David McCullough's heroes of history

The following script is from "McCullough, Part Two" which aired on Nov. 11, 2012. Morley Safer is the correspondent. David Browning, producer.

As the post-election cheers die down or, depending on your politics, the post-election blues set in, we'd like to divert your attention, take you back to a time when this country was just becoming a country.

In the second part of our profile of the historian David McCullough which began last week, we go with him to Paris, the destination back in the 19th century for a host of young Americans, eager to learn from what was then the most important city in the world.

France was the cradle of the modern idea of democracy. French troops were vital to America's victory in the War of Independence and Paris led the world in science, medicine and the arts. And as McCullough has written, the city was irresistible to the new citizens of a new nation.

David McCullough: They came here in the droves. They were here in order to improve themselves and to go home and thereby improve their country.

They were the first wave of innocents abroad, who began arriving in Paris just 50 years after Independence. Writers, artists, medical students.

David McCullough: They couldn't quite adjust to how old everything is. When they were looking at Notre Dame they were looking at a building that was begun before Columbus ever sailed.

Paris had grand boulevards. Breathtaking parks. Great universities. All the things young America didn't have.

Morley Safer: Was there even an art museum in the United States?

David McCullough: No. No art museum in the United States, none.

So in 1830, an artist named Samuel Morse came to study the treasures of the Louvre. His painting of what he saw there is a masterwork. But Morse had other talents as well. While in Paris, he dreamed up the idea for the telegraph, as revolutionary in its day as the Internet is in ours.

David McCullough: He developed not only the telegraphic system, but what we call the Morse code, which was essential.

Morse later met Louis Daguerre, the father of photography as we know it. Daguerre showed him this picture, a Paris street scene from 1836: the first photographic image of a human being: a man getting his boots polished. Morse was astonished, and with Daguerre's blessing, brought photography to America.

David McCullough: So one man, having spent time here, brought home not only a stunning work of art, an American masterpiece, but the idea for the telegraph and the idea for photography.

Others would bring back new ideas in art, architecture and medicine. In 1871, Mary Putnam became the first American woman to graduate from medical school in Paris. Artists drew inspiration from the city's magnificent Luxembourg gardens, irresistible to anyone with a passion for art, including our tour guide.

[Morley Safer: You got it.]

133 years ago, at nearly the same spot, the young American John Singer Sargent painted the gardens in one of his early masterpieces: a couple out for a stroll at twilight.

David McCullough: There's something magical about this place. I think it's the bridges. I do. There's something about -

Morley Safer: You and your bridges.

David McCullough: - my bridges. But truly, isn't it wonderful?

This bridge figures in the story of another American in Paris: Augustus Saint-Gaudens, a street kid from New York. He was determined to be a sculptor, and scraped together the money to study here.

David McCullough: He got by, barely, almost starving. But he got by and he studied, and he progressed rapidly.

His greatest works are part of the American landscape. Abraham Lincoln, in Chicago. In Boston, a memorial to the black soldiers who fought in the Union Army. And in New York's Central Park, the famous statue of Civil War General William Sherman. Saint-Gaudens suffered from periods of depression. And while working on the Sherman sculpture in Paris, had a recurrence that one day became unbearable.

David McCullough: It was very early in the morning, still not quite light. And what he was going to do was kill himself by jumping off this bridge.

Morley Safer: The Pont des Arts.

David McCullough: The Pont des Arts, the bridge of the arts. And as he got out here, probably about where we're standing, the sun began to rise, and the whole facade of the Louvre was lit up, all the bridges. And he said to himself, "I don't want to die. I want to live." And he started whistling, and walked back up to the studio happy as can be. It was Paris. Paris saved his life, literally saved his life.

We moved on to the Sorbonne, Paris's ancient university. It changed the lives of many other Americans.

David McCullough: Charles Sumner was here in 1838. And he had come to broaden himself, to become a more civilized human being.

Sumner was a young Boston lawyer who found himself studying alongside students from colonial Africa.

David McCullough: He saw that they were dressed exactly like the other students. They were treated like everybody else. And he wrote in his journal that night "I wonder if the way we treat black people at home has more to do with what we've been taught than the natural order of things." And it was, it was an epiphany for him.

Sumner went home convinced of the evils of slavery, and became a major voice in the campaign to abolish it.

David McCullough: So you talk about dropping a stone in the pond that sends out ripples. This one young man, one American, studying here at the Sorbonne, has that moment, goes home, and that was the effect.

Just about the only 19th century pilgrim with anything negative to say about Paris was Mark Twain, who may or may not have meant it when he said he was shocked, shocked by the can-can dancers. Twain would be truly shocked to see Paris after dark today.

Otherwise, 21st century Americans find the city - with its art, its history, its cafes and byways - as beguiling as the first wave of Americans did.

David McCullough: Are you a citizen of Paris?

Woman: I am.

David McCullough: Lucky you.

McCullough encounters fans everywhere. Many of them turned out for a reception in his honor at the residence of the American ambassador to France, Charles Rivkin, where the author had an unexpected encounter with a very famous admirer.

David McCullough: I just kissed Olivia de Havilland.

And for good measure, he did it again.

Madame de Havilland is 96. Just about the last great star from Hollywood's Golden Age. Melanie, the good girl, in "Gone with the Wind."

David McCullough: How long have you been in Paris. And what brought you here?

Olivia de Havilland: A Frenchman. (laughter)

David McCullough: That'll do it.

Olivia de Havilland: A Frenchman.

She has lived in Paris for half a century. A love affair with the city shared by Americans past and present.

Olivia de Havilland: You feel that it belongs to you.

David McCullough: Absolutely.

Olivia de Havilland: That's what's so magical about it. That it's yours.

David McCullough: What's the great line, "We'll always have Paris"?

McCullough is the soul of courtliness, but also carries a warning to his audiences about his concern -- his alarm -- that history and its lessons are being lost to many younger Americans.

David McCullough: And those of us who have children and grandchildren...

Saying farewell to Paris, he put it bluntly:

David McCullough: We are raising children in America today who are by and large historically illiterate.

Morley Safer: The teaching of history has become your hobbyhorse, correct?

David McCullough: Yes.

Morley Safer: You, you, calling us historically illiterate.

David McCullough: Yes. I feel that very much so. I ran into some students on university campuses who were bright and attractive and likeable. And I was just stunned by how much they didn't know. One young woman at a university in the Midwest came up to me after one of my talks and said that until she heard me speak that morning she'd never understood that the original 13 colonies were all on the East Coast. And I thought, "What are we doing that's so wrong, so pathetic?" I tried it again at several other places, colleges and universities, same thing. Now, it's not their fault. It's our fault. And when I say our fault I don't mean just the teachers. I mean the parents and grandparents. We have to take part. The stories around the family dinner table. I say bring back dinner if you want to improve how children get to know history.

Morley Safer: But are the teachers themselves semi-illiterate in history?

David McCullough: Well we need to revamp, seriously revamp, the teaching of the teachers. I don't feel that any professional teacher should major in education. They should major in a subject, know something. The best teachers are those who have a gift and the energy and enthusiasm to convey their love for science or history or Shakespeare or whatever it is. "Show them what you love" is the old adage. And we've all had them, where they can change your life. They can electrify the morning when you come into the classroom.

[David McCullough to wife: How about some black-eyed Susans?]

McCullough is 79 now, mulling some ideas for his next book. He and Rosalee, his wife of nearly 60 years, have five children. As newlyweds, they lived in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was the inspiration for his second book, "The Great Bridge," from 1972 -- his first bestseller. To McCullough, it's a profound symbol of the American journey. We close with his thoughts on its meaning: a looming, almost living presence as we talked, behind its back, at Brooklyn's River Cafe.

Morley Safer: You have described this as America's Eiffel Tower.

David McCullough: Yes, indeed. If you could pick this bridge up and turn it over, underneath it would say "Made In America."

It has endured for 130 years. And McCullough is still awestruck by the genius and courage of the people who built it.

David McCullough: I look at that and I think, "Who were those guys and how the hell did they do it?"

Remember, this was the 1860s and 70s. Workers had to reach bedrock at the bottom of the East River, working 60, 70 feet down in wooden boxes, breathing pumped in air.

David McCullough: They would send men down through shafts into that space to dig.

Morley Safer: By hand.

David McCullough: By hand, all by hand.

Morley Safer: Pickaxes and shovels.

David McCullough: Yes. So the temperature down there was unbearable, the air was awful. And the days were long and as arduous as you could imagine. Many of them couldn't take it.

McCullough's pantheon of heroes includes Washington Roebling, who oversaw the bridge's construction, and his father John, a German immigrant who designed it.

David McCullough: He was a new American, he was a very proud American. He wanted to show this is what we can do, we Americans. And he certainly did.

Indeed. In fair weather and foul, the bridge looks as sturdy and iconic as anything the country has built.

David McCullough: This is a bridge about motion. Ships passing underneath, people walking over the promenade, traffic pouring across 24 hours a day. It's still serving its purpose.

Morley Safer: How many more years do you think it will stand?

David McCullough: Oh, forever. If we have a civilization wise enough and appreciative enough to take care of it.