By Caroline Roosevelt
Contributing Writer

Ken Burns’ new six-part documentary, The American Revolution, premiered on PBS last Sunday, and Chester County – to no one’s surprise – figures prominently in the film. The Battle of Brandywine, which occurred September 11, 1777, was the longest battle in the war, witnessed over 300 casulaties and led to the temporary occupation of Philadelphia by the British Army. Recently, I spoke with the film’s co-directors, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt to learn more about their filmmaking process, and how the rich history of Chester County is woven into the larger epic of The Revolutionary War.

Caroline Roosevelt: When did the production of this documentary start?

Sarah Botstein (SB): Ken decided to make the film in 2015. He and David were already making a film on Benjamin Franklin, so some of the early stuff happened then. I joined and then it takes us about ten years to do a big series like this - which is not unusual. We were also doing other documentaries in between - The Ben Franklin film, Ernest Hemingway, The U.S. and the Holocaust - while we were making this, but there was a four-year period of time when this was literally all we were working on.

When the filmmaking crew visited Chester County, where were your areas of focus? 

David Schmidt (DS): We mostly went to Chadds Ford, the Birmingham Friends Meeting House, the Birmingham Hill Preserve and Sandy Hollow Heritage Park. Then we filmed at Valley Forge.

How prominent a focus was The Battle of the Brandywine in the film?

DS: The Battle of Brandywine is a very important battle in history and therefore in our film. It was Washington's last real chance to keep the British from occupying Philadelphia, and he repeated a mistake he had made a year earlier in the war at The Battle of Long Island, and he left his flank exposed. 

It was probably the last time in the war where it could have ended for Washington right there, but the British failed to deliver the decisive blow.

Thankfully, the battle ended with darkness and the Colonial Army was able to escape east towards Chester.

One of the aspects of this film that I’m really excited about is the narrative lens that you introduce. You provide so many different perspectives on the war that have not been the usual voices of history that many of us, including myself, did not hear when we were learning about The Revolutionary War. In what ways do you think that shapes this documentary?

SB: I think our goal was to tell a big, exciting, unlikely underdog story and to remind viewers at every step of the way what an extraordinarily complicated, unusual, diverse people the Americans have always been. You can’t tell a good history of the American Revolution without the Native American story, without the free and enslaved Black people, without telling the story of women, without telling the story of the ordinary soldier and the fancy generals. You can’t tell the story without understanding the really important founders who are just as flawed and complicated as we are now. 

You can’t tell the story without everybody, so what we always try to do, particularly in any film we’re making about a war, is to tie the stories of everyday Americans with the stories of the important people that you’ve had to memorize the facts about in school and make them more real, bring to life the people whose decisions they impact, and let brilliant, academics, writers, thinkers, help us understand how we might think about our history in new ways.

DS: I know there’s more out there still to uncover in the future, but there’s so much that’s available to us now that wasn’t there before. Now we have access to so many more stories than I ever knew were out there. For instance, we learned that when George Washington was producing these general orders proclaiming that, “We have to stand like men,” he’s writing to his brothers and telling them, “I think we’re going to lose.” It is really wonderful that we have access to all of this and can put that out there. 

One of the other really interesting and poignant aspects of this documentary is that it captures the minority perspectives on this war, and it’s not as cut and dry for them because even though the civil liberties are discussed as existential, they don’t apply to them. You’re reminded more natives and more of the black community were on the British side because the occupiers, to them, are the Americans.

SB: In order to tell the story of why different groups chose different sides, you have to understand what’s at stake for them. When you make a film about war, you need to give some context and empathy and understanding for why people might make certain decisions. That doesn't mean there isn't right and wrong and good and bad, and there's a lot of right and wrong

and good and bad in the American Revolution, but context and empathy and understanding are extremely important.

DS: In all these situations, individuals or nations are thinking about their independence and their sovereignty, just as much as a settler is thinking about that. I was really inspired by that, personally. I don’t know what other people will have different takes about this film. I think I’ll probably have a different take if I watch the documentary again in five years. I know that I’ve had different thoughts while making it, and I think that’s the power of a good story.

It seems to me that in Ken Burns’ documentaries, there’s great opportunity to showcase the progress of human nature. Did you find yourself having to work around current event landmines as you were weaving the story together to make sure that it remains universally impactful, especially in today’s complex political landscape?

SB: America has always been a complicated and divided country. We have always had a diverse group of people with different political ideas. The founders debated themselves about what kind of a country we should be. 

They were arguing about states versus a national government from the second July 4th happened. This is not new. Everyone is subjective. We are tasked with building a film that’s foundation is in facts, and we rely on the best and most recent scholarship. We have those scholars debate themselves. It’s not a monolithic group and we don’t all agree politically and we don’t all come from the same backgrounds. We really just want to tell truthful, good stories that people can take away from themselves different things. We don't want to tell people how to feel or what to think. We want to give people good history.

DS: This is a collaboration of hundreds of people who have worked on this film, and we’re all taking into account what they think and what they are contributing. You see all of those names in the credits, but it’s also the contribution of so many people who came before us, who produced, scanned those letters, who made the artwork that we’re using in the film either at the time or in the generations that have come since. They want us to do the best that we can do. And this in some ways is at least one of the things that our generation can contribute – to recognize what they lived through, what they fought for and against and what they brought forth into the world – the world that we have inherited.

To learn more about Ken Burns’ The American Revolution, visit www.pbs.org/show/the-american-revolution.