the American Frontier

AMERICAN FRONTIER, THE. The American frontier, from an early period in the history of the continent, has affected the imagination of the pioneer who desired to exploit it, and of the visitor from afar who viewed it. Long before its existence and its significance attracted the attention of indigenous his torians, it had drawn comment from the alien observer as an environment in which unusual processes were at work, and in which new human values were being born and old values were attaining new proportions. The various definitions that have been accorded it have depended largely upon the momentary use to which the frontier was being put by white men, or upon the functional relation ship of the frontier as it has stood with settled society on one hand and with primi tive virgin soil upon the other.

The cultural values of the frontier have come piecemeal. First, there was the plorer's frontier, as the European invader brought one geographic region after other within the field of recorded human knowledge. Next came the frontiers of the missionary, the soldier and the trapper, upon which each of these scouts of society lived his life. The first of these worked upon the souls of the native inhabitants, who were destined to recede as the world became aware of their existence; the ond was staking in a new world, for one great Power or another, the claims that it was hoped one day to exploit ; the third, the trapper, differed from his priestly or his military fore-runner in that he, first among white men, lived on the land he found and derived from its products a basis for existence. None of these changed the face of nature. All gave way, eventually, when the frontier of the farmer made its appearance and dotted the land with cabins and cleared fields. There is a long succession of later frontiers that may be traced in American history, as alongside the farmer's frontier emerged also the frontiers of the miner, the lumberman and the railroad; and out of them came the frontiers of established local ment, of locally created capital, of industrial society and of the various aspects of culture or religion. In each of these several fields the frontier provides a means for studying institutions while they are in the formative stage, and before they have become inextricably involved in the complex of a progressive and sophis ticated society.

From a different point of view the frontier may be described as a region, a process or a fixed line. As a region, it may be considered as a place in which the new forces of western civilized life are being applied for the first time, and in which a new social group is finding itself and is creating its internal bonds. As a process, it concerns itself with the ways and means whereby the institutions of older society are being worked over and selected according to their survival values, within the territorial limits of the frontier region. As a geographic line, it may be shown upon a map for any period at which statistical evidence is available ; and in this connection it is always the line that may be drawn separating territory possessing an arbitrarily selected average of residents per square mile, from territory of less than that average number. The decennial census of the U.S. Government, since 179o, has provided the basis for this cartographic identification of the frontier. In most of the recent census reports maps are shown for each decennial period, with shadings indicating the distribution of populations of under two inhabitants per square mile, of 2 to 6, of 6 to 18, of 18 to 45, of 45 to 90 and of over 9o. The steps in this scale that American historians have com monly accepted for their study of frontier lines are the first and the second. Most frontier lines are drawn at under two, or over six ; and in either case the line thus drawn shows, for the period of the census concerned, the region near which the frontier process was most typically at work. A series of frontier line maps, made ten years apart, from 1790 until 189o, shows that invariably the zone of contact between settled America and the wilderness ran irregularly from north to south; and that at each decennial census it had made a perceptible advance along most of its front towards the west. At the date of the first census the line ran not far from the watershed of the Appalachians ; after 1890 it had passed be yond the Great Plains, and the whole of the United States was so nearly occupied that no sharp frontier line can be indicated. The duration of the period in American history in which a frontier line can always be shown runs, therefore, from the moment of the initial settlements in the 17th century until the close of the 19th century. To-day, there is no frontier in the true sense, and the frontier episode is closed.

The history of the frontier in America falls easily into three major divisions, that may be separated roughly by the treaties that closed the Seven Years' War (1763), and by the panic of 1837. Each of these periods has characteristics that warrant its treatment as a logical unit.

The first period is dominated by the planting and extension of the English colonies in North America. No serious damage is done by ruling out both the French and the Spanish. The French, confined mostly to the valley of the St. Lawrence, failed to develop a pioneering population ; and their settlements existed chiefly as a residence for the missionaries, the military men and the trappers who were uncovering the interior of the continent without chang ing its aspect. The Spanish settlements in the southern portions of the United States were even less aggressive in the spreading of civilization than the French. And both French and Spanish proved themselves unable to stand up against the competition of the invaders from the British settlements.

Nature of Early Frontier.

Throughout most of the period that ran from the planting of Virginia and Massachusetts until the middle of the 18th century, the frontier in America was really a frontier of Europe, along which the institutions of the western European countries, and particularly of England, were being tested in the wilderness. This is a part of European quite as much as of American history; and every European court felt that to some extent the basis of survival among themselves was to be found among the American plantations. The period does not come to an end until, at the close of the Seven Years' War, the superior weight of the English possessions asserted itself, and it was pos sible for the English diplomats to claim and secure compensation by ejecting France from North America, and by pushing Spain west of the, Mississippi. During the century and a half from Jamestown to the Treaty of Paris, the settlements had spread from the beach where the earliest English colonies were planted. Up the river valleys and the bays they advanced. By i 700 they had reached and were passing the "falls line" (a line that may be shown on a map by connecting the lowest rapids or waterfalls of the successive Atlantic rivers). Beyond the "falls line" they entered the piedmont of the Appalachians ; and by i 763 scattered areas along the upper reaches of the Mohawk, the Connecticut, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Potomac, the Shenandoah and the James, were alive with the activities of the pioneers. But the period preserves its unity because of the omnipresence of the European connection, because of the dependence of the set tlements upon rivers flowing into the Atlantic ocean, and because the future of the continent in its relation to European suzerainty was not certain until after the expulsion of the French.

The Second Period.

The second period of the frontier in America extends from the expulsion of the French until the occu pation of the Mississippi valley (that was to ripen in modern times into the Middle West) ; its zone stretches from the valleys of western Pennsylvania to the bend of the Missouri river, where the Kansas enters from the west. It has a striking difference from the first period for it is now an American frontier, since the new life is an offshoot from the older American establish ments. In this period indeed the United States prided itself upon its aloofness from Europe and from European interests, and gave birth not only to a new breed of democracy that was identified with Andrew Jackson, but to the American system of Henry Clay, and to the international doctrine of James Monroe. The European flavour has largely disappeared, and no considerable body of new European settlers takes a part during this second period in the movement towards the West.

The Third Period.

There is a common quality in the first and second periods of frontier extension that is lacking in the third which covers the years between the panic of 1837 and the panic of 1893. This is primitive transportation. The routes of the pioneers of the earlier periods, as they sought new homes, were those of the natural roads and trails, and the river valleys that lay in the course of the movement. Until the second period was nearly at an end there were no improvements in these natural means of transport, except here and there a fragment of stone road like the Lancaster pike or the Cumberland road (each of which, however, ran close to an improved beaten way), and once in a while a steamboat on some of the western rivers. The suc cessf ul development of the steamboat for up-river traffic, the construction of numerous canals, of which the Erie canal was first and greatest, and the building of the railroads served to intro duce new tendencies in migration. The routes were materially changed, speed was quickened, and the carrying capacity of the highways grew as freights declined. The zone of occupation in the third period was west of the Mississippi bend. Across the plains and mountains to the Pacific, the overland trails guided most of the migrants in the early part of the third period. A little later the completed continental railroads put an end to pioneer traffic of the older sort, and speedily brought a conclusion to the era of the frontier. The frontiersman himself was vastly changed by these improvements in his methods of travel ; while the introduction of elaborate machinery on the farm, like the reapers that spread in use on the prairies, brought capital to his aid and changed the technique of his work.

Characteristics.

In each of these three periods of frontier expansion, there are vital problems which have as yet received little treatment from the historian or the economist. First and fundamental was the relation of the settler to his piece of land; for this was generally an agrarian advance. The land economics of each region had much to do with the course of development as the frontiersmen came in ; and after a region had been taken up, no set of problems was more searching than that which had to do with the escape of the frontier from the burden of land encumbrance. Second was the financial problem ; varying ac cording to region and period, but pressing in every aspect. The personnel of the advance included a low proportion of persons with enough money to be free. The others had to borrow, not only to buy their land, but to pay the costs of outfit and transportation to the new homes, and for maintenance until the new farm be came self-supporting. The most rapid advance of the frontier oc curred after the introduction of banking brought formal credit to the aid of the frontiersman. But interest was high and his collateral was sketchy, and it nearly always happened that the debts incurred during the hopeful period of speculative develop ment became a burden and a curse in moments of economic de pression. Third, and indispensable, was the problem of marketing the surplus that has lasted over from the frontier period into modern western agriculture. The farming communities had no means of meeting land payments or absolving debts other than that of marketing a surplus of agricultural goods. In a community wholly agricultural there was no market; and long distances and high freight rates separated every good market from the source of supply. The search for a market is thus a third of the frontiers man's fundamentals, and one that has never been permanently solved except in narrow regions where agricultural diversification could enter, or where local industrial societies grew up to con sume the surplus.

As the frontiersmen met their problems certain conditions were emphasized that were not unique or new, but that were not so clearly visible in older and more complicated societies. Striking among these conditions was a trend towards equalitarianism, with its resulting consequence in social and political democracy. For the bulk of any frontier group, and during a period of years that averaged perhaps 20 in a single frontier community, nearly the whole attention of society was devoted to the primary physical tasks of reclaiming the land and erecting the dwellings. The period begins when the earliest pioneer makes his appearance ; it ends, normally, when the first of the native-born children leave the home cabin to move on to a new frontier. The uniformity of activity necessary for survival placed a high premium on physical and moral virtues, and threw into the discard matters of social standing, cultivation of taste, birth and even financial status. There were few things on a frontier that could be bought ; least of all personal service. With all at work each resented the occasional individual who escaped work. There was a tendency to dislike those not in step with the community. Men equal in actual status found it easy to generalize upon equality, and to resent artificial prominence. A rough and ready democracy grew up, that gave tone and character to all_ the frontiers that ap peared and passed.

Another condition of frontier life was an unusual openness of mind in certain directions. In most settled societies of the world, personal status was so nearly fixed at birth that it was safe to assume a future without change. But to the frontiersman change was the orderly expectation of life. Within two decades the successful pioneer saw his virgin claim develop and improve, his acreage increase, his cleared fields spread, his herds multiply. He saw grow around him the roads, schools, churches, county towns and institutions of government. He saw the transition from Indian country to sparse farming, the progress from arbi trary territorial government to full participation by the auton omous State, the spread of the available country towards the west as the Government bought land from the Indian or took it over from Spain or Mexico. And in his mind grew an idea of progress that time has scarcely dimmed in the American mind. His community was less than usually bound to rigid classifications and was abnormally ready to look upon and accept a change. He was always a romanticist as he brooded over his future ; and in public affairs this state of mind turned easily into a spirit of expansion.

A more precise consequence of his economic status was his normal tendency towards the acceptance of inflationist theories of finance. Every frontier was improved, largely, by borrowed money. Although the capitalist with ready money to use or lend was not unknown, the average pioneer citizen was obliged to borrow in order to develop his farm. He borrowed amid the enthusiastic conditions of a boom period. By a kind of auto intoxication the frontier community magnified its hope of profits, elevated the value of its land and multiplied its probable crop. Loans were made on inflated valuations ; rates of interest were promised that could never be earned. Debt was spread over the whole farm, yet it was always a matter of years before more than a small fraction of the total acreage could be made to yield. The community borrowed to build its roads and public build ings ; when railroads came, the community and its people bonded themselves to subsidize the railroad. From the mixture of blind enthusiasm, lack of skill and actual fraud that accompanied frontier promotion came a situation of heavy debt at a high inter est rate that reduced the community to bankruptcy when the boom was over or hard times came. On such occasions, without fail, the local response to hard times and unpayable debts was the appearance of inflationist schemes and the suggestion of stay laws to prevent the forcible collection of debts. The land banks of New England, the paper money revolt of Shay, the banking restrictions of the Jackson period, the stay laws of Kentucky, the repudiation of State debts, the demand for greenbacks and the cry for free silver in turn indicated the frontier tendency to accept inflation as a remedy. And the tendency was given pro found political meaning because of the uniformity of the frontier group and the lack of capitalistic dissenters among the debtor farmers. And the directness of the American representative sys tem gave an easy route for the translation of this discontent into party action.

Repeatedly, in every region of the United States, the frontier set-up was prepared, and the resulting community fitted into the matrix and developed towards a balanced and normal life. The process was repeated so often, and under such nearly uniform con ditions, that the American frontier affords one of the few places in which it is practicable to study human affairs as in a laboratory. The experiments were staged not by premeditation but by standard conditions that repeated themselves for many generations. Raw nature and stark human power were again and again brought to gether; and from their contact emerged human self-governing groups. The effect of the process, as group of ter group selected for its use the institutions it valued, and abandoned the customs, re strictions and institutions that seemed to have lost their meaning, was to launch American society as a whole, and to transmute the person, of whatever race, into a new type that was already known as American when Benjamin Franklin made his appearance at the courts of Europe. Its constant tendency was towards direct popular government on a representative system, towards a broad ening opportunity for all in affairs political, economic or social, and towards a new status for women. Enough has already been established by the historians of the frontier to indicate that herein is the most distinctive factor in the making of the United States.

In Political Life.

The political tendency of the American frontier has been unmistakable and fairly uniform. Before the American Revolution nearly every one of the English colonies was conscious of unrest among its newer settlements ; and in Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina this unrest had al ready drifted rapidly towards open conflict. In the colonies as a group, as within the several colonies, the frontier tendency created a distrust of absenteeism in finance and government. The most convincing of the explanations of the American Revolution is that it was a frontier revolt against the long-range control that emanated from Westminster, and that it was embittered because the width of the ocean had prevented the participants on either side from realizing that frontier life had created a new race across the Atlantic. The revolution was not built upon a passion to alter the scheme of life, but on the human determination to control it. The revolutionaries stopped their work when the power of England was broken and independence was attained. The new govern ments erected in America were direct descendants of the old colonial establishments, only sifted and modified by the normal tendencies of the frontier.

Twenty-five years after the separation from England there came a second wave of frontier discontent with the trend of affairs, and it was Thomas Jefferson who organized and led the democratic revolt. His political followers were scattered over every State, among the young and the little; but on the frontier his name aroused enthusiasm in the average mind. His democ racy, more than a little derived from the French revolutionary phi losophers, was instantly acceptable in a community where equality in fact was the common condition. He and his lieutenants gov erned the United States until their enthusiasm cooled, their youth ful ideals settled into middle-aged conservatism, and until a new democracy of the Mississippi valley ranged itself behind the per sonality of Andrew Jackson.

In 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States, and ,for a third time a frontier party took charge of American destiny. A minor revolt, but one with many re semblances to that of Jackson, took the government away from the Jacksonians in 184o, and placed the Whig Party in power. And 20 years later, the new Republican Party, whose enthusiasms ran highest among the newer communities of the north-western States, gained control of the government and entered upon the struggle to prevent the extension of slavery and for the maintenance of the Union, with a typical child of the frontier, Abraham Lincoln, at its head.

A generation after Lincoln, the new States of the western plains, where railway activity had promoted immigration faster than the country was able to support it, festered with discontent. And again there was the element of absenteeism, of inflation finance, of the protest of the common man against the power of the great, of the desire for a re-making of the institutions of administration and government. In this, as in the earlier revolts, there was lacking any great desire to change the basis of affairs, or to alter the philosophies of life. There was little of socialism or revolution but much of a desire to capture the organs of government and to operate them in the interest of the common people. The issue was fought in 1896, over the slogan of free silver and behind the crusading leadership of William Jennings Bryan. For once the western sequence of party creations was stopped. An embattled East resisted and prevented victory for free silver and Populism. But it was because the country had changed and the frontier had become a reminiscence rather than a living fact. No comprehension of American politics is possible without an understanding of the ways and means by which, for a century after independence, this democratic wave sequence kept alive the ideals of western democrats in protest against the rigid classifica tions of older and industrialized society.

The Frontier Disappears.

During the final decade of the 19th century the open frontier disappeared from the American map. During the boom years of the '8os the spread of settlements went farther and faster than was economically wise ; and after 1890 there was an actual recession of the settled areas, so that there are now hundreds of counties in the western States that have fewer farming inhabitants than they had in 189o. With the completion of the continental railroads, no large area was left without easy means of contact and communication with the rest of the nation. Only three tracts remained that had not reached the full dignity of Statehood ; and these, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico were admitted to the Union early in the present century.

The significance of the frontier in American life was never clearly expressed until in 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner, a pro fessor in the University of Wisconsin and himself a child of the north-western frontier, published a monograph, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." Thereafter, by its sheer convincing quality, Turner's idea gave a new reasonableness to American history that young historians absorbed without knowing it ; and that older historians, almost without exception or protest, adopted. It forced a general restatement of American history, now that the organizing principle was recognized. And this re statement is still under way, making progress as new studies develop the meaning of local affairs, or as new syntheses attempt to bring together the whole of the American story.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-A

brilliant synthesis giving the frontier full recogBibliography.-A brilliant synthesis giving the frontier full recog- nition, but with more economic determinism in it than most frontier specialists would approve, is that of Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (1927). There is also a comprehensive survey, with its attention generally focused upon the frontier line as it swept across the country, in F. L. Paxson, History of the American Frontier (1924) . The initial essay of Prof. Turner is most accessible in his Frontier in American History (192o). C. W. Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics (1917), and A. P. Whitaker, The Spanish-American Frontier (1927), are distinguished studies of the West as a stake in European diplomacy. S. J. Buck, The Agrarian Crusade (1919), traces the farmer movements that are an integral part of post-frontier reactions ; and there is much useful detail in C. Goodwin, The Trans-Mississippi West (1922).

. L.

AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY YORK, founded in 1852, is the oldest geographical society in the United States. Its principal activity is the publication of books, maps and a quarterly journal, the Geographical Review, which present the result of original research in all branches of geographical science and record work carried out in the field of exploration. The society also maintains one of the outstanding collections of maps and geographical books in America. A pro gramme of lectures is arranged annually under the auspices of the society, which also recognizes distinguished contributions to geography by the award of medals. A special department of the society's research staff is devoting itself to the compilation and publication of maps and monographs relating to Hispanic America. The society also maintains a school for the training of explorers in survey methods.