if you register now you can request our free american presidents time line poster, a graphic display of the biographies of all 45 presidents. david: summer of 2016.

i was not discouraged, but distressed by the tone of the political campaign and the animosity and nastiness of some of it. i thought, i've got to do something to help bring some balance back and remind people of who we are and how we got to be where we are, and what we stand for. i thought, i've been speaking up and down the land for 40 years or more. maybe some of those speeches, if we dusted them off and put them together, not as an anthology, but speeches where i'd addressed

ideas or subjects that pertain to reminding us about who we are and what our values have been down the years. my daughter, who has been arranging all my speaking dates all these years, wanted very much to help with it. many of those speeches, there was no record of what i said. but we had enough that there were manuscripts of it. i never wanted to give a commencement speech or speech celebrating some important national event or anniversary. i didn't put it on paper. i love to speak, and have been

able to speak often my whole working life. i have been able to speak without notes. it took a while to learn how to do that, but i did. but even though i can do that, i felt in many instances that i must commit my notes to paper and work on it. some i would work on for a week or more. 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. there were some that didn't hold up, but i didn't include those. there were some that were too

first-person singular, and i didn't include those. my dedication in the book is to my grandchildren. brian: 19. david: 19 of them, that's right. so i am reaching out to that generation with the hope that they might draw some guidance or inspiration or motivation from what the old boys said in the days past. my publisher, i did know how they would react to the idea, and they were enthusiastic from the beginning. thank goodness. they have done a beautiful job of publishing with the photographs and archival material that they have reproduced. brian: in the meantime, are you writing another book? david: i am. the subject of the book is

touched on in one of these speeches, the speech i gave at ohio university in athens. i got very involved in the history of ohio when i was writing my book about the wright brothers. 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 presidents then come from any other state, thomas edison, the wright brothers. 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 briefly, the northwest

territory was seated to us -- was ceded to us by the british at the end of the revolutionary war and the treaty of paris in 1783. it was a brilliant stroke of genius on the part of john adams and others who were the diplomats at that occasion. what they ceded to us equal in size the entire area of the original 13 colonies. we doubled the size of our country geographically, physically, with one stroke of the pen. and there was nobody except native americans living there, no settlements, no towns. nothing. there were squatters and traders and fur dealers and trappers, but no settlement. the idea that was cooked up by

others from 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. by the time the war was over, all of that was virtually worthless, about $.10 on the dollar. this would be a way to provide the sale of land, primarily farmland, to these veterans at about eight cents an acre. as most people don't know, and i didn't know, there was a very severe depression following the revolution, as bad or worse as the great depression in the

1930's. everything was way down. it was hard as can be to get by and make a living. the man who put that bill through the continental congress the summer of 1787, just before the constitution and president, was this man who was a minister and a doctor and lawyer, and a brilliant botanist, astronomer. he was an 18th-century polymath. very much like benjamin franklin, and he was often compared to benjamin franklin in that respect. he sold 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 were the complete freedom of religion, government support and public support for education all the way through college, and state universities came to be, and there would be no slavery. there were slaves in all 13 colonies in the summer of 1787, but they passed this ordinance, the northwest ordinance, so there would be no slaves and half of the geographical reach of our country. it also meant that the ohio river -- northwest met northwest of the ohio river -- the ohio river now, if you could get across it, you were free.

that's where the advent of the underground railroad came about. it was one of the most important decisions congress ever made, and this one guy pulled it off. i thought, whoa, who is he? and i got to know him. once i got to know him and learn what happened consequentially, i thought, this is a great book. so that is what i am working on. 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. the central building and the university campus is cutler hall, named for him. we don't sufficiently appreciate 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. that idea of the importance of education i think is extremely pertinent, relevant, and important today as it ever was. i think one of the things we americans don't sufficiently appreciate -- there is a lot that we have and have achieved that we don't sufficiently appreciate, but one of them is our college and university system. yes, they have got very expensive, too expensive. and 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. my father didn't go to college. he graduated from high school, and that was thought to be pretty good. that aspect of trying to reach greater understanding through learning in order to perfect society to improve the problems 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, wisconsin, and michigan. this speech was given at ohio university in 2004. why do you agree to go there? david: they invited me to come

and give a speech on the year on the bicentennial. brian: how long did you take to get ready for this speech? david: i had been spending about four years in ohio working on the wright brothers book. group i was not living there, but going back and forth. i got very interested in the history, both people from the past and present day people. 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: he also went to yale. he lived on martha's vineyard

running a store there, and two of his sons were born there on the vineyard not very far from our house. and to get to ohio, you have to him go through pittsburgh, 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 or in general? brian: in your judgment. david: no more than 20 minutes. brian: why? david: because you are part of a ceremony, the ceremony has many elements, and you don't want to august more space -- want to hog more space than you should. 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: let's look at a speech that was given back in 1989 to take off -- to kick off this book. you gave this speech in the joint sessions of the house. 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 or the pope or general lafayette. so it was a very high compliment. brian: let's watch a little bit of it just so we can -- david: i've never seen it. >> 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 don't want to see the republican party ride to victory on the four horsemen of calumny, fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear." brian: do you remember how you went about preparing for that speech? david: hardest i've ever worked on anything i have ever delivered from a podium. that line just then, i just recently looked up calumny again. it means untruthful, audacious defamation of somebody else's character.

brian: joe mccarthy. david: then there is a wonderful line. let me just see. i can't quote it offhand. harry truman later said to senator smith, "your declaration of conscious -- 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." residents of the other party. but he saw what courage that took, and he knew a lot about

courage and strength of character. he was never reluctant to praise somebody who disagree with him on the other side politically if he felt they deserved praise. brian: here's a speech august 5, 1994 at monticello. >> 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 what they believed, pledging as jefferson wrote in the final passage of the declaration, "our lives, our fortunes, or sacred honor." brian: how has jefferson done in history? david: he's 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 "we are all created equal," and didn't really seem to me to? david: some of them meant it. john adams never owned a slave. brian: but many presidents did have slaves. david: it doesn't gel, it doesn't jive. the pieces of the puzzle don't fit. i think what it was his people were appalled by slavery, and

hated slavery, and there were a lot of them. it wasn't just john adams and abigail and their son john quincy. a lot of people who went out to ohio, for example, to settle him that territory, they didn't want slavery because they didn't like slavery. they thought it was evil. but i think the original founders who were against slavery thought we will never pull all these colonies together, which were really as different as foreign countries were from one another, we will never get ahead with it if we don't tolerate this for a while. but when you think, was one stroke of the pen, the members of congress in 1787 eliminated slavery completely in this vast territory. what 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. i'm just talking financially, let alone the lives lost. brian: may 30, 1998, a speech at the university of massachusetts at the graduation. >> from history, we learn that sooner is not necessarily better. that what we don't know can indeed hurt us very often and badly, and that there is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. we all got where we are, as did everyone before us, with the help of others. brian: you say that in the book

more than once. can you name somebody that has helped you that otherwise you wouldn't 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. one was a science teacher in grade school. she 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 -- pittsburgh is the city of bridges. there are more bridges in pittsburgh and there are in paris. she got one of her classes building little matchstick

models of different bridges in pittsburgh. those finished models were all around the windows in her room. her room was my homeroom in seventh grade. she was interested in everything, it wasn't just science. whatever she taught, she made it interesting. i remember, we could build those bridges, but i remember being absolutely thrilled by those little bridges. i got very interested in bridges and would wind up writing one of my books about the building of the brooklyn bridge, which was built by the roebling's, who came from very near pittsburgh. the old man, john 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 other of the whole chorus of great teachers was vincent scully at yale, who taught the history of architecture. 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. he was a genius. is a genius. he is still living. brian: were you a straight a student? david: no, i horsed around a little bit.

i wasn't very good in physics. i wasn't very good and the subject's taught by teachers i thought were boring. it is too bad, but i did fine. -- i did fine. i graduated with honors. i loved to paint. i still think. my enthusiasm was divided between writing and painting. still is. for me, painting is a release from my work because in painting, you don't have to use any words. brian: your book on the northwest ordinance, what is the timetable on that one? david: i hope to have it finished by the end of next year to be published in the spring of 2019.

brian: november 1, 2000, you spoke at the white house about the white house on the 200th anniversary. >> john adams be proud, vain, your double, short tempered. he was also brilliant, warmhearted, humorous. a devoted husband and father, and a lifelong talker. an all-out, full-time talker. brian: are you a talker? david: am i ever. [laughter] when you said he was a talker, brian: who would be dominating the conversation? david: he would, because i would respect him to bring myself in. i think it's in our irish blood. i think that's how we survived all those hundreds of years was

little to live on. we just kept talking. my father was a great talker. brian: what about your kids? david: oh yeah, i got three or four way ahead of me. brian: how many of the 19 grandchildren have read this? david: one so far, because they haven't gotten it yet they're just getting it. brian: that one is how old? david: 12. brian: the reaction? david: he loves it. brian: boy or girl? david: boy. brian: what was his reaction? david: he loves it. he's a very interesting little man, and i'm very pleased he likes it. i have grandchildren who were in their 30's, and i have one who is 10. they cover a lot of time. brian: six kids?

david: five children. brian: how many of these children and 19 grandchildren and in-laws and all that and he found to be interested in history? david: i would say probably guess that's a very interesting question. i've never thought about it. only 75%. they had it pretty well drummed into them. brian: how did you do that over the years? david: talking, and taking them to historic sites. that's the best way to get them involved. and encouraging them to read good books. there is no reason in the world why history has to be dull. no excuse for a history teacher to be dull. it is about people. it is about life. it is about cause and effect. it is about stories. there is no trick to teaching history, tell stories.

that's what it is. i think you have to bring the characters alive, and you can only do that by really knowing them. you do that by working with original letters and diaries. the book i am working on now about the northwest ordinance and the settlement of ohio is only possible because i have found this incredible collection of letters and diaries at the archive at mariana college in mariana, ohio. unbelievable. written by the people who had settled mariana, ohio. brian: how you find out it was there? david: i working on manasseh cutler for the speech i gave at athens, ohio.

>> is often happens, by talking to the archivist who runs the place and knows more about the subject than anybody, knows that these characters -- there was one who was a carpenter, a boat maker, and another was cutler's son. there was another who was cutler's son. his name was efraim cutler. he eventually ended up in politics. there was a big movement in the legislature to scrap the no slavery rule. it went to a vote in the legislature and the deciding vote was cast by efraim cutler.

the sun. and there is a doctor who wrote terrific histories of the town and wrote essays about figures who figured importantly in the town story. i was there in the archives and the archivist brought over an old notebook and said you might find this interesting. i opened it up and there were these exquisite watercolors of the natural history phenomenon.

it was done in watercolors of such perfection it could be done in the metropolitan museum. in this frontier town. and you think, it is in many ways humbling to realize what so many have accomplished. >> here you are at boston college. >> facts alone are ever enough. fax really have any soul. in writing or trying to understand history, one may have all matter of data and miss the point. one can have all the facts and

miss the truth. like the old pianist teacher, i hear all the notes but i hear no music. explain brian: as we know in politics, we are always hearing that is the truth. you are saying they are not the same? david: they are not. we live in the information age. we get information in quantities that would have been unimaginable in other times on an infinite variety of subjects. in many ways you don't have to carry any of this in your head. you can just look it up, so why learn it. information is important.

it can be worth a lot of money. it can be decisive. in which direction one it goes. but it is not learning. if information were learning, if you memorize the world almanac you would not be learning, you would be weird. no computer has yet had an idea. they only happen here in the human brain. information is not poetry, information is not music, information is not art or theater. it does not deal with the soul of our human nature.

i've always loved dixieland jazz and about 9-10 years ago, we rented a house in florida and i was taking a walk one morning and i found this incredible dixieland music coming out of a house with a lot of cars parked around it. it was about 8:00 or 9:00. i realized, that is not a recording, that is the real thing. i was walking by the same house and the kid who lived there was picking up his newspaper off his driveway. we sat in the car outside this

house and listened to a dixieland concert for about two hours. he said we do this every tuesday , morning. he said, next week, come on in and listen inside. the band is comprised of retired professional musicians. some of them are not retired professionals but they are good enough to have been. you should hear them play. they come in on a walker or a cane and they come down to play and they are 45 or 55 again. it lets you out of time. that is the power of music, that is the power of art.

it is not information. brian: what is the impact of age on you? david: very little. brian: have things changed? david: sure it has. time is more important. material acquisitions of any kind do not interest me. my desire is not to travel a lot. i'm not against traveling but i do not have the bug in me. i want to spend the time i have doing the work i want to do. my joy is in work. your work, your family, your friends and needless to say your

health are what matter. i do not have time to waste time. i get very impatient when i'm with some people who have long since retired and all they talk about is their golf game or their knee operation. that is not for me. i like learning. i like finding out about something that i do not know anything about. i was raised on curiosity. curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. i also love to make something. i love to make a page or five pages or a chapter or a book.

i love to make a painting. i love to make all kinds of things if i have the right materials to work with or have somebody who really knows how to do it. i like to finish the day knowing i have done something that if i was not around it would not have happened. i was pleased i spent much of my day doing it. brian: i have one to ask you about this for several months. before i do i want to run some video of you in the year 2016 and i want you to tell me why you did this. >> president dwight d. eisenhower said there were four key qualities by which we should measure a leader. character, ability, responsibility and experience.

donald trump fails to qualify on all four counts. eisenhower put character first. in the words of the ancient greeks, character is destiny. so much of what donald trump spouts is so far from the truth and so vulgar. he is unwise, plainly unprepared and he often seems unhinged. how can we possibly put our future in the hands of such a man? brian: i've interviewed you lots and lots of hours. it surprised me when i saw this and i thought why did this historian do this? david: because i felt that he was at the least qualified candidate for the presidency in

our history and he not only has had no appropriate background or training and has never done anything for his country on his own or by volunteering and that he is one of those people who uses fear and smear and swagger as his weapons for succeeding. and i really was worried and i still am about what the consequences are going to be. brian: did you organize of the other historians? david: yes and no. ken burns and i did. we said we had to do something.

a traditional place that historians take in the political country has been to stay out of it. to maintain neutrality. it would appear to violate your ability to make fair judgments and not be misled by your own political opinions or emotions. i have done that often. i grew up in a very republican family. i was a great admirer of several republican politicians, past and present. i voted for gerald ford. i quit my job in new york to work for john kennedy when he called on us to do something for

our country. and i have registered as independent but i have cross of the line many times and have been exposed to dear friends and members of my family who disagreed with the position that i took. that was fine. this time i thought it was an emergency. if we could somehow reach out to the people who were really on the fence at that point, it might make a difference. brian: i want to show some more video from the other historians. these are all democrats except one. >> there comes a time when i and you can no longer remain neutral.

we must speak up and speak out. >> like many other historians i have been deeply disturbed by the trump campaign. there are demagogues who rise to the very heights of power. >> nothing is more antithetical to america's founding. >> what is especially different about donald trump is that he is not a patriot. >> one of the things that donald trump is not is a populist. >> donald trump is attuned to the white backlash against a black man in power. >> he is the huckster, the shark. >> i don't know much about trump's temperament, but he seems like a narcissist. >> no one has dedicated his life so completely to self-aggrandizement without even an inkling of responsibility.

>> i never saw all that. brian: i want to ask you about something. you may not like this. the last man on the screen was joseph ellis. and you talk about character and i'm not going to besmirch joseph ellis except to go back and remember the time in 2001, he won the pulitzer and the boston globe reported he had lied to his students about serving in vietnam and making the freedom march in mississippi. they suspended him for a year. he is a historian and now he is involved in politics. how are we supposed to believe someone who would tell students those lies?

you write about lies in your speeches. david: brian, joe ellis is a friend of mine. i can't answer your question. he is a friend and i will not speak negatively about him. as much as i could say is positive about him as a historian and as a friend. the story broke and came as a shock to me. a serious shock but i called him right away and said i just want you to know i am your friend and i will stand by you and i have. it has happened to some other people, plagiarism charges and so forth. i guess the answer to that is historians are human. we all have our flaws and

sometimes what we think will be kept private is not and i think that as a professional point of view, joe ellis, i've never sat in on one of his classes. i'm sure he is good as they get. brian: let me go beyond that, you write so much about character. what is character? david: it is having the courage of your convictions. you tell the truth. and, at the white house, and in the state dining room, there's a

quotation from a letter john adams wrote to abigail. the first night he stayed at the white house. he was the first president to live in the white house and she had not arrived yet. the house was far from complete. in a letter he wrote may only wise and honest men rule under this roof. he puts honesty first. honesty is more important than brains and a number of other people have said it too. our first president became famous for never telling a lie and never said anything

derogatory or nasty about a rival ever. this came over me with particular strength when i was writing my wright brothers book. how we are raised at home is most important. yes, our education is vital and studying with brilliant people. having the advantage of access to books. but it is of those fundamental values that you are raised with, they don't get too big for your, that you don't cheat, that you are loyal to your friends as

country. that you work hard, that you are loyal to your friends and your country. you have purpose in life. if it is worthy purpose, you will have a good life. those wright brothers never had the advantages of material wealth. they never finished high school. they were raised to work hard, to have a purpose and to never be little or smear a rival. other people who were in the aviation pioneering era would often take cracks at the wright brothers. the wright brothers never said anything negative about those with whom they were in competition. you do not learn that in college. might learn it in grade

school from a really good it is what you get at home. brian: i want to stay with character for a moment. the president got a lot of criticism from a lot of different areas about his attitude towards women. one of the heroes of a lot of people is john f. kennedy and his relationship with women --not admirable, nobody knew about it. david: i was in the kennedy administration in a very low ranking role. brian: what is the difference between a jfk and a donald trump when it comes to women? and character? david: kennedy was a gentleman. brian: he had a 19-year-old who was in the white house -- david: he did not smear her. he did not talk about the women he was involved in.

brian: we as of the people office was camelot. david: the exposure of the full story of a president is a recent development in our lifetime. brian: is that good or bad? david: in some ways it is not good. i think the decline of privacy and our way of life is not just in the white house. it is everywhere now. it is getting worse because of electronic snooping and spying. brian: in your lifetime, you've been involved with jefferson and monticello, the whole sally hemmings relationship, they thought very hard to not expose

it. what impact has that had on jefferson's character? david: it has had impact and it always will. the fact that he paid reporters to smear john adams. he was funding that. jefferson destroyed every letter he ever wrote to his wife and she wrote to him. what does that tell us? we don't know. washington did the same thing. we cannot really know those men as i wish we could. you take the adam's papers, there are thousands of letters

between john and abigail adams. if only we could have some from jefferson and washington. they are always in debt. john adams was not in debt. i think we need to know more about the puritans. the idea that they all dressed in black and never smiled and did not like having a good time, not true. there values were admirable. in particularly education and legal fairness. snobbery was bad form.

you do not act that way and you are not vulgar. my great-grandmother was german and she's to talk about the vulgar rich. people who have so much money they were making fools of themselves. brian: in this book "the american spirit," you have 15 speeches. what is the best speeches ever given? david: i cannot answer that. it is like asking about my favorite grandchild. i worked very hard on the speech i gave at dartmouth about the presidency and i worked hard on the speech i gave in ohio at the university there.

i worked hard on the speech i gave at lafayette college about the connection between france and the united states. that is an aspect of our story that is not as understood as it should be. there are 60,000 americans buried in france. more of our people buried there than any other country in the world except our own. you think about the louisiana purchase and the service of the french, the part they played in the revolution, i think there's a good case we would not have won the revolution except for the french. their financial and military help. brian: what was the first time someone said they wanted to pay you to make a speech? and what was your reaction? david: i loved it. i had a lot of tuitions to pay

and survival for many years as and independent writer was no easy matter. i have a wonderful wife and i'm thinking of stopping my job as an editor in new york and see if i can make it on my own as a writer, she said great. brian: you don't remember the first speech you are paid? david: no, i don't. it was probably at a college or university. very good question. if rosalie were here, she would know. brian: we are out of time. the book "the american spirit: who we are and what we stand for." 15 speeches from 1989-2016. my guest, brian mccullough.

thank you very much. ♪ announcer: four free transcripts or to give us your comment about this program, visit us at q&a.org. q&a programs are also available on c-span podcast. ♪ >> if you liked this q&a with david mccullough, watch our interview with him from 2011. a group of americans spending

time living in paris. there is also author michael about a topic he writes american heroes. you can find those interviews online at c-span.org. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> live this afternoon, attorney general jeff sessions. coming up on today's washington journal, a look at what is ahead for congress after the break.

♪ t's "washington journal." former president obama will make an appearance at a town hall style event in chicago. you can see that live at noon, and go to c-span.org for more information on the event. a busy week expected for president trump, with the potential of a tax plan being continued work to get $1.4 billion for the construction of a wall on the southern border into a spending bill, which if not pass could result of a partial shutdown of government starting as the president hits his 100th day in office. democrats are poised to resist