BRIAN LAMB: David McCullough, your new book "The American Spirit," fifteen speeches since 1989 through 2016, when did you get the idea to do this?
DAVID MCCULLOUGH: Last summer, summer of 2016, and I just was not discouraged but distressed by the tone of the political campaign and the animosity and the nastiness of some of it.
And I thought, I've got to do something, maybe, that I - to help to bring some balance back and remind people of who we are and how we got to be where we are and what we stand for.
And I thought you've been speaking up and down the land for 40 years or more, maybe there's some of those speeches, that if we dusted them off and put them together, not as a - an anthology but speeches, where I addressed ideas or - or subjects that pertain to reminding us about who we are and what our values had down the years.
And my daughter Dorie Lawson, who has been arranging all my speaking dates all these years, wanted very much to help with it and she had whatever records we had of what I said, as many of the speeches, there was no record of what I said but we had enough that there were manuscripts of it.
I've never wanted to give a commencement speech or a speech some - celebrating some important national event or anniversary that I didn't put it on paper; I didn't want to just wing it.
I love to speak and I - I've been able to speak often my whole working life. And I - I've been able to speak without notes, and it took a while to learn how to do that but I did.
But even though I can do that, I felt in many, many instances that I must commitment my thoughts to paper and work on it. And some of these speeches I - I would work on it for a week or more to get it to where - what I really wanted to say, and particularly if I felt it was an occasion of - of importance to our country.
And there are four of those speeches in the group, and - and reading them again after many years, I thought they hold up. Now, there were some that didn't hold up and I didn't include those.
There was some that were too first person singular and I didn't include those. And my dedication in the book is to my grandchildren.
LAMB: 19.
MCCULLOUGH: 19 of them, yes, that's right. And so, I'm reaching out to that generation with the hope that they might draw some guidance or inspiration or motivation from what the old boy said in the days past.
My publisher - I didn't know they would react to the idea, and they were enthusiastic from the beginning and thank - thank goodness. And they've done, I think, a beautiful job of publishing it with the photographs and the archival material that they reproduced.
LAMB: But we - in the meantime, are you writing another book?
MCCULLOUGH: I am and the subject of the book is - is touched on in one of these speeches, the speech I gave at Ohio University in Athens.
I'm writing - I got very involved in the history of Ohio when I was writing my book about the Wright brothers and really fascinating aspect of the American story when you think of who came from Ohio and how relatively vast Ohio produces so many remarkable people.
More - more of our presidents have come 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, you have - it goes on and on.
The Northwest Territory was the subject I knew nothing about and very briefly, quickly, the Northwest Territory was ceded to us, to our country, by the British at the end of the Revolutionary War in the Treaty of Paris, 1783.
And it was a brilliant stroke of genius on the part of John Adams and others who were the diplomats on that occasion, because what they ceded to us equaled in 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.
And there was sort of squatters and - and traders, fur dealers and trappers and so forth, but no - no settlement and the idea that was cooked up by this fellow Manasseh Cutler, and 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 cents of the dollar. So, this would be a way to provide the sale of land, primarily farmland would be - mainly farmland, to these veterans at about 8 cents an acre.
So - and as most people don't know, and I didn't know, there was very severe depression following the Revolution, as bad, proportionately, as was the Great Depression of the 1930s. So, every - 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, summer of 1787, the same - just before the Constitution, before we had a Constitution (so nobody) had no presidents yet, was this man Manasseh Cutler who was a minister and a doctor - physician and a lawyer and a brilliant botanist, astronomer.
He was an 18th century polymath at the ultimate 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's so exciting about it, there would be complete freedom of religion, totally free from religion, there would government support, public support for education all the way through college, hence state universities came to be, and, and there'd 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'd be no slaves in half of the geographic reach of our country, but it also meant, of course, Brian, that the Ohio River - Northwest meant Northwest of the Ohio River.
The Ohio River now, if you could get across it and you were a slave, you were free. So, that's where the whole advent or birth of the Underground Railroad came about. It was one of the most important decisions Congress every made.
And this one guy pulled it off and I thought to myself, "woah, who is he? Who was he?" and I got to know him and once I got into his life and what happened consequently, I thought "this is a great book, great subject."
So, that's what I'm working on, but it all began when I was invited to come to Ohio University to give the commencement speech the year they were celebrating the creation of the university in the central building in the university campus.
The oldest building is Cutler Hall, named for Manasseh Cutler. And we don't 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.
But Jefferson said any nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was and never can be. Now that idea of the importance of education I think is extremely pertinent, relevant, and important today, if ever was. And I think that one of the things that we Americans don't sufficiently appreciate is -- a lot that we have a lot that we've achieved that we don't sufficiently appreciate -- but one of them is our college and university system.
Yes they've gotten very expensive, too expensive. And yes some of them 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 it keeps rising steadily. I don't know about how it was with you, my father didn't go to college.
He graduated from high school and that was thought to be pretty darn good. And that aspect of trying to reach greater understanding through learning in order to perfect society, to improve the problems that need to be solved, and so forth, is one of the major lessons of our story as a people.
LAMB: You point out in a book that the Northwest Ordinance creates basically Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes.
LAMB: This speech was given at Ohio University in 2004.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes.
LAMB: Why were you going to Ohio? Why did you agree to go there?
MCCULLOUGH: They invited me to come and give a speech of the year of their bicentennial.
LAMB: So do you remember when you went through the process how did you -- how long did you take to get ready for this speech?
MCCULLOUGH: 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 its history and met a lot of people that I thought were extremely interesting. Both people, you know, from the past and present day people.
And so when I was invited to give the commencement speech in this fascinating state whether -- it was the first university west of the Allegheny Mountains. I thought, I'd love to, so I just did the digging, did the homework, and came up -- ran into this guy Cutler. And
LAMB: Manasseh
MCCULLOUGH: Manasseh Cutler.
LAMB: Who also went to your school, Yale.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes, and I found out he went to Yale. And then I found out that for three years he lived on Martha's Vineyard running a store there in Edgartown and had two of his sons were born there on the vineyard not very far from our house. And that of course -- oh and to get to Ohio you have to through Pittsburgh which is my hometown so it was -- it was in the cards. It was in the stars. I had to do it.
LAMB: How long is the perfect speech? In minutes?
MCCULLOUGH: In my judgment? Speeches in general?
LAMB: Yes. In other words when your speaking to a graduation?
MCCULLOUGH: Oh, no more than 20 minutes.
LAMB: Why?
MCCULLOUGH: Well because it -- you're part of a ceremony. And the ceremony has many elements and you don't want to hog more space than you should. I've never been told how long my speech could be or how short it must be or any of that. Now if I'm invited to come to a university to address a general audience then it's expected that you're talk will run about 45 minutes.
LAMB: Let's look at a speech that was given back in 1989 that kicks off this book. This is only about 30 seconds and you gave this speech in the House of Representatives.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes. No, joint session.
LAMB: Joint session?
MCCULLOUGH: Yes, in the House.
LAMB: And how often does that happen to a historian in history?
MCCULLOUGH: Well, someone who is not in the congress is very rarely ever invited to address a joint session. If it is it's somebody like the President of another country or.
LAMB: The Pope.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes, or General Lafayette. So it was a very high compliment.
LAMB: Well, let's watch a little bit of it just so we get the flow.
MCCULLOUGH: Oh, I've never seen it.
LAMB: Really?
MCCULLOUGH: No.
(Begin Video Clip)
The 20th century Senator that has been written about the most is Joe McCarthy. There are a dozen books about McCarthy yet there is no biography of the Senator who had the backbone to stand up to him first. Margaret J. 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 political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny -- fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear.
(End Video Clip)
LAMB: Do you remember how you went about preparing for that speech?
MCCULLOUGH: Oh, you know, I go about it. Hardest I've ever worked on anything I've ever delivered from a podium. And that line, just then, I just recently looked up calumny again. To make sure I know -- it means untruthful, audacious, defamation of somebody else's character.
LAMB: Joe McCarthy.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes. And then there's a wonderful line -- let me just see. I can't quote it off hand, where Truman, who -- he was President, and had been President -- speech was given in 19 -- her speech 1954. Harry Truman later said to Senator Smith, Mrs. Smith, your declaration of conscious was one of the finest things to happen here in Washington in all my years in the Senate and in 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 praise somebody who disagreed with him or was on the other side politically if he felt that they deserved praise.
LAMB: Here's a speech August 5, 1994 at Monticello.
(Begin Video Clip)
MCCULLOUGH: The Declaration of Independence was not a creation of the Gods, but of living men. And let us never forget extremely brave men. They were staking their lives on what they believed. Pledging as Jefferson wrote in the memorable final passage of the Declaration, our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.
(End Video Clip)
LAMB: How's Jefferson doing in history?
MCCULLOUGH: Well he's having a little trouble and he'll have more because there's an awful lot about his time and his nature that seems inconsistent and hypocritical. But we should never ever dismiss someone whose values counted in the long run because aspects of their way of life are no longer tolerable.
LAMB: Why do you think the founding fathers came up, you know, we're all created equal and they really didn't seem to mean it?
MCCULLOUGH: Well, some of them meant it. John Adams never owned a slave.
LAMB: But the first seven Presidents besides John Adams and John Quincy Adams all had slaves.
MCCULLOUGH: That's right. Yes. It just doesn't gel -- it doesn't jive. The pieces of the puzzle don't fit. I think that what it was that the people who are appalled by slavery, who hated slavery, and there are lots of them. It wasn't just John Adams and Abigail and their son John Quincy, lots of the 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 that the original founders who were against slavery though we'll never pull all these colonies together -- which are really like, in many ways, as different one from another as foreign countries were -- we'll never get ahead with it if we don't tolerate this for a while. But when you think that with one stroke of the pens of the members of Congress in 1787 they eliminated slavery completely in this vast territory.
What if they had done it for the whole deal then? 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.
LAMB: May 30, 1998. This is a speech at the University of Massachusetts at the graduation:
(Begin audio clip): 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 there, and that there is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. We all got where we are as did everyone before us with the help of others. (End audio clip)
You say that in the book more than once. Can you name somebody that helped you that otherwise you wouldn't have gotten to where you are?
MCCULLOUGH: My mother, my father, my brothers, at least three teachers in grade school, at least five teachers in high school, and at least seven or eight professors in college.
LAMB: Is there a teacher that you've never talked about that you would could tell us about?
MCCULLOUGH: Well I've talked about many of them. (Miss Smelch, Miss Smelch) was a science teacher in grade school and (Miss Smelch) was a magical teacher. She got you interested in whatever it was she wanted you to be interested in. And she assigned one of her classes Pittsburgh is a city of bridges. It has, there are more bridges in Pittsburgh than there are in Paris. And, she got one of her classes building little match stick 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 wasn't just she taught science and whatever she taught, she made it interesting. And I can remember, we didn't build those little bridges, but I can remember being absolutely thrilled by those little bridges and 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 town very near Pittsburgh. And the old man Roebling, John A. Roebling, built his first bridge in Pittsburgh. So it connects, no doubt about it.
LAMB: (Mrs. Smelch)
MCCULLOUGH: The teacher who really meant more to me in many ways than anyone, any of the whole chorus of great teachers was Vincent Scully at Yale who was, who taught the History of Architecture, Art and Architecture but mainly architecture. 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 in the English language, and he was, he was a genius, is a genius, he's still living.
LAMB: Were you a straight A student?
MCCULLOUGH: No. I horsed around a little bit. But I, I, yes, I got a lot of A's but I wasn't very good in physics. I wasn't very good in the subjects being taught by teachers that I thought were boring.
LAMB: Back in….
MCCULLOUGH: And it's too bad, I did fine. I graduated with honors and I was school could give a lot of awards. I loved to paint. I still paint all the time 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.
LAMB: By the way, on that, your book on the Northwest Ordinance, what's the timetable on that one?
MCCULLOUGH: I hope to have it finished by the end of next year to be published in the Spring of 2018, 2019.
LAMB: November 1, 2000, you spoke at the White House about the White House, it's the 200th anniversary:
(Begin audio clip): John Adams could be proud, vain, irritable, short tempered. He was also brilliant, warm hearted, humorous, a devoted husband and father. And a life-long talker and an all out full time talker. (End audio clip)
Are you a talker?
MCCULLOUGH: Oh am I ever?
LAMB: When you said he was a talker, would you be the, if you two were together would it just be one, who would be dominating the conversation?
MCCULLOUGH: He would. Because I would respect him and try to hold back, reign myself in, yes. No, I think it's in our Irish blood. And I think that's how we survived all those hundreds of years with the (inaudible) that live on that much, we just kept talking. And…. My father was a great talker.
LAMB: What about your kids?
MCCULLOUGH: Oh, yes. I've got three or four and they're way ahead of me.
LAMB: How many of the 19 grandchildren, I assume some are very young, have read this?
MCCULLOUGH: One, so far, because they haven't gotten it yet. They are just getting it.
LAMB: And that one is how old?
MCCULLOUGH: Twelve.
LAMB: And the reaction?
MCCULLOUGH: Oh, the boy loves it.
LAMB: Boy or girl?
MCCULLOUGH: Boy.
LAMB: What was his reaction to it?
MCCULLOUGH: Oh he loves it. He hadn't read all of it but he's read some of it. He's very interesting little man and I'm very pleased he likes it. My, I have grandchildren who are in their 30's and I have one who is 10. So they've covered a lot of time.
LAMB: How many, six kids?
MCCULLOUGH: We have five children.
LAMB: How many of the 5 children and the 19 grandchildren and the in-laws and all that have you found to be interested in history?
MCCULLOUGH: I would say probably such a very interesting question and I have never thought about it. I think probably 75 percent. But, they've had it pretty well drummed into them.
LAMB: How did you do that over the years?
MCCULLOUGH: Talking and taking them to historic sites when young. It's the best way of all to get them hooked and encouraging them to read good books. There's 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's about people. It's about life. It's about cause and effect. It's about stories. Barbara Tuchman said there's no trick to teaching history or writing, tell stories. That's what it is. And I think that you have to bring the characters alive and you can only do it by really knowing them. And so you do that by working with original letters and diaries. The book I'm working on now about the Northwest Ordinance and the Settlement of Ohio, that's only been possible because I found this incredible collection of letters and diaries at the archive at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio. Unbelievable, Brian. Written by the people who settled Marietta, Ohio.
LAMB: How did you find out that it was there?
MCCULLOUGH: By working on Manasseh Cutler for the speech that I gave at Athens, Ohio. As often happens by talking to the archival, the archivist who runs the place, who is terrific and knows more about the subject than anybody, knows all these characters. I've got one who's a carpenter, a boat builder, and a furniture maker. One who is a minister and a doctor and a lawyer, that's Manasseh Cutler. Then there's another who's Cutler's son. His name is Ephraim Cutler and he eventually wound up in politics and there was a point after Ohio became a state when the big move in the legislature to scrap the, you know, slavery rule and let slaves be in Ohio.
And it went to a vote in the legislature and the deciding vote was cast by Ephraim Cutler, the sun.
Now if that's not a great story, what - and he wrote wonderful letters. And then there's another man, a doctor, named Hildreth who wrote a 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, Mariana (ph), and Linda (ph) this wonderful archivist brought over a big notebook like that, an old one obviously and said I think you might find this interesting. And I opened it up, and there were these absolutely exquisite watercolors of natural history phenomenon.
The caterpillar and his whole life cycle where he turns into the butterfly, all done in watercolors of such perfection they can be hanging in the Metropolitan Museum. And he's a doctor practicing medicine, with patients and all that, in this frontier town.
And, you know, woah, it's in many ways, humbling to realize what so many of them accomplished against - in spite of adversities of a sort we don't even have to deal with ever.
LAMB: Here you are, in the speech from Boston College, back in 2008 and the title of it is "The Love of Learning".
(Begin Video Clip)
MCCULLOUGH: Facts alone are never enough. Facts rarely, if ever, have any soul. In writing or trying to understand history, one may have all manner of data, and miss the point. One can have all the facts, and miss the truth. It can be like the old piano's teacher lament to her student, I hear all the notes but I hear no music.
(End Video Clip)
LAMB: Explain the facts and truths and all, because as we know in politics, we're always hearing that's the truth but it should be factual. But you're saying they're not the same.
MCCULLOUGH: Well, they're not. We live in a - I'm told we live in the information age, and we get information in quantities such as what would've unimaginable in other times. And on a infinite variety of subjects, and all that can come instantly now electronically, and in many ways you don't have to really 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 a country goes.
But it isn't learning. If information - I like to tell students, if information were learning, if you memorize the world almanac, you would not be learning. You'd be weird. If no computer ever has yet had an idea, they only happened here in the human brain, the human imagination.
Information isn't poetry, information isn't music, information isn't art or theater. It doesn't deal with the soul of our human nature. I am have always - long loved Dixie Land Jazz. I love it. And about nine or 10 years ago I was - we rented a house down in Florida and I was taking a walk one morning.
And I heard this incredible music, Dixie Land music coming out of a house with a lot of cars parked around it. It was about 8:30 or 9 o' clock. And I thought, boy they're playing that awfully loud. One of the neighbors don't complain, and then I realized, that isn't a recording, that's the real thing.
So the next day I was walking by the same house and found out the kid who lived was coming out, picking up the newspaper up off his driveway. And I said - and when I heard it the day before, I walked to back to the house and got Rosy (ph) and we got her in the car, and we came down and we just sat in the car outside this house and listened to what was a Dixie Land concert for about two hours.
He said, well, and I complimented him, and he said well next week, he said we do this every Tuesday morning. So he said, come on in, listen inside. Well it's - the band is composed of retired professional musicians.
And some of them are not performer professionals but they're good enough to have been. And you should hear them play. And some of them come in on a walker, or their canes, there's one man who's well into his 90's and they sit down and start to play and they're 45 or 25 again.
There's - if I ever saw the Fountain of Youth at work, it just lifts you right out of time and age. That's the power of music, that's the power of art. And that's not information, that's life.
LAMB: You talk about age, in July, you'll be 84.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes.
LAMB: What's the impact of age on you?
MCCULLOUGH: Well, knock on wood, so far, very little.
LAMB: Nothing's changed?
MCCULLOUGH: Yes, sure it has, of course it has. Time's more important. Material acquisitions of any kind don't interest me at all anymore. I much less desire to travel a lot because I've been to so many places that I don't feel it any motivation to go again. I'm not against traveling, but I don't the bug in me to get out and get on the move.
And I want to spend what time I have doing the work I want to do. My joy is in the work. I think what one finds that your work, your family, your friends and needless to say, your health are what really matter.
I do not like to waste time, I haven't got time to waste time. And I get very impatient when I'm with some people who've long sense retired and all they talk about is their golf game or their knee operation. And, no that's not for me. I like learning. I like finding out about something that I don't know anything about.
I was raised on curiosity is a good thing. And the curiosities is what separates us from the cabbages. And it does. I also love to make something, I love to make a page or five pages or a chapter or a 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 or I'm with somebody who knows how to really do it. I like to finish the day thinking I've done, that if I hadn't been around, it wouldn't have happened. And I'm pleased that I did it, pleased that I've spent my day, or much of my day, doing that.
LAMB: I have wanted to ask you about this for several months. And before I do, I want to run some video.
MCCULLOUGH: Oh, OK.
LAMB: Of you, in the year 2016, and I want you to tell me why you did this.
(Begin Video Clip)
MCCULLOUGH: President Dwight D Eisenhower, who so admirably served his country his entire career, 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 accounts.
And it should be noted, Eisenhower put character first. In the words of the Ancient Greeks, character is destiny. So much that Donald Trump spouts, is so vulgar and so far from the truth and mean spirited, it is on that question of character especially, that he is not measure up. He is unwise, he is plainly unprepared, unqualified, and it often seems, unhinged. How could we possibly put our future in the hands of such a man?
(End Video Clip)
LAMB: Let me say, 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 what, why did this historian do this?
MCCULLOUGH: Because I felt that the -- we -- he was the least qualified candidate for the presidency in our history and that he not only has had no appropriate background or training and has never done anything for his country on his own or on volunteering, and that he is one of those people who uses fear and smear and -- and slander as his weapons for succeeding. And I -- I really was worried and I still am about what the consequences are going to be.
LAMB: How did you or did you lead this and organize the historians together?
MCCULLOUGH: No, I didn't. Well, yes and no. Ken Burns and I did and we both said we got to do something. We can't -- the -- the traditional place that historians take in a political contrast -- contest or country has been to stay out of it. To maintain neutrality because it would appear to violate your ability to make fair judgment and to not be mislead by your own political opinions or emotions. And so I've done that often. I grew up in a very Republican family. I was a great admirer of several Republican politicians then of past and present.
I voted for George -- Gerald Ford. I quit my job in New York to go to work for John Kennedy when he called on us to do something for our country and I have registered as an Independent but I've crossed the line many times and I've certainly been exposed to dear friends and members of my family who disagreed with the position I took. That was fine, I didn't mind that. This time I thought it was an emergency and if we could somehow reach out to people who maybe were on the fence at that point, it might make a difference.
LAMB: I want to show some more video from the other historians just briefly so people can see the extent and these are -- I would suggest almost all Democrats except one you'll see and I want you to tell us about.
MCCULLOUGH: Sure. Right.
(Begin Video Clip)
KEN BURNS: There comes a time when I and you can no longer remain neutral, silent. We must speak up and speak out.
RON CHERNOW: Like many other historians, I have been deeply disturbed by the Trump Campaign.
ROBERT CARO: History is full of demagogues who rise sometimes rise to the very heights of power.
CRAIG SHIRLEY: Nobody's saying -- Clinton -- only I can solve these problems. Nothing is more antithetical to America's founding.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: What's especially different about Donald Trump is that he's not a patriot.
SEAN WILENTZ: One of the things that Donald Trump is not is a populist.
NELL IRVIN PAINTER: Donald Trump is attuned to the white backlash against a black man in power.
DAVID NASAW: He's Melvin's confidence man. He's the Huckster, the shark.
EVAN THOMAS: I don't know as much about Trump's temperament but he seems like a narcissist.
JOSEPH ELLIS: No nominee has devoted his entire public life so completely to self-aggrandizement and self-promotion without even an inkling of civic responsibility.
(End Video Clip)
MCCULLOUGH: Wow.
LAMB: Yes. Did -- did you…
MCCULLOUGH: I never saw all that.
LAMB: You never saw?
MCCULLOUGH: No.
LAMB: I want to ask you about something though because, and you may not like this. The last man on the screen was Joe Ellis, Joseph Ellis.
MCCULLOUGH: Is what?
LAMB: Joseph Ellis was the last man, the last historian on the screen.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes, right. Yes.
LAMB: 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 was -- the Boston Globe reported that he had lied to his students about serving in Vietnam, going in with the 101st Airborne, then taking the Freedom Marches to Mississippi. They suspended him for a year at Mount Holyoke but he got everything back. And he's a historian and now he's involved in politics. Why are we supposed to believe somebody that would tell students for 15 years those lies? And you write about lies in your speeches.
MCCULLOUGH: Brian, Joe Ellis is a friend of mine. And I can't answer your question. He is a friend and I won't speak negatively about him. There's much that I could say that's positive about him particularly as a historian and as a friend. He -- it came -- when the story broke, it came as a shock to me, serious shock. But I called him right away and said I just want you to know I'm your friend. And I'll stand by you and I have. It's happened to some other people, plagiarism charges and so forth.
I guess the answer to that is a historians are human. We're all with -- we all have our flaws and sometimes what we think will be kept private isn't and I think that as a -- well, a professional point of view, Joe Ellis is -- I've never sat in on one of his classes but he's probably as good as they get.
LAMB: Let me just go beyond that because you write so much about character, character, character.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes.
LAMB: What is character?
MCCULLOUGH: It's having the courage of your convictions. It's having honesty, you tell the truth. And at the White House a mantel piece in the State Dining Room there is a quotation from a letter that John Adams wrote to Abigail the first night he stayed in the White House. First president to live in the White House and she hadn't arrived yet so he was there all alone. And the house was far from complete, he was living under construction. And in that letter he writes, "May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof."
What is so important about that line it seems to me is he puts honesty first. The honesty is more important than brains, wisdom. And numbers of other people have said it too. Isn't it interesting that our first president was famous -- became famous for never telling a lie and to my knowledge never said anything derogatory or nasty about a rival, ever. I think and this came over me with particular strength when I was writing the -- my Wright brothers book. I think how we're raised at home is more important than we realize and I think that yes, our education is vital.
Yes, studying with brilliant people and having the advantage of access to great documents and books and libraries is all marvelous, but it's those fundamental values that you're raised and brought up on that you don't get too big for your britches. That you don't cheat. That you don't tell lies, that you're loyal to your friends and to your country. That you work hard, you're a hard worker and you have purpose in your life. You don't just drift along. You have purpose and if it's worthy purpose, you'll have a good life.
And those Wright brothers never had any advantages of material wealth. They never finished high school, let alone went -- ever went to college. But they were raised to work hard and to have purpose and to never belittle or smear a rival.
Other people who are in the aviation, pioneering era, would often take swipes, cracks at the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers never said any derogatory about those with whom they were in competition.
Now you don't learn that necessarily in college and you don't - you might learn it in grade school from a really good teacher. But it's what you get at home. And I just think we should know more about that.
LAMB: I want to stay with character for a moment.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes.
LAMB: The President, Trump, got a lot of criticism from a lot of different areas about his attitude toward women.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes.
LAMB: One of the heroes of a lot of people is John F Kennedy.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes.
LAMB: And his relationship with women…
MCCULLOUGH: Yes.
LAMB: …not admirable…
MCCULLOUGH: Right.
LAMB: …nobody knew about it back in the 60s.
MCCULLOUGH: We didn't know about it. I was in the Kennedy Administration, or in the very low ranking role to be sure.
LAMB: But what's the difference a JFK and a Donald Trump when it comes women and character?
MCCULLOUGH: Kennedy was a gentlemen. Big difference.
LAMB: But he had a 19 year old that was in the White House and…
MCCULLOUGH: Yes, I know, but he didn't - he didn't smear her. He didn't talk about any of the women he was involved with in a derogatory or a masculine superiority fashion.
LAMB: But we as people thought this was Camelot.
MCCULLOUGH: Yes we did. But, remember, the exposure of the full story of presidency is a relatively recent development, happened our lifetime.
LAMB: is that good or bad, by the way?
MCCULLOUGH: Well I think in some ways it's not good. I think the decline of privacy in our way of life isn't just in the White House. It's everywhere now. And it's getting worse because of electronic snooping and spying.
LAMB: In your lifetime, and you've been very much involved in Monticello and Jefferson. The whole Sally Heming's relationship, as we talked earlier about his…
MCCULLOUGH: Yes.
LAMB: …image right now, was not exposed. And they fought hard to not expose it.
MCCULLOUGH: That's right.
LAMB: And so what impact should that have on Jefferson's image? It's character.
MCCULLOUGH: He already has had it. It always will. Well and the fact that he was paying a reporter, so called, to smear John Adams, he was funding that. Not the way - not the rules of the game.
Jefferson destroyed every letter he ever wrote to his wife and that she ever wrote to him. What do that tell us about him? I don't know. Washington did the same thing. It's a shame because we can't really know those men as I wish we could.
Because of that. Whereas you take the Adam's favors, there're over thousand letters between John and Abigail Adams. And they're marvelous, touching, reviewing letters. If only we had some similar window on the lives of Jefferson, Washington. They're always in debt.
John Adams, 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 imagined, and I'm finding that out with some of the characters I'm working on. I knew a little bit about it before.
The idea they all dress in black and never smiled, and didn't like having a good time and all that, not true. And, their values were admirable in the extreme, in particularly, their attitude about education.
And fairness, legal fairness and the rest. And the snobbery was bad for them. You don't act that way. And you're not vulgar. My grandmother - great grandmother was German and she used to talk about the vulgar rich.
Vulgar, vulgar, people who had so much money, they were making fools of themselves with their materialistic showing off.
LAMB: In this book, "The American Spirit" you have 15 speeches. What's the best, in your opinion, the best speech you've ever given?
MCCULLOUGH: I can't answer that. It's a little bit like asking which is my favorite child or grandchild.
LAMB: Which one did you work the hardest on? And you told us that One in the House.
MCCULLOUGH: I worked very hard on the speech I gave at Dartmouth about the presidency. And I worked very hard on the speech I gave in Ohio at the university there.
I worked very hard on the speech that I gave at Lafayette College about the connection between France and United States. Because I think that's an aspect of our story that is not as well understood as it should be.
LAMB: When was…
MCCULLOUGH: You know there are 60,000 Americans buried in France? More people - more of our people buried there than any other country in the world expect our own.
And when you think about the Louisiana Purchase, and the service that the French played, the part that they played in the revolution, I think there's a very good case that we would not have won the revolution, had it not been for the French. Both financially and in military help.
LAMB: Running out of time, I want to ask you when was the first time that somebody said they wanted to pay you to come make a speech?
MCCULLOUGH: Yes.
LAMB: And what was your reaction?
MCCULLOUGH: Oh I'm 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.
And I have a wonderful wife. And when I said I'm thinking of stopping my job as an editor in New York and see if I can make it on my own as a write, she said great, go for it, do it. And…
LAMB: But you don't remember the first speech you were paid for?
MCCULLOUGH: No I don't. It was probably at a college or a university. I wish I had - that's a very good question but if Rosy (ph) were here, she'd know.
LAMB: We're out of time. The book The American Spirit, who we are and what we stand for, 15 speeches from 1989 to 2016, by our guest David McCullough and we thank you very much.
MCCULLOUGH: Thank you Brian.