How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

by Heather Cox Richardson

Even today, when politicians talk about how America is exceptional, they are, consciously or unconsciously, echoing Turner’s Frontier Thesis. While Turner summed up his generation’s thinking about American democracy and the western individual, his famous thesis was not only about triumph. Rather, it issued a dark warning. Turner lived in a time where large corporations were rising in the West, and he pointed out that the director of the 1890 United States Census had recently dropped a significant statistic. Noting the westward sweep of settlement, the director wrote: “There can hardly be said to be a frontier line” any longer. The truth was that the census director was in a tearing hurry because the 1890 census had been such a complete disaster that the first director had resigned, leaving his replacement to try to cobble something together. The poor man had cut where he could. Turner nonetheless took the director at his word, and to him this presented a dire scenario. If democracy was continually remade on the frontier, what would happen to America if the frontier was gone?