First Elaborate On Turners Conception Of Frontier example essay topic

Within the conceptual framework of this research, we will first elaborate on Turners conception of frontier, to be followed by the assessment of his potential conception for the word pioneer. After that, we will choose a pioneer and see why he would be a pioneer according to Turner's definition. The pioneer we will discuss within the course of this report is Thomas Edison. Eventually reaching the Pacific Ocean, the United States had accomplished its goal of reaching from sea to shining sea. Yet they had attained far more than their original goal. Development of the Western United States had returned man to his Darwinian beginnings, making evolution inevitable.

With each evolutionary stage came the increase of true American character and the decrease of European influence. Frederick Jackson Turner, in his remarkable "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", embraces that point and further analyzes it. Turner argues that it was the countless evolutions of the Frontier, from undeveloped lands to thriving towns and cities, and not European practices or influences that shaped American individualism, nationalism, independence, and democracy. In his thesis, Turner argues that the frontier promoted American economic and political independence.

(Turner, p. 43) Even after the American Revolution, the United States still received much of its final goods from European nations. However, in order to promote economic growth and manufacture in the United States, the government had imposed a set of tariffs and other economic sanctions on foreign goods. Despite this, Turner argues that it was the West that largely aided American self-sufficiency. The growing west, in the undeveloped state that it was in, needed many materials to advance its status. It became self-sufficient, producing much of its own goods and receiving much from the Eastern United States as well.

In its development, the Frontier had succeeded in Americanizing the economy and freeing it from European grasp. (Limericks, p. 86) Turner also explains that the Frontier had conferred upon the United States a strong sense of nationalism. The openness of the United States with regard to immigration had led to an influx of foreigners, turning the country into somewhat of a melting pot. However, Turner explains that the frontier has embraced the diversity, creating what he deemed a "composite nationality", or a large and diverse family. (Turner, p. 77) Turner also explains that the evolution of the frontier gradually expunged provincial identities, often merging or eliminating regional groups, such as the Southern aristocrat and Northern Yankee, drastically changing the social hierarchies of the country.

The West had begun to promote the blight of sectionalism and inject bursts of nationalism in the country. It had also done another invaluable thing though. The West had aided in the downfall of slavery, viewing it as a sectional trait of the South that must be eliminated. The men of the frontier believed that the nation could not be half-free and half-slave. They brought this qualm with them to Washington, helping to lead to the abolition of slavery after the Civil War.

The Frontier, through its breakdown of sectionalism had invigorated the United States's else of nationalism. Turner rationalizes that the Frontier also promoted individualism and thus Americanized Americans. The federal government, by providing cheap or free lands, had constructed a safety valve which protected America from uprisings of the poverty-stricken or discontented. (Turner, p. 114) The frontier had taken these men and by providing them with free, but often uncharted land, had transformed them into adventurers. As the first virtually free Americans, frontiersmen had an unpolished roughness to them. They defined the term outdoors men; strong, practical, rational and investigative.

(Turner, p. 129).