Leaders Need Popular Support
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Revolutionary leaders realize they need popular support and begin to address everyday concerns.
Revolutionary leaders realize they need popular support from the colonists and begin to address their everyday concerns: rights, safety, fair government, and hope for a better future.
From
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Episodes presented in 4K UHD on supported devices. Corporate funding for THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION was provided by Bank of America. Major funding was provided by The Better Angels Society and...
Leaders Need Popular Support
Clip: Special | 1m 47sVideo has Closed Captions
Revolutionary leaders realize they need popular support from the colonists and begin to address their everyday concerns: rights, safety, fair government, and hope for a better future.
From
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship♪ Taylor: The leaders of the American Revolution need popular support.
The leaders of the American Revolution are going to have to make promises that there's going to be greater social mobility; there's going to be greater respect for common people; there is going to be broader political participation in the future than there has been in the colonial past by loosening up structures of authority, including structures of religious authority.
If you're making this Revolution and you need the support of thousands of common people, men and women, what's in it for them?
Gordon Wood: Up to the 18th century, people assumed that everything will always remain the same.
But the idea that you could take charge and change your culture, that's what--that's the fundamental basis of the Enlightenment, that man can be changed.
♪ Voice: The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.
'Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent.
Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation.
Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression.
Freedom hath been hunted round the globe.
O!
receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.
♪ We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.
The birthday of a new world is at hand.
[Thomas Paine]
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Clip: Special | 2m 58s | Richard Henry Lee proposes a formal resolution declaring independence from Britain. (2m 58s)
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Clip: Special | 1m 24s | Jefferson uses charged language in the final grievance listed in the Declaration of Independence. (1m 24s)
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Clip: Special | 1m 57s | Colonial leaders know that France’s support is essential, but they must sever ties with Britain. (1m 57s)
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Clip: Special | 1m 44s | One purpose of the Declaration of Independence is to declare that George III is no longer sovereign. (1m 44s)
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Clip: Special | 1m 17s | King George believes this American insurrection could lead to the end of the British empire. (1m 17s)
The Meaning of the Declaration to Different Groups
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Clip: Special | 1m 28s | Different groups begin to wonder what “all men are created equal” means for them. (1m 28s)
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Clip: Special | 1m 34s | The Preamble addresses the concept of natural rights. (1m 34s)
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Clip: Special | 1m 7s | Many Loyalists and some other Americans believe Thomas Paine’s ideas go too far. (1m 7s)
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Clip: Special | 2m 40s | After ratification, the Declaration is publicly read across the former colonies. (2m 40s)
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Clip: Special | 4m 11s | Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, an explosive pamphlet that attacks monarchy. (4m 11s)
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Episodes presented in 4K UHD on supported devices. Corporate funding for THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION was provided by Bank of America. Major funding was provided by The Better Angels Society and...