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Frederick Jackson Turner The Significance Of The Frontier In American History Summary

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Frederick Jackson Turner

This paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze Frederick Jackson Turner. He was an American historian from Portage, Wisconsin that grew up in a middle class family. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1884, and acquired his Ph.D. in history at John Hopkins University in 1884. My goal is to examine Turner's essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History ." Turner's essay is a masterpiece of historical thought and sentiment, enhanced by analysis and critical thinking from a variety of different sources.
Frederick Jackson Turner's essay discusses the closing of the American western frontier, and what it means for the American people. The historical significance of the frontier movement …show more content…

In addition, he notes that initially, European colonists to America kept their own individuality and society, but striking out into the frontier changed European colonists into true Americans, who gave up their Pilgrim finery for coonskin caps and canoes. As a result, the colonists find themselves slowly adapting to their new environment, rather than adapting their environment to their old European lifestyles, which have no place is this new and wild land. He also discusses the demarcation between "savagery and civilization" that made the frontier so unsettling and yet alluring, and the key importance of westward expansion to our nation, even outweighing the importance of slavery in his …show more content…

Turner notes, "Before long the frontier created a demand for merchants. As it retreated from the coast it became less and less possible for England to bring her supplies directly to the consumer's wharfs, and carry away staple crops, and staple crops began to give way to diversified agriculture for a time." 4 Turner's evidence supports his points by then going into detail regarding his assertions, and citing evidence of other historians and statesmen as part of his arguments. For example, when he discusses America's lessening dependence on England, he cites the Governor of South Carolina and his assessment of the South's initial dependence on England for food and drink, and the growing dependence on American markets to supply their daily needs. Thus, Turner continually backs up his own thesis with the interpretations of other historians, experts, and citizens, thereby reinforcing his arguments and his ideas.
Turner's is quite convincing. His assessment of the American westward expansion as a vital part of our history is undeniable. He asserts, "The growth of nationalism and the evolution of American political institutions were dependent on the advance of the frontier," 5 and

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Gary Clayton Anderson is an American historian who is currently a professor at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK. He is focused mainly on the history of native people in the Great Plains and southwest region of the United States. Anderson received his bachelor’s degree from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, his master’s degree from the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, SD, and his Ph.D. from the University of Toledo in Toledo, OH. Along with the classes he teaches, Anderson travels around the country giving lectures about relations between Native Americans and white settlers and other related topics.

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Andrew Gendel Professor Coburn History 17A 22 October 2015 Response Paper Chapter eight in the book, Voices Of Freedom, we read into the years of 1790 through 1815. In the coming chapters we learn about the French Revolution (1792-93), but also skim past Judith Murray and the equality of sexes, George Washington’s farewell address, George Tucker on Gabriel’s rebellion, Mercy Otis Warren on religion and Virtue (1805), Tecumseh on Indians and lands (1810), Felix Grundy, and Battle Cry of the War Hawks (1811). Although chapter eight follows the process of the republic and securing it I find that through this chapter an argument that is most presented in chapter eight is that of Indian rights in the New America, the rise of colonization and the amelioration of Native ways. Tecumseh was a chief who refused to sign the Treaty of Greenville

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In writing A Voyage Long and Strange, Tony Horwitz’s goal is clear, to educate others on early America and debunk ignorant myths. Horwitz’s reason for wanting to achieve this goal is because of his own ignorance that he sees while at Plymouth Rock. “Expensively educated at a private school and university- a history major, no less!-I’d matriculated to middle age with a third grader’s grasp of early America.” Horwitz is disappointed in his own lack of knowledge of his home country, especially with his background history and decides not only to research America’s true beginnings, but to also follow the path of those who originally yearned to discover America.

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Faith Picotte History 310 (T-Th) Homework Ch. 8 1.Turner’s frontier thesis is deceptively draws and allure your inquisitive imagination into a grand scale visionary picture of settlements of specific regions, and the social societal processes. Americans realized the frontier formed and promoted a composite nationalist American society. The English dominated the coastal region. , later continental immigrants flowed towards the free lands of the frontier.

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Frederick Jackson Turner was a major figure among American historians who lived during the years between 1861 to 1932. His famous essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” was published in 1893 and he became known for his studious exploration of American history during the United States’ westward expansion. Frederick Turner stated in an interview that his interest in the study of American frontier’s past, because of his upbringing in Wisconsin which is a newly emerged state from its own trail-blazing past. Turner earned his master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and where he met a noteworthy teacher, Professor William Francis Allen, who guided him toward the study of history. Turner attended John Hopkins University

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Frederick Jackson Turner first spoke to an audience about the Turner Thesis during the 1893 Chicago World Fair. This event was the central ground of American superiority. Many different business groups of diverse backgrounds met to share new products, values and aspects of their culture. Turner stated in one of his speeches at an American Historians seminar that the american frontier or the desire to settle in an area of open and free land will always remain in effect. Due to the lack of land to expand in our continent, America would look overseas.

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The period after the civil war saw the United States of America economy transform to become a national economy and an industrial giant. The already existing industries quickly expanded and new ones emerged including steel manufacturing, electrical power, and petroleum refining. This period saw the rapid expansion of the railroad network which would subsequently connect even the remote parts of the country into the national economic grid essentially transforming the regional markets into a national economy. Following the economic expansion, the American society was greatly transformed creating a new crop of wealthy individuals and a dynamic middle class. Additionally, there was a vast expansion of blue collar job opportunities which quickly

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The Indian fighting frontier was the longest in Davidson County’s history and this impacted the population. In the next fifteen years, the total population grew from three thousand six hundred and thirteen to fifteen thousand six hundred and eight. The slave population grew from nine hundred and ninety two to six thousand three hundred and five, which is extreme. The boundaries of black existence continued to be determined by masters. “Frontier society was almost by definition individualistic, lacking in community agencies: a fixed leadership, churches, schools, and police”.

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frontier to Turner was the promotion of democracy. He believed that the people were strong in individualism as farming communities were settled, railroads were created, and the nation’s dependence on England for trade lessened. George Appo, who was born into a poor family and lost both of his parents to death or jail, began working as a pickpocket in the 1860s and used his money to buy opium. He would attend opium dens, where many different classes and genders gathered to smoke. Appo participating in organized crime because he had to make his own money in order to survive, and had a much higher sense of freedom than most boys his age.

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During the “Gilded Age” period of American history, development of the Trans-Mississippi west was crucial to fulfilling the American dream of manifest destiny and creating an identity which was distinctly American. Since the west is often associated with rugged pioneers and frontiersmen, there is an overarching idea of hardy American individualism. However, although these settlers were brave and helped to make America into what it is today, they heavily relied on federal support. It would not have been possible for white Americans to settle the Trans-Mississippi west without the US government removing Native Americans from their lands and placing them on reservations, offering land grants and incentives for people to move out west, and the

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The contrasts between the American West and East in the nineteenth century range from a new start to the adventure of the living in the Wild West. The east had become overcrowded and did not allow much opportunity for people of lesser wealth. “In 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner gave a celebrated lecture, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in which he argued that on the western frontier the distinctive qualities of American culture were forged: individual freedom, political democracy, and economic mobility. The West, he added, acted as a “safety

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The annexation of Texas occurred in the early 1800’s. American colonists were expanding into the Northern sector of the Rio Grande, which developed the need for Texas to become a part of the United States. In the South, the people supported the drive toward the annexation of Texas, but the Northerners opposed this idea. Texas was another slave state and the nature of their society did not appear appealing to the North.

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The frontier is the raw uncharted and undeveloped land in America. When America was founded individuals claimed land. Some argue that the frontier impacted the American identity such as De Crevecoeur, Quinney, and Turner. J. Hector ST. John De Crevecoeur was an author who wrote the Farmer Letters.

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Turner 's proposition depends on the possibility that "easterners … in moving to the wild agitated grounds of the outskirts, shed the trappings of progress … and by reinfused themselves with an energy, an autonomy, and an innovativeness that the wellspring of American vote based system and national character." (Cronon) While this thought appears like a delightful hypothesis of why Americans are extraordinary, it depends on the idea that the Frontier was "a zone of free land," which isn 't the situation, undermining the hypothesis ' validity. (Turner) The scene of precolonial America was not so inadequately populated the same number of think.

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A view of Americans as a special, exceptional people because Americans had progressively taken over the West and conquered primitive societies was firmly established in the minds of Americans by frontier myth. One of problems is that the frontier myth is a story, and “all stories are partial; that is, in creating narrative coherence, they leave things out, and emphasize other things”. They are not necessarily false, but neither are they history. As the society evolved, the concept of the frontier is consequently redefined as a space of social and cultural interaction and replaced by the terms “contact zone” by Mary Louise Pratt in her 1992 book Imperial Eyes. Contact zones are “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other.”

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