Ken Burns: Without George Washington, ‘We Don’t Have a Country’

As we approach the Quarter-Millennial anniversary of American independence, it remains to be seen whether that important milestone will offer a fitting tribute to America’s history and heroes, like the spirited and patriotic Bicentennial did, or whether it will fail to capture the public imagination. Ken Burns’s upcoming documentary on the American Revolution has the potential to set the Quarter-Millennial celebrations off on the right foot and remind Americans—in the words of Alexander Hamilton—what we are celebrating: “the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world.”

Jeffrey H. Anderson of the American Main Street Initiative and John Fonte of the Hudson Institute recently interviewed Ken Burns about his upcoming documentary, The American Revolution. While talking with Jeff and John, Burns called the American founders “a dream team” and rightly declared that “without a question,” the greatest hero of the American Revolution is George Washington:

“We don’t have a country without him….He knows how to defer to Congress. He knows how to inspire people in the dead of night. He knows how to pick subordinate talent….And then you’ve got the most spectacular thing of all, which is, twice, ceding his power. And so, you know, he’s it.”

Burns also noted the founders’ emphasis on virtue and self-sacrifice:

“Washington spent most of the six and a half years of the war in a tent, not home. He may have been the wealthiest person in America. So he’s also mutually pledging not only his life…but his fortune—I wonder if the richest people in the world are willing at any time to risk that—and [his] sacred honor, which is, I think, at the heart of all of this. And the free electron that turns up in the quotes that we’ve assembled over the ten years it’s taken us to do this—the free electron is the word ‘virtue.’ And I think that’s sort of…missing from our conversations today.”

Burns added the following about the founding period:

“There’s nothing new under the sun. Human nature doesn’t change. And yet…there is this brief moment of a kind of leap, of possibility at least, within the human realm.”

These are welcome observations and sentiments. By focusing on telling America’s origin story, and doing so in compelling detail, Burns’s documentary is poised to help jump-start the Quarter-Millennial celebrations.