(insects chirping) (cracking noises) - So what's gonna come out of this revolution is attempts to create an American national identity.

And somebody like George Washington becomes quite eloquent in trying to persuade people.

You're not Carolinians, you're not New Yorkers, you're not New Englanders.

We're all Americans.

(horse neighing) - I love my country.

My favorite holiday is the 4th of July, by far.

And every 4th of July at the lake, I get up and after a big meal, I make everyone listen as I read the Declaration of Independence out loud.

And my four daughters have had to suffer through this years and years and years.

I've been doing this for 50 years, making films about American history, and I had this supreme pleasure in this film to do a scene on the Declaration of Independence as full and as complete and as I think as triumphant and joyful and complicated as you could possibly ever imagine.

- Two or three things that I was surprised to learn were so central to the history are, one, how unlikely it was that we were gonna win.

(loud boom) And I think Washington knew as a great leader that he wasn't gonna win big, he just couldn't lose.

North America sat on the global stage at this time.

It really was a global war.

The prize of North America was an important piece of a global chess board that everybody was looking toward as these empires were shrinking and growing.

And so, the American Revolution is much more than 13 colonies throwing off the crown and trying to figure out and establish what the United States might be.

- The more you learn about the people of the revolutionary generation, the more you read about them, the more you know what they did, and what they saw, and what they felt.

The more you realize their people just like us.

And I think that demystification actually makes me love them all the more.

These are people and they went through an extraordinary time, and we are the product of that, we are that legacy.

I'm glad that we're gonna give people the opportunity to know more about that.

- We've tried really hard as we lock the film to make sure in that speak now or forever hold your peace, that this is the right length of the shot, that this is the right music for a shot, that this is the right movement of the arrow on the map of the shot.

That we were able to gather all this material and put it in service of a complex narrative that I think will be riveting to Americans who are curious about that simple question, my question, who are we?

But in this case, where do we come from?

What is our moment of origin?

That's the whole thing.

I don't think you'll come away from these six parts and 12 hours without a sense of your own ownership of this story.

- The American Revolution changed the world.

It's not just about the birth of the United States, it has ramifications across the globe.

So studying the American Revolution, understanding it, and putting it in a global context, I think is vitally important for us to understand why we are where we are now.

(soft music)