Why Was The American Frontier Closed

In 1890, the United States Census Bureau deemed the large and intimating Western American Frontier “closed”. How does the Frontier “close”? Why was the Frontier so important to American identity? How does the closure of the Frontier affect Black Americans, Immigrants and First Nations, and how did Social Darwinism coupled with Eugenics influence American action? In this paper, I will discuss how the Frontier was “closed”, its importance, and its closure, along with Eugenics and Social Darwinism, affected minorities present in America. Firstly, the American Frontier was deemed “closed” by the United States Census Bureau due to, mostly, rampant white pioneers settling upon the land. The idea of the American Frontier being “open”, was due to

The closure of the Frontier was motivated by American Manifest Destiny, which was an American idea that America’s destiny was to expand and bring American ideals to new lands. American Manifest Destiny provided the main motivation behind the settlement of the Frontier, as Americans and their government saw the Frontier as an uncivilized, mysterious land that had the potential to be settled by the rising population present in the Eastern United States. The American Federal Government advertised and urged potential settlers to journey West and occupy the land. In addition to the advertisement, legislation passed in 1862, named the Homestead Acts offered distributions of land to applicants that committed to living on the land for a substantial amount of time. As a result, more settlers poured into the area resulting in more communities being constructed in the American Frontier, furthermore, with the construction of railroads in the 1820s-1860s connecting East to, previously, remote areas in the West, travel

In American Society during the 1800s, the Frontier was a land full of mysticism, mystery, adventure, and potential. The idea of American pioneers, explorers, and travellers conquering the formidable and uncivilized Frontier carried a sense of allure among American Society, which corresponded to fashioning the American identity associated with expansion, determination and perseverance. Fredrick J. Turner’s The Significance of the Frontier in American History, explores the concept of overcoming the challenges of the Frontier and, by overcoming these challenges, helping to craft aspects of the American identity, portraying the Frontier as a land in need of taming, a land that is “the meeting point between savagery and civilization”. It was the Frontier, Turner argued, that helped to construct the identity of America, an identity associated with vanquishing problems with resolution and hard work. For instance, the conceptualization of farmers choosing to “accept the conditions”, of the Frontier, and to prosper in those conditions became one of the essential illustrations of Americanization and American character persisting within the intimating Frontier. Moreover, the creation of settlements brought government and order to the Frontier, further establishing civilization within