(Announcer) Please welcome th editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg.

[applause] (Jeffrey Goldberg) Thank you.

Thank you so much for for being here.

And welcome to The Atlantic Festival.

You know, The Atlantic is a very old magazine.

It spent most of his life in Boston.

Then it moved down to Washington about 20 years ago.

But we've been hearing good things about New York City.

And we thought we'd try it out here and see how it goes.

And so we're very, very pleased, to see all of you here.

We've had a pretty event filled day.

This is, this is going to be a great event.

I'm really thrilled to to be able to host the New York premiere of the American Revolution.

The latest film.

[applause] And I'm particularly thrilled that two of the directors, Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein, are with us tonight.

[applause] They've been working on this film for a long time, as as I'm sure you understand.

It's 12 hours long.

We're not going to watch all 12 hours tonight.

Although, if you can compress the American Revolution to 12 hours, you are something of a miracle worker.

And, we we are going to, we'll talk about this.

But, you know, obviously, when they started this film, America was in different place than it is now.

The timing of this premiere or the timing of this film is auspicious and very, very useful in the cause of democracy.

And so we're glad at The Atlantic, that we could participate.

I mean, we.

[applause] I'm going to give you a little bit of a rundown of the of the evening.

After, we screen some excerpts from the film, some, some, highlights of the film.

Ken and Sarah are going to join me, on the stage for a conversation about the film, about making the film.

And we'll be joine by one of the great historians of early American history, Annette Gordon-Reed.

Who has contributed so much to American scholarship and has contributed so much to this film.

And we'll also be joined by Tom Hanks, who has also contributed so much to this film.

Before Ken comes out, to, to talk about the film that you're going to see, we're going to have a live performance, this is very, very exciting live performance of one of the songs from the series, “Hector the Hero”.

And performing the piece will be the world renowned, world renowned fiddler and Grammy nominee Natalie MacMaster and her daughter, Mary Frances, on piano.

So we'll have that.

But before that, we have another, very exciting surprise.

As many of you know, particularly those who, attend Atlantic events and have to listen to me say the same thing over and over again.

The Atlantic was founded in 1857, in Boston, by a group of, great luminaries, including Harriet Beeche Stowe and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Anybody with complicated tripartite names was allowed to, to join.

And it was founded to be the vehicle for the American Idea and it was also founded very, very obviously as, as a magazine for the vehicle for, as a vehicle for the Abolitionist Cause.

These people were all Abolitionists, and and the the energ behind The Atlantic in the early days was to bring about an en to the travesty of of slavery.

The people who founded The The Atlantic, spent four years, warning the country about what may, what would come if they didn't deal with that travesty.

One of those writers, on of the founders of The Atlantic, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, expressed this in in poetry, not only in, in prose.

He wrote a poem, “Paul Revere's Ride”, which many people remember from elementary school.

As part of this campaign to raise what we would say today, raise awareness of the Cause.

The poem of course, has its setting, in the American Revolution.

But he actually meant it as a as a metaphor, to to Longfellow, Paul Revere was a symbol of justice and prophecy.

And the point of the poem was to wake up the American people to the danger that was coming.

Along with th “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “Paul Revere's Ride” is the most important poem ever published in The Atlantic.

And I'm very, very pleased to, to tell you tonight that to read “Paul Revere's Ride We've invited the great John Lithgow.

Thank you.

[applause] (John Lithgow) Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

On the 18th of April in ‘75.

Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march by land or sea from the town tonight, hang a lantern alof in the belfry arch of the North Church tower as a signal light, one if by land and two if by sea, and I on the opposit shore will be ready to ride and spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm.

For the country-folk to be up, and to arm.” And he said, “Good Night!” and with muffled oar silentl rowed to the Charlestown shore.

Just as the moon rose over the bay.

Where swinging wide at her moorings lay the Somerset, British man-of-war, a phantom ship with each mast and spar across the moon like a prison bar, and a huge black hulk that was magnified by its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his frien through alley and street wanders and watches with eager ears till in the silence around him he hears the muster of men at the barrack door, the sound of arms and the tramp of feet, and the measured tread of the grenadiers, marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the church, up the wooden stairs with stealthy tread to the belfry-chamber overhead, and startled the pigeons from their perch on the somber rafters that round him made masses and moving shapes of shade, - Up the light ladder, slender and tall, to the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down a moment on the roofs of the town, And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath in the churchyard lay the dead In their night-encampment on the hill.

Wrapped in silence so deep and still that he could hear, like a sentinels tread the watchful night- wind as it went.

Creeping along from tent to tent, And seeming to whisper, “All is well!” A moment onl he feels the spell of the place.

And the hour, the secret dread of the lonely belfry and the dead; For suddenly all his thoughts are bent on a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay, - A line of black that bends and floats on the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, booted and spurred with a heavy stride, on the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.

Now he patted his horse's side now gazed on the landscape far and near, Then impetuous, stamped the earth and turne and tightened his saddle girth; But mostly he watched with eager search, The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, as it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and somber and still.

And lo!

as he looks on the belfrys height a glimmer, and then a gleam of light!

He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hooves in a village street, a shape in the moonlight a bulk in the dark, and beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a stee that flies fearless and fleet; That was all!

And yet, through the gloom and the light.

The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, kindled the land into flame with its heat.

It was twelve by the village clock When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.

He heard the crowing of the cock, And the barking of the farmer's dog, and felt the damp of the river fog, that rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock, When he rode into Lexington.

He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed and the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town.

He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath o the morning breeze blowing over the meadows, brown.

And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be the first to fall, Who that day, would be lying dead, Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest.

In the books you have rea how the British regulars fired and fled, - How the farmers gave them bal for ball from behind each fence and farm-yard wall, chasing the redcoats down the lane, then crossing the field to emerge again under the trees at the turn of the road and only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night when his cry of alarm to every Middlesex village and farm, - a cry of defiance and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forevermore!

For borne on the night- wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying beat of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

[applause] (“Hector the Hero” by James Scott Skinner) [performed by Natalie MacMaster and Mary Frances] [applause]