Host this week on q a, historian david mccullough, discussing his book, who we are and what we stand for. Host when did you get the idea to do this . Mr. Mcculloch i was upset by the tone of the political andaign and the animosity the nastiness of some of it. And i thought, i have got to do to bring someelp balance back to remind people of who we are and how we got to be where we are and what we stand thought speaking up and down the land for 40 years or more, maybe there are some of those speeches, if we tested them off and put them together, speeches where i subjects thator pertain to reminding us about who we are, and what our values have been down the years. , who has beenr arranging all of my speaking dates all of these years, wanted very much to help with it, and she had whatever records we had. Nomany speeches, there was record of what i said, but we that there were manuscripts of it. I never wanted to give a commencement speech or speech celebrating some Important National event or anniversary that i did not put it on paper or just wing it. I love to speak, and i have been able to speak my whole working life, and i have been able to and it tookt notes, a while to learn how to do that, but i did, but even though i can i felt in many, many instances that i must commit my thoughts to paper and work hard, and some of these speeches i would work on for a week or more to get what i really wanted to say, and particularly if i thought it was an occasion of importance to our country. There are four of those speeches in the group, and reading them again after many years, i thought they hold up. Now, there were some who did not hold up, and i did not include those. Ooere were some that were t firstperson singular, and i did not include those, and my dedication in the book is to my grandchildren. Brian 19. David 19 of them, thats right. So i am reaching out to that generation with the hope that they might draw some guidance or inspiration or motivation from the old boy from what the old boy said in the days past. My publisher, i did know how they would react to the idea, and they were enthusiastic from the beginning. And thank goodness. And they have done, i say a , beautiful job of publishing with the photographs and archival material that they have reproduced. Brian by the way in the , meantime, are you writing another book . David i am. And the subject of the book is touched on in one of these speeches, the speech i gave at Ohio University in athens. I am writing i got very involved in the history of ohio when i was writing my book about the Wright Brothers. And a really fascinating aspect of the american story when you think of who came from ohio and how relatively fast ohio produced so many remarkable people. More of our president s than come from any other state, thomas edison, the Wright Brothers. And if you include the Northwest Territory, which is what much of the book is about, you have abraham lincoln, and it goes on and on. The Northwest Territory was a subject i knew nothing about, and very briefly, quickly the , Northwest Territory was ceded to us by the british at the end of the revolutionary war and the treaty of paris in 1783. And it was a brilliant stroke of genius on the part of john adams and others who were the diplomats at that occasion. Because what they ceded to us size, the entire area of the original 13 colonies. In other words we doubled the , size of our country geographically, physically, with one stroke of the pen. And there was nobody except the natives, native americans, nobody living there, no settlements, no towns. Nothing. There were squatters and traders andthere were squatters and traders and fur dealers and trappers and so forth but no , settlement. And the idea that was cooked up andhis fellow, cutler, others from up around boston, was to create a way of paying back to the veterans of the revolution who never received any money for their service, they received certificates. But by the time the war was over, all of that was virtually worthless, about . 10 on the dollar. So this would be a way to provide the sale of land, primarily farmland, to these veterans at about eight cents an acre. So and, as most people do not know, and i did not know, there was a very severe depression following the revolution, as bad , unfortunately, as was the Great Depression of the 1930s, so everything was way down. And it was hard as can be to get by and make a living. And the man who put that bill through the Continental Congress the summer of 1787, just before the constitution, before we had the constitution we had no president , as yet, was this man, cutler, who was a minister and a doctor, a physician, and a lawyer, and a brilliant botanist, astronomer. He was an 18thcentury polymath. At the element peak. Very much like Benjamin Franklin, and he was often compared to Benjamin Franklin in that respect. And he sold the congress on the idea of creating this territory to comprise five states. And in those five states this is what is so exciting about it there would be complete freedom of religion, totally free religion. There would be government support, public support, for education all the way through college, and state universities came to be, and, and there would , be no slavery. Now there were slaves in all 13 , colonies in the summer of 1787, but they passed this ordinance, as it was called, the northwest ordinance, so there would be no slaves in half of the Geographical Reach of our country, but it also meant, of course, that the ohio river northwest met northwest of the ohio river the ohio river now, if you could get across it, and you were a slave, you were free. Wholet is where the adventure or the birth of the underground railroad came about. It was one of the most important Decisions Congress ever made, and this one guy pulled it off. And i thought to myself, i said whoa, who is he . ,who was he . And i got to know him. Once i got into his life and what happened consequentially, i thought, this is a great book. So that is what i am working on. But it all started when i was by come to Ohio University to give the commencement speech the year they were celebrating the creation of the university. And the Central Building and the university campus, the oldest building, is cutler hall, named for cutler, and we do not sufficiently appreciate, i dont think, how much education mattered to the founders and how much emphasis they put on education as being essential to whether the whole idea of democracy was going to work. Childress said that any nation beects to be ignorant to free expects what never was and what could never be. Now, that importance of education is extremely pertinent, relevant, and important today as it ever was. I think one of the things we americans dont sufficiently appreciate there is a lot that , we have and have achieved that we dont sufficiently appreciate, but one of them is our college and university system. Yes, they have gotten very expensive, too expensive. And, yes, some have gotten too politically correct or incorrect or whatever. But we have created the greatest universities and colleges in the world, and we have more of them than any country in the world. And now the percentage of who gets to go to college keeps rising steadily. I do not know how it was with you, but my father did not go to college. He graduated from high school and that was thought to be pretty good. And that aspect of trying to reach greater understanding through learning in order to Perfect Society to improve the that need to be solved, and so forth is one of , the major lessons of our story as a people. Brian you point out in the book that the northwest ordinance creates basically ohio, indiana, illinois, michigan, and wisconsin. David yes. Brian this speech was given at Ohio University in 2004. David yes. Brian why do you agree to go there . David they invited me to come and give a speech on the year on the bicentennial. Brian so do you remember when you went through the process how long did you take to get ready for this speech . David well, i had been spending about four years in ohio working on the Wright Brothers book. I was not living there, but going back and forth. And i got very interested in history, and i met a lot of people who i found very interesting, both people from the past and present day people. And so when i was invited to give the commencement speech in this fascinating state, it was the First University west of the allegheny mountains, so i thought i would love to. I just did the digging and did my homework and ran into this guy cutler. Brian Manasseh Cutler. David Manasseh Cutler. David and i found out he went to yale. He lived on Marthas Vineyard running a store there in edgartown, and two of his sons were born there on the vineyard not very far from our house. And that, of course, i realize and to get to ohio, you have two go through pittsburgh, which is my hometown. So it was in the stars. I had to do it. Brian how long is the perfect speech . In minutes. David in my judgment of speeches in general brian in . Brian in your judgment. When you are speaking to a graduation. David no more than 20 minutes. Brian why . David because you are part of a ceremony, and the ceremony has many elements, and you do not want to hog more space than you should. I have never been told how long my speech must be or how short it should be, but if i am invited to come to a university to address a general audience, then it is expected that your talk will run about 45 minutes. Brian lets look at a speech that was given in 1989 to kick off this book. This is only about 30 seconds. You gave this speech in the joint sessions of the house. David a joint session, yes. Brian and how often has that happened to a historian . David someone who is not in the congress is very rarely ever invited to address a joint session. If it is, it is somebody like the president of another country brian or the pope. David yes or general lafayette. , so it was a very high compliment. Brian lets watch a little bit of it just so we can david ive never seen it. Brian no . David no. [video clip] the 20th century senator who has been written about the most is joe mccarthy. There are a dozen books about mccarthy, yet no biography of the senator who had the backbone to stand up to him first, Margaret Chase smith. I speak as a republican, she said, on that memorable day in the senate. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an american. I dont want to see the Republican Party ride to victory on the four horsemen of calumny, fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear. [end video clip] brian do you remember how you went about preparing for that speech . David oh, how did i go about it . Hardest ive ever worked on anything i have ever delivered from a podium. And that line just then, i just calumnyooked up again. To make sure i knew what it means. It means untruthful, audacious defamation of somebody elses character. Brian joe mccarthy. David yes. Then there is a wonderful line. Let me just see. I cant quote it offhand. President an he was or had been president. This speech was given, first speech, 1954. Harry truman later said to declarationh, your of conscience was one of the finest things that has happened here in washington and all my years in the senate and the white house. President of the other party. But he saw what courage that took, and he knew a lot about courage. He and strength of character. And he was never reluctant to disagreedebody who with him or was on the other side politically if he felt they deserved praise. Brian heres a speech august 5, 1994 at monticello. [video clip] the declaration of independence was not a creation of the gods, but of living men, and let us never forget, extremely brave men. They were staking their lives on pledging, as jefferson wrote in the final passage of the declaration, our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor. [end video clip] brian how has jefferson done in history . David hes having a little trouble, and he will have more because there is an awful lot about his time, in his nature that seems inconsistent and , hypocritical, but we should never, ever dismiss someone whose values accounted in the long run because aspects of their way of life are no longer tolerable. Brian why do you think the Founding Fathers came up with , you know we are all created , equal, and didnt really seem to mean it . David some of them meant it. John adams never owned a slave. Brian the first seven president s aside from adams did , have slaves. David it doesnt gel, it doesnt jive. The pieces of the puzzle dont fit. I think what it was his people were appalled by slavery, and there were lots of them. It wasnt just john adams and abigail and their son john quincy. A lot of people who went out to ohio, for example, to settle that territory, they didnt want slavery because they didnt like slavery. They thought it was evil. An evil. But i think the original founders who were against slavery thought we will never pull all these colonies together, which were really like as different from one another as Foreign Countries were. We will never get ahead with it if we dont tolerate this for a while. But when you think that with one stroke of the pen, the members of congress in 1787 eliminated slavery completely in this vast territory. What if they had done it for the whole deal . Or what if the government prior to the civil war had offered to buy the slaves . It would have been a bargain price compared to the horrific cost of that war. Im just talking financially, let alone the lives lost. Brian may 30, 1998, a speech at the university of massachusetts at the graduation. [video clip] david from history, we learn that sooner is not necessarily better, that what we dont know can indeed hurt us very often and badly, and that there is no such thing as a selfmade man or woman. And badly, and that thereo we all got where we are, as did everyone before us, with the help of others. [end video clip] brian you say that in the book more than once. Can you name somebody that has helped you that otherwise you wouldnt have gotten to where you are . David my mother, my father, my brothers, at least three teachers in grade school, at least five teachers in high school at least seven or eight , professors in college. Brian is there a teacher you have never talked about that you could tell us about . David well, i have talked about many of them. Mitch. He was a Science Teacher in grade school. And was a magical teacher. She got you interested in whatever it was she wanted you to be interested in. She assigned one of her classes andshe assigned one of her classes pittsburgh is the city of bridges. There are more bridges in pittsburgh than there are in paris. And she got one of her classes building little matchstick models of different bridges in pittsburgh. And those finished models were all around the windows in her room. And her room was my homeroom in seventh grade. And she she was interested in everything. It was not just that she taught science, and whatever she taught, she made it interesting, and i remember, we could build those bridges, but i remember being absolutely thrilled by those little bridges. I got very interested in bridges and, of course would wind up , writing one of my books about the building of the brooklyn bridge, which was built by the roeblings, who came from very near pittsburgh. Roebling built his first bridge in pittsburgh. So it connects, no doubt about it. The teacher who really meant more to me in many ways than any the whole chorus of teachers, was Vincent Scully at yale, who taught the history of architecture. Art and architecture, but mainly protection, and i was, as were thousands of students over the years he taught, swept off my feet by his lectures. Unbelievable. He made it possible for you to see in a way you had never seen before just by showing you what he saw, what he could translate from the visual image for you into the english language. And he was a genius. Is a genius. He is still living. Brian were you a straight a student . David no. No, i horsed around a little bit. But, yes, i got a lot of a, i but wasnt very good in physics. I wasnt very good in the taught by teachers i thought were boring. It is too bad, but i did fine. I graduated with honors. And i was given a lot of awards. I loved to paint. And my enthusiasm was somewhat divided between writing and painting. Still is. For me, painting is a release from my work because in painting, you dont have to use any words. Brian by the way, your book on the northwest ordinance, what is the timetable on that one . David i hope to have it finished next year, to be published in spring of 2019. Brian november 1, 2000, you spoke at the white house about the white house on the 200th anniversary. [video clip] David John Adams could be proud, vain, short tempered, and he was also brilliant warmhearted, humorous. , a devoted husband and father, and a lifelong talker. An allout, fulltime talker. [end video clip] brian are you a talker . David oh, am i ever. [laughter] brian who would be dominating the conversation . David he would, because i would respect him and try to hold back and bring myself in. No i think its in our irish , blood. I think thats how we survived all those hundreds of years was with little to live on. We just kept talking. And my father was a great talker. Brian what about your kids . David oh, yeah, i got three or four. They are way ahead of me. Brian how many of the 19 grandchildren have read this . David one so far, because they havent gotten it yet. They are just getting it. Brian that one is how old . David 12. Brian and the reaction . David he loves it. Brian boy or girl . David boy. Brian what was his reaction to whation david oh, was his reaction to it . David oh, he loves it. Hes a very interesting little man, and im very pleased he likes it. I have grandchildren who were in their 30s, and i have one who is 10. So they have covered a lot of time. Brian six kids . David we have five children. Brian how many of the five childre