In 1893, Frederick Turner published his “Frontier Thesis” in a paper - “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. Within his publication, he asserted that the wilderness masters the colonist. As man traveled over from Europe, nature “strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin.” At first, the frontier environment is “too strong for the man … little by little he transforms the wilderness”. Once the individual is stripped of the old and thrown into the wilderness, an American is born. Thus, America began to advance away from the influence of Europe and towards a bright future. As Turner transcribes on, one can only understand that Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis is valid because nature is one of the greatest equalizers and cannot be underestimated. As the frontier grew, American democracy expanded as the West expanded. …show more content…
American democracy was simply an outcome “of the experiences of the American people in dealing with the West”. It was not “carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth… It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier.” Therefore, anyone from a European country was provided the freedom to travel over to America and the opportunity to work to make a name for themselves. Nature served as an equalizer. As the foreign man came to the country, they did not hold the knowledge of what was to come; therefore, no one was at a disadvantage. The uncertainty of Nature itself helped Nature serve as an equalizer to the new and foreign men. Thus, they were fed into the wilderness as foreigners and spit back out as