In 1893 when Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his famous essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” the United States had recently fulfilled the goal of Manifest Destiny by finishing its conquest of the West. Westward expansion had been an integral aspect of the American identity and its citizens were left wondering what would continue to propel the United States into the future. At the same time, people were also looking back and trying to decide how exactly the frontier had shaped American life. The common belief was that the United States’ conquest of the West was glorious and peaceful and Turner’s essay serves as a perfect example of this line of thinking. For Turner and his ilk, the West was an uninhabited area that was free for the taking. By taking this land, the settlers created the American identity – an identity that stood for rugged individualism and strength. While the West certainly helped shape America, this view often overlooked the brutal nature of America’s march to the West. Turner’s influential essay only helped to cement the myth of benevolent Western settlement into American history. In his second paragraph, Turner makes an important claim that is the guiding idea throughout the rest of the essay. He claims that when “the nation has expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it has conquered. But in the case of the United States we have a different phenomenon.” When other nations conquer people and places, the conquerors are forced to assimilate those new places into their existing society. The American tradition is different, however, because the United States did not have to conquer anything. The West was empty, which allowed Americans to settle the territory free from... ... middle of paper ... ...ed on Westward expansion, then it is none too appealing to realize that Westward expansion meant the brutal conquest of the native population. To come to grips with this reality, Native Americans were pushed out the conscious of Americans. Westward expansion is much more palpable if the West is viewed as free, open land that was ripe for the taking – as described in Turner’s thesis. When Americans were finally confronted with the fact that Native Americans had occupied the land, the Natives were depicted as brutes that were not capable of correctly taking care of the land. Overtime, however, historians have been able to modify Turner’s thesis into a more balanced argument. Turner’s thesis, however, remains important due to the fact that it is such a clear representation of American attitudes about the frontier and Westward expansion at the turn of the century.
In Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay, he talked about how he thought the West was where true American character was formed and that the West was the birthplace of democracy. However, in my perspective I don’t only feel that Turner was inaccurate in his analysis, but also very racist and selfish. I believe that Turner wanted to justify why taking over the West would be so necessary and beneficial to Americans. He stated several things in his essay that were obviously undermined by many primary sources in Hollitz’s book. At the time Americans took on the ideology of Manifest Destiny, which basically was the belief that Americans were destined to expand from coast to coast in North America despite the fact that there was people already occupying land on
...came a long way from its liberal and independent country, the Manifest Destiny era and Imperialism era changing it to a more power-stricken individual that was becoming the thing that is hated from before, Great Britain. The Manifest Destiny era and the Imperialism era have their similarities, just like a lot of eras that succeed each other, but they also have their differences. Imperialism is a more glorified and power-hungry elder to its younger and more innocent Manifest Destiny. It was only a matter of time before America turned into what it hated, but it was up to itself to fix its behavior and become something good, and not simply self-centered and materialistic in terms of land area and world power. The Manifest Destiny and Imperialism exemplified this change and made it apparent that two eras that were similar, yet so different, could change a whole nation.
Rich with exotic scenes and characters, the westward expansion of the United States has long intrigued the storyteller. Often, inspired by this setting, he has chosen to write of gunfights and Indian raids, or of idealistic pioneers battling nature on the frontier’s edge. But there exists a far darker epic of the high plains and the dry deserts: that of a nation whose drastic expansion rent it apart. The grandiose and decisive policies of American presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Polk saw the vast expanses west of the Mississippi River absorbed into the Union, extending the nation west to the Pacific and south to Mexico. Suddenly enlarged, the United States found itself beset by social, economic, and moral quandaries pertaining to the administration of its newfound territories. Unable to resolve these disputes, the nation split into factions formed along preexisting regional and political divides, which led ultimately to the violent and brutal bloodbath of civil war. The roots of this disastrous internecine conflict originated in the expansionistic strategies of both Jefferson and Polk, clearly indicting their actions as damaging to the nation they governed.
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
This historical document, The Frontier as a Place of Conquest and Conflict, focuses on the 19th Century in which a large portion of society faced discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Its author, Patricia N. Limerick, describes the differences seen between the group of Anglo Americans and the minority groups of Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics Americans and African Americans. It is noted that through this document, Limerick exposes us to the laws and restrictions imposed in addition to the men and women who endured and fought against the oppression in many different ways. Overall, the author, Limerick, exposes the readers to the effects that the growth and over flow of people from the Eastern on to the Western states
In order for America to be more independent from England, they needed to learn to become more self reliant. But to do this, the country needed to be more connected, both physically, economically, and nationally. They needed to be physically connected to be able to transport goods and other resources from one part of the country to another. To fulfil this, many long-term developments, such as internal improvements and railroad legislation, began as a result of the frontier. These changes built a community where the country could be economically connected as well: the roads, railroads, canals, etc. allowed resources to be able to transported across the country and begin exporting overseas. This gave America national recognition, since they needed to be united in order to compete with the rest of the world. Turner also argued that this connection between the country, and the process of “cross fertilization of ideas and institutions” that came with uniting the country allowed for nationalism since “Nothing works for nationalism like intercourse within the nation”. The frontier truly forced Americans to develop a more connected and independent country. The frontier pushed for many government actions, such as the acquisition of Louisiana. The disposition of public lands, according to Turner, was a “third important subject of national legislation influenced by the frontier”. Additionally, because the society on which the frontier was developed was so primal, the government was needed to regulate the nature of tariffs, land and internal improvements, politics, slavery, economics, and anything other issue that was needed to be taken care of in order to keep and preserve the independence of the country. The government, therefore, allowed the country to feel a stronger sense of nationalism because of the stability that it brought to the frontier and the rest of
The United States saw its territory more than double in the first three decades of the 19th century. Bursting with nationalist fervor, an insatiable desire for more land, and a rapidly increasing population, the western frontiers of the United States would not remain east of the Mississippi. The eventual spread of the American nation beyond the Mississippi into Native and French land, referred to as “Manifest Destiny” by John O’Sullivan, was rationalized as a realization of their God given duty. The Louisiana Purchase set the precedent for unrestricted westward expansion in America, and allowed for others to follow in his footsteps. Characterized by racist overtones, a lack of the “consent of the governed, and ethnic cleansing, there is no valid distinction between this American continental expansion and the international expansion sought by Europe in the late 19th and 20th centuries, and is clearly imperialist in nature.
While the US may have prided themselves in the fact that we didn’t practice imperialism or colonialism, and we weren’t an Empire country, the actions conquering land in our own country may seem to rebuff that claim. In the 19th century, the West was a synonym for the frontier, or edge of current settlement. Early on this was anything west of just about Mississippi, but beyond that is where the Indian tribes had been pushed to live, and promised land in Oklahoma after policies like Indian removal, and events like the Trail of Tears. Indian’s brief feeling of security and this promise were shattered when American’s believed it was their god given right, their Manifest Destiny, to conquer the West; they began to settle the land, and relatively quickly. And with this move, cam...
Americas need to find a new frontier has long been a part of the American identity. Finding the new was important to a growing country in the early 1800’s. St. Jean de Crèvecoeur described the American as “a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions” (Crèvecoeur 3). Manifest Destiny, a term popularized by John O’Sullivan, describes the social push by the United States to span its boarders from east coast to west coast. This would indoctrinate people all across the U.S. in the “American Way”, which was held by Americans as the right and just way to live. Fredrick Jackson Turner describes in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” the way that the frontier takes a modern man and acutely regresses him into a savage, and then as the settlement moves forth, the now-savage man is slowly and steadily progressed back into a modern American; and thus the frontier moves on. Turner writes, “As successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciations, so each fronti...
All in all, the treatment of the American Indian during the expansion westward was cruel and harsh. Thus, A Century of Dishonor conveys the truth about the frontier more so than the frontier thesis. Additionally, the common beliefs about the old west are founded in lies and deception. The despair that comes with knowing that people will continue to believe in these false ideas is epitomized by Terrell’s statement, “Perhaps nothing will ever penetrate the haze of puerile romance with which writers unfaithful to their profession and to themselves have surrounded the westerner who made a living in the saddle” (Terrell 182).
Many of Turner's arguments, however, exhibit serious shortcomings when they are examined more closely. One of the most critical is his failure to take account of the First Nations as a major player in colonial history and instead reducing their role to that of mere resistance to English settlement. He also brushes aside the importance of the fur trade, even though it was a catalyst for intense commercial rivalry for the New England colonies, New France, and the Indians themselves. Finally, Turner's characterization of the frontier as a purely western and English phenomenon completely ignores the frontier faced by the French colonists on their western and southern borders, as well as the northern frontier of English colonies like New York and Massachusetts. At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. As successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciations, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics.
Turner fails to realize the extent to which Native Americans existed in the ‘Wilderness’ of the Americas before the frontier began to advance. Turner’s thesis relies on the idea that “easterners … in moving to the wild unsettled lands of the frontier, shed the trappings of civilization … and by reinfused themselves with a vigor, an independence, and a creativity that the source of American democracy and national character.” (Cronon) While this idea seems like a satisfying theory of why Americans are unique, it relies on the notion that the Frontier was “an area of free land,” which is not the case, undermining the the...
There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough knowledge of what came before the white settlers; “I came to believe that the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” .
The western frontier is full of many experiences that changed the frontier. Each significant event has an important role on the shaping of society and way it influenced a new nation. Each author brought a new perspective and thought process to the western experience which either contradicted Turner or supported his theories. The frontier ideas that interested me include topics such as trading frontier, farming frontier, nationality and government, and the neglecting of women.
...Thesis in 1893, the process of the Frontier is still a predominant force in American culture. The Frontier Thesis is less about settling the West than it is about Americans adapting to their environment in order to capitalize on resources. Because of this, the new Frontier lies in cyberspace. In cyberspace, Americans are changing their skills and personality traits in order to capitalize and utilize available resources for personal benefit. This process not only defined how the Frontier became civilized, but it also explained the development of the characteristics of the ideal American. In a response to their savage environment, settlers developed certain characteristics that are distinctly American. Because of this, the process of the West can be seen as a social evolution which helped to advance traits that are uniquely American – even in contemporary America.