Exposing the Ken Burns’ The American Revolution

[December 3, 2025]  I’ve not yet seen all of the recent production of Ken Burn’s, “The American Revolutionary” series on PBS.  So far, my initial reaction to it was positive, but the more I saw of the documentary, the more I saw it for what it was: biased against America’s founding.  Being distributed on PBS gives the documentary a legitimacy to its historical accounts that the film does not deserve.

Most of the six episode, 12 hour series is very good.  It gives a well-designed graphic layout of the major battles fought.  The production effort is excellent and fast-paced.  There is more to war than the battles and, correctly, Burns tells the story of the logistical challenges the Continental Army struggled to overcome.  Overall, this was a solid effort.

Matt Walsh, in a recent video discusses some of the many objectionable points of the film.  He says the film is largely “propaganda,” but Burn’s work is not easy to just write off as an obvious Woke production.  It would be easy to dismiss the documentary if Burns displayed George Washington as some green-haired, black, lesbian army General.  No one would take it seriously, but that’s not the case here because the film is not over-the-top Woke.

“Ken Burn’s The American Revolution documentary is a master-class in propaganda.” – Matt Walsh

The Iroquois “Democratic” Confederacy:

Now we know where Matt Walsh stands on the documentary, so let’s get into his core arguments on why he thinks it is full of propaganda.  I will add here that Matt Walsh is only one who is saying that large parts of the film are inaccurate.  As well, much of it is just plainly made up to make the American founders look less great and build up those who resisted America as better than they were.

During the introduction of the very first episode, we see how Ken Burns is setting the tone with his documentary.  We see this here, as Burns introduces his documentary:

“Long before thirteen colonies made themselves into the United States, the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy – Seneca, Kauga, Anandaga, Tuscarora, Oneida, and Mohawk – had created a union of their own that they called the Hodonosi; a democracy that had flourished for centuries … In the spring of 1754, the celebrated scientist and writer Benjamin Franklin proposed that the British colonies form a similar union.” – The American Revolution narrator

But was the Iroquois Confederacy a thriving democracy as we would be led to believe?  And seeing this, did Benjamin Franklin adopt the idea because he saw how successful it had become?  What Burns is saying is that our new nation was based on the “appropriation” of “marginalized” peoples, and that we owe our democracy to the Indians.

The problem with the introduction is that the Indians did not have a written language, so there was no written document that laid out their Confederacy.  Additionally, it was not a democratic entity based on the votes of the Indians, but was involuntarily imposed by the clan mothers of the tribes, who had obtained their power through hereditary claims.  There was nothing like a Western democracy in any Indian tribe, anywhere.

We’re supposed to conclude that because these pre-modern tribes were able to band together and form a primitive confederacy, that Ben Franklin took their idea and created a similar union based on theirs. This is, of course, absurd and not based on any historical record.  This is an egregious error on the part of Burns.  It appears that Burns is deliberately leaving us with the impression that the Indians, despite being “illiterate savages” (Franklin’s words), had somehow influenced Franklin and the Founding Fathers to lay the groundwork for our system of government.

Distorting the Slave Trade:

“Slavery was legal everywhere from New Hampshire to Georgia.  Many of the black people living in the colonies had been born there or in the Caribbean, but tens of thousands were from West Africa, captured from what is now Senegal, Gambia, and Gabon, Angola, Congo, and the Ivory Coast …” – narrator

Burns should know better with what he is doing here.  He is conflating the slavery in America with who is doing the capturing of these blacks in West Africa by omitting who were those who were captured, put them in chains, and sold the soon-to-be slaves.  African blacks were enslaved by African blacks. That is the hidden secret Burns leaves out of his narrative.  Burns does not say anything about the black slavers in Africa, a glaring and purposeful omission.

Women Were the Real Heroes of the American Revolution:

“Crisis changes people, and it gave women different ideas about what they should be doing.  Women were the main consumers in colonial society, and they were the ones who made sure the boycotts worked.  Women stopped drinking tea.  Women started making their own fabric.  Women started making toys for their children.  And didn’t just stop buying British things and starting making their own things, they publicized it … The ladies of Boston, the ladies of New York, they are the most patriotic.  They are at the forefront of this protest movement.  If women hadn’t done that, the protest movement and eventually the revolution would have gone nowhere.” – various women in documentary

So what we are being told here is that it is the women who are the heroes of the American Revolution.  Forget the men who were shot and died.  These men did contribute but that is nothing compared to the colonial women who had to endure not buying things.  The message is clear, it was the women who were the primary force in the creation of America.  This is ridiculous propaganda and very Woke, something we might find in the classroom of a Woke first grade teacher.

The Attack on George Washington’s Character:

“George Washington made his Cambridge headquarters in the handsome home of a Loyalist who had fled to England.  One morning, not long after he had moved in, he noticed a six-year-old African American named Darby Vassel, swinging on the gate … Washington urged him to come inside to get something to eat.  He had plenty of chores for him to do. When Darby asked what sort of wages he could expect, Washington thought the question impertinent and unreasonable … Washington was also shocked to see black soldiers encamped alongside their white neighbors.  Unconvinced they could ever make good soldiers, Washington convinced the Massachusetts Provincial Congress to enlist no more of them.” – narrator

Whether this is true or not, we will never know because we are looking at revisionist history.  But smearing George Washington, a Founding Father, is part of the goal that Burns has from the outset.  It is only one of many subtle attacks on the greatness of America.  This attack comes off as lame and not very believable.  Washington is one of the most consequential men who ever lived in history, and the record of his greatest accomplishments that benefited America, and his thinking are well documented.

The Misogynist Army Compensation System:

“Margaret Corbin, a Pennsylvania artilleryman’s wife, was standing near her husband when he was mortally wounded.  She stepped in and kept up such deadly fire, that her position became a target for Hessen guns.  Grapeshot eventually hit her jaw and breast, and rendered her left arm useless.  Three years later, she would become the first woman to receive a lifetime disability pension, but at half the rate wounded men received.” – narrator

This is accurate, as far as I know.  But it’s the little clip at the end that shows us the bias.  The implication is that she only received half a soldier’s disability pay because she was a woman, and thus showing the misogynist nature of the compensation system at the time; they didn’t believe in equal pay, is the message.

This is where Burns is shoehorning a modern grievance into the narrative; a common Burns’ tactic.  Corbin was not a member of the military and they are the ones who receive disability pay, at “one half monthly pay.”   The fact that she got anything at all is unusual, regardless of her heroism.  Margaret received the same pay as the men.  Was this an oversight by Burns or just sloppy journalism? I think we know the answer.

“Ken Burns is a [President] Trump-obsessed weirdo who’s desperate to include racial politics in everything he does …” – Matt Walsh

America is Founded of the Diversity of its Population:

Ken Burns also pushes the “diversity” narrative; diversity being a modern buzzword that denotes multiculturalism, open borders, DEI, and affirmative action.  Burns wants us to think that because of this diversity, that is the reason for the success of the colonies during the Revolution.

But the colonists were not “diverse” in the modern sense that Leftists use the term.  And, Ken Burns knows this.  The colonists were overwhelmingly white and British.  The fact that Indians were on the continent, or the fact that three percent of slaves from the transatlantic slave trade ended up in this country, does not mean the colonists themselves were diverse in the way we would say today’s New York City is diverse.

The colonists shared the same culture, spoke the same language, and were the same race.  They may have not shared the same religion or country of origin, although they were Christian.  They had more in common with one another than a typical modern-day American.

We are not Deists:

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods or no god.  It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.  Most of the revolutionaries belong to Protestant denominations, but there were Catholics and Jews among them too, as well as Muslims whose faith had crossed the Atlantic on slave ships.  Central to the philosophy of some of the most influential creators of the United States was their belief in a supreme being, but one who did not interfere in the affairs of men, or distinguish between faiths.  They were deists.  They believed it was each individual’s responsibility to lead a virtuous life which could only come from tolerance and a lifetime of learning.  The pursuit of happiness.” – narrator

This is one of those claims we will hear again and again, predominantly from Marxists and agitators who want to undermine our Christian tradition.  They’ll tell you that the United States is founded by men who believe that God is totally indifferent to America’s success or failure, and that we should believe the same lie.

But in this case, Burns is pretty obvious about his intentions.  He starts talking about all the Muslim influence on our founding, and how tolerance is our foundation virtue, almost as if he’s being extremely lazy in applying 2025 Leftist talking-points to eighteenth century history.  Which is not the case.

The problem is that America was not founded by deists.  There is not a single reference to deism in a single colonial law or charter.  What we do find is that the Founders explicitly rejected the idea of an absent god, again and again.  What Ken Burns and PBS are counting on is that we won’t look into any of these claims.

Lies delivered Self-Confidently:

The narrator delivers all these interesting factoids and the blatant lies, and everything in between with an equal degree of self-confidence.  This is a deliberate tactic.  History is taught this way now in every context, whether in public schools or in the media.

What is unfortunate here is that no one in the mainstream media is even attempting to point out these problems.  It would be easy to tell the truth and remove all the revisionist history that Burns has tightly woven into his film.  That is not at all surprising.  The one thing we do know is that the media is willing to lie about anything.  Imagine if you will, that the media lies about what is happening today, those things we can see for ourselves.

Imagine what the media is lying about in the eighteenth century.  How many lies are being told about the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or about the Indians, or Richard Nixon, or about civil rights.

“If Ken Burns accomplished one thing with this bloated mess of a documentary in the American Revolution, he’s demonstrated probably more than any other living person, the need for exactly that [telling the truth].” – Matt Walsh

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Please read my books:

1. “55 Rules for a Good Life,” on Amazon (link here).
2. “Our Longest Year in Iraq,” on Amazon (link here).