Frederick Jackson Turner · Public domain edition · 328 cards · 90 chapters
Frederick Jackson Turner argues that the American frontier, not inherited European institutions, drove the nation’s development and democratic character. This deck covers his 1893 thesis, the 1890 Census frontier line, and the stages of westward expansion.
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Chapter 1 · Question
What did the 1890 Census bulletin say about the frontier line?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
The Superintendent of the Census for 1890 stated that up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but the unsettled area had been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there could hardly be said to be a frontier line. It therefore could no longer have a place in census reports. Turner calls this statement the closing of a great historic movement.
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Section 14 cards
What did the 1890 Census bulletin say about the frontier line?
The Superintendent of the Census for 1890 stated that up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but the unsettled area had been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there could hardly be said to be a frontier line. It therefore could no longer have a place in census reports. Turner calls this statement the closing of a great historic movement.
Chapter 1
According to Turner, what explains American development?
Turner argues that the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development. He holds that American history has largely been the history of the colonization of the Great West, and that the true point of view is not the Atlantic coast but the Great West.
Chapter 1
What does Turner mean by the 'perennial rebirth' of American life?
Turner argues American social development has continually begun over again on the frontier: each western area saw a return to primitive conditions and a new development, so American development showed not merely advance along a single line but recurrence of the evolutionary process. This perennial rebirth, fluidity, and continuous touch with primitive society furnish the forces dominating American character.
Chapter 1
How does Turner treat the slavery struggle in American history?
Turner argues that even the slavery struggle, which writers like Professor von Holst make so exclusive an object of attention, occupies its important place in American history because of its relation to westward expansion. He thus subordinates slavery's significance to the frontier thesis rather than denying its importance.
Chapter 1
Section 24 cards
How does Turner distinguish the American frontier from the European frontier?
The author argues the European frontier is a fortified boundary line running through dense populations, while the most significant thing about the American frontier is that it lies at the hither edge of free land. In census reports it is treated as the margin of settlement with a density of two or more per square mile. Turner calls the term elastic and says it needs no sharp definition for his purposes.
Chapter 2
What does Turner mean by saying the wilderness masters the colonist?
The author argues the frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness finds the colonist a European in dress, tools, travel, and thought, then puts him in the birch canoe, the log cabin, and the hunting shirt. He must accept the conditions it furnishes or perish, fitting himself into Indian clearings and trails. Little by little he transforms the wilderness, but the outcome is a new product that is American.
Chapter 2
How did the frontier advance between the seventeenth century and 1790?
In the seventeenth century the frontier moved up Atlantic river courses just beyond the fall line, leaving tidewater settled. In the first half of the eighteenth century traders reached the Ohio, Spotswood crossed the Blue Ridge in 1714, and Scotch-Irish and Palatine Germans moved up the Shenandoah. The King's proclamation of 1763 forbade settlements beyond the sources of rivers flowing into the Atlantic, but in vain. By 1790 settlement reached Kentucky and Tennessee.
Chapter 2
What new character did the frontier gain after crossing the Alleghanies?
Beyond the continuous settled area lay the small settled areas of Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Ohio, with mountains intervening between them and the Atlantic area. The author argues this isolation increased the region's peculiarly American tendencies, and the need for transportation to connect it with the East called out important schemes of internal improvement. The 'West,' as a self-conscious section, began to evolve.
Chapter 2
Section 34 cards
What did the 1890 census superintendent report about the frontier?
The superintendent of the census for 1890 reported that settlements in the West were so scattered over the region that there could no longer be said to be a frontier line. This followed the earlier spread of settlement by 1880 into northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, along Dakota rivers, the Black Hills, and the mining camps of Colorado, Montana, and Idaho.
Chapter 3
What natural boundary lines marked successive American frontiers?
Turner lists the fall line, marking the seventeenth-century frontier; the Alleghany Mountains, the eighteenth century; the Mississippi, the first quarter of the nineteenth; the Missouri where it runs north-south, the middle of the century (omitting the California movement); and the arid lands near the ninety-ninth meridian plus the Rocky Mountains as the present frontier. Each was won by a series of Indian wars.
Chapter 3
How did the trading frontier affect Indian society and the farming frontier?
The trader advanced rapidly because unarmed tribes, at the mercy of those with firearms, eagerly welcomed him for guns and goods. This honeycombed Indian society and undermined Indian power by making tribes dependent on whites. Yet by selling guns the trading frontier also increased Indian resistance to the farming frontier. French colonization was dominated by the trading frontier, English by the farming frontier, and the two were antagonistic.
Chapter 3
What does Turner say the continental page reveals, and what does Loria compare it to?
Turner argues the United States lies like a huge page of social history, read from West to East: Indian and hunter, trader, pastoral ranch life, unrotated corn and wheat farming, intensive farming, then manufacturing with city and factory. Loria, the Italian economist, compared colonial settlement to what a mountain is for geology, bringing primitive stratifications to light.
Chapter 3
Section 44 cards
How did Indian trails contribute to the development of American transportation and cities?
The author argues the Indian trade pioneered civilization: buffalo trails became Indian trails, then trader's traces, widening into roads, turnpikes, and railroads. Trading posts on Indian village sites commanding water systems grew into cities like Albany, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Council Bluffs, and Kansas City. Civilization followed geological arteries, with aboriginal paths broadened into modern commercial lines.
Chapter 4
How did the Indian frontier act as a consolidating agent in American history?
The author argues the Indian frontier stretched along the western border like a cord of union, since the Indian was a common danger demanding united action. Intercolonial congresses were called from the close of the seventeenth century to treat with Indians and plan defense; particularism was strongest in colonies with no Indian frontier. The Albany congress of 1754, called to treat with the Six Nations, exemplified this unifying tendency.
Chapter 4
What role did frontier army posts and expeditions play in opening settlement?
The author states the frontier army post, protecting settlers from Indians, also acted as a wedge to open Indian country and as a nucleus for settlement. Government military and exploring expeditions helped determine lines of settlement, but the important expeditions were greatly indebted to Indian guides, traders, trappers, and French voyageurs, inevitable parts of expeditions from Lewis and Clark onward. Each expedition epitomized previous factors in western advance.
Chapter 4
Why was salt important to early settlers, and how did salt springs change settlement?
Early settlers were tied to the coast by the need for salt, without which they could not preserve meats or live comfortably. An annual pilgrimage to the coast for salt became essential, and it was almost the only way pioneers learned what was happening in the East. Discovery of salt springs at the Kanawha, Holston, Kentucky, and central New York helped free the West from coastal dependence, enabling settlement to cross the mountains.
Chapter 4
Section 53 cards
According to Peck's guide, what three classes of settlers advanced west in waves?
Peck describes three successive waves: first the pioneer, who lives off the range and hunting, raises corn and a truck patch, and moves on when neighbors crowd him; second, emigrants who purchase land, clear roads, build hewn log houses, mills, and schools; third, men of capital and enterprise who build towns, colleges, and churches. Some of the first two classes remain and rise in society.
Chapter 5
What did the frontier do to immigrants, according to Turner?
The author argues the frontier promoted a composite nationality. Though the coast was preponderantly English, later continental immigrants—Scotch-Irish, Palatine Germans, and redemptioners of non-English stock—flowed to the free lands. In the crucible of the frontier they were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics.
Chapter 5
Why did steady farmers keep moving west rather than stay and improve their land?
Turner explains that cheap virgin frontier land, easily tilled prairie soil, and growing families' demand for more acres drew farmers onward. Those on soils depleted by unrotated crops faced a choice: go west and exhaust new land, or adopt intensive culture. The census of 1890 shows Northwest counties losing population as farmers left for the plains.
Chapter 5
Section 64 cards
According to Turner, what did Governor Glenn say new German townships were supplying?
Glenn wrote that South Carolina's trade with New York and Philadelphia drained it of money for their bread, flour, beer, hams, and bacon. He noted that new townships settled by industrious Germans were beginning to supply all these goods except beer, which he said diminished shipping and trade's appearance but was not a detriment.
Chapter 6
How does Turner characterize the slavery question in relation to frontier-driven legislation?
The author argues the slavery question is an incident, not the mainspring. He contends nationalism and political institutions grew from the frontier's advance, and criticizes von Holst and Rhodes for treating tariff, land, and internal improvement legislation as subsidiary or incidental to the slavery struggle, calling this a wrong perspective.
Chapter 6
What did John Quincy Adams confess about his public land administration?
Adams admitted his system of making the national domain an inexhaustible fund for progressive internal improvement had failed. Turner explains the West did not want a system of administration; it wanted land. Adams also stated that Southern slaveholders bought western cooperation by abandoning their share of public property to new Western States.
Chapter 6
What did Lamar's Calhoun monument speech say about the states and federal government?
Lamar explained that in 1789 the States were the creators of the Federal Government, but by 1861 the Federal Government was the creator of a large majority of the States. Turner cites this to show that as frontier States joined the Union, national power grew.
Chapter 6
Section 74 cards
Why does Turner call the Middle region the typically American region?
The author argues the Middle region was least sectional: an open door to all Europe, it mixed nationalities, religions, and local government forms, and mediated between New England and the South and between East and West. With no barriers to its frontier and connecting waterways, it represented the composite nationality of the modern United States.
Chapter 7
How did the frontier promote democracy in the older states?
The author argues frontier states entered the Union with democratic suffrage provisions, and their attraction of settlers forced older states to liberalize. Western New York pushed suffrage extension in its 1821 convention; western Virginia compelled the tide-water region to adopt a more liberal suffrage provision and more proportionate representation in 1830.
Chapter 7
What dangers does Turner say came with frontier democracy?
The author argues democracy born of free land was strong in selfishness and individualism, intolerant of administrative experience and education, and pressed individual liberty beyond proper bounds. This laxity in governmental affairs made possible the spoils system, and frontier conditions permitted lax business honor, inflated paper currency, and wild-cat banking, recurring with each new frontier.
Chapter 7
How did the spread of cotton culture change the South, per Turner?
The author argues cotton culture spreading into the interior broke down the contrast between the tide-water region and the rest of the state, basing Southern interests on slavery. Before that, the western South, akin to Pennsylvania in stock and industry, showed tendencies toward internal improvement legislation and nationalism, as the 1829-30 Virginia convention debates illustrate.
Chapter 7
Section 84 cards
How did the East try to regulate the frontier, according to Turner?
The East feared unregulated frontier advance and tried to check and guide it. English authorities sought to halt settlement at the Atlantic headwaters; tidewater Virginia and South Carolina gerrymandered legislatures to keep coast dominance; Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Smyth, and Benton all favored limits on western settlement or boundaries. Turner argues these attempts failed, and the frontier advanced carrying individualism, democracy, and nationalism.
Chapter 8
What did Jefferson propose for the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase?
Jefferson wanted to reserve from settlement the territory of the Louisiana Purchase north of the thirty-second parallel, in order to offer it to the Indians in exchange for their settlements east of the Mississippi. He wrote that when the country was full on this side, a range of States could be laid off on the western bank, advancing compactly as population multiplied.
Chapter 8
Why did Lyman Beecher say the nation's destiny would be decided in the West?
Speaking in 1835, Beecher argued the West's population was assembled from all the states and European nations, rushing in like a flood and needing immediate institutions to discipline mind and conscience. Because opinions and settlements were so various and sparse, no homogeneous public sentiment could form institutions quickly, yet they were needed at once. He warned the East not to dream of liberty apart from the West.
Chapter 8
What intellectual traits does Turner say the frontier gave American intellect?
Turner argues the frontier produced coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; a practical, inventive turn quick to find expedients; a masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful for great ends; restless nervous energy; dominant individualism working for good and evil; and buoyancy and exuberance from freedom. He says these persisted as survivals even after higher social organization succeeded.
Chapter 8
Section 94 cards
Where and when was Turner's frontier paper first read and first published?
Turner read the paper at the meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago on July 12, 1893. It first appeared in the Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin on December 14, 1893, with a note stating its foundation was his earlier article "Problems in American History" in The Aegis, a University of Wisconsin student publication, November 4, 1892.
Chapter 9
How does the footnote describe Woodrow Wilson's response to Turner's views?
The note says it is gratifying that Professor Woodrow Wilson, whose volume on "Division and Reunion" in the Epochs of American History Series appreciatively estimates the West as a factor in American history, accepts some of the views set forth in Turner's papers. Wilson enhanced their value, the note adds, by his lucid and suggestive treatment in his December 1893 Forum article reviewing Goldwin Smith's "History of the United States."
Chapter 9
Which text is used for the present version of the paper, and where else was it printed?
The present text is that of the Report of the American Historical Association for 1893, pages 199-227. The note adds that it was printed with additions in the Fifth Year Book of the National Herbart Society and in various other publications, indicating the essay circulated in multiple versions after its first appearance.
Chapter 9
What does the note say about Lewis and Clark's exploration route?
A footnote states that Lewis and Clark were the first to explore the route from the Missouri to the Columbia. The note is brief and corrective in tone, marking the expedition's priority on that specific route rather than making a broader claim about western exploration generally.
Chapter 9
Section 104 cards
How did the American meaning of "frontier" differ from the European one?
The author argues that in American thought and speech the term "frontier" came to mean the edge of settlement rather than, as in Europe, the political boundary. By 1690 the frontier of settlement and the frontier of military defense were already coinciding, so the thing to be defended was the outer edge of an expanding society—a changing frontier needing re-statement as the "West" moved.
Chapter 10
What did the Massachusetts General Court do about frontier towns in 1694-5?
An act of March 12, 1694-5 enumerated the "Frontier Towns" whose inhabitants were forbidden to desert them on pain of loss of lands (if landholders) or imprisonment (if not), unless permission to remove was first obtained. Eleven towns were listed, including Wells, York, and Kittery on the eastern frontier, plus Amesbury, Haverhill, Dunstable, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, Marlborough, and Deerfield.
Chapter 10
Why did the proposed 1675-6 stockade fence from the Charles to the Merrimac fail to appeal?
The proposal was to build a fence of stockades or stone eight feet high from the navigable Charles to the Concord at Billerica, thence to the Merrimac and down to the Bay, enclosing the whole tract for security. But the project did not appeal to frontiersmen; it belonged to antiquated ideas of defense, like the heavy armor and fifty-seven postures of the matchlock manual, which proved too great a handicap in chasing the nimble savage.
Chapter 10
What does the author say about the lawless characteristics of the frontier?
The author says he refrained from dwelling on frontier lawlessness because it is sufficiently well known. The gambler and desperado, the regulators of the Carolinas, and the vigilantes of California are types of the "line of scum" that advancing civilization bore before it, and of spontaneous organs of authority growing where legal authority was absent. Frontier humor, bravery, rude strength, and vices left traces on American character, language, and literature.
Chapter 10
Section 114 cards
Which towns did Connecticut name as frontier towns not to be deserted in 1704?
In spring 1704 Connecticut's General Court, following Massachusetts' act, named Symsbury, Waterbury, Danbury, Colchester, Windham, Mansfield, and Plainfield as frontier towns not to be deserted. These enumerated towns marked an officially designated New England frontier line, representing coastal and Merrimac outskirts, the end of Connecticut Valley settlement, boundary towns of inferior agricultural land, and the isolated intervale of Brookfield.
Chapter 11
What four frontier types does Turner say appeared in New England?
The author identifies a common sequence of frontier types: fur trader, cattle-raising pioneer, small primitive farmer, and farmer engaged in intensive varied agriculture producing an export surplus. He argues these stages appeared in New England, though confusedly, succeeding rapidly and intermingling. Traders and their posts prepared the way for frontier towns, and the cattle industry was most important to early farmers.
Chapter 11
What measures did Massachusetts and Connecticut take for frontier defense around 1703-1708?
Massachusetts in 1703-4 ordered five hundred pairs of snowshoes and equal moccasins for counties lying frontier next to the wilderness. Connecticut in 1704 ordered English and Indian companies to range the woods to discover an approaching enemy, and offered five pounds per enemy scalp. Massachusetts varied scalp bounties by age and service type. Both colonies paid treasury money in 1708 for trailing dogs, following Rev. Solomon Stoddard's 1703 proposal to hunt Indians with dogs.
Chapter 11
How did New England frontier defense differ from that of Kentucky or the Upland South?
The author argues New England frontier towns, having garrison houses and palisaded enclosures like Kentucky stations, differed because they were adjacent to coast towns rather than isolated from settled regions. So colonial authorities showed great activity protecting the frontier, sending garrisons and employing rangers to patrol from garrison to garrison, while frontier towns loudly demanded assistance. These were prototypes of the regular army post and rangers.
Chapter 11
Section 124 cards
What did frontier towns like Dunstable and Deerfield repeatedly petition colonial authorities for?
They petitioned for guards of men, arms, ammunition, and provisions to protect them while harvesting hay and corn, and to pursue the enemy. Dunstable asked for twenty footmen to scout while they got their hay, warning they must otherwise leave. Deerfield begged the General Court in 1678 to cherish them out of fatherlike pity or they were likely to breathe out their last breath.
Chapter 12
What does the Groton petition of 1704 reveal about the town's hardships?
Groton reported many persons killed, captured, or removed, plus lost corn, cattle, horses, and hay, leaving them impoverished. Their pastor Mr. Hobard had been unable to dispense God's ordinances for over a year, and neighboring elders advised hiring another minister while still supporting him. They asked for tax remission, pay for building forts, or liberty to remove to neighboring towns.
Chapter 12
How does Turner reinterpret the seemingly submissive petitions of early frontiersmen?
Turner argues that if we trusted the petitions alone we might impute excessive submission to authority, unlike other frontiersmen. Reading carefully, he finds the petitions are actually complaints against taxation, demands for colonial expenditures on their behalf, criticisms of absentee proprietors, and intimations that they may abandon the frontier position essential to defending the settled east.
Chapter 12
How did common frontier danger promote cooperation among colonies, according to Turner?
Turner argues the frontier was an incentive to sectional combination, as it later was to nationalism. Connecticut sent soldiers to aid Massachusetts towns on the Connecticut River in 1692, recognizing Deerfield as its own frontier. In 1689 Massachusetts and Connecticut joined New York at Albany, called "the hinge" of the frontier, and Livingston urged Connecticut to see Albany as the frontier of all their Majesties' countries.
Chapter 12
Section 134 cards
What did Massachusetts's 1723 General Court order built above Northfield, and for what purpose?
It enacted that a block house be built above Northfield on the Equivalent Lands, garrisoned by forty able men, English and Western Indians, to scout far up the Connecticut River, West River, Otter Creek, and sometimes east of the Great Manadnuck to detect the enemy approaching frontier towns. Fort Dummer soon replaced it.
Chapter 13
How does the chapter describe New England's land system versus the usual impression of it?
The usual description holds that New England created Puritan towns by free grants to approved settlers under a non-commercial policy. The author argues this does not completely fit: there was economic interest among absentee proprietors, and men of political influence were often grantees. Melville Egleston notes the court favored plantations under trusted men, acting on their application.
Chapter 13
What grievances did frontier settlers have against absentee proprietors?
Settlers criticized absentee proprietors who profited from the pioneers' expenditure of labor and blood on their farms while themselves enjoying security in an eastern town. Examples include Salisbury's grant to a dozen proprietors, only two of whom lived and died there, and Groton's 1685 vote to sue non-residents to help pay the rate.
Chapter 13
How were new towns in New England typically formed, according to the chapter?
New towns sometimes arose from settlers aggregating on a large private grant, more often from settlers in older towns spreading to outlying good lands beyond easy access to the meeting-house and then seeking separate recognition. Others came from squatting on unassigned lands or buying Indian title, and some grants were made in advance of settlement.
Chapter 13
Section 144 cards
Why did Mendon petition the General Court about absentee proprietors in 1681?
Mendon's inhabitants argued that absentee proprietors, whose land values were raised by the residents' public works, should bear an equal share of town charges. They warned the town would be worthless if they were forced to quit, and noted that proprietors not yet arrived were 'a great and far yet abler part.' In 1684 selectmen reported half the proprietors lived elsewhere, answering their objections with 'necessity' where reason was wanting.
Chapter 14
What did Deerfield petition the General Court about in 1678?
Deerfield complained that nearly half the best land, centrally located, belonged to eight or nine proprietors who would never settle there. They said this discouraged the minister Mr. Mather and themselves, judging the plantation would be spoiled unless these proprietors were 'begged, or will not be bought up on very easy terms.' Land held by men who can't improve it discouraged all considering going.
Chapter 14
How did Leicester's 1713 grant illustrate absentee proprietorship?
Leicester's twenty shares went to twenty-two influential proprietors, including Jeremiah Dummer, Paul and William Dudley, Thomas Hutchinson, John Clark, and Samuel Sewall. None became inhabitants. The proprietors tried to induce the fifty families, whose settlement was a grant condition, to occupy the eastern half while reserving the rest as their absolute property.
Chapter 14
What did Massachusetts do with its remaining public domain between 1715 and 1762?
The General Court disposed of remaining public lands under conditions making speculation and colonization by capitalists important factors, driven by desires to create continuous settlement lines along roads, protect boundary claims through tiers of towns, and pressure from financial interests. In 1762 it sold Berkshires townships to the highest bidders by whole townships, completing the shift from social-religious to economic conception and influencing the frontier toward 'land mongering.'
Chapter 14
Section 153 cards
Why did New England manufacturing interests oppose free homestead land policy?
The author explains that migration of labor to free lands meant higher wages had to be paid to those who remained. Winthrop's idea of arranging town divisions 'partly to prevent the neglect of trades' underlay later New England manufacturing opposition to the free homestead or cheap land policy demanded by the West and the labor party in the national public domain.
Chapter 15
What dispute divided old New England towns as newcomers increased?
The author identifies conflict between town proprietors and non-proprietors over the undivided town lands. Newcomers were increasingly denied land grants or admission to the proprietors' body. Jonathan Edwards in 1751 described two Northampton parties like England's court and country parties, the first embracing the great proprietors of land.
Chapter 15
How did Cotton Mather view New England's first western frontier?
Writing in 1694, Mather warned that those who 'go out' to new settlements risk perishing for lack of vision and being on 'the Wrong side of the Hedge.' In 'Frontiers Well-Defended' (1707) he urged a well-formed church-state to fortify pioneers, recommended abstaining from vices, and stressed anti-popery teaching. The author notes Mather may not be a typical conservative representative.
Chapter 15
Section 163 cards
What did frontier settlers petition for regarding taxes and religion?
In a 1692-3 petition, settlers of remote farms between Sudbury, Concord, Marlbury, Natick and Sherburne asked for tax easement and extension into the Natick region so they could provide for the worship of God. They noted some neighbors were removing to escape war and public taxes, but said they could not run from the hand of a Jealous God.
Chapter 16
Why did frontier settlers request a captain's commission from Governor Gooch?
A 1742 petition from Virginia's back parts asked Governor Gooch to grant a captain's commission to John McDowell with followings of officers. The petitioners said they had risked lives settling the back woods, the heathens' road to war, and needed men with heart and courage to lead and defend them in time of war.
Chapter 16
How does the chapter illustrate resentment toward protectors of Christian Indians?
Footnote citations point to F. W. Gookin, 'Daniel Gookin,' pages 145-155, for illustrations of resentment against those who protected the Christian Indians. The chapter presents this resentment as a documented frontier attitude, citing it rather than endorsing it, and directs readers to Gookin's study for the examples.
Chapter 16
Section 173 cards
What region and period does Turner call the 'Old West'?
Turner defines the Old West as the interior area between the coastal colonial settlements and the trans-Alleghany settlements, roughly 1676 to 1763. It includes the back country of New England, the Mohawk Valley, the Great Valley of Pennsylvania, the Shenandoah Valley, and the Piedmont. He presents the paper as a program for study rather than a full exposition.
Chapter 17
How does Turner's scope differ from Roosevelt's 'Winning of the West'?
Turner says Roosevelt dealt chiefly with the region beyond the Alleghanies in the later eighteenth century, and with a backwoods society already formed. Roosevelt, according to Turner, ignored the New England frontier and its role, and did not recognize a West between New England and the Great Lakes. Turner instead isolates the earlier interior West from about 1676 to 1763.
Chapter 17
Why does Turner place the end of the Old West period at 1763?
Turner marks the end with the Peace of Paris in 1763 and the royal proclamation of that year forbidding settlement beyond the Alleghanies. By then, he argues, settlement of the Old West was fairly accomplished, and new advances soon followed into the Western Waters beyond the mountains and into interior Vermont and New Hampshire. The isolation of transmontane settlements and Revolutionary-era conditions distinguish the later period.
Chapter 17
Section 184 cards
What did the Massachusetts act of 1694 require of eleven frontier towns?
The act forbade the voluntary desertion of eleven towns then on the frontier and exposed to raids, unless the governor and council gave leave. Landowners who left would lose their freeholds; other inhabitants faced a fine. The chapter says this made the settlers substantially garrisons or "mark colonies," bearing the brunt of Indian attack despite their poverty.
Chapter 18
How did New England's land grants differ from other colonies' back-land practices?
The author argues New England generally did not sell wild lands for revenue with quit-rents, attract settlers by head rights or fifty-acre grants after the Virginia type, or make extensive grants to individuals for services or influence. Instead, colonial governments granted lands in townships to groups of proprietors, who assigned them to inhabitants without cost, holding them in trust to ensure Puritan ideals persisted.
Chapter 18
What was the typical procedure for establishing a New England town?
On application from an approved body of men, the colonial General Court appointed a committee to view the desired land and report on its fitness. An order for the grant then issued, in areas near the equivalent of six miles square. Especially in the eighteenth century, lots were often reserved to support schools and the ministry, which the chapter calls the origin of federal land grants for schools and colleges.
Chapter 18
What does the chapter identify as the most distinctive feature of the New England frontier?
The author argues it was the importance of the community type of settlement: towns carrying Puritan ideals in education, morals, and religion. Holland, quoted in the chapter, claims this preserved morality, education, and urbanity, contrasting it with the solitary western settler's hut where children grew up uneducated and the Sabbath became unknown. The author notes this community form was tied to Congregational organization and the township land system.
Chapter 18
Section 194 cards
How did the proprietors' land policy change as settlement grew denser?
During most of the seventeenth century, proprietors awarded lands to new-comers according to the original theory. But as density increased and land grew scarce in older towns, proprietors began asserting their legal right to unoccupied lands and refused to share them with inhabitants who were not of the body of proprietors. This distinction produced class conflicts in the towns, especially in the eighteenth century, over ownership and disposal of the common lands.
Chapter 19
Why did Massachusetts begin locating towns in advance of settlement?
In 1713, 1715, and 1727, Massachusetts determined on a policy of locating towns in advance of settlement to protect her boundary claims. In 1736 she laid out five towns near the New Hampshire border, and a year earlier opened four contiguous towns to connect her Housatonic and Connecticut Valley settlements. Grants in non-adjacent regions were sometimes made to old towns, whose proprietors sold them to those wishing to move.
Chapter 19
What happened in the Litchfield land dispute and how was it resolved?
Fearing Andros might dispose of public lands to the colony's disadvantage, the Connecticut legislature granted much of Western Connecticut to Hartford and Windsor pro forma. Those towns refused to give up the lands after the danger passed and sold part of them. Riots occurred when authorities tried to assert possession, and the matter was compromised in 1719: Litchfield was settled per the town grants while the colony reserved most of northwestern Connecticut.
Chapter 19
What does the author argue the Vermont grants revealed about New Englanders?
The author argues the opening of the Vermont towns revealed more fully than before the capability of New Englanders to become democratic pioneers under characteristic frontier conditions. Their economic life was simple and self-sufficing; they readily adopted lynch law (the 'birch seal') to protect land titles while resisting New York's authority. The author regards Vermont as the culmination of the frontier movement in New England, comparable to Kentucky and Tennessee settlers.
Chapter 19
Section 204 cards
What was the main effect of New York's land system on its frontier settlement?
The chapter argues that New York's manorial land system retarded settlement. Great patroon estates, confirmed by English governors, were leased rather than sold, so settlers preferred frontiers with more liberal land policies. The author concludes that colonies imposing feudal tenures and undemocratic restraints were certain to lose in the competition for settlement.
Chapter 20
How did Governor Colden describe the great land grants in 1764?
Colden wrote that three grants contained, as proprietors claimed, over a million acres each, and several others over 200,000. Much remained uncultivated, discouraging nearby settlement, and uncertain boundaries led patentees to enlarge claims through costly lawsuits that distressed poor families. He added that proprietors were freed from quit-rents and, through assembly influence, from other land taxes.
Chapter 20
What happened to the Palatines settled on Livingston's manor in 1710?
Governor Hunter located nearly fifteen hundred Palatines on a purchased tract in Livingston's manor to produce naval stores, but the attempt soon failed. The Germans applied to Indians on Schoharie Creek for a grant and migrated there, only to find the governor had already granted that land. Villages broke up; some moved up the Mohawk, others to Pennsylvania's Tulpehockon Creek.
Chapter 20
What military frontier did Virginia establish along the fall line?
Virginia drew a military frontier along the fall line, marking the head of navigation from Washington through Richmond to Raleigh and Columbia. A 1675 statute provided five hundred paid troops at the 'heads of the rivers,' with forts at river falls. In 1691 mounted rangers—a lieutenant, eleven soldiers, and two Indians per river—scouted for enemies, and the Indian boundary was strictly defined.
Chapter 20
Section 214 cards
What did Virginia's 1701 assembly propose to protect the frontier?
The assembly concluded that settlement was the best means of protecting the frontiers, and that encouraging "societies of men" to settle in co-habitations on the frontier lands would accomplish this. Each society was to have at least twenty fighting men and receive a land grant of 10,000 to 30,000 acres held in common, with Virginia paying survey costs and twenty years of quit-rents.
Chapter 21
What military obligations did the 1701 statute impose per five hundred acres?
For every five hundred acres granted, the land had to continually keep one Christian man between sixteen and sixty, able-bodied and fit for service, provided with a musket or fusee, a good pistol, sharp simeter, tomahawk, five pounds of pistol powder, and twenty pounds of lead bullets or shot, kept within the fort, besides ammunition for shooting game. He had to dwell within two hundred acres laid out in a geometric square.
Chapter 21
Who actually became Virginia's frontier fighting line, and how did they differ from the plan?
The author notes that the "warlike Christian man" who actually furnished the firing line was the Scotch-Irishman and the German, armed with the long rifle instead of the "fuzee" and "simeter," and altogether too restless to keep his continual abode within two hundred acres. Still, the author sees resemblances between the planned fortified societies and the later "stations" of Kentucky.
Chapter 21
How did cattle raising extend into the Piedmont, and what setback struck the herds?
Cattle raisers, learning from fur-traders of fertile plains and peavine pastures, followed them and built scattered "cow-pens" or ranches beyond the plantations; wild horses and cattle had already been penned and branded near the settlements. By mid-century disease destroyed seven-eighths of the herds in North Carolina and ravaged South Carolina, prompting Virginia to regulate cattle driving through frontier counties.
Chapter 21
Section 224 cards
What was Governor Spotswood's 1710 plan for blocking French expansion?
Spotswood proposed inducing Virginia settlement to advance along only one side of the James River, forming a column of pioneers that would strike the attenuated line of French posts in the center. In the same year he sent horsemen to the top of the Blue Ridge to overlook the Valley of Virginia. By 1714 he settled German redemptioners at Germanna to work his iron works and serve as frontier rangers.
Chapter 22
How did Virginia's frontier land grants shift from settlers to speculators?
Grants originally intended for actual settlers often became grants to great planters like Beverley, who promoted Scotch-Irish and German settlement or exploited the natural drift into the Valley, then sold lands while reserving quit-rents. Liberal per-family grants let these planters satisfy settlement terms while holding large portions for themselves. Lax requirements and enforcement for cultivation or cattle-raising made holding wild land easy, enabling an aristocratic planter life to spread to the Piedmont.
Chapter 22
How did Lord Fairfax's Northern Neck estate shape settlement in the lower Shenandoah?
Part of Lord Fairfax's roughly six-million-acre estate, derived by dower from the old Culpeper and Arlington grant of Northern Neck, lay in the northern Shenandoah Valley. In 1748 the youthful Washington surveyed it along the upper Potomac. Fairfax established Greenway manor and divided his domain into other manors, giving ninety-nine-year leases to settlers already present at twenty shillings annually per hundred acres, while exacting two shillings annual quit-rent from newcomers in fee simple. Litigation kept titles uncertain for years.
Chapter 22
Why does the chapter call the uplands part of the Old West?
The author argues that a distinct Piedmont society was forming: Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, and other sects out of sympathy with the established church and lowland gentry, plus independent yeomen and their planter leaders. It was naturally expansive, dealing in unoccupied frontier lands and dominated by democratic pioneer ideals rather than aristocratic slaveholding tendencies. Jefferson and Patrick Henry became its mouthpieces. Thus, as there were two New Englands, there were two Virginias, and the uplands belonged with the Old West.
Chapter 22
Section 234 cards
Why was westward settlement in the Carolinas slower than in Virginia?
Turner explains the slower advance partly by the later settlement of the Carolinas, partly by continuing Indian troubles on the flanks of the advancing population, as seen in the Tuscarora and Yemassee wars, and partly by the pine barrens running parallel with the fall line, which made a zone of infertile land unattractive to settlers.
Chapter 23
What did the Georgia trustees require of land grants to prevent large estates?
The Georgia trustees provided that grants of fifty acres should not be alienated or divided, but should pass to male heirs and revert to the trustees if heirs were lacking. No grant greater than five hundred acres was permitted, and even that was conditional on the holder settling ten colonists. Turner notes this attempt to restrict land tenure in the interest of democracy broke down by 1750.
Chapter 23
How did the crown's 1729 South Carolina townships fare?
In 1729 the crown ordered eleven townships of twenty thousand acres each, divided into fifty acres per actual settler under a quit-rent of four shillings yearly per hundred acres after ten years. By 1732 they were laid out on the colony's great rivers to attract foreign Protestants, but all proved abortive as towns except Orangeburg, where German redemptioners settled.
Chapter 23
Why did the Shenandoah Valley fill from the North rather than from the coast?
Turner argues the Virginia Valley was practically unsettled in 1730. The Blue Ridge walled it off from westward advance from the lowlands, while the valley continued the Great Valley running along the eastern edge of the Alleghanies from southeastern Pennsylvania. This fertile limestone band was comparatively inaccessible to lowland expansion but equally accessible to population entering Pennsylvania, so northern settlers filled it.
Chapter 23
Section 241 cards
Why did the Scotch-Irish leave Ulster and what traits does the author attribute to them?
The author describes the Scotch-Irish as lowland Scots planted in Ulster, followers of John Knox with contentious individualism and a revolutionary temper, raised on the Old Testament and the doctrine of government by covenant. Religious and political disabilities imposed on the Ulstermen made them discontented, and hard times helped detach them from their homes; their migration was contemporaneous with the heavy German migration.
Chapter 24
Section 253 cards
How did the Old West society differ from coastal colonial society?
The author argues the Old West was a democratic, self-sufficing, primitive agricultural society where individualism was more pronounced than lowland community life. Indented servants and slaves were not a normal part of its labor system; it raised grain and cattle rather than staples, and relied partly on peltries shipped to the coast for specie. It was a region of hard work and poverty, not wealth and leisure.
Chapter 25
What commercial rivalries and internal improvements did the Old West's trade produce?
Interior trade created rivalries for commercial ascendancy among coastwise cities that still continue. Boston and other New England towns grew as trading centers, while Baltimore (laid out in 1730) and Richmond (established 1737 at the James falls) drew Valley and Piedmont produce. The problem of internal improvements became pressing, with statutes providing for roads, ferries, bridges, and river improvements, laying a basis for national economy.
Chapter 25
What nativist anxieties did the arrival of Germans and Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania provoke?
The author notes that large German and Scotch-Irish arrivals caused grave anxiety. A bill to limit Palatine importation passed but was vetoed. Franklin feared Pennsylvania could not preserve its language or government, complaining the newcomers 'come in droves and carry all before them.' Burke feared the Germans would not blend with British colonists and, by industry and frugality, had 'thrust out' the English in places.
Chapter 25
Section 264 cards
What forms did the antagonism between interior and coast generally take?
The chapter lists contests between the coast's property-holding class and the interior's debtor class over paper money and taxation; contests over defective or unjust local government in taxes, fees, lands, and courts; contests over legislative apportionment that let the coast dominate even in a white-population minority; contests for separation of church and state; and later contests over slavery, internal improvements, and party politics.
Chapter 26
How did Pennsylvania's frontier grievances manifest before the Revolution?
In 1764 the Paxton Boys memorial demanded political privileges equal to the older colony and protested apportionment: Chester, Bucks, and Philadelphia counties plus Philadelphia city elected twenty-six delegates while five frontier counties had ten. The frontier also complained the Quaker coastal party failed to protect the interior against Indians. The back country triumphed in the 1776 constitutional convention, chiefly the work of Presbyterian counties.
Chapter 26
What did Governor Spotswood complain about in Virginia around 1710?
Spotswood complained that old counties stayed small while new ones were sometimes ninety miles long, forcing inhabitants to travel thirty or forty miles to their own court-house; some counties had 1,700 tithables while others only twelve miles square had 500. Justices disliked riding forty or fifty miles to monthly courts. Parishes were also unequal, and vestries refused remote parishioners separation lest it raise the remaining levy.
Chapter 26
What did Jefferson's 1780 apportionment complaint state, and what did it lead to?
Jefferson wrote that allowing each county equal representation gave control to numerous small tidewater counties while large populous up-country counties suffered: 'the 19,000 men below the falls give law to more than 30,000 living in other parts of the state.' This led to a long coast-interior struggle, ended only when slave population passed the fall line; West Virginia remains a monument where it did not.
Chapter 26
Section 274 cards
According to Doddridge, why must slave owners hold all government powers?
Doddridge states the principle that owners of slave property must possess all powers of government, however small their numbers, to secure that property from the rapacity of an overgrown white majority. He adds that this principle admits no relaxation, because the weaker the minority becomes, the greater its need for power under its own doctrines.
Chapter 27
What grievances led South Carolina up-country settlers to form Regulators in 1764?
Remote from the Charleston general court, up-country settlers faced difficulty bringing witnesses, legal delay and costs, so criminals escaped and reckless debtors gained immunity. Extortions by officials and occasional collusion with horse and cattle thieves, plus lack of regular law administration, led them to take affairs into their own hands and establish associations administering lynch law as 'Regulators' in 1764.
Chapter 27
How did the 1808 constitutional amendment resolve South Carolina's representation conflict?
The amendment gave control of the senate to the lower section and of the house of representatives to the upper section, providing a mutual veto. This adjustment came only after the black belt's advance into the interior had assimilated parts of the Piedmont to lowland ideals. Turner says this South Carolina experience furnished the historical basis for Calhoun's nullification argument and concurrent majority theory.
Chapter 27
What happened at the Battle of the Alamance in May 1771?
Governor Tryon's militia of about twelve hundred, largely lowland men led by gentry whose privileges were involved, met roughly two thousand Regulators. Many were killed and wounded, the Regulators dispersed, and over six thousand men took the oath of submission. Turner notes it was not the first battle of the Revolution, since it had little relation to the Stamp Act, and some frontiersmen later refused to fight England because of hatred inspired by this battle.
Chapter 27
Section 284 cards
What did Turner claim the battle of Alamance represented?
The author argues Alamance was a conflict against privilege and for equal political rights, making it a preliminary battle of the Revolution—even though it was fought against many men who later professed Revolutionary doctrines in North Carolina. He notes that thirteen of the forty-four sections of the 1776 state constitution embodied reforms the Regulators sought.
Chapter 28
What common grievance did the Old West share against the coast?
Turner argues the interior region from New England to Georgia had a shared grievance: it was deprived of its due share of representation and was neglected and oppressed in local government across much of the section. He insists this West-versus-East, democracy-versus-privilege struggle be treated as a unit, not as fragments of separate state histories.
Chapter 28
How did the frontier influence religious liberty in the Revolutionary era?
The author argues the multitude of sects in the Old West helped secure complete religious liberty—a secular state with free churches. The Revolutionary constitutions of Pennsylvania and Virginia, influenced by the back country, insured religious freedom. North Carolina's upland efforts toward a similar result were noteworthy, though for the time ineffective.
Chapter 28
What evidence shows the coast yielding to up-country demands?
Turner cites the transfer of capitals from lowlands to the fall line and Valley: Virginia moved from Williamsburg to Richmond in 1779; South Carolina from Charleston to Columbia in 1790; North Carolina from Edenton to Raleigh in 1791; New York from New York City to Albany in 1797; and Pennsylvania from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1799.
Chapter 28
Section 292 cards
How did Northern and Southern colonization spirits differ, per the chapter?
The author argues the Southern frontiersmen showed an individual colonizing spirit resentful of control, while New England pioneers inclined toward community colonization and control. This contrast, he says, left deep traces on later Western history and was reflected in the Middle West and Mississippi Valley.
Chapter 29
What happened to attempts to legislate towns into existence in the South?
In Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, efforts to legislate towns into existence failed; the towns faded away before wilderness conditions. The chapter also notes the Old West diminished the town as a colonizing unit even in New England.
Chapter 29
Section 304 cards
What did Spotswood's fort Christanna illustrate about Virginia's frontier interests?
The chapter's notes state that Spotswood's interest in the Indian trade on the southern frontier of Virginia is illustrated by his fort Christanna, and that the cited references afford information on it. The contemporaneous account of Spotswood's expedition into the Shenandoah Valley is identified as Fontaine's journey.
Chapter 30
What does the chapter note about publishing Virginia laws in German?
The chapter records that in 1794 the Virginia House of Delegates resolved to publish the most important laws of the state in German. This note appears among references on German settlement and immigration into the backcountry, alongside bibliographies on German and Swiss settlements of Pennsylvania and the German element of the Shenandoah Valley.
Chapter 30
How were students educated at Rev. Moses Waddell's wilderness school?
According to the chapter's citation of Hunt's Calhoun, students at Waddell's school on the upper Savannah in South Carolina, including John C. Calhoun, McDuffe, Legare, and Petigru, lived in log huts in the woods, furnished their own supplies or boarded nearby, were called to the log schoolhouse by horn for morning prayers, then scattered in groups to the woods to study.
Chapter 30
What does the chapter cite as a picture of frontier society in Roosevelt's Winning of the West?
The chapter notes that Roosevelt gives an interesting picture of this society in volume one, chapter five, of Winning of the West, and points to Roosevelt's citations, especially Doddridge's Settlements and Indian Wars. The surrounding notes concern Scotch-Irish settlers in the Valley of Virginia and backcountry conditions.
Chapter 30
Section 314 cards
How does Turner define the Middle West for his paper?
Turner applies "Middle West" to the North Central census division: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin (the old Territory Northwest of the River Ohio), plus the trans-Mississippi Louisiana Purchase states—Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. He notes the term is used variously by the public and that no substitute for the old, now indefinite, "West" has been generally accepted.
Chapter 31
What evidence does Turner give for the Middle West's scale and unity?
The author argues the Middle West is an imperial domain: France, Germany, Italy, and Austro-Hungary laid upon it would still leave spare territory. He cites gateway cities (Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo), western centers (Kansas City, Omaha, St. Paul-Minneapolis, Duluth-Superior), southern border cities (Cincinnati, St. Louis), and Chicago at the center, bound by the Great Lakes, Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri.
Chapter 31
What internal contrasts does Turner say the Middle West contains?
Turner describes the Middle West as the economic and political center of the Republic, with Populism of the prairies at one edge and the capitalism typified by Pittsburgh at the other. Despite great local differences, he argues it possesses unity and interdependence in physiography, history of settlement, and economic and social life, which justify studying the area as an entity.
Chapter 31
Why does Turner say his treatment of the Middle West is only an outline?
Turner states that within the limits of the article, treatment of so vast a region can at best afford no more than an outline sketch. In that sketch, old and well-known facts must, if possible, be so grouped as to explain the position of the section in American history. He also notes the region's unity and interdependence warrant study of the area as an entity.
Chapter 31
Section 323 cards
Why does Turner prefer physiographic provinces over State boundaries for studying westward development?
The author argues that fixing attention too exclusively on artificial State boundary lines has hidden significant facts, such as that the United States has had a colonial history and policy from the beginning of the Republic, concealed under phrases like "interstate migration" and "territorial organization." Directing the gaze to physiographic provinces instead lets facts appear in a new light, since each province has its own history of occupation and development.
Chapter 32
What did General Francis A. Walker say about the scale of American settlement?
General Francis A. Walker remarked that "the course of settlement has called upon our people to occupy territory as extensive as Switzerland, as England, as Italy, and latterly, as France or Germany, every ten years." Turner uses this observation to emphasize the element of vastness in the achievements of American democracy, which gives peculiar interest to the conquest and development of the Middle West.
Chapter 32
What policy did England pursue toward the Northwest after the Revolution, according to Turner?
Although England ceded the region by the treaty ending the Revolution, she remained for years mistress of the Indians and the fur trade and held her posts there despite the peace treaty. Dundas, the English secretary for the colonies, declared in 1792 that the object was to interpose an Indian barrier between Canada and the United States. Turner says this conception of the Northwest as an Indian reserve shows England's inability to foresee the region's future and measure American expansion.
Chapter 32
Section 334 cards
What did the Ordinance of 1787 provide for the Old Northwest?
It established a territorial government with provisions for admitting new States into the Union. The author argues its federal colonial system guaranteed that national possessions would not be governed as dependent provinces but would enter as sister States. He suggests these organizational provisions were at least as influential as the article excluding slavery.
Chapter 33
What did the Land Ordinance of 1785 accomplish in the Middle West?
Under its provisions, almost all of the Middle West was divided by government surveyors into rectangles of sections and townships. These lines let settlers easily and certainly locate their farms and foresters their 'forty.' The author notes these survey lines played an important part in the local organization of the Middle West.
Chapter 33
How did the Greenville line and Jay's Treaty affect pioneer settlement?
Wayne's conquest in 1795 pushed the Indians back to the Greenville line, running irregularly across Ohio from Cleveland to Fort Recovery, and secured areas in Indiana. In the same period, Jay's Treaty provided for withdrawal of British posts. After this extension of open area, new settlements formed rapidly, including the Western Reserve and Chillicothe.
Chapter 33
Which regions did Southern and New England settlers occupy in the Middle West?
New Englanders formed the Ohio Company, settled Marietta in 1788, and under Moses Cleaveland began the Western Reserve in 1796, which retained New England traits. Virginia and Kentucky settlers sought the Virginia Military Bounty Lands, founding Chillicothe in 1796. The author says Ohio's history is marked by interaction of New England, Middle, and Southern colonies.
Chapter 33
Section 343 cards
What did the Erie Canal (1825) enable for New England migration?
The chapter calls the canal an epoch-making event that gave northwestern traffic a new outlet and inlet, spurred Buffalo's growth, and turned New York City from a local market into a great commercial center. More importantly, it served as the highway for a new migration: the combined New York-New England stream that poured into Michigan, Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and Indiana in the 1830s.
Chapter 34
How does the chapter describe the political role of the Middle West in the slavery struggle?
The author argues the Middle West's place in the origin and settlement of the slavery struggle is of the highest significance. Rival streams of migration—Lake and Prairie plainsmen versus Gulf plainsmen—struggled for the Mississippi Valley. The author contends slavery and State sovereignty drew power as issues because they involved dominance over common territory in an expanding nation, not merely moral or constitutional questions.
Chapter 34
What was Douglas's 'squatter-sovereignty' doctrine and why did it appeal in the Middle West?
Douglas's 1854 Kansas-Nebraska bill reopened the issue by proposing that territories decide slavery for themselves. The author argues Douglas used a favorite Western idea, earlier promulgated by Cass of Michigan, setting the Middle West's love of local self-government against its antipathy to slavery's spread. He also drew Democratic support and presented it as a non-sectional compromise, though the Free Soil party opposed it.
Chapter 34
Section 353 cards
Why did the Middle West oppose secession, according to the chapter?
The chapter says the Middle West's economic life was bound by railroad to the North Atlantic, and its interests plus love of national unity made it hostile to secession. Calhoun and Taney shaped the issue so the Middle West saw the contest as both a war to preserve the Union and a struggle with the Gulf Plains states for possession of the unoccupied West.
Chapter 35
What role does the chapter assign the Middle West in the Civil War?
The chapter states the Middle West, dominated by its combined Puritan and German population, ceased to compromise after Lincoln's election and turned the scale for the North. It furnished more than one-third of Union troops; Grant and Sherman led in the field, while Lincoln and Chase held presidential, financial, and war powers. The region's forces hewed down the Mississippi and across the Gulf States.
Chapter 35
How did the Indian trade affect the northern pine belt, per the chapter?
The chapter describes traders under English companies and later Astor's American Fur Company spreading goods and whiskey among Indians, with posts called centers of disintegration among the savages. The resulting new wants and demoralization facilitated federal purchase of Indian lands. Traders were followed by seekers of pine land 'forties,' and by the Civil War exploitation of the pine belt had begun.
Chapter 35
Section 363 cards
What drew settlers to the Red River Valley after 1870?
Before 1870 the Red River Valley was almost virgin soil. In 1875 the great Dalrymple farm demonstrated its advantages for wheat raising, and a tide of farm seekers turned to the region. The Jim River Valley of South Dakota attracted still other settlers, and railroads thrust laterals into these wheat areas to draw traffic for their routes to the Pacific.
Chapter 36
Why did settlement of western Kansas fail by 1887?
Pioneer farmers pushed beyond the region of sufficient rainfall for agriculture without irrigation, deceived by rainy seasons and railroad advertisements and recklessly optimistic. Dry seasons starved them back, though good rainfalls revived the attempt. Farmers mortgaged their possessions, and by 1887 settlement reached the western boundary, but the wave dashed itself in vain against the Great Plains. The author calls this the native American farmer's first defeat.
Chapter 36
What does the author argue Populism was?
The author argues Populism is a manifestation of old pioneer ideals of the native American, with an added readiness to use the national government to achieve its ends. It is a complex of many forces, resembling the crisis of 1837 in earlier pioneer exploitation, and includes demands for currency expansion and cheaper transportation, such as government ownership of railroads.
Chapter 36
Section 374 cards
How did Great Lakes shipping change after 1886, and how did its tonnage compare to Suez?
After 1886 the Great Lakes transportation system was revolutionized to serve East–Middle West commerce: tonnage doubled, wooden ships gave way to steel, sail yielded to steam, and huge docks, derricks, and elevators were built. The Sault Ste. Marie Canal, open only two-thirds of the year, carried greater tonnage than the Suez Canal, with most traffic moving nearly the full length of the lakes between Duluth, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo.
Chapter 37
What did Monroe write to Jefferson in 1786 about the western territory?
Monroe wrote to Jefferson that a great part of the territory was miserably poor, especially near Lakes Michigan and Erie, and that the Mississippi and Illinois country consisted of extensive plains which, from appearances, had not had and would not have a single bush for ages. He concluded these districts would never contain enough inhabitants to entitle them to membership in the confederacy.
Chapter 37
What did the Lake Superior iron mines contribute to U.S. pig iron production?
Even in 1873 Lake Superior ores supplied a quarter of total American blast furnace production. The Gogebic mines (1884) and the Vermillion and Mesabi mines (early 1890s) completed the transfer of ore production to the Lake Superior region. Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin now produce ore for eighty percent of U.S. pig iron; four-fifths moves to Lake Erie ports, the rest to Chicago and Milwaukee.
Chapter 37
How does the author characterize the pioneer ideals of the Middle West?
The author argues Middle West ideals began in log huts a century earlier: though his horizon was bounded by his clearing, the pioneer dreamed of continental conquests, seeing beyond the swamp to a mighty city and beyond prairie to seas of golden grain. The author calls these men and women idealists with the will to make dreams come true, holding pioneer traits of individual activity, inventiveness, and competition, honoring whoever had the quickest eye and strongest grasp.
Chapter 37
Section 384 cards
According to Turner, where did American democracy originate and what was its destiny?
The author argues American democracy came from the forest, and its destiny drove it to material conquests. Frontier liberty and equality flourished in the Middle West as perhaps never before in history, and the pioneer's materialism was not the dull contented kind of an old, fixed society.
Chapter 38
What did both native settlers and European immigrants seek on the frontier?
Both native settler and European immigrant saw in the free and competitive movement of the frontier a chance to break the bondage of social rank and rise to a higher plane of existence. The pioneer was passionately desirous of securing a favorable place for himself and his family amid these large but vanishing opportunities.
Chapter 38
What transformation does Turner describe in the Middle West's economy and competition?
The Middle West became a field of vast industrial resources and systematization, drawing the forces of modern capitalism and training famous industrial leaders. Competition grew into consolidation, most clearly seen on the Pittsburgh border, while on the Kansas prairies the Populist survived as a pioneer striving to adjust present conditions to old ideals.
Chapter 38
What task does Turner assign the Middle West, and what evidence of its dominance does he cite?
The author argues the Middle West's task is adapting democracy to vast economic organization, reconciling real greatness with bigness. He notes six of seven Presidents elected since 1860 came from its borders, twenty-six million people live there versus twenty-one million in New England and the Middle States, and it has twice as many students.
Chapter 38
Section 394 cards
According to Turner, where does the real federal aspect of the nation lie?
The author argues that beneath constitutional forms, the real federal aspect lies in the relation of sections and nation, not the relation of States and nation. He notes ex-secretary Root warned that States might decay by neglecting duties while the national government absorbed their power, but Turner suggests sections could gain strength from the States' disappearance.
Chapter 39
What evidence does Turner cite for growing sectionalism in American life?
Turner cites gatherings of business men, religious denominations, and educational organizations in groups of States. He also points to sectional historical societies—the Pacific Coast, Mississippi Valley, and Ohio Valley Historical Associations—as genuine manifestations of sectional consciousness, partly due to distances making national meetings hard to attend.
Chapter 39
Why does Turner say local concentration is necessary?
The author argues a measure of local concentration is necessary for healthy intellectual and moral life, since spreading social forces over too vast an area makes for monotony and stagnation. He denies prophesying disruptive tendencies, asserting instead that American life will be enriched and safeguarded by greater variety of interests, purposes, and ideals.
Chapter 39
How does Turner describe the Ohio River's role in the section's unity?
Turner calls the Ohio, over a thousand miles long, a great highway to the West, a historic artery of commerce, a wedge of advance between Indian confederacies and rival European nations, and a home for six mighty States. The Alleghanies bound the section east, the Mississippi west, with Pittsburgh as the gateway and St. Louis looking toward the Prairies.
Chapter 39
Section 403 cards
What role does Turner assign to the Ohio Valley in American history?
Turner describes the Ohio Valley as both a commercial highway and a "middle kingdom" between East and West—lying between a greater New England and northern European settlement to the north and the "Cotton Kingdom" to the south. He argues its position as highway and Middle Region holds the keys to its place in American history, much as Pennsylvania and New York formed the earlier Middle Region.
Chapter 40
Why did the French fail to hold the Ohio Valley, according to Turner?
Turner argues French explorers saw the river but never grasped its strategic significance for conquering the West. Entangled in the interior's water labyrinth and driven by dreams of the "Sea of the West," they pushed through northern forests and southern plains, reaching the upper Missouri and Santa Fe, but missed the chance to hold the Ohio. Before France could settle it, the long line of French posts from Canada to Louisiana was struck by backwoodsmen advancing through the Ohio.
Chapter 40
What stock settled the Ohio Valley, and what traits does Turner attribute to it?
Turner says the Valley was settled mostly, with important exceptions especially in Ohio, by people of the Upland South—itself an extension of the old Middle Region, chiefly Pennsylvania, mixing English, Scotch-Irish, Germans and others. He describes this upland society as intensely democratic and individualistic, religiously emotional, preferring voluntary cooperation to government action, and rural—small farmers rather than planters or merchants. Daniel Boone's Wilderness Trace began the passage into the Valley.
Chapter 40
Section 414 cards
How does Turner describe the Upland South's westward migration across the Alleghenies?
The author argues that the Upland South's children, who put the wall of the Alleghenies between themselves and the East, gave new life to conditions and ideals lost in their former home. Crossing into the "Western World" was a tonic to this stock, bringing new fire—militant expansion, creative social energy, and triumphant democracy—adding a new section and element to the American nation.
Chapter 41
Why was the Ohio Valley central to American diplomacy from the Revolution to the Louisiana Purchase?
The Ohio Valley was the entering wedge to the Mississippi Valley and needed the river as an outlet for crops and defense for settlements. Spain blocked the Mississippi, England and Spain intrigued to attract the Valley, and France sought a revived empire. The author argues the Louisiana Purchase was largely due to pressure from Ohio Valley settlers to secure this necessary outlet.
Chapter 41
What does Turner say about the origins of the federal territorial system?
The author argues it is a mistake to attribute the system of territories and new States to the Ordinance of 1787 and New England leadership. It was largely the work of Ohio Valley communities who wrought out its essentials for themselves and imposed it on the nation by their attitude. The great Ordinance only perfected the system.
Chapter 41
What did the western settlers demand during the Revolution regarding self-government?
Riflemen of western Virginia, western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Tennessee protested rule by governments east of the mountains and asserted their right to self-government. Significantly, they simultaneously petitioned Congress for admission to the sisterhood of States. Even when leaders like Wilkinson sought independence for Kentucky, the people's national spirit delayed until Kentucky became a State of the new Union.
Chapter 41
Section 424 cards
What did Turner claim about the Ohio Valley's role in national legislation after 1812?
The author argues that between the War of 1812 and the rise of the slavery struggle, the men and measures of the Ohio Valley held the balance of power and set the course of national progress. The era's problems were internal development: the public domain, roads and canals, a protective tariff, and banking and currency for new interstate commerce.
Chapter 42
How did Ohio Valley settlers shape public land policy, according to the chapter?
The author argues Ohio Valley initiative, often against Eastern protest, subordinated the revenue idea to building a democracy of small landholders. Squatters forced passage of preemption laws, which led to the homestead agitation. Turner calls this land policy one of the most influential single elements in shaping American democracy and its ideals.
Chapter 42
What did Turner say about Henry Clay and the American System?
Turner argues Clay of Kentucky fashioned a national policy, raised issues, disciplined a party, and imposed the American System—tariff, internal improvements, and the bank—on the nation. But probing deeply, Clay's policy and power grew from the economic and social conditions of the Ohio Valley people whose needs he voiced, especially their new agricultural surplus.
Chapter 42
Why did Turner say the steamboat's real significance was on Western waters?
Turner argues the steamboat's historic significance lay not on Eastern rivers or the ocean but on the Ohio and Mississippi, since internal commerce mattered more than foreign commerce. Applied to the Western Waters in 1811, it let the West get crops rapidly and cheaply to market, spurring tremendous growth—though it did not solve the need for cheap Eastern manufactures or home factories.
Chapter 42
Section 434 cards
What did Turner identify as the Ohio Valley's role in the slavery struggle?
The author argues the Ohio Valley was a Middle Region with strong national allegiance, striving to hold apart the sectional combatants. Its divided counsels, especially in Kentucky and the southern portions of states north of the Ohio, made it the stronghold of the compromising movement, producing figures like Clay, Lincoln, Davis, and the Crittenden proposals.
Chapter 43
Which leaders and states tried to tie the Ohio Valley commercially to the South?
South Carolina leaders like Calhoun tried to bind the Ohio to the South through the Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad, designed to give Ohio Valley products a southeastern outlet. Georgia rivaled South Carolina with its own plans to drain that commerce. Turner notes the political object in these schemes was as prominent as the commercial one.
Chapter 43
Why does Turner say Lincoln's presidency cannot be understood without the Ohio Valley?
Turner argues that in Lincoln's cautious emancipation policy one sees the profound influence of the Ohio Valley, calling Lincoln Kentucky's greatest son. He insists no one can understand the presidency without appreciating the Valley's ideals and prejudices, which shaped America's original contribution to the world's great men.
Chapter 43
What future does Turner hope for the Ohio Valley?
Turner expects a new age of inland water transportation to supplement the railroad age, making the Ohio Valley a most important region. He hopes its old love of democracy endures and that the ripe civilization of its people will prize the greater glories of the spirit over prosperity, with its historical place depending on contributions to an enlightened, free democracy.
Chapter 43
Section 444 cards
How does Turner define the extent of the Mississippi Valley?
The author describes it as the whole interior basin draining into nearly two thousand miles of the Mississippi, two thousand of the Missouri, and a thousand of the Ohio—five thousand miles of steamboat-navigable waterways and about two and a half million square miles, larger than all Europe except Russia, Norway, and Sweden, estimated to support two or three hundred million people.
Chapter 44
What did the Proclamation of 1763 mean according to Turner?
The author argues it was not intended as a permanent Indian reservation carved from the Valley, but rather a temporary arrangement so British plans could mature and a system of gradual colonization be devised. He notes Washington and Franklin had already recognized the area's importance for American expansion.
Chapter 44
How did the Mississippi Valley affect France, per the chapter?
Turner says France wrote a romantic page of unfulfilled empire, and the Valley's striking effect was the influence of its great unified spaces. He cites Radisson and Groseilliers reaching Lake Superior and probably the Mississippi, Marquette traversing the river nearly to its mouth, La Salle's vision of an interior empire from Gulf to Great Lakes, and the Verendryes and Mallet brothers revealing natural boundaries.
Chapter 44
What did the frontiersmen beyond the Alleghanies demand and proclaim?
Turner says the 'men of the Western Waters' broke with the old order, subordinated social restraint to individual freedom, won land titles by hard fighting against Indians, challenged the East's right to rule them, demanded their own States, spoke with contempt of Eastern rank and class, and proclaimed democracy for the vast country they entered—advancing steadily like a glacier and seeking the sea.
Chapter 44
Section 453 cards
Why was Mississippi navigation vital to western settlers?
The Alleghanies blocked an outlet to the east, so the Mississippi was the broad highway south for surplus products. Spain, however, controlled the river's mouth and Gulf and denied them exit through her colonial monopoly. Turner argues the westerners first had to find an outlet for their surplus products if they were to become a powerful people.
Chapter 45
How did European powers view the Mississippi Valley's destiny?
From the Revolution to the end of the War of 1812, Europe regarded the Valley's destiny as undetermined. Spain sought to keep her hold through the river's mouth, Indian influence, and intrigues with settlers. France contemplated acquiring the whole Valley to provision her West Indian islands and dominate Spanish America. England, holding the Great Lakes, watched for the Union to break apart.
Chapter 45
What did Rufus Putnam tell Fisher Ames about the Valley?
Asked whether the Mississippi Valley could be retained in the Union, Putnam answered in 1790 that if Congress gave up its claim to Mississippi navigation or ceded it to Spain, the western people would very soon separate. He said such a measure would excite so much rage that they would sooner submit to Spain's despotic government than remain, and they might turn to England or Spain if unprotected.
Chapter 45
Section 464 cards
Why did Jefferson call New Orleans the one spot that is America's natural enemy?
Jefferson wrote to Livingston in 1802 that New Orleans is the single spot whose possessor is America's natural and habitual enemy, because produce from three-eighths of U.S. territory must pass through it to market. He predicted the region would soon yield over half the nation's produce and hold over half its inhabitants, and warned that French possession would force the U.S. to marry itself to the British fleet and nation.
Chapter 46
What did Collot report to France about Louisiana and the Western states in 1796?
The French engineer Collot reported that positions on the east bank of the Mississippi, without the alliance of the Western states, could not cover Louisiana. He reasoned that when two nations hold coasts and plains respectively, the coastal one must embark or submit, concluding the Western states must unite with Louisiana into one compact nation or the colony would be conquered or devoured by whatever power held it.
Chapter 46
How did the Louisiana Purchase affect American foreign relations and the state system?
The author argues the Purchase was the decisive step of the United States on an independent career as a world power, free from entangling foreign alliances. It brought political unity to the Mississippi Valley, and the War of 1812 victories of Harrison in the Northwest and Jackson at New Orleans secured expansion and the basis of the Cotton Kingdom. Acquisition of Florida, Texas, and the Far West followed naturally.
Chapter 46
How did the Mississippi Valley promote democracy and shift political power?
The author argues the Valley was the especial home of democracy, born of free land and the pioneer spirit, with insistent demands for local self-government that led to the Ordinance of 1787. Gallatin attributed American happiness as much to the plenty of land as to political institutions. From this frontier society came Jacksonian democracy, centered in Tennessee, which governed the nation after Adams's party fell.
Chapter 46
Section 474 cards
How did the Mississippi Valley's population share grow from 1790 to 1840?
In 1790 the Valley held about one hundred thousand people, one-fortieth of the United States. By 1810 it was over a million, or one-seventh; by 1830 three and two-thirds millions, over one-fourth; by 1840 over six millions, more than one-third. Between 1830 and 1840 the Atlantic coast gained only a million and a half while the Valley gained nearly three million.
Chapter 47
What effect did the Valley's growth have on the older Eastern states?
The author argues the Valley pressured the older section through competition from cheap lands, abundant harvests, and drainage of the labor supply. These things meant an upward lift to the Eastern wage earner. Largely because of this population drain and Jacksonian democracy, most older States reconstructed their constitutions on a more democratic basis, with liberal suffrage, reform of debt imprisonment laws, and attacks on monopoly and privilege.
Chapter 47
How did the Valley's political power in Congress change by 1840?
Before the War of 1812 the Valley had six senators, against ten for New England, ten for the Middle States, and eight for the South. By 1840 it had twenty-two senators, double the Middle States and New England combined and nearly three times the Old South. In the House it had less than one-third the power of New England and the South together in 1810, but by 1840 outweighed them both combined and held the balance of power.
Chapter 47
Why did seaboard cities and sections compete to capture Valley trade?
The author argues the Valley was an industrial entity from Pittsburgh and Santa Fe to New Orleans, and an economic empire beyond the mountains. Rival cities—New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore—struggled to supply the West and receive its products, breaking the Alleghany barrier through internal improvements. New York's Erie Canal drained the Great Lakes basin to its port. Calhoun and Hayne similarly urged the seaboard South to tap the Northwest by railroad.
Chapter 47
Section 484 cards
Why did Calhoun advocate distributing surplus revenue and ceding public lands in 1836–37?
The author argues Calhoun promoted distribution of the surplus revenue and cession of public lands to the states where they lay as an inducement to draw the West into alliance with Southern policies. The same motive explains his readiness, even after losing his nationalism, to back internal improvements fostering a southward trade current on the Mississippi.
Chapter 48
Which region's votes carried the tariffs of 1816, 1824, and 1828?
The upper Mississippi Valley, especially the Ohio Valley, furnished the votes that carried the tariffs of 1816, 1824, and 1828. Its interests profoundly shaped the details of those tariffs, and its need for internal improvement formed a basis for sectional bargaining in constructive legislation after the War of 1812, as New England, the Middle Region, and the South each sought alliance with the growing West.
Chapter 48
How did railroads and the Erie Canal reshape the Mississippi Valley's trade outlet?
As railroads pushed across the mountains, New England and New York colonists and German immigrants settled the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi basin, forming a zone tied industrially and socially to New England. The railroad reinforced the Erie Canal and, as De Bow put it, turned back the tide of the Father of Waters so that for much of the Valley its outlet was New York rather than New Orleans.
Chapter 48
What did Seward tell the Northwest about the transfer of empire and slavery responsibility?
Seward, speaking at Madison, Wisconsin, in fall 1860, declared the empire's power was passing from the thirteen Atlantic states to the twenty states west of the Alleghanies, telling his audience they were the heirs and would be masters of the United States. On slavery, he said the whole responsibility rested on the Northwest, resigning to it the banner of human rights.
Chapter 48
Section 494 cards
What did Sherman say about the river, and why did it matter in the Civil War?
General Sherman said, "Whatever power holds that river can govern this continent." Grant and Sherman, both from the Mississippi Valley, believed the South's cause was lost when Vicksburg fell, unless the Confederacy could regain the river after Eastern victories. Illinois gave the North its President, Lincoln; Mississippi gave the South its President, Davis; both were born in Kentucky.
Chapter 49
How did the Mississippi Valley's population and political power shift after the Civil War?
After the war, political power passed for many years to the northern half of the Mississippi Valley, as the names Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley indicate. The Valley's population grew from about fifteen million in 1860 to over forty million in 1900, more than half the total United States population.
Chapter 49
What economic resources and industries does the chapter credit to the Mississippi Valley?
The chapter cites iron ore feeding the Great Lakes-to-Pittsburgh movement, with the United States producing pig iron and steel equal to its two greatest competitors combined. It is the chief coal producer, has great oil fields, huge wheat and corn crops and cattle, cotton furnishing two-thirds of the world's factory supply, and the greatest railroad network in the world.
Chapter 49
What movements does the author say arose from the Mississippi Valley, and what ideal did they serve?
The author argues the Valley was a region of revolt, producing devoted movements for ameliorating the lot of the common man in the interests of democracy. The Granger, Greenback, and Populist movements, Bryan Democracy, and Roosevelt Republicanism all found their greatest strength there. Farmers learned that unrestrained competition and combination meant triumph of the strongest and seizure of strategic points by a dominant class.
Chapter 49
Section 504 cards
Where did the West first take on its distinguishing features?
Turner locates the West's distinguishing features along the upper waters of the Atlantic's tributaries in the mid-eighteenth century. There, beyond the falls of the rivers, lived pioneer farmers, largely Scotch-Irish and German non-English stock, who formed a distinct people and were the ancestors of Boone, Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, and Lincoln.
Chapter 50
What did Gouverneur Morris argue about representation in 1787?
Morris argued for basing representation on property as well as numbers, so the Atlantic States would keep a prevalence in the national councils. He feared new Western states would be less enlightened, have different interests, and drag the maritime states into wars whose burdens fell chiefly on them. He called the busy haunts of men, not the remote wilderness, the proper school of political talent.
Chapter 50
What did Josiah Quincy argue against admitting Louisiana?
Quincy protested that the framers never foresaw a whole population beyond the Mississippi entering Congress to form laws and decide destiny. He mocked the idea that the patriots had 'taken degrees at the hospital of idiocy,' warned the Ohio's mouth would be far east of the empire's center, and objected to throwing Atlantic rights into 'hotch-pot' with the wild men on the Missouri.
Chapter 50
How did the frontier shape the pioneer's economic outlook?
Turner argues the pioneer, remote from systematic education and working alone with little specie or capital, belonged to the debtor class. At each stage the West favored expanding the currency. Having staked everything on Western development, the pioneer resented conservative sections during financial contraction. Turner says explaining this antagonism requires more than denouncing dishonesty and ignorance as fundamental Western traits.
Chapter 50
Section 514 cards
According to Turner, how did separation from the seaboard affect the Western man?
Turner argues that separation from the seaboard and his environment made the Western man largely free from European precedents and forces. He looked at things independently with little appreciation for Old World experience, rejecting the ideal of an eclectic nation advancing civilization through familiarity with foreign ideas. Instead he sought to conserve and develop what was original and valuable in the new country, seeing in free lands opportunity for a new type of democracy and popular ideals.
Chapter 51
What did Professor Boutmy say about American society, and how did Turner respond?
Boutmy said the United States is primarily a commercial society and only secondarily a nation, a huge commercial company for discovering, cultivating, and capitalizing its territory. Turner calls this a serious misapprehension, since far-reaching ideals of state and society were evolved in the West with loyalty to the nation representing them. But he concedes Boutmy hits the substantial fact that free Western lands shaped the interior man's fundamental traits.
Chapter 51
How did free lands affect equality and liberty in Western democracy?
Turner argues free lands promoted equality among Western settlers and checked Eastern aristocratic influences: where everyone could have a farm almost for taking it, economic equality easily resulted and involved political equality. Western democracy also included individual liberty, as the frontiersman was impatient of restraints. He preserved order without legal authority through lynch law and regulators, and society became atomic, with crime seen as an offense against the victim rather than the law.
Chapter 51
What was the Western man's ideal of the self-made man, and what did he fail to consider?
Turner argues the West was another name for opportunity, with mines to seize and valleys to preempt open to the shrewdest and boldest. The self-made man was the Western ideal, the kind of man all men might become. Out of wilderness experience the Westerner fashioned a formula for social regeneration: freedom of the individual to seek his own. Turner notes he did not consider that his conditions were exceptional and temporary.
Chapter 51
Section 524 cards
What does Turner argue about the West and materialism?
The author argues it is a profound mistake to treat the West as engrossed in mere material ends. The very materialism charged against the West was accompanied by ideals of equality, exaltation of the common man, and national expansion. Turner concludes the West has been and is preeminently a region of ideals, mistaken or not.
Chapter 52
Which sections shaped the West before and after the War of 1812?
From the Revolution to the close of the War of 1812, democracy from the Southern and Middle States contributed the main streams of settlement and social influence; even in Ohio New England leaders soon lost political power. After 1812, New England, having lost supremacy in the carrying trade, sent swarms of settlers west, spreading ideals of education, character, and political institutions as a leaven in the Northwest.
Chapter 52
How did New England settlers change in the West?
Turner cautions against believing an unmixed New England influence took the Northwest. The pioneers were less contented and less conservative than the class conserving pure New England civilization. Modified by sojourn in the Middle Region, they underwent a forest-change: the Westernized New England man was less conservative, less provincial, more adaptable, less rigorous in Puritan ideals, less a man of culture, more a man of action.
Chapter 52
What divided the West before the Civil War?
Cotton culture brought the slave system and the great plantation, displacing the small farmer in all but mountainous areas; the tidewater's industrial organization took the Southwest, breaking back-country unity and forming the solid South. Meanwhile railroads and canals in the Northwest drew Middle State and New England settlement, strengthening antislavery feeling; New England ancestry mapped onto heavy Free Soil votes. The West broke asunder.
Chapter 52
Section 531 cards
What economic and political characteristics does Turner attribute to the Old Northwest?
Turner describes the Old Northwest as a region where older frontier conditions survive in parts and inherited ways of looking at things trace to frontier days, while also being assimilated to the East. It is not entirely content with existing economic society where wealth has accumulated, yet it voted for the income tax but rejected free coinage in the Fifty-third Congress. It is more American but less cosmopolitan than the seaboard.
Chapter 53
Section 544 cards
Which regions' settlers dominated early Ohio politics, contrary to its New England reputation?
The author argues Ohio is popularly considered a child of New England, yet in its formative years it was dominated by other forces. In the 1820 legislature, New England furnished nine Senators and sixteen Representatives, the Middle States seventeen Senators and twenty-one Representatives, and the South nine Senators and twenty-seven Representatives. Together, Southern and Middle State emigrants outnumbered Federalist New Englanders three to one.
Chapter 54
What two Southern elements does the chapter distinguish in Indiana's settlement?
The chapter distinguishes a Quaker migration from North Carolina, moving chiefly because of anti-slavery convictions, and a "poor white" stream made up partly of restless hunters and thriftless pioneers and partly of other classes, such as former overseers, migrating with definite purpose of improving their fortunes. The author cautions that not all Southern immigrants fell into these classes, nor were these the normal elements in Indiana's development.
Chapter 54
What circumstances delayed Northern influence in Indiana before railroad development?
Indiana had no lake ports like her sister States, and settlement from ports such as Chicago was interrupted by the less attractive northwestern part of the state. The chapter also notes the geological fact that limestone ridges and the best soils ran in nearly perpendicular belts northward from the Ohio. These circumstances combined to diminish Northern and facilitate Southern influences prior to railroad development.
Chapter 54
Why were Michigan and Wisconsin settled by English speakers later than the southern tier?
The chapter says Michigan and Wisconsin were the first entered by the French but latest by English settlers. It suggests adverse reports of surveyors who visited the interior, partial geographical isolation, and the unprogressive character of the French settlers as explanations. Great Britain maintained the dominant position until after the War of 1812, and the real center of authority was in Canada.
Chapter 54
Section 554 cards
What caused Michigan's population to surge between 1830 and 1840?
After the Erie Canal was dug, settlement turned into Michigan, and its population leaped from 31,000 to 212,000 between 1830 and 1840. This happened despite the state's heavy debt and the crisis of 1837, which drove away many thrifty, debt-hating Germans. The vast majority of settlers were New Yorkers, making Michigan distinctly a child of the Empire State.
Chapter 55
What two forces attracted Wisconsin's earliest inhabitants?
Fur-trading posts at Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, and Milwaukee formed one element, continuing French influence. The lead region of the southwest corner attracted Illinois and Southern pioneers. Soldiers following Black Hawk's trail in 1832 reported rich soil, sparking immigration. Milwaukee drew a combined migration from western New York and New England that spread along southern prairie counties until meeting Southern settlers in the lead region.
Chapter 55
Why did German immigrants favor Wisconsin over other states?
Wisconsin was free from debt, made a constitution exceptionally liberal to foreigners, and sold her school lands for almost nothing to attract immigration rather than treasuring them or using them for internal improvements. The prudent Germans, who loved light taxes and cheap hardwood lands, turned toward Wisconsin in what the chapter calls another Voelkerwanderung, spreading from Milwaukee north along Lake Michigan and into northern central Wisconsin.
Chapter 55
How did the Northwest's role as sectional mediator end?
The Northwest seemed to represent and understand the various parts of the Union, and Vinton of Ohio pleaded its mission as mediator between sections. But the author argues some issues cannot be settled by compromise. The slave power raised such an issue, too late for support in the upper Mississippi Basin. Lincoln and Douglas's debates revealed the complex Northwest, and the state so potent for compromise became the battle-ground itself.
Chapter 55
Section 563 cards
How does the chapter describe Ohio's post-1860 development and social composition?
The chapter says Ohio found mineral wealth, gas, and petroleum beneath her fields and leaped to a front rank among manufacturing States. It describes her as distinctly part of the eastern social organism, much like Pennsylvania, with no preponderant social center and a multiplicity of colleges reflecting diverse origins. One-third of her people are of foreign parentage; Cincinnati is deeply affected by German stock, Cleveland by New England influence, and the chapter predicts Middle State ideals will dominate Ohio's future.
Chapter 56
What does the chapter say about Chicago's population and significance?
The chapter calls Chicago the very type of Northwestern development for good and for evil and an epitome of composite nationality. Citing a writer's analysis of the school census, it notes only Berlin and Hamburg in the German Empire have a greater German population, only Stockholm and Goeteborg in Sweden have more Swedes, and only Christiana and Bergen in Norway have more Norwegians, with Irish, Polish, Bohemians, and Dutch also represented. It says Illinois will be the battle-ground for social and economic ideals for the next generation.
Chapter 56
How does the chapter contrast Wisconsin and Minnesota?
The chapter says nearly three-fourths of Wisconsin's inhabitants are of foreign parentage, a smaller native percentage than any other Old Northwest State, with Germans largest and Scandinavians second, and no Southern element. It says Wisconsin's foreign element is slightly less than Minnesota's, where Scandinavians hold the place Germans hold in Wisconsin, and that Scandinavians assimilate more readily than Germans, so Wisconsin offers more opportunity for non-English influence. It predicts Wisconsin becomes a middle agricultural dairy State.
Chapter 56
Section 574 cards
What replaced native American farmers in southern and middle counties, and what did those farmers do?
The chapter says farms were divided and sold to thrifty Germans or worked by tenants, while the native farmer retired to a neighboring village and sometimes organized creameries and dairy businesses. Townships and counties once dominated by native farmers of New York extraction came to be possessed by Germans or other European nationalities, and much of the towns' retail trade also passed into German hands.
Chapter 57
How did New Glarus, Wisconsin, begin and how did it change?
New Glarus was formed by a carefully organized migration from Glarus in Switzerland, aided by the canton itself. For some years it was a miniature Swiss canton in social organization and customs. The chapter states it has since become increasingly assimilated to the American type, and left an impress by transforming its county from a grain-raising to a dairy region.
Chapter 57
What political role does the chapter assign to the Old Northwest in 1896?
The Old Northwest gave McKinley a plurality of over 367,000 out of about 3,734,000 votes, while New England and the Middle States together gave him 979,000 and the farther West gave Bryan a decisive net plurality. The chapter concludes the Old Northwest occupied the position of a political middle region between East and West, being the child of the East and the mother of the Populistic West.
Chapter 57
Who does the chapter say the Populist is, and where did the silver leaders come from?
The chapter argues the Populist is the American farmer who kept in advance of the economic and social transformations that overtook those who remained behind. It states the leaders of the silver movement came from the native element furnished by the Old Northwest; in the Kansas legislature of 1891, thirty-two of the original Populists were born in Northern states, mostly Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and nearly all were Methodists and former Republicans.
Chapter 57
Section 584 cards
How does Turner explain Calhoun's shift from nationalism to state-sovereignty?
Turner argues that Calhoun, remaining in the South Carolina interior, witnessed its transformation from pioneer farming to great cotton plantations worked by slaves. This economic change, according to the author, explains the shift from the nationalist and protectionist Calhoun of 1816 into the state-sovereignty and free-trade Calhoun. Jackson, by contrast, left while the region was still a frontier.
Chapter 58
What contrast does Turner draw between Calhoun and Andrew Jackson?
Both had Scotch-Irish pioneer ancestors in the Carolina uplands. Calhoun stayed and shared the region's economic transformation into plantation society, becoming a state-sovereignty advocate. Jackson left while it was still a frontier, shared frontier life in Tennessee, and reflected the democracy and nationalism of his people. Turner uses this to show how migration versus staying shaped political outlook.
Chapter 58
What four changes within a decade does Turner say constitute a revolution?
Turner states that within a decade four marked changes occurred in national development, which together constitute a revolution. The first, which he discusses, is the exhaustion of the supply of free land and the closing of Western advance as an effective factor in American development. He notes that remaining government lands are mostly mountain and arid regions, conquerable only with capital and combined effort.
Chapter 58
What method does Turner say the careful student of history must use?
The author argues that the careful student must seek the explanation of the forms and changes of political institutions in the social and economic forces that determine them. Knowing whether a nation is called a democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy matters less than knowing the state's social and economic tendencies, which work beneath the surface and dominate external form.
Chapter 58
Section 594 cards
What economic concentration does Turner say occurred in the 1890s?
The author argues that iron, coal, and cattle fell under a few great corporations with allied interests, and that railroad and steamship combinations brought breadstuffs and manufactures under similar control. He dates the Lake Superior iron mines' development and the coal, coke, and transport combinations to the early and mid-1890s, calling it largely the work of the last decade.
Chapter 59
How does Turner link labor combination to foreign immigration?
The author argues that labor combination in the same vast industries was the concomitant of capital concentration, but gains added significance because foreign immigration over the past fifteen years made the labor class largely of foreign parentage. He claims the lines of cleavage between capital and labor were accentuated by distinctions of nationality.
Chapter 59
What four phenomena does Turner say marked a completed cycle of American development?
The author lists: concentration of capital in fundamental industries; combination of labor, accentuated by foreign immigration; political and commercial expansion overseas, including Porto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, Cuba, the Isthmian Canal, and China; and party division over Socialism, shown by the Populists and Bryan's Democrats. He ties these to the 1890 frontier announcement, the 1896 Chicago Convention, and Manila.
Chapter 59
What evidence does Turner give of frontier democracy before the Revolution?
The author cites Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, a contest under Governor Spotswood between frontier settlers and coastal property holders, the War of the Regulation in the Carolinas with its Declaration of Grievances, and Shays' Rebellion in New England. He describes a belt of democratic territory from the back country of New England through western New York, Pennsylvania, and the South, in conflict with coastal dominant classes.
Chapter 59
Section 603 cards
What did the suffrage debate at the 1787 convention leave to the states?
The chapter states that conservative leaders demanded property safeguards for the coast against the interior. The outcome left suffrage for the House of Representatives dependent on each state's policy, which the author says effectively imposed a property qualification nationally. Only as the interior developed did these restrictions gradually give way toward manhood suffrage.
Chapter 60
What elements made up Jefferson's political gospel, per the chapter?
The author argues Jefferson's gospel was dominated by Western influence: an agricultural basis for democracy, with manufacturing and city life seen as dangerous to the body politic. It included simplicity and economy in government, the right of revolution, individual freedom, and the belief that those who win vacant lands may shape their own government. Jefferson was born on Virginia's frontier to a pioneer father.
Chapter 60
How did Jefferson's Virginia measures favor the interior over the coast?
The chapter says Jefferson brought measures to shift Virginia's power toward interior settlers rather than the coastwise aristocracy. Repealing entail and primogeniture would have destroyed the great estates of the planting aristocracy; abolishing the Established Church would have reduced the coastwise party's influence for interior dissenting sects. Public education and his demand to abolish slavery reflected the same tendency.
Chapter 60
Section 614 cards
What did the unchecked development of the individual produce on the frontier, according to Turner?
The author argues that the unchecked development of the individual was the significant product of frontier democracy. This democracy preferred expressing itself by choosing a man of the people over forming elaborate governmental institutions. The Westerner defended himself and resented restrictions; the idea of the personality of law often dominated organized justice, and the backwoodsman was intolerant of hair-splitters.
Chapter 61
Why did Andrew Jackson become the idol of the Western popular will?
Turner argues Jackson personified essential Western traits, so during his presidency he became the idol and mouthpiece of the popular will. He attacked the Bank as an engine of aristocracy and denounced nullification, going directly to his object with a frontiersman's ruthless energy. He had a backwoodsman's contempt for formal law and the subtleties of State sovereignty. He is also tied to the spoils system's triumph.
Chapter 61
How did Lincoln's pioneer democracy of the Northwest differ from Jackson's Southwest democracy?
Turner argues Jackson's democracy was contentious, individualistic, and sought local self-government and expansion, with industry and city life as minor factors. Lincoln represents Northwest pioneers who cleared homes and built fortunes amid an ascending industrial movement, where industrial development and city life were its very life. Their hero was industrial rather than militant, and they were commonwealth and industry builders.
Chapter 61
What change in Western democracy does Turner describe in the last chapter of its development?
Turner argues that at each new stage the West grappled with larger areas and bigger combinations, citing land grants as large as Rhode Island and regions dwarfing New England states. Facing the Great Lakes, Prairies, Plains, Rockies, Mississippi, and Missouri gave new standards of measurement. Individualism began giving way to cooperation and governmental activity, and after the Civil War vast public domain went to farmers, states for education, and railroads.
Chapter 61
Section 623 cards
Why did the Far West frontier become social rather than individual?
The author argues that once the arid lands and mineral resources of the Far West were reached, the old individual pioneer methods could not succeed. Expensive irrigation works had to be built, cooperative activity was required to use the water supply, and capital beyond the reach of the small farmer was needed. The physiographic province itself decreed a social rather than individual destiny.
Chapter 62
What did free land on the western border mean for American democracy?
The author calls it the most important factor: an area of free land continually lay on the western border. When social conditions crystallized in the East, or capital pressed on labor, there was a gate of escape. Free lands promoted individualism, economic equality, freedom to rise, and democracy, and differentiated American democracy from earlier democracies.
Chapter 62
What did the vast scale of the West teach democracy, according to the author?
The author argues that free lands and industrial resources existed over such vast spaces that they demanded increasing spaciousness of design and power of execution. He says democracy learned in the West how to deal with the problem of magnitude, unlike old historic democracies, which were little states with primitive economic conditions.
Chapter 62
Section 632 cards
How does Turner describe the idealism immigrants brought to the newer West?
Turner notes four million persons of German parentage and over a million of Scandinavian parentage in the Middle West, and says the newer West's democracy is deeply affected by their ideals. To them America meant opportunity, freedom, and democracy — a chance to escape social caste and build a larger life. He argues even southern Italian immigrants were not driven by mere blind materialism.
Chapter 63
What does Turner claim about the persistence of frontier ideals after the frontier passes?
Turner argues that long after a region's frontier period ends, the conception of society and the ideals it produced persist in people's minds. Because most of the United States is barely a generation removed from primitive Western conditions, he says Americans' inherited ways of thinking and fundamental assumptions were shaped by democracy's westward march.
Chapter 63
Section 644 cards
What does the author say is fundamentally the outcome of American experience with the West?
The author argues that American democracy is fundamentally the outcome of the American people's experiences in dealing with the West. Western democracy, in its earlier period, produced a society whose most distinctive fact was the freedom of the individual to rise under conditions of social mobility, with ambition for the liberty and well-being of the masses. This conception vitalized American democracy and contrasted it with democracies of history and European legislative efforts.
Chapter 64
What does the author say is the problem of the United States regarding democracy?
The author argues the problem of the United States is not to create democracy but to conserve democratic institutions and ideals. In its later development, Western democracy has gained experience in social control, steadily enlarging the sphere of its action and the instruments for its perpetuation, including public schools from the grades to graduate work of the great universities, which created a large body of intelligent plain people.
Chapter 64
What uncertainty does the author raise about the industrial leaders produced by the West?
The author argues it remains to be determined whether these powerful industrial leaders constitute a menace to democratic institutions or the most efficient factor for adjusting democratic control to the new conditions. He notes they were products of democratic conditions, since freedom to rise was the very condition of their existence, and asks whether successors will exploit the masses and be capable of retaining efficient control of vast resources.
Chapter 64
According to the author, what did the West give to the world beyond material wealth?
The author argues the West gave, best of all, not only to the American but to the unhappy and oppressed of all lands, a vision of hope and assurance that the world held a place with high faith in man and the will and power to furnish him the opportunity to grow to the full measure of his own capacity. He also credits the West with types like Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln.
Chapter 64
Section 654 cards
How did the pioneer treat the forest and soil, according to Turner?
The author argues the pioneer saw the forest as no friendly resource for posterity, waging hand-to-hand war on it by cutting and burning a small clearing and expanding it year after year. He also made war on the soil's rank fertility, since virgin land lay just beyond and it was idle to expect scientific farming while new worlds remained open.
Chapter 65
What does Turner say the pioneer learned from experience on new frontiers?
The pioneer learned in the school of experience that crops of one area would not do for a new frontier, and that the scythe of the clearing must be replaced by the reaper of the prairies. He was forced to make old tools serve new uses, reshape habits, institutions and ideas to changed conditions, and find new means when old ones failed, building a new society while breaking new soil.
Chapter 65
How did the squatter and lumberman treat government land title?
The squatter enforced his claim even against the government's title using extra-legal combinations and force, appealing to lynch law with little hesitation and impatient of governmental restriction on individual right. Turner cites Delegate Sibley's 1852 speech defending lumbermen who cut public timber as victims of oppression, noting no colleague protested what would now be called stealing government timber.
Chapter 65
What two ideals does Turner say were deeply fixed in the pioneer's mind?
Turner holds that individualism and democracy were both deeply fixed. The pioneer had a passionate hatred of aristocracy, monopoly and special privilege, believing in simplicity, economy and rule of the people. Yet Turner argues he failed to see democracy was primarily the result of free lands and immense opportunities, not merely political institutions, though occasional statesmen voiced that idea.
Chapter 65
Section 664 cards
What did Turner say was the effective force behind American democracy in the long run?
The author argues it was the presence of practically free land into which men could escape from oppression or inequalities in older settlements. This possibility compelled coastwise states to liberalize the franchise and prevented formation of a dominant class based on property or custom. Among pioneers, economic equality fostered political equality, and democracy became almost the religion of the pioneer.
Chapter 66
What two changes did railways, land grants, and the homestead law bring to pioneer ideals?
Turner states the new colonization demanded increasing use of capital, and rapid town formation made men eager for bank credit, making pioneers more dependent on eastern economic forces. Second, farmers became dependent on transportation companies as never before. When railroads pressed too far and issued too much stock, they collided with pioneers over rates and discriminations, producing the Greenback and Granger movements.
Chapter 66
How did the pioneer's view of government shift, according to Turner?
The author argues the pioneer lost his primitive individualism as credit, currency, transportation, and distribution conditioned his success. Government began to look less like a necessary evil and more like an instrument to perpetuate democratic ideals. Defenses shifted from free land to legislation, from individualism to social control by law—the Kentucky pioneer of 1796 giving way to the Kansas pioneer of 1896. He had no sympathy with socialist revolution.
Chapter 66
What did De Tocqueville predict about manufacturing aristocracy, and how did Turner qualify it?
De Tocqueville said relations between workman and master were frequent but no real association existed, and called the growing manufacturing aristocracy one of the harshest ever, warning that permanent inequality would enter through that gate. Turner adds that the sanative influences of free Western spaces were destined to ameliorate labor's condition, offer new hopes to pioneer democracy, and postpone the problem.
Chapter 66
Section 674 cards
How did Oklahoma's 1889 opening illustrate the closing of free land?
The chapter describes twenty thousand settlers crowding at the boundaries of newly opened Indian reservations in 1889, waiting like straining athletes for the bugle note to start the race across the line. It presents this frantic rush as evidence that the old lavish opportunity for settlers to stake land where they wished had given way to increasingly limited lands and government land lotteries.
Chapter 67
How does the chapter describe the pioneer of the arid regions?
The author argues the pioneer of arid lands must be both a capitalist and a protege of the government. The government reclaims arid areas through costly irrigation projects, supplying capital and building dams and reservoirs itself, operating quarries, coal mines and timber, analyzing soils, and advising farmers what and when to plant, furnishing twenty-acre tracts under careful regulation of water rights.
Chapter 67
What did the author observe about corporate combinations as unpossessed resources diminished?
The author argues that in almost exact ratio to the diminution of unpossessed resources, combinations of capital increased in magnitude and efficiency of conquest. The panic of 1873 was followed by unprecedented combination of businesses into corporations, the panic of 1893 by pools and trusts, and by the panic of 1907 it seemed possible free competition under individualism would end in monopoly.
Chapter 67
What contrast does the chapter draw between early and late pioneer conditions?
The chapter contrasts adventurous Englishmen on the Virginia coast three hundred years earlier, beginning the attack on the wilderness, with the President summoning governors of forty-six states three years before the lecture to deliberate on the danger of exhausting the nation's natural resources. The author argues the pressure of population on the food supply is already felt and this transformation is only beginning.
Chapter 67
Section 684 cards
What constitutional provision expressed the Middle Western conception of the State University?
The author cites the Indiana Constitution of 1816, which provided for a "general system of education ascending in regular gradations from township schools to a State University, wherein tuition shall be gratis and equally open to all." He says this expresses the Middle Western conception born in pioneer society and doubtless deeply influenced by Jeffersonian democracy.
Chapter 68
What does the author say is striking about democracy's pressure on State Universities?
The author argues that nothing in educational history is more striking than the steady pressure of democracy on its universities to adapt to all the people. From Middle Western State Universities shaped by pioneer ideals came fuller recognition of scientific and applied studies, the breaking down of the traditional required curriculum, the union of vocational and college work, and training under the ideal of service to democracy.
Chapter 68
What peculiar power and peculiar limitation does the State University have?
The author argues the State University has a peculiar power in the directness of its influence on the whole people, and a peculiar limitation in its dependence on the people. The people's ideals form the atmosphere it moves in, though it can affect that atmosphere. To uplift the state it must, per Bryce, "serve the time without yielding to it."
Chapter 68
Why does the author say educated leaders and experts are needed in democracy?
The author argues democracy no longer owns unlimited untouched resources, so scientific farming, forestry, and applied science are needed, and public health and manufacturing require experts. He says industrial and social problems are too complex for rule-of-thumb, and universities should train administrators, legislators, judges, and experts to mediate between contending interests and safeguard democracy.
Chapter 68
Section 694 cards
What danger does Turner foresee when universities become powerful state factors?
The author argues that once universities are recognized as influential elements in the life of the State rather than remote cloisters, political and social controversy may obscure their pure air, and efforts may be made to stamp out the exceptional doctrine and the exceptional man. He urges scholars to pursue impartial truth for all the people.
Chapter 69
How does Turner compare the university to the pioneer?
The author argues universities must be left free, as the pioneer was free, to explore new regions and report what they find. Like pioneers they have the ideal of investigation and seek new horizons; they are not tied to past knowledge, since science and society are still growing and need pioneer trail-makers.
Chapter 69
What does Turner say the university should reveal to the individual?
The author argues the university's function is to reveal the mystery and glory of life as a whole: to open realms of rational human enjoyment and achievement, preserve consciousness of the past, spread before the eye the beauty of the universe, and throw wide its portals of duty and power to the human soul. It must honor genius in all fields.
Chapter 69
What standard of success does Turner warn endangers American democracy?
The author argues that so long as success in amassing great wealth for individual aggrandizement is the exclusive or dominant standard, and material prosperity regardless of its cost or resulting civilization is the shibboleth, American democracy—faith in the common man cherished by the pioneer—is in danger, since the strongest will seek whatever goal society marks as preeminent.
Chapter 69
Section 704 cards
What double duty does Turner assign to the University?
The author argues the University has a double duty: on one hand, to help improve the general economic and social environment through scientific discovery and better conditions of existence, and to extend its operations widely among the people; on the other hand, to find and fit men and women for leadership, awakening new demands and satisfying them with trained leaders holding higher conceptions of success.
Chapter 70
How does Turner describe the origin of American democracy?
The author argues American democracy was born of no theorist's dream and was not carried to Virginia on the Susan Constant nor to Plymouth on the Mayflower. Instead it came out of the American forest, gaining new strength each time it touched a new frontier. Not the constitution but free land and abundant natural resources open to a fit people made the democratic type of society for three centuries.
Chapter 70
What new national problems replace frontier conquest, according to Turner?
The author argues the problem is no longer cutting away forest but saving and wisely using remaining timber; no longer moving prairie land from government to pioneer, since it is privately held. Now the task is conquering rejected arid lands with new farming methods and crops from Siberia, Egypt, and China, bringing water to alkali and sage brush, as population grows faster than food supply.
Chapter 70
How does Turner contrast Northeastern cities with Middle Western states?
The author argues that in Northeastern cities like New York and Boston, faces are largely from Southeastern Europe. Puritan New England drew cheap labor to its factories and governed these people as a ruling class with no assimilation between strata. By contrast, Middle Western agricultural states saw immigrant and old native stock arrive together and build a homogeneous society on give and take.
Chapter 70
Section 713 cards
What did the 1890 Census declaration coincide with, according to the chapter?
The Superintendent of the Census declared in 1890 that the frontier line was no longer traceable, and the beginning of the rush into Oklahoma had just occurred. There the broken fragments of Eastern Indian nations and wilder Southwestern tribes had been gathered; the land-hungry pioneer rush made the old Indian territory pass away almost at a blow, with populous cities and oil wells following.
Chapter 71
What does the chapter say the Rocky Mountain mining regions revealed?
The author argues that in the Rocky Mountains, where prospectors once seemed to attain the largest individual freedom, revolutions wrought by organized industry and capital occurred. There law and order broke down in collisions of great capital aggregations with each other and with organized socialistic labor. The Cripple Creek strikes, Butte contests, Goldfield mobs, and Colorado fighting tell a similar story, exposing the dangers of modern American industrial tendencies.
Chapter 71
What new international relations does the chapter say the Panama Canal created?
The chapter says the Panama Canal completed the old dream of a strait between Atlantic and Pacific, creating new relations between Spanish America and the United States. It notes Argentina, Brazil, and Chile mediating between Mexico and the Union, and argues that instead of invoking the Monroe Doctrine and sending frontier armies, the nation now councils with European nations and South America and proposes social reorganization rather than force.
Chapter 71
Section 724 cards
What did Turner see in the Harvard hall that contrasted with his lectures on the Westward movement?
The hall leading to his lecture room was covered with an exhibit of Pittsburgh steel mills and congested tenements, with charts and diagrams on long working hours, death rates, and typhoid's relation to slums. Turner presents this as a social tragedy, contrasting it with young Washington leading Virginia frontiersmen to the Ohio forks where Braddock's men were struck by Indians.
Chapter 72
What did Talleyrand envision when gazing on the unpeopled wilderness near Philadelphia?
Turner recalls Talleyrand, the exiled Bishop of Autun in Washington's administration, looking from an eminence near Philadelphia on wilderness now inside a huge industrial society. Even the cold-blooded and cynical Talleyrand kindled at the vision of coming clearings, smiling farms, grazing herds, populous towns, and a newer and finer social organization to arise there.
Chapter 72
According to Turner, what were America's 'morning wishes'?
The author argues America has never been the home of mere contented materialism; from the beginning of its westward march it continuously sought new ways and dreamed of a perfected social type. He traces this through the ideal of discovery in the fifteenth century, Virginia as a hoped-for republic for Sandys, New England as freedom for the Puritans, Bacon's democratic revolution, and the democratic ideals of frontiersmen.
Chapter 72
What did Jacksonian democracy believe, and what did it not demand?
By the thirties Jacksonian democracy flourished, strong in faith in the intrinsic excellence of the common man, his right to make his own place, and his capacity to share in government. It was rural, based on frontier good fellowship, and loyal to leadership, even recalling senators who opposed their chosen executive. It did not demand equality of condition, since self-made success in free competition was prized, and it viewed governmental restraints with suspicion.
Chapter 72
Section 733 cards
What did the Locofocos demand, and how did they propose to keep society democratic?
The Locofocos were the first Americans to demand fundamental social changes for city workers, protesting monopolies and special privilege like Western pioneers. Their constructive policy was free gifts of public land, so surplus labor would not bid against itself but find an outlet in the West. Both labor theorists and practical pioneers saw cheap land and unpossessed resources as the condition of democracy.
Chapter 73
How did the Whig Western pioneers differ from the Democratic backwoodsmen?
A more northern stream of pioneers cherished similar democratic ideas but added the desire to create industrial centers, build factories and railroads, and found cities. They were ready to call on legislatures for subscriptions to stock, grants of franchises, banking promotion, and internal improvements. These were the Whig followers of Henry Clay, strongest in the Ohio Valley among the well-to-do and in the Southern Cotton Kingdom aristocracy.
Chapter 73
Why did the Populist revise the pioneer conception of government, and what did he demand?
The Western radical became convinced he must sacrifice individualism and free competition to maintain democracy, as capital consolidated and labor organized. The Populist saw government no longer as something outside him but as the people shaping their own affairs. He demanded free silver, ownership of communication and transportation agencies, the income tax, postal savings banks, agricultural credit, primary nominations, direct elections, initiative, referendum, and recall.
Chapter 73
Section 743 cards
What does Godkin argue about democracy and the incentive to excel?
Godkin argues that democracy does not suppress excellence; the desire for distinction—love of fame, wealth, or the subject itself—is the widest and most powerful incentive in all civilized countries. Democratic society, he claims, is marked by fierce competition and eagerness to rise above the level, and success is more worshiped there than in aristocracy.
Chapter 74
What does Turner say would be lost if America abandoned respect for distinct personality?
Turner argues that all that was buoyant and creative in American life would be lost if Americans gave up respect for distinct personality and variety in genius and sank to a dead level of common standards. Being 'socialized into an average' would be an irreparable loss; democracy instead needs multiplied motives for ambition and new lines of achievement.
Chapter 74
What new fields and motives does Turner say should replace material wealth as paths to distinction?
Turner argues that arts and letters, science, better social creation, and loyalty and political service to the commonweal should open new careers for the ambitious. He claims it was not the gold but the getting of it that captivated industrial captains, and that schools and universities could widen intellectual horizons and inspire higher ideals if public opinion awarded laurels in these new fields.
Chapter 74
Section 754 cards
How did coal, iron, and pig-iron production in the decade after 1897 compare with earlier US history?
The chapter states more coal was mined in the ten years after 1897 than in all the nation's prior life, rising from under fifteen million long tons fifty years earlier to nearly 429,000,000 in 1907. The nation produced three times as much iron ore in the past two decades as in all previous history, and pig-iron output, never reaching ten million long tons before 1898, averaged over twice that in the five years from 1904.
Chapter 75
How did railroad traffic and agricultural output grow between 1890 and 1909?
Railroad passengers carried one mile more than doubled between 1890 and 1908, and freight carried one mile nearly trebled in that period, doubling in the past decade. Agricultural products grew far more slowly: corn rose from about two billion bushels in 1891 to two and seven-tenths billion in 1909, wheat from 611 million to 737 million bushels, and cotton from about nine million to ten and three-tenths million bales.
Chapter 75
What does the chapter say about immigration in the decade after 1900?
Over eight million immigrants arrived in the ten years beginning with 1900, with 1.25 million arrivals in 1907 alone—enough, the quoted writer said, to populate both New Hampshire and Maine. The chapter notes the influx came increasingly from southern and eastern Europe; quoting Professor Ripley, it reports that in 1907 one-quarter were Mediterranean, one-quarter Slavic, one-eighth Jewish, and one-sixth each Alpine and Teutonic. Immigrants concentrated in cities and industrial centers.
Chapter 75
How does the chapter connect US overseas expansion to the closing of the West?
The author argues that acquiring the Philippines, Hawaii, influence in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Isthmian Canal made the US an imperial republic and world power, and that this was in some respects the logical outcome of the nation's march to the Pacific—the sequence to occupying free western lands and exploiting their resources. He adds that this position forced reconsideration of constitutional readjustment and traditional ideals of liberty and democracy in governing other races.
Chapter 75
Section 764 cards
What did Richard Rush argue in his 1827 Treasury report about thin population?
Rush wrote that "the creation of capital is retarded rather than accelerated by the diffusion of a thin population over a great surface of soil." The chapter contrasts this with Gallatin's earlier congressional claim that American happiness arose as much from plentiful land relative to inhabitants as from wise political institutions, noting both Pennsylvania financiers may have been right for their time.
Chapter 76
How does the chapter describe the shift from pioneer individualism to monopoly after free lands disappeared?
The chapter says competitive individualism amid vast unappropriated opportunities changed into monopoly of fundamental industrial processes by huge aggregations of capital as free lands vanished. It cites Harriman consolidating railroads into great groups and Morgan consolidating industries into trusts linked with dominant banks, insurance and trust companies, concentrating control of national industrial life in New York City.
Chapter 76
How did industrial magnates like Harriman defend themselves against charges of betraying pioneer ideals?
The chapter says masters of industry did not admit breaking with pioneer ideals; they saw themselves as pioneers under changed conditions, developing natural resources and driven to chop new clearings and find new trails. Harriman argued in an interview that the country was developed by enthusiastic, imaginative, speculative pioneers, and that restrictive conservative law would produce a moribund and conservative people.
Chapter 76
What two pioneer ideals does the chapter say came into mutual hostility, and what substitutes emerged?
The chapter identifies individual freedom to compete unrestrictedly for continental resources (the squatter ideal, with government seen as an evil) and democracy, "government of the people, by the people and for the people." Because American democracy was based on abundant free lands, their loss exposed hostility between these ideals. The chapter says the present turns to government regulation, and movements like initiative, referendum and recall are substitutes for the disappearing free lands.
Chapter 76
Section 774 cards
What evidence does Turner give that American life is integrating by sections?
Turner points to the grouping of votes in Congress and general elections, the organization and utterances of business leaders, and the association of scholars, churches, and spiritual representatives. He cites tariff votes, the location of Progressive Republican strongholds, and the difficulty of adjusting railway rates to diverse sectional interests as examples. He argues this sectionalism stems partly from great spaces and partly from separate economic, political, social, and spiritual interests.
Chapter 77
How does Turner say the real federal relations of the United States are shaped?
The author argues that real federal relations are shaped by the interplay of sectional with national forces rather than by the relation of State and Nation. He notes that separate geographical interests have their leaders and spokesmen, that much Congressional legislation is determined by contests, triumphs, or compromises between rival sections, and that sections are gaining new self-consciousness and revived self-assertion. National character, he says, is a composite of these sections.
Chapter 77
Why does Turner say each age must study history anew?
Turner argues each age studies its history anew with interests determined by the spirit of the time, reconsidering the past from viewpoints furnished by new conditions that reveal forces previous historians inadequately knew. He concedes this exposes the historian to bias but also affords new instruments and insight. Recent history gives new meaning to past events and supplies new hypotheses, lines of inquiry, and criteria of perspective for the remoter past.
Chapter 77
What examples show present developments casting new light on past events?
Turner cites Washington crossing the snows to summon the French from the Mississippi Valley, now seen as the herald of an empire; Braddock's advance to the forks of the Ohio, which even in defeat opened a road to Pittsburgh's industrial power; and the 1794 Jay boundary proposals, which historians barely notice but which involved the richest iron ore deposits and a fundamental industry. He also says minor parties and reform agitations often proved concealed entrances to the main current.
Chapter 77
Section 783 cards
What did Jackson claim in 1837 about the moneyed aristocracy?
Jackson wrote in 1837 that the war was being carried on by the monied aristocracy of the few against the democracy of numbers, with the prosperous using the credit and paper system to make honest laborers hewers of wood and drawers of water. The author presents this as an example of the vehement rhetoric of the era.
Chapter 78
According to the author, what happened to the humanitarian movement of 1830-1850?
The author argues an idealistic and influential humanitarian movement arose between 1830 and 1850, dealing with social forces and eager to apply public lands to social amelioration. But the slavery struggle swept these movements into its mighty inundation for the time, and after the war other influences, including the railroads opening the prairies after 1850, delayed their revival.
Chapter 78
What did the author say about the platforms of the Greenback-Labor, Granger, and Populist parties?
The author argues that reading the platforms of the Greenback-Labor, Granger, and Populist parties reveals the basic proposals later adopted by the Democratic party after its revolution under Bryan and the Republican party after its revolution by Roosevelt. These platforms, discredited by the major parties of the time, show the persistence of earlier democratic forces.
Chapter 78
Section 794 cards
What does Turner say a true understanding of the modern United States demands of historians?
The author argues that comprehending the United States of today and the forces that made it requires reworking American history from new points of view afforded by the present. Done this way, even the North-South struggle over slavery and the freed negro, dominant in the two decades after 1850, appears as only one interest of its time, while congressional debates, newspapers, and public documents remain a rich mine for tracing movements dominant today.
Chapter 79
What analogy does Turner draw between geology and history, and what lesson does he take from it?
The author argues the new geologist describes the inorganic earth dynamically using chemistry, physics, mathematics, and paleontology without first fixing the relative importance of each factor. Because a geological area is too complex for a single explanation, the geologist abandons the single hypothesis for multiple hypotheses, creating a family of possible explanations to avoid partiality for a simple theory. Turner presents this as a model for historians facing varied, complex social factors.
Chapter 79
Why does Turner doubt that the past should merely illustrate and confirm economic law?
The author argues that history is strewn with the wrecks of the "known and acknowledged truths" of economic law. This is due not only to defective analysis and imperfect statistics but also to lack of critical historical methods, insufficient historical-mindedness among economists, and failure to attend to the relativity and transiency of the conditions from which the laws were deduced. He grants the economist's statement offers much, but questions treating the past as mere illustration.
Chapter 79
What does Turner say each specialist and the historian must do to reach the truth?
The author argues that economists, political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, geographers, and students of literature, art, and religion all contribute material, tools, new points of view, hypotheses, and suggested relations to the historian's equipment. Each specialist risks bias from his own viewpoint and drive to deduce universal laws, while the historian risks treating complex social forces from a single angle. The historian must master the sister-studies' essential tools, and their followers must learn historians' methods and cooperate.
Chapter 79
Section 804 cards
What does Turner say the American historian should study in American society?
Turner argues the American historian should recognize and study the forces that operate and interplay in the making of society, seeing American society as one of the richest fields ever offered. He cites its vast spaces, sections equal to European nations, geographic influences, brief development, variety of nationalities and races, industrial growth under freedom, institutions, culture, ideals, social psychology, and religions forming and changing almost under his eyes.
Chapter 80
For what does Turner say the United States was fighting in the war?
Turner argues the nation fights not for an Old World ideal, an abstraction, or a philosophical revolution, but for the historic ideals of the United States and the continued existence of the type of society in which Americans believe. He says this ideal and example offer medicine for healing the nations, and that the country must safeguard its power to serve the world.
Chapter 80
How does Turner contrast the Mississippi Valley migrations with Old World migrations?
Quoting Carl Schurz, Turner presents the Mississippi Valley migration as peaceful: vigorous elements congregating and mingling on virgin soil, drawn by free and broad principles, beginning a new era without first destroying the results of past progress. This contrasts with barbarous multitudes pouncing on decrepit empires and violent concussions of tribes bringing general destruction.
Chapter 80
What did Carl Schurz call the new Western society and its citizenship principle?
Schurz called it the great colony of free humanity, whose mother country is the world rather than old England alone. In that colony, he said, was established the Republic of equal rights where the title of manhood is the title to citizenship. He described this as the dream of the truest friends of man, for which martyrs shed blood.
Chapter 80
Section 814 cards
What does Turner say the Historical Society preserves about pioneers?
Turner says the Society keeps records of a noteworthy movement in human progress, preserving both the achievements and aspirations of the men who made the State, the lesser men in the mass, and leaders devoted to the cause. He adds it also preserves records of those who worked with narrow, selfish, or class ends, so the record is complete rather than merely celebratory.
Chapter 81
How does Turner describe the North Central States in the mid-nineteenth century?
Turner describes the North Central States as a region comparable to all of Central Europe. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota were still essentially pioneer society in the mid-nineteenth century. He notes Wisconsin was called the 'Far West' within the lifetime of many living men, and Minnesota was Indian and fur-trade wilderness beyond the edge of cultivation.
Chapter 81
What drew the pioneers to the Middle West, according to Turner?
Turner argues it was less the underground treasures of coal, lead, copper, and iron than the marvelous adaptation of the soil to raising corn and wheat that drew pioneers to this land of promise and made a new era of colonization. He says nature's revelations are progressive, so mineral wealth came later; the soil first attracted settlement.
Chapter 81
Whom does Turner credit with first settling the pioneer region?
Turner states that first came the children of the interior of the South, who with ax and rifle cut clearings in the forest, raised log cabins, and fought the Indians. By 1830 they had pushed to the edge of the prairies along the Ohio and Missouri Valleys, leaving most of the Great Lakes Basin unoccupied.
Chapter 81
Section 822 cards
What ideal did Southern pioneers passionately hold, and what did they oppose?
The author argues pioneers were passionately devoted to equality, assuming that under free conditions and unlimited resources a homogeneous pioneer society must result in equality. They objected to arbitrary obstacles and artificial limitations, instinctively opposing the crystallization of differences, monopolization of opportunity, and the fixing of that monopoly by government or social custom. The road must stay open and the game played by the rules.
Chapter 82
How did pioneers supplement individual activity, and what examples does the chapter give?
The author notes pioneers had means of supplementing individual activity by informal combinations—a capacity for extra-legal, voluntary association that impressed early travelers. Examples include the log rolling, house-raising, husking bee, apple paring, squatters' associations protecting clearings against speculators, camp meeting, mining camp, vigilantes, cattle-raisers' associations, and gentlemen's agreements. These were extemporized by voluntary action, not immemorial custom.
Chapter 82
Section 834 cards
What two distinct migration tides populated the Middle West, and when did the shift occur?
By 1830 the Southern migration had ebbed, and a new tide flowed in from the Northeast via the Erie Canal and Great Lakes steam navigation. This Yankee stock spread along the Great Lakes, into the oak openings of southern Michigan and Wisconsin, and along forested river courses, reaching the prairie margins by the end of the 1840s.
Chapter 83
How did the Yankee settlers' community instinct differ from Southern individualistic democracy?
The Yankee stock carried a habit of community life, shown in colonizing land companies, the town, school, and church, and a feeling of local unity. This was accompanied by city-building, market surpluses, ties to Eastern trading centers, and a more complex, integrated industrial society than the Southern pioneer's. The author argues this enlarged democracy rested on good fellowship and sympathy, not mere legal equality.
Chapter 83
What did the pioneer letter to Eastern friends warn newcomers they must endure?
The writer warned that if you value ease over money or prosperity, don't come: hands are too few for the work, houses for inhabitants, and days for the day's work. New England ideas and Yankee fashions get knocked out of shape or thrown by as unsuited to the climate. Accommodations range from the soft side of a plank to perhaps three in a bed, yet the rule is to help one another.
Chapter 83
How did German, Irish, and Scandinavian immigrants settle and assimilate in the Middle West?
Germans concentrated in the Missouri Valley, St. Louis, Illinois opposite that city, eastern Wisconsin lake counties, and Cincinnati and Cleveland, holding political balance in nearly half of Ohio's counties. The Irish came as turnpike, canal, and railroad workers, staying along such lines or in cities. Scandinavians, mostly Norwegians, founded colonies in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, later spreading to Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota. The author argues assimilation produced a new American pioneer type, neither a sum of elements nor a complete melting-pot fusion.
Chapter 83
Section 844 cards
In 1850, what share of the Middle West population was native to the Middle West itself?
Almost three-fifths of the population were natives of the Middle West itself, and over a third of the population lived in Ohio. About one-sixth were of North Atlantic birth, about one-eighth of Southern birth, and a like fraction of foreign birth, with Germans twice as numerous as the Irish.
Chapter 84
How did Middle West cities differ in their foreign-born makeup in 1850?
In the five larger cities natives and foreigners were nearly balanced. In Chicago the Irish, Germans, and natives of the North Atlantic States about equaled each other. But in all other cities the Germans exceeded the Irish in varying proportions, being nearly three to one in Milwaukee.
Chapter 84
What does the author argue distinguished the Middle West from New England as a society?
The author argues the various stocks did not remain as separate strata underneath an established ruling order, as was particularly the case in New England. Instead all were accepted and intermingling components of a forming society, plastic and absorptive—a "good mixer" trait fixed before the large immigrations of the eighties.
Chapter 84
What political ideals appeared in Middle Western state constitutions of the later forties and early fifties?
They based the franchise on manhood suffrage, provided for elective judiciary, restricted state borrowing power lest it fall under the money power, and either extinguished banks of issue or rigidly restrained them. Some exempted the homestead from forced sale for debt, married women's legal rights were prominent in debates, and Wisconsin let aliens vote after a year's residence.
Chapter 84
Section 854 cards
What did State Universities emphasize, and what danger did community control pose?
The author argues State Universities were characteristic products of Middle Western society, supported by the community rather than wealthy benefactors, and shaped by popular ideals. They reached more deeply into the common people, emphasized the obviously useful, and became coeducational early. The author warns this dominance of community ideals carried dangers, since universities were called to raise ideals and point new ways rather than merely conform.
Chapter 85
How did pioneers view the Past, according to B. Gratz Brown and Channing?
Pioneers were restless and mobile, moving from Vermont to New York to Ohio to Wisconsin to California. B. Gratz Brown said in an 1850 Missouri Fourth of July oration that they had literally nothing to do with the Past save to dream of it, and that precedents had lost their virtue. Channing wrote that New England's yoke of opinion was heavy, though the author notes the frontier had its own conventions and prejudices.
Chapter 85
What was the Middle West's goal, and how did Lincoln exemplify it?
The author argues the Middle West's goal was the welfare of the average man, not only the man of the South or East, the Yankee, Irishman, or German, but all men in one common fellowship. Lincoln exemplified this hope, rising from rail-splitter to country lawyer, from Illinois legislator to congressman, and from congressman to President. The pioneer's response to Civil War duties showed they could join a common cause.
Chapter 85
What two kinds of governmental discipline does the author distinguish?
The author distinguishes discipline from free choice, where restraint of individual or class interests is accepted as necessary for the common good, from discipline imposed by a dominant class on a subjected people. He calls the latter Prussian discipline: a harsh, machine-like organization based on military autocracy, assuming war is normal. He argues it can only be met by a people using their own government for worthy ends, respecting others' rights and fair play.
Chapter 85
Section 864 cards
What modern organizations does the chapter cite as reviving the pioneer 'house raising' spirit?
The chapter lists the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the Knights of Columbus, councils and boards of science, commerce, labor, and agriculture, women's kitchen associations following the Food Director, and the Boy Scouts. The author argues these show the pioneer principle of voluntary association broadening neighborliness to national and even international scope.
Chapter 86
What does the author call the pioneer 'house raising' spirit in terms of salvation?
The author argues that in the spirit of the pioneer's 'house raising' lies the salvation of the Republic. He links it to what Josiah Royce called 'the beloved community,' an inspiring prophecy of revived pioneer neighborliness broadening to national and international scope.
Chapter 86
What is the heritage of pioneer experience regarding democracy and the individual?
The author describes it as a passionate belief that democracy was possible while leaving the individual a part to play in free society, not making him a cog in a machine operated from above. It trusted the common man's tolerance, good humor, and ability to work out an American type from all nations' contributions.
Chapter 86
What sacrifices does the author say the pioneer type would make in wartime?
The author argues the American type would fight against those who challenged it in arms and in wartime make sacrifices, even the temporary sacrifice of individual freedom and his life, lest that freedom be lost forever. The sacrifice of freedom is framed as temporary, tied to preserving freedom.
Chapter 86
Section 874 cards
How does Turner define the frontier in this index?
The index lists the frontier's definition at pages 3 and 41, alongside entries on its extinction (pages 1, 9, 38, 39, 321) and its kinds and modes of advance (page 12). It also records the frontier's conservative attitude toward advance (page 63) and efforts to check and restrict it (page 33).
Chapter 87
What does the index say about the East's relationship to the West?
The index lists under East: efforts to restrict advance of the frontier (pages 33, 34), fears of the West (page 208), and being out of touch with West (page 18). These entries suggest a recurring tension between settled East and advancing West rather than simple harmony.
Chapter 87
Which frontier traits are attributed to Andrew Jackson?
The index lists Jackson at many pages and describes him as a 'personification of frontier traits' (pages 252, 254). It also links him to Jacksonian democracy (pages 192, 302, 342-343) and to frontier influence on democracy (pages 247, 249).
Chapter 87
What does the index list under frontier influence toward democracy?
The index records the frontier's influence toward democracy at pages 247 and 249, and its demand for independent statehood at page 248. It also lists frontiersmen in Congress (pages 252-253) and the Democratic party at pages 327 and 330, with its basis at page 248.
Chapter 87
Section 882 cards
What does the index say about the Old Northwest's Southern element?
The Old Northwest is defined with elements of settlement including a Southern element, listed as Southern contribution to settlement in 223 and 225-226, and a turning point of control at 229. Its social origin is given as 222-223, and Ohio's settlement is noted as including a Southern contribution alongside a New England element.
Chapter 88
How does the index link the Mississippi Valley to democracy and social order?
The Mississippi Valley is linked to democracy and to an idealism of social order, with early social forces, a beginning of stratification, and economic progress after 1812. Its political power and growth from 1810 to 1840 are noted, along with slavery struggle and industrial growth after the Civil War.
Chapter 88
Section 894 cards
What does the index suggest about the Ordinance of 1787's importance?
The index lists the Ordinance of 1787 with four separate page references (25, 132, 168, 223), indicating it is discussed in multiple contexts across the book, including public lands, the territories system, and the Old Northwest. The entry appears alongside related topics such as public lands policy and the system of territories, suggesting the ordinance is treated as a recurring institutional theme rather than a single event.
Chapter 89
Which groups settled Pennsylvania according to the index entries?
The index lists Palatine Germans, Pennsylvania Dutch, Scotch-Irish, Quakers, and Presbyterians in connection with Pennsylvania. It notes German settlement at pages 82 and 100, Scotch-Irish at 103 and 104, and Quakers at 105, 112, and 164. It also distinguishes the 'new Pennsylvania of the Great Valley' (page 100) from the older settled areas, tying settlement patterns to the Great Valley.
Chapter 89
How does the index characterize conflict between coast and interior?
The index records 'coast and interior, antagonisms' for Pennsylvania at page 112 and 'condition of antagonism between coast and interior' for South Carolina at page 116. It also lists Shays' Rebellion (112, 119, 122, 249) and the Regulators (116, 119, 120, 212) under related unrest, suggesting the book treats coastal-interior tension as a recurring sectional pattern rather than isolated incidents.
Chapter 89
What does the index reveal about the South's role in settling the Old Northwest?
The index states the South's 'contribution to settlement of Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois)' at pages 223 and 225-226. Related entries note Southerners and the Middle West (133-134, 135, 138) and Quakers in the settlement of Indiana (224). This indicates the book treats westward migration into the Old Northwest as partly a Southern movement, not exclusively a New England one.
Chapter 89
Section 904 cards
What does the chapter say about the trader's frontier and its advance?
The index entry lists the trader's frontier at page 12, with effects following at page 12 and rapidity of advance at pages 12 and 13. Trading posts are indexed at page 14. These entries indicate the trader's frontier is treated as an early phase whose effects and speed of movement receive discussion in the opening pages.
Chapter 90
How does the chapter describe the United States as a collection of nations?
The index lists the United States as a collection of nations at page 158, with its federal aspect at page 159. It also notes the United States' development since 1890 at page 311, fundamental forces at page 311, wealth at page 312, and its original contribution to society at pages 281-282.
Chapter 90
What duties and pressures does the chapter attribute to universities?
The index lists universities' duties at page 292 and function at page 287, the influence of university men at page 285, and the need of freedom at page 287. It also notes the pressure of democracies on universities at page 283 and the relation of State and universities at page 286, cross-referencing State universities.
Chapter 90
What does the chapter say about Virginia's frontier and internal inequalities?
The index notes Virginia's early attempt to establish a frontier at page 41, Indian wars at pages 69-70, and inequalities between coast and interior at page 113. It also lists Piedmont society at page 95, Piedmont portions at pages 87 and 89, settlement in the latter part of the 17th century at page 83, and two Virginias in the later 17th century at page 94.
Chapter 90
Source and licence
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #22994 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-11-02. Cards reviewed 2026-11-02.
These cards paraphrase the text for study. They are not a substitute for reading the book, and they do not reproduce long passages.
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