In 1845 the pioneers on the western frontier prepared to open a wagon rout to the Pacific coast. They found out that they were on of the chosen few to go on the expedition. George Donner and his brother then decided, after careful consideration, to accept the invitation to join the westward migration. George deeded some of his land to each of his grown children, while keeping 110 acres for his younger children in case they wanted to return to their home state. On May 11th they arrived at Missouri. Then the Colonel Russell's California Company promised to wait for Boon and his family on the Kansas…
Frederick Jackson Turner “Frontier Thesis”- Turner decisively rejected the then common belief that the European background had been primarily responsible for the characteristics of the United States…
Turner presented his thesis to a group of historians in 1893. The motivation for his masterwork was an American census apart of 1890, which declared that the era of the frontier was over. Turner lamented this development and formed an elaborate theory, which he called the significance of the frontier in American History. Turner believed that the frontier moved along a line. Once an area was settled a group of people moved on to the next frontier line.…
The American political institutions did not so much serve the frontier, as the frontier served to help shape the politics in America. We can begin to understand what Turner means as we deconstruct his thoughts on the Growth of Democracy. The ideas as to what individual liberties were at the time became convoluted as those operating in the frontier acted without government. We can see how our ideas of what it is to have a right evolve from a standard of living. On the frontier, there is a lack of supervision and democracy, leading to a lifestyle that is supported by extreme individualism. Things such as our right to property and privacy come about from a life removed from government, according to Turner. Democracy, in turn, is shaped according to this mode of operation further on down the line. As the frontier began to flourish and take shape, so did the ideas that were so deeply instilled in the area.…
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893.…
As a country full of diversity one can assume that we have learned cultural differences from other countries that we have interacted with. Frederick Jackson Turner discusses this idea in his excerpts from the “Turner Thesis” written on July 12, 1893. He touches on this idea when he speaks about how America adapted and learned from the cultures in which it conquered as the country moved in westward expansion. Such as when Americans learned from the Natives and began to use horseback for war tactics. This gave the Americans an advantage and allowed them to continue advancing forward. With each new opponent they faced, they would gather new ways to fight and this allowed them to evolve as the strongest military. By using these new ways, they also…
Conclusively, Robert Morgan’s central ideas in his article, “There is no true history of the Westward Expansion,” can be agreed with. History doesn’t just come from the few historical people, but the…
He contributed to the American frontier by acknowledging the lack of free will and instituted prerogatives that people of all classes could be equal. This is what made the American frontier so revolutionary. Luckily, Turner's claim appeared to be true, “American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character”. This provides superior evidence that America was changed after a certain amount of time, due to Turner’s claim.…
Turner’s thesis has had such a long impact that it is considered one of the main documents of American histography. According to Turner, it was the frontier that shaped American institutions, Romel Santiago This is not a proper citation. Romel Santiago Quotes should only be used when the writer cannot put the authors words in his/her own without losing the meaning or idea. This is not one of those times.…
In this article, Frederick Jackson Turner believes that, in relation to his frontier thesis, the history of the United States is most influenced mainly by how Americans had assimilated the West into the culture they held. The frontier, in Turner’s stance, was where settlers had restarted civilization as a whole and begun to redevelop the conditions present further east in the United States. By doing so, the frontier is classified as being the most rapidly Americanized area in the whole nation; however, the frontier also influenced the culture of the United States by promoting individualism, American ingenuity, and a restless amount of energy. Additionally supporting his argument, Turner also pointed out the dangers of having no frontier. Turner began to question the possible outcomes from the dissipation of the frontier. Historians, on the other hand, took up a different view on the frontier and its effect on American culture. The historians believed that, instead of the frontier, other factors had influenced the history of the United States, such as slavery, the Civil War, capitalism, and slavery. Furthermore, they hotly contested Turner’s claim of “free land.” The historians declared that the land, which was inhabited by the Indians, was in all actuality not free at all as countless wars had been fought for this land, resulting in many deaths. The historians also challenged Turner’s thesis by stating how communities, corporations, and even the federal government had allowed the inhabitation of the West, instead of individualism. Therefore, Turner’s thesis and the thoughts of the historians contrasted sharply; however, both sides acquiesced to the idea that the West had influenced us to some extent.…
The American West was viewed as a land of opportunity and success for many people of different racial and financial backgrounds during the time between 1865 to 1890. However, the extent of success from the opportunity varied on multiple factors. For the homesteader, opportunity was based upon good weather conditions and hard work but mostly only large scale corporations succeeded. Mining provided little for the average miner; large mining industries profited instead.. At some point West was the land of opportunity and at the same time it was not a land of opportunity for Native American Indians and Minorities.…
In the early 19th century the United States faced a time of internal expansion. This internal expansion was mainly due to the Louisiana Purchase when the United States acquired the Louisiana Territory to become part of the United States. This event marked the beginning of expansion within the United States, which sparked other events that helped increase the acquisition of the Western lands of the United States. In the 1840s Manifest Destiny was a popular idea that the United States was destined to acquire the lands from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. In addition to the Manifest Destiny, there was the end of The Frontier in 1890, which according to Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier thesis” that all of the unoccupied fertile lands…
Like a physicist’s pursuit of a unified theory to explain the universe, a historian searches for a theory that can explain all parts of history without being subject to biases of time, date, and location. I would give this chapter a 9/10 rating; by using examples not from Jacksonian-age America, but from specific historians, authors Davidson and Lytle profoundly demonstrate how theories are merely hypotheses that cannot become laws until they are proved time and time again that they are true. Like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, a historical theory cannot be proven wrong until it a specific example is found where the theory does not work. What we saw with Turner’s frontier thesis was a theory that did not work, so historians from 1893 to now have spent their lives testing their own theories based off of the weaknesses in Turner’s. “Jackson’s Frontier—and Turner’s” was a great model of how a historian’s theory can be impacted by the influences of the times they live in, and how a unified historical theory can not be achieved like a scientific one may be because no two humans think the same; consequently, no historical event can be repeated in the same way a scientist demonstrates an experiment in the lab—history must be intensely discussed and researched, and theories must be made,…
Although the frontier has fascinated Americans since the colonial era, it first came to prominence as a true ideological concept late in the nineteenth century. In 1890, Frederick Jackson Turner, sought to discover an antidote to the "germ theory" of history, which argued that all American institutions evolved from European precedents transplanted into the New World by the colonists, argued that the frontier was more important than any other single factor in shaping American history and culture. An influential address delivered before the American Historical Association, Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" suggests that the process of westward migration across the North American continent unleashed forces directly responsible for…
England, a small and familiar place for many, was a community with very strict rules and beliefs. The Church of England was the dominant power over the country, and not everyone was happy with this dictatorship. Once the land in America was founded, Puritans and other men searching for freedom gathered and sailed across the sea to the new land. America became a “melting pot” full of various traditions, cultures, and beliefs from England as well as new “American” ideas. This process took time and involved adapting and hard work to civilize the land. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner discussed and wrote about the frontier and how it shaped American characteristics. He talked about the steps the Europeans had to take to transform the environment into one with reasonable laws and into one with more of a community rather than mere wilderness. “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 153)”1This quote talks about the frontier having characteristics from the old country, England, as well as new developed ones from America. Turner’s argument is based off the European men arriving in American and having to adapt to the Indian lifestyle which consisted of hunting and of living off the land. Later the Europeans introduced their own more civilized ideas to further the society and build up the area as a whole. Turner only talked about the male figures shaping America and completely disregarded women and their roles in the community. Although Turner’s “frontier thesis” involving males shaping America became a very prominent idea, Elizabeth Ashbridge and Mary Rowlandson, two women, wrote about their completely different experiences. Elizabeth Ashbridge and Mary Rowlandson both represent victims of slavery and viewed the frontier as a place of fear, confusion,…