The Fine Print; Program 05 13 Guest David McCullough Book 1776

from nashville public radio this is the fine print and exploration and celebration of the written word i'm rebecca bain i know it's become a cliche to say that some particular person needs no introduction but a truly applies to david mccullough he has twice received the pulitzer prize for truman and john adams and he has twice received the national book award for the path between the seats and mornings on horseback you probably recognize his voice to among other things he narrated ken burns epic civil war series and more recently he narrated the film sea biscuit his latest book is seventeen seventy six it's the story of george washington and the men who marched with him in the year of the declaration of independence man and every right shape size and color and it tells of the british soldiers who fought to defeat the american upstarts david mccullough joins me this week on the fine

print and it is a pleasure to encourage you to join us for this next half hour the first david mccullough leads from seventy to seventy six the war was a longer far more arduous and more painful struggle in later generations will understand or sufficiently appreciated by the time it ended you're taken the lives of an estimated twenty five thousand americans are roughly one percent of the population in the percentage of lives lost and it was the most costly war in american history except for the civil war we're seventeen seventy six celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the declaration of independence was for those who carried the fight for independence forward a year of all too few victories a sustained suffering disease hunger

desertion or cowardice disillusionment defeat terrible miscarriage and fear as they would never forget but also a phenomenal courage dad rock devotion to country and that too they would never forget especially for those who have been with washington and who knew what a close call it was at the beginning or how often circumstance storms country wins and oddities are strays individual characters have made a difference to the outcome seen little short of america it is unicycle and initially i wondered why you chose to focus on one year seventeen seventy six rather than the revolutionary war in its entirety but after reading seventeen

seventy six i had no questions why that was such a mix to ordinary year in the history of this country i think it was the most important year in the most important war over history it's a war that gave rise to the country amid possible which you say the birthing pains of of the united states of america down i had the notion that it was a subject or work what might undertake war i was really out of this book and sometimes those happened before finnish re re writing the book about the panama canal i want to move on to write something about theodore roosevelt in this case i felt strongly that well all the drama of what was going on an independence hall in philadelphia and seventeen seven essential that we sober and i'm a fourth of july was of the utmost importance and very interesting and

very dramatic it nonetheless is not more stories and one could even argue which less than half the story with those without the tenacity the courage the patriotism of those who were out carrying on the fight though the noble ideas and ideals of the declaration would have been nothing more than words on paper and we forget those men who were fighting and the woman who had sent them offered to do what they thought was their duty and in some cases the women no one fought with them and we shouldn't forget that we should never forget them we are their beneficiaries and abigail adams at one point in a letter to her husband set to future generations who will reap the blessings who scarcely be alone can see the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors and shoot unfortunately is right i feel myself reasonably well educated in american history but i discovered

so many things i did not know and reading seventeen seventy six what is usually the case when you get into that kind of worries that one fines excitement writing a book is which what you find out what you discover that you know like at a four year course in one subject which of course isn't one subject because every subject has been the subject of touches on all kinds of things this in many ways as interesting as a project a river we're going to the atoms book because it's certainly at century and i had never worked in the eighteenth century before it was a country had never visited and now that i have i told my wife rosalynn american backers in the eighties well you know it shows one of the things that i like so much about this book is the people in it are real to many they're not figures in a

history book these are living breathing men and women and i don't think i had that kind of appreciation for them before oh thank you it's exactly what i try to do because that's what they were when i'm working i sometimes have the sense that they're watching over my shoulder and i think what they say about what i'm writing what they say that's it that's the way it was or with aig should be shaking their heads they know my friend you know understand it wasn't that but it was this way and that's more important to me in many respects in what the experts are though book reviewer said and if i can finish a project like this and feel this is the way it was this is as interesting as it really was this is as human as it really was and as full of life in sound and flavor and smell and humor and tragedy all those things and then i think i

will feel i've done my job i love what i do i love that were below what every aspect of it the research the writing of andrew ended and the reward the pleasure is in the works so once they finished it will but you're going to look for the next i know well i have to say then i fell madly in love with the fighting quaker the fairfield green someone whose name i was vaguely familiar with but who and who literally next to nothing about and he is an extraordinary man i am so delighted to have made his acquaintance of thank you when you sit down to write a book or maybe a ship to take into consideration and one of them is the form where's the form of the book where he's a begin how does it begin in what spirit are toned as a beginning and with this book i decide to start as you know with k george the third on his way to parliament to get one of the most

important speeches ever given by any king ever concerning the war in america and i were to describe the hole look of london in that timely pageantry of the cane procession from st james's poster that extraordinary character exactly over sixty thousand people how to see and so forth and then we need more freedom film terms we cut to america and what we see when we cut to america hold a week come up close on in contrast to your sister as if you notice nothing ukraine and then you'd never heard of probably mostly never heard of i think he's one of the most remarkable americans of all time he's an amazing man here's this follows a quaker as you say who walks with a limp because of a childhood injury who knows nothing about the military except what he's written books and has made a

general the ages thirty three major general thirty three years old and you wouldn't think he'd have a chance he wouldn't think that that others would do respect him or buy him or take his idea seriously and he turns out to be the best general we have is an amazing story and thank goodness he wrote a lot of letters in which he set down what was happening and how we felt about what was happening and what he thought of other people all that and that's the that's the raw material the one works with when you're doing the eighteenth century when you're writing about revolutionary war you have no photographs to look at you have no recordings of their voices you have no phil you have no rapport taj of the kind words accustomed to note newspapers and they sent reporters to describe the action of battles in tripoli your work artist correspondent soundbite of winslow homer sent to cover the civil war but what you

do have are those letters and the diaries and there are so many of them and so many of them are quite wonderful that almost makes up for what you don't hear the architecture unit buildings still stand you have portraits done usually well after the fact but nonetheless you can see the color of his or her eyes in that texture of their skin color hair or whatever you can see them as a as a person than a viable person and green comes across in his party is a very strong looking man in not just physically but strong character and he was both charles wilson peale sport it to support and it gets interesting because it and i turned to their portrait now looked at him and i thought he looks like someone i would enjoy sitting down and talking to present something about his eyes and the set of his mouth that humor is there should be a thoughtful

mrs day was quite funny yes yes will that that great line when someone complained about in his line led and he was dancing think you can dance well it but i dance strongly was nobody said it had strong in the whole book that's nfl in la because that's him he does the astronomer galileo go through life getting strong and any other scene i've doors what you were used to in the entire fabric and a picture of his brother left of him sitting moment when the trip ever wasn't running setting up their reading euclid as if the was nothing in cairo's about that or anything else you'd rather be doing for our no no as amelia we really know the issues of abraham lincoln reading a book by the firewall voice ascends this eighteenth century young man reading you could do it in the foundry is just as good and maybe better i find both green and henry knox enormously admirable each of roma

who was in so many ways an example of what one can do to attain education if you are willing to do the work yourself land like henry knocks the man's a bookseller the bath and i'll let the fact that in all these advertisements where he would get a shipment of books and from london he's name is the biggest thing on the advertisement i thought now that's a guy his secure in himself he was himself the biggest thing around him all got huge and funny and garrulous and again a wonderful letter writer they should or their respective wives and as a consequence they wrote letters to them think goodness that's why we know about it so we can get inside their lives talk for just a minute about the man who made up america's army definitely a motley crew and the again the image

that we sometimes too often get from our history books is the tri cornered hat you know the uniformed of revolutionary soldier and these guys these guys were ragtag yes they look like for the region from the field which most of more young for a region with you very few listens in than seventeen seventy six inches still early of course for me at a half year war longest war in our history except for vietnam which most people don't realize they don't have uniforms and after they had been on the march and in the fight for four five months madame had no shoes and one other end of the captain rags dr korn was worn by usually buy more affluent people are people and more a higher rank officers were chaplains surgeons so forth leap most of the men in the race or iris that's felt that straw hats or wrap their heads

in the handkerchief would say recession then they were they were motley they wore red coat blue clothes clean coast no coats then eventually get these schools which they wore costly and are in rags they looked like a homeless people only only worse worse and hungry sockets starting many cases and they were all heroes they quit they defected they were over the enemy they hear a deserted illegally or they are they won't pack and one on whether listeners were up which were perfectly free to go there is to me a poignant little vignette in here you mentioned yourself the portrait artist charles willson yeah yes comes and he he describes how this man comes toward him dressed only in this long shirt it's tattered its ragged man is filthy there's so many sores on his face that they can't even be washed were treated and he's looking at this man and

horror and realizes it's his brother james well that still make the hair stand up on the back of my neck nothing could be more vivid to me oh you were then you know where i can show you an indictment in the most important scenes are events that affected me in the whole book and that is one of them and the fact that he is a portrait painter any zip he's accustomed to looking at faces and the man is so wretched that he doesn't recognize his own brother and i feel that they were all our brothers they are the people who were doing what had to be done in order that we may have the blessings that we enjoy and people like jay bose fitch that once the one who were went through everything and her joes of hodgkin's writing to his beloved sarah and the day after that retreat from brooklyn is daring

escape from brooklyn and they're all the more i was soaking wet cold and hungry and he gets a letter telling him his son has died this little boy he's been worried about for months and that he has to write her back and say how heartbroken he is but that he will not quit and that's that's the thing that i can't quite ever express fervently enough that this determination that some of them have this they would not quit they were losing again and again and they were being told again and again they didn't have a chance to win they knew that probably a third of the country was against the war and when they got into places like new york and new jersey the great majority of the local sons or you were against the war they were tories are loyalists and yet they keep going they would quit largely because of people like

henry knox and nathaniel greene and emotional washington follow the leader is the leader that's what's so critical and the fact that the leader has the gift of seeing talent in people like green our conversation with david mccullough will resume after this brief time out i hope you can continue to check out the fine print that he's being is in vienna the peak

the coup and we touched on him briefly but i want to go back now to george washington because you give us a picture of this man has come to life for me now through this book in a way he had not before even to the portrait that she use do you include in the book a portrait by charles wilson peale were all mostly familiar with the gilbert stuart portraits and the portrait by peele tells me so much more about this man's character perhaps undoubtedly influenced by reading the book but this man had such incredible leadership skills and i think again

from the distance we are at today we don't give him maybe as much credit as we should for holding this ragtag army together and ensuring the outcome of the war and creating this country when the congress named washington to be a commander of the american army they didn't pick him because he was a great military genius or that he had been a great hero in the previous war the french menu they picked him because they know him they knew the kind of man he was the newest character they respected his integrity and they know that while he wasn't the best general past glee to be found he was better than anybody else that we found very solemn as american commerce done anything so wise christian's watch on the first full year and under his command he did and many things that were born or made many

mistakes had he been covered by the present day media he would have to show they were portrayed him as he was as a failure as a bumbling amateur thank goodness they weren't there covering or the country didn't know how seriously he had this calculated the battle of brooklyn or the battle of gets paid for example but he never failed to learn from his mistakes think the secret crucial part of washington's character he also was a political general in the sense that he understood how the system works but he wasn't the boss and congress was the boston as hard as it was to deal with congress as frustrating as it could be to get congress to do it so obviously needed doing and quickly he nonetheless never violated that trust and that's a new streamlined was an extremely important example to set right away why shouldn't held was a symbol of unity for the army and for the

congress for eight years when he was commander in chief of the armed forces and then of course he's commander in chief great warriors was president so he's served as our commander our symbol of unity for sixteen years and he's set an example such as no other man that i can think of could have done in that place it was just that he was in my view the best them the greatest president we ever had but he was the greatest president at the beginning and so from then on much that we feel a president ought to do or be comes from example he set out in the constitution if he'd been a month if he'd been a self indulgent to superficial person it would've been a terrible way to have gotten off to a reasonable started after all none of these people had ever fought a revolution before none of that ever created new country before they created to broadway show or civilian new country air their

all wing it they don't they don't know quite what to do and then a moment none of them is perfect none is without flaws and weaknesses that so important and dogs we should stand back and finger some glitter around their heads because it's miraculous men suddenly appeared they were very human and what's wonderful is that these very human people could rise to the occasion sent away and achieve this noble objective they'd been dodd's it wouldn't really deserve much credit that's just so amazing to me to just these very human people individually are the ordinary man but when they joined together it's on spying is orange fire and it ought to nourish inspire patriotism and i mean real patriotism up there not the flashy show off glib kind of love of country and love of country and to be ignorant of them or to

be indifferent to them is really a form of in gratitude changed me how can you be so rude so callous as to have no interest in the people who left you so much if your grandfather had left left you a million dollars you might take some interest in who that man was these lefties he will lead to something far greater wellington monday yeah they left as an incredible system of government freedom and freight well there you go up or doing his freedom and opportunity we're not just has to say what we want to say or print what we want a print but to think for ourselves that what was that ever happens out of the enlightenment and you have to understand what the light and that was the episode understand where that began not because as some bad tasting pillion to take them because it's a very interesting it's who you are how did you get to be here at a heavily here and we come

before who did it but one sacrifice with what ingenuity what inspiration what cleverness and courage is i think is in a way in many ways of what i've i hope whenever there's about courage moral courage physical courage courage of your convictions ms mcauliffe and beyond the shadow of a doubt this book is about courage it it's so much about courage that i didn't even think to pull that out and say it's about courage to me that's the whole story here is the courage that it took for everyone from the from the foot soldier who's covered with lice and still manages to go into battle and still manages to do what he did up to you know the man who crafted are former government and the man who led the ones in about courage is courage is the threats are at the hall for my pharaoh characters is a little boy john ringwood it will blow a symbolic name is graeme wood is lowering the heaviest

greenwood john ringwood who walks all away from what's present a portland maine to boston to sign up at age sixteen as a fight for a new memories here about ten years he had a little broken five eighty years ago the fights going on over bunker hill the stars down the road to try him join up and get in on the soldiers coming the other way a black man is wounded and he sees this terrible dashed out of the back of the man's neck he's never seen anything like that before has he says hair stood on end you just horrified terrified and he asked the man if it hurts very much and he said no it doesn't back and just going okay are patched up and i'm going back to the fight and he wrote for john ringwood wrote later in his memoir from that moment on he was never frightened again is example of courage courage is contagious and

i don't i love that scene and all the adventures that will own close to head of visit israel trask ten years old trask it came with his dad's here so i'm good jade as fitch got his boy only fourteen years old and there was some women that were canadians immigrants are free black man over many many more is that as the war went on it's an american story of an american army we would like historian extraordinary david mccullough this two time pulitzer prize and national book award winners latest work is seventeen seventy six and that doesn't include our program for this week and i hope you enjoyed it and i hope you will join me next week as well together we'll check out the fine print for national public radio i'm rebecca bain the fine print is produced by rebecca bain and scott smith for nashville public

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