Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said the American Revolution has been “sanitized,” calling the war “dark and bloody.”
“I think we have sanitized the war. And I — I think it’s out of an understandable fear that if somehow we reveal how dark and bloody it is, that it will somehow diminish those big ideas in Philadelphia in [1776] and then 11 years later in [1787], when they do the Constitution,” Burns told NBC News’s Kristen Welker in an interview that aired Sunday.
“It doesn’t. They’re made — those ideas are made even more impressive because of the improbability of the struggle, the odds against success, the time it took to do it, the — all of the problems, the winters at Valley Forge and Morristown in which people are dying of disease,” he added.
Burns’s comments come amid heated debates about how American history should be presented, with many pushing for American history’s darker aspects, including slavery and the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans, to be highlighted more often.
In October, Burns said his documentary, “The American Revolution,” shows how the U.S. has had deep divisions since its beginnings. However, he also said the story of the revolution and the war itself “could put the ‘us’ back in the U.S.”
“We were divided, really divided back then,” Burns told The Hill about the time before the Revolutionary War.
“It was not just a revolution against Britain. It was a civil war against those who wished to remain loyal to it. It was a world war engaging many European as well as Native American nations. It’s a very complex story,” he added.
The U.S. will celebrate its 250th birthday on July 4, marking two-and-a-half centuries of American independence.
