In high school, I was exposed to the conventional wisdom concerning our nation’s founding—Battles of Lexington and Concord, Declaration of Independence, British defeat at Saratoga and Yorktown, and the Peace of Paris 1783. Finally, the Articles of Confederation were given short shrift, as the failed initial attempt at self-government that necessitated a stronger federation under the Constitution.
Two lightbulb moments changed my history book view of the Articles:
- I read Tom DiLorenzo’s Hamilton’s Curse. I had previously thought of Hamilton as just another major participant in the founding, a neutral by comparison with others, such as Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington. Hamilton’s Curse taught me to investigate Hamilton more thoroughly.
- I spent 7 years doing a weekly program for WFYL called We the People - the Constitution Matters. We reviewed all the major founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution of the United States, The Federalist essays, and anti-federalist papers.
This is background for a critique of “The American Revolution,” the epic six-part, 12-hour Ken Burns series that recently aired on PBS. Based upon the success of his prior series, exceptional visualization, and a star-studded voice cast that includes Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, and Samuel L. Jackson, I would expect this one to reach an audience of 40 million. But is the documentary an accurate rendition of America’s founding history or is it propaganda?
As producer Burns is a self-described “yellow dog Democrat,” the worst that could be expected by those who favor freedom. Conservatives reacted predictably. Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh—while admitting 70-80 percent of the documentary is “actually quite good”—called it “a masterclass in propaganda because it weaves complete nonsense—and I mean total garbage—into a very compelling and factually accurate narrative of the Revolutionary War.”
But the events Burns described are consistent with history. One could argue against the heavy emphasis on victims of the war to include loyalists, neutrals (e.g., Quakers), slaves, and indigenous people. However, that is a part of our nation’s founding story. Burns makes a valid point: The American Revolution was also a civil war as well as a war of secession from Great Britain. There is little doubt that both sides of the war committed atrocities. Given the available evidence and the nature of civil wars, Burns’s treatment of the subject seems valid. In any case, Walsh’s criticism is a relatively minor issue.
The greater criticism should be directed at the series’s conclusion. Rather than presenting facts, “The American Revolution” simply repeats the nation’s founding myth that, “The Constitution saved the nation from chaos.”
The Articles government was formed in March, 1781 and the Constitution-promoters (the “Federalists” [actual nationalists]) began their work in 1786 at the Annapolis Convention. The Paris Peace Treaty ended the war in 1783, and the Federalists were claiming that the nation under the Articles was slipping into crisis a mere three years later. Specifically, they argued the following:
- Using Shays’s Rebellion as an example, a federal government was necessary to restore order. However, Shay’s Rebellion was put down by state resources and did not spread to adjoining states. Federal resources were not necessary.
- The federal government had incurred more debts and foreign banks were unwilling to loan necessary funds to it. However, John Adams had already secured loans from Dutch bankers in 1782 after hostilities on the North American continent had ceased. There were immense investment opportunities in the United States for foreigners. The Dutch loan signaled the beginning of funding competition. Given that the Patriot forces had been successful in a six-year war, the financial chaos claim is essentially false.
Now consider the accomplishments of the Articles government:
- It managed the successful completion of land warfare with the Battle of Yorktown. This was emphasized with the story of Robert Morris in the Ken Burns series, session 6.
- It managed one of the most successful treaties over history, the Paris Treaty of 1783. That treaty effectively doubled the size of the United States. (However, it was a disaster for the indigenous peoples.)
- It created the Northwest Ordinance of 1785 which became the statehood path for Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Slavery was also banned in the Northwest Territory.
To his credit, in “The American Revolution” Ken Burns sheds light on the dark side of a war fought for the noble cause of secession. Sadly, the fight for freedom was lost when the Articles were scrapped for a strong central government. At the Virginia Ratifying Convention on June 5, 1788, Patrick Henry warned, “You are not to inquire now whether the community are under… a tyranny at home… but whether the new government will not be worse than the old.”
The most important takeaway from our founding history is that the Constitution marked a counter-revolution which paved the way for the Leviathan state of today, a truth neither the left nor right dares speak.
