgkins
42:02George Washington is wrecked. He has come within inches of losing his entire army,
42:08and along with it, the cause of independence. Now he knows he must abandon New York City.
42:19The Continental Army is in no shape to fight again. They leave the city and go north along Manhattan Island.
42:30A few months ago, they were being treated as heroes. Now they are in full retreat.
42:42Washington's reputation has plummeted too. His inexperience and mistakes had been costly.
42:49His ability to lead an army is now severely in question. Soon, he will receive challenges from
42:57within his own ranks. If you stopped the clock in 1776, you would have suspected that this guy would
43:04be out of a job pretty soon. Things were not going well.
43:11The dream of a new world, Thomas Paine's vision, seems more remote with each step.
43:22Across America, spirits are depleted. Many soldiers up and leave the army.
43:30Others, like Joseph Hodgkins, face the choice. Stay and fight or return to their homes, perhaps as British
43:39subjects evermore. My dear Joseph, I hope if we live to see this campaign out, we shall have the
43:48happiness of living together. It will trouble me very much if you should engage again. Your most
43:54affectionate companion until death, Sarah. Hodgkins will stay and retreat with the remains of the army
44:04toward an uncertain future for himself, for the army, and for the cause of independence.
44:11The revolution will go on, but it is about to enter its darkest days.
44:21Next time on The Revolution. Confidence in Washington reaches an all-time low
44:27as America's revolution descends into anarchy. The Americans in 1776 have encountered nothing but
44:34defeat followed by defeat. This really negatively affects the morale of his force who really now
44:40question whether or not Washington is the right man for this job. Washington makes a bold decision to
44:46strike the Hessians at Trenton. It was a do-or-die moment.
45:16the
45:16bit of a
45:19step
45:20next time
45:20the
45:20of the
45:20the
45:20day
45:20of
45:21you
45:21You
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