"What Was the Significance of the Frontier Upon the Development of America?”

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From the moment the first colonists arrived on the shores of the new world, they were forced to face new challenges that were different than anything they had ever known. Fresh out of Europe, they still thought and acted like their European predecessors, but the savage wild that they found in the new world required them to create new ways of getting through every day. Frederick Jackson Turner believed that it was the confrontation between the harsh wilderness and the edge of civilization that eventually formed the American character. American pioneers were forced to constantly reinvent themselves and their way of living in order to survive. This resulted in an exceptional class of people who could tame the wild while still remaining civilized. The American frontier was usually on the most Western edge of colonies and its people were more free-spirited in temperament than the Eastern people because the frontier lacked many social and political institutions that the East always had. As later generations moved farther inland, any class distinctions, churches, and established governments of their past slowly began to disappear, resulting in a new, rugged, and increasingly independent class of people. As more and more people began immigrating to the new world population increased and people were forced to move farther inland. As these men and women traveled farther and farther into the new world, they began losing their old ideas of how the government should be and fell into a more primitive way of living. Everyone had a role to play in society, from a common blacksmith, to the mayor in charge of the town. They faced a difficult everyday life, but by working together, they managed to survive. Here, in the outskirts of society, democracy was born. As Turner says, “American democracy was born of no theorists dream: it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia

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