Wilderness at Dawn: The Settling of the North American Continent

by Ted Morgan

This is the biggest, grandest, most sprawling epic ever told, filled with battles and hardship, courage, determination, daring voyages into the unknown, and eye-opening discoveries.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of FDR, Winston Churchill, and Somerset Maugham, Wilderness At Dawn is the sprawling, roughhouse epic of the unsung heroes, heroines, and rogues who tamed the rugged continent that became our country.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, World History, Geography, Westerns, Native American

544 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Born Saint-Charles Armand Gabriel de Gramont*, he used the name Sanche de Gramont as his byline (and also on his books) during the early part of his career. He worked as a journalist for many years, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for local reporting written under pressure of a deadline. He first came to the United States in 1937, and became a naturalized citizen in February 1977, at which time he had his name legally changed to Ted Morgan. He was a National Book Award finalist in 1982 for Maugham: A Biography.


*His father was a military pilot who died in an accident in 1943, at which point he inherited the title "Comte de Gramont". He was properly styled "Saint-Charles Armand Gabriel, Comte de Gramont" until he renounced his title upon becoming a U.S. citizen in 1977.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“[F]or a transitory enchanted moment, man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an esthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder…”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“As night fell, and the sun dropped behind green meadows, its light glowing red in the sky, a range of hills cast shadows on the Father of Rivers, and on the tiny figures in their canoes, Marquette a speck of black in his cassock. Could he and Joliet have any idea of the vastness of the area they had acquired for France? Could they have even begun to imagine the watershed, with thirty-five thousand miles of navigable waters converging into one…?”
- Ted Morgan, Wilderness at Dawn


I can’t say that Ted Morgan’s Wilderness at Dawn, originally published in 1993, flew under my radar. It was never on my radar. Until I saw it reviewed by a friend here on Goodreads, I never knew it existed at all. Immediately, though, I was drawn to it. I like ambitious projects, and this – the first of two volumes – fits that bill. It weighs in at nearly 500 pages of text, and covers the settling of North America, from roughly the end of the Pleistocene to the signing of the United States Constitution. This kind of scope appealed to me.

Nevertheless, I did not know exactly what I was getting into. As a result, I had extremely tempered expectations. That is probably why I liked this so much.

Wilderness at Dawn takes a bottom-up approach to history. While most historians today at least attempt to give us some voices of the common man and woman (the “great man” theory of history being out of vogue), Morgan relies on lesser-known voices almost exclusively. This is anecdotal history (done well, I might add), whereby historical movements are related through personal experiences.

Morgan structures his book by dividing it into four sections. Part one begins with the Ice Age, the Bering Land Bridge, and North America’s earliest inhabitants. This flows into the early days of European exploration, with the Spanish and French making their continental inroads. In part two, the English enter the picture, and the geographic scope narrows, mostly ignoring the Spanish and focusing on the eastern seaboard. Part three covers the long French retreat, culminating in the French and Indian War. The final section is devoted to the rise of the Americans, and what that meant for the Indian tribes who no longer had other European powers with whom to ally themselves.

Within each of these four sections, Morgan has further subdivided the subject into chapters devoted to specific parts of North America. There is, for example, a chapter on Jamestown, a chapter on the Chesapeake frontier, a chapter on the Quaker frontier, etc. Within each of these chapters, he typically finds an inveterate scribbler or diarist or traveler to use as a guide to the location.

Despite being twenty-five years old, Wilderness at Dawn has an inclusive sensibility. By sheer dint of the fact that Morgan is relying on people who left written records, there is a bias in narrators. Accordingly, most of the voices are white men, and even though they are ordinary, they are also – by their literary skills alone – closer to extraordinary.

(Barbara Tuchman noted this difficulty when she wrote A Distant Mirror. It is hard to find the voice of an average person, because an average person in those times was not leaving a written record. Unlike today, of course, where everyone in the world can record every aspect of their life, and update it continuously. I once told a friend that there were more pictures of his dinner on Facebook than there were photographs of Abraham Lincoln. He terminated our online connection).

Still, Morgan does his best, and does highlight certain lesser-known figures, such as the half-Scot, half-Creek leader Alexander McGillivray, and the slave Caesar, who spent his whole life on a Hudson River estate. When he died – at the age of 115 – he was still enslaved.

The settling – or conquest, or taking – of North America was obviously not a smooth and peaceful process.

Three European powers settled in different parts of the continent and pieced together a sense of its geography, a little like blind men describing an elephant. The Spanish saw that there was a low coastal plain around the Gulf of Mexico and that a mighty river emptied into the gulf. They saw that Florida was not an island and that the Mexican sierras continued north into the Rockies. The French moved into the heart of the continent from Canada by discovering the water route that linked the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. The British groped their way along the Atlantic coastline from Maine to Georgia and advanced westward as far as the barrier of the Appalachian highlands.

Mix well these ingredients: three expansionist European powers, a native people refusing subjugation, and a population of slaves brought against their will from West Africa. The result? A recipe for strife.

Morgan covers these sometimes tragic, sometimes violent, oftentimes adventurous events in an enjoyably readable manner. Early on (as in the first couple pages), Morgan dives into an extended sports metaphor comparing the mindsets of people who lived on the frontier (football fans) with those who lived in the hinterlands (baseball fans). Upon reading this quirky riff, it occurred to me that Morgan has never watched a baseball game or a football game. Still, I appreciated this idiosyncratic opening gambit.

Wilderness at Dawn is replete with moments like this. There are numerous passages brimming with wit and evocation. For instance, in describing the Puritans:

It was a class-conscious frontier, discriminatory and undemocratic. The seating plan of the church was based on the age, estate, and dignity of the townspeople, with everyone jockeying for better pew position. It was a frontier where not the tiniest green sprout of individualism could grow, and where the formerly oppressed rather quickly adopted the methods of their oppressors. In Boston, the Puritans were soon cutting off dissidents’ ears and branding them, as had been done to the Puritans themselves in England.

The tale told in Wilderness at Dawn has been told many times before, in many different ways. This separates itself by living up to its promise to present a sweeping epic through intimate moments. When you have finished this, you are not going to remember future president George Washington tramping through the forest to deliver a diplomatic message to the French, starting a chain of events that would lead to a world war. Instead, you will remember the brashly opinionated Englishman William Byrd II, who filled his journal not with the profound, but the mundane. He writes not as a statesman or general or king, but as a man who would fight with his wife in the morning, followed by a “flourish” in the afternoon.

Afternoon flourish?

Now that’s the kind of history I can get behind.

[Breck Baumann · Rating 5 out of 5]

With Wilderness At Dawn, Ted Morgan has quite successfully achieved the momentous task of piecing together each and every culture and civilization that has stepped into the wilds of what would become North America. While there are numerous similar histories of the "European colonization" of the Americas, Morgan's approach is unique in that he focuses on both popular, infamous, legendary, and ordinary folk and settler alike—from explorers to ship hands, conquistadors to squaws, and governors to cowbow-esque 'regulators.' Seamlessly reeling the reader in with the opening chapters, he chronicles a fascinating take on the prehistoric settling of the continent, while eventually moving on to such settings as the frontier, hinterlands, and lawless periods of various colonies in their early years:

Specializing in defending habitual criminals, Macnemara was popular with his fellow lawyers. He was the sort who would always stand a drink and crack a joke. In 17 10, however, he killed a Quaker boatman in a quarrel. Indicted for murder, he entered a plea of "homicide by chance medley," meaning in the heat of battle. As punishment, he was branded on the right hand with the letter "M." Incredibly, he was reinstated as a lawyer, which attests to the serious shortage in the colony. In 17 12, he was charged with "attempted buggery," which he plea-bargained down to simple assault. He got off with a fine of fifteen hundred pounds of tobacco. In 1720, he died of natural causes. On a copy of his will, which was found in the probate record, someone had written in the margin: "A most troublesome and seditious person."

What sets Morgan's work apart from other macro-histories is the fact that he leaves out all of the typical facts and fluff of known major events—briefly mentioning a battle of the French & Indian War or American Revolution—and instead providing insightful commentary on a pivotal moment that went under the radar. Indeed, he follows a colonial wife's discovering of blue dye from indigo, the steps of planting and harvesting rice that would establish the economies of the Southern colonies, a fugitive slave's revolt against a plantation, and such matters as the districting of the Northwest Ordinance's township system for an infant United States. As pleasant surprises go, this was an underrated and unique history that memorably catches all glimpses, resources, and foundations of the settling of North America.

[Jeff Mauch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always been fascinated by the age of exploration, particularly the settling of the North American continent, and while this is a fairly comprehensive telling of what happened from the first people to come after the ice ages up to the full settling of the continent, there was just a bit too many anecdotes and side stories for me in this work. I really liked Morgan's approach here both chronologically and that he covers so many forays into the continent that don't even get mentioned in most history courses. I think far too often the focus is solely on Jamestown, the puritans, the pilgrims, and maybe mention of St Augustine and New Amsterdam, but these are just a few of many interesting treks into North America that happened from the 1500s to the 1700s. It's far too often boiled down to Columbus, a few settlements on the East Coast and then skipping straight up to the Revolutionary war. Morgan really does have a pretty comprehensive account here, I just feel that some of the impertinent information got in the way in a handful of the chapters, making the book longer and dragging it out a bit. I think this is just a personal taste thing here, you're either going to enjoy these more personal stories of early settling or you aren't, they just were too much for me. Overall this is a solid book and still holds up fairly well for being written in the 1990s, it's clear Morgan's sources were solid and well researched.

[Tami · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another amazing well researched history book of North America. Lots of interesting tidbits and of course political craziness. I truly am in awe how this country came together forming a whole new set of rules and laws for the citizens to abide by when coming from three major European countries. They had to learn to mesh, not only with different religions but with taming the wilderness, something they had never experienced before. Then add to that, dealing with such unknowns as the native Americans. Some were friendly some not so much. Some wanted to convert the natives to Christianity and others just wanted to annihilate them. It's a complex nation with a complicated start and the irony of freedom for all but yet slavery was rampant. It was a different time and a different mindset.
I learned a ton but won't bore you with those facts but I did like that Mr. Morgan points out in his introduction a metaphor of this country and that's football. It's a frontier game - Each side is trying to obtain land or yardage just like the westward movement. First downs are measured with chains, just like the surveyors of old who walked this country with chains, measuring and plotting land. How about the names of the teams - Patriots, Cowboys, Broncos, Forty-Niners, Chiefs, Raiders, Buffalo Bills, Oilers and Redskins - all various stages of frontier life. Football is played in all kinds of weather, just like the frontiersmen pushing westward. It's a brutal game and so was the conquering of this country.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed it. Readable. Quite a few items/notable people in US history that I had never read about.

[Greenfont · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who knows nothing about the formation of America. I was in learning about the process that led to the creation of the US and also to the commonly perceived 'American' identity. Ted Morgan provides a very detailed account of the events leading up to the late nineteenth century as others have mentioned. Some may complain about the large amount of dates, numbers, and other accounts that could be seen as 'uninteresting' however good history focuses on what matters and not what is interesting. Dry History is often well done History.

Morgan focuses on many different and often concurrent events that created the early identities and political landscapes which ultimately created and developed the United States. Although chapters are dedicated to Spanish, French, and English forays into the new world; Morgan will often interject relevant events surrounding these different players. Perhaps most interesting for myself is the significant running attention surrounding the interplay of Native Americans, their view and experience. Rather than simply a people crushed between many forces, Morgan through his narrative asserts that that whilst ultimately the Native Americans' way of life, culture, and land were to change forever; there was often a high degree of interaction in which the Native American actions affected the colonies substantially. From unfriendly relations checking growth in the early days to the ongoing trade relations such as those with the French (beaver trade), concluding in the participation of Native Tribes in key historical conflicts such as the French-Britsh war and the War of Independence which followed not long after; preceded by native-colonial interaction in smaller events throughout the four hundred year time period. Native Americans whilst destined to lose land, culture, and knowledge to the growing settlers; definitely had agency enough to leave their own mark.

I do agree however with some of the prior criticisms of this work in that its scope despite Morgan's intention of writing a '[i]story of men and women, red, black and, white[/i]', the chapters concerning the Black Frontier are scant and aren't really focused on Black experience. Women are omitted for the most part outside of references to wives and daughters, and a few occasional anecdotes, bar one example. Although Morgan attempts to evade a '[i]Great Man[i]' history; the social history scope is limited but I feel this is likely due to length constraints like any book has.
Perhaps this is why the civil war is practically absent from the overall account.

In closing I would definitely recommend this work as a thoroughly researched and detailed account of the settling of America in a chronological way that isn't a two dimensional biography of individuals or one sided towards those that settled. It gives a good sense of events from which a reader may be able to hypothesize how the American identity and culture has formed into what it is today. But Morgan doesn't I feel succeed in providing a clear or explicit explanation of how an American ethos came into being. On the other hand I would disagree with the other reviews in that a 'conclusion' is not provided, asides from the aforementioned point the events conclude themselves; a historical account of the events doesn't need a narrative conclusion in the way that a fictional work does.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clocking in at almost 500 pages, this voluminous book begins with the earliest civilizations of the North American continent and gliding through to the era of European explorers culminating into the nascent American nationhood. It is easy (and commonplace) to direct attention to the Pilgrims at Jamestown as the earliest colonizers of North America, but to do so is at best, sheer folly and at worst, historically inaccurate. The author correctly details the Spanish conquistadors as having predated the English émigrés and meticulously details their journeys, perils, and overall effects of the inhabitants. From there we are introduced to the French explorers by way of the interior of Canada and their trading ways. The reader is then introduced (and reminded) of the English settlers hugging the Atlantic seaboard, and from there the story gets immortalized by what we recall being taught in school; only, the author spends a much more generous time laying out the framework of the new settlement, its interlacing with the relationships with the natives and the conflicts that ensued. The Dutch are even given a cameo spotlight and of their importance to the New York area.

The book from there leads up to the events prior to, and during, the French and Indian War and all the intricacies involved with competing loyalties and allegiances from world powers and natives alike. The breadth and depth explored of this period spares no minor detail, and at times, plods along giving the reader a fuller perspective that what most are acquainted with.

The most famous period, the American Revolution, however, does not get the same treatment. It is addressed, but the focus is still on the continent on whole and the direction the newly-formed country was headed into. Although not as excited as a subject as historical warfare, the topic of surveying land is detailed and is to be applauded for its importance in creating boundaries of the new country.

All in all, this is a very good read which will introduce the reader to early North American history that is not often taught at the school level, or given its due significance to how the Republic was founded and what it has become, warts and all.

The book is a tad long, which at times does, as mentioned above, plod along at times, but the wealth of information has the advantage of providing a much needed foundation of this North American continent. In light of this, I would be inclined to recommend this book slightly more to history fans and aficionados than the casual reader. Overall, an invigorating study of this early period of time and enlightening.

[Art · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wilderness at Dawn provides a good overview of how north America came to be inhabited and how it was explored and settled. It takes you from "The First Fifteen Thousand Years" up to the point where lands purchased via the Louisiana Purchase were being surveyed and settled. This is my first reading of anything by Ted Morgan and I found the book approachable and very readable. The most enjoyable parts of the book were the anecdotes....whether it was the initial encounters of native Americans with the conquistadors (no wonder the "Indians" grew to distrust Caucasians), the daily life of the early European settlers up and down the East coast (brutally challenging) or the adventures of those who surveyed all the land. The sheer vastness of this country and the opportunities it presented formed out national character....including a willingness to run rough-shod over races of people who could be either used to our benefit or who "stood in the way"......the laws were made up as we went and the country became civilized only as enough people arrived to warrant some sort of order.....otherwise it was a very wide open society with sinners and saints sharing borders....each doing their best to survive, in spite of each other and sometimes at each other's expense. That having been said, parts of the book were tedious reading and it could have been 50-75 pages shorter.

[Sophia Tseng · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the amount of time it took me to read this book, I cannot recommend it enough. This is one of the unique American history books that starts with basically the dawn of time, including how man came over the Alaskan land bridge 15000 years ago, and the ancient civilizations they formed. So few people know that the first Europeans to make landfall here were actually the Spanish. Or that there are so many small influential events in history that crafted the foundation of the nation. It was never a certain thing, between the infighting of the French, British, Spanish and native Americans it was a series of small miracles that allowed the country to be founded and gained through varying frontiers.

Surprisingly little is mentioned about the formation of the continental congress, ratification of the constitution and so forth, and as far as I’m concerned this is fine, there are so many books written about those topics. Instead there are fascinating stories here about the character of the settlements that made the original states, and deep insight into how additional states were added through surveying, parceling of land, land grants, into a nation of landowners.

This is truly a fascinating read!

[Raul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most enjoyable book. For me it takes a different point of view than any history book I have read before. Full of unique observations and details that I never read before, new and uniquely viewed in a new perspective and, to me, new information on what I thought I already knew. I thank Mr Morgan for this special gift he shares.

[Eve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice narrative of the backstory for North America, staring with Bering Land Bridge Crossing. It fill in many American history plot holes, like how the land was divided, taking readers up until 1946, when all the contiguous continental territory was allotted. To be sure, readers will find many dated aspects to how this classic was written.

[Ed Howe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief and sometimes amusing history of the settling of North America from the point of view of America and some reference to the other European countries and native peoples in what would eventually become the United States.

[Phillip Frye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greatly enjoyed this book. My only criticism is that for a book called, "Settling of the North American Continent" it has little information about Mexico or Canada. It deal primarily with the settling of the United States of America.

[Frederick Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book sometime in the 1990s and kept it on my bookshelf. It was very well written and enjoyable.

[LA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview. Dated but solid information.

[Laurent Reinhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just before reading this book, I read its sequel A Shovel of Stars: The Making of the American West - 1800 to the Present. Though at times disjointed, Morgan's love for his adopted homeland shines through as he chronicles the settling of North America, interwoven with a variety of often colorful firsthand accounts. As in the sequel, he doesn't blindly glorify American history nor does he shy away from colloquialisms or gritty details. An enjoyable and informative narrative overall.

"On La Isabela, Columbus the successful navigator became Columbus the inept island governor. Giving in to public pressure, he began asking the natives for a gold tribute, and initiated a system of forced Indian labor to help the settlers work their lands, just as the Spanish had done in the Canaries. Columbus still believed, or forced himself to believe, that he was in Asia; his career, his title, his coat of arms, and his cash rewards still depended on it." P52

"When the final struggle came in the eighteenth century, the English had a compact area of dense settlement with a population of two million, whereas the French had Quebec on the St. Lawrence and New Orleans on the Mississippi, like the handles on a two-thousand-mile-long jump rope, with the wilderness in between and a population of less than one hundred thousand." p100

"Coexisting in the lawless Piedmont with the planters and family men who made up Woodmason's congregations was a backcountry underworld that took advantage of the absence of government. They included squatters, runaway debtors, idlers, gamblers, mulattos, crackers, and others too lazy to be outright criminals: malingerers, poachers, chicken rather than horse thieves, marginal men." p357

[Ushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first part of a two-book series about the settlement of North America (really, the United States; Canada gets a few mentions in passing), ending in 1799. The first chapter, like the first chapter in any middle school American history textbook, is about the Indians; in the second chapter, Columbus makes an appearance, and then Cabot, de Soto, Coronado, Cartier, La Salle, Washington. In addition to these, many nonfamous people appear, including the lawyer who inserted the last-minute clause in the Northwest Ordinance prohibiting slavery, the Caribbean-born planter's daughter who introduced the cultivation of indigo to the United States, the last slave in New York who died at age 115 in 1852, and many more. My favorite is a late 17th - early 18th century rich tobacco planter and slaveowner from Virginia, who knew three ancient and three living foreign languages, owned a library of 3600 volumes, and wrote a diary about every meal he ate and every occasion on which he "rogered" and "flourished" his hysterical wife. In 1728 he was involved in the surveying of the Virginia - North Carolina boundary; as the surveyors slowly moved west, they drank everything that burns and screwed everything that moves, white or Indian; after a visit to an Indian village, one surveyor had traces of Indian body paint on his ruffles.

[Chris Laskey · Rating 5 out of 5]

2nd Read. This is an excellent overview of the settling of North America - loads of interesting and different elements of history - especially those stories not often heard or forgotten. A great primer that should and hopefully would inspire further research into those sections that interest. The author especially aims to keep perspective on the time periods rarely engages in cultural or modern superiority to the people and times before. This is important as recent histories tend to heap big scorn on those times. Granted the European atrocities and later American atrocities aren't ignored but they are given a proper placement in the mindset of those generations. All sides are given their perspective as well. This work should be in every school

[Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

My two biggest complaints about this book is the lack of devoted material to the slave trade and the flow of story lines. I bought the book expecting to read more from the slaves perspectives, even the "Black Frontier" section is not convincing in my opinion, especially given the primary sources available. Even though the book lacked black perspectives, I continued reading the material and found it very difficult to do so, largely due to the writer's style. Ted Morgan is obviously a great historian, however this book is more of a survey of the continental settlement and not for everyone.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought what the book did best were the numerous short portrayals of different people in different times and places. Whether British tourists, Southern belles, or surveyors, the lives of these people lend a vibrant vitality to the social scenes of the times. However, the book falls apart some when it comes to conclusions and the overarching picture. I felt that sometimes a good anecdote would be tarnished by some dumb statement at the end, and that Morgan's attempts to construct conclusions were quite lacking.

[korey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, I broke my reading rule with this book. I couldn't finish it. It was just getting too monotonous with all the names and dates, and blah blah blah. The first part of the book was very interesting, reading about the first explorers to the US and then about the first colonist and the peoples that made up the first colonies. Also, the section on the French was really interesting since it realated to Quebec. But after that, I just lost interest and had to put it down. Oh well.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly good account of the settling of the North American continent. Author used a lot of quotes from personal journals and told a few anecdotes. At times, he seemed to lose the thread of the chapter and sometimes the quotes seemed not-too-terribly relevant, but it was still good reading, especially the parts about Jamestown and the other early settlements. Amusing comparison of football and baseball on pates 14-15 and how they symbolize the frontier and the hinterland.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

AP US History summer book. Opening chapters on early North American people and first explorers to reach America are riveting. Chapters dealing with each of the original 13 colonies are also well-written. Some later chapters get a little monotonous, especially the one on surveyors. Study questions will be posted online in reading group over summer.

[Kathy Halsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this telling of early American settlement. As an official old person, I have forgotten quite a bit of this stuff. Morgan did a nice job of connecting American events with events in the rest of the world. So much war and conquest in our history.... As an old "hippie" I keep hoping and waiting for mankind to get smarter in settling disputes. :)

[Richard Kravitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good History, a bit slow.

[Whiskey Tango]

This book shaped my understanding of human geography. It reminds readers that America was settled by several different cultures and countries. It’s a triumph of storytelling about the different frontiers of America. We were often taught American history as going from East to West and the British settlement as being the preeminent story. Ted Morgan’s book emphasizes the fact there were multiple settlements and multiple beginnings of American history. He spends the early chapters talking about American Indians and their presence on the landscape before European settlement (e.g., the Cahokia Mounds along the Mississippi River near St Louis in Illinois and Mesa Verde in Colorado). But the Spanish presence, the French presence, and the Dutch—as well as the English later on—all play a major role in the settlement of North America.

Ted Morgan has a gift for telling stories within stories. When he’s talking about the Spanish settlement in New Mexico, he will take a diversion, talking about the revolt of the Pueblo Indians in 1680 — the only successful Native American revolt against colonial rule in history.

This book is told from the people’s viewpoint. One even calls it a ‘new approach to American history.’

I think that’s an important point to make. History is not inevitable. It is based on the decisions and choices that people make. Morgan is very skillful at identifying those key decisions and key choices that people made that really affected the outcome. Sometimes we read back into history and say, ‘it had to turn out this way,’ but it’s not as clear to the people who are actually living in that moment, how history is going to unfold.