Transcripts For CSPAN2 Books By David McCullough 20240713

Cspan why wouldnt the government at that time have protections for him . Guest why wouldnt the government have a pension. There were for pensions for nobody else and not a penchant for the present in effect he had very little money. He had to borrow money quite secretly which dean acheson cosigned to pay for the move back home. This is not wellknown and it doesnt mean he didnt have any money. He did have money but he needed cash to cover all the expenses coming out of the white house. When he got home in order to provide himself some income he undertook the writing of his autobiography, his memoirs which no other president had ever done except for herbert hoover. Hoovers time in office was much briefer than was trumans presidency and covered far more tumultuous history so to undertake the 2volume memoir was a very major ambitious task and then he build his library. There had been a previous president ial library, Franklin Roosevelt library at hyde park established after roosevelt had died in office or truman was the first president who actually officiated over the establishment of his president ial library and there again he was beginning something new. I think one of the things i tried to imply or to emphasize in the book is that truman was a very creative public figure. He was a creative president. He was a creative presidency. He had been a builder of his life. He built roads and he build courthouses and when he became president he built the famous truman balcony on the back of the white house with a flurry of criticism. Then of course he is the one who ripped entirely rebuilt the white house. The white house we have today is really a house that harry built except for the outer shell which is maintained, the original outer shell. The entire interiors the reconstruction of the original house and need to pardon every detail of that reconstruction. He loved it. He loves building and he loves creating. And of course in a larger way his presidency is marked by such creative and innovative acts as the Marshall Plan and the truman doctrine and so forth. So to begin to be a builder in the chapter of his life appealed to him tremendously and the library, building the library and his office in the library welcoming guests there and taking people around the library became his life. Cspan did you ever meet him . Guest i saw him once when i was a youngster. One of my first jobs in new york, i was very starryeyed. Id gotten a job at the magazine called Sports Illustrated and i was coming home from work one night. We lived over in brooklyn and i came out of the subway stop of the old hotel in a big car pulled up. There was a small crowd waiting in my went into the crowd. Governor Harriman Harriman stepped out and i had never seen a governor before so i was excited about that. Former president truman and i was just astonished. And i remember thinking my god hes in color because we only had blackandwhite television. And i think the fact that he is high and read it good health radiated good health and he certainly didnt see mike a little man to me. To me he was 6 feet 8 inches but i never spoke to him. I never met him. Ive often thought wouldnt it be interesting if he could go back in time and i could reach out and touch him on the shoulder in 1956 that fall night and say mr. President im going to write your biography someday. Cspan knowing what you know about him what you think you would think about it . Guest im sure some of it he would like because this is after all an honest attempt to see his flaws and faults to but i would hope in some he would think i had understood him better than other people have. I think he was a much much more complicated complex keenly intelligent man, thoughtful and considerate man. Just as the harry truman portrait implies. He isnt just a kind of salt a downhome missouri will rogers and all of the people that i have interviewed that had worked with him and were in the white house would all say please understand that this man was much more than the fbi. Cspan how many interviews did you do . Guest about 126 and that runs across a Broad Spectrum of people who hardly knew them at all and who saw him coming go as neighbors or people independent but also some of whom that were so important that i interviewed many times over during the 10 years it took me to write the book. Cspan who did you spend the most time with . Guest i would guess in total perhaps either Margaret Truman his daughter or George Kelsey on the white house staff and some of the secret Service People who were invaluable because they were with him all the time. Many of whom had never been interviewed before. Write your secret Service Allowed to talk afterthefact . Guest apparently so. And they were wonderful because they saw him offstage and they saw him under all conditions and often under enormous pressure, tension. You mentioned the attempted assassination. Two of the secret servicemen who are still here in washington walked me through the whole event from inside and outside the playhouse where to place. I spent the better part of on saturday doing that and i dont think, im sure thats never been done before so my account of that is based on material that can only be had by reaching that time to living people. And their devotion to harry truman is a very compelling thing to listen to and its true of all the people at all levels. I did not find a Single Person who knew him well or worked with him who wanted to tell me what his terrible backstage temper was or what an ungrateful or difficult boss he was to work with. The closer people were to him its not that they just liked them but they were devoted to him. In a way i was hoping id find some people who really didnt like him so i could have some skeletons to pull out of the closet but that never happened. Cspan when did you start on it . Guest 10 years ago, 1982. Cspan what was the reason . Guest well i was, i was looking for subjects. I started working on a book about picasso. I had to goround with Pablo Picasso to wind up with harry truman and ike without luck after a few months because he was to me a repellent human being. He didnt really have the story of the kind that interested me. He was instantly successful. He never really went very far or had any venture so to speak. He was immensely important painter. He was the frack a tour of modern art that i found the treatment of his family and his attitude toward women he wasnt somebody wanted to spend five years with as a roommate so to speak. Cspan guest my editor at Simon Schuster suggested i think about doing Franklin Roosevelt because at that time it was not a good one volume biography of roosevelt than just don an impulse in a visceral way i said no, if i were going to do a 20 century president they wouldnt be president roosevelt that would be harry truman. He said well why not harry truman . I looked into it and i found there was not a good biography of harry truman. There is the complete life and times did this last chapter that you are talking about, that part of his life has never been written about before and it comprised of 20 years of his life, very important part of his life. Beyond that there was this immense collection of letters and diaries which he poured himself out on paper all of his life and he left a written personal, very revealing president unlike any president that i know of that im sure we will never have another president that leads anything like that. We dont write letters much anymore and we dont keep diaries much anymore. He did both his whole life among before he ever realized he was going to be a figure of history. In one month to give you an example, and one month in 1947 when he was resident and his wife thats was in independence looking after her mother harry truman the president of the United States wrote to her 37 times. These werent just simple how are you and the weather is turning cool or what have you. These were real letters. Cspan did you find out how you broke them . Were they all in longhand . Guest wonderful clear straightforward strong handwriting jeff he was but fortunately very legible so there was never a problem reading his handwriting is there was ever seldom a problem understanding what he was talking about. Cspan in the last chapter you point out he and his wife bess truman called her darter margaret every night in new york . Guest yes. They were very very closely the same people that were with him as speaker surgeon secret Service Agents or his white house or domestic staff have said they were by far the closest family they had ever known in the white house and though they dont want to quote and by person they said truman was their favorite president. He was the first president ever to walk out to the kitchen and the first president in their memory to walk out to the kitchen to thank the chef or the cook for the dinner that night. They said they remember Calvin Coolidge coming out once or twice and they thought it was perhaps to see if anybody was belching food. Truman knew everybody by name on the staff and knew all about their families. This was sort of a politicians life. Its just the way he was and the whole give them hell harry, harry truman on the job at the office in the white house with his people at the lowest level where the highest level never gave anyone help never raised his voice. If anything hes remembered for being how considered he was. For small favors and courtesies he would do. David mccullough has appeared on cspan more than 75 times including 50 appearances on booktv. Up next he discusses his biography john adams are the 2001 book was the recipient of the pulitzer prize. Guest john adams was born in 1735. He lived until 1826 at the age nearly of 91. He lived longer than any president in our history. He has been commonly thought of as a rich boston blueblood. He was none of those. He wasnt rich, he wasnt lost on me and andy was the blueblood. He was a farmers son who because of a scholarship to harvard discovered looks as he said red forever. John adams was the most deeply and broadly read american of his time and there was john adams the second president of the United States who signed legislation to create the library of congress. So to be here to talk about john adams and remember john adams is altogether particularly appropriate at this occasion. He was a man of genuine brilliance. He was also a man of great heart and great humor devoted to his country, truthful, devoted to his wife and to his family, hardworking and godfearing and altogether one of the bravest patriots in our history. He was abrasive and sometimes temperamental and sometimes tactless, sometimes overly concerned with his own position or place in the estimate of his friends or posterity and he was also a man to his credit but also to his bandage that he never considered popularity his mistress but he never courted top hilarity. He was a man of runcible. His courage was the courage of his convictions. I think one of the most vivid and important examples of his principle behavior and conduct in life was he was the only founding father who never owned a as a matter of principle. Now we know its important to judge those who didnt own in the context of their time. Thats correct and fair and historically the sensible sound thing to do but lets not forget that John Abigail Adams were also at the time opposed slavery. Abigail perhaps even more ardently than her husband. At one point she once says i wonder if all the travails and suffering that we are going through our punishment for the sin of slavery. The San Andreas Fault of slavery that runs through our countries story begins well before the revolution just as the revolution is too many seen people dont understand before the declaration of independence. The declaration of independence is John Dickinson who opposed the proclamation of independence was in many ways launching into a storm in the skiff made of paper. What date it not more made it more than just a piece of paper was the fact that we succeeded in the revolution, and the war. We fought for, fought for and succeeded in gaining our independence. John adams wouldnt have said free and independent he would have said independent and free. You have to have the independence and the freedom. New englanders by nature and cultural tradition if you will war fiercely independent people. Independence was a way of life so was religion. I think this is of the outmost importance in understanding that time, that age, that moment in history and those protagonists. We believe strongly in the separation of church and state and to a large degree they all did too. The separation of church and state in their time and in their minds and eyes and spirits did not mean the separation of church and statesmen. If we really want to understand that we have to understand the part that religion played in their life and their whole outlook on what might happen next. They also had very Long Distance communications that took a lot of time and a lot of travail and is almost on beyond reckoning. To get a letter back and forth between philadelphia and boston read the adams lived and they called it rain tree took at least two weeks. The communication across the ocean and the Adams Abigail and john were separated and cumulatively 10 years and that separation was created by the Atlantic Ocean and communicated across the Atlantic Ocean upwards of three to six months. And what did that mean . It meant both in personal life and in diplomatic or official life that one had to be more responsible than we understand today that ones own decisions. Abigail adams at home running the family and running the farm trying to keep people, good people working to meet the farm work to get that was their only means of subsistence and trying to educate the children making decisions about whether to give smallpox shots for example. She had to make those decisions herself rage she wouldnt pick up the phone and ask her husband what should i do . That was a part of life. Assumption of responsibility to ones self. When adams was serving in france and in the netherlands and in england as a diplomat again and again he had to make homages decisions on his own, decisions that would affect the course of events at the time and the fortune of United States in this country and perhaps his own career. Nothing could be communicated any faster than something that could be transported. We think of communication and transportation is two different things. No faster than a sailboat macker someone on a horse. They are quite like we are because they lived in a different time. A very different time and a very very interesting time. In writing the book i tried to read not only what they wrote and oh my did they write, but neither john nor Abigail Adams was capable of writing a dull sentence or a short letter. [laughter] they wrote just between the two of them over 1000 letters to each other. Over 1000 have survived all of the Massachusetts Historical Society and all unread paper and as a consequence those letters today are as good as the day they were written. You can hold them in your own hands and you are holding that letter at the same distance to your eyes as they did and with two hands as they did and something tactful and very important and visceral happens when you are working with the real thing. It isnt the same as seeing it on microfilm or in a book. The humanity, the mortality, the vulnerability of those people comes through in the bravery. Think about women alone in her kitchen at 11 00 at night having been up since 5 00 in the morning doing what she did sitting down and writing those letters and nearly always inserting into her letter some wonderful quote from one of her favorite pulitzers or shakespeare or are always getting a little bit wrong. [laughter] which showed she didnt look it up. She wasnt taking a book off the shelf and copying it in saying this will make me look great. She knew as part of her. There is equally important and equally rewarding experience in reading not just what they wrote that what they read. I did a small piece for the Washington Post this summer about that. All those writers that so many of us were required to read and english courses in high school and college, samuel johnson, pope and swift and thoreau and Samuel Richardson the novels of Samuel Richardson and to be reminded of how terrific they were, what wonderful writers. We talk about progress and heaven knows we live with the benefits of progress all the time, certainly when we go to the dentist. [laughter] when i think of poor john adams at the end of his life was not a tooth in his head, every one of them had been told long before nova kaine. We have a certain vanity and a certain arrogance but when you read what they wrote in the 18th century i dont think anybody does it any better today or even as well. I will tell you Something Else that all to all got to make a sauce set up an shape up and that is the letters a rate in massachusetts was higher in their time than it is today. And what a disgrace that is. And what good work, a lot of work still has to be done about that. The books that they read affected their lives as they do our lives and our time. They affected their notion of truth, her are some, right and wrong, how you write a letter. John adams for example advice john quincy dont try to write literature when you write a letter. Dont strain for thrills and fancy effect. Write the way you talk. Its a letter, remember that. Write the way you talk so when you read his letters of john quincy you were hearing them talk. One of the things that i have done in my books and particularly in this book one of the ways i approach biographies simply my way is to let them talk as much as possible. Most of life is talk if you think about it. How they talk in the words they use and the figures of speech and expression and the cadence all at their reflection of personality, style, the person. Abigail was usually influenced by the writings of Samuel Richardson particularly the great novel clarissa which was one of the most popular novels of the 18th century and she wrote a very interesting letter to her knees saying you want to read colors and you ought to write your letters the way they are in that novel. The whole novel as many of you know are just letters. Its people writing letters back and forth to each other and they are written to the moment predicts whats happening right now and thats the way abigails letters are written. All those letter she wrote her husband were written in large part because they were separated for so many years and the suffering they experience because of their separation is to our advantage because we as a consequence of the letters. Even when she wasnt separated from her husband she would write to somebody else. She would write to her sister for example, some of the best letter she ever wrote and she needed to work her thoughts out on paper and her feelings out on paper. This is a very important point about writing for all of us. You all have had the experience sit down you start to write something and you find you have an inside thought that you never would have had if you hadnt wanted to write something about writing focuses the brain in a different way. With that some video of your home and your writing shed. Where is it . Guest well first of all its not a shed. Its headquarters. Thats her home on music street in west massachusetts the village in the center of the island of marthas vineyard. Thats the bat porch looking out over the acre where we have gardens and a nice reach back to bordering a neighboring farm which has been in the same family since the island was first settled. This is in affect my walk and thats where he worked right there. That measures 12 by 8 feet and has windows on all four sides. I absolutely love it. There are about 800 books in their and my faithful typewriter for which i have worked now since 1965. Add i wrote every book ive ever written on that old royal typewriter produced nothing wrong with that. It is an example of a beautifully made american machine. It probably has 750,000 miles on it. Cspan if he written every word of john adams in this room . Guest part of it was written in charlottesville only lived there for a year, the better part of the year when i was doing research at the library at the university of virginia. But essentially all of it was written here in that room. Cspan what time of day the right . Guest i work all day everyday. Im not writing all day. Dime reading or correcting what i wrote the day before or im going over notes. Theres no phone, theres no telephone there. Cspan do you have music . Guest there is no music. Theres a nice view but i wont be tempted by it. Its far enough from the house that general washington and some of his soldiers marching along i hope they showed the end of it because theres a guy at the end identify with. Hes the one thats always a little slow. Hes catching up. Here we will see him. I look at him and he is my example. Thats the one. Hes always a little behind and i work out there because when the children were young i didnt want them to have to be walking around. There is a line from louis agassi. He called me to really look at whats in front of me when i worked work. Its one of the earliest photographs of the capital prevail love that photograph. Thats how i got interested. This is a great line from adams letter to abigail about none but honest and wise wise men rule under this roof which is indicated there into the mantelpiece of the state dining room at the white house. Thats the map of boston which they use very importantly in the book im working on now and of course it figured very importantly as a contemporary map and the john adams put threeday take everything with a wonderful crayon drawing by french artists. Its the best representative of him ever done and i love drawing and i love painting. I paint and draw myself and the only way we can see those people is through paintings and drawings. Its the of the utmost importance of trying to them reach the human being that one is writing about. Those are all letters from George Washington which again is part of what im working on. They have been dug up on the property were building the little building where i work. Cspan how long have you lived in the house . Guess who we bought it initially 1965. We paid for what you pay for car today. It was the eyesore of the city but they slowly began to restore it and fix fix it up. We live for a term at cornell. I was a writer in residence at the University Mexico for a while and the aggregate of half a year at least an independence missouri when i was working on the truman book. This is the other work area. This is where all of the paraphernalia of the communications are located. The fax machine, the copying machine, the computer and so forth. That is a little sign that says no cell phones permitted in this room which i took from a hotel in london. I love that little sign. I was in italy having lunch and thats a photograph of i spoke with a joint session of congress and it showed jim wright falling asleep to my eloquence. Some grandchildren, rosalies grandfather from ireland. Thats one of my watercolors the house on marthas vineyard. The paintings are here and there around the house. Id have them to the children. Thats one from our hotel room at the boston public gardens. Cspan how long does it take you to paint . Guess that these are watercolors which you can do pretty quickly. Thats the Crow Reservation in montana could thats a little sketch of the farm near the house where he lived in pen and ink. Its something ive always loved to do and i think i left our oldest daughter melissa and their first granddaughter and caitlyn and John Mcdonald her husband. Thats across the street where he served over the years so you see how far i have to go to get to the library. They used to say to my friends if youd like to go into the library for cigars we would rock across the street and there was a little library. The church were some of our children were married and thats right on the corner where we live. Cspan i have one of those that you are talking about. Its got creases in it. Who was in the photo . Guest thats a picture of my mother probably taken before i was born. Cspan mother on the left . Guest mother on the left and my aunt marty on the right that i loved it because it was such a wonderful period in the cradle car in the background. Cars always take photographs. I put a car in the photographs so youll know when they were taken but i appreciate that because my aunt marty was in the picture and was the one who gave me a copy of appomattox when i graduated from yale. That started me reading bruce kaplan which started me reading our protect mode and a lot of other people and i didnt know it at the time but the bruce catton book really changed my life because i began to sense what i wanted to do as a writer. David mccullough is the author of a dozen books and a twotime winner of the vote surprise and National Book award. Hes appeared on booktv more than 50 times. Our look at his programs from the archives continues with a look at the Washington Post in 2002. Here he reflects on the Research Conducted for his 1983 book about the Brooklyn Bridge. I have had a lunch with several friends in a restaurant on the low rate side of washington of new york and the two friends were both friends and i both started talking about all the builders of brooklyn ridge had known what they set out to create this unprecedented structure. My first book was about the johnstown which is really a study in human shortsightedness, human irresponsibility. If theres a theme to the johnstown book its really that its perilous, certainly extremely dangerous up there and assume because people are in positions of fronts ability they are behaving responsibly. That is the mistake that all were making in johnstown and that the cost of more than 2000 lives. It wasnt an act of god. It was the fault of human beings. What happens in life and certainly happens in publishing his viewer quickly typecast and after the book came out ahead to publishers approach me. One wanted me to do a book about the chicago fire and the other one to do a book about the San Francisco earthquake. [laughter] and at the age of about 35 i was being typecast as bad news for cola. [laughter] i didnt like that in fact what i really wanted at that stage in my outlook on the human condition with some symbol of affirmation because we arent always shortsighted. We do know how to solve problems as human beings and we do have the capacity to do greater things than we know and imperfect people working together can often achieve noble, creative works. Listening to these two men talk about the Brooklyn Bridge at that lunch i suddenly thought, thats it. Thats the symbol of affirmation that i have been looking for. I came out of that restaurant and i was working then as an editor in new york and somebody was waiting for my me back at the office to talk about something or other. I had forgotten completely about it. I was so excited about the idea and so motivated i went immediately to the 42nd Street Library in new york and that took those marble stairs up to the thirdfloor where the card catalogs were. I was just propelled by this book that was acquiring a structure in the design in my head. All i wanted to know was if someone had already done it. I pulled out the drawer and i read over 100 cards on the subject of the Brooklyn Bridge but not one according to the descriptions on the cards that was the book i had in mind. They knew nothing about the bridge engineering or physics or mathematics. One of the lessons that i learned in the process of writing the book is if you are motivated you can learn anything. If you work it out yourself and if you unravel it yourself, if you struggle to understand it on your own you will know it in a way that you will never lose it. It will never go away and im very interested in how we learn things and how we teach people today and have traditionally. So much of it is just handed to the student and we all know how we can study or have studied for an exam for days and days and we go in and take the exam and we do fairly well or we do very well and then two months, two years its gone. I could go today 30 years later and take a test on building the Brooklyn Bridge and the details in the structure of the Brooklyn Bridge and extremely well because its part of me now. It will always be a part of me because i had to do it on my own struggling to work it out myself read is one of the reasons i think we need to bring much more of the Lab Techniques techniques and the humanities and we do presently. Rosalie and i drove from her home in lake plains produce. It was a beautiful saturday afternoon in the fall and everything was inglorious color. We got to the campus in troy, new york and there was almost no one there. There must have been a football weekend or something and we went to the library which was an old church that have had been converted into a library, very dark victorian church. I went to the desk and i called in advance and i said we are here to look at the world link collection for the woman said well we are so shorthanded today i will just give you the key. You go up to the top of the stairs all the way to the attic and there are light switches on the way up the stairs, if you turn left theres a door to a closet right to the left of the top of the stairs. We went up the stairs and turning on the light switches which were 40watt bulbs and the stairs creak. It was like something out of steven kang. We got to the top of the stairs and turned to the left and took the key, opened the door and there wasnt a closet. It was a small room with shelves all around from floor to ceiling jammed with material. Scrapbooks, old fox is of letters, photographs, all kinds of notes of some kind couldnt tell what they were tied up with old shoestrings and you could tell this shoestrings have never been untied. They had that worn look that shoestrings get 30 years later that had never been untied. And there was a bust of john roebling, the designer of the bridge and adore knocker from brooklyn heights. And it looks jeff something in somebodys closet in an attic. But it was the volume of it, the amount and i looked at it and i went oh and rosalie looked at it and she said oh my gosh. [laughter] there goes three years of our lives. It was the proverbial trump in the attic compounded i dont know how many times. It did take three years to go through the material and to write the book. They were in many ways three of the best years of my writing life spray was telling marie earlier before this event started that there, he had written a number of oaks and sometimes you write a book on the subject of the book and it sort of done when youre finished. He feel that said, ive said everything i want to say about this and you really dont want to turn back to it again. That has never been sure for the subject of the Brooklyn Bridge. Its infinitely interesting work of american art of the greatest importance. Its a lesson of so many times that i hope in a brief way i can just talk about that. First of all it is a great urban event. It is a great expression of the ideal of the city, of late community committed to the ideal of the city. It stands at the very gateway of our nation, our country and particularly in that day in the 19th century was the gateway for millions of immigrants coming up the harbor to the new world. There was nothing like it in the world. There was nothing like it in the country. Those towers on the Brooklyn Bridge when they were completed which dont seem like very much today were the tallest structures on the northern continent, taller even the capitol dome here in washington. They werent expression at the beginning of highrise of heroic new york it was the first time it began to appear that it wasnt growing out, is going to go up. The concept of a vertical city with new and furthermore it was hitherto impossible and in the Brooklyn Bridge are being greedy and of highrise skyscraper urban america right there because it contained heroic scale and steel, the first use of structural steel in a major way in any structure in new york except for the deeds bridge in st. Louis would still stands the first use of major structural steel anywhere. We talk about social revolutions and economic revolutions. Bessemer steel is one about which too little has been written into litter too little understood. Was the whole complexity of the country in the direction of the country. The bridge will contain in its designed the concept wherein a work of engineering is performing its service to the quality of life in the city. If youve been to the Brooklyn Bridge and he walked across the Brooklyn Bridge you know exactly what im talking about. The boardwalk. Its how you walk over the bridge. Instead of putting pedestrians sidewalks or walks on the outside of the bridge on the permit her of the bridge the designer put them inside of the bridge, and side bet great net of vertical cables so and above the traffic to vehicular traffic so when you walk across the Brooklyn Bridge you feel contained in that network of cables and you are not on the edge of the bridge. All the uneasiness that can go with that are gone. Furthermore because you are above the traffic you can enjoy the view and away that you cannot know whether bridge. There has never been a bridge for this turn walkway was so designed and tragically there has never been one since. As you know nothing juniors who designed their bridge, bridges i think spent two weeks, months, years studying how to put that railing at exactly the point so when you go across and a card you cant see anything. [laughter] [applause] but the engineers wrote an original if the idea was people could on a sunday afternoon on a weekend day go with your family or your boyfriend or your children and walk up and out of the city, up higher than youve ever been in your life. There were many buildings that were four or five stories. You are 119 feet above the river and it isnt a river. The title straight. Saltwater with four to 6 feet. There were sharks in the rivers in those days. Siegels fly under the bridge and the bridge is so high up the kazoo was built in the age of the sale and they wanted the ships coming and going from the Brooklyn Navy yard upstream to be able to do so without trimming their tops. Only the bigger ships of the day had to do that. It was also the beginning of the advent of steam on the rivers he we could see all kinds of steamboats and sailboats and feel the fresh air. Enjoy yourself and have the thrill of knowing that you were in new york city. You were in brooklyn. You were in the greatest metropolis with what was thought to be the greatest country on earth. Statement the revolutionary war in the 18th century was more important to who we are and the way we are and what we hold to be in our american secular faith than most people realize. And unfortunately to a very large degree it is portrayed so often, almost as though the people who were involved and particularly the protagonists were figures in a costume pageant. The cloning of the time, the renditions of jefferson and washington and others in the paintings by Gilbert Stuart were Charles Wilson teal land this sort of theatrical quality to them. We dont see them in photographs. We have no recordings of their voices. We cant see film footage of them and in fact in the case of those who fought in the war we have no on the spot drawing by artist correspondence such as Winslow Homer covered the civil war so its almost impossible to reach them as we would reach people in the civil war or the First World War except for what they wrote. What they wrote in diaries and letters and sometimes orderly books of records of one kind or another and memoirs or autobiographies written afterthefact. The newspaper coverage was nothing like you would expect. There were no correspondents covering the war. No reports coming back to be published in the papers around the country. And by and large we would have to conclude we dont know what they look like. But we do know what they look like in part because of deserter notices. When men deserted from the ranks and when they went home or went over to the other side into effect did notice is or what they published in the papers or at the country stores. They were very descriptive because they hoped to find these people. What comes through in those descriptions is the realization of how different from all of us they look. Very few who fought with washington with washington in 1776 war uniforms. Even the officers rarely had full uniforms. Washington himself had a magnificent uniform because he felt that was part of his role as a leader, to look like a leader and to look like a general. The men in the ranks were wearing every thing imaginable. And they were not supplied with replacements for what they were so as the year wore on their clothing became tattered mended, and eventually in rags or worse in rags. And the times themselves, the era in which they live was so much harder than we understand. Life for someone in the 18th century even in peacetime was very difficult by our standards, very uncomfortable, filled with danger, threats of disease, filled with the possible accidents and physical destruction that would come from what works. People were beaten up i live more than we are and our time. There was no orthodontists, no dentist, no cosmetic surgeons to say the least so that someone with a severe childhood injury like nathaniel green would walk the rest of his life with a limp coming from an accident that in our time could be readily corrected. John pummeled the great painter whose works hang in the capital the signing of the decoration of independence, the magnificent painting of one of the most important scenes in our history when washington returns to the army back to the congress returned as powers to the Congress Something no general have ever done after the end of the revolutionary war. He has to use up all night again because of a childhood injury. Henry knox as part of one hand blown off in a hunting accident as a young man. On and on. People were missing teeth. They had a way of holding their head on their shoulder because of something that had happened to them. Live is dangerous, difficult and people were resilient, tough and strong to a degree that is something we too seldom forget. We in our time are softies by contrast. Its hard for us to imagine what it be like to have sweeping epidemic is in terry or smallpox or typhus or typhoid sweep through our town, community or city and take the lives of hundreds of people all around us. But it happened. Of course when the war came along the suffering and tragedy and the grief, the sorrow can be measured with any statistics. Abigail adams said future generations who will reap the blessings will have little idea and little imagine what we have suffered on their behalf and she was right. The war was the longest in their history except for the vietnam war, it 8. 5 years. Was also very bloody proportionate to the population. 25,000 americans were killed and two we do have lived with the brutal statistics of the 20th and the 21st century of war casualties and sufferings worldwide 25,000 doesnt sound like a great deal but 25,000 was 1 of the population of 2,500,000. If we were to fight a revolutionary war today with our population that would mean its over 3 billion would be killed within their time it was a horrible war and it was extremely costly to the people who stayed home and had to make do without their husband to work the farm or to be the breadwinner. I would like to just read you a little bit from some of these deserter notices. They are very colorful. They are very rich are asked. In a way they are describing people who were immediately identifiable in a way that we are not used to, very much like the characters in dickens day. One George Reynolds of rhode island for example was 5 feet 9. 5 inches tall, age of 17 and carried something on his right shoulder. Thomas williams was an immigrant in old countryman it says quote that means he was from coal country. He was not an old man from the country. Its probably from ireland or wales for were somewhere to that effect spoke good english but had a film on his left eye. David ralph a saucy fellow was wearing a white coat, jacket and breeches and a ruffled shirt when last seen. Asserted from colonel brewsters regiment and captain harveys set a note to the gazette one siemensma the greenfield to join her bite trade a thin fellow about 5 feet 4 inches high and have him of loot code and a black vest a metal button black long hair, black eyes and his voice in a hermaphrodite fashion masculine rather predominate. Likewise a small smart fellow grayheaded has a younger look on his face and is apt to say i swear, i swear. Between his words will. He had on the raincoat and old red graco was wearing too to see one red and one green was the right games are also he were something of a sober look. Likewise john davey along up shouldered fellow ed shoemaker by trade for comfortable says comfortable. He out on a green coat thick leather breeches then leaks lost some of its four teeth. These men who are largely anonymous were the ones who went and did the hard marching and fighting and marching and fighting again and again month after month and who made the words and noble ideals of the decoration of independence more than just a declaration, more than just words on paper. When we celebrate the 4th of july we celebrate the great openings and passages of the declaration of independence. We celebrate that all men are created equal, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. None of that would have been possible without the man who marched with washington through 1776 and beyond. Dont picture them as all heroes. They werent. Hundreds deserted. Thousands deserted as time went on. Thousands more went home when their enlistment were out. They only enlisted for a year and when the time came to go home there was nothing to stop them and many of them just marched away. When washington was in retreat across new jersey and his army was down to rags and many of the men were without shoes and winter was coming on and the british were coming on fast behind them and force beyond anything washington could imagine with soldiers who were welltrained, well shod with Good Clothing in good equipment. While that was going on at one point in december the enlistment for 2000 men came up in 2000 men marched away home with no shame. David and that was because in part, they were led by a man who would not quite. George washington was not a great intellectual but jefferson hamilton. It was not the brilliant speaker like his fellow virginian trick henry. What George Washington was a leader. He was a man of an honorable courage physical and moral courage. He was a man who can spot rates talented other people and give them a chance. And two of the best many pet, he picked within about two weeks of first meeting them. Nathaniel green, and henry knox. He picked them despite the fact that they were new englanders any dislikes new englanders. He thought they were the best he had in the works. Those two men, during an ox, with washington, were the only officers who stayed the length of the war and did not leave. Who would not quit. Youre watching tv on cspan2. Our showing highlights from historian David Mccullough. In 2017, he published the american spirit. Collection of speeches he has given throughout his career. He spoke with the john f. Kennedy president ial library in boston. About how history can inform us today. David i am writing a book about hearing truman, i love the idea that he went out for a walk every morning. I thought maybe i should try that. As a way of sort of clearing of your head. You start thinking in a way, if you are not walking. And so last summer, when the comments being made by the republican candidates for the presidency to me, not only appalling but unimaginably out of place. I thought, what can i do to provide some Counter Point of view to this. I started thinking about some of the speeches that i gave at the national occasion such as that 200 anniversary of the congress. The anniversary of the white house. Kennedys Memorial Service in dallas. I was asked to be the speaker there. And commencement speeches and speeches that i had given at particular locations of important in history of other organizations and or universities. And found that there were a great many where i was voicing what really matters to me and why i think history is so intimately fascinating. And how essential you think it is. And is part of the experience of being alive. Why should we live our lives in just a little bit of time of our biological thoughts offer provide we can have access to the whole realm of the story. In going back hundreds of thousands of years. So i said to work to take a look at which speeches might be appropriate. I had the help of my daughter who arranged all of these talks that i gave. A new kept the records of what i said. When i read the book first time in a finish and i put about oh, he is writing in the times or he is picking these speeches because they might be current times related. While i said i heard you before, historians basically dont really have a role in talking about current politics. But he is talking about current politics in these speeches. David none of these speeches was written. Way back in with them a second time thinking what is the paragraph. Host what is the point he is trying to make care. I might be taken to heart by people who are in politics right now. So it back and i rented a second time and each time, i was looking in the speech, but is the one point he is trying to make here. There might be taken to heart by somebody who might be elected president. So the meat pick out few of them. I will do each one but i think 12 out of 15. I found a pertinent point Pretty Simple one. Speech one. From 1989, Margaret J Smith pretty good the guts to rebuke joe mccarthy. She said, i dont want to see the Republican Party and she was a republican from maine. Read the political victory on the four horsemen. Fear ignorance, bigotry, and smear read mirrors the interesting work here. Smear. Why perhaps they had implications. [laughter]. [laughter]. David if you only had a sense of humor. [laughter]. Could you imagine somebody reading that in the current political mind. David it would be wonderful. What a need to be wonderful. And the republicans to stand up and she is a woman pretty rare case, women in the senate. At that point in our history. In most people had no way did you Margaret Chase was. She was the bravest most admirable political figure we have ever had. Host and not in the republicans are standing up now. David not enough. Host 1998 quoting Benjamin Rush. Perhaps as well known. The patriots of the time. One of the original signers of the declaration. Speaking of good nature, mattered most in human relations, he said in the book, this is his quote. I include candor, gentleness, indisposition to speak with civility and listen with attention to everybody. And youve added in 1998 in the speech, wears to the wise that perhaps, in our own day more than ever. David indeed, Benjamin Rush is one of my favorite characters from our past. If an absolutely remarkable man. The 18th century, someone who is interested in almost everything. And he was accomplished position. He was one of the first people to encourage the fair and humane treatment of people with mental illness. And not to just put them away in a cell as if they were animals. He was extremely courageous in his ability to go into places where legs was rabid. Yellow fever epidemic. He risked his life over and over. And he one of the signers of the declaration of independence. And when he ascended eckler ration of independence, he was only 30 years old. We forget how young those people work. Jefferson, when he wrote the declaration of an abyss was 33 imagine. Washington, when he took command of the Continental Army was 44 years old. We see them later on with white hair and the whigs. In their elderly statures and so forth rated they work very young at that time. I think that the encouraging fact of that part of our story. I dont think we can never know enough about the American Revolution. And by the way, the new museum of the American Revolution is just opened in philadelphia is a must for all of us. It is marvelous and in particular, is a place to take your children and grandchildren to get them hooked on history. And its brilliantly organized and his spectacular building by robert service. Excuse me. As of right in the center of where all the historian neighborhood is. Only few steps down the street from independence hall. But we lived in the boston area sort of take the reality of the miracle in that area as part of our environment. Part of our world. Thats good. I love kennedys profile that ive read that. Oh so young and really aware get what they wanted to do with my life read and i love this regard John Quincy Adams for example. Host will i cannot quote. As the word civility. It is a lost art in the Public Discourse of america today. In the sense of comedy that existed among people who share a common goal and no there needs to be common end. It is gone. And you write that has ever been lost. We had many instances, and deep chasm than division in this country. But we come out of this. The two sides seem so unalterably opposed when politics, trumps policy. When the sense of an National Goal is gone. The particles matter more than National Goals. What brings us out of this. David leadership. Leadership of the best kind. Leaders who have the courage to stand up to their convictions. Will have the backbone to do what is right irrespective of what it means to bear their political future or chance of being elected. It has to come mainly from the people. Now we talked about the three segments of government. Legislative, judicial and executive. But theres a fourth factor. The people. All of us and when we stand up, and we say, no more of this. We wont take this anymore. When we stand up and say, theres a person right there using the right thing and doing the right thing were going to get behind her or him and make sure that attitude becomes and maybe even decisive. The reason about Margaret Chase, thats what im going to do. Somebody in the government right now. It will happen. Out of the necessity to survive and were going to expect that. Host david, i believe that we are basically a country where 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 percent of people are in the middle. You want government to get something done. And we ate doing it. David that doesnt mean we wont. When it comes to very hard times, very baffling times. Pessimistic times. Inappropriate silly behavior times. To the part of our leadership. But we come through them all. And very often we can come through them, these difficult times, these are clouded sky times. When you do come through, were better off and better for having done it. People talk about, that was a similar time back then. No it wasnt pretty there never was a similar time. Or things have never been so bad and so dark. So for boating. Yes they have. If you dont understand that, you dont understand the reality of our story. Id like to point out that the influenza epidemic which my parents and your parents probably went through. 1918 and 19. 500,000 americans died. That disease disease didnt know where it came from, they didnt know if it would ever go away at all or how to cure it. If that were to happen today, given the size of our population proportionately. 1,500,000 people died. In less than one year. Now imagine if that were on the nightly news every night pretty we would all even be more terrified and who would be next in our family who died read and just as the depression in the civil war, horrible, horrible times. But we came through them. Because we knew that we could and would. And we understood, that nothing of much consequence was every accomplished alone. Has to be a joint effort. A look at our programs from our archives concludes with his three counts of the pioneers who settled in Northwest Territory. Cement is from 2019 at the ohio statehouse. As in columbus. David the big change, the biggest sudden revelation, here was something, was when i eventually, after a finish the brothers got down to marion abusing her there was a collection of wonderful archival material there. In my assistant, this really probably bracket the greatest research on the market today. And i saw this breathtaking collection. I knew we had opened contents to him. It was really thrilling. Then we just try to describe why it was great. It isnt that there was just so much of it. There are literally thousands of of letters, diaries, memoirs unpublished journals, maps. Data of all kinds, drawings and magnificent oil paintings. But its the quality of it all. The quality of the writing, the quality of the thinking. The quality of the honesty and expressing what they were brokenhearted developed. What they were fearful of. How they were suffering. And no, the work they had to do. In the onset of epidemic disease. In the natural fiasco, the storms and the earthquakes. And all of it, happening one after another. When your, almost starved to death. Compared to them, we are all a bunch of softies. [laughter]. Truly. So i could go on for the hours of listening to history. What is so beneficial. So in barging of life. I think that two of the most important lessons to be learned, and passed on to our children and grandchildren. The first is empathy. To be able to put yourself in the other person place pretty to imagine what life mightve been like then. What they went through. And it is the same for people in our own times. You have to understand why other people feel as they do about things. What yourself in their place. If the secondly, attitude. Gratitude for all of the other people what they do for our benefit. Or have done or did long ago. And we should never take that for granted. We should never say oh that is just the way it is. And one of the things that we unfortunately do take for granted, is a Public School system. Another thing is that all men are created equal. Not just on paper, those two parts of our life, our National Life began here. First Public School system anywhere in the country. Here, in ohio. Why did it happen because of one man primarily read the charter, the northwest ordinance 1987. 1787. States very clearly, there will be public education. There will be complete freedom of religion. There will be an attitude towards the native americans that is fundamentally respectful and decent. And there will be no slavery. Remember there were slaves in one of the 13 colonies the original ones celebrated all men were created equal but yes we have a hundred 50 slaves over here in the slave quarters. No it will not be that way. And that was due primarily is not say entirely who wrote the basic of the northwest ordinance, and it was son ethan. Eighteen century format. Then somebody you know a lot about everything. That was interested in everything. Doctor law and medicine and dependency. All three at once and practice all three. And he was probably i would say almost certainly, the leading american botanists of the day. He was an astronomer. He was interested in languages. It was interested in everything. And he believed in the importance, the essential necessities and the good life. Morning. Learning. More than anybody ive known or come to read about. He never lived here. He came out to see how everything was going. But he had too much going on back home. And hamilton, massachusetts. Which is just north of boston. In his church, and his parsonage still there in very superb condition rid the place where the first covered wagon left to come to ohio. Still there. And his son with his wife and four children. In their young and hopeful. And theyve known how to dress themselves of hard work. But even the most difficult daily tasks of a farm or being a farmer on the recce found in new england, is not going to be anything probable to the case here. They came out, and other way, just coming on the ohio river, two of the children died of disease. They had to be buried in the banks of the river were there were no settlements. Imagine read arrive here, cutler. And stepped off on the boat. And turned her ankle badly. And he was suffering from disease himself. When he arrived here. They knew no one. And so they had to begin as everybody else to do. My hard work. It oh, wed have no idea how hard they work today in and day out. All the children work read men and women and all the children. They began work right away. Now eat from cutler, had not had the education his father had because he had been raised by his grandparents for farmers in connecticut. This is very important to keep in mind because of what he then did. Ethan cutler, i was asked in an interview just the other day. Aaron ohio, but of all of the scenes in my book, which do i wish i couldve been there to have watched first person. And i knew right away. There was a big movement. We came after the election of thomas jefferson. They will call it because they didnt really have a party name. But the jeffersonians, you hear had decided that they were going to get rid of this rule there could be no slaves treated and introduced slavery until ohio. And two people in the legislature relating the fight in any the charge to stop that. To keep it from turning into a slave state. This was general roof was putnam who was in fact the leader who came out to settle here. Along with ethan. The other was ethan cutler himself. He was young at this point. In his absolutely devoted to stopping this change. And it gets quite. In the was in chillicothe. He could hardly get out of bed. And there was even some question whether he would survive and live. The day that the boat was going to take place the boat. Rufus putnam came into the room the boardinghouse room nearby. And he was old enough to bend his father. And he came in and he said cutler, you must guess well, be in your place or you will lose your favorites measure. According to one account, putnam and another man carried them into the connection an on a stretcher. Theres no reliable evidence of this. Cutler himself notes only, i went to the convention and moved to strike out the obnoxious matter and it made my objections as forcibly as i was able. It was an active fortitude and the result was never ever to be forgotten here. It cost me every effort i was possibly incapable of making in the past by a majority of one vote only. Because he had gotten up from his suffering and gone in there and voted, it was stopped. And it would be no slavery. Lunch is no slavery in ohio, but all the Northwest Territory which included indiana, illinois, michigan, and wisconsin. Now imagine if the slaves had been admitted. Imagine what wouldve happened. There wouldve been no underground railroad. It wouldve been no cabin. The most influential powerful novel ever written by any american if this had been a slave, wouldve probably been no Abraham Lincoln are you. Ellipsis read. Voltage wouldve been different. This one man, there is no statute of him. It is not mentioned in any of the history books. And hes been in effect, totally forgotten. So imagine the excitement we felt, to hear all of his letters. All of his private correspondence with his wife, and others. In the putnam bulletin alone over a thousand pieces. You missed any of these other programs, or want to watch them in their entirety, you can visit our website, put tv. Org. Access our archives by using the search box at the top of the page insert David Mccullough and book. Tonight a book tv, leaders beginning at 88 00 p. M. Eastern. Timing is a National Political correspondent discusses the career of House Speaker nancy pelosi followed by discussion on what donald trump and Winston Churchill have in common. Then a talk about that character and motivation of north Koreas Kim Jong un. Watchful tv tonight and over the weekend, as he spent two. The president , from public affairs, available now in paperback and ebook. Presence biographies of every president , organized by the rankings, by noted historians. From best to worst. And it features perspectives in the lives of our nations executives and leadership styles. This website, cspan. Org the president. To learn more about each president , and historian feature, and order your copy today. Barbara books and ebooks are sold. It is up and running. Two one zero and left off. From vinyl liftoff read Space Shuttle, america will continue read on wednesday, nasa will launch to estrus into space since the first time of the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. Astronauts will join the current team of two russians, and one american. Im more the International Space station. Tonight at 9 00 p. M. , will explore the history of space expiration as we tour the country to hear the stories of the people and places key to his development. I cast or not melvin. You see the sun and this incredible, changed me. Fundamentally, it made me have a cognitive shift in the way think about humanity. In 1935. The city of the curvature of the earth. We will take you nasa training sites. We are in the laboratory here for the communication testing. We still talk about the role that we played on the frontlines of the cold war. The space race was a Major Initiative within the cold war. The 60 to estrus and came here for navigation training, needed to know the night sky better than anyone. June observatory in 1984 that specializes in the photography of the moon. In the personal stories of two women leave their mark on the nation. I made nine wonderful over the last two weeks. And without shuttle goes, theres going to be ten souls. Thank you. [applause]. The movie showed everyone who captain johnson was, what she did, and how profound she was in the pages of american history. History of Space Exploration is a cspan city tour exports the market