Center for Media and Learning

Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.

This line went down well with the crowd but brought the project’s limitations into focus. This kind of “just the facts” claim, while posing as humility, in fact masked Burns’ grandiosity. There is no story of the past that is told without a concept of historiography. Whatever you write, you are taking a stance on your subject and on the practice of history itself. The suggestion that other historians are not also interested in “show[ing] what happened” is, at best, careless.

But the advantage of Burns’ crowd-pleasing approach was plain: unrivaled reach. Even in this era of nasty fights over school curricula, his films have remained above the fra

n his denouncement of Trump at Stanford, he said, “I have come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known truth. History is a mysterious and malleable thing, constantly changing, not just as new information emerges, but as our own interests, emotions and inclinations change. Each generation rediscovers and reexamines that part of its past that gives its present new meaning, new possibility and new power.”

But the nature of that responsibility was precisely the big idea that was lost in the movie — for facts don’t speak for themselves. If they did, the facts of the revolution would not have inspired people as disparate as Confederate rebels and Martin Luther King, Jr.

for facts don’t speak for themselves.

Vignettes and battle dates won’t offer the American people what they need to think through the toughest questions raised by the country’s founders: What is true liberty and when is it time to give up on politics and take more drastic measures to secure it?

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us

sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people,

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us

The next day, Washington’s general orders spoke of the urgent need for “Subordination & Discipline (the Life and Soul of an Army) which next under providence, is to make us formidable to our enemies, honorable in ourselves, and respected in the world.

—the humble prayer book still serves as a key intellectual artifact of revolution.

The laity’s handwritten edits in prayer book margins—scraping off “King of Kings” and pasting over rote prayers for the royal family—operated as cultural cues for political change. At critical moments in the war, as colonists endured sieges and made sacrifices, they edited their prayer books to endorse turns in popular thought at the local level

The poor Wretches, fingering their Beads, chanting Latin, not a Word of which they understood, their Pater Nosters and Ave Maria’s. Their holy Water—their Crossing themselves perpetually—their Bowing to the Name of Jesus, wherever they hear it—their Bowings, and Kneelings, and Genuflections before the Altar. The Dress of the Priest was rich with Lace—his Pulpit was Velvet and Gold. The Altar Piece was very rich—little Images and Crucifixes about—Wax Candles lighted up. But how shall I describe the Picture of our Saviour in a Frame of Marble over the Altar at full Length upon the Cross, in the Agonies, and the Blood dropping and streaming from his Wounds.

The poor Wretches, fingering their Beads, chanting Latin, not a Word of which they understood, their Pater Nosters and Ave Maria’s. Their holy Water—their Crossing themselves perpetually—their Bowing to the Name of Jesus, wherever they hear it—their Bowings, and Kneelings, and Genuflections before the Altar. The Dress of the Priest was rich with Lace—his Pulpit was Velvet and Gold. The Altar Piece was very rich—little Images and Crucifixes about—Wax Candles lighted up. But how shall I describe the Picture of our Saviour in a Frame of Marble over the Altar at full Length upon the Cross, in the Agonies, and the Blood dropping and streaming from his Wounds.

I am wearied to Death with the Life I lead. The Business of the Congress is tedious, beyond Expression. This Assembly is like no other that ever existed. Every Man in it is a great Man—an orator, a Critick, a statesman, and therefore every Man upon every Question must shew his oratory, his Criticism and his Political Abilities.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety

Since the publication of Bernard Bailyn’s introduction to Pamphlets of the American Revolution in 1965, we have known that colonists expressed fears of a British conspiracy to enslave them.[4] Yet we have paid little attention to Native American fears that colonists intended to annihilate them. How widespread were these fears?

In March 1775, land speculators from North Carolina sought to create a new colony based on Daniel Boone’s forays into “Kaintuckee,” to gain title to highly valuable Cherokee hunting grounds.

Dragging Canoe (ca. 1738–1792), son of a conciliatory Cherokee elder and soon to be focus of the hard-line resistance, i

Nations have melted like snowballs in the sun. We never thought the white man would come across the mountains, but he has, and has settled on Cherokee land. He will not leave us but a small spot to stand on. Should we not therefore run all risks, and incur all consequences rather than submit to further laceration of our country?”

Treaty of Sycamore Shoals

Dragging Canoe, son of diplomat Little Carpenter

The 1763 Royal Proclamation reinforced the line, which was made by blazing, or stripping bark from trees. British agents had repeatedly told the Cherokees they were fully within their rights to drive off the squatters and seize their horses and cattle as a penalty for breaking English law.

John Stuart, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs living in Charleston, S.C., was accused of using his influence with the Cherokees to bring the rumored plan into effect.

Alexander Cameron, Stuart’s emissary

y 1775 lived among the Cherokees for more than a decade.<span class="diigoHighlightCommentLocator"></span>

Charleston rebel William Henry Drayton dispatched an envoy to bribe Cameron into abandoning his loyalty to the king.

With his Cherokee wife and three children, Cameron fled his 2,000-acre estate in South Carolina

Dragging Canoe make passionate speeches in defense of liberty, dignity and survival

In Maryland, for instance, by the new constitution of 1776, to run for governor one had to own 5,000 pounds of property; to run for state senator, 1,000 pounds. Thus, 90 percent of the population were excluded from holding office