"The Pioneers," by David McCullough

Sydney M. Williams

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Burrowing into Books

“The Pioneers” David McCullough

August 4, 2019

“Now, all at once, almost unimaginably, it had acquired 265,878 square miles

of unbroken wilderness, thus doubling the size of the United States.”

                                                                                    The Pioneers, David McCullough

History allows us to marvel at our own time with renewed perspectives. For example, how rich and easy our lives are – despite a freshman Congresswoman telling a Newsweek interviewer that “an entire generation [millennials] came of age and never saw American prosperity” – compared to the hardships experienced by early pioneers, like those along the Ohio River.

David McCullough, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, in his new book, follows several families, including those of Manasseh Cutler and his two sons, Ephraim and Jervis, along with Joseph Barker and Samuel Hildreth, from the founding of the Ohio Company in 1784, through the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, to 1863, when the Territory had become five states and all the founders were dead.

In 1783, as a condition for signing the Treaty of Paris, John Adams insisted that Britain cede rights to what was called the Northwest Territory, an area west of Pennsylvania, east of the Mississippi River, north of the Ohio River and south of British Canada. It consisted of 265,878 square miles – an area larger than France, an area from which five states would eventually be carved: Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837) and Wisconsin (1848). In 1800, the U.S. Census recorded a population of 51,000 in the Territory. By 1860, those five states had a population of seven million.

The land they first settled in 1788, where the Muskingum River meets the Ohio, became the town of Marietta. It was named after the French Queen, Marie Antoinette. Marietta was settled by forty-eight pioneers led by General Rufus Putnam, a Revolutionary War veteran and friend of George Washington. It is in the southeastern part of what is now Ohio, bordering on Virginia (now West Virginia). The passage of the Northwest Ordinance gave ownership of the land to the U.S. government which, via the Ohio Company, sold land to pioneers, including Revolutionary War veterans – men, as Joseph Barker later wrote, who “had been disciplined to obey, and learned the advantage of subordination to law and good behavior in promoting the prosperity of themselves and the rest of mankind.” Traits needed by those who would venture west included, Mr. McCullough writes: “fortitude, perseverance, patience, resolution and good sense.”

The Northwest Ordinance, as prepared by Manasseh Cutler, the hero of Mr. McCullough’s book, had stipulated that the Territory be (and remain) slave free. His son Ephraim, as a state legislator, later ensured that Ohio stayed slave free. While today that stipulation sounds obvious, at the time the Ordinance was enacted there were slaves in all of the thirteen original states.

The earliest pioneers suffered hardships we can barely imagine: Indian attacks, disease (including the devastating attack of influenza in 1807 when more than 70 people in Marietta died, earthquakes, wolves, President Jefferson’s embargo act, floods, freezing winters (the “Starving Year” of 1790) and accidents. Yet they endured. They had arrived, newly liberated from England, but with the benefit of English laws and customs, the concept of representative government and a sense of responsibility and accountability. Liberal ideals of the Founders made their way into the Ordinance, Article III of which read: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” The pioneers were interested in education and historic preservation, as could be seen in their preserving sacred Indian burial grounds, some of which dated back almost 2000 years.

The years covered in this history incorporate the first stages of the industrial revolution. Robert Fulton’s steamboat was developed in 1807. In 1825, the 363-mile long Erie Canal was opened, and soon steamships began to ply lakes and rivers, which eased upstream trips – no more “bushwhacking.” By the end of the 1840s, trains were running between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia by way of Harrisburg. The first settlers struggled across the Appalachians, on foot, with horses or oxen, struggling with carts and wagons. Within two generations canals, steamships and trains had shortened a two-month trip to a few days, allowing visits from Aaron Burr, Alexis de Tocqueville, Frances Trollope and Charles Dickens, among others.

The subtitle of Mr. McCullough’s book reads: “The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West.” Therein lies his most important message – how the ideals laid out in the Declaration of Independence, laws embedded in our Constitution and the desire to create educational institutions came west. With them – and because of them – settlers were able to produce communities where people lived harmoniously on farms and in towns and cities, where civilization prospered. A surprising number of pioneers had been educated at Yale and Harvard, and were interested in the arts, literature, writing, sciences and the environment. Institutions like Marietta College and the University of Ohio are their legacy.

There has been some silly criticism of Mr. McCullough, implying he is not “woke,” suggesting he ignored the plight of the Native Americans whose ancestors inhabited these lands for thousands of years. While I am certain that Mr. McCullough does not excuse the abysmal treatment of Native Americans, that was not the purpose of this book. Besides which, it is unfair to apply today’s moral standards when judging the actions of individuals who lived two hundred and thirty years ago. As well, we should keep in mind that conflict was inevitable between nomadic, hunter-gather North American Indian tribes and pioneers of European heritage who wanted to build and settle into towns and cities and to cultivate the land.

The purpose of the book was to relate the remarkable story of how a handful of dedicated pioneers turned a wilderness of dense, dark forests into productive fields and orchards, how they harnessed rivers to build mills, established governments, schools, churches and hospitals, how they built towns and cities where a diverse people lived happily and in peace – and how integral to the whole are all of our separate parts.

History allows us to open windows, in this case onto the pioneer spirit that drove aspirant Americans to a new frontier. A reading of The Pioneers provides perspective of our collective pasts, permits an understanding of who we are, and offers clues as to where we might be heading.