Book Description

Excerpt from The Great West, in Fact and Fiction As Turner suggests, station yourself at Cumberland Gap, and again a century later at South Pass in the Rockies and, watching, describe the procession advancing westward. Comment on the role of the trader and the hunter, the means of transportation (noting the initial importance of buffalo and Indian trails), the advancing centers of frontier attraction and settlement, the later' influx of foreign born, and the ultimate strong mix ture of races and tongues. Rather poetically, Turner expresses the opinion that the forest clearings of pioneer days have been the seed plots of American character. Discuss his conception Of the Western pioneers' characteristics and ideals, noting his belief in the dominant role played by free land in the development of character, and with particular attention to his discussion of the new democracy that came, stark and strong and full of life, from the American forest. Nowhere more than in the West, Turner believes, and particularly in the Mississippi Valley, did the fundamental pioneer ideals of individualism and of a democracy grow through the years into sharper opposition. Dis cuss, noting especially the vast opportunities in a land of stupendous natural resources Offered by the squatter ideal to the strong, and the later expression of each of the two ideals: the one, in the rise of captains of industry and of powerful combinations; the other, in what Turner refers to as successive and related tidal waves of popular demand for legislative safeguards to rights and social ideals. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.