the frontier history
Bancroft (H. H.), History of California, History of Oregon, and Popular Tribunals; Shinn, Mining Camps. Compare Sumner, Alexander Hamilton, p. 98, and Adams’s History of the United States, I, p. 60; IX, pp. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The competition of the unexhausted, cheap, and easily tilled prairie lands compelled the farmer either to go west and continue the exhaustion of the soil on a new frontier, or to adopt intensive culture. Particularism was strongest in colonies with no Indian frontier. [33] This proved to be an important educational influence, since it was almost the only way in which the pioneer learned what was going on in the East. He builds his cabin, gathers around him a few other families of similar tastes and habits, and occupies till the range is somewhat subdued, and hunting a little precarious, or, which is more frequently the case, till the neighbors crowd around, roads, bridges, and fields annoy him, and he lacks elbow room. That was the day of new stirrings in the human heart. 240, 241. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote a thesis regarding the frontier and gives an in depth explanation of how the American frontier is the most influential aspect of American History. [11], The rising steam navigation[12] on western waters, the opening of the Erie Canal, and the westward extension of cotton[13] culture added five frontier states to the Union in this period. [47] The West in the war of 1812 repeated the phenomenon on the frontier of that day, while the speculation and wild-cat banking of the period of the crisis of 1837 occurred on the new frontier belt of the next tier of States. 25. The “Frontier” is defined as “a region at the edge of a settled area”. Roosevelt, Winning of the West, and citations there given; Cutler’s Life of Cutler. Thence he passed to the frontier of Missouri, where his settlement was long a landmark on the frontier. We shall consider the whole frontier belt, including the Indian country and the outer margin of the “settled area” of the census reports. 4, 60, 61; Imlay and Filson, Western Territory of America (London, 1793); Rochefoucault-Liancourt, Travels Through the United States of North America (London, 1799); Michaux’s “Journal,” in Proceedings American Philosophical Society, XXVI, No. Compare Wilson, Division and Reunion, pp. But this does not justify Dr. von Holst (to take an example) in treating our constitutional history in its formative period down to 1828 in a single volume, giving six volumes chiefly to the history of slavery from 1828 to 1861, under the title “Constitutional History of the United States.” The growth of nationalism and the evolution of American political institutions were dependent on the advance of the frontier. Narrative and Critical History of America, VIII, p.10; Sparks’ Washington Works, IX, pp. The Frontier in American History consists of thirteen essays with the most important of these being The significance of the frontier in American history. And so various are the opinions and habits, and so recent and imperfect is the acquaintance, and so sparse are the settlements of the West, that no homogeneous public sentiment can be formed to legislate immediately into being the requisite institutions. It represented that composite nationality which the contemporary United States exhibits, that juxtaposition of non-English groups, occupying a valley or a little settlement, and presenting reflections of the map of Europe in their variety. For example, he may study the origin of our land policies in the colonial land policy; he may see how the system grew by adapting the statutes to the customs of the successive frontiers. But earlier it was given over to almost exclusive grain-raising, like North Dakota at the present time. But the most important effect of the frontier has been in the promotion of democracy here and in Europe. “Spottswood Papers,” in Collections of Virginia Historical Society, I, II. Many of the people in the back settlements are already little attached to particular situations. There is no word in the English language more stirring, more intimate, or more beloved. This overhanging frontier of America is a true survival of the days of Drake as well as of the days of Boone. The end of the first quarter of the century saw the advance of the Scotch-Irish and the Palatine Germans up the Shenandoah Valley into the western part of Virginia, and along the Piedmont region of the Carolinas. [Burke], European Settlements, etc. A rapid enumeration of some of the more noteworthy effects is all that I have time for. The farmer’s advance came in a distinct series of waves. (1752), p. 237. His works helped establish the Western as a popular genre in literature and motion pictures. Prof. Osgood, in an able article,[45] has pointed out that the frontier conditions prevalent in the colonies are important factors in the explanation of the American Revolution, where individual liberty was sometimes confused with absence of all effective government. Required fields are marked *. Works, IX, pp to control, and fashions are in vogue modes... North of Ireland, whence they came Virginia [ 49 ] and South Carolina [ 50 ] those. Stamp indelibly upon the premises which they existed should be studied was named president of the old hope a... Well known citations there given ; Cutler ’ s article in the process of expansion Unsettled of. Turner ( 1861-1932 ) was an epitome of the Government has not entirely passed ; both... Year to the West ( the frontier history, 1848 ), ch land exists, and compares the and... 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