This is clearly intended to speak to just that moment. There couldnt be a better time to hear from on his sense of how to approach in this question. Bill maclean is a national treasure. Wilfred mcclay. Hes admired and beloved by scores of students past and present. It was also one of the great writers of American History. His book, the master list self was judged best book in American Intellectual history the year it was published. Among his other wonderful books of American History are our students guides to us history. Finding the human person in the american past. Hes also been a historian active in the service of his country. Bill served for 11 years on the National Council of humanities which is the Advisory Board of the National Endowment for humanities. Hes a member of the u. S. centennial commission. The Commission Planning the official public commemoration of americas 250 anniversary in 2026. He received his phd from johns hopkins. With this latest book, hes made an extraordinary contribution to our capacity to understand ourselves. Land of hope describes itself as an invitation to the Great American story. It exists to fill a kind of cap. This not a shortage about American History but an assessable narrative account of the ark of the american story that understands itself as an invitation to the american looking to become a fuller citizen of this country is something we are always in need of. Our format will be very simple. Bill will talk about the book. And i will chat about and then we will invite all of you into the conversation through questions and answers. With that, lets welcome wilfred mcclay. [applause] this is my first visit to the new and improved aei. I am finding my way around. Its wonderful to be here. This is an institution i hold very dear and have for many years. I think the fact they appointed you all to this important post is a very good sign about the future. Im going to stick this up here because i may not be using it. Youve all mentioned in his introduction, some of what i was going to say about the reasons why i wrote the book. Because for someone in the academy to write a book like this is pretty insane opposition. Certainly not anything that will help your career and i didnt seek to use it to do that. But, it did seem to me, are we okay . Okay. It did seem to me we have a problem. The profession, historic profession of which im a part, has made many advances. Im not here to trash the historical institution. Its made many advances, particularly in articulating the experiences of the inarticulate. Of the marginalized. Of those who have been neglected by historical studies in the past. But the result which is not necessarily the intention, a fragmented, fractured, incoherent, discontinuous understanding of our past. One that fails to convey to young people, the larger arc. Or it reflects the outlook of writers like Elliott Howard who is somewhat questionably researched and politically peoples history of the United States has sold over 3 million copies. I just checked on this. Its been treated as authoritative even in some of the best public and private high schools. Other respectable classrooms. So the just of this. Is that we are losing a general grasp on the public meaning of our own history. It made many advances in the breath of sophistication of its approaches to topics that have been neglected in the past. What now is neglected is a broad shared historical consciousness, Public Knowledge that we need to be able to think of ourselves as a coherent political entity. To prepare people for citizenship. Not just in terms of the civic, civics 101 understanding of citizenship as a set of a particular Political Rights and responsibilities. But in the sense membership. Being members of a society or country. Part of a great story of which america, an american story is constituted. So this is a state of affairs that cant go on without producing serious consequences. A great nation needs and deserves a great narrative. Needs to convey that narrative to the rising generations to do so effectively. If its to sustain itself in face of the challenges that are inevitably stirred up. It goes without saying that this story is retelling and cannot be a fairytale. Cannot whitewash the past. It has to be truthful to be convincing. But there is no necessary connection between a truthful account excuse me, no necessary contradiction especially when the subject is American History. We cease to provide that, either one. Either truthful or convincing or inspiring in our schools today. So this combination of truthfulness and inspiration is really what i was after in land of hope, which title itself begins to convey. I will unpack that more as i go. I hope youll forgive me, i will read some passages to give you a sense of the feel of it. , the tone and diction of it. [indiscernible] im happy, im delighted, im amazed at the reception its gotten with general readers. The adult reading public for lack of a better term. Its really meant for young people. To compete with not just howard them but the glitzy and hyper expensive textbooks on offer. So the underlying aims of the book are clear in the outset which is an epigraph that i borrowed. It was a Great American writer. I recommend him. He was a great radical in the 1920s. In the fullness of time, has come to a more vivid appreciation of this country. A profound sense of connection to its past. Let me just read you from this essay. This passage, the title of the book was the first thing i wrote which was sort of unusual. I sort of this title paid in mind what i wanted to achieve. Then the other thing i added was this. This required by a piece of cardboard. Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times, history is more or less of a monumental art. In times of danger, we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today. We need to know what kind of firm ground other men, belonging to generations before us have found to stand on. Despite changing conditions, they were not very different from ourselves. Their thoughts for the grandfathers of our thoughts. In some measure, to make their hopes prevail. We need to know how they did it. And this is continuing. This is the part i especially am interested in. In times of change and danger, when there is a quick fear under mans reasoning. A sense of continuity with generations going before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past the idiot delusion of the exceptional now. That blocks the thinking. Thats why in times like ours when old institutions are caving in and being replaced by newer constitutions. Political thoughts have to look backwards as well as forward. Quite appropriate, isnt it . To our moment. Note that passage i kind of marked out, its arguing that a sense of living connection to the past can be studying and reassuring. A source of sustenance, even in times of great upheaval. That sense of connection with the past can free us from the illusion that we live in a time so different from all other times as to be completely without precedent. From the illusion that the past is nothing whatsoever to teach us. We are all prone to think this way about our present times that a steady flow dramatic and unsettling events and Technological Innovations render the past irrelevant. Young people are especially tempted to think this way. Because frankly, they have left less experience and have nothing but the present as a point of comparison. Recommends the council is something necessary and not merely desirable. It should answer the way of these observations to tell you the year in which he wrote these words. 1941. This was a truly frightening moment in the history of the world. The western world particularly. Hitler was in control of the european continent. The very fate of european civilization seem to hang by your thread. It could have been forgiven for thinking at this time, that the past in the midst of this unprecedented war that the pastor nothing to teach such a moment. But thats not what he said. Part of the point of looking backwards as he counsels us to do is that in doing so, we not only recover a sense of where we came from. But we learn to free ourselves from our mental imprisonment in the present this conviction we have that what we are seeing and experiencing and believing today represents the pinnacle of Human Knowledge and possibility. The natural or inevitable state of human beings. When we learn to incorporate the past into our thinking, we enrich our imaginations. Even as we become far less acceptable to idiot delusions. We become better people and more appreciative citizens. So, we need a different kind of textbook. One doesdoes not condescend to past but reaches back to it. Seeks to recover the roots of our great story and present that story in its fullness. Not merely in its coarseness, brutality and failure, although not neglecting those things either. But in his triumphs and grande. It needs to take into the account the importance of history as a reservoir of shared memories that make possible our cohesion as a people. Make it possible for us to Work Together to achieve common goals and goods. It needs to teach us how to bounce criticism with appreciation. An old word that i like very much. Taking into account the perennial challenges of statesmanship as well as the conditioning role of circumstances and context in the conduct of policy and the making of laws and politics. Above all, it needs to understand historical knowledge as a critical elements. As a sense of membership for those longing and obligation. [indiscernible] instead, histories have reflected the calls to the depth of our humanity. It does not tell us what to think about the task and almost never presents us with a simple reality play. Pitting white hats against black cats. It means learning to appreciate complexity. Nuance and context. The circumstances within which historical actors are constrained to act. It means asking questions and asking them again and again and again. Asking fresh questions as if the experience of life causes fresh questions to arrive in our minds. Let me talk now about some of the books more specific distinctives. First of all, the fact that its a book. Its a tangible, physical object rather than an intelligible collection of pixels on a flickering screen. Thanks to my publisher, wonderful efforts. They made it into a very handsome book. I do take credit for the selection of the cover art, however. The handsome most willingly, with great exception to that. People came in bondage. Restless and exploratory. Unwilling to settle in which the conditions they were born. Drawn by the prospect of a new beginning. The lore of freedom. Exploring in ways the old world did not permit. Hope is a very powerful word. It has both theological and secular and even material meetings. As well as spiritual ones. A sense of things as they are initially given to us. That we can never settle for that. Its a spiritual quality above all else. An aspirational quality that cannot be accounted for in merely material. [indiscernible] a nation that professes such high ideals makes it so vulnerable to searing criticism when it falls short of them. Sometimes very far short of them as we often have done. But we should not be surprised by this. Such as we should not be surprised to discover that many of our heroes turn out to be deeply flawed human beings. All human beings are flawed. To believe otherwise is to be nacve. As what passes as cynicism is a little more than nacvetc. In america, hope is far too persistent and compelling a force to be defeated for long by such passing sentiment. America has a story and its vital that our young people be acquainted with that story. Stories are how we organize the world. We are at our core, remembering a story making remembered as a story making creatures. What we call history and literature are merely the refinement and intensification of that basic human need an impulse. Now let me give you a fuller sense of the book by presenting excerpts. Each dealing with the issue or event thats especially important and yet problematic in our view of the american path. Perhaps a single most sensitive subject is the place of slavery in the nations past. The challenge in presenting the subject accurately is one of balance. Insisting on the importance of slavery without exaggerating its enduring significance. The tendency among the young to imagine slavery was an uniquely american institution. But this is a profound misconception. The United States did not create slavery and did not create racism or racial prejudice. These evils are as old as Human History. Absent from strong moral force. The United States while having a history thats touched by these evils and having participated in them is a country that has a larger history of which it can be proud of seeking to overcome such things. How does one deal with the failure of the framers to deal with the problem. The time the Constitutional Convention of 1787, it had become deeply enmeshed in the economy despite the ways is existence student glaring contradiction to our nations commitment to equality and selfrule as expressed in the declaration of independence. How is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes . How we wonder today could such otherwise enlightened and exemplary men as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have owned slaves . A practice so contradictory to all they stood for. As i write in the book. There is no easy answer to such questions. But surely, a part of the answer is that each of us is born into a world we did not make. Its only with the greatest effort and great cost that we are ever able to change that world for the better. Moral sensibilities are not static. They develop over time and general moral progress is generally very slow. It involves the training of the imagination to see speaking and acting in their own times, rather than ours. And singing our heroes as a human mixture of admirable and unadmirable qualities. People like us who may like us be constrained by circumstances out of their control. Were certainly unavoidable in the short term. In order to achieve an effective political union. What we need to understand is how the original compromise no longer became acceptable to an increasing number of americans. Like slavery came to be seen not merely as an unfortunate evil, and as a sinful impediment to human progress. A stain upon the whole nation. We live today on the other side of a great transformation. A transformation that was taking place but not yet completed and the very years the United States was being formed. Hence, it would be profoundly wrong to content as some do that the United States was founded on slavery. No, it was founded on other principles entirely. On principles of liberty and selfrule to have been discovered, refined and enshrined through the efforts of several turbulent centuries of european and british and American History. Producing materials for use in american schools, and absent a countervailing concern the teaching that slavery is part of the nations enduring makeup, its dna they use to clumsily. A lesson that would be false and pernicious. A related lesson in history is that the wisdom of the statesman may often be less than obvious to contemporary observers because only the leader is in a position to understand all the singh shall forces that are in essence shoot forces in play. Being a great leader requires current, emergencies, even dearth when it may mean courting the displeasure of the multitudes. And accepting unpopularity as a result. Book contains many examples of this. Lets take the case of lincoln. Were so accustomed the thinking of lincoln in heroic term wets forget the depth and breadth of his popularity during his entire time in office. Few great leaders have the been more comprehensively disdained, loathed and unestimated. A low Southern View of lincoln is to be expected. But it was widely shared in the north, too. As lincoln biographer david donald put is, lincolns own associates thought him a simple susan, a baboon, an aimless punster, a smutty checker, his cass called a first rate second rate man, george mcclellan, his opponent in 1864, openly disdained them as welsh meaning baboon. Our rhetoric today cant hold a candle to that. Lincoln was convinced, with good reason, he was doomed to lose that election with incalculable consequences for the war effort, the future of the nation and all he had done and all he had sacrificed to that end. So i quote from the book again we need to remember that this is generally how history happens and this is very much directed towards the young people but i think all of us can benefit from this we need to remember this is generally how history happens. It is not like a hollywood movie in which the background music swells and the crowd in the room applauds and leaps to its feet as the orator dispense timeless words and the camera pans the room full of smiling faces. In real history the background music does not swell, the trumpets do not sound and the kearning critics the carping critics seem louder than the applause. The leader or the soldier has to wonder, is he acting in vain . Are the criticisms of others in fact true . Will time judge him hashly . Will harshly. Will his sacrifice count for nothing . Fewer great leader have felt this burned more comprehensively than lincoln. And i do this a lot with other statesmen in times of stress, to try to get people to appreciate what its like to be in the shoes to be the man of the arena as Theodore Roosevelt said. Let me also suggest something that land of hope relates the story of the end of the civil war in april of 1865, in a way that might hold some lessons for our fellow countrymen today who seem to regard the vest tajes tajesages vestiges of the american past with contempt. This is a longer passage here but on april 9, after last flurry of feudal resistance lee faced facts and arranged to meet grant at a courthouse to surrender his army. He could not formally surrender for the whole of the confederacy but his surrender would represent the end of th