More than 1,000 members of the Syracuse community filled Hendricks Chapel on Tuesday night to listen to Pulitzer-Prize winner and historian David McCullough talk about his first love: history.

‘I believe that history is the subject of infinite interest,’ he said. ‘It is about human beings.’

His one-hour lecture, titled ‘First Principles,’ revolved around the stories of America’s founding fathers, specifically John Adams, the second president of the United States and the subject of McCullough’s 2001 biography ‘John Adams.’

The lecture was the third installment in Syracuse University’s University Lecture series. The speech, which was scheduled for Grant Auditorium, was moved to Hendricks after organizers realized how large the audience would be. Prime seats were filled an hour before the speech began.

McCullough, who won a Pulitzer in 1993 for his biography of former president Harry Truman, kept the lecture focused, but also cracked jokes and got several long laughs from the audience.

‘We see (the founding fathers) in their crimped shirts and their white wigs and we think, ‘What a bunch of softies,’’ he said. ‘Not at all. Those were tough people.

‘They were declaring themselves traitors and they thought they would be hanged,’ he added.

McCullough credits the existence of the United States to its founders’ courage. This courage has shaped every American, whether Americans know it or not, McCullough said.

‘If (the founding fathers) had taken a poll for the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they would have scrapped the whole idea,’ he said. ‘What we owe to their courage is something that we can never quite live up to.’

Members of the community made up most of the audience, but a number of students also attended the free lecture.

Sophomore engineering and computer science major Dan Nowacki said McCullough surprised him.

‘I went into the lecture anticipating him talking more about how the founding fathers and their ideals related to the current government and the Sept. 11 situation,’ Nowacki said. ‘It turned out to be specifically about their time, and not how that related to our day. There was not as much connection to the present day as I had anticipated or hoped for.”

Nevertheless, Nowacki said he enjoyed the speaker.

‘It was like taking a class from a really interesting professor — one where he isn’t actually reading from a book, but he is putting some life into a really dry subject,” Nowacki said

Stefanie Barraco, a history buff and a graduate student in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, walked away from the lecture impressed with McCullough.

‘I thought he was great,’ she said. ‘He was very eloquent. He spoke for an hour without any notes. It was amazing.’

She enjoyed hearing more about Adams and not as much about former President Thomas Jefferson, who normally gets more attention, she said.

Ann Martin, also a graduate student in Newhouse, said she appreciated the historical perspective McCullough offered.

‘It is sort of a neat thing to think that (the founding fathers) were normal people like us,’ she said. ‘They also walked around and tried to keep warm with their coats and gloves in the cold.’

Published on March 5, 2002 at 12:00 pm