PBS recently aired The American Revolution, a six part documentary made by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt. I’ll use this thread to discuss the series. Up first, I’ll list some anecdotes that I didn’t know about and that stood out to me.

• The Battle of Cowpens, which occurs in South Carolina. I liked the story on this because of the military tactics employed by Daniel Morgan, the Continental Army Brigadier General against Gen. Banastre Tarleton, who the series presents in a villainous way (in my opinion). Morgan’s soldiers are made up of militia and more seasoned Continental army soldiers. In the war, the militia soldiers tend not to be disciplined, retreating prematurely. Morgan attempts to use this to his advantageous, making two lines of militia in the front, 150 yards a part. He instructs to to shoot two volleys and then retreat behind a third line. Morgan believes that Tarleton will order his men to pursue aggressively. Because of this belief, Morgan has a third line of the more experienced soldiers standing on slope, a bit hidden from sight. On the day of the battle, Morgan’s plan works exactly as he hoped.
• The moving story of James Forten, a free black from Philadelphia who heard the reading the Declaration of Independence when he was 9 and became a privateer at 14 to fight on the American side. During a second encounter with a British navy vessel, the British capture Forten. However, the ships captain befriends Forten and the Captain offers him freedom in Britain. Forten refused, and ended up in a deplorable prison ship with other captured American rebels.
• The Treaty of Fort Pitt, which involved a treaty between Americans and Lenape, a Native American tribe (called Delaware by the Americans). The Americans wanted to make a treaty with the Lenape to be able to pass through their territory and also get other assistance in their war against the British. One of the things the Lenape would get in return was the possibility of becoming a 14th state. It was crushing to hear that this treaty quickly fell a part, partly because one of the militia killed the Lenape chief negotiator.
• Imperial ambitions of the colonists–specifically, a plan to invade Quebec (although I believe the motive had a military component to this) and Washington ordering one of this generals to complete destroy Native American villages. There were Native American attacks on Americans, which pushed Washington to address the problem. However, he employed merciless approach likely to clear the space for Americans to occupy after the war.