Pros And Cons Of The Frontier

The frontier has always represented a part of American culture. The idea of moving west fundamentally created the identity of the United States. America overcame the Proclamation of 1763, Manifest Destiny accelerated expansion, and finally the Homestead Act promoted the movement towards the Pacific. Frederick Turner’s Frontier Thesis stated that the expanse of land beyond the eastern cities would act as a safety net for the tensions affecting the crowded seaboard, and to a degree, Turner was correct.
The frontier, despite the boundary that defined it being redrawn every couple of decades, always embodied the American values of individualism, nationalism, and egalitarianism. The considerably young nation appealed to other countries abroad due
In late nineteenth century, the census bureau announced that the frontier halted to exist, and all land was distributed. Initiatives set out by the government—railroads for easy access to the west and huge land grants for interested parties—brought the closing of the frontier swiftly. The benefits of the enormous shift of the population were that cities did not become more crowded than they would have and worker wages in the cities remained higher due to less competition in the labor force. It also helped settle the western territories of the country, and California became just as important to the national economy as its eastern counterparts. The utilization of the entire land and the creation of more states assisted in the reunification of the nation after the Civil War just 40 years ago, and it only bolstered the growing world power. However, the drawback of the disappearing free land was the sense that America was finally a place with borders and limits. There had always been a fear that Americans would undergo a painful transition phase whereupon society would lose its strength and individualism that drive for progress due to the fact that the United States could no longer