Focus 580; John Adams: A Biography

John Adams did not write the American Declaration of Independence. That credit goes to his colleague lifelong friend and sometime nemesis Thomas Jefferson Adams merely made it happen when it did. And that may have made all the difference. We rightly honor all the heroes of the American Revolution though we also gloss over their warts. But the story of John Adams is one of almost unimaginable heroism. During this hour focus 580 will talk about the life and times of John Adams and the remarkable role he played in American history. Our guest is author and historian David McCullough. His biography John Adams won the Pulitzer Prize the American Academy of Diplomacy award and the Christopher award and the revolutionary roundtable award was Time magazine's best nonfiction book of the year and also the New York Times Book Review editors choice. John Adams was a national bestseller in hardcover when it was published last year. And it was recently republished in paperback by Touchstone books. As we talk with David McCullough You are invited into the conversation questions on the topic are welcome. All you need do is call us around Champaign-Urbana at 3 3 3 9 4

5 5. We also have a toll free line. Anywhere you hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 and we can also take e-mail questions talk w i l l dot UIUC dot edu any time during this hour. Let me mention a bit more about our guest David McCullough he is the author of six other highly acclaimed works of history the Johnstown flood the great bridge the path between the seas mornings on horseback brave companions and Truman which also won the Pulitzer Prize and all of his books remain in print. He has twice won both the National Book Award and the Francis Parkman prize. He's been honored by the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American letters award the National Humanities Medal. The St. Louis literary award the Carl Sandburg award and the New York Public Library's literary lion award. He's past president of the Society of American historians and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He's been an editor essayist lecturer and is one of the few private citizens ever asked to speak before a joint

session of Congress. David McCall is also has also been the host of many public television series including Smithsonian world in the American experience and the narrator of many documentaries including the Civil War. He's been called a master of the art of narrative history and his books including The book John Adams certainly testify to that and he joins us this morning by telephone. Dave McCullough Good morning. Good morning sir. Thank you so much for granting us your time. I'm delighted to be with you. It might seem like a silly question given the compelling story there is to tell in the life of John Adams but I am curious why did you choose him as a subject as opposed to others he might have chosen. I started out with the idea of doing a dual biography of Jefferson and Adams. I was fascinated by the life of Jefferson have been fascinated with Jefferson since I was in high school and felt I knew a good deal about it.

I was also very impressed intrigued as so many people are by the fact that Jefferson and Adams unbelievably incredibly died on the same day. And it wasn't just any old day it was their day of Taiz the Fourth of July 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And so I thought it would be interesting to see how these two very different men. Who had such an effect on the history of our country. How how their or their paths of their lives crisscrossed intertwined and moved from as you suggested in your introduction from being fellow patriots close friends to becoming rivals really almost enemies for quite some time and then eventually after reconciliation remained friends again until their until their dying

day. And my concern was that Jefferson with his horror his fame is his glamour as a tall somewhat mysterious Virginian. I'm serious in that he never really revealed much about his private or personal life would be forever upstaging short cranky John Adams from from Massachusetts and. It was a lesson for me in some ways that we often worry about the wrong things because it was very soon after I got into the Adams material the great collection of letters and diaries that have survived in at the Massachusetts Historical Society. I began to read what Adams himself really had to say and what kind of a human being he was. That in fact Adams interested me more than Jefferson

and also because Adams is so forthcoming about his life his feelings his aspirations disappointments and so forth. And especially I think to his deep abiding affection for his wife the real love story of their lives that I know that that's the book I wanted to write. I want to write about it. So it it sort of happened to me. And once I realized that my initial idea wasn't the way to do it the just to concentrate on how to do it where you know of course I would still have the chance to tell the story of Adams and Jefferson. Once I decided that the book almost seemed to write itself. Well it's a marvelous read. It gives so much insight into the events in the very personal impact of those events hit on people in the very powerful impact of individuals on those events. I sometimes think Americans have an idea that our independence was inevitable that we were somehow living out our

destiny. But as I read the stories in your book I often find myself wondering at how many close calls there were. Well the more I read about it the more I know about it and I'm working on a book now about the revolution the more impressed I am the more I feel that it really was a miracle it happened at all a miracle that we declared independence a miracle that we won the war and then a miracle that the government under the new constitution survived those first very precarious years when Washington was president and succeeded by Adams. I also think many people have the impression that all these founders were great friends that they just got along famously with each other which of course is not the case. And none of them was a god or a saint Heaven knows. They all had their failings and their imperfections.

They're human beings. It's what is what is so essential to appreciating respecting what happened is that human beings with their flaws and failings could rise to the occasion and do what they did. That's the story. And they were just like we are because they couldn't be just like we are because they live in such vastly different time. And I had never worked in the 18th century and never written about the 18th century until this project. And for me in many ways that was one of the most appealing aspects of the whole six years that it took to write the book. To go back into that really amazing time of our founding what seemed so clear in the words of John Adams is that he was poignantly aware of the significance of. It is time

that this what he thought was the moment that he had to act that this was the moment to push for American independence. Yes I think they I think by and large they all knew that they they had a sense that they were actors in a great drama immense historic importance and that they each individually and collectively had to rise to the occasion to play their parts well. And this theme of the stage of history of the drama of history of actors in noble parts and so forth comes through in much of what they wrote themselves at the time. So that and Adams says at one point I am but an ordinary man it's times of made me. Well I don't think he really believed he was an ordinary man and he certainly wasn't an ordinary man. But they knew

that they had been born in exciting times serious times as has Adams. It's remarkable how does a son of a colonial Braintree shoemaker become so motivated and able enough to fill this role. Well that's a very very good question and one of the there's so many misconceptions about John Adams and one of them is that he's thought to have been a rich Boston blue blood. Well he wasn't any of those things he wasn't rich. He wasn't a Bostonian. He wasn't a blueblood he was as you say shoemaker and Farmer son. He grew up as a New Englander in a rural town on a farm and knowing from from childhood that life was an easy life was a battle struggle that nothing nothing came without effort. And you

you had to you had to earn your place in life. He also is in my view one of the or the best examples. I know of in our history of the transforming effect of education. His mother was almost certainly illiterate. His father we know could sign his name but we really don't know if he could do much more than that. And the boy showed exceptional ability and great promise at a very early age. The father saw that and the father was determined that the boy was going to go to college and went so far as to sell 10 acres of land which was absolutely against his whole the father's whole concept of how you went about life you never sold away land was the only true wealth but he sold 10 acres to help pay the cost of sending the boy to

college. And John Young John Adams himself won a partial scholarship so he went off to Harvard. Which was nothing like the Harvard of the of the present day. It was a small academy really with a faculty of about seven and four buildings and students came at age 15 it was really almost like a high school but it was the best there was to be had in the country and at Harvard. John Adams discovered books as he's said and as he also said from that point on I read forever and he became I think the most broadly and deeply read American of that very bookish time. More so even than Jefferson. He never stopped reading. He never stopped learning. And he understood that learning and then they had they many of them felt that learning was part of the pursuit of happiness. When those people of that time wrote of the pursuit of happiness as

Jefferson expressed at the Declaration of Independence they weren't talking about material affluence or hoar ease or long vacations. Nobody who had ever heard of a vacation when they were talking about an enlargement of the experience of being alive through learning and the life of the sea the spirit the life of the mind and the spirit. And. Again and again what they they all were saying and especially eloquently Jefferson and Adams and Franklin was the importance of education. If you want ones strong sustaining theme all through our story as a people one consist of the ideal it is the idea of education. And they felt this especially because they were concerned they were convinced

that the system wasn't going to work the system of government of the people self governing of a self-governing population the system wouldn't work unless people were educated. Jefferson said it wonderfully in a single sentence he said Any nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was and never can be. And that was that was the bedrock faith. And both of those men live that life in one of the great. The great pleasures and inspirations that comes from reading their letters particularly in their years of retirement the letters back and forth to each other. Quincy Massachusetts. By the cello is their continuing interest as old men in the life of the mind in what they were reading in education philosophy history Greek Latin and so forth.

In other words education wasn't something he just did for a while when you were a youngster it was it went on all through life and this was borne out by the words they committed to paper in articulating the principles of the new nation. Indeed in the Adams Adams who was the author of the oldest written constitution still in use anywhere in the world today which is the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts which predates our national constitution by a full decade. And it provides the essential structure of government that we have in our national constitution. But there's a paragraph in that in that constitution Massachusetts which was unlike anything has ever been set forth before in which he says it shall be the duty. The government to educate everybody. Now we take that for granted. But that was radical in that day and when he wrote it he was sure

that the legislature of Massachusetts would strike that out. That they wouldn't vote for it. Well in fact they did vote for it and furthermore they voted for it. You know intimately and that was a major event in the rise of a popular public education. And again something of the kind that we should never ever take for granted. We're talking this morning with Dave McCullough He's the author of John Adams which won the Pulitzer Prize when it was published last year in hardcover was recently issued in paperback by Touchstone books as author of many other books he's twice won the Pulitzer Prize in fact once for his. Bill countryman your questions if you'd like to join us or welcome around Champaign-Urbana the number 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free anywhere you hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We do have a listener waiting in a roar on line number four. Let's include this person. Good morning unfocussed 580.

Yes hi good morning. Very happy to hear this program. I want to ask the country was so new. Where did these people have come forward daily to do the things they did. You spoke of him selling away and to put his son through college. But initially Where did he get the money to buy the land. I never hear about income. Well they were farmers and they were tradesmen or craftsman shoemakers blacksmiths or. Sailors merchant says so for then the Addams Family rived in Massachusetts in the 16th 17th century the 16th 30s all the way back right back then John Adams was fourth generation American but there his income came from their farm and if his income after he returned to

Massachusetts from the presidency after the peon Abigail left the White House that's their income was came from their farm. That's what they survived. And the remarkable thing is that that he was not only willing he John Adams willing to serve his country for years and years at a really very modest financial reward. And left his wife Abigail too with the tremendous responsibility of not only raising their children and and looking after their education and the rest but running the farm making ends meet which was extremely difficult for I would suppose. So that's why I asked the question yes. And then MONEY MONEY as we know it was it was cash money was a very rare thing so an awful lot of what was done was done with by barter.

Yes. So that you were you would trade and she set up a little business where if you were in Philadelphia or were in Europe would buy and send her. Oh every every day items like handkerchief and pins and things of that sort which she would then sell she she was running or her own. The order of business if we as we might say during through the war Abigail Adams is in my view one of the most admirable of all Americans. She was she was as profoundest Anja patriot as any of the men she suffered. The absence of her husband for for years ten years altogether. And when he would get down and begin to think that he was spending too much away time away from home that was costing too much. The aggravation and anxiety worrying about his family

and being separated from her. She would write back and tell him you're doing what really matters and you stay with it. This is what we have to do and one of the very poignant lines in her letters is I she says I have it exactly right but she says I wonder future generations will ever know what we have suffered in their behalf. And well Frank sadly the answer is no we don't have. We think we've. And we do live in difficult dangerous and uncertain times. But believe me they lived in far more dangerous and uncertain times than we do. And life life just every day life without a revolutionary war without all the privations of shortages and inflation and so forth. During the Revolutionary War just ordinary life was far more difficult far more still far more with inconveniences and discomforts and fears than we ever have to even think about here.

The fear of epidemic disease sure will. The smallpox in particular room epidemic dysentery could sweep through did sweep through those small farming towns of Massachusetts and elsewhere and take the lives of hundreds of people in a matter of weeks. You know too for a woman like Abigail Absolutely she would have to be up at 5 o'clock in the morning get the fire started for breakfast wake up the hired girl wake up the children with her husband away she had to tend the stock she made she made the clothes for the family. She educated them her children herself because the schools were closed during the war and home she. She had a day is full of those. It is hard you know hard work as one could imagine and yet and yet she had the motivation and the stamina to sit down at her

kitchen table to say a 10 o'clock with the house quiet all the children's sleep and with the light of a candle take up her pen and write to her husband. Some of the most marvelous letters ever written by an American. And those letters have survived. They're there still to be seen still be held in your own hands. The in the messages is starkly Society in Boston with another call to talk with a promise to get right to butt. We're talking about Abigail I think it's worth talking a bit more about the extraordinary relationship they had the very deep friendship in romance in very very strong commitments and in support they had for each other and in fact it's probably you know he probably could have done near what he did without her not just as a support but as an intellectual companion. Well she she their affection their respect their

dependence on each other is are at the very center of his story. You cannot understand him and what he did without understanding her and her part in their lives. She was the daughter of a clergyman a minister have as a consequence grew up in a rather different atmosphere than her husband. There were books in the house. Her father was a man of importance in the community. And though she never went to school she was only educated at home she was a racist reader. All of our lives all of her life have had of an irrepressible writer. And she was I think having spent years reading what she wrote and then the letters by the way number in the thousands. I think she was incapable of writing a dull sentence and

it isn't just that she was the wife of a president and an the mother of a president and thus the first woman in our history to ever play that dual role and the only one up until President Bush. George W. Bush became president and now Barbara Bush his mother can claim that same part of her history. But had she been the wife of someone of no consequence said that about having Ellen Adams just been there and the New England housewife and written the letters she wrote we would we would need to know about her because the letters are far far more in number and in far more consequential in quality than the letters of almost any other woman of it. We're a little past her midpoint with Dave McCullough talking about his book John Adams which won the

Pulitzer Prize and talk. But the remarkable life and times of John Adams in the dawn of American independence. We have one caller waiting to join our conversation if you would like to also. You can call us around Champaign-Urbana at 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. And also by email you can send us a note talk w i l l dot UIUC dot edu. We have a listener in Charleston next on line number four. Good morning you're on focus 580. Yes I'm assuming that this question this person that based on Mr. McCollum Why a time understanding a concept meant more in historical fantasies. My question is how do you account for today's void between rich and poor worldwide and can it be fixed. Oh I got to think. OK thank you.

Well that's a good that's a very large and. Extremely important question. I was watching him in Washington for a few days and I was walking along the street yesterday and I saw a lineup of people waiting to get food in a soup kitchen as they used to because it was set up in one of the little parks just within blocks of some of the finest hotels and the White House and so forth. And I was asking myself that same question What can we do. What is the explanation for this. And I don't know that I can answer it or if there's anyone can and one could say it's ever been and it is true it's ever been. But if we can set to rights as so much else about life if we can

if we can solve so many very complicated and difficult problems. To use the fields saying if we can put a man on the moon so forth why can't we solve this. And I think we've all got to ask ourselves that question and really think hard about it. I think it's the question we have our lines are all full in fact now let's go on and talk some more listeners Next up someone in Chicago on line number one. Good morning you're on focus 580. Yes. Hello First I want to thank Mr. McCullough for a wonderful book but also I guess my question is about our history as freedom loving people the Constitution especially the writ of habeas corpus seems to be very much threatened at this point. When you look back over our history it seems whenever Americans feel physically or sick certain as far as the security we trample on the Constitution and the way we have imprisoned the Japanese during American citizens during

World War Two. And what's happening now. And I just I guess what did John Adams Thomas Jefferson first see how what a frightened people we would be and how we could protect our Constitution. I mean it seems like we're always in a situation where We're the we're waving the flag and spitting on the Constitution at the same time. Well not always. We've done that when it seemed to be times of emergency when the. When the country was threatened and when we were in danger. Now it's it's easy and perhaps accurate to say that we have often over reacted. I think the probably the most glaring example was the idea that we put over 100000 Japanese Americans 80 percent of whom more than 80 percent of whom were citizens in those camps during World War 2.

Lincoln dismissed Tavia's corpus during the Civil War and no one really knows how many people were held in jail. Estimates range from three to as much as thirty thousand people. By the time the war had ended Adams himself who believe fervently in an open government he said we must have an open government we must know what's being said. He himself signed the Sedition Act which made it illegal unlawful to say derogatory or defamatory things about members of the government. And I think some 25 or 30 people when they were tried by to be sure they were tried by juries an open trial and they went to jail for that but it was clearly a violation of the First Amendment freedom of speech. But in all of these cases it was because we were at war or threatened by whore

and threatened by internal. The danger from spies zealots. Fifth Column as they used to say violence and the terrorists. And while it looks it looks particularly un-American in retrospect and often looked un-American to many people at the time right. It didn't seem that that was it. Quite so when when the threat was hanging over everyone's head. I think one thing to take into consideration too is that every time such a crisis has passed we have gone immediately back to our fundamental way of conducting ourselves. Gone back to the Constitution. There are some times

when certain liberties have to be curtailed or or limited in order to protect ours protect ourselves to to protect the lives and the safety of our citizens. And this they are very difficult decisions to make and there's no question that these decisions ought to be subjects of. Discussion debate consideration. And and it's as much as we can remain an open society we certainly should do so. We have several calls to talk with and also an e-mail question from a listener will read that quickly and ask you to maybe address dealing with the letters from Jefferson to Adams. The question is were the letters from Jefferson to Adams and vice versa. Social event they were read out loud to the family after the evening meal and discussed. Did this knowledge of a larger audience improve the quality

of the letter. That's the question from someone who writes It's a very interesting thought. Yes they undoubtedly were read out loud certainly Jefferson's that letters were passed around or read out loud among the what remained of Adams family by that time. People read out loud to one another far more than we do now and I think something has been lost in the family life and in and in the in the enjoyment of writing and prose and poetry and writers wrote to be read out loud. People would sit in the evening and someone would rip in the parlor would read a book out loud while others might have been knitting or shelling peas or whatever. And in the end in the spirit of communication and understanding of the beauty of the language this was often a far better way than just reading it in isolation

particularly with poetry and of course the 18th century produced some of the greatest poets of all time. And John and Abigail Adams were avid readers of Alexander Pope and Milton and the poems of Daniel to follow people like that. And of course Samuel Johnson. So yes. What was written what was published very often was. It outloud and expected to be read out. If we if we have time I'd like to follow up on that but we have several callers waiting and I will defer to them we have someone next on line number two from the home of high school. Good morning you're in focus 580. First time caller long time listener. And we were wondering like they have it as president. Well I think that in my view and he himself felt

that the biggest decision he made as president was to use all of his influence the the power of his office to keep this country from going to war with France. We were at we were at war at sea and unofficial or at sea. And there was a great clamor a great popular demand to go to war with France all out. And Adams very skillfully negotiated navigated those treacherous waters and. Succeeded in keeping the country from going to war and had we gone to war let me say it would have been almost certainly a disastrous experience for us because we would have gone to war with the Poleon. And we were very poorly prepared for anything like a war. Just just financially we couldn't. We could have paid for it to begin

with and had we gone to war with the Poleon it seems reasonable to assume there's very little likelihood that Napoleon would have been willing to bring about anything like the Louisiana Purchase. So why would it cost Adams considerably in the political way almost certainly prevented his re-election. He did the right thing and he once said that if we were anything to be put on his tombstone and he like to say he kept us out of a war with France. Call one follow up. Thank you. OK thank you very much for the call. He also was really the founder of the Navy. He was the founder of the Navy he was the founder of the Library of Congress. He had he was the man who by the force of argument and his determination on the floor of Congress drove

drove the Declaration of Independence through the Congress got to Congress to vote for it which was no small achievement because it was touch and go whether they would vote for it. Very close. He is the one who insisted that proposed on the floor of the Congress that George Washington be put in command of the Continental Army. He's the one that insisted that Jefferson be the one to write the Declaration of Independence. He is the president who who put John Marshall on the Supreme Court which. So he just is a casting director if you will. He was. He was extraordinary. And he wrote some of the most vivid and solid political statements of statements of political belief the loss of creed. He was our first ambassador to the Court of St. James's after the Revolutionary War was over and he was the one who on his own

went to to the Netherlands and got the Dutch Dutch bankers to lend us the United States which hadn't been recognised hadn't won its independence had to get the Dutch to really provide the financial wherewithal with which to fight the Revolutionary War which may be as important as almost anything he is he ever did because we were desperate for money to pay to pay for the war and for the Dutch to help supply arms. His John Adams never failed to answer the call of his country to serve. And no matter what season of the year no matter how inconvenient for him no matter what sacrifices it would call for on his part to to see to. Give up his private life his professional life in order to serve the country. He's a great

example of public service in the best sense. He also seems to have played a key role in getting France to intervene in the Revolutionary War. You know so that eventually he did indeed yeah. And that was all important. And then I think this is about most. Very revealing about him as a human being. He was the only only one of the founding fathers who never owned a slave. As a matter of principle and if anything I think that it's fair to say that his wife Abigail was even more adamant on the subject of slavery. I certainly would love to talk about that a little bit more because there's much more there. There are a couple callers waiting there and I want to make sure we include them in our conversation. We'll go next to a listener in Bloomington Indiana on one number four. Good morning you're on focus 580. Hi I heard your comments on John Adams and the rest of our founder founding

fathers use of education. Would you comment. On a couple of very brief quotations about education from our founding fathers that the first quotation comes from our northwest ordinance by the way the Northwest Ordinance is very important in Illinois because Illinois came into the union by complying with the Northwest Ordinance and here's what the Northwest Ordinance is in Article 3. Religion morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. That's from the Northwest Ordinance. Now from our Constitutional Convention a man who is very active Gouverneur Morris. You know our Constitutional Convention. This is with going to more set at our Constitutional Convention. Religion is the only solid basis of good morals. Therefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man toward God. Nora Webster the same Noah Webster that wrote the dictionary was also a delegate to our Constitutional Convention he worked with Governor Morris

Wright he wrote part of the Constitution. Here's what Noah Webster said. The Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children under a free government ought to be instructed or your comments are. Well I think business is business. A failing on the part of many historians and I would include myself too that we haven't paid sufficient attention to the importance of religion and religious thought and religious belief in. In the course of American history we believe very strongly that in the separation of church and state and rightly so. But you it would be a mistake to assume that there was a separation between church and statesman. Now Adams was a was a deeply religious man. He was a devout Christian. All of his life. A man who

I don't know that he ever missed a Sunday without going to church and he often went several times. On the single Sunday however when he wrote his paragraph in the constitution of Massachusetts about it being the duty of the government to educate everybody he talked about the need to educate young people in science and literature and agriculture and natural history. It went on for a long list. He did not include religion. I really think he felt that that was not part of the processes of education. If he did so he never said so specifically that I know of. He also took a very strong stand especially later in his life about religious tolerance. He certainly did particularly about religious tolerance all through the country he.

This is a wonderful scene when he first arrived in Philadelphia and he'd never never been near a Catholic church before and he attended Mass at a Catholic church in Philadelphia which is still there same church and he stayed for the whole mass which lasted some two hours. And afterwards he wrote a marvelous letter to Abigail describing everything about the service and the priest and the altar so forth. And the end of it he said that he found the service but both moving and awful. And a number of people who've read that students and some scholars or stories have said that he is there as a as a New England Protestant with Puritan background was very narrow minded in your views about the Catholic service because you call it awful. Well that's a

misunderstanding of the fact that in the 18th century many words had different meanings from what they do today. And one of them was the word awful didn't mean awful as we use it meant full of off or off some. So he he's he has an open mind about he's interested in all religions. As a delegate to the Continental Congress every Sunday he would go to a different church just to hear the service to listen to the minister. It's a very interesting part of his own education. We have just about three minutes left with our guest Dave McCullough and we have a couple callers I want to try to squeeze in at least once. One more and this is again from Mohamad Seymour high school in the interest of education let's talk with them one or two. Good morning. Yes. I would like for you to discuss the relation between Adam and then play Franklin. OK. That's a very interesting relationship. Adam was a

great admirer of Franklin as everybody in America was at. We must keep in mind that Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American alive both in this country and abroad. And the regard for him was enormous. Fibers for example all thought highly of Benjamin Franklin if for no other reason than the invented the lightning rod which of course saved many a barn in many house from going up in flames. Adams had read what Franklin had written and Adams appreciated Franklin's humor and Franklin as kind of wry wisdom. And he enjoyed working with him in the Continental Congress. However ne never lost his respect for Adam for Franklin's ability and Frank had Franklin's wit and Franklin's importance. But when Adams arrived in France to assist Franklin to work with Franklin in negotiations with the French to get them to come in

on our side during the war and supply us with the arms of the ultimately military force he found that Franklin's by his lights was lazy and sort of sloppy and and and Adam's not running a very good ship and that in part as Adams acknowledged it was because Franklin was old and he was really beyond past his prime and much of the time. So well I think he he greatly admired Franklin and never lost sight of Franklin's importance as an American figure. He found working with an extremely frustrating at that stage. We just have a minute left I'm sorry to say there isn't there's much more we could talk about that we're just not going to be able to get to I want to if you could say you know just a brief word about the sort of controversial nature of John Adams that many people thought he was very conceited and vain

in it wasn't it wasn't necessarily an easy person for a lot of people to work with and yet he was still very effective. Well he was he could be cranky and abrasive and quick tempered and he was fiercely independent which was both his strength and in some ways a disadvantage. He was honest to almost to a fault. He could be just and it could be tactless in that respect. Anyone who got to know him as Jefferson wrote as well as anybody to know him was to love him to to to to and to understand his extraordinary integrity and courage. And it was and it was the courage of his convictions. He was he was besides And I think this is important to emphasize. He was brilliant. He was one of the most brilliant men ever in public life in this country. And fortunately he was there at the beginning at the founding time

much to our advantage. Well we're going to have to leave it there. And I will though suggest for folks who'd like to know more about the story of General John Adams. Look for the book John Adams by our guest during this hour David McCullough. The book won the Pulitzer Prize it is now out in paper by Touchstone books and I'm sure you can find it in libraries and bookstores. And to you David McCullough thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you very much for including me in your program. All right best to you.