Noble Ideals and Complicated Truths: Understanding the American Revolution

To make sense of our present, we must understand our past. This is the essence of history. We are currently a divided nation. Individual states are described as red or blue depending on their political leanings. People are reluctant to engage in meaningful conversations with friends and family members about politics and current events for fear of starting an argument or causing irreparable tensions. What cable television network you watch or newspapers and periodicals you read has become a reliable predictor of where you stand on most issues. We long for the days when Americans were united and could proudly stand together in support of a common cause. But to study American history is to learn that those days never existed. We have always been a nation divided.

I recently finished watching The American Revolution, the epic PBS documentary co-produced and directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt. Over six parts and twelve hours, this magnificent film achieved the nearly impossible task of encapsulating the complex motives and myriad conflicts that led to American independence and the founding of our nation. As with Burns’ other documentary films—on the Civil War, World War II, the Vietnam War; on the history of baseball, the national park system; on Franklin Roosevelt and Benjamin Franklin—we are reintroduced to familiar stories with fresh insight and new perspectives. Burns’ films instruct that most American history involves division, yet his films help bring us together, for this is what insight and perspective bestow.

To grasp the American Revolution is to understand the complexity and messiness of our history. While our national origin story drew from virtuous ideals of liberty, freedom, and equality (“we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal”), it arose out of violence and brutality, contradictions and hypocrisy, and involved deep divisions and disagreements.

The history of the American Revolution is an inspiring story. It is also a complicated, confusing, and deeply human one. The people who risked their lives in defense of an idea and the pursuit of independence, were deeply flawed human beings, as are we. Coming to terms with the reality and complexity of the Revolution requires that we undo the mythology of America’s founding and examine the lives of the people directly and indirectly impacted, the importance of land, geography, and competing national interests, and the political and economic motivations that influenced the divergent actors involved.

As a documentary, The American Revolution provides a holistic and comprehensive understanding of the American story. The film sheds light on a widely diverse group of people who lived through the Revolution, not only those who led and instigated the revolutionary fervor that eventually took hold in the colonies, but also everyday Americans whose voices and perspectives are frequently ignored or forgotten. A complete look at the American Revolution must include women, free and enslaved Africans, Native Americans, and an assortment of mostly poor immigrants who descended from Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Poland, and other nations.

Women played integral roles in taking care of the homestead, following the troops into battle, healing the wounded, and burying the dead. Black Americans were excluded from the aspirational visions of America’s founding yet understood profoundly the universal ideals espoused. Thousands would risk their lives by joining forces with the Loyalists (fewer with the Patriots) in the hope of a better future. Native Americans were forced to navigate competing factions of people they did not trust in a war they did not ask for and which would threaten their survival, national identities, and land.

And yet, the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence united thirteen diverse colonies based on the idea that anyone who arrived on American shores and committed to the nation’s principles could be an American. It was these aspirational ideals, along with the leadership and wisdom of men like George Washington, which held the union together. These revolutionary ideas, and the people who planned and led America’s fight for independence, continue to inspire me. The American Revolution only reaffirmed my profound gratitude towards Washington, without whom we could not have prevailed, and to Benjamin Franklin, John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, and many others.

The American Revolution examines the good and the bad, juxtaposing the noble underpinnings of the revolution with the tragedy of slavery, the exclusion of women and Black Americans from the body politic, and the dispossession of Native Americans lands. It also examines the dreams and aspirations of ordinary Americans who combined distinct cultures and religions, spoke different languages, and knew little about the people from other colonies who also came to identify as Americans. Out of this complexity and messiness is the miracle and promise that became America. The film helps us better understand that, when we live up to our ideals, we truly are a light unto the nations.

So much of what we understand of the American Revolution is encased in myth, sentimentality, and nostalgia. I learned at a young age that Americans were aggrieved by a neglectful and detached British monarchy that imposed unfair taxes on us without our consent—taxation without representation—and imposed a series of repressive decrees that were enforced by British authorities with no input from American colonists or their representatives. Then, an energetic assortment of patriotic Americans aspiring to liberty, freedom, and equality gallantly fought for our independence. Although partly true, this version fails to do justice to the entire story, which is far more complex and human.

In fact, the Revolutionary War was a brutal civil war involving tens of thousands of Americans on both sides of the conflict. When the war began at Lexington and Concord in 1775, most American rebels had no interest in breaking with the British empire. As the war progressed and it became more about independence and sovereignty, Americans were forced to choose sides in a conflict that divided families, communities, cities, and villages. As the film notes, for many American colonists, the decision to become a patriot or loyalist was not an easy one, and those who chose to remain loyal to the King were not bad people; their reasons seemed rational and sensible at the time.

The war encompassed eight years of uncertainty and terror that left tremendous loss and destruction in its aftermath. Officers in Washington’s Army served with little or no pay, endured poor supplies, a lack of adequate clothing, terrible conditions, food shortages, illness, and harsh weather. More died of disease than died in combat. Over time, many deserted, some threatened mutiny. Prisoners of war on both sides were treated inhumanely, some were tortured, and many would die of starvation or disease. Retaliation and recrimination against loyalists by their patriot neighbors included incredible acts of cruelty. Tens of thousands of Americans became refugees when forced to flee their homes depending on which army occupied their town or city.

Black Americans deciding where to place their allegiances had no easy choices. The British were the world’s foremost slave traffickers at that time, so Lord Dunmore’s proclamation promising emancipation in exchange for joining British forces understandably raised skepticism. But it was abundantly clear that emancipation was not on the agenda of the Continental Congress. Approximately 15,000 Black Americans chose to risk it all by escaping their slaveholders and fighting on the side of the British. Only 5,000 Black Americans opted to align with the Continental Army.

For the Black Americans who sided with the British, the end of the war brought inexpressible terror and anguish – the thoughts of returning to their cruel and brutal masters was too much to bear. During peace negotiations, General Washington insisted that the British return every runaway slave to their rightful owners, but the commander in chief of the British forces refused. Britain had promised to free all slaves who came to fight for them and it was a question of national honor for them to live up to their word.

At war’s end, thousands of Black Loyalists fled the newly established United States and sailed to Nova Scotia, Britain, or the islands of the Caribbean, rather than take their chances in America. As Andrew Lawler wrote in the November 2025 issue of The Atlantic, “The story of the Black Loyalists and their postwar diaspora highlights an irony long ignored: Thousands of those with the biggest stake in securing liberty ultimately had to flee a country founded on the premise that all are created equal.” For those who left, life continued to be harsh and unfair. But the unlikely alliance between Britain and enslaved Africans during the Revolutionary War “set in motion a series of events that would … undermine the foundations of slavery on both sides of the Atlantic.” In later years, American abolitionists, including John Quincy Adams, would view Britain’s wartime proclamations as important legal precedents in the movement to end slavery. Such are the power of ideas.

Also forgotten in the history of the American fight for independence were the millions of native Americans who lived among the colonists and the land west of the Appalachians. The idea of liberty embedded in the Declaration of Independence and our founding documents included, for the colonists, a quest for unfettered access to the lands and resources of Native nations. Britain had restricted settlers from claiming land beyond the Appalachians, and this decree, even more than taxation without representation, was deemed intolerable. Across the colonies, native independence was a threat to colonists who wished to claim the very lands that native peoples had occupied and nurtured for hundreds of generations.

Nevertheless, thousands of Indigenous people fought in the Revolutionary War, more for the British than for the Americans. Native tribes had to assess which uneasy alliance would better serve and protect the interests of their sovereign nations. The end of the war brought no peace for them. The newly formed United States dismissed and exploited the native tribes, dispossessed their lands, and restricted their individual liberties. Indigenous Americans would not become citizens until 1924, and their struggle to remain sovereign would never end.

As Ned Blackhawk, a native American historian interviewed in the film writes in The Atlantic, “The colonists sought not just territory, but unchallenged dominion. To achieve this, they needed to erase the legitimacy of Native governance and justify violent dispossession.” Indeed, to study the American Revolution is to learn that “[m]uch of American history has involved efforts to impose constrained visions of liberty—rooted in individualism, private property, and patriarchal norms—on Native peoples.”

And yet, despite the injustices and inequities, the American Revolution remains a story of inspiration and hope. Eventually aided by the French, ordinary Americans with little status won the war because they refused to give up, shared in the hardships, and supported each other in trouble and sickness. They did this for an aspirational vision of an independent republic founded on notions of liberty, freedom, equality, and a government of the people guided by the rule of law. It was the first time in history a nation was founded on such ideals. That not all Americans would share equally (or at all) in those fruits at war’s end does not erase the promise of liberty and freedom that the American Revolution inspired across the globe.

The power of words to unite competing factions of colonists and galvanize a movement for independence is another part of the unique American story. Powerful writings, such as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the words of the Declaration of Independence helped transform hostility to British rule into a national movement that would inspire people and countries around the world for the next two centuries. The challenge for us is to draw on the aspirations of liberty, freedom, and equality, and strive to be the nation our forebears thought we could become.

In 1963, while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., declared, “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” As we approach 250 years since the signing of the Declaration, we have a more developed and inclusive understanding of the “self-evident truth that all men are created equal,” one that includes women, persons of color, immigrants, and people of different cultures, creeds, and ethnicities. The aspirations of our forebears have inspired people and nations, across continents and centuries, even when we failed to live up to them ourselves. There is no going back; the promissory note is due and it must be paid.

On April 19, 1775, when the first shots of the American Revolution were fired, the outcome of the war was uncertain and full of risk. The story of America’s founding is thus hopeful and inspiring. But we cannot do justice to our past unless we reckon with all its complexity. Human rights, equality, and the rule of law were ideas worth fighting for. The American Revolution remains a work in progress. Whether we live up to those ideals and behold the promise that is America, is up to us and future generations.

A Better Society: The Legacy of Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins, Time Magazine Cover, August 14, 1933

When I studied economics in college during the late 1970s, I learned about supply and demand, how competitive markets are supposed to operate, the impact of monopolies and oligopolies on free trade; I studied evolving theories of price inelasticity and economies of scale, and debated differing views of monetary and fiscal policy. The study of economics helped me understand the foundations of a capitalist economy. But what was frequently missing was the real-world impact of our economic system, its successes and failures, winners and losers, and how different economic policies affected the lives of everyday people.

It was only when I combined economic theory with history and began to examine how economics applies in real life that I fully appreciated the initiative-taking ingenuity of the New Deal under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The New Deal was not just a slogan, but an ambitious and comprehensive set of government programs aimed at rescuing the United States from the Great Depression, countering record-high rates of unemployment, homelessness, hungry people in bread lines, mass bank failures and foreclosures, and an economic system that had failed so many Americans. From public job programs and unemployment insurance to improved workplace safety and health requirements, the FDR government showed that people mattered, that hope survived, and that the common good was an essential component of a compassionate society.

“The test of our progress,” said FDR, “is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” That, to me, is the true test of a nation’s character. What kind of country and society do we aspire to be? It is why, for most of my life, I have believed in the power of government to do good and provide a basic level of economic security for those left behind.

I also believe in the power of private sector innovation and ingenuity and understand the limitations and inefficiencies that have burdened certain government programs. But when I see how badly corporate America repeatedly has failed the working class and how easily and cold-heartedly companies let go of thousands of loyal and dedicated employees to improve profit margins by even a little bit, I come back to the values that inspired me throughout my life, faith-based values of compassion for those in need and a belief that government exists for the common good.

One significant, often overlooked, figure of twentieth century American history who shared this view is Frances Perkins. Appointed by President Roosevelt as Secretary of Labor in 1933, Perkins was the first woman in U.S. history to serve in a presidential cabinet, a position she held for the next twelve years. When FDR appointed her, Perkins was known as a social reformer who had advocated better working conditions for factory workers and an end to child labor. But only after I read The Woman Behind the New Deal by Kirstin Downey (Vintage Books, 2009), did I understand just how fundamental she was to the creation and implementation of the most important legacies of the New Deal—social security, unemployment insurance, and the minimum wage, to name a few.

Although Perkins had a privileged upbringing, from an early age she aligned herself with the Christian Social Gospel movement and believed her mission in life was to help the poor and those in need. Her first real exposure to poverty was when she worked at Hull House in Chicago, a settlement house founded by Jane Addams that provided social and educational opportunities to lower and working-class people. Settlement houses were communal boarding houses where social workers and community activists lived and ate together as they served individuals and families in need. As described by Downey, “Hull House offered job training, health services, childcare, a library, and a savings bank. It operated a kindergarten, day care center, English-language and U.S. citizenship classes, and clubs for new mothers, camera enthusiasts, and aspiring artists and musicians.” It brought hope and dignity to those in need and lifted the spirits of the people impacted.

The success of Hull House inspired a national movement and eventually led to hundreds of settlement houses across the United States. Working at Hull House changed Perkins’s life. She witnessed firsthand the problems experienced every day by the urban poor—people living in overcrowded conditions without basic sanitation services in decaying city tenements, in neighborhoods regularly exposed to contagious diseases. From that point on, Perkins devoted her life to improving the lives of the poor and those left behind by an unforgiving economic system.

Perkins eventually received a master’s degree in social economics from Columbia University and worked for the National Consumers League in New York, where she focused on child labor, poor wages, excessively long workdays, and unsafe workplaces. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, young children were frequently employed for twelve hours a day in factories and sweatshops, and thousands suffered serious injuries from work unsuitable for their small, undeveloped bodies. In the lower east side, women worked in unsanitary and harsh conditions in garment factories at excessively low wages. In most factories and workplaces around the country, if a worker became sick or was injured on the job, they were left to fend for themselves. The government offered no protection. There was no unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, social security, or disability insurance.

On March 11, 1911, Perkins was having tea near Washington Square Park when she learned that the ten-story building that housed the Triangle Shirtwaist factory had caught fire. She rushed outside and saw flames coming from the windows of the building as the women, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrants, were trapped inside with no means of escape. Fifty women jumped to their deaths rather than burn to death, their bodies landing one on top of another on the street below. Before the fire department extinguished the flames, 146 workers died. It was later discovered that workers complained to management about the unsafe working conditions two years before the fire. The company ignored the complaints, fired the complaining workers, and did nothing to address their concerns. For Perkins, this was another turning point in her life.

After the fire, Perkins’s advocacy led to the creation of the New York State Factory Investigation Commission, whose first order of business was to investigate the causes of the fire. The Commission held hearings and learned that the factory’s managers had padlocked exits to all but one stairwell to prevent workers from leaving with leftover scraps of cloth. To compound the danger, the door to the stairwell swung inward making it nearly impossible to open when frightened workers attempted all at once to flee the rapidly spreading fire. The factory building contained no automatic sprinklers, and flames quickly consumed the only open stairwell. A rickety fire escape, built to accommodate only a few people at a time, collapsed as panicked workers piled on. With no way out for the remaining workers, their only hope was to be rescued by the fire company, but the firefighter’s ladders only reached the sixth floor, thirty feet below the igniting flames.

Based on the Commission’s findings, the New York Legislature passed a series of bills that prohibited smoking in factories, required mandatory fire drills, required automatic sprinklers in all buildings taller than seven stories, and established a system of building registrations and regular inspections. At the time, these were pathbreaking reforms. The legislature eventually required all factories to provide washing facilities, clean drinking water, and sanitary restrooms. All these measures mirrored the reforms advocated by Perkins.

Perkins caught the attention of New York Governors Al Smith and, later, Franklin Roosevelt, who recognized that this intelligent, industrious woman understood the issues facing the poor and working classes in American society. In 1930, at the start of the Great Depression, Perkins convinced Governor Roosevelt to appoint a state commission to study unemployment and propose solutions, and she pushed him to create a system of unemployment insurance. When Roosevelt was elected president, he asked Perkins to become his Secretary of Labor.

Before Perkins accepted, however, she needed assurances that Roosevelt would support her policy ideas and initiatives. By then, a third of the workforce was unemployed. There was no public assistance. Charities were running out of money and forced to turn away the hungry. One in six homes was lost to foreclosure. Sick people stopped going to doctors because they could not afford medical care.

Perkins wanted Roosevelt to agree to a public works program to immediately address unemployment, a national labor policy to protect the rights of workers, a forty-hour workweek, a federal minimum wage, workers compensation to ensure that people injured at work did not desperately slide into poverty, a national system of unemployment insurance, an old-age pension (Social Security), a revitalized public employment service, and a system of national health insurance.

As Downey notes in A Woman Behind the New Deal, “The scope of her list was breathtaking. She was proposing a fundamental and radical restructuring of American society, with enactment of historic social welfare and labor laws. To succeed, she would have to overcome opposition from the courts, business, labor unions, conservatives.” Roosevelt agreed to all of it. And except for national health insurance, which the American Medical Association fought with all its might, Perkins and Roosevelt achieved all her original demands.

When Perkins took over the Labor Department, she found an ineffective agency filled with malfeasance. She worked diligently to cleanse the department of inept and corrupt management. She professionalized the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which permanently improved the accuracy of employment and wage statistics, and modernized the cost-of-living index. One of her first official acts as secretary was to racially integrate the department’s cafeteria. Frances Perkins was truly a woman ahead of her time.

She collaborated closely with the president to help alleviate the suffering of millions of Americans who were out of work. Under her leadership, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was established within days of inauguration. As Downey notes, by August 1933, the CCC had put 300,000 men to work “planting trees, building bridges and fire towers, restoring historic battlefields, and beautifying the country’s National Park System.” Soon, the government created other public works agencies, and millions of people were employed building dams, tunnels, bridges, roads and parkways, schools and hospitals, playgrounds and public parks. Although the economy continued to stagnate, the unemployment rate declined, and New Deal programs built much of the nation’s infrastructure that contributed to the dramatic expansion of the U.S. economy in the years to follow.

Although Roosevelt treated Perkins as a peer of equal importance and intelligence, she faced frequent sexism, condescension, and disrespect from the male dominated ranks of labor leaders, Congress, and the Cabinet. Although she did more to advance the cause of workers than anyone else at that time in U.S. history, the heads of major labor organizations treated her with disdain and never accepted a woman as Secretary of Labor. Even the press often failed to recognize that Perkins drafted the New Deal’s most important and enduring laws, helped get them enacted, and then administered them fairly and effectively.

Perkins was instrumental in the drafting and passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, which the Washington Post proclaimed as the “New Deal’s Most Important Act.” It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Act, for to this day it affects the lives of every man, woman, and child in the United States. Another of Perkins’s signature achievements was the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which introduced a federal minimum wage, restrictions on child labor, and an eight-hour workday. The law, as described by Downey, “ushered in a new way of life for many workers, permitting them an opportunity for rest and relaxation.”

If that were not enough, Perkins stood alone as the administration’s most vocal advocate for the admission of Jewish refugees throughout the 1930s. In the face of strict immigration quotas, an isolationist Congress, and an obstinate State Department, Perkins worked behind the scenes to relax the formal requirements to bring tens of thousands of German Jewish refugees to safety, thus rescuing them from the calamity of the Holocaust.

Perkins achieved what she did, as Downey describes, “selflessly, without hope of personal gain or public recognition.”

It is a great historic irony that Frances is now virtually unknown. Factory and office occupancy codes, fire escapes and other fire-prevention mechanisms are her legacy. About 44 million people collect Social Security checks each month; millions receive unemployment and workers’ compensation or the minimum wage; others get to go home after an eight-hour day because of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Very few know the name of the woman responsible for their benefits.

The lives of all Americans are significantly better over the past ninety years because of Frances Perkins. Her legacy remains with us to this day. Despite the efforts of the current administration, it is imperative that we not aspire to resurrect the wrongs corrected by the wisdom, compassion, and tenacity of Frances Perkins. Our failure to protect her legacy may determine the kind of country we will have for the next ninety years.