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.