charlie: his award-winning books include biographies of alexander hamilton. the new york times has called him as elegant and architect of history as we have seen in decades. his new book is a detailed and vivid portrait of america's first president. the starting point in an but his biography is that there are significant dimensions in a life that have eluded previous

biographers. hamilton had a quarrel with washington late the revolutionary war. he quit washington's staff in anger and wrote a letter to his father. he painted washington as a moody and temperamental man. he said, the general and i have come to a rupture and he shale -- shall at once repent of his ill-humor. a member thinking how george washington should have to conform to that saintly image ahead of george washington. got me thinking that perhaps the most familiar figure was in many ways the most unfamiliar. charlie: what now do we know that makes the unfamiliar familiar? >> i discovered that under the surface, washington was a passionate and complex man with many militant fiery opinions. he was a fierce perfect --

perfectionist but it was all under this reserve and stoic, butnic aura that we know there was a fierce personality under that facade. charlie: could you make the case that without george washington, the revolution would have failed? >> and author used the phrase earlier, "the indispensable man." there were probably generals who from a strategic standpoint were superior. while the other generals are jockeying for power and getting sidetracked, george washington always has a clarity of vision. there is a tenacity of purpose and a force of character. there's no one in the world whom you would rather give a monumental task to then george washington. this is a man who had tremendous

experience. he spent 5.5 years in the french and indian war. george washington turns out to have been a project. he was already at 23 in charge of all the armed forces in virginia. a wunderkind. he was then at the house of burgesses for more than 20 years and running an immense plantation at mount vernon. not only with 300 slaves. fishery business on the potomac and is even running one of the largest distilleries in the country, not withstanding his aversion to alcohol. charlie: he was the logical choice? >> in 1775, he was elected

unanimously by the continental congress as commander in chief. he's one of the few people who really had significant military experience. but reimer, charlie, what is happening is the revolution starting in massachusetts. there are thousands who have gathered in the common but they are new england militiamen. to give it a continental perspective everybody looks to the south because that would give it national character. there is something about washington throughout his life that people are constant in entrusting power to him. he inspires confidence and his levelheaded and is not somebody who becomes drunk with power. he is also somebody who understands that military power must be subordinated to civilian power and he does this brilliantly through the revolutionary war. he has 14 masters.

there is this squabbling continental congress so washington's genius is in many ways more political genius. he was not a great general, i discovered. charlie: he was not a great general? >> he was middling. he probably lost more battles than he won. but i think it's that rare case where his strength of what he did between battles was more important than what he did in the battle. he is running an army that is chronically short of men, money, clothing, shoes, blankets, gunpowder. there are one year enlistment's. every december the army shrinks from disillusionment and you have to re-create it in january. holding this ragged band of men

for eight point five years -- he had to have been a strong leader and a very inspirational presence. this is not the story of the general standing on the hill watching battles unfold in the planes. he was right in the thick of battle with bullets whizzing around him. friends?who were his who isas somebody naturally mistrustful. he had to know you for a long time and he would gradually lower the barriers. washington did not have a lot of friends in the contemporary sense of a confessional relationships. heart-to-heart conversations. it he forms more powerful friendships than a alliance is with some of the other founders. madison is certainly an early tudor and advisor. it does not get any better than that. and hamilton who is effectively

chief of staff during the war not only gives him hamilton is a brilliant theorist and constitutional scholar but someone of a great programmatic lines in history. they discover that washington always gives a certain distance from people. if necessary ready to distance himself. >> what was in his character that made him famously not want to be president for more than ?wo terms >> this is an interesting story because he starts out as a young man who would like money, status, and power. then he gets more fame and power than any human being could dream of. people do not realize that heing the revolutionary war, is away for a .5 years and only goes back to mount vernon once for three days.

at the end of the war, he feels he has sacrificed the prime of his life to this war. what happens, because of his stature, because people feel so confident in entrusting power to him, he becomes the president of the constitutional convention. he does it very reluctantly. he very reluctantly becomes the first president. he was unanimously elected. friends,o his closest i will become president for a year or two, establish the legitimacy of the federal government than i will go back to mount vernon. after one year or two, his cabinet said we are in a crisis, he cannot go home. then there was one crisis after another and eight years past. if you look at the last 25 years

of his life, almost the entire period was sacrificed to service for his country. charlie: then when he went home after eight years? >> this is fascinating, he was warned -- someone said you should get a special appropriation from congress because you will have people descending on mount vernon. he knows or gets home and looks over the ridge and there are tourists and veterans and curiosity-seekers. man andon is a polite feels obligated to feed and house everyone who comes to mount vernon. often there are 10 to 20 people sitting at the table. a lot of them complete strangers. the saddest line in his voluminous papers, he writes in his diary, i dined alone with mrs. washington today for the first time since i returned home from the war. he had been home from the war for 1.5 years and it was the

first time he had dinner alone. even in the privacy of mount vernon he becomes not only a prisoner of his celebrity but like a piece of public property in a way that he cannot escape it does not know what to do with and he is constantly complaining in his letters that all of these guests showing up our drinking his wine and eating his food and it becomes a tremendous strain on his finances and he made the person advices and get a special appropriation and he said i do not need that but it becomes a major drain on his finances. >> jefferson was in many ways the most complicated because he had tremendous admiration for jefferson's political and literary talents and of course what happens is the two-party system emerges from this feud between washington's first secretary of state and his first secretary of treasury alexander

hamilton. jefferson is very disturbed by the growth of federal power and presidential power. he's disturbed by this liberal interpretation of the constitution and jefferson begins to help secretly orchestrate attacks on the administration. at the 1790's went by, washington becomes increasingly disenchanted and cynical about jefferson. they are really not on speaking terms during washington's final years. died,george washington martha washington makes a statement to friends that the second worst they of her life was the day thomas jefferson visited mount vernon. the worst day having been the day her husband died. she says to friends that thomas jefferson was among the most

detestable of all mankind and martha washington was not particularly political. jefferson had betrayed and doublecrossed her husband. is that it true orchard of jefferson? >> jefferson wrote a letter to an italian friend that ended up accidentally getting published in the newspaper. he said you may be amazed at the heresies that have sprung up among us. those who were samson's in the in thend solomons council have had their heads shorn by the harlot angle -- england. very strong language. jefferson never dreamt that this letter, which referred to washington, never dreamt that it would be published. when martha washington made that

statement, she said that we have the proof in the house. i guess she had a copy of the letter. charlie: what was her influence on george washington? >> i did not get the feeling this was a very torrid or lusty marriage but it ripened into a deep friendship. he married her and she was a widow, a wealthy widow. it gives him financial security which allows him to do what he does. washington was a reserved and aloof man. good host, buta a certain kind of cordial and detached nature. martha washington was a very skillful hostess. she would make sure that everyone was being attended to and felt comfortable. in 1001 ways, she takes this ambitious young man whose life is ruthless and certainly he becomes very settled when martha

comes on the scene. as so often happens in a successful marriage it really sets up the success. charlie: he had a difficult relationship with his mother? asked to put it mildly. his father dies at 11 so he is left to the tender mercies of his mother and she was a very careless and self-centered woman who always felt that george was neglecting her. we really have no statements of pleasureg any pride or in his success. there is no evidence that she attended the wedding between george and martha washington. fredericksburg but never visited them. all, laterngly of washington receives a letter from the speaker of the general assembly and says there is something happening here in the state capital that you should know about. your mother has appeared and she has applied for special

emergency relief clinic she is crushed by taxes, pleading poverty and intimating that her son the commander in chief had neglected her. becauseon was mortified he was a very dutiful son and had been very generous with his mother. >> it is hard to ask a question about washington without asking about the teeth. >> they were not wooden, let's retire that. they had real teeth inserted into them. we now in 1784 that he bought nine teeth from slaves, possibly from his own slaves. the sounds ghoulish but it was actually common practice at the time to buy teeth. but the dentures were important for this reason. he becomes president and has this one cuspid. dentures atned his the new york academy i noticed

that in the back, the upper and lower dentures are connected by curved metal springs. stayed inay that they his mouth is he had to keep his mouth firmly pressed shut. this means every time he opened his mouth to start talking it relaxed the pressure on the spring and there was a possibility that these dentures would come shooting out of his mouth. it may not be coincidental that most of the speeches george washington gave as president to threeo three -- one paragraphs long. consciousredibly self and never uses the word dental or teeth. if he received the dentures he will write to his dentist and say, the items that you sent arrived safely. he was intensely self-conscious about that problem. charlie: any last words before he died? >> no.

even on his deathbed, he is hysterical. he noticed his young slave had been standing all day and said, you happen standing, must be tired. inflammation of the epiglottis so he felt he was choking and suffocating. secretary got onto the bed with washington and rolled him over because it made breathing easier and he said, thank you for doing this. this is a debt we perform to each other and i hope when you're time comes, someone performs the debt to you. and is a man who is dying comes up with this beautiful and eloquent statement. thethat sensitivity to people around him was very characteristic of washington. that he was image this cold-blooded man, not true.

♪

charlie: joining me now is the author david mccullough. -- you and i have been talking about this book and other interviews. >> we have.

charlie: our initial conversation was about anticipating this book of the intertwining of the lives between thomas jefferson and john adams. >> i found that i wanted to write about john adams. extent tocovering the which he tells us what he really feels. in his inner life and political life. he brings us into his confidence with a candor that is extraordinary in any century, in that time. it is possible to know john adams better than any of those principal figures. there is a moment when he was in worcester as a young schoolteacher, 20 years old.

he said, i vow to rise each morning with the sun and study holy scriptures every monday, -- i will gather myself within myself and address myself to doing better. then the next day, he was right, dreamed away the day. slept most of the time. i suddenly thought, there is my guy. he is human. he was very vain. in the 18th century sense of the work which should not mean spending time in front of the mirror. preoccupied.g self and irritablete at times but also warm-blooded and warmhearted. brave hearted. he had great physical and moral courage. he was no sunshine soldier.

he was there when he was needed. he was not perfect. made mistakes. none of them were perfect. we have to understand how human they were because that makes their achievement more remarkable. if they were gods, gods can do anything. they were not superhumans. they were extraordinary people and some of them were truly brilliant. it is truly a miracle what they accomplished, but these were the people present at the creation. they were making a country against the most daunting odds imaginable. charlie: where did the phrase "present at the creation" first come? >> it was the title of that marvelous book about the truman years. charlie: this is the real creation. >> they are not just starting a new company or a broadway show. they are making a country, a

nation. charlie: if they had taken a poll in philadelphia -- >> in the country, they never would have gone ahead with it. only about one third of the people or for it. charlie: the odds were against them. >> and it was not popular. charlie: what manner of man and woman were in favor of it? >> to a large degree, they were new englanders and virginians. we have to include the carolinians and maryland. states, new york and pennsylvania were very much on the fence. they relied by a man named john dickinson. charlie: but what was the nature of the revolutionist? were they intellectuals? political firebrands? >> they were all of that. intellectuals, firebrands,

ambitious politicians, decent, hard-working people who had farms. they felt that they were not being granted their birthright's is english subjects. in other words, they are not revolting to create a new and different society. they say, wait a minute, you are taking away our rights as english subjects. free englishman. government of laws and not of men. we have no choice and that. you're taxing us to pay your own bills back home. why should we pick up the tab back home when we have no part in that life? us have never seen england and it is probably time we started our own country. charlie: no taxation without representation. >> yes. when they say free and independent, the concept is that

they cannot be free unless they are independent. they cannot generate the moral spirit tomorale, the fight the war unless they are fighting for independence. they have to do it to give spirit to the army. the will not be able to get help from abroad, france, if they do not declare independence. france will not come in and give financial and military support to a country that will make up and be part of england again. the french support of our american revolution, which was essential to our victory, was primarily as a way for the french to get at the english. they were not anxious for a government of all the people. all men created equal. france was a monarchy. more of a monarchy than even great britain. charlie: it is amazing when you think of that. the great decision of the war against france. john adams believes that the

most important thing that he did was to want peace with france and a war. we were fighting an undeclared war at sea. it was a real war, exchanging fire, capturing ships. the real war, the undeclared war at sea could very well have ignited into a real war, which as it happens, the new high dictator, the emperor as he proclaimed himself, napoleon. steered a very careful and dangerous, treacherous course among the shoals and the

whirlpools of diplomacy and managed to keep america neutral. not to side with the door france. wanted peaceians with france at any price. the hamiltonians, the high federalists, were eager to go to war with france. he would've probably guaranteed adams's reelection. when he succeeded in keeping us from going to work with france, after the humiliations of the he feltd xyz affair, that he save the country from a colossal blunder. he was right. but it was at the expense of his own political fortunes. charlie: where did he place that effort in terms of his own historical legacy? >> where? he thought it was number one. he was proudest of that of anything he had done. other historians agree, it really does rank as an extremely

brave, politically courageous act. a true profile in courage. charlie: there are some things here. dams is them you, a best subject i have ever had. i could sit down and write another book about him and not the redundant. imagining,most above the quantity of the material. there are over 1000 letters between john adams and his wife. they were marvelous letters. neither one was capable of writing a dull sentence. charlie: tell me about her. >> she was extraordinary. she could hold her own intellectually with any of the brightest people of the day. she was looked upon by the likes of jefferson, franklin, and others as one of the remarkable women of the time. she had never been to school, she was a minister's daughter. she read everything, she remembered everything she read. she was a wonderful writer.

she made her own clothing. look after the children. she made the meals. looked after the farm when john was in the continental congress or as a diplomat abroad. she carried on as active a correspondence as any woman of the 18th century. if she had done nothing but write the letters, she would be something that historians and biographers would be interested in. i think that one of the most impressive things about her, charlie, is that in almost every letter she wrote, she quotes several lines of poetry. there was speculation at the time that, the old woman, as they said, was really running thanks. there is some truth to this. whenever she was back in quincy, he got in trouble. he writes these wonderful letters, you must be with me, i need your advice, i need your counsel. nobody understands things better than you.

one of the things i found in the course of my work was a wonderful account of a dinner at the white house, not long after they occupied the white house. when jefferson attended the dinner, there were a number of members of congress at the dinner table. a large dinner party around a large table. she recorded all that she said and jefferson said. jefferson was sitting beside her. she knew every single member of congress around that table by their face, and all about each of them. jefferson would say, who is that? and who is this? not only he did not know who they were, did not know anything about them. she did not know because she made great effort to learn. she loved being at the center of things. she loved politics. george washington was an immensely intelligent man. he was not learned.

not an intellectual. he was a great, natural born leader. a man with phenomenal self command. that is what adams admired most about george washington. charlie: early on, port of who ought to be leading to him.ution, he nominated >> he was the one who said that jefferson ought to write the declaration of independence, and the man when he became president who put john marshall on the supreme court, the greatest chief justice we ever had. as a casting director, he was remarkable. charlie: he could have been a kingmaker of the revolution. qualityngton's greatest during the war was that he would not give up. we would defeat this british

army. the best equipped toughest army in the world. poorly equipped, poorly clothed, and adequately trained army was going to take on -- no naval force, not a ship to defend any port. it was preposterous. he had never led an army in battle before. when washington is retreating across new jersey, that is the -- the lowest point. he hasn't a chance. it is over. he gets his army down. he succeeds in getting across the delaware. the british army comes right after and the officers decide that winter is coming and it is time that gentleman stop this

fighting business for the duration. the british office went back to new york. --n the british forces washington is on the other side of the delaware. he only has about 4000 troops. it is over. so what does he do? he attacks. the pain of crossing the delaware which has an made fun of, it is not very accurate, it conveys the immense importance of this extraordinary heroic act. it comes across at night. with no shoes. it's not just leaving bloody footprints in the snow. he hits them at trenton and princeton and winds.

two swift and dramatic engagements. the effect on morale is beyond discussion. charlie: then you can go to the that hecy to the fact does not want to be king. >> like franklin roosevelt who went through two crises, during the depression and the most horrible war in history, washington leads the country in two testing times. the revolution and the period after the revolution. these different forces of the different state over all kinds of issues. everywhere in the colonies and the noted states for washington are you -- washington.

charlie: are you in the process of writing a book on washington? >> charlie, i cannot say a word yet. i'm convinced we cannot know enough about those people. one of the reasons that adams is a joyous subject is because he is a window. he wrote about everyone. the others did not necessarily write about everyone. charlie: not only that but as someone said, he had no filter and it was instant, the reaction from his emotion that he had this extraordinary sense of direct, without filter, from his soul to his mouth. who said that? you? >> i don't know. i wish that i had. he believed, as he said in a wonderful letter to his son, john quincy, that one ought to write a letter in the way that

one talks. no literary flourishes. no flourishes of the pen. right the way that you talk. a lot of life is made up of talk. we cannot hear those people talk. there are no recorded voices. there is the film of them. but the way this man in particular wrote and the way that his wife wrote -- that is the way that they taught. it is very direct and without frill. it has almost a modern candor. he is a pungent writer. he is maybe the best writer of the whole bunch. charlie: better than jefferson? >> yes. not just in the grand pronouncements, the papers of .tate, or proclamations he would have made terrific novelist, a wonderful reporter.

he would have made a good interviewer. his little sketches what he wrote about different people are the best we have of all of these characters. charlie: what did he say about jefferson? >> dependent on what the mood was -- he thought jefferson was more ambitious than people understood. charlie: no surprise to me. >> he thought jefferson was not always on the level that there was much hypocrisy and many contradictions about jefferson. charlie: did he keep this private? >> yes, mostly within the family and mostly at a time when jefferson had betrayed him. jefferson was designing financial support for the men busy slamming and slandering adams. charlie: what does that say about jefferson? >> it says he would not do his

own fighting. jefferson would never say anything derogatory about anybody himself but he would encourage others to say it. he would say to madison, go cut so and so to pieces and do it quickly. jefferson did not like confrontation. he felt and said often that one ought to go through life avoiding pain. adams knows that you cannot do that. once described someone as a mountain of the salt of the earth. to me he is like a character in dickens. he is grumpy and funny. he is full form. there's no silhouette. if you cut him, real blood would come out.

his love for his family and his wife is quite wonderful. charlie: he loved to farm. >> he liked being a former. he loved to build walls and move trees. small farming. it is new england. the difference between a new england freeholder of the 18th century, and a virginia planter, was far greater than most understand. it was not just that one owned slaves and the other didn't. i should point out that adams is the only founding father that never owned slaves, as a matter of principle. hewas a man of principle and would live and die as one. ♪

charlie: doris kearns goodwin is here. she won the pulitzer prize for her book "no ordinary time," which colonel -- chronicled the lives of the roosevelts. her new book is called "team of rivals: the political genius of abraham lincoln." i am pleased to welcome you back to this table. how did lincoln do this? he was not a governor. he was not as prominent as the others were. they were esteemed, established figures. he was a one term congressman

who lost two races for the senate. he was simply a lawyer made speeches. >> you would think after losing two races for the senate you would go to another line of work but he had this internal confidence. when i looked into it, it was really his temperament. he worked harder for this than any of the others. stewart went to europe for eight months prior to the convention being wined and dined by kings and queens and lincoln was going from one state to the other. he maneuvered to have the convention in chicago. say, nobody ison really a front runner in illinois, let's have it there and then he got people to come to the convention and applaud for him and give momentum. i think that he got it because he had made no enemies in his entire life. his strategy was, if you go away

from the first guy come to your second love. as each one peeled away -- charlie: say that again. >> he specifically said, if you have to give up your first love, let me be your second love. he never said anything bad about the other three guys -- they were all saying bad things about each other so they finally came to him. charlie: what gifts did he bring to the campaign? what was it about? was he the smartest man around? was he the most gifted orator? other to have something than the fact that he was a nice guy. a he had already become national figure because of the debates with stephen douglas. politics was the abiding passion of the country so thousands of people would listen to these debates. when you had a great speech it

would be printed in the newspaper. everybody would be reading it. it would be passed out to 50,000 people or 100,000 people. speeches were much more important than than they were now. charlie: he wrote his own speeches? >> without a question. [laughter] nobody else could have done that. he was brilliant and completely self-taught. he figured out he had only one year of formal schooling. a few weeks here, a few weeks there. his father would lend him to someone to work to pay off the debts that his father had. the best himself books, shakespeare, poetry, the king james bible. those cadences got into him. it is not just that they were great rhetoric, he had this remarkable empathy to understand people on all different sides of the political spectrum. so he could speak to their feelings and thoughts and absorb them in a way that the other guys could not. he used metaphors -- and he was

funny. he was a gifted storyteller. legendary. lively,re funny and more magnetic than i had realized and less depressed. we have overdone the idea that this man had depression all his life. charlie: he was depressed or not? >> i think he was melancholy from the time he was born. charlie: the different between melancholy and depression -- >> i think he has a temperament that looked on the melancholy side of life, but he knew how to get himself out of his sad moods incredibly. he did it by conversation, by humor, by reading. the minute he would hear a battle was lost he knew that he had to get to the battlefront to soldiers and that would get him from his moods. there is no evidence that he was dysfunctional during the presidency or ever takes to his bed. he sustains everyone else's spirits. he understands himself so brilliantly that he can get his

low moods to high moods. charlie: there is this notion that you find out, if you do what you do, that the exercise of power is influenced by the qualities of personality, and character, and all of those things that have nothing to do with the standard matters -- standard measurements of leadership. you are so right. when we look to who we will elect as president, we really should look at their temperaments. lincoln was the kind of person who, when he made a mistake, he learned from it and acknowledged it immediately. he shared credit when something went well. if something went wrong, he would shoulder responsibility for blame. if he were mad, he would write a hot letter, wait to cool down, and never need to send it. he understood the emotions of

the people. he understood journalists. he loved gossip in. he was curious the whole time. that's what you have to look for in a candidate. more important than the resume am a more important than what he said 20 years ago. he would say, yes i changed my mind, i like to think i am smarter today that i was yesterday. charlie: you sent about 200 pages on this. theseducing all of characters in this book, he gets the nomination. what is the campaign about in 1860? campaign is about the extension of slavery to the western territories. even the republican party did not think they could get it out of the south. they figured, if you could prevent it from going to the western territories, kansas and brassica, then it will -- and nebraska, then it will die of its own accord later.

that is their main platform. the democratic party is split in three, some lincoln does win the election. charlie: lincoln comes to washington. the issue of saving the union is the most important reality of his life. he chooses all of these rivals. it is a hard sell for him. are they surprised? >> the country is certainly surprised. it was unprecedented. the president seemed to put like-minded people in a cabinet. not only were they his rivals, the did not like one another either. i think the reason that he was able to get them to say yes -- they knew that the country was in peril. as soon as lincoln was elected, the southern states start cease eating -- seceding. charlie: lincoln was asked, why are you treating these people who do you know good?

he said, i need the best men. >> exactly. there, in the white house you have all the different points of view. you have to argue and hone your thinking -- it made him such a better leader. even though they fought. some would not talk to one another. it would call each other liars, scoundrels -- can you imagine today? much morencoln so clearheaded because he had to test it out on these guys. charlie: think about this. when something came up, he was getting advice from his secretary of state. >> most of them wanted him to give it up. the first vote -- he had a vote at the beginning, shall we resupply -- and the overwhelming majority said no. yeses and one no. >> exactly right. back to this notion of

this extraordinary man, who has not had the perfect resume, does not have the perfect experience, who has not been in washington as a senator. he has been dealing with slavery, rhetorically. >> i think it's because he had huge ambitions. he certainly was not a modest man in terms of ambitions. charlie: that famous quote about him that ambition burned like a fire? >> like an engine that could not stop. his ambitions were not just for office or power of a it was about a couple she something so worthy -- accomplishing something so worthy that his name would be recovered. motherthis dream, his when she died said i am going away from you now, and it will not return. not offering hope of heaven or that they would reunite. he seemed to adopt this ancient greek notion that if you could a cop at something fine, you would

-- if you could accomplish something really fine, you could live on in their memories. he did not have a selfish ego. he could subordinate his ego. stanton had humiliated him whenever lawyers. yet, -- when they were lawyers. yet he decides, i will put that behind and stanton ends up loving him more than his family. they have huge ambitions but they are for purpose. he can subordinate himself if he needs to reach that larger goal. lincoln's white house was so much more open that he had more feeling of the public. there would be these receptions where diplomats and back woodsman or side-by-side. he said -- woodsman were

side-by-side. he said, i can never forget about where i have come. all the time and that kept him alive to the sentiment in the country. charlie: he visited the troops a lot. >> he got enormous sustenance from visiting his troops. he would walk amongst their ranks and he would tell them his funny stories that they would tell to 100 more people. he said, after each battle was lost, they had to see him to know that he still had confidence in them. not only did they help his spirits but he got been feeling better. he would come home from those visits and say i have seen the soldiers and i know what they are fighting for. he gives the purpose of the war and the gettysburg address more brilliantly than anyone could possibly have done. charlie: this tells you that abraham lincoln was a good ceo. he was a good leader-manager. a leader evidence of titian. -- of an institution. what is remarkable about this is

that you show his political skills. >> i think that he understood how to deal with people. it's managing the emotions of other people. if you allow yourself to put your rivals inside your cabinet because you know that you will be strengthened by them, if you can shoulder responsibility for them, if you can treat them with kindness, empathy, and compassion -- you'll get ahead in the long run. he understood people. if politics is about people, it makes no sense to assume there is something wrong with a political person. politics could be an honorable profession but we have made it different today. charlie: the gettysburg address. tell me about that, the preparation, the instinct and .ow long it took to write it >> when he was thinking about the speech he would write pieces and put it in a drawer and be thinking and thinking. the order for the speech was

edward everett. lincoln was just supposed to be the follow-up guy. lincoln speaks for two minutes, and at the time, everyone thinks it is not quite finished so they do not know how to apply right away. he does not think it really worked because they are so stunned that he finished so quickly. what he was able to do was give a meaning to that war that has endured forever. he was able to say that these people have not died in vain. they are giving their lives for something archer even then unions -- larger even then an unions. he says, if we should lose this war, the idea that ordinary people can govern themselves will be undone. we will no longer be a beacon of hope. he is arguing that a government of the people, either people, for the people, and.

endures. it is what america stands for. ♪

donald trump: thank you very much. i have thousands of employees all over the world. for purposes of tonight, we will just say all of the country. >> on-topic, on-topic. donald trump: you see so many other companies constantly. they used to move from new york to florida. or they've moved from new jersey to someplace else. i tell the story often about a friend of mine is in the excavation business, and he always orders caterpillar. >> nobody cares. donald trump: it takes a lot of courage to run for president. >>