>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening on this july 4th with a conversation about america and it's history by looking back at a series of conversations we have had with the imminent historian david mccullough. >> 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 generals, the commander-in-chief of the very dark days of the revolution. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following:

>> 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 ideals and ideas of the declaration of independence which we celebrate, as we should, every fourth of july and, as we know, our secular faith would have been nothing more than a declaration, words on paper, if it weren't for the people doing the hard slogging and the fighting, against all odds, suffering

terribly. one of the reasons i wanted to write the book is one of the lines 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 sufficiently know. >> rose: i knew she wrote that and, when i read that, it remind med 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. wonderful henry knox, one of the most admiral people in the whole story. >> rose: aide to george washington. >> aide to george market, commander of artillery, former book seller who knew mother of the military other than what he read in books.

25 years old, and the very day the text of the declaration of independence arrives from philadelphia, he writes, as we play our parts, history will judge us ill or favorably, the future will judge us ill or favorably. so they know that they are part of history. i think that's an completely extremely important thing to understand. great that you pointed that out because that gave 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 role of commander-in-chief. >> rose: speaking of knowing his role in history, i mean,

george washington, who we get to know here, was carried forward because he upped 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, except by definition that he was a great leader. >> he was a great leader. he isn't a great intellectual like adams or jefferson, not a great orator like patrick henry, he's not a napoleonic figure, he's a leader and people will follow him. he has absolute integrity and he will not give up and he never forgets what it's about, what the war is for. and again and again, you have people saying they're not going to quit because i will not leave this good man. we have to remember that, 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 over to the enemy. >> rose: because they were given pardons. >> absolutely. and people in new jersey, when washington in the army were retreating across new jersey, when the general and the british commanders offered pardons for anybody who would sign the loyalty eat, people in new jersey came by the thousands to sign as quickly as the believed. if there would have been daily polls taken and run in the newspapers, it would have just disintegrated immediately because people would realize that they haven't got a chance, it's over. >> rose: a couple of points here. you thought of this, this story, midway through the john adams book. >> yes, i did. >> rose: what caused you to think about it, the lesser from abigail or -- >> no, it was when i was writing the chapter dealing with the summer after the declaration of independence was signed, and the whole war effort is starting to

fall apart, and then came the battle of brooklyn and the escape from brooklyn, the miraculous night escape by washington. and when you're writing a biography, you can't stray from your subject very much. elizabeth longford who wrote the great biography of 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. i thought, well you can't do it here, but you can do it in the next book. and so i began, which surprises some people, i began with george iii before going to parliament in october of 1775 to declare that the american colonies are in rebellion and that their leaders, these rebel rousers --

>> rose: he calls them the unhappy americans. >> the unhappy americans, absolutely, they're traitors, he says so, and that he, the king, and the british power of the british army and british empire are going to bring these people to heel, they're going to crush the rebellion. and it's when that speech reaches boston opt first day of the new -- on the first day of the new year because of the great delay in crossing the ocean, first day of 1776, that the people in the army under washington, people everywhere realize there isn't going to be a short, unpleasant business which will wind up with reconciliation and that we better be fighting for independence. now, they don't dare say it right away, although some of them are writing it, like nathaniel green wrote it in letters to washington, who, like young knox, knew no more of the military when he joined up and

when he was made a general at age 33, knew no more of the military than what he read in books. but we have to remember that's an age, if you want to know how to do or do something, a good way is a close study of the books, which is the idea of the enlightenment. washington, green and knox had the equivalent of a fifth grade education, formal schooling. >> rose: these two guys are new englanders, and george washington is a very, very patrician virginian. >> and he ardently dislikes new englanders. he thinks they're dirty and unrule y. they have the unfortunate idea they like to decide things for themselves, which you can't have if an army, but he overcomes that bias, which is a big inner struggle, he has to, because that's all he's got, a

new england army. he has some people from the middle colonies who joins them. >> rose: he takes command at 33 in '75. >> he said to congress, 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 fought in the french and indian war and had a distinguished record. they pick him because they know him as a person and as a politician. h he is a political general, and that's sometimes used in a dismissive or a less than complimentary way. we should thank god that he was a political general because he never forgets who is boss. >> rose: so we have washington at 43. he goes to the constitutional

convention, though, in a uniform. >> yes. >> rose: even though he's saying, i'm not the man. >> he's available. >> rose: there is a contradiction there. >> they choose him. well, yes and no. i think he's being perfectly honest in both. he will serve if called upon, is ready to serve, he has his uniform, reminding them he's a military man at heart, but he's very genuine, look, i'm not the ideal fellow at this job. he makes some very bad mistakes in judgment. he was outfoxed, outflanked, outnumbered, to be sure, made to look pretty inept at the battle of brooklyn. he was so indecisive at the time of the siege of fort washington that he likely cost that bastian that they thought was impregnable along with several thousand of his troops and hoards of supplies and cannons

and the rest, these were horrible defeats, charlie, 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. >> rose: 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. almost like an x factor. yes. he was a commanding figure. >> rose: tall? oh, yes, 6-feet-2, probably 190 to 200 pounds, perfect physical condition in the prime of his life. he was only a young man, 43, but they were all young.

green 33, jefferson 33 when he wrote the declaration of independence. >> rose: franklin was the only one who had age on him. >> and he was old enough to have been their father. >> rose: yeah. but we see them as the white-haired founding fathers, patriarchs, elder statesmen, but at this point they're not. it's a young americans cause, and they were not in the majority ever. the people who are for the revolution were never in the majority. they were maybe a third. adams -- no one knows really what the proportions were. there were no polls or surveys taken. but at least as many people were against the war as were for it. >> rose: and they knew what would probably happen to them, the leaders, if they lost, off with their heads. >> yes. >> rose: they would be all hung at the crack of dawn. >> yes. >> rose: let me talk about the war for a second. 75, they go to boston.

they win some early victories, don't they, in '76? >> no. >> rose: no victories? didn't they surround them in boston? >> they drove the british out of boston, made it impossible for the british to remain in boston by this incredible feet of ingenuity and doing the impossible, hauling a cannon -- >> rose: did that give them confidence? >> absolutely. probably gave them too much confidence. they felt pretty big. after all, they drove the british empire out of boston is that this was the biggest superpower in the world. >> yes. >> rose: and they had taken them on and driven them out of boston. >> and they were jubilant. they were a victorious team and marched off to new york and faced 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 new jersey and new yorkers and pennsylvania and so forth and will become more than it was in boston, truly a continental army. >> rose: and what happened? they got sick in great numbers, epidemic dysentery, smallpox. they didn't understand the rules of hygiene. a they -- washington divided his army, leaving half in manhattan and taking the other half over to brooklyn. >> rose: mistake? mistake. it was a mistake to try to defend new york. new york was inthe defensible because they had no sea power, they had no navy. the british came into new york with a fleet of 400 ships. >> rose: if the british navy had gone up the hudson, it would have been over? >> oh, yes. no. yes, indeed, it would 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 threthree generals, it was awfu. there were valiant performs on the part of some of our troops and the miracle is they didn't lose more, but at that point, the army was, you know, in fact, in the midst of a real trap because all the british had to do was to to bring their fleet up the east river and would seal them off. but the wind was in the wrong direction. if the wind had been in the other direction on the night of august 28th, 29th, i think it would have been all over because washington and his army would have been trapped. >> rose: no united states of america. because just of the wind, history was changed? >> absolutely. but then the next day after the defeat of the battle of long island, they decide they have to escape, the night of

august 29th, and they organized a retreat at night back across the east river by rounding up every boat they could get their hands on, on the east river, on the hudson, new jersey, and everywhere they could get boats, brought them all over, and they took that army off of brooklyn in the night, 9,000 men, cannon, 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 troops, green troops, people who'd never marched with a rifle or musket before, but they pulled this off, and it worked, it was as

miraculous as the wind being in their favor. >> rose: i mean, you've got to realize what they were facing. the largest expeditionary force ever mounted. >> who had just defeated them in a horrendous battle, a huge battle, the biggest battle ever fought on a 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 luck or circumstance, the 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 loaded down, the water was only inches below the gunnels. they had no running lights. they had to be absolutely

silent. if the enemy had any idea they were trying 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, there are a lot of them that are still back on the brooklyn side, and it's going to be light, and that will be curtains for them. in comes a providential fog that covers all of brooklyn, but it doesn't happen on the new york side. now, if you were writing a novel and you had that happen, you would say, no. >> rose: no, that's too much. it's not real. >> rose: too much of a perfect weather. >> yes. >> rose: at this time, as they were retreating, what was the mood of washington? >> oh, one of abject discouragement. hhe was exhausted. he hadn't slept for three night

or more. they all were exhausted, and he -- you know, i'm sure he realized he played his hand wrong, that he'd misjudged the whole situation. he never covered what was called the jamaica pass. there's a pass-through the rough ridge that runs along long island, and they had nobody post-ed there to stop the british, so the british sent 10,000 men on a 9-mile march through the night up and around and they just completely outflanked us. it was a perfect military maneuver, perfectly handled, perfectly performed by the british just as they're landing on long island, everything was done just right. now, if general howe had attacked after he had them on the run and they were retreating back to th the fortification of what is now brooklyn heights --

>> rose: what does this say about the british and their ten nasty? >> the military scholars have debated this for 229 years, why didn't howe move in for the kill. some say he didn't do it because he'd had such bloody experience at bunker hill where the americans were in a position on a high ground, entrenched, and he wasn't going to attack that way again. it had been awful. they'd lost 1,000 men. on the other hand, he would attack a frontal position later on in 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 just crush them because we want them back into the empire. >> rose: they wanted to maintain the union and -- >> politically, he was a wig. >> rose: not end up like the south did after the civil war.

>> yes. that doesn't mean he wasn't a very tough and very professional soldier, he was, and very smart and very courageous. >> rose: the two howes were brothers? >> yes. >> rose: richard. and william. richard was an admiral and william was the general, and they were very highly-placed, very influential figures in london society, they were aristocrats, as all officers were, and any picture we have of bumbling aristocratic tool fooln high command during our revolution are not so. there are many misconceptions. >> what about misconceptions of george iii. >> is seen as the crazy king who lost the colonies. >> rose: and in fact? a very courageous man, interesting man, i find him a great sympathetic character, a great collector of books, a wonderful painter, he was a

musician, 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 to be king, you be king. and he was still fairly pretty young, and the madness of king george which we know about in the play and movie, that doesn't come till 20 years later, long after the war. >> rose: let me say this, this is history at the ground level. this is history on the battlefield. >> yes. >> rose: this is diaries from soldiers. >> yes. rose: and you liked some ofed them. >> i like them. >> rose: hodgkin's. joseph hodg hodgkins.

>> rose: tell me about hodgkins. >> hodgkins was a shoemaker, had children, a wife at home, sarah, to whom he wrote regularly no mary what was happening, and they're wonderful letters, and he talks about, if i'm told to march, i'll march, and he fights on. after escape from brooklyn in this terribly demoralized army, hodgkins is writing to his wife and just received a letter their youngest child has died. he had known the little boy was sick and very worried about him. we forget sometimes these people are thinking about their families and loved ones. so they have been defeated, looks like they're over, they're exhausted, filthy dirty, no proper uniforms, he hears his

child he adored died and yet he picks himself up and goes on and he will not stop. >> rose: 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 and fitch never talk about the declaration of independence. it's interesting. i never found life, liberty and pursuit of happiness mentioned. >> rose: how about equality? yes, i think our country, we're going to decide this for ourselves and make the kind of society and the kind of way of life here that we want. we're not going to be dictated to. >> rose: that's what always drives revolutions. >> yes, but they're not fighting because they're e exploited and suppressed and poor. americans had the highest standard of living, average americans, of any place in the world. >> rose: but they wanted to shape their own destiny.

>> yes, exactly. >> rose: okay. and they were proud of who they were, and they wanted to show these brits that they could fight as well as anyone, given some experience. they're learning from experience. washington, green, knox, glover, they're all learning as they're going along. >> rose: that was one of the values washington had. he could learn from his experience. >> exactly. so when he's defeated, he doesn't say, oh, woe is me, pity me, but what can i learn from this. experience had been his teacher all through life. his father died when he was quite young. he was on his own from about the age of age 16, as all these other people were, too. but the jabez fitch story is different because he's keeping a diary, and he kept a diary no matter what was happening, including after he was captured and taken prisoner and put in

one of those vial british prison ships in the harbor here in new york, and i think he must have hid this. we showed a picture of a beautiful leather diary and all that -- they were writing on little scraps of paper and i think he was hide aing them in his shoe because that was against the rules, you weren't supposed to do that. >> rose: right. but the fact they wrote the letters and 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 skin and feel what they went through, these very human beings. and also i think what comes across the how tough they were. these people were people who had been beat up by life, just by life in peacetime by our standards. we are sort of contained an in cotton compared to how life was then. >> rose: they did not now how it was going to turn out. >> right, and they also knew

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 a new england farm, and most all of these people are farmers, was a struggle. life was a battle. and, you know, many of these fellows had no shoes. of course, in the wintertime, it was terrible. the sort of legendary stories of their 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 of them were, went barefoot all summer long, from about may till probably october. they had tough feet.

they with respect like our feet -- they weren't like our feet. and that's something we need to understand. they knew how to fix a broken wagon. they knew how to pull out a stump or dig a trench, they were used to hard work. >> rose: they knew how to survive outside. >> yes. >> rose: let me take you back to the battle. they retreat to new jersey. >> yes. >> rose: down to 3,000 or 2,500 men, ill-clothed, ill-fed. >> cold. >> rose: cold. yeah. >> rose: it is now december. 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.

well, sometimes when all hope's gone, the thing you do is attack. >> rose: freedom is having nothing else to lose. >> yeah. 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 and again are pulling him back from that wisely. had he launched an attack on the british in boston, it would have been a catastrophe. >> rose: for us. absolutely. but he decides christmas night, they're going to attacks cross the delaware and strike at trenton, where there are 1,500 german mercenaries bivouacked for the winter at a certain outpost, while the major part of the british army, the enemy army, has pulled bark back, mosf them back here to new york.

they cross in the night and march through the night. to give you some idea of how rough that was, the only fatalities, the only men we lost at the battle of trenton were two guys that froze to death on the march. >> rose: wow. just froze to death. and they hit early the next morning, and it was a route, because it was a total surprise and they came in determined to really win. 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 what the psychological impact to have th to have -- ime victory was. >> rose: what did it do? gave people the idea we might win. >> rose: even though it took six, seven long years. >> absolutely. well, they didn't know that yet, that we could beat them. 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, for the mercenaries, and they were not drunk from christmas celebrations the night before as many people have written and said. they weren't. washington then had to do something. the natural decision would have been to retreat back across the delaware where it was pretty safe because the british didn't have any boats to get across. but he didn't do that. he turned and made a big loop around and came up and struck at princeton and won again. two victories, one right on top of the other. and that combination just changed the morale of everybody. you can read it in the letters of abigail adams and you can read it in letters of all kind

of people, ministers and attorneys and people in all walks of life writing about what it meant to get the word that we had won at trenton. trial princeton was important and was a victory, trenton was far and away 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. >> rose: and he took 2,500 men over. >> yes, and two other attacks were to be launched farther down the river -- >> rose: and in this case, washington was the field commander? >> he road with the troops, but he was not commanding them immediately. general green and general sullivan were in command of the two prongs that attacked, and our old friend the boston book seller, henry knox, was in charge of the artillery and the

artillery really were decisive in that battle. >> rose: these two guys george washington chose early in '75 served him brilliantly? >> and served him through the entire war. the only general officers to stay the distance, to go the whole way with washington. only two. washington, knox and green are the only ones that fight through the whole war, of the general officers. >> they all would come in and serve or be killed -- >> yes, or leave. >> rose: hamilton came in at some point. >> yes. >> rose: did he serve as an aide to washington? >> later. at this point he was a young artillery officer and fought in the battle of trenton and princeton and new york. >> rose: what did he think of washington? >> he idolized him. later on they would have their differences, patch it up and he would become washington's secretary of treasury.

>> rose: 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. i think we've got to understand how human they were because that would make their achievement more remarkable. gods can do anything. they weren't. they weren't super humans. they were extraordinary people and some truly brilliant and it is truly a miracle what they accomplished, but these were the people that were present at the creation. >> rose: the founding fathers. they were making a country, making a revolution first, then

making a country against the most daunting odds imaginable. >> rose: where did the phrase "president of the creation" first come? because it was also the title of dean acheson's book. they're not just starting a broadway show. they're making a country, a nation. they don't know how it's going to come about. if they had taken a poll in the 13 colonies in 1776, they never would have gone ahead with it. only about a third of the people were for it. >> rose: odds were against them. >> it was not possible. >> rose: what marion of man and woman was in favor of it? >> well, to a large degree, they were new englanders and virginians. >> rose: some from south carolina. >> yes, definitely we have to

include the carolinians. >> rose: yes, indeed. and maryland. but the central states, principally new york and pennsylvania were very much on the fence. they were led by a man named john dickinson -- >> rose: but i'm asking, what was the nature of the revolutionist, is my question? were they intellectuals? were they political fire brands? what? >> they were all that, intellectuals, fire brands, decent, hard-working people who had farms and -- >> rose: just were offended by the way things were. >> they felt they were not being granted the rights -- their birthright as english subjects. in other words, they're not so much revolting to create a new and very different kind of society. they're saying wait a minute, you're taking away our rights as english subjects, free englishmen, a government of laws, not of men. and you're taxing us with -- and we have no choice in that, and

you're taxing us to pay your own bills back home. why srould we pick up the tab for your expenditures there in end land when we have no part in that life, most of us have never seen england and it's probably time we started our own country. >> rose: no taxation without representation. >> yes. and when they say free and independent, the concept is 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 independent. >> rose: all right. so they have to 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 was

essential to our victory in the american reamerican revolution,s primarily a way for the french to get at the english. they weren't anxious for a government of the people, all people created equal. france was a monarchy, more so than even great britain was. so -- >> rose: it's amazing when you think about that. on the great decision of the war against france, john adams -- >> yes. >> rose: -- believes that the most important thing he did was to want peace with france and not war. >> yes. most americans don't realize that we were fighting a war with france in the last years of the 18th century during the john adams administration as president. we were fighting an undeclared war at sea, but a real war, exchanging fire, capturing ships, all of the acts of war at sea. but the real war, the undeclared

war of sea could have very well ignited into a real war with, as it happens, the new high dictator, if you will, the emperor, as he claimed himself, napoleon. but adams steered a very careful, dangerous, treacherous, even, course among the shoals and the whirlpools of diplomacy and managed to keep america neutral, not to side with either england or france. the jeffersons wanted peace with france at any price. the hamiltonians were eager to go to war with france. i was high politics. probably would have guaranteed adams reelection had they gone to war with france. when he succeeded in keeping us from going to war with france after the humiliations of the so-called xyz affair, he felt

he'd saved the country from a colossal blunder and he was right but at the expense of his own political fortunes and he knew that. >> rose: where did he place that in terms of his own historical legacy? >> he thought it was number one. >> rose: that's what i thought. >> i think he was proudest of that than anything he'd done. and it really does rank as an extremely brave, politically courageous act, a true propile in courage -- profile in courage. many similarities in truman and adams. >> rose: what are the similarities? >> farmers sons, short in stature -- not charismatic or handsome -- both great readers of history. >> rose: both letter writers. both very direct. both letter writers, exactly. both very direct in their candor, and both underestimated and boast men of character and

integrity and both viepts who followed looming -- both vice presidents who followed looming idolized presidents before them. having said all that, there were tremendous differences. >> rose: 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, deeply-read of american of his day, more so even than jefferson, a farmer's son who became that. >> rose: right. and adams did not like party politics. he thought party politics were vial. he thought that, 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 united states of america. >> rose: one of the similarities is they both had a great sense of the country and what it meant and the mission. >> and they were true patriots who showed that by risking their lives, by going to war or 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 that declared him as it did all the other traitors. >> rose: was truman more a club guy and adams -- >> no, truman was not a loner at all. >> rose: a club guy. yes, active in the masons, a good party man. they were both devoted to their wives. >> rose: abigail and bess. yes, and they were both well advised by their wives backstage. >> rose: bess was a wise

counsel. >> yes, i think she was. bess abhorred public life. she would freeze in front of a camera, became an old stone face. whereas abigail loved public life. abigail adored politics and, in many ways, abigail adams was a better political thinker than was her husband. she had a wonderful capacity to judge people. >> rose: i'm going to get to that book in a moment. suppose i had said to you, david, this is a really good idea, but it's going to take ten years of your life. >> i would have said no. >> rose: you would have? oh, absolutely. i'm glad i didn't know because i never would have done it. >> rose: but you never thought about quitting? >> no, never, never. no, i've been very lucky in my subjects, charlie. the more you learn, the the more you want to learn, and every book -- i have never known a great deal about any subject that i've embarked upon to write about, ever. >> rose: so that was a voyage of discovery for you. >> yes, and if i knew 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. >> rose: like what? well, this may sound strange, but i think writing history requires a tbreel -- a great deal of imagination. i don't know 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 them, 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. we 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 brave riunder difficult -- 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. >> rose: exactly. but let me go back to jefferson, too. what's interesting is everything adams was, jefferson wasn't. 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, of the revolution. >> rose: is that what they called him? >> and adams was the voice. and he speaks for the equality and the common man, and here he is living as far removed from the daily rounds of life of the common man as one could get, served in every possible way by people held in bondage, by 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 have to watch

out for the common man, i know, i'm one of them, and the majority, if they get too much power, can be as dangerous as an individual. so there is the i didn' ying anf the american revolution. >> rose: i've been fascinated by the idea of first adams, jefferson and franklin, of those free, is it automatic that jefferson loved paris more than the other two, or is it hard to tell? >> i don't think he did necessarily love paris more than the others. >> rose: jefferson. jefferson. adams spoke french more than he did, read it more readily than he did. franklin, of course, took to the way of life immediately. >> rose: yes, he did. 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. >> rose: right. although, wasn't hemings with him? >> yes, but they were free while

they were there. >> rose: do you think he was so troubled by slavery that it made him happy to be away? >> yes, i think he knew it was wrong. >> rose: why didn't he give it up? >> that's a good question. 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 slave which was true of many southern planters. >> rose: he died very poor, didn't he? >> broke. >> rose: but with fine wine in his cellular. >> yes, and never stopped spending. >> yes, exactly. he must have been a smooth talker when he went to the bank because how he could get away with it. all his life. >> rose: 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, 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 anything, and that's exactly what these -- i know it was a genuine mission. that's exactly what these people felt. these americans weren't disenchanted with their country. they weren't the lost generation. >> rose: they went to learn something and bring something back. >> yes, they weren't alienated from america. again and again, they would talk, this will make me a better american. >> rose: jefferson or the people of the time. >> the people, in the time of 1800s. they're not going to bring home 80 crates of stuff but will bring home themselves as a better sculptor, painter, physician, politician. >> rose: excuse me because i've asked you about this before, the famous story that jefferson and adams died on the same day. >> yes. >> rose: who was it that reached out to whom? you told me it wasn't either -- i first heard that it was adams' wife, abigail, who was responsible. then i heard, no, that she

actually -- >> , no benjamin rush from philadelphia, the physician, a signer of the declaration of independence. >> rose: felt like what? he felt those two should have a reconciliation. >> rose: before they died? before they died. adams agreed right away and wrote to jefferson. >> rose: adams wrote to jefferson. >> yes. >> rose: abigail had nothing to do with it? >> nothing to do with it. in fact, abigail was angry with jefferson. >> rose: that's what someone said, abigail didn't like jefferson and was angry. >> she felt he had betrayed her husband because he was the one who put the reporter after adams during the campaign, when they were running against each other. >> rose: on jefferson's orders? >> yeah. snowso what does that tell you? >> the irony is he was the same one who turned around and revealed the sally hemings 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 die just on any day, they died on the fourth of july, their day. and adams truly did say, jefferson survives. >> rose: survives. survives. >> rose: and jefferson was dead. >> and jefferson had died that morning. >> rose: wow. july 4th. >> yes. i had the opportunity to write about some of the most spectacular human beings. i'm interested in the people. an entirely virtuous person is not very interesting. >> rose: right. an entirely perfect score --

>> rose: goodie two-shoes. ight, no. >> rose: you want flaws and warts. >> i think writing history requires a great deal of imagination. i don't moan 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 them, but sympathetic in that you understand what trouble they were in or how complicated the situation may have been, and what they didn't though. >> rose: 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 that i have undertaken, i have been very lucky in my subjects, but the years i enjoyed 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. >> rose: you believe that, if your subjects live to an older age, they lose some of their inhibition, they have a different perspective on things, they are freer. >> yes. >> rose: to talk with more -- i feel that way. maybe you know, somebody said courage is having done it before. >> rose: 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 i am doing anything else. i'm on vacation every day. >> rose: that's because you found something you love. >> i love it. and i want you to know what i love. >> rose: yeah americas -- yeah, me, too. >> i do. >> rose: 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. 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? >> rose: you have been part of our history, and i thank you for sharing with me. >> thank you very much, charlie, as always. >> rose: for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com.

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

this is "nightly business .eport" with tyler mathise >> good evening, everyone and welcome to this holiday edition of "nightly business report." i'm sue herera. tyler mathisen is off tonight. here at nbr we talk a lot about entrepreneurs and those who risk it all to follow their dreams. the challenges are real but so are the rewards. it all starts with that one bright idea and from there it can turn into a $1 million business so tonight on this independence day we celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit and independence from your boss. it all begins with a vision, a vision to create something new, butet