Frederick Jackson Turner

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Frederick Jackson Turner
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Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the
Frontier in American History (1873) AMERICAN
HISTORY IN A LARGE DEGREE HAS BEEN A HISTORY OF
THE COLONIZATION OF THE WEST. Up to our own day
American history has been in a large degree the
history of the colonization of the Great West.
The existence of an area of free land, its
continuous recession, and the advance of American
settlement westward, explain American
development. p. 76. THE FRONTIER HAS SHAPED THE
AMERICAN CHARACTER American social development
has been continually beginning over again on the
frontier. This perennial, this fluidity of
American life, this expansion westward-with its
few opportunities, its continuous touch with the
simplicity of primitive society, furnish the
forces dominating American character. The true
point of view in the history of this nation is
not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West. p.
76.   The frontier is the line of most rapid and
effective Americanization. p. 77.   The frontier
individualism has from the beginning promoted
democracy. p. 83.   THE FRONTIER WAS THE
CRUCIBLE OF AMERICANIZATION. In the crucible of
the frontier the immigrants were Americanized,
liberated, and fused into a mixed race, English
in neither nationality nor characteristics. p.
82.
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Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the
Frontier in American History (1873) THE AMERICAN
FRONTIER HAS HELPED US UNITE AS A COUNTRY. The
effect of the Indian fronteir as a consolidating
agent in our history is important. The Indian was
a common danger, demanding united action. p. 80
THE AMERICAN FRONTIER HAS CULTIVATED AMERICAN
NATIONALISM. Nothing works for nationalism like
intercourse within the nation. Mobility of
population is death to localism, and the western
frontier worked irresistibly in unsettling
population. p. 83.
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THE AMERICAN INTELLECT OWES ITS STRIKING
CHARACTERISTICS TO THE FRONTIER. The result is
that to the frontier the American intellect owes
its striking characteristics. That coarseness and
strength combined with acuteness and
inquisitiveness that practical, inventive turn
of mind, quick to find expedients that masterful
grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic
but powerful to effect great ends that restless,
nervous energy that dominant individualism,
working for good and for evil, and withal that
buoyancy and exuberance which comes with
freedom--these are traits of the frontier, or
traits called out elsewhere because of the
existence of the frontier. Since the days when
the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of
the New World, America has been another name for
opportunity, and the people of the United States
have taken their tone from the incessant
expansion which has not only been open but has
even been forced upon them. p. 85.
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THE FRONTIER IS GONE. And now, four centuries
from the discovery of America, at the end of a
hundred years of life under the Constitution, the
frontier has gone, and with its going has closed
the first period of American history. p.
85.   He would be a rash prophet who should
assert that the expansive character of American
life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been
its dominant fact, and, unless this training has
no effect upon a people, the American energy will
continually demand a wider field for its
exercise. But never again will such gifts of free
land offer themselves. p. 85.
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Cowboys eating dinner on the range. A typical
chuckwagon, like the one shown here, carried
potatoes, beans, bacon, dried fruit, cornmeal,
coffee and canned goods. (Library of Congress)
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The starting line for the first Oklahoma Land
Rush, April 22, 1889.
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Homesteaders photographed in the 1880's by
Solomon Butcher in Custer County, Nebraska.
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Exodusters waiting for a steamboat to carry them
westward in the late 1870's. (Library of
Congress.)
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Homesteader Omer Yern and family photographed by
Solomon Butcher in Custer Country, Nebraska,
1886. (Courtesy Nebraska State Historical
Society.)
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David Hilton and family pose for homestead
photographer Solomon Butcher, showing off their
prize possession, a pump organ. Butcher noted
that Mrs. Hilton insisted on having the organ
hauled into the yard, so her family portrait
would not reveal that the Hilton's still lived in
a sod house.
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Cover of The Beef Bonanza How to Get Rich on the
Plains, by Gen. James. S. Brisbin, one of the
books that helped fuel the cattle boom of the
early 1880's. (Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University.)
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Rath Wright's buffalo hide yard, showing 40,000
buffalo hides baled for shipment. Dodge City,
Kansas, 1878.
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