Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns speaks about the complexities of Revolutionary War-era American government with CEO Emeritus of the National Constitution Center Jeffrey Rosen in the first of two morning lectures Monday in the Amphitheater.
ARIANNA NEVAREZ
Staff Writer
For the first day of their two-day lectureship, Ken Burns and Jeffrey Rosen spoke about the pursuit of happiness, the history leading up to the Constitution and the founders of the U.S. at 10:45 a.m. Monday in the Amphitheater.
The two opened by addressing their interpretations of the phrase “pursuit of happiness.” Burns said the first time he came to Chautauqua, he saw this phrase amplified through the Institution’s mission. He said the Institution is “about lifelong learning” and doesn’t focus on the material aspects of life.
According to Burns, the American Revolution is the “most important event in world history since the birth of Christ,” but with the country’s newfound freedom came an individual responsibility to constantly improve oneself.
“[The pursuit of happiness is] not the pursuit of transitory and immediate pleasures and sensations. It’s about lifelong learning. … The keyword, in that phrase, is ‘pursuit,’ meaning it’s a process,” Burns said. “We’re never going to get there, and it keeps us Americans, and 11 years later in the Constitution, a more perfect union. It keeps us unusually corrigible, willing to correct our mistakes, willing to be restless and innovative. And it’s in that spirit that we can go back and celebrate.”
Burns said the founders were trying to direct people to improve themselves to have a “virtuous life.” To work toward that life, Burns said he reads Leo Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom each morning, a habit he has maintained for more than 4,000 consecutive mornings.
The pursuit of happiness is an “obligation,” according to Burns. He said society will fail at times, but the obligation will always be there for humans.
“This is not just a civic or political gesture. It’s a deeply spiritual one,” Burns said. “As we discuss, the spiritual origins of the United States or the commitment to an ecumenical version of worship that the founders were committed to. They had seen what having a religion meant to all the previous empires in the world and wanted to free themselves of the tyranny that comes from these tiny little differences between faiths that have engendered so much suffering in the world. So, it is a struggle that has to be engaged every day.”
Burns played the beginning of the second episode of “The American Revolution,” which took the audience through the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the excerpt, Burns said winning the war was a “miracle.” He said the odds of an American victory against “one of the great military powers of the earth” at Lexington were close to zero, yet they won. Often, Burns explained, the different historical figures of the American Revolution are pitted against one another, and Burns is constantly asked who is the best writer; he said too many of the “bold-faced names” are just “marble statues,” yet society thinks of them as perfect. Society’s perception of history in this regard is a disservice because it makes history feel unapproachable, according to Burns.
“It’s important to understand that we get distracted by the romanticism and sentimentality of the revolution. We even champion … something that fits into a kind of convenient story that we want to do,” Burns said. “We also see the pressures even today of trying to make the story simpler and more direct when it’s in fact complicated, and as we were saying earlier this morning, a complicated story might be redundant. A good story is a priori complicated, and this one, of our founding, involves such high ideals and such extraordinary betrayals.”
To understand the full and complicated story, Burns said he also tried to focus on the stories that aren’t often considered or told. From soldiers from foreign countries to minorities in the U.S., some voices are underrepresented in narratives about the U.S., yet they are central to it, Burns said. To contextualize this issue, Burns shared a clip that focused on the Sullivan Campaign of 1779 from “The American Revolution.”
He said he selected this clip because the campaign targeted tribes located in present-day Western New York. Six nations were attacked, burned and deprived of all resources they had built up for themselves.
“Washington, basically at the same time he is coming to deliver us to this promised land, is taking away their promised land at the same time with a chillingness that you just have to sit in in order to understand. To celebrate who we are, deservedly so, we also have to know this other side,” Burns said.
Rosen cited the contradiction Thomas Jefferson created by praising Native Americans in his notes on the state of Virginia, then enacting “a policy of Native American removal.”
However, Rosen said, not all of the founders were brutal. In John Dickinson’s first draft of the Articles of Confederation in 1776, freedom of conscience would have been guaranteed to men and women, according to Rosen.
Burns then told the history of the Battle of Yorktown, including the events that led to it. Burns talked about American colonists being “spectacularly successful” against the British, convincing the French to join. The two nations worked together to win in Yorktown, but Burns said America was at a “be careful what you wish for” moment.
The nation was challenged with creating a republic, learning how to rule, addressing the topic of slavery and creating compromises as a collective. While writing a letter to Madison, Jefferson asked him questions about the future of the Constitution, writing: “What if someone should lose an election but pretend false votes and reap the whirlwind?” Burns also cited Alexander Hamilton’s words: “What if someone should mount the hobbyhorse of popularity and create chaos? No man is above the law.”
“I mean, this is why we study the past,” Burns said. “Just to be forewarned.”
The lecturers played a clip focusing on the Battle of Yorktown to close ahead of Tuesdays lecture on the aftermath of the battle, when the U.S. gained its independence. Burns asked the audience to consider the dynamic between flawed people attempting to create a system built on checks and balances.
“All of these clips we’ve given you are going to tell you what the flesh is heir to, and that they are as aware of it as we are. Even as they can’t themselves control their own hypocrisies of owning slaves or participating in the uprooting of Indian villages,” Burns said. “So, this is the great gift that they have given to us — and we are required to take, internalize and then pass on to our posterity — is this understanding that it is not you or them. It is us, and that we have met the enemy and it’s us.”
