Turner argued that it was the frontier that had formed the American character. As pioneers pressed ever westward, losing touch with East Coast centers of elitist or aristocratic traditions, their lonely struggle with the elements (and Indians) shaped their essentially democratic principles. Westerners as he described them were egalitarian, anti-authoritarian, and often violent, the frontier acting as a social safety valve, releasing pent-up tensions of expansion. Without it, he wondered whether Americans would lose “that coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and acquisitiveness …
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