ANNOUNCER: Support for this special conversation comes from the Gertrude J. Sandt endowment, the James H. Olay family endowment, and the Sidney and Helen S. Friedman endowment.

And from viewers like you, thank you.

JARED FREDERICK: From the Dr.

Keiko Miwa Ross WPSU Production Studio, this is A Special Conversation, The American Revolution.

Good evening, I'm Jared Frederick.

American history has been a lifelong passion of mine.

And tonight, I'm excited to talk about our nation's history and the upcoming PBS documentary by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt called The American Revolution.

Joining me in this discussion are three distinguished historians, colleagues, and friends.

Let's meet them now.

Brady Crytzer is an author, historian, and lecturer of history at Robert Morris University.

He is also an associate editor of the Journal of the American Revolution and the author of eight books.

Dr.

Friederike Baer is an award winning professor in history and the division head of Arts and Humanities at Penn State Abington.

Her book, Hessians, German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War, was honored with the American Round Table of Philadelphia Annual Book Award, among many others.

And Dr.

Baer also served as a historical advisor and interviewee for the upcoming documentary, The American Revolution.

Also joining us is Dr.

Christopher Thrasher, a postdoctoral teaching fellow at Penn State, who studies Native American, colonial, and early US history.

His dissertation considers the Revolutionary War period from a unique perspective by centering Muskogee Confederacy history and Muskogee diplomacy with the Cherokee Nation.

Thanks, everyone for joining us here.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

I think a really good question to start off with as an icebreaker is to simply ask what spurred you all individually to take an interest in the American Revolution.

For many of our viewers, it might have been a field trip or a movie, or a book, but what led each of you here?

Let's start with Brady, then go to Christopher and then Friederike.

It's a very simple story.

I had a great teacher.

In fact, I had a lot of great teachers growing up.

But I've always been an inquisitive person.

I love to research.

I love to write.

And living in Pennsylvania really gave us this wealth of opportunities to really consider our past.

My dad was in the Marines, so we had military history around all the time.

And so I think it was a combination of that.

And then once I got into school, learning some things about the Revolution that kind of clashed with that popular idea of it, some of these kind of myths and legends of the Revolution that aren't exactly true.

And as I learned more, I just wanted to keep going.

All right.

Very good.

And, Friederike, how about yourself?

Yeah.

For me, it was an undergraduate seminar that I took in college at a German University, where we read America's founding documents very closely, very carefully.

And that really got me interested, A, in historical research then, but also specifically in early American history.

It was at a college course in the United States then, that I first came across quote unquote, "Hessians."

And so that sparked my interest in that particular aspect of the Revolutionary War.

Fascinating.

It's always great to see how primary sources can serve as a gateway to these bigger conversations.

So those are all great answers, and I think will be a good core element of our chat this evening.

And so that core element is a new six-part series entitled, The American Revolution, directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt.

And I suspect that the historian in each of us will hope that this spurs the next generation of history buffs, and it will keep that conversation going for a long time to come.

But before we get into that, I'd like to mention that one of our guests, Dr.

Baer, served as a research consultant on the film, and also appears as a subject matter expert in the documentary itself.

So Dr.

Baer, what was it like to work with Ken Burns and team on this really expansive and exciting project?

Yeah.

Thanks for that question.

I'd say, working with Ken Burns, who I think is the master storyteller of the American experience, and his entire team, was both exhilarating and extremely rewarding.

It really, in many respects, was collaborative process over many years, and sincere effort to really the process a huge amount of information, including textual and visual and material, representing a wide range of experiences and perspectives to tell the story of the war with depth, and also with humanity.

I think a lot of people will be surprised of by how complex and full of contradictions the founding of our nation really was, and how deeply relevant that story remains today.

JARED FREDERICK: That's fascinating stuff.

And I wonder what was the process give and take, and what was the typical of communal experience of working with all of these other historians, as you were mapping out the narrative with the Burns team?

Yeah.

So my personal experience was there was some communication and sharing and asking questions, sharing resources by email, of course.

But I've had a couple of experiences where I was able to see the all 12 hours of it and share feedback, very detailed feedback about what we were watching.

And it was as a group, sometimes with other historical advisors, sometimes with members of the team.

The effort really was always to think hard about what kind of story this movie is telling or trying to tell.

And so from for me, it was not just feedback or my own perspectives on the Hessian experience, but the war, generally.

So I always felt like everything that anybody would say was taken very, very seriously, really taking into consideration with the idea of making this film better and more comprehensive.

That's spectacular.

And I think that's the perfect segue to taking a quick look at a preview of the film right now.

[music playing] WOMAN 1: To believe in America is to believe in possibility, possibility worth fighting for.

The possibility of a different kind of world.

[music playing] MAN 1: America is predicated on an idea.

Everything that we believe in comes out of the Revolution.

And our ideas of liberty, equality, it's the defining event of our history.

WOMAN 2: The American Revolutionary movement served as a model around the world.

MAN 2: These are not English liberties.

These are transcendent liberties.

These are liberties that all individuals have by the nature of being human.

The American Revolution changed the world.

JARED FREDERICK: There's a lot of stunning visuals in and the snippet that we just saw.

And I think in some ways it's very reminiscent of the Ken Burns film of 35 years ago that looks at the American Civil War.

There's a lot of sweeping visuals, a lot of beautiful sunsets, a lot of eloquent prose that is going to be incorporated.

But I also suspect that it's also going to offer a very complicated picture of the American story.

And I think it's to start off worthwhile to think about how we've commemorated the American Revolution over the generations.

When you look back to the national bicentennial in 1976, it's in a strangely similar place to where we are as a nation today.

We're recovering from a defeat after a prolonged war.

There's a lot of cynicism against government.

There's a lot of political scandal, inflation even, to be taken into account.

And in 1976, Americans sought the American Revolution as something to buoy their spirits a little bit.

And I think a question for us to think about is, can it or should it serve as that purpose and how historically responsible is that?

So I think we need to start off by re-examining what the American Revolution actually was.

And so I'd like to start us off by posing a question to Dr.

Baer.

So Friederike, on your perspective, you've put forth that the American Revolution was essentially a brutal Civil War.

And so how does this new documentary help instill that appreciation or that perspective to viewers?

And how does it balance this sort of romanticized interpretation of the conflict we've had versus perhaps the grimmer reality of the situation?

Yeah.

I would say that the film is really no doubt that this war cannot be reduced to a conflict between Redcoats and Patriots, as it appears, I think too often still in the telling of the story and also in our collective memory.

It was certainly much more complicated than that divided communities and families in North America, from Canada to Florida, with some supporting the Patriots, some siding with the crown, and many others trying to just stay out of the conflict altogether.

And in some regions, especially the Southern provinces, we see battles.

I think that's important to keep in mind as well, battles and skirmishes, where the majority of men involved in the fighting were actually Americans.

One example is the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina in 1780, where Patriot forces fought American militia.

So every person basically on this battlefield is an American, important to keep in mind.

And then, of course, the war also resulted in the destruction of property, massive destruction of property, burning of farms, homes, entire towns.

There's plenty of violence amongst civilians and against civilians.

The displacement of large numbers of people.

And it facilitated the spread of deadly diseases.

As I think many viewers will know that the greatest killer of the Revolutionary War is actually disease.

So the effects varied depending on time and place.

And while we certainly have stories of courage and triumph and even joy, there was plenty of violence and suffering on and off the battlefield.

And I think the film does an excellent job showing those kind of contradictions, really.

It's reassuring to hear because I think Americans are ready for a complicated interpretation of what the war was.

And at the heart of what the war was is the question of loyalty as well, because as she just suggested, sometimes the most dangerous place to be is in the middle, not aligned with one side or another.

But in addition to ideology, something else that is contested over time is history itself.

So, Christopher, every generation has its own interpretation of history.

Given what we know today, what is truly fresh in the story of the American Revolution, as perhaps told in this documentary, but even more applicable to your arena in the contemporary scholarship, including your own.

What's new to learn about the American Revolution?

I think it's always getting bigger.

I mean, of course, the volume of work that's being produced all the time is just it's explosive.

At one time, I mean, it was novel to bring in loyalist perspectives all that much.

There was this kind of celebratory version of the history.

And then over time, it's grown to expand and sometimes extend across the Atlantic or to incorporate histories of the Caribbean into the story.

There's more and more historians now who are bringing it to other parts of the continent, and they're looking at how not only these empires are playing off against one another, but also native nations that are far more than just auxiliaries, which is how they're portrayed in some of their earlier histories.

And so historians are bringing these different more regionally focused stories into the mix.

And so they're expanding it without necessarily writing larger books, but just by focusing on various topics, and showing how the story or maybe the timeline for the Revolution itself can shift just depending on where you put the focus, where you put the center of the story.

That's really well said.

And I think one of the other universal themes that we can associate with people who endured the American Revolution is this overbearing sense of uncertainty and perhaps even dread.

Nothing was a foregone conclusion.

We can look back at it today with a degree of hindsight and perhaps even a little bit of comfort, but in real time, those people didn't have those securities in that peace of mind.

So given that, how does that allow us to empathize with these people who were alive and trying to survive 250 years ago?

Yeah.

Well, I think in some ways a little bit easy to empathize because we don't know where things are going in our own moment.

There are things happening all over the world that are concerning to us, and we don't know how it's all going to play out.

The same is true during the Revolutionary War and also leading up to it.

At first, people really don't know what it is.

The colonists don't know what it is.

Leaders in the British Empire don't know what it is.

Their peers in France or in Spain don't know.

Native nations are unsure what to make of it.

Nobody's totally clear like what there is, what kind of opportunities might be presented by it.

They don't know what the point is necessarily early on.

Though, there's some voices that do rise to the top.

And to simplify the narrative, we focus on some of those voices.

But yeah, it's very complicated.

And I don't know if that's reassuring necessarily, but I think we can understand what was happening in the nation and that it was so difficult to see the path in front of you.

And I think we can look for, I suppose, a little bit of example there in how some people did cope with it and looking to family or to community and just trying to do what you can to ride out the storm.

Sure, sure.

And I think that's the perfect segue for a question for Brady.

Brady, you've spoken before about the power of finding comfort in the past.

Viewing the American Revolution, perhaps as proof that the United States has navigated troubled waters before and considering new perspectives of this era, as highlighted by Chris, is highlighted in this film, how does this story, and particularly the diverse nature of the American colonies as a melting pot, offer us a sort of blueprint for America's future?

Yeah.

The American Revolution has always been, I think, atonic for troubled times.

And this is true in the broad sweep of American history.

In the Civil War, people looked at the American Revolution much in the same way brother fighting brother, neighbor fighting neighbor.

And they saw a way forward.

When we looked at World War I and World War II, we saw so many young men coming home killed on the battlefield.

And people look to the Revolution, I think, for inspiration, this idea of fighting for a greater noble cause.

So the Revolution is always there for us as Americans to reflect on.

But every generation has its different need.

When William Penn founded Pennsylvania in the 1680s, he had this amazing idea to make a place of true religious freedom, where anyone could come here and live the way they wished.

And we saw French Catholics, Scots-Irish Presbyterians, German Anabaptists, Mennonites and Amish.

We saw West African Muslims, Ashkenazi Jews, all coming here to Pennsylvania.

And I think in so many respects, the Revolution sort of sheds a light on the power of that diversity.

We tend to think of diversity being something new in America.

There are challenges to live in a multicultural society for people who have been here and people who are coming here.

But what I think this documentary does a really good job of is reminding us that as Americans, yes, those challenges are there to be faced, but we are actually really good at it.

We have this amazing history of blending cultures together in this melting pot.

And I think looking at the Revolution, maybe can serve to remind some people of that today.

Yes.

It is always fascinating to see how the likes of historical memory comes into the national conversation, often at times when we need it most, whether it be the American Civil War or the 1970s, like we mentioned a little bit ago.

We can always find a little bit of comfort in the likes of the image of Betsy Ross or something along those lines.

But speaking of Betsy Ross and William Penn, I'd like to use Pennsylvania as somewhat of a case study or a microcosm within the bigger picture to understand how the American Revolution is playing out in American society.

And really, Pennsylvania serves as a crucial role.

I mean, this is when arguably, it becomes the Keystone State, it is really at the center of everything, good, bad, and everything in between.

And so here in Central Pennsylvania and in northern parts of the State, that Civil War that everybody has alluded to was very much in full swing.

Native peoples had to choose between the lesser of two evils when it came to alliances, which side was going to betray them less than the other.

You had neighbors turning on neighbors.

Families were very much being divided.

And not too far away from our studio here is a reconstruction of a Revolutionary War Fort called Fort Roberdeau, which, in some ways, laid a foundation for the industry that would follow in the American Revolutionary War.

And so here in Pennsylvania, I think it's very easy to say that those consequences were being immediately felt.

And so, with all that being said, Brady, I'd like to pivot back to you now, given your scholarly focus on the Pennsylvania frontier, how was the American Revolution perceived and experienced and endured West of the Susquehanna river.

Did the motivations and concerns of settlers and Native peoples in those areas align with or sharply diverge from the concerns of revolutionary leaders, let's say, perhaps back in greater Philadelphia?

Yeah.

The American Revolution in the West.

And by the West, we mean anything really beyond the Susquehanna, was a very different war than in the East.

It had different motivations.

It was fought by very different people.

Most Western settlers were first or second generation immigrants.

And the reason they risked it all to go West was because there really wasn't a lot of opportunity to own land here in the East.

So people moved into Western Pennsylvania, Western Virginia, Kentucky, hoping to stake their claim.

And really, as we see people in the East Coast upset about taxes and a perceived denial of rights, the real motivator in the West was land.

And that was true for Native Americans as well as these recent settlers.

They were both competing for those same resources.

So when we look at the American Revolution in the West, we see it as a very unique style of conflict, not one of big battles, but daily raids, partisan squabbles.

These men were diehard Patriots.

Let's not forget, in 1775, in Westmoreland County, a year before the Declaration of Independence was written in Philadelphia, the frontiersman of Hannastown met to pass the Hannastown resolves, challenging the authority of parliament.

And again, that was a full year before Jefferson ever put pen to paper.

So it's a different war fought by different peoples.

At the core of it, though, are still a repudiation of British policies.

Maybe not tax policies, but certainly land policies.

If you're joining us, this is a special conversation on the American Revolution with history experts Brady Crytzer, Dr.

Friederike Baer, and Dr.

Christopher Thrasher.

I'm your host and moderator, Dr.

Jared Frederick.

So as we continue to move along here, thank you for some really great perspectives on Pennsylvania and the war.

I'd like to offer a follow up question to Friederike.

Following up on those divisions that Brady alluded to, beyond the high minded philosophical reasons, what were the primary on the ground factors that motivated individuals to become loyalists or Patriots?

Can you offer viewers any interesting case studies from revolutionary Pennsylvania?

Yeah.

I think it is safe to say, as Brady already suggested, that many individuals chose sides depending on personal needs and concerns, the hope to preserve one's property, perhaps the hope to gain land, economic circumstances, peer pressure, search for adventure.

As the war went on, maybe a desire for revenge if your own family or community had been subject to an attack, perhaps, or plundering, all of those factors could influence why someone would want to join on one side or the other.

I want to give you an example for Pennsylvanian, whose choice I think was motivated by both ideas but also by personal circumstances.

And that individual is James Forten.

James Forten was a free born African-American, born and raised in Philadelphia.

And he was eight or nine years old when the war broke out.

And he was at the statehouse when the Declaration of Independence was first read in early July of 1776.

And he later said it was an experience that profoundly impressed him.

And I think to some extent, then, shaped the trajectory for the remainder of his life.

At age 14, he signed on to serve on an American privateer.

And privateers, in case you're not familiar, is basically a private vessel that's-- privately-owned vessel that's commissioned to carry out raiding of enemy ships, including merchant vessels.

So that particular ship, unfortunately, for young James, was captured by the British.

And the captain of that ship was so impressed with his talents.

He had enjoyed some formal schooling as a child that he offered him an opportunity to go with Britain, with him and his own son to be educated there.

And Forten declined, stating that and I quote, "I have been taken prisoner for the liberties of my country, and never will prove a traitor to her interests."

And what happened then is that basically, I mean, he declined this opportunity to go to Britain.

It's amazing.

He instead ends up on a prison ship in the harbor of New York, where he stayed for seven long, miserable months.

And some of you know, many people perished on these ships.

He was exchanged, finally walked home to Philadelphia, to his mother.

His father had died years earlier.

And he learned a new trade.

And that was sailmaking.

He eventually started his own business and became one of the leading and wealthiest African-Americans of his age.

And he dedicated his life to the abolition of slavery, basically to the fight of extending the principles of the Declaration that he had heard as a young boy.

So here is someone who saw opportunity in joining, I think, the war, the war effort, signing on that privateer, getting out of his home, maybe building a career for himself, economic prosperity.

But he comes back and he takes those principles to heart and acts on them into the early 19th century.

That's a great case study.

And there's a lot of rich interpretations that we could delve into with that one.

But it really speaks to this incredible mosaic that the American Revolution is even singularly right here in Pennsylvania.

It poses perils, but it also poses opportunities as well.

Christopher, I'd like you to reflect on that a little bit further in the context of frontier conflicts and all the divided loyalties that we find therein.

What did the likes of Native peoples and enslaved persons, tenant farmers, people who might not have always been in the history books, what did they stand to gain or lose from the war?

That's a great question, but a really hard one to answer in a compressed space like this.

But I mean, generally, for Native people, it's going to vary from nation to nation.

It's going to depend on their relationship to the colonies, but also to one another.

Some Native people see it as a way to regain land that's been stolen from them, or that might have been ceded under unhappy circumstances.

Others see it as a way to create a quid pro quo with British loyalists in order to get some support from Britain in ending wars that are happening between Native nations.

I study Muskogee history.

They've got a war with the Choctaws that starts in the early to mid 1760s and goes on for about 10 years.

It doesn't end until '76.

And the reason that it's ending is because Muskogees have gotten more control over trade, but they also have lawless support in ending the war.

They get the likes of John Stuart, who's superintendent of Indian Affairs for Britain, to help them out.

And so they kind of trade.

We will help if you help us.

But again, that's going to vary from nation to nation.

They all have very different circumstances.

Enslaved people are in a really hairy situation.

It's a pretty tough place to be in.

They're often caught in the middle in these conflicts.

I mean, it's been mentioned a couple of times, property-- people who are seen as property are going to be the subjects sometimes of these raids or border patrols or at the ends of battles.

And they're also going to be doing a lot of the really tough work, a lot of that hard work when it comes to logistics and supply.

Black Americans are working as boat pilots, laborers, also lawyers in the 1700s, performing all kinds of roles in relations to communications and moving messages back and forth to.

You mentioned farmers.

I mean, you teach the Civil War as well, and I'm sure it comes up sometimes, talking about how these farms become battlefields for people.

And that, of course, destroys the farm itself.

But also, these armies march on their stomach.

And maybe they'll get into this.

In the documentary, talking about Nathanael Greene and the Southern theater.

His letters are just full of his complaints about not being able to feed his soldiers, not being able to clothe them.

And I think he goes bankrupt at the end of the war because he goes out of his own pocket, basically, to supply his own army.

And then Congress doesn't pick up the bill.

And so he, as I understand it, he's basically left with nothing except Georgia gives him an Island like a plantation space on an island.

And that's what he has after the war.

But yeah.

More great case studies.

And we're on to something really good here because I think it reveals the dull nature of how the American Revolution is being waged, because on one hand, it is a local war.

It is being waged over regional territory, and yet at the same time, it is a World War.

It is a truly global war.

And I'd like Friederike to perhaps offer some international perspective on that with our next question.

And so how does the war change or reveal the power dynamics among foreign powers?

And I think we could also ask within Pennsylvania itself, what are political leaders and commoners alike aspiring to?

Yeah.

There is no doubt that this war is a continuation of an ongoing struggle that had been going on really for decades over power and territory that included European empires, Native American nations, and American forces.

And in this particular case, of course, it starts with Britain's-- pretty simple.

You start with Britain's efforts to put down the rebellion to keep the North American provinces within the empire.

But it very, very quickly involved other powers.

Native nations, as was already suggested, were divided.

Some of them joined the Americans or sided with the Americans.

Many more actually were more sympathetic to what the British were fighting for.

France supported the Americans informally for a while with arms and money, not because they were excited about Revolution or the rebellion but because they see this war as an opportunity to weaken Britain.

Several months after the American victory at Saratoga in October 1777, of course, France formally enters the war as an American ally.

And then Spain becomes involved not because it is declared-- it is signing a treaty with the Americans, but because it is an ally of France.

And the two hoped to weaken British influence and I think, more importantly, hope to regain territory that it had lost to Britain as a result of what is in America called the French and Indian War that had ended in the 1760s.

The Dutch also support the Americans, but they don't send any troops over into this war.

So you can see there are all these different alliances and dynamics at play here.

The involvement of all of these powers ultimately means that the war spreads to colonial possessions outside of North America, most notably, of course, the Caribbean, but also the Mediterranean and even South Asia.

It becomes a global conflict with Britain, more or less isolated.

Now you asked, specifically, about Pennsylvania and also this the differences, perhaps between what leaders are trying to get out of this and what commoners might be aiming for.

And I do think Pennsylvania is a very interesting case.

As was already suggested, the diversity of the population, of course, is remarkable, and its founding in the late 17th century as an experiment in government that was much more Democratic than what was then practiced in Europe shapes, I think, its history during this particular time.

The most obvious reflection or expression of this spirit is the adoption in 1776 of the State Constitution, the Pennsylvania State Constitution, it's important to remember, had one legislature.

This means it didn't have a house and a Senate or a lower and upper house.

It has one body of legislature.

And then has an executive council as opposed to one executive, like a governor, for example.

All of these were elected annually by the majority of white men, thanks to limited restrictions on the franchise.

The Declaration also had a Declaration of Rights that was really modeled on the Declaration of Independence.

This Constitution was by far the most radical Democratic of all the State Constitutions.

And it meant that men, who had previously been excluded, now had access, not just to vote, but to actually hold elected office in the government.

This, I think we need to emphasize, is not what the so-called founders envisioned.

They believed that political power should be limited to a relatively small elite of educated men, who they believed were best positioned to look out for the interests of the whole.

The founding fathers were not proponents of democracy.

So Pennsylvania's vision is quite interesting and very different.

It also failed.

Pennsylvania got a new Constitution in 1790, which was within the context of the times, much more conservative.

But yeah, Pennsylvania really has a revolutionary vision that is a far more Democratic, I think, than what the founders were going for at the time.

If you're just joining us, this is A Special Conversation on the American Revolution with history experts Brady Crytzer, Dr.

Friederike Baer, and Dr.

Christopher Thrasher.

And I'm your host and moderator, Dr.

Jared, Frederick.

And Friederike, I'd like to do a quick follow up on that topic.

You've done a lot of research on Hessians and their involvement in the American Revolution.

How has that research broaden our understanding of foreign influence and the international impact that the American Revolution had on world society at that time?

Yeah.

So Britain hired, ultimately, an estimated 30,000 German soldiers from six different German territories that are collectively known as sessions.

But they're not all from Hessen.

And of course, that alone had a tremendous impact on the war that we need to remember.

We estimate that by 1780, '81, fully one third of the British regular army force were Germans.

That's a lot.

And their availability for this war, I would argue, allowed Britain to keep the war going for as long as it did.

And of course, the employment also had far reaching consequences for the families and the communities where these men, and I should also mention, several hundred women and children, where they were coming from.

The absence, particularly of the men, usually breadwinners, had tremendous impact on the families.

It often meant hardship, impoverishment for years.

And many of them, of course, were gone for five, six, even seven years.

And also important to keep in mind that we estimate that as many as 13,000 never came back home.

Maybe 7,500 or so died, and then another 5,000 or so remained in North America.

And one more point I just want to add to this.

I think one way in which the participation of these German enriches our understanding of the Revolution is the way in which they describe the American War and the land and the people in private and official records.

And what stood out to me when I went through these records.

And we have a huge volume of material, thankfully, available to us today.

These individuals described the war unlike any other conflict that they had experienced as almost unnatural.

And this was due to a number of reasons.

One was the unfamiliar terrain and the climate.

Think of Canada in the winter, for example, or West Florida in the summer.

That was a tough environment to campaign in.

There was also an inability to distinguish friend from foe.

Who could you trust?

A lack of confidence in the reliability of allies, including Native Americans.

The American war fighting that differed from conventional European style and formation.

And of course, there was also the language barrier.

So these accounts, collectively, really highlight, I would say, the messiness and again, the violence of this conflict, this Civil War.

And I know Brady has gone through many of those accounts as well, because you two have written a book on the Hessians.

Now, when I first learned about the Hessians in fourth grade, I was taught that they were really bad dudes, cutthroats, who were just wanting to kill people for money because they enjoyed it.

It's a little bit more complicated than that.

Who were the Hessians?

And what were they all about?

Well, your fourth grade history lesson is really the result of a political choice by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence to label these soldiers as quote, "mercenaries."

And that has survived-- that's a great political campaign that survived for 250 years.

But the reality is, these poor guys were not really making money on this operation.

Their kings and their monarchs certainly were.

In fact, they were being paid more for more men that died.

So they were always sad to see low casualty figures when it came time to pay.

But they were ordered to come here.

And what I think is really valuable about them is that they are one, highly literate, and two, very experienced with the notion of Revolution.

And what these German auxiliaries do is give us an outsider's perspective on this war, because we think we have the American Revolution figured out.

But they write in their journals, as Professor Baer mentioned, that they have very different conceptions of what is the difference between a freedom fighter and an anarchist.

They have their own traditions that seem to conflict.

They see inherent contradictions between a nation fighting for freedom and enslaving tens of thousands, if not more, people in the American South.

So they give us, I think, fresh perspective on the Revolution.

And as historians, that's exactly what we're always looking for.

And speaking about motivation, Christopher, when we think about the American Revolution, we tend to sum it up in that well-known phrase, no taxation without representation.

It's even on DC license plates.

But what crucial frustrations besides taxation, and a lack of representation, what are the issues that drove a wedge between communities?

What were the essential grievances of the time that are important for us to understand two and a half centuries later?

Yeah.

Sometimes it might be far more personal.

I mean, in some cases, the people who were choosing sides is either rebels or Patriots or loyalists.

They might be part of the same business organizations.

I study a lot of the Indian trade.

These companies that are moving materials from Britain into native nations and then taking the deerskins back to the markets in Europe.

And these companies can be really extensive.

And they might divide just based on the individual people, the personalities or their connections to different communities themselves.

Some of them might be a little more connected overseas, whereas others are more homegrown Americans, who have these tighter networks in the colonies themselves.

And so they might divide over this issue.

Kind of seeking their own advancement or wealth.

I mean, there's people pursuing legacy.

That's a piece of it.

I think that comes into play when you think about some of the founders.

They definitely know that this is in some way going to be historical, especially as it progresses and becomes clear that this is a really serious conflict that's going to last for a while with these consequences radiating all over to both sides of the Atlantic.

I think they're aware that there's some kind of legacy they can build out of it.

So it's not just the taxation representation issue, it's legacy.

It's personal gain, land.

Brady mentioned land being central to people at this time.

And that's of course, true.

The proclamation line that's set out by the British government that says no expansion to West at this point, roughly in the Appalachians.

That frustrated some of the people who become founders, who become rebels or Patriots because they had been land speculating.

Like George Washington, he speculates on lands in Florida.

And these policies by either the King or parliament can frustrate them and can hurt their own bank account, basically.

And so that's an element of it, too.

And then there's some of these guys that I study who are trying to defraud native people of land, and then they're stopped by some of the King's agents and they're publicly humiliated.

So that might be a piece of it.

They might feel like they're driven into the rebellion because of their own treatment by British agents, who may then, with the King's consent, go and do the thing they were trying to do anyway.

There's a kind of hypocrisy there.

So it's a wide range of issues, and it can be these big picture things, but also extremely deeply personal.

And it can be regional to reflect those different regional interests.

I'm glad you mentioned regional consequences, because after the war and even after the Constitution, the country, as well as the Commonwealth, they go through a lot of growing pains.

And this was perhaps no more pronounced than during the Whiskey Rebellion in the years after the war.

And so we have a brand new WPSU documentary that is coming out on that topic in the summer of 2026, taking a look at all these momentous issues in the aftermath of the war.

And we're going to offer a preview of that right now as well.

[music playing] NARRATOR: On the night of September 11, 1791, a group of men carrying torches ambushed a federal tax collector on his rounds.

They strip him naked, shave his head, and tar and feather him, an act of political protest and intimidation.

WILLIAM HOGELAND: Tarring and feathering was a pretty horrible thing to do to someone.

And then leave you in the woods.

This was a federal agent.

NARRATOR: Rebels were protesting a domestic tax on whiskey production, a tax devised by Alexander Hamilton to repay wealthy Americans who financed the Revolution.

But to farmers on the frontier, distilling grain into whiskey meant survival.

CAROL BERKIN: If you had to ship that grain over land in a wagon with a mule, by the time it got there, it was spoiled.

BRADY CRYTZER: Whiskey was the solution.

You can make your crop, easier to transport, and far more valuable.

NARRATOR: Hamilton dismissed petitions against the tax and hired federal agents to enforce the law and penalize delinquent farmers.

BRADY CRYTZER: If you didn't register your still, it was a $250 fine.

That's the equivalent to four years of income.

If you're on the side of the people who feel they need to resist this tax, maybe we need to continue the Revolution.

NARRATOR: Citizens of the four Western counties refused to pay the tax, and vigilantes punished those who followed the law.

CAROL BERKIN: They destroyed property.

They tarred and feathered people.

There's a current of violence.

You can't dismiss it.

BRADY CRYTZER: If you did follow the law, then your neighbors may attack you, kill your livestock, burn your barn.

WILLIAM HOGELAND: It involved some very violent action, but it was planned throughout the various communities of Western Pennsylvania.

BRADY CRYTZER: Most of the rebels were veterans of the American Revolution.

This was not the country they signed up for.

The thing that really scared everybody in the East was military discipline going up against federal officials in a shootout.

Hamilton saw a kind of unraveling.

WILLIAM HOGELAND: There's an insurrection going on.

There's nothing else to call it.

Both sides want it to come to a head.

[gunshots] [music playing] JARED FREDERICK: Doesn't that look good.

And boy, there's a lot of familiar faces in the clips that we're showing this evening.

Yes.

So good stuff.

So as that preview alluded to, Brady are likewise an expert on the Whiskey Rebellion, and you've written a book on that topic as well.

I wonder if you could take a moment and outline for us how and why we should look at the Whiskey Rebellion as a sequel to the American Revolution in Pennsylvania.

Yeah.

The Whiskey Rebellion is, for some context, the greatest crisis of George Washington's presidency, which was really a presidency of many crises.

It was the second largest domestic rebellion in American history.

Of course, number one being the Civil War.

So it is a critical event for really understanding the early Republic.

And if you view it as a sequel to the American Revolution, maybe even a continuation of the American Revolution, I think there's a lot of really important research to be done.

When you consider most of the rebels were members of Pennsylvania State militia units during the Revolution in the West, they were left without supplies, without food.

They wrote warnings, pleas to the Continental Congress to send supplies, to send goods.

They never came.

They were devastated by British allied Native American raids in the subsequent year.

There was a break of trust between Western frontiersmen in the Revolution and the forces of what would become a federal government in Philadelphia.

And the Whiskey Rebellion very much is a continuation of that.

Not only were they not defended in the Revolution, but then the one thing they make that they can subsist on is, which is whiskey, is taxed and regulated.

And they view that as something they never signed up for.

So most of these rebels are revolutionary veterans.

It muddies the water a bit because we celebrate them as Patriots.

But a decade later, they're trying to ultimately secede and dismantle the Republic.

As historians, we dive into that murky stuff.

That's where we live.

So it's a great study for that.

How's that story never been made into a movie?

It's an incredible tale, often overlooked in the aftermath of the Revolution.

But as we are talking about film in our few final minutes together, I'd like to pose a question to each of you as we think about history, as we think about legacy, I think it's worthwhile to ponder what this film by Ken Burns and team might be able to achieve.

And what sort of shelf life it will have if we think about his Civil War film?

Teachers are still using it over three decades later in the classroom.

So Friederike I'd like to pose this question to you first.

What do you hope viewers will gain from this documentary series, The American Revolution?

What do you hope it will achieve in the long run?

I hope that it will inspire people to reflect on what the Revolutionary War was about, with all its complexities and contradictions, and that we shall not lose sight of the principles and the ideals that inspired it.

Well, said.

Brady.

Jared, I think you can speak to this too a bit.

So many of the historians that I grew up reading and the people that mentored me were products of the bicentennial in 1976.

And they are retiring and leaving the field.

And I look at this 250th anniversary, and I think how many young people are out there that maybe will have that spark ignited in their lives that we all share.

And I think documentaries like this are going to be really, really the motivator behind that because the message is eternal.

I mean, this material is 250 years old and we're still riveted by it.

So there's a whole new generation of historians just waiting to emerge.

And I think this documentary is going to have a lot to do with it.

Chris.

Yeah.

I hope it inspires a lot of curiosity.

I mean, we want people to read our work too.

But I hope people can understand they can also do a lot of their own research, and I hope this gets them asking questions about the Revolution.

I hope it makes some suggestions to them about some directions they can go in.

I think pretty early on in the documentary, they talk about the Haudenosaunee is a kind of a democracy or proto democracy that might be inspiring some of the early revolutionary leaders.

There's digital archives now that people can access, and they can go do this for themselves, too, and check our work a little bit.

Yeah.

I mean, we were talking a little bit earlier before the show about Florida.

Florida's got amazing Revolutionary War history.

Some of these stories have not been told very often.

Or if they have, it's to a very select audience.

I hope people will expand their boundaries.

I hope by watching this, they'll understand there's so much more to be done.

And I mean, we're talking to a Pennsylvania audience predominantly, but maybe they want to learn a bit about Florida's history or Canada.

And I mean, what better time than now when you have all these documents that are available, and also books in every form you can-- I mean, audio books, digital books, or get them at their library.

Yeah.

BRADY CRYTZER: The greatest tool in the toolkit for a historian is imagination and creativity.

Because as we've seen from this documentary, this event touched everybody's life on this continent, and that's a lot of stories we have to still tell.

Yeah, absolutely.

And for me, from a personal perspective, as one who teaches American history, I use Ken Burns films all the time.

Thank goodness for Ken Burns and the likes of PBS or I don't know what I would use to fill that void and keep the attention of 19-year-olds in such a rapt fashion.

But visual storytelling is so crucial because increasingly, people are visual learners.

And I'd say that they're probably less likely to look at a primary source document than they are to watch a documentary.

So I think we are incumbent, as it's pressed upon us as historians, to embrace this sort of stuff when it enters the realm of popular culture and mass media, and to use it to the best of our ability.

And I think the other thing that is very apparent in this film, going from the clips that I've seen so far, is the power of place.

The Burns team went all over North America to capture the aesthetic and the landscape of the war.

And as we start to conclude, I'd like to ask each of you if you could tell viewers one place that they could go to understand the American Revolution, where would that place be?

I'd like to start off with Friederike That's a tough one.

There are many places.

I think regardless of where you are located, there is bound to be a place nearby where some battle or skirmish took place there.

And I think those spaces are really powerful if you're trying to imagine the landscape, you're trying to imagine people, also, again, the violence is suffering, what transpired in these.

For me, personally, one of the most impressive battlefields, I think, is probably Saratoga.

It's not only an exceptionally well-preserved space with really great self-guided tours that you can take, the audio files that you can take around.

But it is also-- it's now so peaceful that you-- it's really a great place, I think, to contemplate some of these events that happened, at this point, pretty distant past.

I mean, 250 years ago.

JARED FREDERICK: So many the battlefields are now peaceful places of reflection.

I think that's one of their appeals.

Brady, how about you?

You could go to a city like Boston or New York, but those are important places, but it's hard to get a real feel for the time period.

The modern world keeps spinning around us.

I would say find one of these great forts.

And of course, I'm going to talk about the Western frontier up here in the middle of Pennsylvania, maybe Fort Ligonier, maybe Fort Loudoun, and Franklin County.

Put yourself in those mountains, because the views you have there are unchanged from 1776.

And you get a sense of how geography truly was destiny in that regard.

So I'll make it the easy one.

I'll go into the wilderness to find the Revolution.

There you go.

Chris.

I got to put in a plug for home back in Pensacola, because I mean, they've got a great program there of buying up property in downtown.

The university's got a lot of great historic preservation's.

So if anybody needs a vacation destination as it gets cold, check out Pensacola, some place like that.

But also, I think in Philly, William Bartram's house is now a museum.

He was an explorer and naturalist, and he talked to a lot of different Native nations in the South, and is traveling as the Revolution kicks off and observes some of these things happening in the backcountry.

Absolutely.

And I suppose my pick, I mean, Philadelphia.

I mean, go to Independence Hall, that's one thing.

And then go to the Museum of the American Revolution a few blocks away to gain some additional historical context.

But these were all great answers.

There's no singularly one important place to the American Revolution.

Beauty and significance is in the eye of the beholder.

And whether it be Colonial Williamsburg or Saratoga or Guilford Courthouse, and you've all underscored this to one extent or another.

Sometimes the most poignant history is the history that's in your own backyard.

And I think that's a really good place to start.

Yeah, absolutely.

So as we start to wrap things up, any final thoughts for us on where we go from here.

What is the blueprint as we move forward?

What meaning do we take from the American Revolution?

I think the American Revolution really is a reminder that we are in troubled times.

But there have been troubled times before, and there will be troubled times in the future.

But if we think about those enduring spirits of liberty, freedom, perseverance, I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned there.

Well said.

So, Brady, Friederike, Christopher, thank you so much for joining us on the program.

We've been talking with American history experts, Brady Crytzer, Dr.

Friederike Baer, and Dr.

Christopher Thrasher, about The American Revolution, a documentary series by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt.

It premieres on PBS and the PBS app on November 16.

And you can find more information about the upcoming Whiskey Rebellion documentary by WPSU and Kristian Berg at wpsu.org/support whiskey rebellion.

And to continue a deeper dive into Pennsylvania history, you can visit Past PA on the PBS app and on video.pbs.org.

I'm Jared Frederick.

Thank you for joining us.