Episode 1: In Order to Be Free (May 1754 –May 1774) of Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt’s The American Revolution, written by Geoffrey C. Ward, carries the monumental task of launching this American “origin story” in time for the 250^th anniversary of American independence. This episode sets the stage and introduces the cast, while highlighting the significance of the events that follow. The entire series depends on the success of this episode to lay all the groundwork for the Revolutionary War, described as the “most consequential revolution in history.”

Ken Burns discusses his new series at the LBJ Presidential Library in June, 2025. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

In less than two hours, viewers are introduced to the colonial world at the outset of the Seven Years’ War and move through the responses to imperial reform efforts.  Retreading the well-worn “Road to Revolution” from the Stamp Act protests to the “Shots Heard Round the World” at Lexington and Concord, the episode covers much ground across thirteen colonies, periodically panning out to the larger imperial setting.

With these strengths, Episode 1 falls prey to the central challenge of anyone studying the 1760s—how do we avoid writing to Revolution? Throughout, the narrator’s voice quickens his pace with a crescendo leading inexorably towards the first shots fired. As the credits roll, it is clear that something extraordinary is underway, and the viewer receives the strong impression that no thinking colonist could possibly support any path but independence. This false sense of unity creates a problem in explaining wartime experiences and postwar disorders.

Episode 1 feels both the weight of expectation and the pull of events building toward Revolution: It labors to tell a narrative of the 1760s driven by the outcomes of the series that follows. By the close of this episode, focus turns to the Second Continental Congress to dramatically launch their unprecedented and unbelievable Declaration of Independence.

To accomplish this feat, the heaviest lifting falls to a rockstar lineup of historians who update the public on scholarship since America’s 1976 Bicentennial. The result of this rigorous scholarship is a wider view of both the sheer multitude of peoples and the diversity of opinions animating the prewar years. As each historian appeared—Bernard Bailyn, Alan Taylor, Vincent Brown, Christopher Brown, Maya Jasanoff, Joseph Ellis, Colin Calloway, Jane Kamensky, Stephen Conway, Michael Witgun, Kathleen DuVal, Maggie Blackhawk, Philip Deloria, Ned Blackhawk, Stacy Schiff, Annette Gordon-Reed, Serena Zabin, Rick Atkinson, and Nathaniel Philbrick—I found myself glancing often at my bookshelf and remembering exactly why we are drawn to study the Revolution. Other scholars’ work lies just beneath the surface—one cannot miss the influence of T. H. Breen, Woody Holton, Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, Ben Carp, and many, many others as part of an emerging narrative of the prewar years. This is a welcome update to that “Road to Revolution” public narrative. The study of the Revolution is alive and well at American universities, and the quality of this research and teaching should be clearly recognized from this episode.

For viewers on couches or students at desks, the historians reconstruct a complex British world that spanned from London to India, Canada to the West Indies, while also establishing the dynamics of colonial seaports and agricultural small towns, journeying into colonial backcountries and onto Native lands. The scholars return Native populations to the forefront to geopolitics. This is critical to understanding tensions between colonial economic desires that clashed against imperial governance and Native political rights. The maps throughout the episode pan in and out, reminding us that the geographies of early America spanned far past the thirteen colonies.

As a former public school teacher who once wielded the DVD remote to show Ken Burns’s Civil War, I am excited that a new generation of students will similarly be drawn to Ken Burns’s The American Revolution. Like that documentary, this was also a war fought on 1,000 fronts by everyday people who deeply shaped the emerging nation.  Geoffrey C. Ward is masterful at weaving academic history into updated public narrative.  I am hopeful that as viewers and students watch they become the next participants in larger conversations about the Revolutionary War and early America.

Teaching this Episode: The Importance of the Pause Button. 

For anyone watching: Keep the remote handy. I would encourage you to press pause. This episode will establish many of the dynamics critical to understanding the war effort and the emerging new nation, yet on this inexorable march toward The American Revolution, it’s good to remind students that these events played out over time, across large geographic regions separated by oceans, and with an array of choices facing individuals, families, and communities. When you feel the narrative start driving more and more, and the historians appearing less and less—press pause.

Consider our challenge for teaching and understanding—how do we talk about this time period without simply building a timeline to revolt? Since elementary school, we have learned of this series of events that form our national origin myth as “the Road to Revolution.” We all know how this story plays out, and we all recognize which side will be victorious. We know, as in the first moments of this episode, that somehow despite the odds these thirteen colonies will unite in the most “monumental” revolution in world history. We know that these United States will become a global power.  We know this origin story. Press pause.

The historians remind us that nothing can be taken for granted, no event was foreordained. A challenge is then raised: How do we research, teach, and understand the protests and events of the period as they were experienced by the participants in their own time? How do we understand the protestors, spectators, fence-sitters, loyalists, disaffected, patriots, the aloof—all manner of colonial subjects making choices as individuals, families, and communities?

As you watch, ask students to consider how people chose to navigate the increasingly chaotic world of the 1760s and 1770s. Why did individuals choose to join protests (or not) or choose to bear arms (or not)? How do we both tell a story with such a compelling ending, but also give space to the individuals, families, and communities for whom the Revolution was not life altering? How did people spread across the eastern seaboard, Caribbean Islands, and into the backwoods understand the events occurring in their communities and their empire? These questions also raise consideration of those for who were excluded from an emerging body politic.

Set the Scene: At Every Map—Press Pause

Every time a map is shown, press pause. Ask the students to listen to Maggie Blackhawk explaining mapping, then examine these maps either as primary sources or as modern depictions of the land and peoples. Consider how geography influences this story. How does the presence of Native grounds—of Native populations, politics and trade on the map prominently—change the way we view this space? How does panning out to see the Atlantic world alter students’ perceptions of identity and connection? (I would also revisit Fred Anderson’s version of George Washington’s engagement in Jumonville Glen).

The Cast of Characters: Who Inhabits British North America—Press Pause

Note for your students the repetition by the historians about the inhabitants of British North America. Alan Taylor and Christopher Brown play the important role of reminding viewers throughout, as Brown notes, “it is easy to underestimate the sheer diversity and variety in the colonies.” Jane Kamensky asks the question directly: How did people who were so fundamentally and historically diverse and different come to common cause?  Even if the narrator can’t help but avoid a universalizing “American opinion” and hold a bitter tone for “loyalists,” the historians set up a far more accurate, pluralistic view of colonial communities. Those sheer multitudes of people and opinions will help explain later divisions during wartime and peace. The variety of backgrounds and experiences of the 1760s–1770s help explain the diverse expectations for peacetime in the 1780s–1790s, as well as ongoing crowd action.

The Timeline of Events—Pause, Pause, Pause

To cover the period from May 1754–May 1776, the filmmakers naturally collapsed time for storytelling with a focus increasingly narrowing on Boston and New England to lay the groundwork for Lexington and Concord. Despite this, the episode pays surprisingly little attention to the politics happening on the street, or the evolution of protest strategies in response to perceptions of violence or mob rule across the British Empire.

This episode is relatively dismissive of crowd action. There is surprising little discussion of the evolution of protest strategies, which misses an opportunity to think about the innovative ways in which everyday people came to participate in protest with non-importation (that said, the role of women in the homespun movement is well done) and its aim at economic pressure points to influence imperial powerbrokers. Whether it was the daytime theater of hanging effigies, mock trials, public funerals protesting the Stamp Tax, or later the circulation of lists for non-importation, spectatorship and participation in protests played a critical role in the political awakening among colonists.

The crowd in this episode falls into an older historiography portraying the unthinking mob, rather than understanding the importance of involvement and the evolution of protest strategies. For students, it is important to emphasize the diverse imperial audiences for street protests. These protests built the mutual trust, cemented a common terminology and ideology, and created the communication networks key to a Revolutionary coalition.

The colonial crowd could be violent, drawing upon a long British tradition of “rough music,” which used extralegal punishments to injure and humiliate those perceived of violating community norms (such as wife-beating). These were not just random angry crowds but often planned and executed activities to stop tax collection locally, demonstrate the impossibility of implementation, and win repeal in England. To win that repeal, the violent crowd actions were often followed by large displays of loyalty. This episode leaves out other crowd protests such as funeral displays, repeal celebrations, gatherings at Liberty Trees, and other forms of staged political theater designed to broadcast a shared and peaceful British identity.

Detail from Paul Revere’s engraving, “A View of the Year 1765,” featuring an effigy hanging from a Liberty Tree. From Wikimedia Commons.

Protest was controversial. The initial violence associated with street protests served as a disincentive to engaging in crowd action. Fears of violence shaped community decision making. When individuals and communities in the lower South and West Indies, for instance, learned about the first street protests on August 14–15 in Boston alongside news of the violent property destruction in Boston and Newport on August 26–28, it shaped their reception of these events as potentially unleashing a dangerous wave of violence. Colonists weighed their responses to calls to protest a disturbing set of reports of a “War of General Leveling.” Appreciating how the fears of a slave majority as well as lower class unrest impacted strategies of influence, the response of colonists in Barbados, Antigua, and Jamaica appear more like the fears of many in New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston who preferred “quieter” methods to advocate repeal. This influenced strategies of dissent during the Stamp Act repeal movement and shaped the political legacies of the protests.

“The Road to Revolution” narrative tends to treat colonial protest as an inevitable and immediate response. Protest required both choice and sacrifice, but also a weighing of its effectiveness in convincing British politicians to act. Appreciating more the stops and starts of decision-making demonstrates again the sheer diversity of opinions and experiences at the outset of the Revolution.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the consequence of this “Road to Revolution” is to create an impression that one event naturally flowed into the next, with little pause or interruption in an inexorable drive to independence. This long period of Episode 1 experienced ebb and flow (as would the Revolution), regulations and their removal, protest and its cessation. By organizing this around a growing list of grievances, the episode moves toward explaining later events without recognizing fully the emphasis provided by the historians, “how did people who were so fundamentally and historically diverse and different  come to common cause?” The episode effectively builds toward the Declaration of Independence but leaves important questions about divisions in this emerging body politic.