Frederick Jackson Turner

“ Economic equality fostered political equality. An optimistic and buoyant belief in the worth of the plain people, a devout faith in man prevailed in the West. Democracy became almost the religion of the pioneer. He held with passionate devotion the idea that he was building under freedom a new society, based on self government, and for the welfare of the average man.
And yet even as he proclaimed the gospel of democracy the pioneer showed a vague apprehension lest the time be short—lest equality should not endure—lest he might fall behind in the ascending movement of Western society. ”

“ Out of her bounty has come a nation whose industrial competition alarms the Old World, and the masters of whose resources wield wealth and power vaster than the wealth and power of kings. Best of all, the West gave, 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 where were to be found high faith in man and the will and power to furnish him the opportunity to grow to the full measure of his own capacity. Great and powerful as are the new sons of her loins, the Republic is greater than they. ”

“ The self-made man has become, in popular speech, the coal baron, the steel king, the oil king, the cattle king, the railroad magnate, the master of high finance, the monarch of trusts. The world has never before seen such huge fortunes exercising combined control over the economic life of a people, and such luxury as has come out of the individualistic pioneer democracy of America in the course of competitive evolution.
At the same time the masters of industry, who control interests which represent billions of dollars, do not admit that they have broken with pioneer ideals. ”

“ In democratic societies, in fact, excellence is the first title to distinction; in aristocratic ones there are two or three others which are far stronger and which must be stronger or aristocracy could not exist. The moment you acknowledge that the highest social position ought to be the reward of the man who has the most talent, you make aristocratic institutions impossible.
All that was buoyant and creative in American life would be lost if we gave up the respect for distinct personality, and variety in genius, and came to the dead level of common standards. ”

“ Forests again along the Ohio Valley, and beyond, to the west, lay the levels of the Great Plains. Within the earth were unexploited treasures of coal and lead, copper and iron in such form and quantity as were to revolutionize the industrial processes of the world. But nature's revelations are progressive, and it was rather the marvelous adaptation of the soil to the raising of corn and wheat that drew the pioneers to this land of promise, and made a new era of colonization. In the unity with variety of this pioneer empire and in its broad levels we have a promise of its society. ”

“ But the idealistic influence is not limited to the dreamers' conception of a new State. It gave to the pioneer farmer and city builder a restless energy, a quick capacity for judgment and action, a belief in liberty, freedom of opportunity, and a resistance to the domination of class which infused a vitality and power into the individual atoms of this democratic mass. Even as he dwelt among the stumps of his newly-cut clearing, the pioneer had the creative vision of a new order of society. ”

“ We are fighting not for an Old World ideal, not for an abstraction, not for a philosophical revolution. Broad and generous as are our sympathies, widely scattered in origin as are our people, keenly as we feel the call of kinship, the thrill of sympathy with the stricken nations across the Atlantic, we are fighting for the historic ideals of the United States, for the continued existence of the type of society in which we believe, because we have proved it good, for the things which drew European exiles to our shores, and which inspired the hopes of the pioneers. ”

“ Charging the administration, and especially John Quincy Adams, with subserviency to Great Britain, he demanded that the United States should become the center of a system against the despotism of the Old World and should act on its own responsibility. "We look too much abroad," said he. "Let us break these commercial and political fetters; let us no longer watch the nod of any European politician; let us become real and true Americans, and place ourselves at the head of the American system." ”

“ The frontier democracy of that time had the instincts of the clansman in the days of Scotch border warfare. Vehement and tenacious as the democracy was, strenuously as each man contended with his neighbor for the spoils of the new country that opened before them, they all had respect for the man who best expressed their aspirations and their ideas. Every community had its hero. In the War of 1812 and the subsequent Indian fighting Jackson made good his claim, not only to the loyalty of the people of Tennessee, but of the whole West, and even of the nation. ”

“ So long as success in amassing great wealth for the aggrandizement of the individual is the exclusive or the dominant standard of success, so long as material prosperity, regardless of the conditions of its cost, or the civilization which results, is the shibboleth, American democracy, that faith in the common man which the pioneer cherishes, is in danger. For the strongest will make their way unerringly to whatever goal society sets up as the mark of conceded preëminence. What more effective agency is there for the cultivation of the seed wheat of ideals than the university? ”

“ In the dark period of the commercial crisis of 1819, while Congress was considering the admission of Missouri, the slavery issue flamed out, and revealed with startling distinctness the political significance of the institution, fateful and ominous for the nation, transcending in importance the temporary financial and industrial ills.
The advance of settlement in the United States made the slavery contest a struggle for power between sections, marching in parallel columns into the west, each carrying its own system of labor. ”

“ There is no virtue in Pearl street, in Wall street, in Court street, in Chestnut street, in any other street of great commercial cities, that can save the great democratic government of ours, when you cease to uphold it with your intelligent votes, your strong and mighty hands. You must, therefore, lead us as we heretofore reserved and prepared the way for you. We resign to you the banner of human rights and human liberty, on this continent, and we bid you be firm, bold and onward and then you may hope that we will be able to follow you. ”

“ West of the Mississippi lay a huge new world—an ocean of grassy prairie that rolled far to the west, till it reached the zone where insufficient rainfall transformed it into the arid plains, which stretched away to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. Over this vast waste, equal in area to France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Denmark, and Belgium combined, a land where now wheat and corn fields and grazing herds produce much of the food supply for the larger part of America and for great areas of Europe, roamed the bison and the Indian hunter. ”

“ These slashers of the forest, these self-sufficing pioneers, raising the corn and live stock for their own need, living scattered and apart, had at first small interest in town life or a share in markets. They were passionately devoted to the ideal of equality, but it was an ideal which assumed that under free conditions in the midst of unlimited resources, the homogeneous society of the pioneers must result in equality. What they objected to was arbitrary obstacles, artificial limitations upon the freedom of each member of this frontier folk to work out his own career without fear or favor. ”