Slavery

Throughout the book, McCullough portrays slavery as one of the most contentious and important topics which arose during the conception and settlement of Marietta, mainly due to the historical period during which those events took place.

At the end of the eighteenth century when the Reverend Manasseh Cutler was lobbying politicians in Congress to pass the Northwest Ordinance, most states were not only allowing the practice of slavery but actually profiting off of it, too. Yet, the Reverend understood that there were those among the rich and powerful in the country for whom the practice was repulsive – as it was to him, too, due to his views that all human beings were deserving of freedom and compassion. McCullough writes that “as was well understood…it was almost unimaginable that throughout a new territory as large as all of the thirteen states, there was to be no slavery” (29). The...