The pioneers the heroic story of the settlers who brought the American ideal west
Pulitzer 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...
| Main Author: | McCullough, David G. (Author) |
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| Format: | Downloads eBook Books eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2019.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
Go to Downloadable eBook Here. |
| Summary: |
Pulitzer 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. |
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| Physical Description: |
1 online resource |
| Format: |
Requires OverDrive Read (file size: N/A KB) or Adobe Digital Editions (file size: 113138 KB) or Kobo app or compatible Kobo device (file size: N/A KB) or Amazon Kindle (file size: N/A KB). |
| ISBN: |
9781501168697 |
| Author Notes: |
His first book, The Johnstown Flood, was published in 1968. His other books include 1776, Brave Companions, The Great Bridge, and The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. He received the Pulitzer Prize twice for Truman and John Adams and the National Book Award twice for The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal and Mornings on Horseback. He also won two Francis Parkman Prizes, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and New York Public Library's Literary Lion Award. Two of his books, Truman and John Adams, have been adapted into a television movie and mini-series, respectively, by HBO. In December 2006, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He also made the New York Times Best Seller List in 2015 with his book The Wright Brothers, and in 2017 with The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For. (Bowker Author Biography) |