>> charlie: welcome to the program. on this fourth of july, a compilation of conversations with the american historian david mccullough. >> there but for george washington, there is no america. >> that's my feeling. i think he's the greatest president we've ever had. i think he's the greatest american of all because, if it weren't for him, as you just said, there would be, in my view, be no united states of america, and he did it all right, particularly when he became president. he set the example, just as he was setting the example as the general, as the commander-in-chief in the very dark days of the revolution. >> charlie: david mccullough for the hour, next. funding for charlie rose is provided by the following:

>> there's a saying around here: you stand behind what you say. around here, we don't make excuses, we make commitments. and when you can't live up to them, you own up and make it right. some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where it's needed most. but i know you'll still find it, when you know where to look. >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg. a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

the glorious ideas and ideals of the declaration of independence which we celebrate, as we should every fourth of july, and as we know by our secular faith would have been nothing more than a declaration, words on paper, if it hadn't been for the people who were out there in the slog fighting against all odds, suffering terribly. one of the reasons i wanted to write the book was a line abigail adams wrote to her husband about this time. she said, "future generations who will reap the blessings will scarcely know the hardships and sufferings we've endured in their behalf." and we don't. we don't sufficiently know. >> charlie: i knew she wrote that and, when i read that, it reminded me that these people knew they were making history. >> absolutely.

absolutely. they knew that they were being called upon to play a part in one of the great historical dramas of all time and that they would be judged by how they played their parts, each individually. young henry knox, one of the most admiral people -- >> charlie: an aide to george washington? >> yes, commander of artillery, a former book seller who knew nothing about the military other than what he read in the books, 25 years old. he writes the very day the text of the declaration of independence arrives in new york from philadelphia, he writes, "as we play our parts, history will judge us, ill or favorably," so they know that they are part of history. i think that's an extremely important thing to understand. great that you pointed it out. that give them a kind of sense

of responsibility, a duty. they didn't have much cause to have hope, when you consider the odds against them. no real army, no navy, no money, no gunpowder. washington never commanded an army in battle in his life before he was given the role of commander-in-chief. >> charlie: knowing his role in history, i mean, george washington, whom we get to know here, was carried forward because he understood what he had to do, even though he didn't have a great strategy, even though he was, as you say, not a great general by any other definition with the exception that he was a great leader. >> he was a great leader. that's the key to washington. he isn't an intellectual like john adams or jefferson, he isn't a great orator like patrick henry, he isn't a

brilliant napoleonic figure, he's a leader and people will follow him and he has absolute integrity and he will not give up and he never forgets what it's about, what the war is for. again and again, you have people saying that they're not going to quit because i will not leave this good man, you know. we have to remember, at one point, it was down to 3,000 troops, that's all he had left. hundreds, thousands had either quit, gone home when their enlistments expired, deserted, went to the enemy. >> charlie: because they were given pardons. >> absolutely. and people in new jersey, when washington and the army were retreating across new jersey, when the general and the british commanders offered pardons for anybody who would sign the loyalty oath, people in new jersey came by the thousands to sign as quickly as they could. if there had been polls taken, daily polls taken and run in the

newspapers, it would have just disintegrated immediately because people would realize that we haven't got a chance, it's over. >> charlie: just a couple of points here. you thought of this story midway through the john adams book. >> yes, i did. >> charlie: what caused you to think about it? the letter from abigail? >> no, when i was writing the chapter dealing with the summer after the declaration of independence was signed. the whole war effort is starting to fall apart, then came the battle of brooklyn and the escape from brooklyn, the miraculous night escape by washington. when you're writing a biography, you can't stray from your subject very much. elizabeth longford who wrote about queen victoria said, you can't leave your subject for more than five pages, and she

was right, you can't, and i wanted very much to write about, in some detail, about the battle of brooklyn and about the escape from brooklyn. you can't do it here but you can do it in the next book. so i begin with, which surprises some people, george iii going before parliament. >> charlie: that's how the book began. >> yes, to declare the americans were in rebellion, that the leaders, the rebel rousers -- >> charlie: he calls them the unhappy americans. >> yes, they're traitors, and he and the king and the british power, army and empire are going to bring these people to heel, they're going to crush the rebellion. it's when that speech reaches boston on the first day of the new year because of a great delay in crossing the ocean, first day of 1776, that the

people in the army under washington, people everywhere realized this isn't going to be a short, unpleasant business which will wind up in reconciliation. and we better be fighting for independence. they don't dare say it right away, though some of them is writing it like nathaniel green is writing it in his letter. >> charlie: another aide to george washington. >> yes, nathaniel green who knew no more of the military when he joined up and was made a general at the age of 33, knew no more of military than what he read in the books. but we have to remember that that was an age where if you wanted to learn how to do something, a good way to do it was a closed study of books which was the whole kay of enlightenment. washington, green and knox had about the equivalent of a 5t 5th grade education. >> charlie: no formal

schooling. everything i know is because of your book. these two guys are new englanders, and george washington is a very patrician new englander. >> he thinks new englanders are dirty and unruly. they have the unfortunate idea they like to decide things for themselves which, of course, you can't have in an army. 4..pt he overcomes that bias, which is a real big inner struggle. he has to because that's all he has is a new england army. he has people from the middle colonies that join? >> charlie: he takes command at 45. >> never commanded an army in battle before in his life. he said to congress, i'm not qualified for this job, i'm not the pan -- i'm not the man, but he also knew he was better than anybody else they could pick and they choose him not because he's

a great general, they know he fowgd in the french and english war with a distinguished record, but they know him at a person and politician. he is a political general and that's sometimes used in a dismissive or less than complimentary way. we should thank god that he was a political general because he never forgets who's boss, congress is boss. >> charlie: so we have washington at 43. he goes to the constitutional convention, though, in a uniform, even though he's saying, i'm not the man. >> yes. he's certainly saying he's available. >> charlie: there's a contradiction there. >> well, yes and no. i think he's being perfectly honest in both. he will serve if called upon to serve. he is ready to serve. he has his uniform. he's reminding them he is a military man at heart, but he's very genuine saying, look, i'm not the ideal fellow for this job, and he makes some very bad

mistakes in judgment. he was outfoxed, outplayed, outnumbered, to be sure, made to look pretty inept at the battle of brooklyn, he was so indecisive at the siege of fort washington that he really caused that bastian they thought was impregnable along with several thousand of troops and hoards of splice and cannons and the rest. these were terrible defeats, charlie, very, very serious, yet he did not quit, he did not succumb to his own sense of defeat and failure, and the people who followed him, with only a few exceptions, were determined to stay with him, as was congress. >> charlie: it is said about him that he had this special quality and that you couldn't quite put your finger on it, but you knew from the people who saw

him up close that he had it. >> yes. >> charlie: it's almost like an x factor. >> yes. he was a commanding figure. >> charlie: tall? oh, yes, 6-feet, 2 inches, probably weighed 190 pounds, in prime physical condition. only 43. greene 33, knox 25, adams 40, jefferson 33 when he wrote the declaration of independence. we forget this. >> charlie: and franklin was the only old one. >> he was old enough to be their father. we see them as the white haired, elder statesmen, but at this point they're not. it's a young american's cause. and they were not in the

majority, ever. the people who were for the revolution were never in the majority. there were maybe a third. adams -- no one knows what the proportions really were. there were no polls or surveys taken. but at least as many were against as for it. >> charlie: and they knew what would happen if they lost, off with their heads, they would be hung at the crack of dawn. >> yes. >> charlie: let me talk about the war for a second. in '75, they go to boston. they win some early victories, don't they, in '76? >> no. >> charlie: no victories? didn't they surround them in boston is this. >> they drilled the british out of boston. impossible for the british to remain in boston. by ingenuity and doing the impossible, hauling the canon -- >> charlie: did that give them

confidence. >> probably too much. they felt big, after all they'd driven the british empire out of boston. they outsmarted them. >> charlie: and this was the biggest superpower in the world. >> yes. >> charlie: and they had taken them on and driven them out of boston. >> and they were jubilant. they were victorious. they marched to new york to face them on the field of battle for the first time, and they suddenly have a name. they're called the continental army. they have a flag to march under. they have their general and they're going to be joined in new york by the people from journal and new yorkers -- from new jersey and new yorkers and pennsylvanians, and will become more than boston, truly a continental army. >> charlie: and what happened? they got sick in great numbers, epidemic dysentery, smallpox. they didn't understand the rules of hygiene. washington divided his army,

leaving half in manhattan and taking the other half to brooklyn. >> charlie: mistake? mistake. he was trying to defend new york, new york was indefensible because they had no sea power, they had no navy. british came into new york with a fleet of 400 ships. >> charlie: if the british navy had gone up the hudson, would it have been over? >> yes, indeed, it could have been. when washington fought the battle of brooklyn with about 9,000 of his troops over there and was soundly defeated, 300 americans or so killed, over 1,000 taken prisoner, including three generals, it was a route, it was awful. there were pockets of valor performed on the part of some of our troops and the miracle is they didn't lose more. but at that point, the army was, in effect, in the midst of a real trap because all the british had to do is bring the

fleet up the east river and they'd seal them off but the wind was in the wrong direction. if the wind had been in the other direction on the night of, say, september or august 28th, 29th, i think it all would have been over because washington and half of his army would have been trapped. >> charlie: no united states of america. just because to have the wind, history was changed! >> and then the next day, avenur the defeat of the battle, they decide they have to escape, the night of august 29, and they organize a retreat at night back across the east river by rounding up every boat they could get their hands on, on the east river, the hudson, new jersey, everywhere they could get boats, brought them all over and they took that army off of brooklyn in the night,

9,000 men, canon, equipment, horses, everything, without the loss of a single man. now, an organized retreat in the face of an enemy of overpowering strength is the hardest thing in the military operations to bring off successfully, and the fact that this amateur army, really undisciplined, green troops, people who'd never marched with a rifle or a musket before, that they pulled this off and it worked, it was as miraculous as the wind being in their favor. >> charlie: i mean, you have to realize what they're facing, the largest expeditionary force ever mounted. >> they just defeated them in the biggest battle ever fought on the north american continent up to that point, and the people who saved the army were the

marblehead massachusetts mariners under a tough little general named john glover. so you have a combination of both fate or circumstance or hand of god, as many said, with the wind being exactly what they needed. but you also had the skill, the ability of those mariners to pull that off. the boats were going across so low the water was only inches below the gunles. no running lights. they have to be silent. if the enemy had any idea they were going to evacuate, they could have descended on the army and annihilated them, truly, right then. then they get across, most of them. morning is coming, and a lot of them are still back on the brooklyn side, an it's going to be light, and that will be curtains for them. in comes a prove detentionle fog

that covers -- prov all of broot doesn't happen on the new york side. if you were bringing a north no, you would say, no, that's not real. >> charlie: too much of a perfect weather. >> yes. >> charlie: at this time, they're retreating, what was the mood of washington? >> oh, one of abject discouragement. he was exhausted. he hadn't slept for three nights or more. they were all exhausted. and he -- i'm sure he realized he played his hand wrong, that he'd misjudged the whole situation. he never covered what was called the jamaican pass. there's a pass-through the ridge that runs along long island, and they had nobody posted there to

stop the british. so the british sent 10,000 men on the nine-mile march through the night up and around and completely outflanked us. it was a perfect military maneuver, perfectly handled, perfectly performed by the british just as they were landing on long island, everything was done just right. now, if general howell had attacked and they were retreating back to the fortifications that's now brooklyn heights, they could have been -- >> charlie: what does this say about the british and their leadership and tenacity? >> this is the debate, why didn't they move in for the kill? some say he didn't do it because he had such a bloody experience at bunker hill where the americans had been positioned on the high ground in a trench and he wasn't going to attack. >> charlie: right.

it was awful, they lost 1,000 men. but, on the other hand, he would attack a frontal position later on at fort washington. i think he felt, why destroy them completely when we've got them and we're going to win this and let's pull back a little bit, let's not crush them because we want them back into the -- >> charlie: they wanted to maintain the union and -- >> politically, he was a wig. >> charlie: not end up like the south after the civil war. >> that doesn't mean he wasn't a tough and very professional soldier. he was a very smart and very courageous soldier. >> charlie: the two howells are brothers? >> yes. >> charlie: richard and william. >> richard was the admiral and william was the general, and they were very highly placed, very influential figures in london society, they were aristocratics, as all officers were, and any picture we have of

bumbling aristocratic fools in high command during our revolution is simply not so. there are in misconceptions. >> charlie: what about the misconceptions of george iii? >> george iii is seen as the crazy king who lost the colonies. >> charlie: and he is, in fact? >> a very courageous man, i find him a sympathetic character, he was a great collector of books, a wonderful painter, he was a musician, he was a devoted father and husband. he was intelligent. samuel johnson thought he was charming company and samuel johnson did not judge people lightly. but he saw as his duty to crush this rebellion. his mother said, george, be king. and when your mother tells you, you are king. he was still fairly young. and the madness of king which we

know about because of the play and movie, that doesn't come for 20 years later. long after the war. >> charlie: let me say this, this is history at the ground level. this is history on the battl battlefield. >> yes. >> charlie: this is diaries from soldiers. >> that's the real story i wanted to tell. >> charlie: and you like some of them. >> i like them. >> charlie: hodgkin's. hodgkin's, a great, great guy. >> charlie: your favorite character. >> i'm impressed with fitch, , too from connecticut. >> charlie: tell me about both, hodgkin's first. >> hodge againhodgkins was a shd a wife to whom he wrote regularly. they're wonderful letters. he said, i will march and he fights and he fights on. after the escape from brooklyn in this terribly demoralized

time, hodgkins is writing to his wife and just received a letter their youngest child died, the little boy was sick and he was very worried about him. we forget these people are thinking about their families and loved ones. so they have been defeated, looks like it's over, they're exhausted, filthy, dirty, no proper uniforms. he hears this child he adores has died and, yet, he picks himself up and he goes on and he will not stop. >> charlie: because they believed in their leader, they believed in their mission, they believed in the holy idea that they were creating a nation. >> yes, i think so. now, joseph hodgkins never talks about the declaration of independence, it's interesting.

i never found life, liberty and pursuit of happiness mentioned. >> charlie: how about equality? >> yes. i think our country, we're going to sign this for ourselves, we're going to make this kind of society and way of life here that we want. we're not going to be dictated to. >> charlie: that's what always drives revolution. >> yes. but they're not fighting for because they're exploiting, americans had the highest standard of living, average americans of any place in the world. >> charlie: but they wanted to shape their own destiny. >> yes, exactly. and they were proud of who they were and they wanted to show these brits they could fight as well as anyone. they're learning from experience. washington, green, knox, glover, they're all learning as they're going along. >> charlie: that's one of the

values washington had, he could learn from his experience. >> exactly. so when he's defeated, he doesn't say, who woe is me, pit, but what can i learn from. this experience had been his teacher all his life. his father died when he was young, he was on his own from age 16, as all these other people were, too. but the story is different because he kept a diary and he kept a diary even after he was captured and taken prisoner and put on one of th the vile prison ships in new york. they're writing on little scraps of paper and i think he was hiding hem in his shoe because that was against the rules, you weren't supposed to do that. but the fact that they wrote the letters, the fact they kept the diaries is part of the great

contribution to their country because now we know what it was like. we can be in their shoes and feel what they went through, these human beings. and i think also what comes across is how tough they were. these people had been beat up by life in peacetime, by our standards. >> charlie: they did not know how it was going to turn out. >> right. and thails knew that -- and they also knew that, without courage, without an understanding that life isn't always a big gift of a bed of roses, you're not going to make it through life because life was hard. any new englander, for example, knew that it's best to expect the worst. you know, life on the new england farm -- most all these people are farmers -- was a struggle. life was a battle.

and, you know, many of these fellows had no shoes. and, of course, in the wintertime, it was terrible, and there are legendary stories of leaving bloody footprints in the snow, from marching in their bare feet. that's true. really happened. but you also have to understand that a farmer, particularly a young farm boy, as many were, went barefoot from about may to probably october. they had tough feet. they weren't like our feet. that's something you need to understand. they knew how to fix a broken wagon. they knew how to pull up a stump or dig a trench. they were used to hard work. >> charlie: they learned how to survive outside. >> yes. >> charlie: let me take you back to the battle. so they retreat to new jersey. >> yes. >> charlie: down to 3,000, or

2,500 men. >> yes. >> charlie: they were underclothed, underfed, cold. >> yes. >> charlie: it's now november, december. things are precarious. george washington, on christmas night, decides what? >> well, all hope was gone. he said himself the game's pretty nearly up. sometimes when all hope's gone, the thing you do is attack. >> charlie: freedom is having nothing else to lose. >> yes. so he's wanted to attack all along, from boston on. he's constantly wanting to attack, and his counsels of war again and again are pulling him back from that wisely. if he'd launched an attack on british it would have been

disastrous. but he decides on christmas night to strike at trenton where there are 1,500 german prisoners bifprisonersprisonersbivwacked . most of the british army has pulled back, most of them back to new york, and they cross at night and march through the night. to give you some idea how rough that was, the only fatalities, the only men we lost in the battle of trenton were two guys that froze to death on the march. >> charlie: wow. just froze to death. and they hit early the next morning, and it was a route, because it was total surprise, and they came in, determined to

win, and when it was over, washington turned to one of his officers and said, this is a glorious day for america, and it was. he knew -- he knew what the psychological impact of the victory would be. >> charlie: what did it do? it gave people the idea we might win. >> charlie: even though it took six or seven long years. >> absolutely. they didn't know that yet. >> charlie: yeah. that we could beat them. that it was possible to fight them and beat them. now, it wasn't a big battle. it wasn't like the battle of long island, the battle of brooklyn as it was called then. it was a small battle. it was a fierce fight, bloody, for the enemy. the enemy were not drunk from christmas celebrations the night before as many people had written and said, they weren't. washington then has to do something, and the natural

decision would have been to retreat back across the delaware where it's pretty safe because the british didn't have any boats to get across. but they didn't do that. he turned and made a big loop around and came up and struck at princeton and won again. two victories, won right on top of the other. and that combination just changed morale in everybody. you can read in the letters of abigail adams, ministers, attorneys, and people in all walks of life writing about what it meant to get the word that we had won at trenton. while princeton was important, one of the most important events in the war and, consequently, one of the most important events in history, it would truly change the world. that little attack on trenton,

which was a little village. >> charlie: and he took 2,500 men over. >> yes, and two other attacks were going to be launched farther down the river. >> charlie: and in this case, washington was the field commander? >> he road with the troops, but he was not commanding immediately. general graves and general sullivan were in command of the two prongs of attack, and our old friend the boston book seller henry knox was in charge of the artillery and the artillery really were decisive in the battle. >> charlie: the two guys george washington chose early in '75 served him brilliantly. >> and served him through the entire war. they were the only officers to stay the distance and go the whole way. washington, knox and green are the only one that fight through the whole war, the general officers.

>> charlie: they would come in and serve and leave. >> yes. >> charlie: hamilton came in at some point. >> yes. >> charlie: serve as an aide to washington? >> later. he fought in the battle of princeton and new york. >> charlie: and what did he think of washington? >> he idolized him. later on, they would have differences and they would patch that up and he would become washington's secretary of treasury. >> charlie: after he is one of the great men in history. >> yes. >> charlie: there but for george washington, there is no america. >> that's my feeling. i think he's the greatest president we ever had. i think he's the greatest american of all because, if it weren't for him, as you just said, there would be, in my view, no united states of america. and he did it all right, particularly when he became president. he set the example, just as he was setting the example as the general, as the

commander-in-chief, in the very dark days of the revolution. >> charlie: i think we've got to understand how human they were, what makes their achievement all the more remarkable. if they were gods, gods can do anything, and they weren't. they weren't superhumans. they were extraordinary people and some truly brilliant and it is drool a miracle what they accomplished, but these are the people that were present at the creation, the founding father. the president was there. they were making a country, making a revolution first and making a country against the most daunting odds imaginable. >> charlie: when did the phrase president of the nation. >> it's used in title of dean athchenson's book. they're not starting a broadway

show. >> charlie: a country, a nation. >> if they had taken a poll in 1776, they wouldn't have gone ahead with it. >> charlie: odds were against them? >> it was not popular. people were against it. >> charlie: so what manner of man and woman was in favor of it? >> to a large degree, new englanders, virginians. >> charlie: south carolina -- definitely the carolinaians. >> charlie: but i'm asking what was the nature of the revolutionist. in other words, were they intellectuals? were they political fire brands? >> they were independen intellee brands, ambitious politicians,

decent, hard-working people who had farms and felt that they were not being granted the rights that were their birthright as english subjects. in other words, they're not so much revolting to create a very new and different kind of society. they're saying, wait a minute, you're taking away our rights as free english subjects, free englishmen, the government of laws and not men, and you're taxing us to pay your own bills back home. why should we pick up the tab for your expenditures there in england when we have no part in that life, most of us have never seen england and, besides, it's probably time we started our own country. >> charlie: no taxation without representation. >> yes. and when they say "free and independent," the concept is that they can't be free unless they're independent, and they

can't generate the moral fire, the morale, let's say, the spirit to fight a war unless they're fighting for independence. >> charlie: all right. so they have the do it in order to give spirit to the army and they're not going to be able to get any help from abroad, namely france, if they don't declare their independence because france is not about to come in and give financial and military support to a country that's going to make up and go back and be part of england again. the french support of our american revolution which is essential to our victory in the american revolution was primarily as a way for the french to get at the english. they weren't anxious for government of all the people, you know, all men created equal, france was a monarchy, more of a monarchy than even great britain was. so it's amazing -- >> charlie: it's amazing when you think about that, on the great decision in the war against france, john adams.

>> yes. >> charlie: leaves that the most important thing -- believes that the most important thing he did was to want peace with france and not war. >> yes. most americans don't realize we were fight ago war with france in the -- fighting a war with france in the last years of the 18th century during john adams' administration as president. we were fighting a war at sea, exchanging fire, capturing ships, all of the acts of war at sea, but the real war, the undeclared war at sea could have very well ignited into a real war with, as it happens, the new dictator, if you will, the emperor, as he proclaimed himself, napoleon. but adams steered a very careful and dangerous, treacherous course among the shoals and the

whirlpools of diplomacy and managed to keep america neutral, nonot to side with england or france. the jeffersonians wanted peace with france at any price. the hamiltons were eager to go to war with france. it would have probably locked in adams reelection. so when he succeeded from going to war with france, he felt he saved a colossal blunder but at the expense of his political fortunes. >> charlie: where did he place that effort in terms of his own historical legacy. >> where? >> charlie: yes. he thought it was number one. i think he was proudest of that than anything he'd done. it really does rank as an extremely brave, politically

courageous act, a true profile in courage. there are many similarities between truman and -- >> charlie: what? both farmer's sons, both short in stature, not charismatic or handsome. both great readers of history. both very direct, both letter writers. both very direct in their candor and both underestimated and both men of character and integrity and both vice presidents who followed looming idolized presidents before. >> charlie: right. and having said all that, there were tremendous differences. >> charlie: like? adams was brilliant. adams was an intellectual, a

giant mind. truman was very intelligent, but not that. adams was learned, probably the most widely and deeply read american of his day, more so even than jefferson, a farmer's son who became that. >> charlie: right. and adams did not like party politics. he thought party politics were vile, as did washington, that the country would be destroyed by party politics because people would begin to think more about the fortunes of their party than the fortunes of the united states of america. imagine thinking that. >> charlie: yeah. i was going to say one of the similarities is they both had a great sense of the country and what it meant. >> oh, absolutely. >> charlie: and the mission. and they were true patriots who showed that by risking their lives by going to war, by going to serve overseas as adams did in the midst of war crossing the atlantic four times, at great

risk to his life, signing a declaration of independence. >> charlie: was truman more of a club guy and adams was -- >> no, truman was not a loner at all. >> charlie: he was a club guy? yes, he was very active in the masons. he was a good party man. >> charlie: right. they're both devoted to their wives. >> charlie: abigail and beth. yes. and they were both well advised by their wives backstage. >> charlie: bess was a wise counsel? >> yes, i think she was. bess abhord public life and would freeze and become a stone face. abigail loved public life and was a better political thinker than her husband. she had a wonderful capacity to judge people. >> charlie: i'll get to that book in a moment.

suppose i said to you, that's a really good idea but it's going to take ten years of your life. >> i'm glad i didn't know because i never would have done it. >> charlie: have you ever thought about quitting? >> no, never. never. no, i have been very lucky in my subjects, charlie, and i've -- the more you learn, the more you want to learn, and every book -- i've never known a great deal about any subject that i've embarked upon to write about, ever. >> charlie: it's a voyage of discovery for you? >> yes, and if i knew all about it, i wouldn't want to write the book. it's a journey and you learn so much by doing this and you learn a lot about yourself. >> charlie: like what? well, this may sound strange, but i think writing history requires a great deal of imagination. i don't mean that you're making things up, but you have to be able to transport yourself into that other time and into the

shoes of those other people. get inside their skins, if you will, and that takes imagination. that takes empathy and sympathy. i don't mean sympathetic in the sense of feeling sorry for but sympathetic in that you understand what trouble they were in and how complicated the situation may have been. and what they didn't know. you have to always remember, they don't know an awful lot because they're caught up in the moment just as we are and they don't know how things are going to turn out. but i also feel that, for me, it's been an opportunity for self-expression because i can express things that i feel about human nature, about life, about the bonds of friendship, family, about loyalty, about bravery under difficult circumstances and about our country that i'm

dying to express, that i want to express. i can't understand how anyone who professes to love our country can have no interest in our history. >> charlie: let's go back to jefferson. jefferson burned all the letters that he and his wife wrote or received. >> yes. jefferson lives in a different world from adams. he's been born and raised in a different world. his first memory was of being carried on a pillow by a slave. first thing he remembered in his life. he is, of course, our great voice, our great pen -- the great pen of the revolution. he was the great pen and adams was the voice. he speaks for the equality and

the common man, and here he is living as far removed from the daily rounds of life as a common man as one could get, served in every possible way by people held in bondage, by his slaves. adams, who is of the common man, adams, who was a farmer's son, whose mother was almost certainly illiterate, who grew up knowing that life, particularly on a new england farm, is a struggle, he's saying, you've got to watch out i'm one of them -- and the majority, if they get too much power can be as dangerous as an individual. so there's sort of the ying and the yang of the american revolution. >> charlie: i'm always fascinated by the idea of first adams, jefferson and franklin, of those three, is it automatic that jefferson loved paris more than the other two?

>> didn't necessarily love paris more than the other two. adams spoke french and read it more readily than he did. franklin took to the way of life immediately. jefferson was there longer. he was there five years, and i think, in many ways, they were as happy as any years in his life because he was away from slavery. >> charlie: right. was samuels with him? >> yes. >> charlie: do you think he was so troubled by slavery that it made him happy being away? >> yes, i think hi knew it was wrong. >> charlie: why didn't he give it up? >> we'll never know the answer. i have a feeling it had to do with finances. he was always in debt and his greatest wealth was in his slaves, which was true of many southern planters. >> charlie: he died poor, didn't he?

>> he tied broke. >> charlie: fine wine in his cellular. >> yes. and he never stopped spending. he must have been a smooth talker when he went to the bank because how he could get away with it all his life. >> charlie: yeah. he was never not in debt. but i think that jefferson wanted to bring something home from paris. he brought home paintings. he brought home some 80 crates of books and all kinds of things to raise the cultural level of the country, and i think that was a genuine mission. i know it was a genuine mission, and that's exactly what these people thought. these americans were not disenchanted with their country. they weren't like the so-called lost generation. >> charlie: they went to learn something and bring something back. >> yes, they weren't alienated from america. again and again, they would talk about this is going to make me a better american. >> charlie: the people at the

time -- >> 1800s. they're not going to bring home 80 crates full of stuff but bring home themselves as a better painter, politician. >> charlie: i asked you about this before, the famous story when jeffersonen and adams died on the same day. >> yes. >> charlie: who reached out to whom? because you told me it wasn't either, that the person -- i first heard that it was adams' wife, abigail, who was responsible. then i heard, no, actually -- >> benjamin rush. >> charlie: benjamin rush. the physician in philadelphia, signer of the declaration of independence. >> charlie: felt what? that those two should have a reconciliation. >> charlie: before they died? and adams agreed and wrote to jefferson. >> charlie: and adams wrote to jefferson and abigail had nothing to do with it? >> no, didn't have anything to do with it and was more angry at

jefferson. she felt he had betrayed her husband because he's the one who put the reporter after adams during the campaign when they were running against each other -- >> charlie: on jefferson's orders. >> yes. and he was the same one who turned around and revealed the sally hemmings relationship on jefferson because jefferson, he felt, hadn't rewarded him sufficiently for the job he'd done attacking adams during the campaign. but they were really true friends. they were as different as night and day, and they died on the same day, and they didn't day on just any day, they died on the fourth of july, their day. and adams truly did say

jefferson survives. >> charlie: survives. survives. >> charlie: and jefferson was dead. >> and jefferson had died that morning. >> charlie: wow. july 4. >> yeah. i had the opportunity to write about some of the most spectacular human beings. i don't mean they were necessarily great, but they were interesting. i'm interested in the people. >> charlie: yeah. an entirely virtuous person is not very interesting. >> charlie: right. an entirely perfect score -- you want human. >> charlie: you want flaws and warts. >> writing history requires a great deal of imagination. i don't mean that you're making things up, but you have to be able to transport yourself into that other time and into the shoes of those other people, get inside their skins, if you will, and that takes imagination. that takes empathy and sympathy. i don't mean sympathetic in the sense of feeling sorry, but

sympathetic in that you understand what trouble they were in or how complicated the situation may have been and what they didn't know. >> charlie: which of these stories, which of these characters, which of these books means the most to you? >> can't answer it. it's like answering which of your children. i can say this -- and no question about it -- of all the years -- 40 years i have been at work, the happiest, most fulfilling years -- and i've loved every subject i've undertaken, i have been lucky in my subjects -- but the years i've enjoyed the most were the years writing the john adams book because of that material. it was such a privilege to keep company with those people. they set such a high standard for us. >> charlie: you believe if your subjects live to an older

age, they lose some of their inhibition, they have a different perspective on things, they're freer to talk with more -- >> i think so. i feel that way. somebody said, i don't know -- maybe you know -- that courage is having done it before. >> charlie: yeah. and i feel, now, that i see a lot more clearly than i did before. to write well is to think clearly, and that's why it's so hard. but it's also why it's so enjoyable. writing is hard work, but i never equated ease with happiness. i'm often happier when i'm working than when i am doing anything else. i'm on vacation every day. >> charlie: that's because you found something you love. >> i love it. and i want you to know what i love. >> charlie: yeah, me, too. i do. and i want you to know much more

about our country, and i want people to understand that we, too, are being judged by history. history isn't just something that happened before we came on the scene. we are part of history, and how are we going to measure up? how will our political discourse, our participation as citizens, how will we look when they take a look at us 50 or 100 years from now? >> charlie: you have been part of our history and i thank you for sharing with me. >> thank you, charlie, very much, as always. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gehring. >> good evening, everyone, and happy fourth of july. welcome to a special second half outlook of "nightly business report." i'm bill griffeth in for tyler mathisen. >> and i'm susie gharib. well, the first six months of the year are in the books, and the gains by the major indexes are nothing to sneeze at. the s&p and nasdaq gaining around 6%. and while the dow didn't do that well, it still climbed more than 1%. so not quite the fireworks from last year, but still solid gains. >> that's not so ancient history. history, nonetheless. tonight we look ahead to the second half of the year and what to expect in everything from housing to stocks to the economy. >> and that's where we begin tonight, the economy.