American Frontier Thesis Statement

The Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) case brought the legal integration of Jim Crow Laws into society; soon institution’s severed contact between Whites and Blacks by segregation. The segregation included water fountains, public transportation and some Blacks were even denied education. 2. The reference to Jim Crow is negative because it dehumanized a majority of African

What Turner wants to point out here is that the American West is the most important feature of American history, and of the development of its society. He refers several times to a process of “Americanization” and we will see that the definition he gives of it is a very peculiar one. He gives a definition of the frontier: “it lies at the hither edge of free land”, meaning that he considers the Indian territory to be free land. According to him the frontier is the “meeting point between savagery and civilization”, “the most rapid and effective Americanization”. The process of Americanization he refers to is in fact a double

Plessy v. Ferguson , a very important case of 1896 in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the legality of racial segregation. At the time of the ruling, segregation between blacks and whites already existed in most schools, restaurants, and other public facilities in the American South. In the Plessy decision, the Supreme Court ruled that such segregation did not violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. This amendment provides equal protection of the law to all U.S. citizens, regardless of race. The court ruled in Plessy that racial segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities for blacks and whites were “equal.”

The Frontier Thesis may play a heavy part in U.S. history, but there are implications for truly understanding the outlines of this thesis. Fredrick Jackson Tuner during a great meeting of American Historical Association on July 12th, 1893 in Chicago, a paper named “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” This paper introduced an innovative way of astonishment to understanding the construction of America. Turner envisioned that the history of America was not focused one the prominence of the Frontier and the America established many trades and accomplishments from this voyage. Such as Tuner laid out the foundation of his thesis, he also didn’t account for the flaws that were overlooked from his discernment of the Frontier. (Tuner, pg. 1-9)

One of the most famous arguments made in the world of environmental history was sparked by Frederick Jackson Turner in his essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. In his essay that came to be known as the Frontier/ Turner Thesis, he claimed that modern American culture and innovations had been developed by the growth of America into the western frontier. The migration of Americans to the western frontier originated through their desire for adventure as well as fertile and cheap land that was open for the taking. The frontier promised possibilities of expanding new markets in an unclaimed portion of the country. There are, however, several critics of the thesis, such as George Pierson, who disagree with Turner as to the

Faragher, Buhle, Cziyron and Armitage ( 2010) note the westward development into the new territories of the United States usually took place in three stages; trade, settlement and statehood. The speed at which this expansion occurred reinforced America's sense of themselves as a pioneering people. This experience worked to create a belief that the United States was a nation of adventurous, optimistic, and democratic people (p. 357).

In 1893, at the 400th anniversary of the appearance of Columbus in the Americas celebrated in Chicago , Frederick Jackson Turner presented an academic paper entitled, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” In this essay, Turner proposes that, “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.” The group dynamic that Turner champions is the farmer. More directly it is white, male farmers. While the expansion of the west by white male farmers was a factor in the development of America, it is not the only explanation for this progression. Turner fails to incorporate all of the demographics present during this expansion which were essential to the evolution of America.

Robber Barons In the new industrial age, people such as Andrew Carnegie and JD Rockefeller played a key role industrializing America. They paved the way for future industry with their creativity and ambition (Document C-2, historian B, 1953). The United States would not be as technologically advanced if these poeple didnt come up with the stratigies that they did. Carnegie was thought to be the industrail hero of the time, while Rockefeller was thought to be the Oil hero.

Many Americans believed that God was commanding them to expand. They believed that population growth demanded territorial expansion and that national expansion equaled the expansion of freedom in the 1840s. Manifest Destiny a phrase coined by to describe this expansionist mood. Although many Americans supported the idea of Manifest Destiny, not all Americans were keen on the idea. There were many of Americans who believed that Manifest Destiny was an unnecessary search for land, which led at the expense of others. Manifest Destiny spread throughout the nation and many countries and parts of the nation experimented with it, more specifically Texas, the Mexican Cession Territory, and Oregon.

Response to Turner's Essay on The Significance of the Frontier in American History Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" essay presents the primary model for comprehending American history. Turner developed his notions on the uncovering of the 1890 census that the frontier was coming to an end, that the nation had occupied its continental borders. As Turner discusses in his essay, an extensive era of American development approached an ending, but left enduring marks on American society. A major notion within his claims of the American frontier is, "the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, [that]

Frederick Jackson Turner was one of the most important theorists, North American historian, and author of Frontier Thesis. The Frontier Thesis postulated the centrality of expansion of western frontiers in the formation of American nationality and political consolidation of democracy in this nation, leaving a factual political history and introducing an interpretation grounded in economic and social factors.

The frontier line was just the beginning of what was to become of America. Acres upon acres of land scarce of settlers allowed for easy expansion. “Frontier history tells the story of the creation and defense of communities, the use of land, the development of markets, and the formation of states” (Hine and Faragher). One the expansion of the land started the formation of our own ways formed. For the first time we began to modify the ways of European life and make them into our own. Eventually as we continued to advance westward we began to leave the European ways of

In 1896, the court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson ruled that the states had the right to legally segregate public facilities. This court ruling fueled the fire of Southerners in regards to race relations, leading to the Jim Crow laws. These laws went as far as to say blacks could not cut a white person’s hair, drink from the same water fountain as a white person, and established a test for blacks to take prior to getting a ballot.

Turner’s emphasis on the Frontier shaping American character through adaptation had strong undercurrents of sectionalism. He wrote, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in opposition to the Census Bureau’s report of 1890 and did not believe the federal government should dictate what was and was not a frontier. In the essay he says, “The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for

The emergence of western history as an important field of scholarship started with Frederick Jackson Turner’s (1861-1932) famous essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American history.”[1] This thesis shaped both popular and scholarly views of the West for the next two generations. In his thesis, Turner argued that the West had to be taken seriously. He felt that up to his time there had not been enough research of what he in his essay call “the fundamental, dominating fact in the U.S. history”: the territorial expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. The frontier past was, according to Turner, the best way to describe the distinctive American history and character.