The gold rushes in California in 1849 and in Colorado in 1858 and the discovery of silver in Nevada in the mid-1800s lured people from the East and from all over the world. Turner, Frederick Jackson. If, critics ask, some mystical forest influence was responsible for such practices as manhood suffrage, increased authority for legislatures at the expense of executives, equitable legislative representation, and women’s political rights, why did they not evolve in frontier areas outside the United States—in Russia, Latin America, and Canada, for example—exactly as they did here? The public lapped up the Wild West show, and imitators scrambled to put on similar extravaganzas. The answer is obvious: in few nations of the world has the sort of frontier that Turner described existed. Unassailable as this argument may be, it ignores the fact that the recurring demand for implements and methods needed in the frontier advance did put a premium on inventiveness by Americans, whether they lived in the East or West.

The trials and tribulations suffered by people who dared to enter an unknown wilderness made them stronger, more self-reliant, and more inventive. At the University of Wisconsin Turner’s faith in cultural democracy was deepened, while his intellectual vistas were widened through contact with teachers who led him into that wonderland of adventure where scientific techniques were being applied to social problems, where Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis was awakening scholars to the continuity of progress, and where searchers after truth were beginning to realize the multiplicity of forces responsible for human behavior. Entering Yale at age thirteen, Cooper was expelled in his third year for playing a prank. It came out of the American forest, and it gained a new strength each time it touched a new frontier.” When he penned those oft-quoted words, Turner wrote as a propagandist against the “germ theory” school of history; in a less emotional and more thoughtful moment, he ascribed America’s democratic institutions not to “imitation, or simple borrowing,” but to “the evolution and adaptation of organs in response to changed environment.” Even this moderate theory has aroused critical venom. Given economic success he would be able to afford the aesthetic and intellectual pursuits that he felt were his due, even though he was not quite able to appreciate them. apex.....one of a number of important issues before Congress

"It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West. America's Frontier Heritage. Rarely do other peoples display such indifference toward intellectualism or aesthetic values; seldom in comparable cultural areas do they cling so tenaciously to the shibboleth of rugged individualism. At other instances, frontier is also considered the zone of transition where the explorers and colonizers were arriving. Because these sums were always beyond the reach of factory workers (in bad times they deterred migration even from the rural East), the frontier never served as a “safety valve” for laborers in the sense that Turner employed the term. Although Cody did hire "real" cowboys and Indians, the show did not realistically depict western life. Without the established lines of ancestry and wealth that made up the social structure in Europe, success on the American frontier, with its wealth of natural resources and fertile lands, was open to anyone strong enough or courageous enough to master it. One was the wide diffusion of land ownership; this created an independent outlook and led to a demand for political participation on the part of those who had a stake in society. Turner maintained that the experience of picking up their belongings to forge a new life in a new place made Americans uniquely American. The government would enforce these beliefs during the Indian wars that dragged on until the 1890s (see Chapter 3). Is it still a valid key to the meaning of American history? Believing themselves entitled to the land, Americans assumed the authority to dismiss other cultures' claims to the continent Americans desired. Folsom, James K. The American Western Novel. As new governments formed in the West, these pioneers established more relaxed voting requirements than those found in the East, granting more men the right to vote—and extending the vote to women well before eastern states. The second, “Problems in American History,” attempted to isolate those forces most influential in explaining the unique features of American development. In a later generation Franklin D. Roosevelt favored a similar expansion of the American democratic ideal as a necessary prelude to the better world that he hoped would emerge from World War II.

This was especially the case with the early town builders. 0. When the USA’s continental expansion came to an end in 1892, the concept of frontier was also dissolved. His principal professor, Herbert Baxter Adams, viewed mankind’s development in evolutionary terms, but held that environment had no place in the equation; American institutions could be understood only as outgrowths of European “germs” that had originated among Teutonic tribes in the forests of medieval Germany. Schlissel, Lillian, ed. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. What did the 'frontier' mean to Americans?

He hired real Native Americans to wear warbonnets and reenact battles with sharpshooting scouts or cowboys. The “germ theory” explained the similarities between Europe and America, but what of the many differences? Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. The Oxford History of the American West.

Paintings and sculptures also shaped Americans' image of the frontier. To say that these characteristics and attitudes were solely the result of a pioneering past is to ignore many other forces that have helped shape the American character. A more divergent group than Turner realized felt the frontier’s impact, but that does not minimize the extent of the impact. To a degree unknown among Europeans, Americans do display a restless energy, a versatility, a practical ingenuity, an earthy practicality. I am not adequate to the task. This is true even of one of his statements that has been more vigorously disputed than any other: “American democracy was born of no theorist’s dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth.

He pictured settlers as moving westward in an orderly procession—fur trappers, cattlemen, miners, pioneer farmers, and equipped fanners—with each group playing its part in the transmutation of a wilderness into a civilization. Since shortly after the first colonies were founded on the Atlantic coast, the frontier has beckoned to settlers. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. From the first settlements at Jamestown in 1607, the process of frontiering was repeated for three hundred years until the entire continent was settled. Instead, they favored governance by many. In Europe, a serf (a laborer who works the land and is owned by the lord who owns the land) could never think of leaving his allotted plot of land to rise from poverty, nor could a shopkeeper's son ever hope to run his own store before his father's death. Forging their own way or following others' dusty tracks, pioneers braved Indian attacks and unknown environments to find a satisfactory plot of land. Syllabus. The works of 19th-century American sculptor and illustrator Frederic Remington (1861-1909) recall the rough-hew…, 697. Those who were not content to settle in one spot Billington labeled "men with the West in their eyes." What did the 'frontier' mean to Americans? Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey. These practical applications of the frontier hypothesis, as well as its demonstrated influence on the nation’s development, suggest that its critics have been unable to destroy the theory’s effectiveness as a key to understanding American history. America is a young nation compared to European countries and certainly an infant when measured against the ancient cultures of China and Japan. … Equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists. Idealists such as Woodrow Wilson could agree with materialists like J. P. Morgan that the extension of American authority abroad, either through territorial acquisitions or economic penetration, would be good for both business and democracy. Land prices of $1.25 an acre may seem low today, but they were prohibitive for laborers earning only a dollar a day.

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