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The Turner Thesis

In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner made an historic speech at the Columbian Exhibition. In his address, he spoke on, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Turner’s hypothesis was that the frontier was the single most important influence on the development of the United States and its values.
He spoke of the frontier’s important influence on America for the first time shortly after the census of 1890, when a report from the Census Bureau proclaimed, “the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. . . . it can not, therefore any longer have a place in the census reports.” Thus, the frontier officially ceased to exist. Turner quickly began to assess the importance of the frontier to America’s past and to question the impact that such a change would have on the country in the future.
The American frontier is sharply distinguished from the European frontier--a fortif...

Posted by: Adriana Alvarez

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