Frederick Jackson Turner

“ Enough has been said to make it clear, I trust, that the Ohio Valley has not only a local history worthy of study, a rich heritage to its people, but also that it has been an independent and powerful force in shaping the development of a nation. ”

“ In that new age of inland water transportation, which is certain to supplement the age of the railroad, there can be no more important region than the Ohio Valley. Let us hope that its old love of democracy may endure, and that in this section, where the first trans-Alleghany pioneers struck blows at the forests, there may be brought to blossom and to fruit the ripe civilization of a people who know that whatever the glories of prosperity may be, there are greater glories of the spirit of man ”

“ In a word, as I pointed out in the beginning, the Ohio Valley was a Middle Region with a strong national allegiance, striving to hold apart with either hand the sectional combatants in this struggle. In the cautious development of his policy of emancipation, we may see the profound influence of the Ohio Valley upon Abraham Lincoln—Kentucky's greatest son. No one can understand his presidency without proper appreciation of the deep influence of the Ohio Valley, its ideals and its prejudices upon America's original contribution to the great men of the world. ”

“ In short, the real federal aspect of the nation, if we penetrate beneath constitutional forms to the deeper currents of social, economic and political life, will be found to lie in the relation of sections and nation, rather than in the relation of States and nation. ”

“ The Ohio Valley is, therefore, not only a commercial highway, it is a middle kingdom between the East and the West, between the northern area, which was occupied by a greater New England and emigrants from northern Europe, and the southern area of the "Cotton Kingdom." As Pennsylvania and New York constituted the Middle Region in our earlier history, between New England and the seaboard South, so the Ohio Valley became the Middle Region of a later time. In its position as a highway and a Middle Region are found the keys to its place in American history. ”

“ The squatters of the Ohio Valley forced the passage of preëmption laws and these laws in their turn led to the homestead agitation. There has been no single element more influential in shaping American democracy and its ideals than this land policy. And whether the system be regarded as harmful or helpful, there can be, I think, no doubt that it was the outcome of conditions imposed by the settlers of the Ohio Valley. ”

“ The intrigues of England to attract the Valley to herself and those of Spain to add the settlements to the Spanish Empire, the use of the Indians by these rivals, and the efforts of France to use the pioneers of Kentucky to win New Orleans and the whole Valley between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains for a revived French Empire in America, are among the fascinating chapters of American, as well as of Ohio Valley, history. ”

“ Without pursuing the interesting speculation, I may note as evidence of the development of sectionalism, the various gatherings of business men, religious denominations and educational organizations in groups of States. Among the signs of growth of a healthy provincialism is the formation of sectional historical societies. While the American Historical Association has been growing vigorously and becoming a genuine gathering of historical students from all parts of the nation, there have also arisen societies in various sections to deal with the particular history of the groups of States. ”

“ American industrial life is the outcome of the combinations and contests of groups of States in sections. And the intellectual, the spiritual life of the nation is the result of the interplay of the sectional ideals, fundamental assumptions and emotions. ”

“ In the opening years of the Revolution these pioneers were recruited by westward extensions from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. With this colonization of the Ohio Valley begins a chapter in American history.
This settlement contributed a new element to our national development and raised new national problems. It took a long time for the seaboard South to assimilate the upland section. We cannot think of the South as a unit through much of its ante-bellum history without doing violence to the facts. ”

“ Within this vast empire there are geographic provinces, separate in physical conditions, into which American colonization has flowed, and in each of which a special society has developed, with an economic, political and social life of its own. ”

“ In the Ohio Valley, by the initiative of Ohio Valley men, and often against the protest of Eastern sections, the public land policy was developed by laws which subordinated the revenue idea to the idea of the upbuilding of a democracy of small landholders. ”

“ It believed that government was based on a limited contract for the benefit of the individual, and it acted independently of governmental organs and restraints with such ease that in many regions this was the habitual mode of social procedure: voluntary coöperation was more natural to the Southern Uplanders than action through the machinery of government, especially when government checked rather than aided their industrial and social tendencies and desires. ”

“ German sectaries with serious-minded devotion to one or another of a multiplicity of sects, but withal deeply responsive to the call of the religious spirit, and the English Quakers all furnish a foundation of emotional responsiveness to religion and a readiness to find a new heaven and a new earth in politics as well as in religion. ”

“ The result was a tremendous growth in the entire Ohio Valley, but this invention did not solve the problem of cheap supplies of Eastern manufactures, nor satisfy the desire of the West to build up its own factories in order to consume its own products. The Ohio Valley had seen the advantage of home markets, as her towns grew up with their commerce and manufacturers close to the rural regions. Lands had increased in value in proportion to their nearness to these cities, and crops were in higher demand near them. ”

“ Indeed, the United States is, in size and natural resources, an empire, a collection of potential nations, rather than a single nation. It is comparable in area to Europe. If the coast of California be placed along the coast of Spain, Charleston, South Carolina, would fall near Constantinople ”