David Stewart, a history professor at Hillsdale College and founding faculty member of the institution’s Center for Military History and Grand Strategy, has offered a critique of Ken Burns’ recent American Revolution documentary that differs from most other commentary surrounding the film.
While numerous critics have debated whether Burns devoted appropriate attention to figures like Washington, Hamilton, Monroe, and Jefferson, or whether he over-emphasized certain historical perspectives at the expense of others, Stewart identifies a more fundamental problem. His concern centers not on how Burns portrayed the Founding Fathers or his attempt to add complexity to the traditional narrative, but rather on what he believes the documentary failed to illuminate in its pursuit of nuance.
Stewart takes issue with conservative commentators who object to the documentary’s coverage of Major-General Horatio Gates and the Battle of Camden. In that August 1780 engagement, Gates commanded 4,000 American troops who suffered a devastating loss to Lieutenant-General Cornwallis’ 2,000 British soldiers in South Carolina’s midlands. Gates infamously abandoned his forces during the battle’s final moments, fleeing approximately 200 miles before halting near Durham, North Carolina. While Stewart acknowledges this reflects poorly on Gates, he argues it represents neither the complete narrative nor its most significant aspect.
The aftermath of Camden provides the more compelling story, according to Stewart. Congress swiftly removed Gates from command, installing Major-General Nathanael Greene to lead the Southern Department. Greene assumed control of a depleted force numbering under 2,000 soldiers who were isolated, demoralized, and lacking supplies. Over subsequent months, Greene managed to double his army’s size while conducting a strategic withdrawal northward that drew Cornwallis in pursuit. The Americans engaged in multiple skirmishes and battles during this period, suffering defeats in nearly every confrontation—a campaign Greene memorably characterized as “we get beat, rise, and fight again.” Through these tactical losses, American forces lured Cornwallis far from his supply lines, ultimately forcing him to abandon the Carolinas entirely and march toward Yorktown.
Stewart emphasizes that Greene commanded substantially more troops by fall 1781 than he had inherited a year prior. This growth, he argues, reveals something profound about the motivations driving American soldiers. These men endured twelve months of grueling marches, repeated military setbacks, persistent food scarcity, inadequate supplies, and hundreds of casualties. They did not persevere with the expectation that a struggling army or unstable government would eventually compensate them with land or money. Instead, Stewart contends, these soldiers believed in a greater cause and fought for fundamental principles. This narrative, he maintains, deserves emphasis in Burns’ documentary as the essential context for
understanding Gates’ cowardice.
Stewart notes other interesting details mentioned in the documentary, such as the linguistic diversity among Valley Forge soldiers, but questions why Burns did not focus more intently on explaining their motivations for enduring such hardship. He asks why men repeatedly plunged into the frozen Hudson River in January 1776, why soldiers volunteered for suicidal missions at Stony Point, and why three hundred Maryland riflemen chose death over retreat as American lines collapsed during the Battle of Brooklyn. Human failures like dishonesty, theft, cowardice, and moral compromise require little explanation, Stewart observes, but heroism and self-sacrifice demand deeper examination. Burns’ documentary deserves criticism, in his view, for failing to explain these extraordinary acts.
Stewart, writing from his expertise as a military historian, limits his observations to that domain while noting that other scholars with appropriate qualifications have raised similar concerns regarding the documentary’s treatment of Native Americans, African Americans, women, political philosophy, and economic matters.
His fundamental objection is that Burns did not complicate or add nuance to the Revolution’s story but merely replaced one extensively discussed group of historical actors with another, thereby overlooking the era’s most meaningful narrative.