Ken Burns

He's got Old Testament righteousness.

You know, if we have to spend another 500 years

drawing with the sword the blood that is drawn with the lash, meaning fighting to end slavery.

We'll do it.

And then he stops, very Old Testament, he stops on a dime and turns to this New Testament ending, the peroration, which says, with malice towards none, with charity for all.

And then it has that kind of unbelievable generosity in it and this ability to say, a second ago, I'm willing to keep this going for however long it takes to end this scourge of slavery.

Whatever drawn by the lash, drawn by the sword, we will do.

It's just an amazing ability to understand us.

And he took – he's the one who reached back over the Constitution and plucked Jefferson back into significance.

And so when he gives the Gettysburg Address, four score and seven years after the – 87 years after the signing of the Declaration, he's creating the 2.0 operating system that we have now.

We really do mean it, that all men are created equal, and that now, because of the sacrifice, there's not a proper word in that entire address.

You know, the guy before him, Edward Everett, noted orator, spoke for more than two hours, and he spoke for two minutes.

And Everett wrote him, and he said, Mr. President, I should flatter myself if I thought I came to the heart of the matter in two hours as you did in two minutes.

It is.

There's so many wows in the work that we have.

And people say, well, what did you learn differently?

And you go, oh, my God, are you kidding?

Every day is this revelation, this sort of tsunami that breaks over you of new information.

And then it's just, what is it that I can save?

You'd assume, you'd presume completely understandably that making a documentary film on the American Revolution is additive, right?