Turner’s Frontier Thesis

Aim: Assess the validity of Turner’s Frontier Thesis

“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. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West.” – Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893

What is Turner’s thesis?

Frontier Thesis – frontier fosters: • The Frontier experience had promoted a habit of

independence and individualism. • Frontier had acted as a powerful social leveler, breaking

down class distinctions and thus fostering social and political democracy.

• Challenges of frontier life caused Americans to be inventive and practical-minded – yet also wasteful in their attitude toward natural resources.

What happens when when frontier closes? (Fears of Turner?)

• Availability of free land on the frontier as a safety valve for harmlessly releasing discontent in American society.

• Frontier held out the promise of a fresh start. Once it was gone, would the U.S. be condemned to follow the patterns of class division and social conflict that troubled the nations of Europe?

Determine the arguments on both sides:

Valid• Homestead Act – land becomes available to everyone; land in poor

condition – chance to revitalize/use it industriously;• Homestead act leads to more modern ideas of democracy – more

women’s rts. (some of the first states to give women rt. to vote were out west)

• Social Equality – able to own property, conduct businesses, worked side by side with men.

• Homestead Act – start fresh (transcendentalism…)• Removal of Native Americans makes way for American opportunity and

“progress” – technology and modernization• Chinese Immigrants began to industrialize the west – RR – job

opportunity, immigrant opportunity, class advancement…accepting of immigrants (briefly!)

Invalid• Transcendentalism – abuse of resources…we are not

progressive/industrious! • Restrictions on immigration• Removal of Native Americans – lack of true equality;

no benefits for all in gov’t. Forced assimilation…• Class mobility was more limited than suggested• Homesteaders were forced to give land back to

government (couldn’t cover costs of farming/transporting goods).

• Homestead land was restricting public use, became private land. Also, land was not fertile.

Cattle Trails

Myth and Reality in the West

Homesteads from the Public Lands (acreage legally transferred to private ownership).

Frontier Realizations• Unsettled areas are broken into isolated bodies of American settlement.• The “closing” of the frontier inspired Turner’s “The Significance of the Frontier

in American History” (1893) • Americans realized that land was not inexhaustible! • Above realization prompted the government to set aside land for national parks

(Yellowstone 1872, Yosemite and Sequoia 1890).• Frontier is more than a place but a “state of mind” and a “symbol of

opportunity.” Its passing ended a romantic phase of our nation’s internal development…leads to economic and psychological problems.

• Frontier no longer a safety valve – previously if hard times came, the unemployed who cluttered the city could move west, take up farming, and prosper. No longer was this possible. The promise of success out west was not helpful to unskilled, cost of livestock, and cost of machinery usually got in the way of prosperity.

• Safety valve idea was effective in perhaps making urban employers maintain wages so as not to lose worker, but now wages may change because of the closing of the frontier.

• By the 1890s the largest movement of Americans was to the cities and industrialized areas. Not only was the era of the western frontier coming to a close, but the dominance of rural farming America was also on a decline.

Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Wayby: Emanuel Leutze, 1860

20-by-30-foot painted mural (oil) currently displayed behind the western staircase of the House of Representatives chamber in the United States Capitol Building.