The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West Audiobook (Free)

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Pulitzer Prize–being successful historian David McCullough rediscovers a significant and dramatic chapter in the American story—the settling of the Northwest Place by dauntless pioneers who also overcame incredible hardships to build a community predicated on ideals that would come to define our country.

Within the Treaty of Paris, where Great Britain known the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the huge Northwest Territory, a about The Pioneers: The Heroic Tale from the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal Western wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the near 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 had been three remarkable circumstances: independence of religion, free of charge universal education, & most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the initial music group of pioneers lay 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 for the banks of the Ohio River.

McCullough tells the story through five major personas: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler’s kid Ephraim; and two various other men, one a carpenter turned architect, as well as the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science. They and their families created a city inside a primeval wilderness, while dealing with such frontier realities as floods, fires, wolves and bears, no streets or bridges, no guarantees of any sort, all the while negotiating a contentious and sometimes hostile relationship using the native people. Like so many of McCullough’s topics, they allow no obstacle deter or beat them.

Used great component from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and words by the main element numbers, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of individuals whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable achievements. This is a revelatory and quintessentially American story, written with David McCullough’s signature narrative energy.