Ken Burns

There are people arguing for the rights of enslaved people.

It is an incredibly fluid and fascinating dynamic.

Which side would you have been on?

I think that's the fundamental question, and I really don't know what side I'd be on.

I don't know whether I could take up arms for a cause, whether I would be willing to die for a cause, whether I would be willing to kill for a cause.

I remember when we made the Civil War series afterwards, I said, we're not doing any more wars.

And for a variety of reasons, we got sucked into doing a history of the Second World War, which we called The War.

Before the ink was dry on that, I'd committed to Vietnam.

And before the ink was dry on Vietnam, I said, we're doing the revolution.

I'm drawn into the fact that it obviously represents the worst, but often the best of us.

And there's so much...

that happens in the levels of it, and yet the elemental question that you ask is one that I think all of us who've worked on it sound every day in some way.

I'm not sure I have the answers.

Of course, I might be a loyalist, but maybe I wouldn't be.

But could I fight?

Jefferson didn't fire a gun in anger.

Patrick Henry didn't fire a gun in anger.

Benjamin Franklin didn't fire a gun in anger.

But George Washington did, and Alexander Hamilton did, and James Monroe did, and many other people fought in this war and made decisions of that kind.

And as the last line of the Declaration says, we mutually pledge to each other our lives,