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The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
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The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

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The #1 New York Times bestseller by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that’s “as resonant today as ever” (The Wall Street Journal)—the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would 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. “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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 7, 2019
ISBN9781501168697
Author

David McCullough

David McCullough (1933–2022) twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for Truman and John Adams, and twice received the National Book Award, for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. His other acclaimed books include The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, Brave Companions, 1776, The Greater Journey, The American Spirit, The Wright Brothers, and The Pioneers. He was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Visit DavidMcCullough.com.

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Reviews for The Pioneers

Rating: 3.6805554479166664 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I love nonfiction. This is a wonderful account of the settling of the Northwest in the early 1800's; aka Ohio.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which predated the U.S. Constitution, opened the area of the country above the Ohio River to settlement and later became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Incorporated within the document were three conditions: freedom of religion, free public education, and prohibition of slavery. After the Revolutionary War, America was in a financial crisis. The script promised the veterans was almost worthless. Offering land in the Northwest Territory was a better substitute.David McCullough provides a very readable history of the pioneer spirit as they built communities within the then Ohio wilderness. The story is told through the lives of five individuals: clergyman and politician Manasseh Cutler, who shepherded the Northwest Ordinance through Congress; General Rufus Putnam, Ohio Company organizer; Manasseh’s son, Ephraim, sales agent for the Ohio Company; Joseph Barker, carpenter, architect, and shipbuilder; and Samuel Hildreth, physician and scientist.This book of American history covers a period between 1787-1863 from the perspective of the aforementioned individuals from their Ohio residences. Much of the material were taken from personal journals. (One must wonder what primary sources future historians will use to detail our time’s history since much of our correspondence is limited to 128 bits.) Sources are well documented but conveniently sequestered and organized at the end of the book, which promotes smooth reading. I have avoided reading this historian fearing that it would be dry and tedious reading. I was wrong and look forward to reading another of his histories.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wonderful David McCullough book about the opening and settling of the Northwest Territory. The book's focus is on the people who came from Massachusetts to settle the town of Marietta, Washington Co., OH at the confluence of the Muskingum and the Ohio Rivers.The story details the long fight to prevent the introduction of slavery into the Northwest Territory. I highly recommend this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Though narrow in scope, I found this story quite enlightening. As a life long resident of Ohio who even took the mandatory Ohio History class in eighth grade, I don't recall ever reading such detailed information about the birth of the Northwest Territory, the people involved in it and the people it impacted.In true McCullough fashion he delivers a history lesson which reveals the struggle and hardships shared by all, the human desire to discover the unknown and to tame its harsh realities. This book is not merely about power and destruction. There were a few ah ha moments for this Ohioan. So, that's why the Columbus hockey team is named the Bluejackets, So that's how Marietta got its name. Interesting stuff but I'm not quite sure how popular this book would be outside the buckeye state but I hope it draws attention if not for the subject then for McCullough's well written story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When Britain recognized the United State as an independent country, it gave up its rights to the territory north of the Ohio River--what would later become Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Mannaseh Cutler, a Massachusetts minister, and Rufus Putnam, a Revolutionary War general, gathered together a number of veterans and set out to establish the first settlement in what was known as the Northwest Territory: Marietta, Ohio. It wasn't an easy passage, nor was the settlement easy. McCullough details a series of brutal raids by Native Americans and equally brutal retaliations by the settlers. In addition, they faced a lack of roads and bridges, dwindling supplies, wild animals, floods, illness, and more, yet they persisted. At the heart of their new American ideal were three tenets: freedom of religion, free schooling for all, and freedom from slavery. And there were struggles among themselves to achieve these goals as not all of the settlers agreed upon them. As usual, McCullough creates a readable story by focusing on a few key persons and their families: Manasseh Cutler, his son Ephraim, General Cutler, an architect who helped to build the great cities of the territory, and a doctor who became a scientific ground breaker. Several better known figures in American history make appearances, including Washingon, Jefferson, Burr, and John Quincy Adams. McCullough bases his work on a recently discovered collection of diaries and letters, as well as legal and government documents. The tale gets somewhat repetitive at times, yet the reader never loses sight of the perseverance, ingenuity, faith, and sacrifices of these pioneers.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    All of the historical works by Manchester are easily read, engaging, and informative. The reader can plainly see the courage, determination, and strength displayed by the early pioneers in their efforts to settle what was then the "western wilderness" of Ohio. This is not my favorite of Manchester's books but interesting and informative all the same. I recommend "The Pioneers" to anyone wanting to do a thorough dive into this slice of Americana.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The book is well written and not dry at all. The story is told through the eyes of a handful of various men, so the shifting of narratives and sometimes unnecessary details may jolt a few readers, but McCullough feels so excited to share all the nuggets of his research that it didn't take me out the book at all.The style of his writing in this one felt akin to the Ken Burns film documentary, The War, which also got some criticism for taking this alternate style of approach for historical storytelling.How you feel about the content is relative to you; I personally didn't know about the anti-slavery clause in the Northwest Ordinance, which, since it was written before the Constitution, throws a wrench into the debate about the framers intent on slavery (and what the omission of that word means). If you've read a book about a certain battle or group or anything around this place you will feel that it is inadequately covered because that's your area of specialty, and how dare an author not dedicate a tome to the very thing you know so well. This unoriginal critique can be given to every history book (certainly a 260 page one), so if you're one of those guys, prepare yourself (or just read more books).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoy McCullough's readable United States histories. This volume, focusing on settlement of the Northwest Territory and specifically of Marietta, Ohio, was no exception. McCullough knows how to tell the story in an engaging manner, incorporating discoveries from his research. The book focused primarily on more prominent settlers of Marietta and its surrounding areas although we learn bits and pieces about the settlement of the rest of the state, especially the Cincinnati area, and receive some basic statistics on the settlement of Indiana and Illinois. I found it interesting as some ancestral families lived in this area during the book's time period. I was a little disappointed readers didn't hear the voices of some of the more common citizens more often. I detest blind endnotes, and unfortunately the book incorporated those. I want to know of a footnote's presence without having to keep my finger in the back and following word by word to try to figure out where a footnote exists. I know this was a publisher's decision rather than the author's. I call this "publisher fail," and I would like to throw egg on the face of the blind footnote inventor.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I’ve read virtually all of David McCollough’s books and have enjoyed them immensely. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this work up to the level of the others. I’m not sure if it was the subject matter or the style in which it was written, but if his name were not on it, I would not have believed that he wrote it.The book chronicles the formation and establishment of the Northwest Territory (the northwest at the time encompassing the Ohio and Michigan territories) in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. I recently read a biography of Daniel Boone, so I was somewhat familiar with settlement of the region immediately to the south, across the Ohio River. The settlers faced many of the same threats and challenges, so it was not entirely new ground.There were certainly some interesting passages, and it was not “bad” by any stretch, but I had come to expect excellence in the work of Mr. McCollugh, and sadly did not find it here.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    David McCullough’s “The Pioneers” illuminates just how important Ohio was in the westward expansion and, in particular, the passing of Northwest Ordinance which first prohibited slavery in the new territory and established the premise for public schooling. Ohio University (1804) and Marietta College (1832) stand as testaments. As always, McCullough delivers a fluid, you-were-there narrative, rich in detail and devoid of the “faculty lounge” bloviating usually associated with such texts. Why, I ask, didn’t I have history professors like McCullough in college? Barring one – a Julius Weinberg by name – my “professors” universally demonstrated an uncanny ability to bludgeon their students into an undulating mass of somnambulating, date spewing automatons. Seriously, the joke (and truth) was that you read your history assignments standing up so that after you fell asleep and dropped to the floor, you would wake up and start again.“The Pioneers” also illuminates just how tough, resourceful and interconnected our early settlers were. It is also honest about the frequently harsh treatment of the Native Americans and their frequently barbaric treatment of innocent settlers, with notable exceptions on both sides. McCullough characteristically deals with these incidents as historical fact and leaves any bias to the reader. A breath of fresh air in these troubled times.A pleasure to read and one that has inspired this Ohio native to motor down to Marietta, a river town settled and named by French ex-pats in honor of Marie Antoinette. Who knew? Four stars for this collection-worthy journey through a seminal period in our Nation’s founding and Ohio’s role in it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Based on records kept by individuals associated with the Ohio Company, who established Marietta, the first significant American-founded settlement in the Old Northwest Territory, I can't say that this is particularly satisfactory work. On one hand, it's not really lively enough to be popular history. On the other, it doesn't have enough of a critical or analytic backbone to really appeal to a scholar. The overall flavor is one of antiquarian fustiness. This is too bad, as I have personal and professional interests in early Ohio history, and I really do expect better from David McCullough.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I always enjoy McCullough's books. I learn so much that is not taught in school. These are real people who fought in the Revolutionary War and therefore prepared for the hardships of the new land they were forging into homes and cities.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Although I did learn a few interesting facts, I found this book for the most part dry, boring, and disjointed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Read this in 2019 -- two years before this book was added to the DAR Book club reading list for 2021-22. I had found this an engrossing book about America's beginnings of its westward expansion -- it focuses on the settlement of one area of Ohio in the early days of our nation, and also covers several remarkable people behind it all. McCullough also did a great job evoking the dangers (wild animals, etc) of going into this unknown territory.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I enjoyed this book immensely. As one of the 11+ million who now inhabit Ohio I found this book enlightening. It sparked an interest to learn more about the early settlers of the Northwest Territory and Ohio in particular. Highly recommend!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was delighted to see the maestro of American history had turned his genius toward places where I've lived and studied. The Pioneers focuses on the early visionaries (and speculators) who campaigned to form the inroads that led to the forming of Ohio, the Northwest Territory and ultimately the entire westward expansion. In the course of covering a hundred years from the end of the Revolution to the turn of the 20th century, McCullough explains the Burr-Blennerhassett conspiracy, the founding of Ohio University, the rise of steamboats, and the end of native peoples. Marietta, Ohio is at the center of it all. McCullough portrays the personal charm and political perseverance of its residents, the Cutlers, Putnams, and Hildreths who were all so central to this time and place in America's history.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For me, David McCullough is an acquired taste. His accounts of American history and its players don't immediately do justice to this book's subtitle, "The Heroic Story of Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West." I think it's the use, or misuse, of the word "heroic." These figures aren't Lincolns or Washingtons. They're more like John Adams but much, much less well known. They're heroic, yes, but not larger-than-life legends.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Engaging, informative, interesting - a good read. This is really the story of the history of the Territory of Ohio. In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance championed by a man named Manasset Cutler opened up the territory for settlement. Cutler's oldest son was one of those settlers along with a number of other families who stayed and became the backbone of government on the frontier.The early chapters deal with the hardships the settlers faced not only in getting there, but after having settled. Native tribes at one time friendly turned violent. One of the memorable stories is of a very inept General who set out to fight the natives but was horribly defeated due to his own arrogance and gout. Weather played a huge part: sometimes floods, other times hot and drought.The second part from 1979 to 1814 deals with Ephraim Cutler, and four other men who were early leaders: Joseph Barker was a carpenter turned architect; Samuel Hildreth was a physician who was also an early American scientist, and General Rufus Putnam, a Revolutionary War veteran.The city of Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River is the main focus of the story as it was the first carefully laid out settlement. Aaron Burr shows up after he has killed Hamilton with his own revolutionary idea of splitting the territory from the US. There are two colorful characters, Harman and his niece/wife Margaret Blennerhassett who arrive and build a huge mansion on an island in the Ohio River. They become involved with Burr and the story seems to strange to be true. When Manasset Cutler wrote the Constitution for the territory, slavery was not allowed. His son, Ephram also worked to keep Ohio free of slavery and promoted free education. Ohio later became one of the main routes for the Underground Railroad.A lot of history of one particular part of the country which was one of the first frontiers after the establishment of our country.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a nice history of the town of Marietta, Ohio. Drawn from a great amount of letters, diaries and earlier works about the founders and their families, this is very personal and very detailed. I learned quite a bit about early Ohio from 1788 - about 1820. This covers a brief period of time with just a small amount of history from the mid-1800's as it follows the founders and their children. A good work on early frontier life.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Popular historian McCullough’s latest book examines the lives and times of the New England pioneers who formed the Ohio Company of Associates and settled in Marietta, Ohio, at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers. This book had its origins in McCullough’s 2004 commencement address at Ohio University. His research into the history of the university led him to Manasseh Cutler and the Ohio Company. It didn’t hurt that McCullough was already very familiar with John Adams and his family, who make appearances in this book. The bibliography provides evidence of both wide and thorough research. The execution feels a little awkward, though, especially the rather abrupt ending. Since it’s a group biography of people of different generations, the last to die were living in a different era at the end of their lives.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Author David McCullough stands securely as one of our nation’s great historians. His prior well-received works have focused upon American military and political history. This exposition tells how the American ideal settled into what was then known as the Northwest Territory. McCullough does so by sharing the work of five sizable figures in early Ohio history.The five played varied roles in life: A pastor/educator, a military man, the farmer-son of the pastor/educator, an architect, and a physician/scientist. McCullough treats them as heroes in contrast with his critique of Vice-President-turned-rebel Aaron Burr’s role in Ohio state history. He captures interesting history about a state which comes to the fore every four years in electoral politics. He also demonstrates Ohio’s dedication to education epitomized in Manasseh Cutler’s Puritan ethic and its pride in a stand against slavery in its state constitution.Those looking for a critical and analytical history will probably be disappointed as McCullough essentially tells “hero” stories about white males and as settlers’ xenophobia manifested in wars with the Native Americans. This book is told by an American who is proud of his country’s history even when it seems morally questionable. His sensitivity falls a bit short concerning the paranoia the pioneers showed towards Native American attacks. While the narrative about Ohio’s stand against slavery is admirable, the narrative about constant butchering from one side or the other between the settlers and the natives is simply tragic. In this work, McCullough could have shown more compassion towards those being invaded and moral honesty about white oppression.Despite these shortcomings, this well-told tale should be treasured by many for years to come. The world rarely presents itself in morally clear categories. Such is the case here. The American move west required ingenuity, steadfast labor, and hardiness. This was shown by both the men and the women who for sharing these values. This work captures that ethic in relatively clairvoyant form. Such is our common national history, and those interested in understanding what it means to be an “American” (or even an “Ohioan”) should spend some time reading McCullough’s entertaining exposition.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I am familiar with many of the towns/settlements in this history that I was never out off. Lots of history crammed into 260 pages. From good old George Washington to the Civil War. From Benjamin Franklin to Mad Anthony Wayne ( good old ft. Wayne!!). The Indians had a good 50 pages or so then mad Anthony pushed them off the story and we moved on to steamboats and Ohio statehood. I enjoyed it. The only disappointment that made this pedestrian may be too many excerpts from letters. Never boring. I Learned quite a bit about about the movers and shakers who were the pioneers of Ohio. Gateway to the west.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The book focuses on founding of Ohio, its first settlement Marietta, and the Cutler and Putnam families. It's a fascinating topic and McCullough is a solid writer and historian. I felt this book lacked the focus I expected and was searching for a theme to hold the work together.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    McCullough tells the story of the settling of the Northwest Territory - Ohio, Indiana, etc - after the revolutionary war and the war of 1812.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I like the information given, but the history feels scrubbed and overly shiny. Not that a very dark side was what I was looking for, but it would be helpful to have more of the humanity of these pioneers shown as well.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    David McCullough’s book “THE PIONEERS: THE HEROIC STORY OF THE SETTLERS WHO BROUGHT THE AMERICAN IDEAL WEST” is not the usual adventure story I expected. Beautifully narrated, it is more a biographical treatise of the life and time of a few pioneers who settled the Ohio Valley in the last fifteen years of the 18th century and their sons who followed their father’s footsteps.

    The Ohio Valley was settled by the Ohio Company established in Massachusetts and the Scioto Land Company, a speculative venture. In 1787 the Congress passed an ordinance granting these two companies hundreds of thousands of acres of land on the Northwest side of Ohio River opposite the shores of Virginia up to the Scioto River from the meeting point of Muskingum River.

    The Northwest Territory Ordinance was passed due to the efforts of General Rufus Putnam, a Revolutionary soldier who fought shoulder to shoulder with General George Washington and Reverend Manasseh Cutler triple doctor of Theology, Medicine and Science, who canvassed with the leaders and Congressmen in New York and Philadelphia. He had a capable and ardent supporter in Vice President John Adams (later the second President of the USA) who ensured that the 1787 Ordinance became a reality.

    The first batch of settlers were led by General Rufus Putnam. Though Manasseh Cutler never left Massachusetts, his young son Jervis was in this group and he was the first to set foot at the Point, the place where the Pioneers landed and near which the first settlement Marietta was set up.

    Later Manasseh’s second son Ephraim settled in Marietta and till his death in 1853 was a leader in expanding and developing the Northwest Territory of Ohio. Among other achievements he was instrumental in setting up the Ohio State University and the Marietta College.

    The contributions and work of other stalwart pioneers like James Barker and Dr. Samuel Prescott Hildreth form the core of the book and the last chapter “JOURNEY’S END” closes the story after the death of the latter in 1863.

    Dr. Samuel Hildreth, was a physician, a botanist, a geologist and a great water-colour painter. He also authored several books on the life and contributions of the Pioneers of Ohio. Dr. Hildreth was also very kind hearted and humane, a necessary attribute for a successful physician.

    Describing the flowing Ohio and the surrounding forests, Dr. Hildreth writes “On the bottoms, or alluviums, and on the north sides of rich hills, the beech, sugar maple, ash, and elm, were the prevailing growth; while the sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) lined the borders of the rivers, where its roots could be refreshed by the running water. Along these streams the red man pushed his light canoe, rejoicing in the wild freedom of the forest, and happily unconscious of the approaching fate which threatened his race, and was soon to banish all but his name from the face of the earth.”

    Unconsciously, this passage reveals the savagery and prejudice of the white man towards the coloured natives. The natives neither coveted gold nor land – which the white Christian did and seized the same violently from the natives leading to unavoidable massacre on either side.

    As far as the Native Indians were concerned, all land belonged to the Great Spirit (god) and He alone could own it. In that spirit the various tribes lived more or less lived symbiotically in relation to their surroundings.

    The growing number of immigrants and their clearing hundreds of acres of forests to acquire land alarmed the Indians. As stated in the book:

    “Captain Pipe and others of the tribes had become alarmed by the size of what was being built by the settlers and the numbers that kept arriving. The native people did not believe land was something to be owned. In the words of a Wyandot named Turk,

    “No one in particular can justly claim this [land]; it belongs in common to us all; no earthly being has an exclusive right to it. The Great Spirit above is the true and only owner of this soil; and He has given us all an equal right to it.”

    It is apparent from the book, the Pioneers were unabashedly biased against the natives whom they considered enemies – to be fought with, eliminated ad driven out FROM THEIR OWN LANDS. [Donald Trump’s rants about illegal immigrants – increase in violence, crime, etc. reflects the reality that the natives must have felt, when the illegal white immigrants landed on their shores].

    The only mentions of Natives in this book are how they are merely an obstacle that the pioneers had to "overcome" so they could (and this is an actual quote) "build a community based on ideals that would come to define our country". It doesn't touch on anything from the point of view of the Natives.

    The entire book, the characters are living in "fear" from them. I kept reading, expecting the next paragraph, page, or chapter to jump POV's to the Natives to combat the horrible stereotypes the book/main characters were painting. That never came.
    The feelings and perspectives of the native Indians be damned.

    That in mind, it's still a good non-fiction book if you want to learn about the perspective of the pioneers and what their lives were like.

    Being the first book of David McCullough I have read, I liked it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I originally hail from Nebraska, specifically from the south-central region of the state, never more than 30 minutes from the Platte River where nearly all the great trails of the westward pioneers (e.g., the Mormon Trail and the Oregon Trail) converged, following a route very similar to Interstate 80. You could throw a rock in any direction from where I lived and hit some piece of pioneer history, some of it fascinating, some of it less so. Living in a place so saturated with the history of America’s westward expansion, it’s easy to forget that this was actually America’s SECOND westward expansion. There was a time in American history when “the West” did not begin on the western edge of the mighty Mississippi but at the ragged edge of eastern Appalachia. It is the story of the settlement of this first “American West” that McCullough has elected to tell. As with all great national stories, the major movements can be successfully summarized in the lives of key figures; in a sense, the sweep of history is best seen through the focused lens of biography, which might explain why McCullough excels as a historian…because he has an inimitable gift for writing about people. The major players in this narrative are two generations of the Cutler family, Manasseh Cutler and his son, Ephraim. Manasseh Cutler, almost alone, persuaded Congress to pass the Northwest Ordinance which, as McCullough is quick to point out, is a document OLDER than the Constitution (1787) and serves as one of the earliest embodiments of America’s national ideals, expressed in two key provisions: 1)That slavery would be prohibited2)That land would be set aside to fund public education McCullough concludes: “The great Northwest Ordinance of 1787 stands alongside the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence as a bold assertion of the rights of the individual.”His son, Ephraim, almost 50 years later (1825), carried forward his father’s vision, successfully leading a crusade in the Ohio state legislature to pass a tax to fund statewide public education. In addition, he played a key role in the founding of Ohio University (where Cutler Hall is still the campus centerpiece) and Marietta College. As many others would undoubtedly agree, McCullough may be the finest historian of this generation; he is most certainly one of the most popular and most widely-read and holds, I’ve discovered, the rare accolade of having all his published works still in print. Given that his first book on the Johnstown flood was published in 1968 (50+ years ago), that is no small accomplishment.Perhaps if I were a professional historian, I would have more to offer by way of meaningful critique. However, history is, for me, hobby reading and I am, I must confess, more dilettante than connoisseur. Reading for pleasure brings with it a different set of expectations that McCullough is somehow able to perfectly fulfill. I am always surprised at how quickly I can read his books. His prose is effortless and spell-binding. It’s history that reads better than any novel. The more of McCullough’s work that I read, the more that I WANT to read his work. And, at the end of the day, that may be the highest praise that one could give to ANY author.

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Closely following the end of the American Revolutionary War, a group of hardy and well-educated veterans set out to settle the Northwest Territory ceded to the US at the end of the war. In The Pioneers, David McCullough retells their story from the signing of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 to the start of the Gold Rush, focusing on a few families and their Puritan desire for abolition, free education, and religious freedom. As usual, McCullough packs in a lot of historical details through primary sources, but still manages to tell a pretty good story. The Pioneers is an excellent resource for readers looking to understand the beginnings of Western expansion and the politics and lives of Americans during this period.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The history, mostly, of the founding and settlement of Marietta, Ohio. The story is told through the writings of five of its settlers. Things may drag a little if after hearing of the number of brick houses in Marietta, the regularity of its streets, or the legendary moral superiority of its founders, one becomes concerned that the author might have been trying to sell property there. The most interesting parts of the book are about other mentioned asides, e.g. Aaron Burr's attempt to become the emperor of the West or Marietta's role in the underground railroad.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    David McCullough is a unique author. He finds known areas of history about which little is written. The biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman have elevated the regard in which those Presidents are held. Both existed in the shadows of their predecessors; the great George Washington and the diabolical and infamous, though well-regarded Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

    This book continues that tradition, harking back to the earlier Wright Brothers, also largely centered around the State of Ohio. The first part of the book, focusing on the New England origins of Ohio's founders as a state, drags a little. Thus the four rather than five stars. The book wound up with my wanting to wave a seventeen or so star flag around (I think Ohio was the 17th state, admitted after Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee).

    The book had a major contribution on the role of Manassah and Ephraim Cutler and other New England ministers in resisting the spread of slavery into Ohio and the Northwest Territories. Other inspiring stories were the selfless efforts of Samuel Hildreth, an early doctor and nature curator. Finally, it is the story of how many good men made a very great country, the United States of America.

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The Pioneers - David McCullough

Cover: The Pioneers, by David McCullough

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The Pioneers, by David McCullough, Simon & Schuster

CONTENTS

Epigraph

Part I

1787–1794


1. The Ohio Country

2. Forth to the Wilderness

3. Difficult Times

4. Havoc

Part II

1795–1814


5. A New Era Commences

6. The Burr Conspiracy

7. Adversities Aplenty

Part III

1815–1863


8. The Cause of Learning

9. The Travelers

10. Journey’s End

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

IMAGE CREDITS

For Rosalee

The character ought to be known of these bold pioneers. . . . From whence did they spring? . . . For what causes, under what circumstances, and for what objects were difficulties met and overcome?

—EPHRAIM CUTLER

PART I

1787–1794

CHAPTER ONE

The Ohio Country

The Ohio is the grand artery of that portion of America which lies beyond the mountains. . . . I consider therefore the settlement of the country watered by this great river as one of the greatest enterprises ever presented to man.

—J. HECTOR ST. JOHN DE CRÈVECOEUR, 1782

I.

Never before, as he knew, had any of his countrymen set off to accomplish anything like what he had agreed to undertake—a mission that, should he succeed, could change the course of history in innumerable ways and to the long-lasting benefit of countless Americans.

That he had had no prior experience in such a venture and was heading off alone in his own one-horse shay appears to have been of little concern. If he was as yet unknown to those with whom he would be dealing, he carried with him letters of introduction from the governor of Massachusetts, the president of Harvard College, and some forty others. The day of his departure was Sunday, June 24, 1787.

Manasseh Cutler was forty-five years old and pastor of the First Congregational Church of Ipswich Hamlet, a tiny Massachusetts village not far from the sea, thirty miles north of Boston. He had been born and raised on a hilltop farm in Killingly, Connecticut, and given the biblical name of Manasseh after the oldest son of Joseph. Like most New Englanders, he was a descendant of those strong-minded English Puritans who had landed in America in the seventeenth century and proliferated ever since. James Cutler, the first of the family to arrive, had fathered twelve children. The Reverend Cutler himself was one of five and the father of eight.

He had attended Yale College, with classmates mainly from New England among whom a biblical name such as he had was by no means uncommon. He was distinguished for diligence and proficiency, and finished with honors in 1765.

In less than a year he married Mary Balch of Dedham, Massachusetts, a small trim blonde said to have had a no less amiable disposition than he. Her father, the Reverend Thomas Balch, performed the wedding ceremony. When offered the chance to run a chandlery—a ship supply store—in Edgartown on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, bride and groom moved immediately to the island and there remained for three years, time enough for two sons, Ephraim and Jervis, to be born, and for Manasseh to conclude that a mercantile life was not for him.

He resolved to enter the ministry under the tutelage of his father-in-law back in Dedham. His studies continued for nearly two years, during which he started preaching in one town or another. Prosecuted my study, he wrote in his diary. Began to make sermons. May God grant me his blessing and assistance in so important an undertaking, and make me serviceable to the cause of religion, and the souls of my fellow men.

He was offered the pulpit at Ipswich Hamlet. The day of his ordination, at age twenty-nine, the Meeting House was thronged so exceedingly that not more than half the people were able to attend.

A bit above average in height, stout but well-proportioned, the Reverend Cutler had a ruddy, healthy look, and dressed always in ministerial black—black velvet coat and breeches, black silk stockings. He would be described as a gentleman of the old style, country type. But stiff-necked and somber he was not, any more than were most Puritans, contrary to latter-day misconceptions. Puritans were as capable as any mortals of exuding an affable enjoyment of life, as was he. Like many a Puritan he loved good food, good wine, a good story, and good cheer. His black clerical attire, a professional requirement, by no means represented disapproval of bright colors in clothing or furniture or decoration. It was said he could out-talk anyone, and from numerous of his diary entries, it is obvious, too, that he had an eye for attractive women. But here again that was no violation of Puritan rules.

He had as well great love for his large family, his wife and children, and was ever attentive to their needs for as long as he lived.

In addition to all this, and importantly, Manasseh Cutler was endowed with boundless intellectual curiosity. It may be said he was a university unto himself, ranking high among the notable polymaths of the time, those of great and varied excellence who took an interest in nearly everything.

He had succeeded in becoming three doctors in one, having qualified for both a doctor of law and doctor of medicine, in addition to doctor of divinity, and having, from time to time, practiced both law and medicine. At one point he looked after some forty smallpox patients and seems to have gained a local reputation for his particular skill at coping with rattlesnake poisoning. He became an honorary member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, received a degree of Master of the Arts from Harvard, and was elected a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Further, to supplement his meager income as pastor—never more than $450 a year—he had added a third floor to the rectory and established his own private boarding school where the students were prepared for usefulness in the world.

Most remarkable were his continuing scientific pursuits. He was at once an avid astronomer, meteorologist, and naturalist. Over the years, his modest income notwithstanding, he had acquired his own barometer, thermometer, telescope, spyglasses, and celestial globe, and was particularly esteemed among fellow scientists for his work in botany, and for having written the first-ever treatise on the classification of the flora of New England—a study of some 350 separate species. His knowledge of botany was probably surpassed by few if any Americans of his generation.

Year after year he carried on extensive correspondence with leading figures in all the sciences on both sides of the Atlantic. One letter concerning his studies of the aurora borealis, written in 1778 to Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale, went on for twenty-four pages.

Between times he studied French. Indeed, he seems to have been studying something nearly every waking hour. Engaged in the study of botany, reads one diary entry. This morning endeavored to observe the eclipse of the moon, reads another. Studied, studied hard, studied very hard, he recorded one day after another.

Once, with a half dozen others, he climbed the highest peak in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, carrying a heavy barometer on his back in the spirit of wanting to bring back new knowledge—to compute the elevation at the summit, which he recorded to be 9,000 feet. That either he or the barometer had overestimated the height by some 2,600 feet did not in the least deter his zest for learning.

On the day of his departure on his unprecedented new mission, he brought with him the cabinet necessary for saving botanical specimens collected along the way.

He had a favorite quotation from Virgil that to his family seemed the key to his character, Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causasFortunate is he who understands the cause of things.

The year before, on the morning of March 1, 1786, the Reverend Cutler and ten others gathered in Boston at the famous Bunch of Grapes tavern, at the corner of King and Kilby Streets. Their purpose was to launch a highly ambitious plan involving the immense reach of unsettled wilderness known as the Northwest Territory. They were a group of veteran officers in the Continental Army, as Cutler was considered also, having served six months during the Revolutionary War as an army chaplain.

At the peace treaty ending the war, signed in Paris in 1783, the American diplomats John Adams and John Jay had insisted that all the lands controlled by the British west of the Allegheny Mountains and northwest of the Ohio River east of the Mississippi, be ceded to the new United States. The British commissioners persistently urged making the Ohio River the westernmost boundary of the United States, but John Adams, it is said, responded indignantly, No! Rather than relinquish our claim to the western territory, I will go home and urge my countrymen to take up arms again and fight till they secure their rights, or shed the last drop of blood. John Jay agreed and the British found it best to yield the point.

The land on the southern side of the Ohio was part of Virginia and already being rapidly settled according to the Virginia system, which allowed a man to take and mark for himself any unappropriated lands. By the New England system, so-called, the land lying north of the river was to be properly surveyed and sold, the establishment of settlements done by legal process, and lands of the natives to remain theirs until purchased from them.

Until that point the United States government did not own a single acre of land. Now, all at once, almost unimaginably, it had acquired some 265,878 square miles of unbroken wilderness, thus doubling the size of the United States. It was an unsettled empire north and west of the Ohio River, bigger than all of France, with room enough for as many as five more states and included access to four of the five Great Lakes, one of which, Lake Michigan, reached to its very center.

And then there was the Ohio River, itself a great natural highway west, la Belle Rivière, as the early French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle had called it.

The new realm was spoken of as the back country, the vast interior, the howling wilderness, the fair domain beyond the Ohio, or simply the Ohio country. There were no roads as yet anywhere in all this wilderness, no bridges, no towns, churches, schools, stores, or wayside taverns. In New England there were more than a thousand towns, one about every five miles. But in all the immense territory to the northwest of the Ohio River, the territory from which five states were to emerge—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin—there was as yet not one permanent legal settlement.

A few remote forts had been established and there were hunters, trappers, fur traders, and squatters, those who settled wherever they chose and without legal claim to the land.

Much, too, was reported of forests teeming with wolves, bears, wild boars, panthers, rattlesnakes, and the even more deadly copperheads. And, as every easterner knew, there was the Indian menace, the many native tribes who considered the Ohio country their rightful, God-granted domain. Much blood had already been shed in wilderness battles and atrocities committed by both natives and white men. These were realities well-known throughout the east and particularly on the minds of those gathered at the Bunch of Grapes.

Worst of all had been the infamous massacre by American militia of ninety-six peaceable Delaware Indians in central Ohio in 1782—Christian men, women, and children who knelt singing hymns as they were systematically clubbed to death, all because they were mistakenly thought to have had a part in the murder of a family of settlers. In revenge soon after, at Upper Sandusky, the Delawares stripped naked, tortured, cut off the ears, burned while still alive, and scalped a captured American officer, a friend of George Washington’s, Colonel William Crawford. Delaware justice demanded a life for a life be taken, but they would give an enemy an opportunity to die well and honor his family during ritual torture. Crawford’s dismemberment was also to insure that he would be a less formidable enemy in the next world. The story of Crawford’s fate, the ultimate frontier nightmare, was told over and over back east.

Only the year before the Bunch of Grapes meeting, one of the group, General Benjamin Tupper, as part of a government surveying party, had been turned back from entering the Ohio country so severe was Indian resistance to the encroaching settlers.

Then, too, there was also the immediate reality of serious, mounting troubles right at home. Unprecedented financial panic had gripped the new nation since the end of the Revolutionary War. The resources and credit of the government were exhausted. Money, in the form of scrip issued by the government, was nearly worthless. The scrip the veterans received as compensation for their service was worth no more than ten cents on the dollar. Trade was at a standstill. In Massachusetts the situation was worst of all. Farmers were being imprisoned for debt. Only a few months earlier an armed rebellion led by a poor Massachusetts farmer and war veteran named Daniel Shays had to be put down by a force of loyal militia commanded by General Tupper.

As it was, the severe economic depression that followed the war would last longer even than the war. But out west now there was land to be had as never imagined—vast land, rich land where there was no end to the beauty and plenty—that could be made available to veterans at a bargain price in compensation for their service. West was opportunity. West was the future.

As time progressed, the New England Revolutionary officers and soldiers interested in western immigration became more and more impatient to realize their hopes, as one settler was to write.

They were poorer than their neighbors who had not been in the field; and if they had more of pride, that was only natural from the lives they had led, and surely they had a right to feel proud of the services they had rendered. One who was among them, and a close observer, says that they had a better and more dignified bearing than before the war, dressed more handsomely, and were improved in manners and conversation. . . . These men it must be remembered did not receive money in pay for their fatigue, exposure and suffering, but final certificates in settlement.

The spirit of immigration never ran higher with us than at this time, Manasseh Cutler wrote to a member of the Congress, Nathan Dane, who happened also to be a Massachusetts neighbor.

The leading figure—the driving force—at the Bunch of Grapes gathering was a widely known hero of the Revolution and, in normal times, a farmer and surveyor, General Rufus Putnam. It was he who had called the meeting.

A commanding presence, he stood nearly six feet tall and spoke in a manner described as straightforward and impressive. One of his eyes had been disfigured by a childhood injury that gave it an outward, oblique cast, leaving the expression of his face strongly impressed on the mind of the beholder. In his portrait he is shown in profile, with the intention, no doubt, to hide the bad eye. As would be said:

He was not brilliant, he was not quick, but he was richly endowed with that best of gifts—good, sound, common sense, and he had, in unusual degree, that prescience that enabled him to skillfully adapt means to ends, so as thereby to accomplish what he wished. . . . His judgment was sound, he was patient and had great power of endurance. His integrity was never questioned.

He was also known to be full of jokes and loved to sing.

Most important to matters at hand, Rufus Putnam, before the end of the Revolution, had led 288 officers in signing what was known as the Newburgh Petition, whereby land bounties promised to veterans would be provided in the Ohio country in payment for their military services.

Then, at the war’s end, he had written a long letter to Washington about the possibilities represented by the Ohio country, knowing Washington as a young man had seen that wilderness firsthand on surveying expeditions and, further, that Washington owned land there. He was already an Ohio land speculator.

I am, sir [Putnam wrote], among those who consider the cession of so great a tract of territory to the United States . . . a very happy circumstance and of great consequence to the American empire.

Washington, though a Virginian to the core, had particularly high regard for the New Englanders who had served under his command. A great part of his military history had been made north of the Potomac, beginning in Boston.

Many there were in New England, Putnam assured him, waiting for the chance to head west as settlers, and there was not the least doubt but other valuable citizens will follow their example.

In a letter to Congress, Washington strongly supported the idea, but in a subsequent letter to Putnam he wrote, ". . . matters, as far as they have come to my knowledge, remain in statu quo."

In 1784 Putnam wrote again to Washington to assure him settlement of the Ohio country still engrosses many of my thoughts, and much of my time, and that as soon as Congress made provisions for granting land there, thousands from New England would emigrate. Meanwhile, however, many were growing quite impatient, and the general inquiry now is, when are we going to the Ohio? It was being called Ohio Fever. Putnam preferred to call it the Ohio cause.

In 1784 an ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory had been drawn up by several members of Congress including Thomas Jefferson. It proposed, That after the year 1800 . . . there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States. . . . The ordinance passed but without any slavery restrictions, and without them as would be said, it was a dead letter.

Jefferson had since backed off from his position on slavery, having decided not to risk his political usefulness by maintaining such a stand. Further, by this time he had resigned his seat in Congress and departed for France to serve as the new American ambassador.

The plan set forth now at the Bunch of Grapes was to form an association or company to purchase from the government lands in Ohio and establish a first settlement there. A very pleasing description of the western country was provided by both Generals Putnam and Tupper. Manasseh Cutler, too, took an active part in the discussions. He had read nearly all that had been published of the writings of early French explorers and like others had been moved especially by descriptions of the land and the river by St. John de Crèvecoeur.

It is, without doubt, the most fertile country, with the most varied soil, the best watered, and that which offers to agriculture and commerce, the most abundant and easy resources, of all those which the Europeans have ever discovered. . . .

Crèvecoeur also described the experience of giving oneself up to the current of the Ohio River. This sweet and tranquil navigation appeared to me like an agreeable dream. (In a book he was soon to publish, Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson referred to the Ohio as the most beautiful river on earth, though, like Manasseh Cutler, he had never seen it.)

Full agreement at the Bunch of Grapes gathering was reached with no difficulty and in the days that followed further details were seen to. It was to be called the Ohio Company of Associates and Rufus Putnam was to be its chairman. A fund of a million dollars would be raised. No one could purchase less than one share, or more than five. Payment for each share would be primarily the face value of the certificates held by the veterans, plus $10 in gold or silver. The cash raised by the $10 payments was to cover the company’s operating expenses.

That the Ohio Company was also, apart from its noble intentions, a venture in land speculation went without saying. Those founders taking part at the Bunch of Grapes were to receive generous compensation. Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler, for example, were each to receive four shares, or 4,692 acres of land.

Major Winthrop Sargent, another surveyor who had been to Ohio, was named secretary of the company, and Manasseh Cutler was chosen to negotiate with the Continental Congress in the purchase of the land. He was also to have a say in the enactment of a new Ordinance, whereby Congress would establish how the new states were to be laid out, and, importantly, the conditions under which they were to enter the Union. Such an ordinance was essential, for without it no purchase could be arranged. As would be said, What would homes be worth to New England men without good government?

That a national constitution had still to be resolved by the summer of 1787 meant there was as yet no president of the United States, only a Congress to deal with.

It was intended that this ordinance, now called the Northwest Ordinance, should stipulate that in the whole of the territory there would be absolute freedom of religion and particular emphasis on education, matters New Englanders considered fundamental to a just and admirable society.

Most importantly, there was to be no slavery. In the plan for the creation of a new state northwest of the Ohio River, the proposition put forth by Rufus Putnam and others at the time of the Newburgh Resolution, the total exclusion of slavery was an essential.

As would be observed by historians long afterward, the Northwest Ordinance was designed to guarantee what would one day be known as the American way of life.

Manasseh Cutler was to be the spokesman for the Ohio cause on the scene with the Congress in New York. The word lobbyist had yet to come into use. Rather he was the agent assigned to win congressional approval, and no fitter or more capable agent could have been selected.

His enthusiasm for the whole undertaking seemed to compound by the week. The more I contemplate the prospect, he wrote to Winthrop Sargent, . . . the more I feel myself inclined to take an active part in carrying on the settlement and to be one of the first emigrants. He was already contemplating the number of foreign vegetables that might thrive in land so rich.

II.

The day of his departure being a Sunday—Lord’s Day, as he liked to say—the Reverend Cutler preached a sermon before bidding goodbye to his wife and family and heading off southward to Cambridge, Boston, Providence, Rhode Island, and beyond, rolling along in his horse and buggy, making thirty to thirty-five miles a day and, to judge by his daily journal entries, in grand spirits.

He was bound first for New York, where the Congress sat, then Philadelphia, where for the past month the Constitutional Convention had been meeting in secret sessions. Crossing into Connecticut, he made a brief stop at the family farm in Killingly to see his father and found all well, his father, at age eighty, in better health than he expected, still able to help bring in the hay.

At Middletown, the traveling pastor was the guest of General Samuel Holden Parsons, one of the directors of the Ohio Company. A Harvard graduate, attorney, and noted officer in the Revolution, Parsons had traveled to the Ohio country only the year before as one of the commissioners appointed by Congress sent to the Northwest to negotiate a treaty with the Indians. He could speak from experience about the Ohio River, the great reach of the wilderness, the fertility of the soil. He and Cutler talked for the better part of a day. In addition, Parsons provided Cutler with still more letters of introduction.

At New Haven, he stopped again, this time to call on the president of Yale, the Reverend Ezra Stiles, a tiny sparrow of a man who, like Cutler, had enormous interest in practically everything.

It had been years since Cutler had been back to his alma mater and Stiles, happy to show him about, led a campus tour, introducing him to faculty and students, showing him the library and a collection of apparatus for the study of science. When Stiles insisted Cutler stay for a midday dinner with his wife and four daughters, Cutler could not resist. I sent for my trunk, he wrote, and showed the Doctor and his lady, and the young ladies, my botanical apparatus and books, with which they were all highly pleased, having never seen anything of the kind before. The previous day en route he had collected a number of flowers, all still perfectly fresh in his botanical box. With these in hand, he proceeded to deliver a short lecture on fructification, separating the parts at the same time, all to the delight of his audience. Only a call to dinner ended the performance.

Cutler could not have enjoyed the day more, but when urged to spend the night, he declined. He was on a mission and must keep on his way.

The roads were very bad, or excessively bad. He worried about his horse. A tavern at Fairfield, Connecticut, was miserable, dirty. He wrote of crossing King’s Bridge (small, very narrow, and badly built) onto New York Island and of seeing the ruins of British encampments and fortifications on both sides of the road on his way down to the city, as well as the ruins of Fort Washington, Fort Independence, and other fortifications built by the Americans.

By mid-afternoon Thursday, July 5, having covered 302 miles in twelve days, he arrived at the Plow and Harrow in New York and from there, wasting no time, he set off to deliver his letters of introduction.

From that point on things moved rapidly. The days that followed were as full as any he had known. He was everywhere, busy every hour, meeting or conferring with, or being hosted by one figure of importance or influence after another. In his business with Congress he regarded success a duty.

The morning of July 6, he went to New York’s City Hall to deliver his introductions to several members of Congress. At eleven o’clock he climbed the spacious stairs to the Congress Chamber on the second floor. At the time only eight of the thirteen states were represented by delegates.

A member from Virginia, Colonel Edward Carrington, greeted Cutler and introduced him to other members to whom Cutler delivered his petition for purchasing land for the Ohio Company and proposed the terms and conditions of purchase. A committee of five was then appointed to agree on the terms and report to Congress.

He had made a good start, as no doubt he sensed. His manners in particular impressed three of the five members who were southerners. Never before, they said, had they seen such qualities in a northern man.

That the one who had come to persuade the members of Congress to accept a proposal of such monumental scale was neither a commercial proponent nor politician, but a well-mannered figure of high learning and culture, as well as a man of the cloth, was in itself a matter of considerable interest and importance. Clearly he was to be taken seriously.

In the days that followed, he dined in style several times, starting at the home of General Henry Knox, once a Boston bookseller, now secretary of war. Already an investor in the Ohio Company, Knox had great influence among veterans and was fervently urging Congress to act. Both the general and Madam Knox, as she liked to be called, with their love of lavish hospitality, had become quite large. (Secretary Knox weighed approximately 325 pounds.) Cutler described her as gross and thought her way of doing her hair, piled a foot high on top of her head, far from attractive.

But at a dinner hosted by an English social lion, Sir John Temple, the consul general of Great Britain, he was delighted to find Lady Temple the greatest beauty, notwithstanding her age, I ever saw, as happily he recorded in his journal, and then went on about her soft but majestic air and smiles that could not fail of producing the softest sensibility in the fiercest savage. One would suppose her to be no more than twenty-two, he wrote, when in fact she was forty-four and already a grandmother.

Attired as usual in clerical black, the Massachusetts pastor remained as courtly and socially active as always and filled his diary with each day’s events and observations on those he was meeting. Such effort as he devoted to the diary alone would have been enough in itself to tire most people. Yet he was also faithfully writing home to his wife, Mary, and depending greatly on repeated word from her, as he would continually during times away from her for years to come.

On the afternoon of July 9 he went again to climb the stairs to the Congress Chamber and in the course of much discussion made his case. This time, however, the session did not go well. What exactly was said, he did not record, only that they debated on terms but were so wide apart that there appears little prospect of closing a contract. With the meeting ended, several members of the committee were polite enough to point out to him the splendors of the great room, its fine furnishings, the grand, full-length portrait of George Washington, and drapery that infinitely exceeds anything of the kind I ever saw before.

Clearly he had much work to do.

Earlier that same day he had made a most important call on the geographer of the United States, a military engineer and surveyor of long experience on the western frontier, Thomas Hutchins, to discuss the best possible site for settlement on the Ohio River. That afternoon they met again.

A veteran of the French and Indian War, Hutchins had laid out Fort Pitt at Pittsburgh, where the Monongahela and the Allegheny Rivers meet to form the Ohio. Later, in 1766, he had conducted a hydrographic survey down the Ohio, on an expedition led by the well-known Indian trader George Croghan. A great number of Shawnees and Delawares went too, the entire party with baggage filling seventeen canoes. They traveled the whole length of the ever-winding river, more than 1,000 miles from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi, with the result of the first published survey describing the river’s depths, currents, bordering hills, and bottomlands.

More recently, Hutchins had been in charge of several surveys of the Ohio frontier under the protection of a military escort. He knew the territory as did very few white men and, as Manasseh Cutler learned, he had no hesitation about voicing his opinions on the subject. He gave me the fullest information . . . and advised me, by all means, to make our location on the Muskingum, which was decidedly, in his opinion, the best part of the whole of the western country.

The great trees of the forests at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum would not only provide timber aplenty for houses and boat building, but were a sure sign of fertile soil. Further, a federal fort, Fort Harmar, had now been established close by and the native population in the vicinity was comparatively small, two highly important advantages.

Thomas Hutchins’s advice was to be decisive.

The great Puritan leader John Winthrop, on board the ship Arbella, in 1630, on his way with the first Pilgrims to settle in Massachusetts, had famously declared, For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. By all evidence, the Reverend Manasseh Cutler had decided where in the Ohio country the new City upon the Hill was to be located.

On July 10, he dined with an English immigrant, William Duer, who had distinguished himself as a member of the Continental Congress during the Revolution and later became involved in a number of commercial and financial projects whereby he had become quite wealthy. He lived in the style of a nobleman. I presume he had not less than fifteen different sorts of wine at dinner, and after the [table] cloth was removed, Cutler wrote. Also present were Winthrop Sargent, who had come on to New York to work with Cutler, and another from Massachusetts named Samuel Osgood, who had recently been appointed one of the Board of Treasury.

To what extent Cutler discussed his conversation with Thomas Hutchins about the ideal location for settlement, if at all, is not known, but it would seem unlikely he could have kept Hutchins’s opinions to himself. In any event, Duer, Sargent, and Osgood were all to play considerable parts in what followed.

Congress by then had come to an agreement on the form of government for the western territory and drawn up a bill, a copy of which was sent to Cutler, and with leave for him to make any remarks he wished and propose any amendments, which he proceeded to do that same afternoon of July 10.

That done, he decided the time had come for a visit

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