What We Learned Filming The American Revolution

The co-directors of the new PBS series, Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt, describe how they made a documentary about a war distant in time and shrouded in myth. On June 24, 1778, a total solar eclipse covered a wide swath of North America—from the Pacific Coast of Mexico to Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The eclipse occurred just a few days before the Battle of Monmouth, when George Washington’s Continental Army engaged General Sir Henry Clinton’s British Army—a standoff that nevertheless allowed the Patriots to claim a much-needed victory. The British, meanwhile, continued their retreat from Philadelphia to New York City. We wanted to depict this eclipse for our series The American Revolution, and in this we had a stroke of luck: There would be a total solar eclipse across much of North America on April 8, 2024.