house, as we would regardless of who is president of the united states, and that is what we will continue to do after the dinner and in years to come. jeff mason, the president of the correspondents association and with reuters. and on saturday, we will bring you live coverage of this year's white house correspondents dinner, with entertainment by the daily show correspondent and with college scholarships and awards. president trump will not be attending this year's inner, making him the first president to skip the event since ronald reagan in 1981, who was recovering after having been shot. c-span coverage starts saturday at 9:30 p.m. eastern. ♪

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 first-person singular, and i did not include those, and 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 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 presidents 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 1930's, 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 18th-century 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 don't 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 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 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 martha's 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: let's 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: let's watch a little bit of it just so we can -- david: i've 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 don't 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 i've ever worked on anything i have ever delivered from a podium. and that line just then, i just "calumny"ooked up again. to make sure i knew what it means. it means untruthful, audacious defamation of somebody else's character. brian: joe mccarthy. david: yes. then there is a wonderful line. let me just see. i can't quote it offhand. presidentan -- 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: here's 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: 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

, you know "we are all created , equal," and didn't really seem to mean it? david: some of them meant it. john adams never owned a slave. brian: the first seven presidents aside from adams 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 there were lots 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 that territory, they didn't want slavery because they didn't 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 don't 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. i'm 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 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.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 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.

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 wasn't very good in physics. i wasn't 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 don't 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 all-out, full-time 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 it's in our irish , blood. i think that's 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 haven't 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. 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. so they have covered a lot of time. brian: six kids? david: we have five children. brian: how many of the five children and the 19 grandchildren and in-laws and all that and he found to be interested in history? david: i would say probably -- that's a very interesting question. and i've never thought about it. probably only 75%. but 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 when young.

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 reason in the world, 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. barbara said there is no trick to teaching history, tell stories. that's what it is. and i think you have to bring the characters alive, and you can only do that by really knowing them. and so 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, brian written by the people who have settled marietta, ohio. brian: how you find out it was there? david: i working on manasseh cutler for the speech i gave at athens, ohio. as often happens, by talking to the archival -- the archivist and who knowsc more about the subject than anybody, knows these characters -- i have got one who was a andenter and a boat builder a jet maker. one who was a minister and a doctor. there was one that was manasseh

cutler. his name was efraim cutler. he eventually wound up in politics, and the was a point when ohio became a state the legislature -- a big movement in the legislature to scrap the no-slavery rule. let slaves be in ohio, and it went to the legislature and the , deciding vote was cast by efraim cutler. the son. and if that is not a great story, and he wrote wonderful letters. and there is another man, a , who wroted hildreth the terrific histories of the town and wrote a lot of medical essays and pieces about various characters who had figured importantly in the town's story, and then one day, i was there in

the archive in marietta, and this wonderful archivist brought over a big notebook like that, and old one, obviously, and he said, "i think you might find this interesting," and i opened it up, and there were these absolutely exquisite watercolors of the natural history phenomenon. the caterpillar and his whole life cycle returns as a butterfly, all done in watercolors of such perfection they could be hanging in the metropolitan museum, and he is a doctor practicing medicine, with patience and all of that in this frontier town -- with patients and all of that in this frontier town, and you think whoa. it is humbling to realize what so many of them accomplished, despite of adversities.

in thehere you are speech from boston college back in 2008, and the title of it is "the love of learning." [video clip] facts alone are never enough. facts really have a 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. it can be like the old piano teacher's lament to her students, i'd hear all of the notes but i hear no music. clip]video brian: as we know in politics, we are always hearing that is the truth. you are saying they are not the same? david: well they are not. , we live in the information

age. and we get information in quantities that would have been andaginable in other times on an infinite variety of subjects. instantly now, electronically, and 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? well information is important. ,information is valuable. it can be worth a lot of money. it can be decisive in which direction one goes in one's life or which direction the country goes, but it is not learning. if information -- i like to tell students, if information were learning, if you memorize the you would not be , learning. you would be weird.

no computer ever has yet had an idea. they only happen here in the human brain, human imagination. 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 have always -- long loved dixieland jazz. i love it, and about 9-10 years ago, we rented a house down in florida, and i was taking a walk thisorning, and i heard incredible dixieland music coming out of a house with a lot of cars parked around it.

it was about 8:30 or 9:00, and i thought, they are playing that awfully loud, and then i realized, that is not a recording. that is the real thing. so the next day i was walking by , the same house, and a fellow, the kid who lived there, picking up his newspaper off the driveway, and when i heard it the other day, i walked back to the house and got rose, and we got in the car and came down, and we sat in the car outside the house and listen to this dixieland concert for about two w hours, and i complemented him, and he said, next week, we do this every tuesday morning. he said, next week, come on in and listen inside. well, the band is comprised of retired professional musicians. formere of them are not professionals but are good enough to have been, and you

should hear them play. and some of them come in on a walker or a cane. there is one man well into his 90's, and they sit down and they are 45y, and or 25 again. if i ever saw the fountain of youth at work, it just lifts you right out. that is the power of music, the power of art, and that is not information. that is life. in july, you will be 84. david: yes. brian what is the impact of age : on you? david: very little. brian: have things changed? david: yes sure it has. , intime is more important. material acquisitions of any kind do not interest me at all anymore. my desire is not to travel a lot.

i have been to so many places that i do not have motivation to go again. i am not against traveling, but too not have the bug in me get out, and i want to spend what time i have doing the work i want to do. my joy is in the work. worknk what one finds, you , your family, your friends, and needless to say your health are what really matter. i do not like to waste time. i have not got 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. no, 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 thierry all-city is a good thing and that curiosity is what separates us from the ravages, and it does. i also love to make something. to make a page or five pages or a chapter or eight chapters 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 thinking i have done something that if i was not around it would not have happened. and i am pleased that i did it, please that i spent much of my day doing it.

have wanted to ask you this for several months, but before i do, i want to run some video. oh, ok. brian: of you in the year and i 2016, want you to tell me why you did this. [video clip] david: 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. and it should be noted eisenhower put character first. in the words of the ancient greeks, character is destiny. so much of what donald trump spouts is so vulgar and so far far from the tooth and mean-spirited that he does not measure up. he is unwise. he is plainly unprepared,

unqualified, and he often seems unhinged. possibly put our future in the hands of such a man? brian: i've interviewed you lots and lots of hours. i have actually no idea what your politics is, and 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 that he not and only had no appropriate background or training and has never done anything for his country, on his own or volunteering, and that he is one of those people who uses fear

and smear and slander as his weapons for succeeding. and i really was worried and i still am about what the consequences are going to be. brian: how did you -- did you still am about what the organize of the other historians? david: no, i did not. yes and no. ken burns and i did. we said we had to do something. the traditional place that historians take in a political contest has been to stay out of it, maintain neutrality, because it would appear to violate your ability to make fair judgments and to not be misled by your own political opinions or emotions. and so, 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 go john kennedy when he called on us to do something for our country, and i have registered as an independent, but i have crossed the line many times, and i have certainly been exposed to dear friends and members of my family who disagreed with the position that i took. that was fine. i did not mind that. this time i thought it was an emergency. and if we could somehow reach out to the people who were

maybe on the fence at that point, it might make a difference. brian: i want to show some more video from the other historians. briefly, so people can see the extent. i would suggest, all democrats except one, and you will see. [video clip] >> there comes a time when i and you can no longer remain neutral, silent. we must speak up and speak out. >> like many other historians i have been deeply disturbed by the trump campaign. history is full of demagogue who rise and who sometimes rise to the very height 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. >> one of the things that donald >> he is melville's confidence man. he is the huckster, the shark. >> i don't know much about trump's temperament, but he seems like a narcissist. >> no nominee has devoted his entire public life so completely to self-aggrandizement, self-promotion without even an , inkling of responsibility. [end video clip] david: wow. brian: you never saw that? brian: i never saw that. brian: i want to ask you about something. you may not like this. the last man on the screen was joseph ellis. david: was who question might brian: 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 at the same time, "the boston globe" reported he had lied to his students about serving in vietnam, the airborne and making , the freedom march in mississippi. for a year,ed him but went back, and now he is a historian and involved in politics. why 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. and i cannot answer your question. he is a friend, and i will not speak negatively about him. there is much that i could say that is positive about him, particularly as a historian and as a friend. when the story broke, it came as a shock to me. a serious shock.

but i called him right away and said, "i just want to know, i am your friend and 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 and i think that as a -- from a professional point of view, joe ellis, i've never sat in on one of his classes, but he is probably as good as they get. brian: let me go beyond that, because you write so much about

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. 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 britches, 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. you might learn it in grade school from a really good teacher. it is what you get at home. brian: i want to stay with character for a moment. president trump 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 with the derogatory fashion. brian: we as the people though this 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 fought 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. not the rules of the game and

jefferson destroyed every letter he ever wrote to his wife and she wrote to him. what does that tell us about him? i don't know. washington did the same thing. it is a shame because 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. they are marvelous, touching, revealing letters. if only we could have some from ofilar window on the lives jefferson and washington. they are always in debt. john adams was never in debt, but he never had any money. it was a different ethic. i think we need to know more about the puritans. the puritans were not what most people imagine, and i am finding

out that with some of the characters i'm working on it i knew a little bit about it before. -- characters i am working on. i knew a little bit about it before, 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 a little bit like asking which is 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. i think 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, the part they played in the revolution, i think there's a good case we would not have won the revolution had it not been for the french, both financially and military help. brian: we are running out of time. i want to know when was the first time someone said they wanted to pay you to make a speech? and what was your reaction? david: i am sure i loved it. i had a lot of tuitions to pay and survival for many years as an independent writer was no easy matter. but i also look back on it as a very happy time in our lives. i have a wonderful wife and i'm when i said i'm thinking about 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. go for it. do it. brian: you don't remember the first speech you are paid? david: no, i don't.

♪ david: it was probably at a college or university. i wish i had -- it is a 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. by our guest, david mccullough. i thank you very much. david: thank you. ♪ 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. ♪