The PioneersThe Pioneers
Title rated 3.85 out of 5 stars, based on 339 ratings(339 ratings)
eBook, 2019
Current format, eBook, 2019, , Available.eBook, 2019
Current format, eBook, 2019, , Available. Offered in 0 more formatsPulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important and dramatic chapter in the American story-the settling of the Northwest Territory by dauntless pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would come to define our country. 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. They and their families created a town in a primeval wilderness, while coping with such frontier realities as floods, fires, wolves and bears, no roads or bridges, no guarantees of any sort, all the while negotiating a contentious and sometimes hostile relationship with the native people. Like so many of McCullough's subjects, they let no obstacle deter or defeat them. 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. This is a revelatory and quintessentially American story, written with David McCullough's signature narrative energy.
"David McCullough has become perhaps our best-loved chronicler of America's past. . . . The Pioneers is the account not just of one Ohio settlement but of myriad such places across America, where innumerable immigrants (as the settlers were known) came to make a fresh start in a strange land. It is a story as resonant today as ever."--Gerard Helferich The Wall Street Journal
"McCullough is among the most thoughtful and thorough historians of the past two generations. . . . [A] great American mind."--John S. Gardner The Guardian
"A tale of uplift, with the antislavery settlers embodying a vision of all that was best about American values and American ideals."--The New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
"David McCullough has become perhaps our best-loved chronicler of America's past. . . . The Pioneers is the account not just of one Ohio settlement but of myriad such places across America, where innumerable immigrants (as the settlers were known) came to make a fresh start in a strange land. It is a story as resonant today as ever."--Gerard Helferich The Wall Street Journal
"McCullough is among the most thoughtful and thorough historians of the past two generations. . . . [A] great American mind."--John S. Gardner The Guardian
"A tale of uplift, with the antislavery settlers embodying a vision of all that was best about American values and American ideals."--The New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
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- [United States] : Simon & Schuster Audio, 2019.
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