David McCullough - The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For

ALSO BY DAVID McCULLOUGH

The Wright Brothers

The Greater Journey

1776

John Adams

Truman

Brave Companions

Mornings on Horseback

The Path Between the Seas

The Great Bridge

The Johnstown Flood

Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 2017 by David McCullough

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

Simon Willards Clock originally appeared in Brave Companions by David McCullough in 1992 (Simon & Schuster).

Power and the Presidency: Whats Essential Is Invisible originally appeared in Power and the Presidency edited by Robert A. Wilson in 1999 (PublicAffairs).

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition April 2017

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Interior design by Joy OMeara

Jacket Design by Jackie Seow

Jacket Illustration by Suto Norbert Zsolt/Shutterstock

Author Photograph by William B. McCullough

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-5011-7421-6

ISBN 978-1-5011-7420-9 (ebook)

For Our Grandchildren

Caitlin

Jed

Tyler

David

Leah

Ethan

Jesse

Caroline

William

Melissa

Geoffrey

Nellie

Louisa

Henry

Rosie

Nathaniel

Tamaelle

Luke

May

Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

History, I like to think, is a larger way of looking at life. It is a source of strength, of inspiration. It is about who we are and what we stand for and is essential to our understanding of what our own role should be in our time. History, as cant be said too often, is human. It is about people, and they speak to us across the years.

Our history, our American story, is our definition as a people and a nation. It is a story like no other, our greatest natural resource, one might say, and it has been my purpose in my work to bring that story and its protagonists into clearer, more human focus in what I have written and in speeches I have made.

The speeches included here have been selected from a great many given over the past twenty-five years with the hope that what I have had to say will help remind us, in this time of uncertainty and contention, of just who we are and what we stand for, of the high aspirations that inspired our founders, of our enduring values, and the importance of history as an aid to navigation in such troubled, uncertain times.

Two of the speeches were delivered at celebrations of national anniversariesthe Bicentennial of the United States Congress and the Bicentennial of the White House. Two others were given on historic ground and at ceremonies honoring two eminently memorable American experiences, one of high hopes, the other of tragic loss and words of everlasting value.

The first was a summer naturalization ceremony at Thomas Jeffersons Monticello. The second, a memorial service marking the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, took place at midday, November 22, 2013, at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. More than five thousand people had gathered, many having traveled far to be there. The day was miserablecold, wet, and windyand the crowd had been gathered since early morning. The Naval Academy Glee Club sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The scene from the speakers platform was one I will never forget.

University and college campuses have been the setting for a number of the other speeches included, and at those occasions I hoped to make clear to the young men and women about to step in to full participation in American life the vital importance of knowing their countrys history, but also that history, like music, like poetry, like art, is a wonderful way to enlarge the experience of being aliveand that history is not about politics and war only, not by any means, and for the reason that music and poetry and art are very much a part of history, a point of particular emphasis in the talk I gave at Lafayette College in 2007.

I have no idea how many speeches Ive given, starting at least fifty years ago, but I do know I have spoken in all fifty states and I am still at it, primarily because I feel I have something to say and because I always enjoy seeing our country and meeting people and listening to what they have to say.

Yes, we have much to be seriously concerned about, much that needs to be corrected, improved, or dispensed with. But the vitality and creative energy, the fundamental decency, the tolerance and insistence on truth, and the good-heartedness of the American people are there still plainly.

Many a time I have gone off on a speaking date feeling a bit down about the state of things and returned with my outlook greatly restored, having seen, again and again, long-standing American values still firmly in place, good people involved in joint efforts to accomplish changes for the better, the American spirit still at work.

Washington, D.C.

1989

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Senator Dole, Members of the 101st Congress, ladies and gentlemen. For a private citizen to be asked to speak before Congress is a rare and very high honor and I thank you.

Simon Willard was never a Member of Congress in the usual sense. Simon Willard of Roxbury, Massachusetts, was a clockmaker early in the nineteenth century and he did it all by hand and by eye.

In cutting his wheel teeth, reads an old account, he did not mark out the spaces on the blank [brass] wheel and cut the teeth to measure, but he cut, rounded up and finished the teeth as he went along, using his eye only in spacing, and always came out even....

David McCullough addressing Congress

It is doubtful, the old account continues, if such a feat in mechanics was ever done before, and certainly never since.

The exact date is uncertain, but about 1837, when he was in his eighties, Simon Willard made a most important clock. I will come back to that.

On a June afternoon in 1775, before there was a Congress of the United States, a small boy stood with his mother on a distant knoll, watching the battle of Bunker Hill. The boy was John Quincy Adams, diplomat, senator, secretary of state, and president, who in his lifetime had seen more, contributed more to the history of his time than almost anyone and who, as no former president ever had, returned here to the Hill to take a seat in the House of Representatives, in the 22nd Congress, and thrilled at the prospect. And it was here that this extraordinary American had perhaps his finest hours.