It is good that “The American Revolution,” a series by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, premiered on PBS the week before Thanksgiving. It is good to be reminded of the sacrifices that were made to form this nation.

Among the many lessons from the series, two are especially important this Thanksgiving Day. One is about America, and the other is about our families.

The American Revolutionary War was the first war ever fought proclaiming the unalienable universal rights of all people, proclaiming in its founding document that we have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The fathers of our nation were not perfect — some were slaveholders but spoke of equality and freedom for all, and, for the past 250 years, we have largely continued to work toward that goal. The founders were unified when it came to freedom of religion, a right that had been denied them by European monarchs.

It was a diverse group that fought to come together as one nation. And they struggled to move forward together. Their common enemy then was oppressive tyranny and decisions made by a remote government without their consent.

Nothing was guaranteed for those who joined the rebellion, and success seemed unlikely at many points along the way. Those who stood up and fought against British rule risked their lives and fortunes, and some lost both.

What they won for us was the opportunity to keep trying to sustain the most remarkable government experiment in human history — a multi-religious, multi-ethnic democratic republic.

Burns begins the series with a 1790 quote from the patriot Thomas Paine, who wrote about what was required to achieve American freedom in “The Rights of Man.” Paine said the strength and power of despotism over man “consists wholly in the fear of resisting it, and that in order to be free, it is sufficient that he wills it.”

It is the same message President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave over 150 years later during the Great Depression, when he told Americans that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Even today, if we want to keep our freedom, we have to conquer our fear.

The second lesson from the PBS series is that our political differences can be so powerful that they can affect our personal relationships and can even split our families in tragic ways. Burns highlights the story of Lucy Knox, who married American revolutionary Henry Knox in 1774, even though she came from a family of Loyalists.

As the PBS series reminds us, this was a civil war with Americans forced to choose a side. Lucy, estranged from her family and heartbroken, wrote to her sister Hannah in 1777, “How horrid is this war, Brother against Brother — and the parent against the child.”

We all have stories about Thanksgiving celebrations derailed because of strong political differences. Disagreements may be an essential part of the American experience, but that does not mean that we should give up on trying to get along.

Liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and her conservative family clashed over Thanksgiving dinner, until they “made a decision to table the taunts and jibes.” She said, “We’re relying on a virtue that’s been in short supply of late: civility.”

If you still have empty chairs around your Thanksgiving table because of politics, maybe this is the year to try something different.

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