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The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. The Eberle Foundation. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And by annual financial support from viewers like you. Hello, I'm Forrest Sawyer.
Welcome to the sixth and final program in our series, Liberty. In every period of history, there are problems that seem to attract the greatest minds of the age. In our time, they're in the fields of science and technology. In the 18th century, the question of the age was government, how to form a government that could protect liberty and endure. It's one thing to win a revolution.
It's quite another to avoid a dictatorship and create a society that is free from the power of the government. a system of government that preserves the freedoms for which people fought. This was the problem facing the 13 states in 1783. To fight the war, they had joined together somewhat reluctantly into a loose federation.
All real power, the power to tax, to raise armies, to enforce treaties, rested not with the Continental Congress, but with the states. There was no president of the country, no national court system. no Washington, D.C. The French, realistic as always, prepared to send 13 separate ambassadors, one to each of the states.
The war of independence is over, but the fate of the American Revolution has yet to be decided. I have the honor of surrendering into the hands of Congress the trust which you have given me. Many years ago, when I accepted your commission, I never thought I had the abilities to accomplish so difficult a task. But these doubts were always overcome by a belief in the justice of our cause.
Having completed the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theater of action. For many years, I have acted under orders from this august body. And now, I bid an affectionate farewell to Congress.
I return my commission and take leave of public life. Washington's surrender of his sword to Congress was an electrifying event throughout the world. I mean it just captivated the world because nobody of his stature who had led successful, successful revolution or war would had ever done such a thing.
In history it seemed Caesar, Cromwell, Marlborough, all these victorious generals expected political rewards commensurate with their military achievement. He could have been king. Congress, in effect, offered him a crown. He spurned it. And in the process, he gave us a whole new definition of greatness, which was renunciation of power, not the embrace of it.
And it's no accident that on his deathbed, Napoleon said, they wanted me to be another Washington. After the war, Washington settles down in his beloved Mount Vernon to become, once again, a planter and a businessman. He is confident that he will never again be in the public eye.
I find myself thinking of the days of my youth, gone, to return no more. I am now descending the hill that I have been 52 years in climbing. I'm from a short-lived family, and soon I will be entombed in the dreary mansions of my ancestors.
But I shall not complain. I have had my day. The end of the war and Washington's resignation leave 13 little republics held together by a loose alliance.
The wisdom of time and the lessons of history all point to the inevitable. There will be states, but not all. they will not be united. It was not all that different from the present European community, which is trying to put together a similar kind of organization to bring together disparate states.
That's the way the United States was. Massachusetts and Virginia were separate states. When people talked about their country, they meant my country, Virginia, my country, Massachusetts. So bringing these states together was no simple task.
It wasn't clear whether the states were going to be part of some perpetual union. They might have or they might not have. People talked in terms of two or three confederations, perhaps.
Or no confederations, just 13 separate. Uh, governments. During the next five years this big question remains.
Thirteen countries or one consolidated nation. But not with bullets and swords but words and pamphlets. It is the last and greatest battle of the American Revolution.
In the peace treaty with England, the Americans have gotten almost everything they asked for. From control of the West all the way to the Mississippi River, to the right to dry their catch of codfish on the shores of Nova Scotia. The soldiers are returning home, and people are filled with optimism about what the future will bring.
The pursuit of happiness in a rich and plentiful land. And I would love thee every day, every night we'd kiss and play, if with me you'd fondly stray, over the hills and... I arrived home 14 days ago after a very hard journey.
The flax and spring wheat all dried up, but at least my orchard is full and blooming. I promised myself 40 barrels of cider. Mrs. Gilbert is a hearty woman.
She's contented and happy now that I'm home, but only complains of one thing. The wolves, they... How, through the night, disturbing arrest? You know what?
I have to sell my gun. To our west lies land of... inexpressible beauty and fertility.
There, thousands of streams flow into the Mississippi, that prince of rivers, in comparison to which the Nile is but a rivulet, the Danube a mere ditch. For Americans, the Wild West is only several hundred miles inland. Most of the continent is a river.
is still peopled by Indian tribes. With the coming of peace, the way is now open for a steady stream of migration. In time, this will decimate Native American culture.
But in 1783, most Indians have never even seen a white man. For the losers of this war, the several hundred thousand Americans who had chosen to remain loyal to the crown, the American victory is a disaster. Many are forced to flee.
Some go to Canada to start a new life. new life, others to England. Many loyalists find that even here, in what they had always thought of as home, they do not really fit in.
November in London. Dark, heavy fog. No wonder British people hang themselves in winter.
I spend my days as in a dream, thinking of the little cottage I left behind. What I would give right now for a Carolina peach. This is home. Our mother country. Yet we are aliens here.
The British are cold and formal. Perhaps I'm fit only for America. But there's no prospect of ever returning in safety.
I must be content to finish my days among strangers. Fighting a war which demanded the full participation of ordinary people has profoundly changed Americans. The old hierarchies are breaking down.
Gone is the colonial world of deference. When you end my life, monarchy, you end the sense of being a subject, you end the sense of inequality pervading everywhere, and I think when you become a citizen, you're saying everyone is equal. and not subject to anyone.
You're equal to each other. And that had a pervasive effect. Servitude, for example, white servitude, declined very rapidly and finally disappears altogether by 1800. Whereas in the pre-revolutionary period, as many as half the population of Philadelphia had been at one point in their lives bonded servants. So you have a real change.
This same spirit touches African-American slaves. In Massachusetts, a woman known as Mum Bett sues for her freedom, basing her claim on the principles of equality outlined in the state constitution. She wins her own emancipation.
John Adams and his wife Abigail find themselves in England surrounded by a world of wealth and privilege Adams has just been appointed ambassador of the United States to the court of King George When he presents his credentials to the king, he is received politely. His wife, Abigail, is less than impressed by this old world of inherited power. Dear sister, yesterday Mr. Adams and I visited the court of his Britannic Majesty.
His Highness would look better if he did not drink so much. Her Majesty sits there stiff with diamonds. The whole family is inclined to corpulence.
The princess is a short, clumsy miss of fifteen. The English boast of her beauty, but you're simply... American girl is much prettier. I stood there for four hours before His Gracious Majesty Deign to nod at me.
Now I know to be looked down upon, my sovereign pride is considered a mighty honor here, and I fear my expression was not sufficiently supplicant. There is a servility of manners here, a distinction between nobility and common citizens, which happily is foreign to Americans. Peace.
And a new scene opens. The object now is to make our independence work. To do this, we must secure our union on solid foundations.
It's a job for Hercules, for we must level mountains of prejudice. Quit the sword, my friend. Put on the toga and come to Congress. We fought side by side to make America free. Let us, hand in hand, struggle now to make her happy.
Alexander Hamilton is sitting as a delegate in the Continental Congress. Illegitimate, born in the West Indies, he came to New York City as a teenager to be educated. Unlike most of his fellow citizens, Hamilton has no attachment to any of the American people.
local region. Brilliant and arrogant, this 28-year-old is absolutely convinced that he knows where this young country should be going. Hamilton saw very quickly the potential.
for the United States, for the new nation to become a world leader. He believed that every potential was here, natural resources, population, the isolation from European intrigues and war. Hamilton believed in systematic planning and in the kind of ruthless wrenching of America from its pleasant agrarian attachments.
into a mercantile and then into a manufacturing society. And he was single-minded in his interest in making America all that it could be. Americans are just beginning to have a national vision. Artists and writers are the first to give expression to this nationalism. They mythologize the revolution itself, producing epic paintings, heroic battles of the war, Franklin and Washington raised to the level of gods.
In this spirit, a 25-year-old graduate of Yale, Noah Webster, sets to work writing a speller for a new language. American English. We've been children long enough. We must unshackle our minds and begin to act like independent beings. Let's not waste our lives mimicking our parents from other nations.
We now have our own empire to defend and a national character to develop. Hamilton and Webster are the visionaries. Their nationalism is shared by only a small minority of their countrymen. People who had served in the war and who had moved around and served in different areas, and this is particularly true of the officer corps, those people had a sense of the larger political entity and of the promise of that entity. They could see the value of a continental union in the long term in terms of national greatness.
But most Americans have never traveled more than 30 miles from the place where they were born. They view the world from a very local perspective. There was great competition to establish your way of life as the better way of life. New Englanders, for instance, had fairly negative things to say about Southerners, who they thought of as decadent and as leisure-loving.
They thought possibly the end of civilization was coming every time they saw a horse race or the men drinking or... dueling or some activity that they considered to be not quite proper. To the Southerners, the New Englanders seemed very suspicious and kind of plotting and not open and not very genteel, kind of crabbed, to use a word that they used. Of course, stereotypes are the way we understand people from other societies. Freed from British control, each state pursues its own independent course.
Each state adopts its own system of government and prints its own currency. Some use English pounds as the standard. Others use Spanish dollars.
For most Americans, this local independence of the separate states is just fine. They are fiercely proud of their liberty to control their own fate. That's why they fought the revolution. This is what they have won.
But during this time, all is not well with the country as a whole. At Mount Vernon, George Washington is receiving a series of letters from friends and former military men. Alexander Hamilton writes from Congress that without an army or a navy, America is completely powerless to deal with international problems. England should have long ago returned our lands in the West. Spain blocks our ships from the Mississippi.
How do we defend our... rights as a country. Do we have troops, a national treasury, or even a national government?
We have a shadow of a federal government where 13 petty republics must agree on every point of every measure the union wants to execute. The result? Nothing happens. The states have brought the wheels of national government to a stand still.
You really see Hamilton tearing his hair and mumbling dirty wackafrass as as the revolution ends because the Confederation government to him is absolutely nothing that's going to build the America he wants it to be. He has no patience whatsoever with this loose agreement. He sees very clearly that the states are going to go back to squabbling with each other.
he wants a uniform currency he wants uniform internal trade within the country and when he sees Rhode Island charging Massachusetts a tariff every time someone brings eggs from one state to the other he's absolutely disgusted sometimes I think I'm wasting my time in public service I hate Congress I hate the world a mass of fools and knaves I hate myself. Border disputes smolder between the states. Pennsylvania is fighting with Connecticut over which state will control land to the west.
It is clear that these might become full-fledged shooting wars. Observers in England smugly declare that all this is inevitable. The popular opinion certainly believed that the American experiment couldn't possibly survive. It was remarkably... liberal, the government was very weak, the country was very extensive, and there was really no possibility of this absurdly new, fresh government surviving more than a few years.
It would disintegrate. One underlying crisis overshadows everything else. The United States was bankrupt. It had no ability to tax. All it could do was request the states to give it money.
The financial situation was very, very serious, with huge war debts that had to be paid if you're going to restore the credit of the country. The states are slipping into an economic depression. Americans are dividing into two camps, creditors and debtors. We are oppressed by the very men whose property we fought for, whose independence we bled for.
Yes, we owe money to these men, whose purses are their conscience, who hear their lust for wealth louder than the cries of the poor and the needy. They grow fat while debtors go to jail. Thank you.
buy up our land for a dollar an acre. If their God-provoking, self-serving crimes go unpunished, can we believe there is a hell below? In 1786 in Massachusetts, the antagonism between the debtors and creditors breaks out into open conflict.
Angry farmers arm themselves and march on the state courthouse in Springfield. The local militia join with the farmers. Daniel Shays, the leader of the insurgents, becomes a folk hero.
Soon, debtor rebellions are breaking out in all 13 states. The debtors are by far the majority. The popularly elected legislatures pass laws which, in effect, cancel all debts, trampling on the property rights of the creditors.
I was as strong a believer in popular government as any man in America. But it is rapidly becoming the last kind of government I should choose. I'd even prefer a limited monarchy at this time. Better the whims of- One man than the ignorance and passions of the mob.
Che's rebellion shakes people's belief in popular government. There is now a rumor circulating through the states that Nathaniel Gorham, president of the Continental Congress, has approached Prince Henry of Prussia. Our free institutions of government have failed, he is quoted as saying.
Will you please come to America and be our king? Prince Henry is said to have reminded Gorham that Americans did not get along very well with their last king and to have curtly declined the offer. May 1787. Philadelphia, America's largest city, is abuzz with excitement.
The most celebrated leaders from the states are coming to town. Che's rebellion has convinced them that something must be done, and it will happen here in Philadelphia. The delegates are coming to a city which rivals some of the great centers of culture and power in Europe. The streets are paved, and some are even lit at night. The artist Charles Wilson Peale offers the public a natural history museum displaying wonders such as mammoth bones and stuffed golden pheasants.
He also spends the next few months painting this portrait of the most celebrated American of the day. Washington has reluctantly come out of retirement to lend his prestige to this convention. Most delegates come expecting to revise the Articles of Confederation, the loose agreement among the states, which is the basis of their union. But a small group is convinced that the Articles will have to be completely scrapped. One of them is James Madison, a shy, scholarly Virginian, whose voice is so faint that at meetings he is constantly being told to speak up.
Madison was about 5'1", he had a high squeaky voice. Steven Seagal could not play James Madison. He was the antithesis of the bold and strong government building hero. He was extraordinarily erudite, very much an intellectual, and he had read political philosophy, old and new. The big problem... will be the degree of authority which the federal government will have over the states. In the ancient governments, even where there wasn't some strong central authority, there was always some controlling power. And everyone knows what happened to the Amphictyons. The same thing happened to the Achaean League. Too much local authority. I think every age has some major issue that people understand as a kind of an agenda for that generation, a major problem that is to be resolved. In the 18th century, clearly, it was the problem of government. How could you design a government, a new government, a government that didn't have kings, didn't have hereditary rule, that could function, that could be stable? Republicans of the past had been significantly short-lived, characterized. The great republics were gone. What had happened to Rome? What about the English Commonwealth? What had happened to Greece? Never before had a people deliberated and deliberately created a new country. And this, I think, gave them a tremendous sense of excitement, but also awe and responsibility. I mean, they felt, they used the term, we have the responsibility of millions yet unborn. The delegates troop into the Pennsylvania State House. They seat themselves informally at green, bays-covered tables, three or four to a table, and then silence. The first vote of the convention is to keep their proceedings absolutely secret. They did that, not in a conspiratorial way, but in the conviction that if they were accountable to the public for everything they said and did, that nobody would say our... do anything. So Philadelphians didn't know a lot about what was going on. They knew this group was meeting there, but there's remarkably little in the Philadelphia newspapers about what was going on. People did keep this oath of secrecy. They did not leak during this hot summer. Over the next months, rumors spread like a thick undergrowth. George Washington's dour expression as he leaves the convention hall one day prompts a report that the delegates are in disarray. Some people on the outside are convinced that the delegates are up to no good. Virginia's former governor Patrick Henry for one. I smell a rat. On July 3rd, the thermometer tops 90 degrees with a drenching humidity that exhausts the delegates. Blinds cover the windows and keep out the sun and noise from the streets. When they are opened, they let in the flies. In between meetings, the delegates do what they can to find relief. They have their portraits made by an apparatus which produces an exact silhouette of a person's features. Fifty years before the invention of photography, these are actual images of Madison, Franklin, and Washington. Shadows captured from another era. Reporters trying to figure out what the delegates are doing have to contend with shadows as well, for the total news blackout continues. They know that something serious is going on behind the closed doors. Two of the three delegates from New York State have gone home in protest. After almost four months of exhausting debates, the delegates emerge with a plan to completely scrap the Articles of Confederation. They have written a blueprint for a new nation. This convention created a constitution of an entirely new government, very, very different from the Articles of Confederation, because it was a national government in its own right, with its own president, its own senate and house of representatives, its own court system, that would reach right down to individuals, have coercive power over individuals, in a way that the Confederation never dreamed of. The Founding Fathers have addressed the issue of power in an entirely new way. They have put forward the idea that only in a large democracy, with an extensive system of checks and balances, can you protect the rights of the minority. from potential tyranny by the majority. It was a revolution in democratic thought. Prior to that, philosophers had said, if, and it was a huge if, if democracy is possible anywhere at all, it has to be a revolution. to be on a small face-to-face society. Pericles, Athens, Rousseau's, Geneva, something of the sort. Now, they said, said Madison, no, the secret is an extensive republic. An extensive republic that will allow you to have a saving multiplicity of factions. The more the merrier. Faction used to be considered the great enemy of democracy. Madison said, no, wrong, completely wrong. Faction will be the savior of democracy because by having more competing factions. more diversity in the modern language, you will have, again, you will prevent the emergence of a stable, potentially oppressive majority. The biggest danger to our rights today is not from governments acting against the will of the majority, but from government which has become the mere instrument of this majority. Think about it. That's where the abuse of power comes from. Not the tyranny of the king, but the tyranny of the majority. Wrong will be done as much by an all-powerful people as by an all-powerful prince. The text of the Constitution is sent to the printers. It is only a proposal. It will not become the law of the land unless it is accepted and approved by the country as a whole. September 19th, 1787. The Constitution is made public. We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the... Blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity to ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. For the majority of the country, expecting only a revision of the Articles of Confederation, it is a real shock. They ask me how I could be against the new Constitution when our friend General Washington will be the first president under it. That's fine, I say, but how about when General Sloshington, or who knows what scoundrel, becomes the second president? Look at the Senate being created by the new constitution. Six years, and they can be re-elected as long as they please. It's really an appointment for life. You know, being this new federal city, surrounded by walls of gold, gold flowing in from all our pockets. They live in this Eden with their fellow senators, far away from any knowledge of how ordinary people live. These men had just come out of a war. They had just come out of a war. They had risked their lives to fight for no taxation without representation, and the power of local government, and all men are created equal. And within a few short years, what is being proposed but the creation of a central government that looks suspiciously to them? just like the British government that they have been fighting against. We have several things in our favor. Everyone loves Washington, and he supports it. All the commercial interests are on our side. They want a government which can regulate trade. The people with money, of course, are with us. They need protection against the two Democrats. spirit of the state legislatures. On the other side are all those inferior men with very superior positions in local government. They're afraid of losing their power to a national government, where of course they don't stand a chance of getting elected. And then there are the people. They're suspicious of strong government and they don't like paying taxes. I can't even guess what's about to happen. Everything now depends on the incalculable fluctuations of human passions. We'll know in several months whether it is yes or no. Over the next six months, the Constitution becomes the major topic of conversation in all 13 states. The debate involves people from every class of society. There was a perfectly extraordinary outpouring of public concern, writing and exchanges of letters, pamphlets, broadsides, songs, everything under the sun during that period of time, pro and con the Constitution. It's, in my estimation, the greatest outpouring of political thinking in Western history. At issue, what system would best protect the liberty won by the revolution? Those who oppose the Constitution are known as the Anti-Federalists. As the debates intensify, it is clear that they are in the majority. If you ask, what is the source of this? What is the agitation all about? What are the anti-federalists concerned about? It's the fear of the creation of this amount of centralized national power. And it's an effort. to state those fears, the fear of a national army, the fear of a taxing power of the national government, a fear of executive authority, a fear of aristocracy that could be built into this through the Senate. It's a long series of fears that people who are still devoted to the original principles of the revolution saw as developing out of the constitution proposed. Governmental power will introduce itself into every corner of the country. It will wait upon the ladies at their toilet. It will enter the house of every gentleman, watch over his cellar, wait upon his cook in the kitchen, penetrate into the most humble cottage, and it will touch the head of every person in the United States. And to all these different people, the message from the government will be the same. Give, give, give. This Constitution is an open invitation to Jews or heathens to take over our country. Soon we'll even have the immigration of peoples from the Eastern Hemisphere. All because there's no religious qualification for office. None. The president can be re-elected every four years. For life. Even if he loses an election, he still controls the army. So, how will you get him off the throne? He's like a bad edition of a Polish king. These lawyers and men of learning, these moneyed men who talk so finely and gloss over the details so smoothly to make us poor folks swallow down the pill, they're the ones who will go to Congress. They'll get all the power and all the money into their own hands and they'll swallow up all us little folks. The other side of it was the effort of the Federalists, those in favor of the Constitution, not only to calm those fears, but to explain the way in which... They were unreal. You keep talking about this aristocracy. I don't understand the meaning of this word. There aren't any kings or princes in America. In America, every capable person is an aristocrat, and they are the people who should be running the government. Remember, sir, we elect our leaders. The people are free to choose whomever they please to govern them. Good people, smart people, yes, even rich people may be elected. But they can also be kicked out of power if they don't represent the will of the people. who elected them. Why should you have confidence in a person elected to your state legislatures as opposed to someone elected to the federal legislature? Is there some magic spell that converts honest men to tyrants when they become delegates to Congress? Yes, this is new. Yes, it's never been tried. Many things Americans have done we've never tried before. We've accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. We have... set up governments which have no model on the face of this globe. And now we can improve on this great confederacy. On this, you must deliberate and decide. Always. We debate this question. We're debating it in Washington now, as to how powerful the federal government should be. That's what American politics is all about. And they set the terms, especially during the great turmoil of ratification. Winter 1788. Special conventions are called in the states to approve or reject the new Constitution. If nine states ratify, the Constitution will become the law of the land. But it is clear that this will be an uphill battle. The first real test is in Massachusetts. The majority of the delegates that went to the Massachusetts ratifying convention were probably opposed to it. Their towns had debated the federal constitution. They decided it went too far. This was no good. And the delegates are going to have to... go back and live with their towns. So they come in instructed to vote against. The Federalists say, but let's talk about this a while. And they debated provision by provision. And the Federalists are extremely skilled debaters. They're able to explain. an awful lot. For example, a Senate with a six-year term. Who heard of such an outrageous thing as a six-year term? In Massachusetts, all office holders were elected every year where annual elections end, tyranny begins. That was the slogan. Well, the Federalists said, you know, the Senate's a little different than institutions you're used to. It has to deal with foreign affairs. People elected to the Senate won't have a lot of experience. You need some time in office to exercise. the responsibilities of the Senate responsibly. Okay, next point. And then the Federals come up with another argument. So one unanswerable objection after another was being answered by Federalist opponents. At a certain point in the Massachusetts Convention, the anti-federalists realized they were being out debated. They say, oh, what's the point of this anyway? Let's just vote it down and go home. And at that point, Samuel Adams had been very quiet. He was not a good speaker. He had a lisp. He says, this isn't something we should rush. This is very important. I came here to learn and I find I'm learning more every day. We should continue this debate. We shouldn't simply have the vote. The Federalists defend the Constitution clause by clause. They make each detail of the plan seem reasonable. but they have no answer for the anti-federalists'biggest worry, that the proposed government will be simply too big and too powerful. The Constitution spells out the rights of government. Where, ask the anti-federalists, is a similar listing of the basic rights of individuals. A bill of rights protecting ordinary citizens against this all-powerful government. Our rights to a jury trial, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly. This is the true stuff of liberty. These inalienable rights that cannot be touched by any government. Without these guarantees, we might as well just appoint ourselves a king and take lessons in the art of bowing low. This objection is answered by Federalists like Noah Webster. I can understand a Bill of Rights to prevent kings and barons from encroaching on the rights of the people, but I don't see why we need a Declaration of Rights to protect us from our own elected legislature. In this new government, a Bill of Rights is absurd. It prevents what? Our own encroachments against ourselves? Tell us that restricting the unlimited power of the national government would be inconvenient. And so our property, our consciences... Our very lives are to be left wholly to the tender mercy of the government and the supreme courts, which have been given only slightly less power than God Almighty. Why not have a Bill of Rights? Why not a short document saying our rights are preserved? Are you worried that it will use up too much paper? Liberty is not protected by parchment barriers. It is the very system of this new government which will protect us. Government is separated into different branches, each with a different mode of election, and each having different powers. Ambition will be made to counteract ambition. In the end, both sides are victorious. The Constitution is ratified by the states and becomes the law of the land. And Congress begins work on a Bill of Rights. Ironically, it is James Madison himself who drafts the document and becomes its strongest supporter. Freedom of religion. Freedom of speech. The right of trial by jury. Freedom of the press. Over time, the Bill of Rights has proven to be as significant as the Constitution itself. The ultimate protection for the rights of a vast diversity of humanity, who, in the centuries to follow, will call themselves American. It's what makes us a single people. It's the only thing that makes us a single people really because we're not a nation in any traditional sense of the term we're not an ethnicity we're not a we're made up of everybody from the world every race every nationality every ethnic group is here and Equally American and they're equally American because they believe in these ideals these beliefs these these Ideas that came out of the revolution are the adhesive that holds us together. We're the first nation, I suppose, in modern times to make ideology the basis of our existence. A country founded on three pieces of paper. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Their words express the ideals, the standard, by which we judge our actions. In time, an ever-widening circle of groups will demand to be included in the phrase, we, the people. It is an ongoing struggle, one which began as soon as the words were written, over two centuries ago. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Are we not to be considered men? Has the God who made the white man and the black left any record declaring us a different species? Are we not supported by the same food? Hurt by the same wounds. Wounded by the same wrongs. Pleased by the same... lights and propagated by the same means. The American Revolution is very important for putting slavery on the agenda in a way that forces it to be a public question from there forward. It's comforting to think that ultimately slavery would have fallen on its own accord, or ultimately people would have seen the light in an enlightened age, that humanitarianism would have conquered, or maybe even economic interests would have thrown slavery out. We'll never know. The fact is we'll never know. But what we do know is that it was never put up for public debate. It was never on the agenda in a serious way before the imperial crisis. It has been more than 25 years since a tax dispute led a group of American patricians to wage a war with the British. Nobody in 1763 dreamed that you could govern a large country without a king. At the beginning of the American Revolutionary Period, we lived in a late aristocratic world. The assumption was that wisdom, power, stability, had to flow from the top to the bottom. At the end of the American Revolutionary Period, that idea was dead as a doornail. And the assumption was that power, legitimacy, flowed upwards, and that the source of stability was a consenting mass. So, one paradigm shattered a new paradigm, the paradigm of modern politics was in place. It's one of the greatest ironies of human history that the American Revolution is sometimes considered no revolution at all. That honor goes to others, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, revolutions that fail to realize their promise of liberty, revolutions that ultimately failed. Our revolution, I think, is underestimated. mainly because it succeeded. It set out to establish a government that was by the people, for the people, and it succeeded. The challenge was to create a republic, the first one in the history of the world, that could have any significant longevity. It succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the revolutionaries. you There's a huge parade today to celebrate the birth of a free government. I'm struck not so much with the celebration itself, which is grand and happy, but the reason for it. We are not glorifying a victory won in the blood of one people over another. No city was reduced to ashes, no army conquered, no news of thousands slaughtered. Think of it, we're celebrating a triumph. Of knowledge over ignorance. Of liberty over slavery. The blessings of peace throughout the continent. People from all ranks are marching. Farmers, mechanics, every tradesman's boy rightly considers himself a principal in the business. This is the difference between a republican government and a monarchy in the minds of men. We are more than paid back for the sufferings of war and the disappointments of peace. So... It's done. We have become a nation. To learn more about the American Revolution, the people, the times, and the world as it was, visit PBS online at the address on your screen. Me, oh my, she loved him so Broke her heart just to see him go Only time will heal her woe Johnny has gone for his old Sold her rock and she sold her wheel She sold her own least winning deal To buy her love a sword of steel Johnny has gone for a soldier Liberty, the American Revolution, is brought to you by NorWest. Banking, mortgage, and consumer finance. We care about our communities and the value of education, and are proud to support this series. NorWest, to the nth degree. Major funding is also provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, expanding America's understanding of who we were, who we are, and who we will be. The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. The Eberle Foundation. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And by annual financial support from viewers like you. The Democracy Project. To order Liberty, The American Revolution on videocassette, or Liberty, the companion book written by Thomas Fleming, call PBS Home Video at 1-800-828-4PBS. For a copy of the Liberty soundtrack on CD or cassette, call PBS home video at 1-800-828-4PBS. Performances by Mark O'Connor, Wynton Marsalis, Yo-Yo Ma, and James Taylor feature the music of the revolution heard in this series. The soundtrack includes the Liberty themes, Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier, and Song of the Liberty Bell. What if the past was lost forever? What if we never knew bicycle mechanics could fly? Or that a dreamer could also be king? At PBS, history is never past tense. It's alive in the stories we tell every day. Tales of courage, heroics, inspiration. Helping you find your place in history. If PBS doesn't do it, who will? Liberty on KCET is made possible by our members and the following. Foothill Capital Corporation, one of America's leading asset-based lenders, providing financing to companies across the United States and Canada. Foothill Capital Corporation, a Norwest company. If you'd like a free copy of the viewer's guide poster for the Liberty series, call KCET's Community Relations and Outreach Department. The number is 213-953-5788. One per family, please.