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The Western Frontier Thesis

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The Western Frontier Thesis
The Western Frontier The romanticism of the west employed the frontier as the outer edge of the wave meeting “between savagery and civilization.” To historians, a frontier is “is not a lining of marking the start of an empty place but a zone of interaction where two or more societies vie for the use of land.’ In the “frontier thesis”, Frederick Turner describes the frontier as “gradually peopled.” However, the congress in 1862 funded the transcontinental railroad, the union pacific, and the Homestead Act. This placed Indians, freed slaves, and soldiers in conflict for the next four decades; the conflict eventually led to murder and massacre during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Although the western frontier is seen as English-speaking pioneers, it is best understood as competing ethnic, religious, and racial groups. During modern era you can see a difference of ethnic equality from present time to old times. In 1871, Arizona civilians descended from peaceful camps and massacred over one hundred Apaches. If anyone asked who was responsible for this, typical western history would suggest …show more content…
During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, immigrants started to flood the frontier; blacks started moving north, Europeans crossed the Atlantic, like Patricia Limerick said “adaptability in American Society to the test.” The old-stock American debated whether it was better to coexist or exclusion, how can they defend “their” land against these foreign threats. Later, the west became diverse with different ethnic groups and racial groups; this put a strain to simple varieties of racism. The west was then dominated by whites, and blacks were now used as slaves. However, not only did the negros lose their integrity but also the mulatto, and Indians with laws that excluded them from giving any testimony; this law also excluded the

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