Frederick Jackson Turner\'s Famous Text

¶ … Frederick Jackson Turner's famous text the Fronter in American History, the existence of the American frontier has defined American culture, more so than any other region. Although America is geographically diverse, it is the frontier and the myth of the American West that has made American culture unique. In many ways, Turner seems prophetic about the increasingly isolated nature of American life. American culture still fears nationalized institutions like universal health care, and disdains widespread civic engagement: "But the democracy born of free land, strong in selfishness and individualism, intolerant of administrative experience and education, and pressing individual liberty beyond its proper bounds, has its dangers as well as its benefits. Individualism in America has allowed a laxity in regard to governmental affairs which has rendered possible the spoils system and all the manifest evils that follow from the lack of a highly developed civic spirit" Turner notes in Part I of his text, "The Significance of the Fronteir in American Histry." From a cultural historian's perspective, Turner's only error may have been in surmising that because there was a death of the American frontier in the sense that when there was an end to wide open spaces, this individualism might decline. The frontier continues within the souls of Americans -- although a more data-based historian might dislike Turner's lack of specificity of analysis of crucial incidents in American history and the absence of statistics in his writing.

Turner paints a picture in words, not in facts and data of how America began as a nation settled by immigrants, pilgrims and travelers who were seeking independence and enrichment. After the coastline had been settled, the availability of wide open spaces drew people outward. The West had, however, a distinct quality apart from the earlier coloial settings on the eastern seaboard, which were based in manufacturing, a more collective sense of dependence upon Europe, and upon the institutions of centralized governments. The Eastern coast was the frontier of Europe, but the West was not characterized by dense populations. Instead the West was spread out, and created the illusion of infinite, free land and space that fostered Americans individualism. The East was the trader's frontier, in contrast to what Turner calls the rancher's frontier, or the miner's frontier, and the farmer's frontier, founded upon individualism, and hostility to Indians, rather than dependant on trade with Indians. Poetically, this description 'feels' true -- although a historian of Native American relations in the East might suggest that there were many individual examples of conflict between land-hungry settlers and tribes that mirrored the feelings of people on the Western rancher's and farmer's frontiers.

Turner does introduce some economic analysis to his work, noting that of course, the farmers did need goods from the coast, even while they desired to buy land cheaply. But he asserts that their cultural connections were far more tenuous with the East and with Europe, in contrast to costal states. Especially early on, the Western lands were poorly administered, based in the "common law" of the settlers, in the words of Henry Clay, rather than upon a model strict European administration. Turner calls the states of the frontier and the populist movements of the frontier almost primitive in their orientation and disdain of government.

For Turner, the geographical centers of the U.S. have distinct personalities almost function like emotional forces of nature. The East is depicting as fearing and mourning the expansion of the West, and feebly resisting its unregulated sprawl. This echoes modern cultural vocabulary in discussing the divides of Blue vs. Red, which often breaks down into West vs. East, or coast vs. heartland. Turner's West is characterized by mechanical facility, a disdain for intellectualism, an embrace of opportunity, a love of material goods like land, a hatred of custom, and confidence born of a proud unawareness of the past, what Turner calls "scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons."