The frontier holds a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans; as Turner characterize it, “the vision of America as a frontier nation”, the frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization element in the American history; the meeting point between savagery and civilization. The frontier was the wilderness just outside the civilized towns, which subsequently offered people an opportunity to strike out and succeed on their own. As put by Crevecoeur in his characterization of the farmer, new citizens shaped by the “land of fecundity, liberty and opportunities, inspiring dreams and self-reliance, and success.” The frontier, in contrast with Europe, gave the people an opportunity they could never think of back in the
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In Quinney’s writings, “Independence Day speech”, he portrays history and accounts of Europeans, the American and the Red Man. He characterizes the 4th of July as the day of the “birth of a great nation, but also the recollection of a transfer of the miserable weakness and dependence of his race (Indians) from one power to another”. Quinney also tells us how the wise Red Man foretold the coming of “a strange race from the sunrise (the white from the east), who would eventually crowd them from their fair land possessions”, and how they knew they would eventually had to retreat back to the west, where they came from, giving way to the frontier. Four centuries after the discovery of America, the frontier, the invisible line, had disappeared. As explained by Turner, fur traders and mountain mend had explored and settled parts of the West long before the mass wester emigrations demanded complete American control of the territory between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Between 1800 and 1870, nearly half a million Americans set out across the frontier. Traders, farmers and families set out on a journey of discovery, traveled across plains and deserts, and over high mountains, taking a chance that there was a better life somewhere to the west, and that’s how the American West was defined. Response #2 – Weber, Mencken, and Douglass – that America is the land of opportunityAmerican history touts our nation as the land of opportunities, promises, independence, hope and freedom, among many other things. Most would argue, that while it is all possible, it takes hard work, and sometimes, it can nearly be “just a dream”. America is often tout as the best place to be born, to grow up and to live, but in many cases, people struggle on a daily basis to become someone and earn enough to survive. Weber, in his title, “The spirit of capitalism” introduces us to the American capitalism and its beginnings, and how
In Quinney’s writings, “Independence Day speech”, he portrays history and accounts of Europeans, the American and the Red Man. He characterizes the 4th of July as the day of the “birth of a great nation, but also the recollection of a transfer of the miserable weakness and dependence of his race (Indians) from one power to another”. Quinney also tells us how the wise Red Man foretold the coming of “a strange race from the sunrise (the white from the east), who would eventually crowd them from their fair land possessions”, and how they knew they would eventually had to retreat back to the west, where they came from, giving way to the frontier. Four centuries after the discovery of America, the frontier, the invisible line, had disappeared. As explained by Turner, fur traders and mountain mend had explored and settled parts of the West long before the mass wester emigrations demanded complete American control of the territory between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Between 1800 and 1870, nearly half a million Americans set out across the frontier. Traders, farmers and families set out on a journey of discovery, traveled across plains and deserts, and over high mountains, taking a chance that there was a better life somewhere to the west, and that’s how the American West was defined. Response #2 – Weber, Mencken, and Douglass – that America is the land of opportunityAmerican history touts our nation as the land of opportunities, promises, independence, hope and freedom, among many other things. Most would argue, that while it is all possible, it takes hard work, and sometimes, it can nearly be “just a dream”. America is often tout as the best place to be born, to grow up and to live, but in many cases, people struggle on a daily basis to become someone and earn enough to survive. Weber, in his title, “The spirit of capitalism” introduces us to the American capitalism and its beginnings, and how