The Pioneers: The Heroic Story Of The Settlers Who Brought The American Ideal West
- Author: David McCullough
- Narrator: John Bedford Lloyd
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- Duration: 10:23:54
Synopsis
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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.
Chapters
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001 ThePioneers Open
Duration: 35s -
002 ThePioneers Dedication
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003 ThePioneers Epigraph
Duration: 19s -
004 ThePioneers Part1 1787-1794 Chapter1 TheOhioCountry
Duration: 01h18min -
005 ThePioneers Part1 1787-1794 Chapter2 ForthToTheWilderness
Duration: 01h19min -
006 ThePioneers Part1 1787-1794 Chapter3 DifficultTimes
Duration: 01h02min -
007 ThePioneers Part1 1787-1794 Chapter4 Havoc
Duration: 01h09min -
008 ThePioneers Part2 1795-1814 Chapter5 ANewEraCommences
Duration: 01h16min -
009 ThePioneers Part2 1795-1814 Chapter6 TheBurrConspiracy
Duration: 34min -
010 ThePioneers Part2 1795-1814 Chapter7 AdversitiesAplenty
Duration: 01h06min -
011 ThePioneers Part3 1815-1863 Chapter8 TheCauseOfLearning
Duration: 01h01min -
012 ThePioneers Part3 1815-1863 Chapter9 TheTravelers
Duration: 48min -
013 ThePioneers Part3 1815-1863 Chapter10 Journey sEnd
Duration: 43min -
014 ThePioneers Credits
Duration: 01min