 Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome. I'm Tom Wheeler, the president of the Foundation for the National Archives, your host for this evening's event. And clearly, our guest, David McCullis, sees many friends in the room. And it is entirely fitting that that should be so and that he should be back here with us tonight, because it was about nine months ago in this hall, on this stage, that David McCullis received the first Records of Achievement Award from the Foundation for the National Archives. It is an annual award that we present for leadership in the use of America's documents to tell the story of the spirit of America. And when the board of directors of the Archives Foundation sat down to consider who should receive the seminal award, it was about a three-second consideration. And David McCullis was the choice. So we are grateful to David McCullis for coming back home here to the National Archives and for honoring us tonight. One clarification or a couple of ground rules and a clarification. Mr. McCullis has been kind enough to agree to respond to any questions that you may have. There are two microphones over here on the side. Please line up or queue, I guess, as the British would say, since we're talking about that kind of an era, and use those microphones. Secondly, is there's a typo in the program that says that there will be a book signing in the theater lobby until 9.30. We want to make sure that Mr. McCullis keeps the use of his hand for writing subsequent books, and it will not be lasting until 9.30. But obviously, he's indicated his willingness to sign those while you were there, but we won't be hanging around until 9.30. It is my privilege at this point in time to introduce the archivist of the United States, our host here tonight, Professor Alan Weinstein. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here tonight as we host David McCullis, author of 1776. As all of you know, he was twice winner of the National Book Award, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and we'd be here for many more hours if I listed all the prizes that David has won, deservedly so. However, I want to say one thing as a journeyman historian to a master historian that it is one of the amazing achievements of this man, Mr. McCullis, that none of his books, which I'm not going to list at this point in order to get to him more quickly, none of his books has ever been out of print. Think about that for a second. That's an achievement. He's received 38 honorary degrees and deserved everyone, and will undoubtedly receive 38 more. He's been an editor, he's been an essayist, he's been a teacher, he's been a lecturer, he's been a familiar presence on public television, and we've come to expect something rather unique of this man. He represents, to me at least, the epic storytelling tradition, the grand tradition of historians and narrative history, and he is the master of that. But to my amazement, to my, and I can't tell you how much I admire the fortitude here, this man is tonight giving his 28th speech in 35 days. Think about that for a second. How many of you, even the writers, even if you're offered 28 speeches in 35 days, how many of you could make it through this guy? Well, Mr. McCulloch has. I want to close before turning the podium over to David McCulloch, with a comment of his that came to my attention in an interview he gave, because it speaks to what I consider to be the historical reality and the centrality of this man in our country. I might add he's an enormous patriot. Some people, McCulloch said, think there's diplomatic history and there's life, and there's business history and there's life, and there's presidential history and there's life. Life is always mixed up with it, and personality is always a determinant. Always, if you don't understand the natures, the motives, the personalities, the failings, the backgrounds of the people involved, you don't understand why things happen the way they did. History is about life. History is about life. It's awful when the life is squeezed out of it and there's no flavor left, no certainties, no horsing around. It always disturbed me how many biographies would never give their subjects a chance to eat. You can tell a lot about people by how they eat and what they eat and what kind of table manners they have and also what kind of platform manners they have. David McCulloch, the floor is yours. Mr. Weinstein, thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, old friends, and there's so many of you here tonight, it pleases me more than I could say. I am deeply and forever indebted to the National Archives. I've been drawing upon the resources of the National Archives and on the insights and advice and continuous courtesies of the staff of the National Archives for 40 years and my indebtedness could not be greater and my appreciation could not be greater and I just say from the heart that I feel I'm with a number of fellow spirits tonight, not just people who are interested in history but who care about this great institution. And because there's so many of you here that are old friends and people that I care a lot about, I wish particularly that Rosalie were with me tonight. I have just completed a five-week book tour and Rosalie stayed with me for the first six cities and then she said, I'm going home. And that was the right thing for her to do. Rosalie is my editor-in-chief. There's a man at Simon Schuster that he thinks, he's my editor-in-chief and I don't correct him but she really is. She's been my polar star for 50 years and I wouldn't have had the life I've had without her, anything close to it and I certainly wouldn't have had the writing career that I have without her. She had the courage and it took a lot to cut loose from what was a good job and a regular salary to see if we could make it on her own writing history. And there were years, many years when that was anything but easy but it was always a joy. I discovered in this city when I was here working for the U.S. Information Agency under President Kennedy and thus under Edward R. Murrow that I loved working on the research for history and that I loved writing history. I discovered my vocation during those years and I feel blessed that I've been able to do it and to support my family and if I had to pay to do it now, I would do that too because it brings me more pleasure than anything I know. I feel like I'm on vacation every single day and I work every day. It's not easy and it doesn't get any easier because I suspect that our standards get higher the more we work at what we do but because it's hard doesn't mean it doesn't provide joy and it provides great joy. There are certain basic ideas it seems to me which are essential in writing history and teaching history and one is to convey the sense that nothing ever had to happen the way it happened. That events could have gone off in any number of different ways for any number of different reasons at a variety of points all along the way. Nothing was ever on a track. We're taught history that this followed this followed that and that followed that and we begin to think that that's how it had to be. It never had to be. Nor was anyone ever aware of how things would turn out. The expression the foreseeable future ought to be dropped. We shouldn't use it. There's no such thing as the foreseeable future any more than there's any such thing as the self-made man or the self-made woman. We are all the results of many people who have helped us, inspired us, corrected us, reprimanded us, given us encouragement when we need it and we know who they were, parents, teachers, friends but often they're people we've never known because they lived in another time. They lived long ago and they may have written symphony that moves us to our souls. They may have written the laws that we enjoy among the blessings of this country. They may have been poets, they may have been great masters of literature or painting and they have shaped us. They've shaped us with their vocabulary. All of us walk around every day unknowingly quoting Shakespeare, Cervantes, Pope, Swift and we think this is just the way we talk. Unknowing that these all come from a long tradition of the great English language. And too few it seems to me understand the degree to which we have been shaped by those who created this country and not just the founders but the people whose lives and whose fortunes and whose sacred honor was on the line but whose names mean nothing to us. They were anonymous or largely anonymous even in their own time but they were there and they did heroic and sometimes extraordinarily unprecedented acts which have made possible how we live. Abigail Adams in the letter to her husband written from Quincy when he was in Philadelphia in 1776 said future generations which will reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors. And in this she was entirely right. Another point to keep in mind it seems to me and to Covey and what we teach and what we write about history is that in a very real sense there was never any such thing as the past. Nobody ever lived in the past. Jefferson, Adams, Washington, they didn't walk around saying isn't this fascinating living in the past? All right, we picture us in our funny clothes. They lived in the present but it was their present, not ours and they don't know how it's going to come out any more than we do. They don't know what's over the horizon. There's much that they don't know, much that they don't know because they lived in the 18th century just as there's much that they did know that we don't know because they lived in the 18th century. So when we try to enter into their world, into their time, into their culture, we must remember that their present was different from ours and as a consequence they were different from what we are. In many ways more different than we realized. Yes, of course they were fellow human beings. Yes, of course they had many of the same emotions and fears and ambitions and the like but because they lived in another culture they of course were different. And again, more different than we often understand. Now George Washington has long been long perceived as the marble man, virtually a demigod, an emblem, a unifying symbol, an icon and the rest. And he's very knowable. He's very approachable to use a word in fashion. And this we can find in what he wrote. There are no photographs of Washington as there are no photographs of any of the people of the 18th century except some very, very long lived soldiers whose lives extended beyond, way beyond the revolution so that they were photographed as in their late 90s or more than 100 years old in ancient wonderful daguerreotypes. There are only about seven of them. There are no recorded voices. We don't know exactly what George Washington's voice was like or Jefferson or Adams or any of them. We don't know exactly what a New England accent was like or a Virginia accent was like. And there are no film clips and there was no reporting done of the war, no war correspondence covered the Revolutionary War. They didn't do that in newspapers in those days. So we don't have British correspondence coming over to cover their side of the war or German correspondence to cover the Hessians and how they were faring or American correspondence either loyalist or patriot recording what was happening from their point of view. And there are no artist correspondence, no Winslow Homer covering the Civil War. There are no on the spot sketches or paintings of any of these people during the war. They were all painted after the fact and very often by people like John Trumbull and Charles Wilson Peele in a very sort of formal and almost European manner. What do we have? We have the letters. We have the diaries. We have the account books, the records of the different commands, the orderly books, memoirs. And these in their way are so eloquent, so full of the emotion and the lives and the point of view of those who wrote them that in their way they compensate for all that we don't have. I found particularly valuable the letters of man named J.Bez Fitch who no matter what was happening to him in this 18 months of the book that I wrote from summer of 75 through to the end of 76, no matter what was happening he was writing it all down in a diary. Joseph Hodgkin's letters to home to his wife Sarah and her letters to him. A little boy named John Greenwood. If you're writing a novel you wouldn't dare risk so obvious a symbol for a name as John Greenwood. He was about as Greenwood as any soldier in the war. A little boy who had found a fife, a broken fife from a British soldier in Boston, mended it and learned to play it. And when his family sent him up to Portland, Maine to get him away from the occupation of Boston by the British and he heard that the war had broken out he put that little fife in his shirt pocket and with nothing more than the clothes on his back set off to join the army walking 150 miles by himself all the way to Boston. He was 16 years old but he looked about 14 or less and he was quite small for his age. And his memoir of the war is one of the most telling and descriptive and moving accounts of all which includes his first encounter with a wounded soldier after the battle of Bunker Hill right on through to a brilliant, wonderful description of the crossing of the Delaware and the attack on Trenton at Christmas night in the end of the year 1776. So these have been the voices that I have been listening to for the last three years and more. And those of George Washington and Nathaniel Green and Henry Knox and John Glover, British officers, Hessian officers and men in the ranks, loyalists, innocent bystanders. Washington's own total count of letters just written in this 18 month period totals nearly a thousand. We don't think of Washington as a great writer of letters. Now many of them were dictated nonetheless they're his letters and they're very revealing especially those that he wrote in private. For while this very self-controlled, a very model of a leader acting as a leader in his presence before the troops always, never revealing doubt, uncertainty or what was going on in the inner side of him in his privacy and particularly late at night when he was sleepless he would pour out his innermost feelings in a way that is immensely human and very revealing. He was often full of despair, often full of doubt, very often full of self pity and who was to blame him. I'll read you one example. This was written the night of January 14th, late at night in his headquarters outside of Boston. He had been in command since the summer of 1775 and when he could command, please understand that he wasn't the George Washington of the Gilbert Stuart paintings. He wasn't the George Washington of the powdered hair and the awkward teeth. He was a young man in the prime of his life and a spectacular and in spectacular physical condition. Six feet, two, 190 to 200 pounds and for all of 43 years old. And he'd never commanded an army in battle before in his life. He was new to it. They were all new to it and they were all young. Jefferson 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, Adams 40, Hancock 39. Benjamin Rush, one of the most interesting of them all was 30 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence. Nathaniel Green who turned out to be the best general we had and who started knowing only what he had read in books was a Quaker with a bad limp from a childhood injury and he was all of 33 and had been made a major general having never set foot on the battlefield or having served in a war before in his life. Henry Knox was a big fat, garrulous Boston bookseller, 25 years old and he too only understood, all that he understood about the military was what he'd read in books. Green had bought most of his books on the military in Henry Knox's bookshop. And so Henry Knox and Green have become fast friends over books before the war began. And the fact that they had learned as much as they had but only from books was never held against them because you see this was the 18th century when it was widely understood that learning things from reading books was a good idea. Neither Green nor Knox nor Washington had more than about a fifth grade education formally. But they were very intelligent men and they never stopped reading. Here's what Washington wrote in the big house that still stands in Cambridge on Brattle Street. We all know it as the Longfellow House. It really, in my view, ought to be also known as Washington's headquarters because it was from there that he commanded the siege of Boston from the summer of 75 until the evacuation by the British in March of 76. And momentous decisions were made in that house in the front parlor by the fireplace that's still there. When I think of who came and went inside that house and what those old walls would have to say if they could speak, it evokes all kinds of possibilities. The reflection upon my situation in that of this army produces many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep. He told Joseph Reed. Joseph Reed was a young Philadelphia attorney who had signed on briefly to serve as Washington's aide and then went back to Philadelphia because he needed to look after his abandoned law practice and his young family. And Washington would pour himself out to read in a way he didn't to anyone else with great affection. He was very fond of Reed. And imploring him always to please come back which eventually Reed did. Nobody knows, he says, nobody knows the predicament we're in. Well, nobody knows the predicament we're in, they were in today either. Then he goes on, I have often thought how much happier I should have been if instead of accepting of a command under such circumstances, I had taken my musket upon my shoulders and entered the ranks. Or if I could have justified the measure to posterity and my own conscience, had retired to the back country and lived in a wigwam. I shall be able to rise superior to, if I shall be able to rise superior to these and many other difficulties which might be enumerated, I shall be most religious, I shall most religiously believe that the finger of providence is in it. He's afraid he's going to fail. He wishes he didn't have the burden of this impossible command. And he had told the Congress that he was not up to the command, that he was not sufficient for the job. And he meant it. But he also knew that he was more up to it than anybody else. And he also showed up in Congress in his uniform indicating he was available. And when he spoke to Congress, he said if circumstances go against me and this doesn't work, remember I warned you. Now Congress picked George Washington not because he was a brilliant general or he had a great war record. He didn't. He'd served gallantly courageously in the French and Indian War. But he had been out of military life for more than 15 years. And he had no great record as a tactician or strategist. They picked George Washington because they knew him as a man. They knew him as a fellow member of the Continental Congress. And they liked him. They trusted him. They knew his character. They knew his integrity. And they made one of the best decisions any Congress ever made in choosing him to be the commander. When we start toting up, adding up the miracles of the creation of our country, George Washington is one of them. He would serve through the entire war. And the only other general officers who would serve through the entire war were Green and Knox. These two young New Englanders whom he spotted right at the start despite the fact that he didn't like New Englanders. He overcame that bias. He thought they were dirty. He thought they were rude. And he thought they had this intolerable notion that they could decide things for themselves like only serving if they could elect their own officers. And often the officers got elected by requiring little or no discipline or insisting on any kind of punishment for those who broke the rules. But he overcame that bias. And as it turned out, those two men were the best he had and they would serve the entire length of the war with him. Now, the 14th of January, the night that he wrote these despairing letters, these despairing letters was probably as low a point as he'd ever known in his life. There was not enough gunpowder. There was not enough money. He had to replace virtually his entire army because as of December 31st, an entire army had been free to go home. Their enlistments were up and most of them went home. So he had to replace that army with new greener enlistees in the face of the enemy without the enemy knowing that he had no gunpowder, had an even greener and less experienced army taking the place of the army that had moved out. And they had no money to pay them. And winter was setting in, they didn't have adequate clothes or adequate barracks and so forth. He really felt honestly that no commander had ever been put into a tougher position. Four days later, on January 18th, the whole situation changed. It changed because young Henry Knox had come to him in November with an idea. Now, this is an extremely interesting situation for two reasons. First of all, that a young, minor officer in the army could go directly to the commander in chief with an idea. That wouldn't have happened in the British army. And it wasn't just the young man could go from a low rank to the top to convey this idea, but that the idea could get to the top, to the commander in chief. And so it's the opportunity of the individual and the opportunity for ideas, two very powerful American themes all along in our whole history. The idea was to go to Ticonderoga at the southern most end of Lake Champlain and fetch the great guns that were there, cannon and mortar, excuse me, and haul them nearly 300 miles back to Boston in the dead of winter, down the Hudson Valley, far as Albany, crossing the Hudson, and then taking them over the Berkshire Mountains. And it was all virtually wilderness. Very few roads. Again, I repeat in the dead of winter. Washington liked the idea immediately and immediately said to Knox, you're in charge. And he did it. Phenomenal. This bookseller from Boston, who'd never been out of Boston, never attempted anything of the kind. He was, excuse me, authorized to spend $1,000, no more than $1,000. And he could take one man with him. So he took his younger brother, who was 19. 25-year-old bookseller and a 19-year-old kid, and they set off to bring back the guns from Ticonderoga. It's like something in a myth. And it worked. Now how they did it, well, you'll have to read my book. And what happened? Well, what happened in one night with massive use of manpower and oxen, nearly 1,000 oxen, they put those guns on top of Dorchester Heights. And the British woke up the next morning, March 5th, looked up and saw what had happened and realized they had to get out. They were right under those guns, well within range, as were their ships in the harbor, which may be even more important. If the ships were knocked out, they had no way to escape. So a quiet, unofficial secret deal was made. The Americans agreed they would not bombard British troops in Boston or the ships in the harbor, and that the British would be free to leave without any attack on the part of the Americans if the British agreed not to burn the city of Boston, which they were well ready to do. So on March 17th, the British sailed away. Evacuation day, which in Boston is often celebrated for another reason. And that rather reason is a good one, but it often eclipses what evacuation day is about. It was an immensely important event because we had bested them with sheer manpower, ingenuity, and the capacity to do things. We couldn't march very well. We couldn't drill very well. We couldn't fire muskets as rapidly as could the British. We weren't really very good soldiers at all. Unruly, bush leaguers, farmers in from the fields. But we'd bested them. We'd shamed them, and it filled us with pride and unfortunately more confidence in ourselves than we should have. What followed was Washington then moved to New York to defend New York against the return of the British, which was expected to come about almost any time. Didn't happen until the end of June, first part of July, and the British sailed in in such force as to dazzle anyone who saw it. Over 400 ships, 32,000 troops. That was more troops than the entire population of Philadelphia, which was the largest city in the country at the time. Determined to take New York. Washington decided on his own that he would defend New York. That he had to defend New York for political reasons. It was a political decision. Washington was a political general, very important. Important in the sense that he understood how the system worked, which was that he wasn't the boss, Congress was boss. And it was a mistake. We couldn't possibly defend New York. We had no ships to stop the British from bringing their fleet, their biggest ships up into the Hudson or smaller warships up into the East River. Two ships had more cannon power than all the cannon we had on all of New York. And he faced the British for the first time in the Battle of Brooklyn. The Battle of Brooklyn was an enormous battle. Covered six miles. There were 40,000 people involved. And Washington proved quite inept in his first attempt to command a battle. The British outsmarted us, outflanked us, outfought us. They killed over 300, really 400 American soldiers. They took 1,000 of our men captive prisoners and three of our generals and left Washington trapped there on Brooklyn Heights if they could possibly bring their ships up into the East River, which they were unable to do because of the direction of the wind. If the wind had been in a different direction the night of August 29th, 1776, I think we'd all be sipping tea and referring to our flat in New York and singing God praise the Queen. I think it would have been over because 9,000 men, including their commander in chief would have had no escape. As it was because they couldn't bring those ships up, Washington attempted a night withdrawal from Brooklyn. It was the Dunkirk of the Revolutionary War, a phenomenal accomplishment, given the yet dispirited, defeated troops who were soaking wet, had had very little sleep, were cold, and they'd never done anything like it before. The hardest military maneuver is almost as hard as any military maneuver of all is to an organized orderly withdrawal in the face of overwhelming enemy force. They did it at night, across the East River, no running lights, and again, providence, the hand of God, fate, chance, luck, whatever one chose to call it, entered in. At exactly the point when it looked like the river was too rough because of the Northeast Wind for our little makeshift flotilla to start taking the men across, suddenly the wind dropped like the parting of the Red Sea and the boat started over. When morning came and there were several thousand men who had still not gotten off and the whole thing was gonna be revealed to the British that we were trying to escape under their very noses, a providential fog came in and covered the entire Brooklyn side of the East River, fog so dense that people couldn't see six yards ahead of them. And there was no fog whatsoever over on the Brooklyn side. They got 9,000 men, all their equipment, horses and cannon off of Brooklyn, across the East River, which isn't a river at all, but a tidal strait and very treacherous currents, even in the best of condition, without the loss of a single man. But it wasn't just providence or chance or the hand of God. It was the skill of those mariners manning the boats. Under the command of a man named John Glover, they were mostly all from the North Shore of Boston, marble head, Gloucester and such places. And they performed in a way that few men have ever performed their profession, what they knew better with larger consequences riding on their ability. There were times when most of those boats, because they were so loaded down, the water was only a matter of inches below the gunnels. It was a phenomenal feat of navigation, seamanship. Well, one defeat then followed another. Kips Bay was turned into a route when the British invaded Manhattan. Washington lost his self-control for one of the few times in his whole career, struck out with his riding crop, trying to stop those who were running like rabbits, throwing off their knapsacks and hats, dropping their muskets in order to run faster away from the oncoming enemy. Washington on a big horse kept charging forward, getting closer and closer to the enemy. And his anger was such, he was in such a rage that Nathaniel Green called it almost suicidal. So close did he get to the enemy. And it was only because two of his staff managed to get ahold of the bridle of the horse that they got him off the field. If Washington had been killed then, if Washington had been captured at Brooklyn, I think it would have been over. He would be called an indispensable man later on. I don't think that's an overstatement. There was nobody really with the stature, with the capacity for leadership, for all of his mistakes to take his place. He then made another grievous performance with the assault on Fort Washington, which stood on the highest promontory at the north end of the island of Manhattan, right where the George Washington Bridge comes in today. You see, his problem there was indecision. He couldn't decide what to do, so he made no decision at all. General Green told him he thought the port could be held. Green was wrong. The fort fell, they lost another 3,000 taken prisoner, more cannon, more material. And from that point on began the long march, the long retreat across New Jersey. At one point, as the march got closer to Pennsylvania, the enlistments of 2,000 men came up. And 2,000 men said that's it for us and went home. Don't picture all these soldiers as heroes. They had been deserting by the hundreds all through the campaign. After every defeat, people gave up and left. Many defected, went over to the enemy. We forget that, but some didn't leave. Some stayed with him. Some would follow him anywhere. Washington was a leader. He wasn't a brilliant intellectual. He wasn't a spectacular speaker. He wasn't a brilliant general, but he was the leader. And people would follow him, and some would follow him through hell. 3,000 of them stayed with him. That's all there were, 3,000 men. All that stood in the way of the end of the revolution and any hope that the great words, the great ideals of the Declaration of Independence would mean anything more than words on paper. And so when we celebrate our 4th of July, as we will this weekend, we shouldn't just think of those people who were at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the people portrayed by John Trumbull in the painting of July 4th, 1776, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Part of our problem is that we tend to see those figures from the 18th century as not quite real, like figures in a costume pageant in their silks and their powdered hair, and their sort of posed statesman-like positions. This is another side of the story. This is another kind of American, another kind of patriot, another kind of hero, those 3,000 men. When they finally succeeded in putting the Delaware between them and the oncoming British Army, in other words, they crossed the Delaware at night to get over to the Pennsylvania side and destroyed all the remaining boats on the New Jersey side so the British couldn't follow immediately after. Charles Wilson Peele, the great Philadelphia painter, was part of a militia unit that had turned out to bring some support for Washington. And he walked among those troops the morning after their crossing. And he wrote in his diary that he had never seen such miserable human beings in all of his life. They were all in rags, they were half-starved, they had no winter clothing, they were covered with dirt and signs of disease. And he saw one man that he describes in the diary as the most wretched mortal he'd ever laid eyes on. He said the man was so dirty, you could hardly see the color of his skin. He had nothing, he was naked, except for what they called a blanket coat. His hair was long and filthy, hanging down over his shoulders. And his face was covered with sores. And then a few minutes later, he realized the man was his own brother. So those are some of the people we need to remember when we celebrate the 4th of July. They stayed there on the Pennsylvania side of the river, sort of taking stock. And the only conclusion that any rational person could have come to and most did, as had the British, as had the great majority of American citizens, is that the war was over and we had lost. But fortunately, Washington chose not to see it that way. He admitted in one of these private letters in which he is so very honest and forthcoming that the game is about up. So when all hope's gone, he did what you have to sometimes do under those conditions, he attacked. He crossed the Delaware at Maconkey's Ferry, up to the north. He crossed, as we all know, with ice cakes in the river. And no, he probably wasn't standing up in the boat to know the famous painting is filled with inaccuracies, but you know it doesn't matter because the painting conveys the drama, the magnitude, the importance of that event, which would turn history. Would change the course of the war, change the course of American history, and consequently change world history. And as tough and as demanding as the crossing was, again managed by John Glover and his marble head mariners, the worst part of the night was the march to the south, down the east side of the river to strike at Trenton. The wind was howling, it was another northeaster. It was a blinding snow, sleet, hail, heaven knows what the wind chill factor was, and they marched nine miles through the night. Men with no winter clothes, they're in rags. Many of them have no shoes, their feet are wrapped in rags. And yes, they did. Some of them leave bloody footprints in the snow. They were so cold on that nine mile march, the two men froze to death on the march to give a rough idea of how terribly difficult it was, the suffering they endured. And the next morning, no sleep, marching all night, nine miles through the dark, they struck at Trenton with a passion such as which they had never shown. They tore out of the fields and woods above Trenton, out of the blinding blizzard early in the morning, and it was all over in about 45 minutes. It wasn't a big battle, it wasn't a great, sort of stagey 18th century battle as Brooklyn had been. It was a fierce house to house combat, and we won, decisively, and that meant worlds because we'd never beat them at fighting, and we'd beaten them, and we turned around a few days later, again in the bold night march, an early morning attack, and struck at Princeton, and won there too. But it was the victory at Trenton, after crossing the Delaware Christmas night, that changed the war because of its psychological effect, its impact on the morale of the army, and its impact on the morale of the country. The words spread like wildfire, that we had won. We had won a fight with the British Empire, and maybe even equally satisfied, we had beaten the Hessians who were the most despised of those we were fighting. I don't think we sufficiently understand the history of our own country, and I don't think we sufficiently respect the history of our own country. I think we know we live in a very interesting country, and certainly we do. We also have a very interesting history, and unlike most people, most countries, we know when we were born, and they call the Declaration of Independence our birth certificate. Nathaniel Green later called George Washington the deliverer of his nation, which I think is very apt. I want to close with a scene that to me is as moving as anything in the whole story, and I'll try to sketch it as quickly and I hope as effectively as possible. On December 31st, 1776, the last day of the year, again, the entire army was free to go home. All their enlistments were up, and Washington was desperate to get men to re-enlist. He dreaded having to do what he'd done the previous December of putting together a whole new, even greener army. And so on December 31st, he called the men out into formation, and without any authority to do so, standing in front of them on his horse, resplendent in his magnificent uniform, he said that they would sign on for another six months. He was seat to it that they received a bounty of $10. He had no authority, whatever, from the Congress to do that. But as he wrote to Robert Morris quite bluntly, I thought at no time to stand on trifles. One of the soldiers would remember his regiment being called out, and his excellency, as Washington was called, was stride on the big horse, addressing them in what the soldier called the most affectionate manner. The great majority of these men were New Englanders, they had been with him from the start, served much longer than anybody, and they had no illusions about what they were being expected to do if they signed on again. Those willing to stay were asked to step forward. The drums rolled, and no one moved. Minutes passed, no one moved. And then Washington turned on his horse and rode away from them, his back to them. And then he stopped and turned and came back again and spoke to them a second time. And here's what he said, my brave fellows, you've done all I asked you to do and more than could be reasonably expected. But your country is at stake. Your wives, your houses, and all you hold dear. You have worn yourself out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstance. Again, the drums rolled and this time, the men began stepping forward. God Almighty wrote Nathaniel Green, inclined their hearts to listen to the proposal and they engaged anew. What's so interesting there is that it's perfectly, it's a perfect example of what was so great about Washington. He would not give up. He speaks to them once, they don't react. He speaks to them a second time and they do react. The first time he's offering them some pay, which he knows they desperately need to support their families, to support themselves. Realistic is not just offering the money, it's realistic. He understands that patriotism only will go so far for people who have been through hell. But then the second time he does appeal directly to what Lincoln might call their better angels. And it works. And I wonder if any of you are struck by something that has struck me about that speech. The line, if you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstance. You have a great chance, a great opportunity that others don't have. Isn't that so like the famous speech in Henry the Fifth? We few, we happy few, and gentlemen in England now a bed shall think themselves accused, accursed that they were not here. Same idea, same idea. This story again from Shakespeare, the good man will teach his son. This story is something we should teach our sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters. Congress meantime had fled, taken off from Philadelphia, terrified that the British were gonna attack and take Philadelphia. And they had abdicated all their control over Washington and made him virtually a dictator. This is very little known by most people. They said, we're going, you're in charge. And in their letter transmitting this new resolution, they said, happy it is for this country that the general of their forces can safely be entrusted with the most unlimited power and neither personal security, liberty nor property be in the least degree endangered thereby. But even more interesting is what he wrote to them. Instead of thinking myself freed from all civil obligations by this mark of their confidence, members of Congress, I shall constantly bear in mind that as the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside when those liberties are firmly established. And he was, as I think we all know, as good as his word. He went before Congress when the war finally ended and gave back his command. No conquering general had ever done that. This magnificent moment in our history is memorialized, commemorated in a fine painting that hangs in the rotunda of the capital again by John Trumbull. When George III was told after the war had ended by the painter Benjamin West, who was the court painter to the crown and who lived in London and who was an American who'd been living there since well before the war, when George III was told by Benjamin West that Washington would probably do this, George III said if he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world. I don't think that there's a much more powerful story than the story of our origins. And I hope that none of us ever will ever think of them again as figures in a costume pageant. Thank you. I think that's probably... Here we thought that Mr. McCulloch was tired and would like to go sign books. He'd actually like to take some questions first. Thank you. I would love to take some questions if you have some. And there are microphones, I believe, right on either side here for anyone who would like to ask a question. You've got a good voice. I'm reminded a little bit of the story of Monet out finishing, at the end of the day, one of his haystack paintings near Giverny. And a little boy came along and was watching him finishing it up and putting away his gear. And the little boy said, how long did it take you to do that picture? And he said 40 years. The actual time spent directly on this book was about three and a half years, but I was thinking about it and with the intention of doing it through perhaps a half of my time spent on the Adams book. So it was very much on my mind all along. So in effect, it was really 10 years because I knew that once I finished the story of Adams, I wanted to come back and tell the other side because in the Adams book, I had gone into great detail and the best I could to describe what had happened at Independence Hall and that whole side of the eventful year of 1776. But I knew that there were, how much was going on elsewhere that mattered in the extreme? And I wanted to tell that story. I'd also been writing biography for 20 years and I was eager to get back to writing some history. I don't make an outline to answer the second part of your question. I don't, many people I know make detailed outlines. To me that would be, that would take the adventure out of it. I know how I wanna begin or where I wanna begin and what note and I have a good idea of where I will end. But the rest of it for me is like a journey through a foreign country and I want each day to hold its own surprises. My friend, Mary Lee Settle, who was a wonderful historical novelist once said in the talk, I heard her give at Monticello, I write to find out. And I think that's a perfect description of it. People sometimes say to me when they ask me what I'm working on, they say, what is your theme? I have the slightest idea what my theme is. That's one of the reasons I'm writing the book. And I hope that maybe before I end the book, it'll dawn on me what my theme is. Yes, sir. What did Washington think of the American attack on Quebec? Well, the American attack on Quebec was one of the very few times when Washington did not inform Congress of what he was going to do and did not pay an awful lot of attention to his war council. And Washington loved to attack. Washington was a very aggressive fighter, exactly as the way he was a fox hunter. Washington was a kind of fox hunter who rode right up at the front, right with the hounds and he'd go all day long if it took all day long to get the fox. It isn't just what kind of a fox hunter. So it's both immense determination and tremendous physical stamina. To do that seven to eight hours is almost unimaginable. He sent Benedict Arnold off up through the main wilderness to attack at Quebec. And another army was under Montgomery was coming over from the west toward the east, Quebec. The attack on Quebec, as I expect many of you know, was a disaster. One of the biggest blows, one of the worst bits of news Washington ever received during the time he was in Boston. He was terribly disappointed. It was a massive blow. They thought they could win. They thought they could take Quebec. And they were wrong. Yes, sir. You opened the book with the scenes of the King George's speech before parliament and I haven't finished it, but you've given some rather objective portrayal of the King that we don't necessarily aren't familiar with. Can you give a little more detail, your study of the King? Yes, I wanted to begin in London. I wanted to begin in late October in London because it's the day that the King went before parliament to give one of the most important speeches ever any King or anyone ever gave before parliament. When we fought at Lexington and Concord and at Bunker Hill, we were not fighting for independence. We were fighting for our rights as free-born Englishmen. In 1775, 1776, except for those 500,000 American men, women and children who were held in slavery, we had the highest standard of living of any people in the world, which is something most people don't understand. So we weren't fighting for independence and we were very well off in world terms. And we had more freedom again except for those 500,000 black men, women and children in slavery. We had more freedom than any other people in the world because people living under the British system had the most freedom of anyone. But on the day when the King addressed parliament, which is very much like our state of the union moment, you have the King coming before a joint session of commons and House of Lords. And he addresses them with his policy. And his policy was, in essence, the following. The American colonies are in rebellion. Their leaders, these political firebrands are traitors. And their real purpose is independence. Nobody had spoken, at least publicly or on paper, no one of any consequence or responsibility here of anything about independence as yet. And that he, the King and his cabinet had concluded that they must send sufficient force to put the rebellion down, and furthermore that they were conducting negotiations to hire additional troops, which as we know were the Hessians or the German mercenaries. When that letter, that text of that speech finally reached this country, it was a blow such as no one expected. It didn't arrive until the first day of the new year, January 1, 1776, it reached Boston. And right away, everybody knew this wasn't gonna be a short war. Washington had written to his wife, Martha, to say that he'd be home by Christmas when he first took command. Jefferson had written to a kinsman late in August of 1775, excuse me that he looked forward to the moment when we would be reunited with the mother country in the happy good old way. But such illusions of a reconciliation went out the window with that speech. Now George III was not the mad king who lost the colonies. George III's mental illness did not come on until 20 years later, 1776, he was a very healthy young man in his 30s. And his madness was not understood then. It's a disease called perfuria, which is hereditary, wouldn't be diagnosed until the 20th century. George III was not a dimwit. He was a very intelligent, very interesting man. He was an accomplished musician, an accomplished artist, great lover of literature, great collector of books. And according to Samuel Johnson, one of the most interesting, engaging men that he'd ever held a conversation with. And Johnson was a very severe critic or judge of other people. He was kind, he was honest, he was an ardent horticulturalist, agriculturalist, loved his farms at Windsor, he was happiest there working on his farms as were Adams or Jefferson or Washington. And he had 15 children, for whom he was an excellent father. And he was doing what he thought was his duty as king. And he had the support of the country and the support of parliament. When Fox and Burke and others stood up and gave their magnificent speeches in the House of Commons, in support or in sympathy with the American point of view, they were powerful and they were eloquent to the point of magnificent. Their speeches, particularly Burke's, are literature, but they didn't have the votes. And they knew they didn't have the votes. And they were thus free to say almost anything they wished. Furthermore, furthermore, they too would always refer to our colonies. In other words, they didn't get it either. It wasn't gonna be their colonies. That was the point. There came a point where it was very close that reconciliation might have happened. But it was only possible if we gave up the idea of independence and we weren't gonna do that. John Adams said the American Revolution began in the hearts of the American people long before any war broke out. And I think that's probably true. And the war could have gone either way any number of times, six or seven times, even during the course of the one year, 1776. The British didn't lose because their generals were dim bulb aristocrats who shouldn't have had high command. They were excellent officers. Some were better than others, of course. If Henry Clinton had been in command instead of William Howe, it might have gone quite differently because Clinton caught the point, which we were slow to catch. That it wasn't holding Boston or taking New York or holding New York or occupying New Jersey that was gonna win the war. The only thing that would win the war for the British was to surround Washington and his army and put them out of business. And Washington too was slow in realizing this. As long as the army survived, as long as the army held together, as long as there was fight in it, the war would go on. And he also knew how big a country this is. Whether we would have won had the French not come in, who's to say? If we hadn't won, the war would certainly have gone on a great deal longer without the French. But let's not forget that the French didn't come in because of any great love of democracy. They came in because it was an opportune chance to stick it to Great Britain. And in doing so, they spent so much money that they virtually bankrupt themselves, which in the chain reaction helped to bring on the French Revolution. Whereas the British who were very concerned that if they lost the colonies, that would be the end of the British Empire. And of course, we know in hindsight that in the 18th century, the British Empire was just getting into the second gear. And it wouldn't be until the 19th century that the British Empire really became the powerful force in the world that it was. There are all kinds of ironies. There are all kinds of points to remember. Longest war in our history except for Vietnam. Most people don't know that. And with the bloodiest war in our history per capita, except for the Civil War. Population of 2,500,000. 25,000 Americans were killed. That's 1% of the population. If we were fighting a revolution, a war for our independence today, we would lose over 3 million people on the same ratio. So for that generation, for those people, this was a terrible loss. And they would never, and many of them, recover from it. And it wasn't just those who were killed. It was those who were wounded. Those who lost limbs. Those who suffered acutely from disease and the after-effects of disease. We lost more people from disease than we did from musket balls or cannon fire. And much of that was needless. And again, it was lack of discipline in the troops because the British were quite healthy through most of it. Yes. I'd like to get to the general topic. You were talking about learning history, reading history, and then especially teaching history. Yes. Several weeks ago you were on television and I called a comment that you said, basically today they do not know how to teach history and what they're teaching is not very good. Could you expound upon that? Well, there are wonderful teachers of history and in many places, history is being taught extremely effectively. But the blunt truth is that in our public schools nationwide we have been doing an abysmal job of teaching history for about 25 years. It's been a long time since the Bradley Report which spelled all this out very clearly. There have been surveys and studies since. A survey conducted by the American Council of American Alumni here in Washington was filling out a questionnaire by seniors, only seniors on what were called the 50 best universities and colleges in the country. And the results were very discouraging. The performance was less than what it would have been at the high school level 25 years ago. Question 19, who was the American commanding officer at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown? More people, more of these college seniors in their best schools, best colleges and universities answered Ulysses S. Grant than answered George Washington. And 6% of them said it was Douglas MacArthur. Which shows they didn't know they were guessing. They're guessing. I could tell you at length incidents that I've known when I've been lecturing or serving as a visiting professor or lecture at colleges and universities, you know very well. It's striking, it's appalling, but it's curable. And I think the problem is at the core of the problem is that we're not teaching our teachers as effectively as we need to. We're graduating too many teachers with degrees in education who don't know any subject. They have had no major other than education. And there's good signs that several universities are changing that. SMU now is always required that you have to major in a subject if you want to teach. The University of Oklahoma now requires that one major in a subject if you want to teach. This is a big step in the right direction. Now if a teacher doesn't know her subject, his subject, that obviously makes it difficult to teach that subject. But you can't love something you don't know any more than you can love someone you don't know. And we all remember from our own experience those teachers who meant the most, who inspired us, who threw open the window and gave us a whole new inspiration or idea about the possibilities of learning were the teachers who loved what they were teaching and conveyed that enthusiasm. Miss Schmelz in sixth grade who said, come over here and look in this microscope, you're gonna get a kick out of this. My high school history teachers, Robert Abacromby, Walter Jones, they were marvelous teachers because they loved what they were teaching. There was a terrific teacher of teachers at the University of Pittsburgh, Margaret McFarland, who was, among other things, the great mentor of Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers, who reached more children than any teacher who ever lived. And he said so, everything he did in his programs based on the teachings of Margaret McFarland. And Margaret McFarland said, attitudes aren't taught, they're caught. It's the attitude of the teacher that's caught and that's what matters most. Show them what you love, she would tell teachers an advice of how to do it. Also, if a teacher doesn't know what she's teaching, she's therefore more dependent on the textbooks. And while we have some superb textbooks, most of them are far from superb. Many of them are so dreary, so boring, so lifeless. It's as if they were designed to kill any interest that you might have in history. By the way, we have here tonight one of the best history teachers I know. Jim, where are you? Jim Percoco, stand up. Jim Percoco is exactly the kind of teacher we need. He loves what he's teaching and he gets his students so enthusiastic, so involved with projects and writing papers that is pure magic. And I don't think there's any more important people in our society than our teachers. Nobody's doing more important work. And we've got to get over the idea that they're just sort of glorified babysitters who take care of our children or our grandchildren while we do the important work. They are the ones that do the important work. Yes, sir. Could you offer some advice on writing and particularly writing history? Yes, I would love to. And I think this better be the last question. Enjoy it. First of all. And enjoy the whole process. Now, some people say to me often and I understand how much of your time is spent on research and how much is spent on writing. They almost never say how much of your time is spent thinking. And most of your time is spent thinking. And it should be that way. My wife, Rosalie, will say when I'm in the shower, will say, stop writing your book and get out of the shower. I work every day, all day. I find that if I stay with it every day, all day, it's both more enthralling and easier. I try to, at the beginning, read all sort of the basic secondary works on the subject, but get past that as quickly as possible into the primary sources, into collections like this one here at the National Archives or the Library of Congress or the Massachusetts Historical Society or the Clemens Library in Ann Arbor or the Huntington Library in Pasadena or the libraries in Britain, which are rich with material. And there are all kinds of books that still haven't been written. And I'm trying to write the book I would like to read. That's really the essence of it. If the book hasn't been written that I would like to read, I write it so I can read it. And I went to a party one night when I was quite new with this. I'd written one book, but I had embarked on writing my second book about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. And it was a party in the summer on Martha's Vineyard where we live. And I was introduced to a well-known Washington socialite of great importance. And I'd like, and my host said to her, I would like you to meet David McCullough. He's writing a book about the Brooklyn Bridge. And she said in the voice that, for my point of view, was far too loud. Who in the world would ever want to read a book about the Brooklyn Bridge? Well, I tried not to show my seething feelings about her. And, but on the way home, I think I was probably punching the dashboard as I drove along. But I think by the time I got back to the house, I realized that she'd done me a great favor. She's right. Who would want to read a book about the Brooklyn Bridge? Well, I would. I would. And my feeling has always been if I can make it as interesting as it really was, I'll have achieved what I'm trying to attain. Now, I write narrative history. And there are people who don't think highly of narrative history. They think that it's not quite the way it ought to be. That's all right, that's fine. Isn't it wonderful? We don't all have to think alike. I loved historical novels when I was in my 20s. I read almost all, for example, the books of Kenneth Roberts, Oliver Wisswell and the Rundell, wonderful, wonderful novels. But I kept thinking, how much of this is what happened? How many of these things that people are saying, did they really say? How many of these characters actually existed? And I began thinking, wouldn't it be wonderful to write something that had the pull, the appeal of these wonderful novels, but yet it was all true? You couldn't make up anything. You had to play by the rules that everything had to be the real thing. No invented dialogue, only what they actually said in letters and diaries and like. And so that's what I've been trying to do. And of course I had many good examples of that spirit, that attitude, one of whom, one of the masters of the forum just died yesterday or the day before. Shelby Foote, whose works on the Civil War are literature. And I think that's what people who write history, at least some of us, ought to aspire to, because otherwise no one's gonna read it except professional people. And if no one reads it other than the professionals, I think history is doomed. Because it belongs to all of us. Just as this National Archives does. There were years when people walked by the archives and they saw this formidable place and they thought, well, only the high priests of academe can go in there, you know. It's here for all of us. And what's so wonderful about the new National Archives and its open attitude and generosity to the public, the desire to be a great education center is that it isn't any longer just for scholars. Of course it's still for scholars, but anybody here can go do research. That's the wonder of it. That's what most teachers need to find out, teaching history. Get their hands dirty in it. Find out the excitement, the detective case, the accelerative curiosity that works for anybody who takes it up. I was an English major in college. I started off having no idea how to do it. And you learn by doing. You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano. You can't learn to paint without picking up a brush and putting some paint on it and going to work. And it's the same thing with writing history. Dig in, learn from the experience and enjoy it. Because if you're enjoying it, the people who are gonna read what you wrote and write will enjoy it. And rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Learn to edit yourself. That's the hardest thing of all. Write what you have to say and then put it aside for a while and then call upon the editor you to step in and show that mug that wrote this stuff, how it can be fixed. That in many ways is the most enjoyable part of the whole process for me. And read it out loud to someone or have someone read it out loud to you. Because that's when you begin to hear things that are wrong with it or need to be changed or things that need to be added that you don't often see with your eye. I think we all ought to read to each other much more than we do. I think it's one of the pleasures of life. We shouldn't just, of course, we should read to our children and grandchildren, but we ought to read to allow to each other. Well, enough from me. Thank you very, very much. Ladies and gentlemen, can I ask that you let Mr. McCulloch get through before leaving the auditorium if we could just stay for just one more minute? I'd like to make two points as we close this evening off. The first is that David, I didn't realize that you had another vocation that we haven't been told about, in addition to being teacher, in addition to being writer, scholar, lecturer, you're a magician. You manage the extraordinary feat of taking material that we all think we know and transforming it into something we've never heard before, which is what happened tonight. Can we give another round of applause? There will be a light dessert session. We've all earned it. Prepare for you by the foundation for the National Archives in the lobby, which is where Mr. McCulloch will sign books. And I'd like to close since we don't have Mr. McCulloch, the next best thing with one of his quotes that may be appropriate for closing off this evening. We have, he said in an interview, a generation of young people who are historically illiterate. We've got to do something to improve that. The example he wrote has got to be said at home. That is maybe the most important thing. We've got to start talking about history with our children in front of our children. We've got to encourage them to read good books about history, books that a person will want to read. We have to take children to historic sites, presidential homes, battlefields, wherever, and we can do all that. We can also talk about that part of American history that has interested us most and where historic heroes are in front of our children. Barbara Tuckman said it perfectly in two words. Tell stories. Tell stories. We heard an extraordinary story. Tell it tonight. And thank you very much on behalf of the National Archives and the foundation for the National Archives. Thank you for being here.