This is part five of a 10-part series of reflections on Eric Sloane’s book on the bicentennial, “The Spirits of ’76.” Each chapter covers a different spirit of America.
Of all the chapters in Eric Sloane’s 1973 book, “The Spirits of ’76,” his fifth chapter on pioneering is the most melancholy. He reflects on the hardships of life in the 18th and 19th centuries, including the strange and spectacular ways that people uprooted themselves to travel for months on end to find and make new homes in uncharted land for themselves, leaving all comforts behind.
