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Cultural And Political Effects Of The North American Frontier

        The North American frontier contributed greatly to today's
American culture. For nearly 150 years before independence, the
Appalachian mountain range had been the American frontier, separating
civilization from wilderness. When North America gained independence
and became the United States, however, people began to move more
freely across the frontiers, into the unknown. The land belonged to
them now, and they were free to explore it however deeply they chose
claiming at will what land they saw. One can explain American
development as the existence of a large area of free land constantly
receding, and American settlement advancing westward. The difference
in American institutions from those of any other nation is that
American institutions have a way of adapting themselves to the
growing, changing nation for which they were imposed. In addition,
American development has shown itself to be not only an advance along
a single frontier, but a cycle of returning to primitive conditions
along a constantly moving frontier line, then settling and civilizing
those areas. The American frontier is also unlike that of any other
country in that most other countries have developed in a limited area
of which they knew the boundaries, meeting and conquering other
developing nations around them. But in the case of North America, the
frontier was where savagery and civilization met, and nobody knew what
lay beyond it. The settlers of North America had no idea that the
continent they had begun settling was so enormously vast; they simply
took nature as it came. The pioneers' necessity to cope with natural
barriers and survive in near anarchy, in essence being
self-sufficient, has greatly affected the American culture of
today.

        One of the areas affected by the frontier experience was
politics. People on the frontier had to deal with whatever life
brought them and make the best of it. They learned how to be very...