Shaping America
Final Script

TITLE:Lesson 7: “Making a Revolution”

WRITER:Gretchen Dyer

PRODUCER:Julia Dyer

DRAFT:Final

DATE:6 February, 2001

Lesson 7 “Making a Revolution”  Final Script • 1

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UNIT OPENING
  1. VIVID MONTAGE of images of violent protest--e.g.: 1) riots in bread lines during the Depression; 2) the Cultural Revolution in China; 4) the student anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s; 5) MLK’s March on Washington; 6) the toppling of the Berlin Wall; 7) Tiananmen Square; INTERCUT with images from the American, Revolution
/ MUSIC UP
  1. GORDON WOOD on camera; intercut with above
/ GORDON WOOD: Revolutions have many different interpretations For some people it’s just a change of government, a violent change usually, an overthrow of government. I think for others, it’s more than that. It’s not simply a change in government but a change, a fundamental change in the society and social relationships.
  1. EDWARD COUNTRYMAN on camera; intercut with opening images
/ EDWARD COUNTRYMAN: What drives people to get involved is somewhere between hope and fear, vision and desperation. People get involved for all sorts of reasons because revolutions are never, never simple things.
  1. GORDON WOOD on camera
/ GORDON WOOD: I suppose it’s a sense of being aggrieved, of feeling that the existing order is unfair, unjust, and something has to be changed. A willingness to risk one’s life eventually, ultimately, for changing the order.
  1. EDWARD COUNTRYMAN on camera; intercut with opening images
/ EDWARD COUNTRYMAN: It’s a matter, I think, of a coalition of people coming together and ultimately agreeing on a great big question. Should we still have a monarchy in France? Should we break from Great Britain or stay with Great Britain? And people approach that question from different points of view.
  1. SHEILA SKEMP on camera; intercut with images of American colonists
/ SHEILA SKEMP: The Americans in the 1760’s, 1770’s were ripe for revolution, though I don’t believe they knew it at the time. They would have been horrified. They were proud to be Englishmen, and I think that’s what we forget. They loved being English, but looking back, we can see that the conditions were there if the right things happened or the wrong things happened, depending upon which side you were on.
  1. JON BUTLER on camera; intercut with colonial images
/ JON BUTLER: Before 1776, Americans had almost unwittingly, without any planning, effected a revolution that transformed the nature of the old 17th century colonies.
First of all, Americans had…developed a new political order. They effectively developed legislatures. And American politics was marvelously participatory in its character.
  1. Sheila Skemp on camera; intercut with images of Magna Carta, John Locke, etc.
/ SHEILA SKEMP: They also were steeped in the English tradition of rights. They knew about the Magna Carta. They knew about John Locke’s notion that we all had certain natural rights—life, liberty, and property—that we had the right to revolution.
  1. JON BUTLER on camera; intercut with images of colonial Christianity, slave religious practices, politics, etc.
/ JON BUTLER: When you add together a new kind of political order and American materialism, and the development of a widely broadcast New World economy, and when you add to that then different nationalities, you had a society that looked utterly unlike Old World society. This was a revolutionary society, not yet revolutionary in political principle, but revolutionary in social context, revolutionary in its economy, revolutionary in its politics. It was a modern society.
SEGMENT ONE
“OPENING MOVES” / Music up
  1. Period map of the colonies and England separated by the Atlantic; cu to footage of “untamed” land along the Mississippi River or in the Allegheny Mountains.
  2. CHESSBOARD (1): Dissolve from landscape shot to CU of a “period” chessboard as a hand begins to place a row of pawns into position.
/ NARRATOR: In the mid-18th century, the North American continent was a playing field where European nations competed; the coveted prize was dominion over the rich, vast land itself. The British colonists were, for the most part, proud of their identity as British citizens. In 1754, when war broke out with the French over land in the Ohio Valley, the colonists supported the Mother Country.
  1. images of French and Indian War, incl. portrait of George Washington in uniform
/ MUSIC UP: [Snare drums play a slightly ominous-sounding march.]
  1. cont’d above
/ NARRATOR:They contributed supplies for the British army as well as troops of their own, like the Virginia militia which included the young George Washington. To coordinate this effort, London officials ordered the colonies from Virginia northward to send delegates to convene in Albany, New York. Members of the Iroquois nation were also invited to Albany in hopes that they would support the British cause, or at least remain neutral.
  1. PATRICIA COHEN on camera
/ PATRICIA COHEN: The plan behind the Albany Congress was to get as many Colonies together as possible to discuss ways to coordinate and pay for military defense of the Colonies. And this had not been an issue before, but there had never been the threat of a kind of Pan-Indian War on the Western Frontier.
  1. SHEILA SKEMP on camera; intercut with images of Albany Congress
/ SHEILA SKEMP: What actually happened is that a few colonists—and Benjamin Franklin was the primary instigator in this regard—decided that as long as some of the colonists were getting together to talk to Indians, maybe they would get together and talk to each other as well, and they would develop what became known as the Albany Plan of Union.
  1. SHEILA SKEMP on camera
/ SHEILA SKEMP: It was an ambitious plan. Its greatest significance was that it came from the colonists. They were the ones who created this. Everybody at the Congress signed on to it, or most people did. Then they sent it off to the various colonies to be ratified and not one colony accepted it.
  1. PATRICIA COHEN on camera;
  2. CHESSBOARD (2): image of chessboard as a hand continues to place pieces on the board
/ PATRICIA COHEN: The Albany Congress is a foreshadowing of congresses that would come in the next decade. It indicates that in 1754, the colonies weren’t ready to surrender autonomy. They didn’t see themselves as part of a large unit yet.
  1. MAP, using different colors to identify the territorial divisions of the various players before the war, dissolves into a map illustrating the post-war claims.
/ NARRATOR: In the French and Indian War, the colonies were pawns in a larger struggle for global dominance. After the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the American playing field would never look the same. The defeated French departed the board altogether. Some of their Indian allies were now declared enemies, and British troops were left behind to defend the colonies against them.
  1. CHESSBOARD (3) as a hand places the last piece, a Queen, in position. White moves pawn from E2 to E4 (White=British, black=American)
/ Before long, the British were facing off against the colonists over who would pay for this protection.
  1. SHEILA SKEMP on camera
  2. CHESSBOARD (4): white knight moves from G1 to F3
  3. CHESSBOARD (5): black knight moves from B8 to C6
/ SHEILA SKEMP: In 1763 the English proclaimed something called the Proclamation Line. What they wanted to do was keep the English colonists along the seacoast and keep the Indians to the west. And what they did was keep some English troops along the Proclamation Line to try to preserve that border, and they wanted Americans to pay for that. The problem was, Americans didn’t even want the soldiers there, and they did not want to pay for it with taxes enacted by Parliament. But it was, in terms of the actual money, that really wasn’t the issue. The issue was more, “Do they have a right to tax us? Do we want these British soldiers here? We thought they were all going to go home after the war and we were going to go out West and make all this money.” And all of a sudden those opportunities were closed to them. And they were being taxed for the first time by Parliament.
SEGMENT TWO
“THE GAMBIT” / Music up
  1. portrait of James Otis
/ ACTOR – JAMES OTIS
“I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is.”
  1. CHESSBOARD (6): chess board has changed: black knight has moved from G8 to F6, white knight from B1 to C3); black takes white pawn at E4; then white takes black knight with at E4; black moves D7 pawn to D5, forking white knight and bishop
/ NARRATOR: In 1760, tension between Britain and the Colonies began to escalate when the British applied to renew the Writs of Assistance.
  1. SHEILA SKEMP on camera
/ SHEILA SKEMP: The easiest way to describe them is to say that they were general search warrants.
They were used in the colonies to board ships to find out whether the colonists were smuggling any goods into colonies, which many times they were.
  1. images of Boston merchants;
  2. CHESSBOARD (7): chess game in progress
/ This had been going on for a long, long time and nobody had ever questioned it. But in 1761, there was a big trial in Boston, in which James Otis became one of the leading spokesmen for the merchants and demanded that the Writs of Assistance not be renewed.
  1. CHESSBOARD (8): nightmarish images of the chess board, pieces taken, created with bizarre camera angles, moody lighting
/ ACTOR – JAMES OTIS
“This wanton exercise of power; what a scene does this open! Every man, prompted by revenge, ill humor, or wantonness to inspect the inside of his neighbor’s house, may get a Writ of Assistance. Others will ask it from self-defense; one arbitrary exertion will provoke another, until society be involved in tumult and blood.”
  1. painting or sketch of a courtroom scene from the period; dissolve to interior of Boston’s Old State House
/ NARRATOR: The passionate lawyer’s performance in Boston’s Old State House drew quite a crowd. One witness at the trial, another Boston lawyer named John Adams, described Otis as “a flame on fire.”
  1. interior of Old Boston State House
/ Otis’ opening argument framed many of the fundamental philosophical arguments that would fuel the American revolution.
  1. portrait of Otis
/ ACTOR – JAMES OTIS
“An act against the Constitution is void. An act against natural equity is void; and if an act of Parliament should be made, in the very words of this petition, it would be void.”
  1. SHEILA SKEMP on camera
/ SHEILA SKEMP: What Otis did was argue that there were certain natural rights that no government could abrogate, so he was talking about limited government. He was saying there are some things that Parliament cannot do. At the time I’m not sure how meaningful that was; but later on, that kind of argument would become more and more and more popular. And so he kind of laid the groundwork.
  1. facsimile of the Declaration of Independence and/or interior of Jefferson’s apartment in Phila.
/ NARRATOR: James Otis lost the court case, but his arguments took on a life of their own. The Declaration of Independence, written 15 years later, begins with an appeal to the same higher law to which Otis had referred; and Otis’ arguments on privacy…
  1. juxtapose (or superimpose) portraits of Otis and Madison
/ ACTOR – JAMES OTIS
“A man’s house is his castle.”
NARRATOR: …were still resonating in 1789 when James Madison sat down to write what would become the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
  1. CU of facsimile of the Bill of Rights, or of a hand writing on parchment with a quill pen
/ ACTOR – JAMES MADISON
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”
  1. image of protesting colonists
/ NARRATOR: One of the most vital consequences of Otis’ courtroom performance was its example of how eloquent and inflammatory words could arouse the population to action.
  1. portrait of John Adams;
  2. CHESSBOARD (9): chess game in progress—black takes a pawn
/ ACTOR – JOHN ADAMS
“Every man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take arms against Writs of Assistance. Then and there was the first scene of the first Act of Opposition to the arbitrary Claims of Great Britain. Then and there, the child Independence was born.”
SEGMENT THREE
“THE MIDDLE GAME” / Music up
  1. CHESSBOARD (10): CU chess board: white “castles”
/ NARRATOR: In the winter of 1765, conflict between the colonists and the Mother Country intensified over the Stamp Act. By imposing a tax on a wide range of colonial documents, the British Parliament hoped to raise money to help pay off the national debt. The colonists were incensed.
  1. EDWARD COUNTRYMAN on camera; facsimiles of various colonial documents, packs of cards, etc.
/ EDWARD COUNTRYMAN: First of all, at the level of principle, the Stamp Act did threaten to undercut the power of the colonial assemblies, and that’s where the colonial elites had their power so they felt threatened. Secondly, it was going to reach into practically everybody’s pocket at one point or another. Whether you’re talking about a gambler going down to the tavern to buy a new deck of cards, or a couple who are going to get married, or somebody who is taking out an indenture to become a servant, or you’re buying or selling land; any of that, it was going to reach into these people’s lives.
  1. SHEILA SKEMP on camera
/ SHEILA SKEMP: They wanted to pay for those soldiers out there in the Proclamation Line. They wanted to pay for administrative costs. They saw the Stamp Act as a fair tax, as a small tax, one that would hit everybody more or less evenly, that nobody would have to pay too much, and they saw this as an excellent practical administrative expedient. I think that they were stunned. They didn’t quite know what they were doing or certainly did not know how it would be regarded in America.
  1. images of Charleston; illustrations of effigy hanging from gallows
/ NARRATOR: Mass protests against the pending Stamp Act erupted throughout the colonies. In genteel, tree-shaded Charleston, a furious mob calling themselves “Sons of Liberty” erected a forty-foot-high gallows. There they hung an effigy of a stamp distributor. Inscribed at the base was the phrase “Liberty and No Stamp Act.”
  1. CHESSBOARD (11): chess game in progress; a shot that plays off the black-white dichotomy of the board
/ NARRATOR: In many a colonial tavern, one could find white colonists discussing the need to defend themselves against “slavery” and to fight to preserve their “liberty” at all costs. Pamphlet writers throughout the colonies warned that submission to the Stamp Act would…
  1. a period pamphlet or etching depicting the Sons of Liberty in action
/ ACTOR – Maryland Pamphleteer
“…deprive them of every privilege distinguishing freemen from slaves.”
  1. Image of slaveholders
/ ACTOR – SAMUEL JOHNSON
“How is it that they loudest yelps for Liberty come from the drivers of Negroes?”
  1. EDWARD COUNTRYMAN on camera; intercut portrait of Samuel Johnson
/ EDWARD COUNTRYMAN: …which was Samuel Johnson, of course, in London in 1776. And he meant that thing to sting, that question to sting. I think that when they start using this language in 1765, 66, they don’t realize how hypocritical it actually sounds.
All they mean really is that their property can be taken from them without their say-so. They don’t appreciate where the language is going.
  1. CHESSBOARD (12): Black moves his Queen out
/ NARRATOR: Convinced of the justice of their cause, the colonists were prepared to fight tooth and nail to protest what they saw as “taxation without representation.”
While the rabble rioted, political leaders of the colonies convened a Stamp Act Congress.
  1. PATRICIA COHEN on camera; images of Stamp Act Congress
/ PATRICIA COHEN (Roll 6798, 5:12:50) The Stamp Act Congress was composed of men sent from each colony. They petitioned the king in very polite language and assured the king that they understood that Parliament did have sovereignty over the colonies, but that the Stamp Act was ill-advised and it ought to be rescinded.
  1. CHESSBOARD (13): White moves his Queen back to safety
/ NARRATOR: Facing widespread resistance, the British repealed the Stamp Act. However, Parliament made a point of asserting that, in principle, Britain had every right to tax her colonists. This only deepened resentments on both sides of the Atlantic.
  1. EDWARD COUNTRYMAN on camera
/ EDWARD COUNTRYMAN: That’s why when Parliament repeals the Stamp Act in 1766, it passes the Declaratory Act, which is an empty, hollow shadow of a thing. But it says we can do anything we want, we’ve got the power. The issue shifts from the problem of paying the imperial debt or paying the cost of running the empire to the problem of who is in charge.
SEGMENT FOUR
“THE BLUNDER” / Music up
  1. images of British soldiers circa 1768
/ In 1768, after Bostonians had demonstrated they would not remain passive, the British sent troops to occupy the city.
  1. SHEILA SKEMP on camera; images of British soldiers, colonialists
/ SHEILA SKEMP: Both sides created tension in the years between 1768 and 1770 when the Boston Massacre took place. The British came in. Many of their soldiers who weren’t paid enough tried to get jobs in town, which hurt Americans who were trying to get those same jobs. They drove up the cost of housing. They drove up the cost of food. Americans, on the other hand, did not exactly receive these troops with open arms. They had always been suspicious of standing armies in time of peace. That was one thing that was not allowed in England, and yet here it was happening in America.