The Pioneers
The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
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Wait time: About 4 weeks
As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River.
McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler's son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science. "With clarity and incisiveness, [McCullough] details the experience of a brave and broad-minded band of people who crossed raging rivers, chopped down forests, plowed miles of land, suffered incalculable hardships, and braved a lonely frontier to forge a new American ideal" (The Providence Journal).
Drawn in great part from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and letters by the key figures, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of people whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable accomplishments. "A tale of uplift" (The New York Times Book Review), this is a quintessentially American story, written with David McCullough's signature narrative energy.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 7, 2019 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781508279099
- File size: 299522 KB
- Duration: 10:24:00
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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April 22, 2019
Popular historian McCullough (1776) uses his well-crafted writing style and thorough research to highlight the evolution of the “Ohio territory” (now Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin) from late-18th-century settlement to well-regarded American cities (Marietta, Cincinnati) by the 1860s. He follows members of a few optimistic, well-connected families whose impact on the region spanned generations, admiringly portraying their efforts to create a new England on the frontier. Settler leaders Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler veered between Eastern political maneuvering for approval (including that of George Washington) for private purchase of the land they wanted and surviving the pioneer trials of wildlife, starvation, and violence between settlers and native Americans (which is treated as a minor subplot). The swiftly moving narrative also shines light on the territory’s consistent antislavery position beginning with the 1787 Northwest Territory Ordinance and leading to the first black vote in 1802. While some readers may be put off by the near-omission of the native people’s perspective, those seeking a pro-colonial history will find this is a fascinating and well-written look at the Cutler families and the Americanizing of Ohio. Illus. Agent: Mort Janklow, Janklow Nesbit Associates. -
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was one of the most important acts of Congress in our history and crucial to an orderly settlement of the American West. It began taking shape on March 1, 1786, when Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam convened a meeting at the Bunch-of-Grapes tavern in Boston. The men there devised an ambitious plan to guarantee what would later be known as the American way of life. Veterans would be provided property in the Ohio country as payment for their military services. The conditions of this plan would allow freedom of religion and education but wouldn’t allow slavery. From this meeting, the Ohio Company was formed, coupling the group’s idealism with land speculation. In his absorbing new book, The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, bestselling author and most readable of historians David McCullough brings to life the story of the courageous men and women who dealt with many hard realities to found the city that became Marietta, Ohio. Letters, diaries, journals and other primary sources give us an intimate portrait of the community. McCullough focuses on five men, quite different from each other, who were instrumental to the venture’s success. Women were responsible for many things, as well, but since they recorded little of their hardships, we have few of their first-person accounts. Putnam did much of the planning for the first Ohio Company group to settle in the West, and he was their leader. Manasseh Cutler didn’t move to Marietta himself, but his son Ephraim did, and he and Putnam were personally responsible for prohibiting slavery in the new state of Ohio. Joseph Barker, a skilled carpenter, became a notable architect, and Dr. Samuel Hildreth was a pathbreaking physician and an important historian of Marietta. There’s so much more, including visits from Marquis de Lafayette and John Quincy Adams. And what about Aaron Burr’s trips to the area, the first less than a year after he killed Alexander Hamilton? McCullough has again worked his narrative magic and helped us to better understand those who came before us.
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