“An Asylum for Mankind,” the second episode of Ken Burns’s documentary The American Revolution, begins in the immediate aftermath of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Over the span of two hours, Burns (and his co-directors, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt) march viewers from the Patriot victory at Fort Ticonderoga through the Battle of Bunker Hill, the burning of Falmouth, Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, the Battle of Quebec, the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and the ravages of smallpox and typhus, finally arriving at the Declaration of Independence.

Burns has not been modest about the stakes of his project, describing the American Revolution as “the most important event since the birth of Christ.”[1] Burns and his co-directors, unfortunately, don’t manage to make it feel that way.

Instead, “An Asylum for Mankind” presents the American Revolution as a sedate series of events and dates. Swells of music, tastefully framed shots of reenactors, and quotations devoid of context or explication glide viewers effortlessly through the imperial crisis and the beginning of the Revolutionary War, while giving little consideration to what propelled British colonists to wage a civil war within their Empire.

As historian William Hogeland explains at the beginning of the episode, “Independence was not, in any way, officially on the table as a goal of the Americans at that point. The idea of independence was still controversial.” One hundred and twenty minutes later, Burns and his codirectors depict the members of the Second Continental Congress agreeing to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” by declaring their freedom from Great Britain. But the intervening hours neglect to explain why the colonists underwent this world-historical change of heart.

Analyzing why things happen means reckoning with contingency—that is, with the possibility that things might have turned out differently than they did. Burns, Botstein, and Schmidt emphasize the importance of contingency in military matters, but they show no real appreciation of contingency in the course of political events. In battle after battle, ubiquitous red and blue animated arrows compare what the generals planned with what actually transpired. In contrast, the filmmakers frame the thirteen colonies’ route towards political independence as a stately parade march.

“A chart of battles, leaders, and congresses during the Revolutionary War,” depicting the Revolution’s causes (roots), major events (trunk), and battles (branches). Created by the George Washington Bicentennial Commission, 1931-1932. From the National Archives.

To their credit, Burns, Botstein, and Schmidt invite a murderers’ row of eminent historians to appear on screen. Friederike Baer, Ned Blackhawk, Christopher Brown, Vincent Brown, Colin Calloway, Stephen Conway, Phil Deloria, Erica Dunbar, Annette Gordon-Reed, Jane Kamensky, and Serena Zabin, along with others (even the late Bernard Bailyn), stud the second episode with their insights, reminding the viewer that it need not all have happened as it did. The co-directors, however, fail to capitalize on these openings. Burns cedes the screen to the talking-heads without really learning from what the historians have to say. Instead of listening, he and his co-directors seem to be waiting for their turn to speak.

Despite everything, some valuable history does make it through. The episode reaches its high point when Annette Gordon-Reed, Christopher Brown, and Vincent Brown delve into the calculations and contingencies at play in the American Revolution for free and enslaved Black people and the centrality of the question of slavery in the American Revolution. Should they flee to the British side, which has promised them their freedom, or take their chances in the inchoate American republic? As Vincent Brown puts it, for enslaved people, the war is “not a question of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. It’s, ‘What can I get from making this decision right now, in this place, at this time, among these people?’”

The narration adds the intriguing point that some of the Continental Army was “more integrated than American forces would be again for almost two centuries.” For a moment, a glimmer of contingency shines through. Why does America backslide on integration after the war, and might it have gone another way?

Outside of this portion, however, the episode fails to meaningfully update or broaden the hoary historical narrative. The filmmakers dutifully slot a handful of new characters into the traditional story—women, enslaved people, free Black people, Native people—but move on before viewers can get any idea of what roles these people really played. Instead, it’s on to the next thrilling battle or artfully juxtaposed quotation.

Even in the military history, there’s no real engagement with the scholarship on what a standing army in North America meant in terms of lived experience. For instance, what did it mean for British soldiers to be stationed in colonial cities? The directors bring on the right scholar to speak to these issues—Serena Zabin—but they fail to ask her the correct questions or meaningfully apply her insights into the larger story that they tell.

Nor is it just people who receive short shrift. Critical ideas and events also seem to have landed on the cutting-room floor. There’s no mention of the Olive Branch Petition of 1775, for instance, in which the Second Continental Congress tries to avert a final rupture from Great Britain. Nor do Burns, Botstein, and Schmidt waste any time on how economic forces, such as the debates over imperial trade policy, the shortage of hard currency, and concepts like capitalism and mercantilism, play into the patriots’ decision to formally revolt.

How did the episode, and the series, wind up like this? Burns himself has offered some hints. At an event in July 2025, he explained, “We wanted to rid ourselves of the fashions of historiography and make a film that simply shows what happened.”[2] On Fresh Air, he told Terry Gross, “A good story is a good story is a good story. I think the story of the American Revolution is a really good story.”[3]

But in trying to tell the “good story” without the “fashions of historiography,” Burns reveals that he doesn’t really understand history—or, for that matter, how to tell a good story.

We rarely find meaning in lists of events. Meaning comes from understanding what those events signified for the people who lived them and for the world they left in their wake. A story needs a plot, but what makes it great are the characters, the themes, the suspense. Historians draw these elements out of the record in the way that a director can draw them out of a script.

By shrugging off the why of the Revolution, Burns and his co-directors leave us with a tedious sequence of whos, whats, and whens—a largely unexamined, consensus narrative of the American Revolution that tells the story just as it’s always been told. They would have done better by heeding the words of John Adams: “[W]hat do We mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American War? The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People.”[4]

Burns apparently has a neon light in his editing room that says, “It’s complicated.”[5] And it’s true: history is complicated. That’s what historiography is for—to consider why things happened the way they did. That story of the Revolution—the one with a why—could be a really good story too.

Endnotes

[1] John Dickerson, “Ken Burns on America’s origin story: ‘The most important event since the birth of Christ,’” CBS News, Nov. 2, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ken-burns-on-the-american-revolution/.

[2] Nathaniel Moore, “What Ken Burns Won’t Say About the American Revolution,” Politico, July 3, 2025, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/03/ken-burns-american-revolution-war-pbs-00424659.

[3] Terry Gross, “Ken Burns’ ‘American Revolution’ series includes voices the founders overlooked,” Fresh Air, October 20, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/10/20/nx-s1-5580245/ken-burns-american-revolution-series-includes-voices-the-founders-overlooked.

[4] “From John Adams to Hezekiah Niles, 13 February 1818,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6854.

[5] David Smith, “Ken Burns on his American Revolution documentary: ‘We won’t work on a more important film,’” The Guardian, Nov. 20, 2025,  https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/nov/20/ken-burns-american-revolution-documentary.