Shaping of America   Term Paper ID:27713 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examination of how America was shaped by the frontier, native Americans, & by the slave system. Focus is on historical injustices.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examination of how America was shaped by the frontier, native Americans, & by the slave system. Focus is on historical injustices. Paper Introduction: The Frontier in American History American history involves a mixture of histories, cultures, and national backgrounds brought together in what was truly the New World when it was discovered by European settlers. At the time, there were several Indian tribes in North America and the larger civilization of the Aztecs in South America. The settlers from Europe brought their culture with them, and they only broke away from that culture slowly over a period of time as they created something new. With the advent of slavery in the plantation economy of the South, blacks from Africa were brought to the Americas and introduced elements of their culture. These different forces mixed and interacted over time to become the underpinnings of American history and what would become a distinctive American culture. Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Evenmany of those who support the values immigrants bring with them haveemphasized that no nation can allow unfettered crossings of its borders andthat some sort of immigration policy has to be set in place and enforced,though there may be large differences among groups as to what is anacceptable policy. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984.Lewis, Loida Nicolas. Every challenge isdesignated some form of "new frontier," from the exploration of space tothe plumbing of the depths of the sea, from the challenge we face infighting disease to that of fighting poverty. armed [the English] with a moral justification for doing so when their numbers became sufficient. These different forces mixed andinteracted over time to become the underpinnings of American history andwhat would become a distinctive American culture. This marked thebeginning of a real division between North and South, with slaverypermitted in some areas and not in others and with economic forces at workon both sides over the issue. Washburn. Winkler. (Turner 12) Turner shows how the existence of the frontier shaped the Americanindividual, the state, the economy, and the culture. The goal was to eliminate"Indianness" and to make the heathen as much like the Europeans aspossible, always with the proviso that the Native Americans would remaininferior by their very nature and would only aspire to be like theirEuropean teachers. The Native Americans also had their ideas ofproperty and its meaning, and it was quite different from that of theEnglish. The settlers from Europe brought their culture with them,and they only broke away from that culture slowly over a period of time asthey created something new. Boles in his book Black Southerners examines the developmentof the slave system in Virginia and analyzes the growth of a blackcommunity in the South. Defining the Native Americans as "savage" and "brutish". In the South, the plantation economy developedbecause of the types of crops that were grown and the fact that these cropswere labor-intensive, and slaves were used because there was no readyworkforce on which to draw. He finds that changes in the economic structure were key to the changesthat took place in the black community, and with the Civil War and theemancipation of the slaves, this community was faced with a new set ofproblems and priorities. Boles tells the story chronologically, beginning with the role ofslavery in Europe and showing how it was carried over into the New World asan economic decision. Frederick, Allen F. How to Get a Green Card. The American People: Volume One. The frontier played an important part in American history, both as areality and as an idea, and the idea continues to do so today long afterthe physical frontier has disappeared. This frontier was pushed backunevenly but steadily until the census of 189 showed that it no longerexisted. The English could justify this because they had made NativeAmericans into brutes in their minds. Boles shows the significance not only of the white economy but of theblack culture that was brought into this economy and that managed todevelop alongside white society, showing a strength and resilience that wasremarkable. . Inthis century, consecutive waves of immigration from different parts of theworld created tensions with Americans already living in this country, forthey believed that the immigrants were taking their jobs, gorging thewelfare roles, and somehow reducing their overall standard of living. However, what has made the country it is todaycomes from the contributions of peoples from all over the world, and thiswill continue to be the case. To the Native American peoples theland they inhabited was sacred and sanctified. . (Turner 24) Turner notes that one of the effects of the frontier was an increasein democratization. The Frontier in American History. John B. Berkeley: Nolo Press, 1993.Nash, Gary B., Julie Roy Jeffrey, John R. Therewere clearly offenses committed on both sides, many fueled by culturaldifferences, but the economic motive for the English would cause them totreat the Native American in a way that led to an immediate and violentbacklash from a people who had in any case fought among themselves, tribeagainst tribe, for centuries. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. . The Frontier in American History American history involves a mixture of histories, cultures, andnational backgrounds brought together in what was truly the New World whenit was discovered by European settlers. Davis, and Allan M. The English in effectdemonized Native Americans as a justification for forcing them off theirland and for making them into inferiors: By denying the humanity of the Indians, the English, like other Europeans, claimed that the native possessors of the land disqualified themselves from rightful ownership of it. That disappearance was announced byFrederick Jackson Turner in his book The Frontier in American History, abook in which the author also discussed the significance of the frontier inAmerican history. He shows that formost of American history, the frontier was the challenge, an ever-presenttest that had to be met and defeated. The IndustrialRevolution was then shaping life in the United States, as factories,timberlands, and manufacturing plants all needed workers. The attacks on Native Americans by the Englishincluded both economic motives and cultural differences, but many of thecultural motivations for these attacks were created, or at leastexacerbated, by those with an economic motive. Boles also clearly feels that it was a tragedy when the newlydeveloped and free United States failed to do something about slaveryimmediately, instead allowing it to continue as an institution for anothercentury before the Civil War brought an end to it. Black Southerners: 1619-1869. (Nash et al. and Wilcomb E. The American Heritage History of the Indian Wars. . The first Europeans towitness Native American rituals failed to perceive this as a form of deepreligious expression, for to their Christian minds, these were deplorablepagan rites. Between 182 and 191 , at least 38 million Europeansarrived in the United States, the result of a number of forces including:the Napoleonic Wars; political disturbances in Germany, Austria-Hungary,Greece, and Poland; the Potato Famine in Ireland; religious persecutions ofProtestants, Catholics, and Jews in Czarist Russia and other parts ofEurope; the Industrial Revolution that created thousands of unemployedworkers and peasants; and a rigid social structure that supported a closedaristocracy and upper class. The fact that the frontier continues to play animportant role in American life is evident in the way Americans seem tokeep searching for a new frontier to replace the old. Worship of more than one deity, and sacrificial offeringsdirected at the natural world, stamped Indians as a misguided, lesser formof mankind. The NativeAmericans, of course, saw things differently: Unimpressed with most settler practices, they saw little reason to replace what they valued in their own culture. It remained a drivingforce in the shaping of the American way of life, and a motivating factorin the growth of the nation: The legislation which most developed the powers of the national government, and played the largest part in its activities, was conditioned on the frontier. The masses fromEurope were thus more or less welcomed as cheap labor, and the immigrantsin turn found cheaper land and higher pay than they had known in Europe(Lewis 1/3). The economic motive led the English to denigrate Native Americanculture to a greater degree than might have occurred otherwise and helpedthem justify the outright theft of the land and other resources. With the advent of slavery in the plantationeconomy of the South, blacks from Africa were brought to the Americas andintroduced elements of their culture. The result was that theNative Americans were treated like children and also were made to labor fortheir Christian betters as a way of atoning for their paganism. (Nash 1 6) English tactics against Native Americans crossed the line betweenstrategic deception and outright immorality in the view of many (Utley andWashburn 23). Over time, using slaves became a habit somesaw as their right, and any attempt to abolish slavery was seen as a threatto the economic order. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.Turner, Frederick Jackson. Thus, some peoples at various times have benefitted or been victims ofthe frontier mentality that shaped America as we know it today. Works CitedBoles, John B. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962.Utley, Robert M. . (Turner 4)Turner says that the further West we move, the more American the frontierbecomes because it is farther from Europe. At the same time, as Boles shows, the whitepopulation had developed a certain fear of the black population whichcontributed to the development of controls and laws to keep the slaves intheir place and to protect the white population from any threat. The many Native American tribes were as culturallydifferent from each other as the nations of Europe, but to the whitesettlers the Native Americans were more alike than they were different.These Indian cultures had been developing for centuries, but thatdevelopment was stopped by the influx of white settlers so that some ofthese societies had disappeared entirely by the end of the fifteenthcentury, while others were undergoing profound social transformation. The United States is a nation of immigrants and so is a mixture of thecultures of many peoples. When they observed the colonists' systems of law and justice, religion, education, family organization, and child rearing, Native Americans often concluded that their own ways were superior. 32-33)The very land was sacred to the Native Americans who lived here before thewhite settlers arrived, and the relationship these people had with the landwas not given much respect by the Europeans, who had a very different viewof nature and their own place in it. The growth of nationalism and the evolution of American political institutions were dependent on the advance of the frontier. New York: American Heritage Publishing, 1977. the frontier states came into the Union withdemocratic suffrage provisions and showed reactive effects on the statesfrom which people had come to the new regions: The rise of democracy as an effective force in the nation came in with western preponderance under Jackson and William Henry Harrison, and it meant the triumph of the frontier--with all its good and with all its evil elements. However, what Turner's analysis really shows is that the frontiercontinued to exist as a given in the American mind. Politicians find it easy tolabel such efforts assaults on a new frontier because the word "frontier"has such strong connotations in American life. The United States at this time was expanding intothe West and Southwest all the way to the Pacific Coast. There areobviously flaws, problems, and injustices in the American historical past,both social and economic. The attitude of the Christian Europeans toward the NativeAmericans was paternalistic as a consequence. At the time, there were severalIndian tribes in North America and the larger civilization of the Aztecs inSouth America. He shows how the African culture was transplantedand reshaped and how economic and social pressures contributed over time tothe growing sense of rebellion in the black community before the Civil War. Millions of people left their homeland insearch of a better life. The South saw slavery as a necessity inorder for the plantation owners to maintain their economic position, whilethe North saw slavery as unfair trade in economic terms and an abominationin moral terms. Howe, Peter J. (Turner 31)Originally, the frontier was associated with the native peoples who werehere when the Europeans arrived and who at various times were perceived asenemies to be eliminated. . Turner notes how the wilderness faced by the colonists changed them,and he calls the frontier "the line of most rapid and effectiveAmericanization": It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. Turner shows how the frontierwas pushed back by settlers over successive generations and how each regionwas settled in its own way, with its own economic structure, agriculturalproduce, and mode of life: Each of these areas has had an influence in our economic and political history; the evolution of each into a higher stage has worked political transformations. Only the Native Americans are indigenous to thiscontinent, and at some point in their history they may also have come tothis region from Asia across the Bering Strait or by some other means. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.