As the nation recovered from the Civil War, the South was preoccupied with Reconstruction and all its attendant problems. In the North, aside from burying the dead and caring for the widows and orphans, life quickly returned to other pursuits: the building of America's industrial base; the flood of immigrants, filling cities and spreading out to the countryside; the huge growth of urban populations and everything that entailed.
A major portion of the country's energy was focused on the West, which created the need for dealing with the Plains Indians who had roamed free for centuries, and who now saw their tribal lands and way of life threatened. The nation began building railroads across the prairies, deserts and mountains, from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific coast, cutting through areas where Indians had lived. Miners began extracting the wealth of gold, copper, silver and lead from the mountain areas of the West, bringing seekers of instant wealth into the region. Farmers, both native Americans and immigrants, became “sod busters,” plowing up the prairies to plant wheat and corn, often fighting with cowboys who drove herds of cattle hundreds of miles to rail heads. The conquering of the west and the closing of the frontier ended the great age of exploration and expansion across the North American continent between the Mexican and Canadian borders. It was an exciting time, a troubling time, a rewarding time, and for many, very often a tragic time.
An alternate project for this assignment is on Native Americans. You may combine the topics.
Sources:
Be sure to review the pertinent section of the text for your own background.
Document/Web Sources
Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis suggests that the American frontier experience—homesteading, mining, railroad building, etc.—transformed not only American culture but also the and culture life of the Indians. The Frontier experience was also supposed to have strengthened the democratic impulses of Americans, based on the idea the life on the edge of civilization is hard and demanding, and a person's worth in that environment can be based only on what he or she can contribute, not where they came from or who their parents were. Perhaps that is why the first state in the United States to give women the right to vote was Wyoming, in 1869, a full 50 years before the 19th Amendment was passed.
Construct an essay based on the above resources that examines the place of the west—the frontier—in American history. What do you make of Turner's ideas? What was life in the West like? What was it like to live on the Great Plains? Do you think the frontier experience did encourage democracy? What, if anything, does that tell us about the absence of a frontier on this planet in our time?
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Updated September 6, 2008