I always thought it would be wonderful to write a book like Our Town - Wilder’s great masterpiece about an American small town - but I would write about real people instead. Once I found out what he’d done and began reading about the people who went out and settled the land, I kept going back to my great hero Thornton Wilder. “I had never heard of Manasseh Cutler, which made me even more interested. “My first thought was, Whoa,” McCullough says. The ordinance included a stipulation that there would be absolute freedom of religion and free universal education, and that slavery would be forbidden. It didn’t take long for McCullough to be swept up in the story of one of Ohio University’s founding fathers: A Massachusetts minister, Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in persuading Congress to pass the Northwest Ordinance that opened the vast wilderness containing Ohio to Revolutionary War veterans and their families. When the celebrated author learned the university’s oldest building was called Cutler Hall, he was curious about the name. In 2004, as McCullough was preparing to deliver the commencement address at Ohio University, he decided to add a bit of campus history to his speech. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian never imagined a chance encounter with a clergyman who lived in the 18th century would lead to his new book about southeast Ohio. David McCullough is known for his comprehensive biographies of John Adams, Harry S.
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