Updated November 14, 2025 at 13:57 PM ET
Filmmaker Ken Burns has examined some of the most defining moments of American history.
He’s delved into the Civil War, dissected America’s response to the Holocaust and chronicled the evolution of jazz music.
For his latest project, Burns turns his lens toward The American Revolution — an event he has called the most significant since the birth of Christ.
Speaking to Morning Edition, Burns said he wanted to “wake people up” to the fact that “for most of human history, most people had been subjects under authoritarian rule and that what happened in the eastern seaboard of North America created citizens — this new thing with responsibilities.”
The six-part series — 10 years in the making — tells the story of how the American Revolution unfolded through the accounts of political and military leaders, Native soldiers, free and enslaved African soldiers and many more who played roles on both sides of the war.
The first episode of The American Revolution airs on PBS Sunday, Nov. 16. The series was co-directed by Burns, David Schmidt and Sarah Botstein.
Burns discussed his project and what he learned during its making with NPR’s Michel Martin. Below are some of his thoughts:
The Founding Fathers thought of future Americans as they envisioned a country
The Founding Fathers, Burns said, spoke of “unborn millions” who would be influenced by the creation of the country and the concept of citizenship.
When Thomas Jefferson spoke of the pursuit of happiness, Burns said this was not about the pursuit of material things but about lifelong learning in a marketplace of ideas.
“If you led a life of lifelong learning, you would be virtuous. You would earn the right of citizenship, one of the highest honors that could be bestowed on anyone,” Burns said.
The brutality of the revolution makes it that much more significant
The American Revolution explores just how violent the fighting was during the war.
Burns said that without newsreels or photographs, current understanding of the fighting is “limited to the romanticized paintings.” Conversations about the revolution, he added, focus on big moments like the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention.
“We think that if we acknowledge the violence … that somehow it will diminish those big ideas,” Burns said. “In fact I think that those big ideas are even more inspiring when you understand that they come out of a revolution that is bloody, just guerrilla warfare at times and unbelievably brutal, a revolution that is also a civil war.”
Division is a constant in U.S. history
“When you look at the revolution, we were really divided then, really divided,” Burns said. “People were killing their neighbors.”
He noted how hundreds of thousands died during the Civil War and how various bombings took place in the U.S. during the Vietnam War era.
“I think we forget that. And [in] almost every period that I’ve focused on, you find enormous differences between people,” Burns said.
Burns said The American Revolution series serves as a reminder of why America’s experiment with democracy is so special.
The Founding Fathers “talked about you and me. They talked about the unborn millions,” Burns said. “We’ve got an obligation to listen to what they were offering, to understand what they thought was important … and then try to hand that off to our posterity and maybe the blips that we are so focused on, the navels that we constantly gaze at, won’t seem as important.”
The digital version of this story was edited by Majd Al-Waheidi. The radio version was produced by Phil Harrell.
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