It was a brilliant early fall morning in upstate New York, and Ken Burns was back on the battlefield.

He had just driven two hours from his home in New Hampshire to a rolling meadow outside Saratoga Springs, where the view has changed little since the Continental Army scored its first major victory over the British in 1777. After climbing onto the porch of an 18th-century farmhouse, he started delivering his now-familiar spiel to a small group of journalists and local officials.

“The American Revolution is encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality and nostalgia,” he said. But his six-part, 12-hour documentary about the subject, which debuts Nov. 16 on PBS, will aim to strip that away — and hopefully bring some healing to our own fractured moment.

“We say, ‘Oh we’re so divided,’ as

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