What was romantic about the final phases of frontier settlement

Originally Answered: What are the states that were known as the "Wild West" known as today? Why did the Wild West era end? The Wild West ended because of the Progressive Era, lack of land to claim and inventions. After it ended, just like in history, in True Grit Wild West shows were started in order to look back.

What is the Frontier in American History? American frontier, in United States history, the advancing border that marked those lands that had been settled by Europeans. It is characterized by the westward movement of European settlers from the original Atlantic coast 17th century to the Far West 19th century.

What was romantic about the final phases of frontier settlement? What was "romantic" about the final phases of frontier settlement, and what was not?

It was romanticized because it brought up a hopeful clause to white settlers. What is the frontier line? The frontier line was the outer boundary of European-American settlement into this land. The "West" was the recently settled area near that boundary. Thus, parts of the Midwest and American South, though no longer considered "western", have a frontier heritage along with the modern western states.

How did the frontier affect America? Effects of the American Frontier. One can explain American development as the existence of a large area of free land constantly receding, and American settlement advancing westward. How did the economic impact of the Homestead Act contribute to the close of the frontier in the late 19th century? If unemployment was high, immigrants would have been even more likely to move on to the west than stay in a city. In these ways the existence of the frontier acted to limit unemployment in the east.

In addition, due to the continuous draw of the population westward, eastern wages tended to be higher than they otherwise might have been if workers had no other option. In spite of the disappearance of a distinct frontier, there were still large regions of unsettled government land, and families continued to homestead. But by the end of the nineteenth century, the general migration pattern into rural areas had reversed itself, and more people were moving to the city in search of employment than were moving out of the city and onto a farm.

These job-searchers did not always go to the eastern cities, but rather to the industrial giants and trade capitals of the west: Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, and San Francisco. As time went on, farmers felt the impact of the loss of the frontier as the land available for homesteading became increasingly marginal.

Traditionally, American farmers were not tied to the land as in other countries. Original settlers would often sell their land for a profit to later arrivals and move on. With no new and better lands to move to, farmers had to make do with what farmland was available.

They also had to contend with the political and economic forces that they had sought to escape by moving west. Turner claimed that prolonged frontier experience had affected the thinking of the American people, their culture, and their institutions, and that the isolation and hardship of the frontier had fostered self-reliance, individualism, and movement away from the influence of Europe.

In each successive advance westward, the need to create civilization anew accounted for the vigor, ambition, and democracy of America. With loss of the frontier, Americans lost a critical foundation for their culture, and an era had ended with unforeseen abruptness and startling finality. The history of the frontier would certainly appear in a different light from the perspective of Native Americans, Hispanics, blacks, and women.

The essay was a seminal work, however, in that it investigated the evolution of a social and psychological phenomenon in terms of culture and economics as well as personalities, politics, and fortunes of war. Agriculture in the Mississippi Valley region underwent major changes after the Civil War. Farmers began thinking of farming as a business with a cash crop of wheat, corn, or cotton instead of a self-sufficient way of life.

A farm began to be viewed as an outdoor factory and growing crops as production. Farmers made use of credit and considered such factors as transportation and marketing, just like other businesses. Farming also became increasingly mechanized, which drew farmers into a cycle of purchasing ever more expensive farm machinery.

In the late s, rural dwellers started to purchase household goods, tools, and clothing rather than fashioning these items themselves. Mail-order catalogs filled the need for manufactured items in areas where travel to a large city to shop was not practical. Large corporate farms, using economies of scale, could purchase seed, equipment, and supplies at discounted prices.

Because of the size of their businesses, they could negotiate for better rates from the railroads for transportation of their produce. These factors contributed to the profitability of the bonanza farm. Development of the railroad refrigerator car allowed fresh produce from every area of the country to be shipped to markets in the large urban centers.

In the south, large-scale commercial agriculture changed the rural way of life. Entrepreneurial capitalists of the New South extended the business of agriculture beyond the old plantations and into regions of small farms. There was an acute shortage of capital in the south, which posed major obstacles to rebuilding the economy. Without hard currency, Southerners had to operate on credit. Wealthy individuals who extended credit for profit were called credit merchants.

Many acquired large holdings of land in the post-Reconstruction south at the expense of small farmers. The "crop lien" system was one method of the commercialization of southern agriculture.

The farmer was thus pressed by circumstances into making a large planting of a single cash crop—usually cotton. Many farmers cultivating the same product caused cash crop prices to drop. Some farmers were able to use the crop lien form of credit to bootstrap themselves into independence and pay for their own seed and supplies in the following years. For other farmers, however, the crop lien proved to be a debt trap from which they could never climb out.

Eventually, many lost their farms. The planter or merchant who extended the credit was often seen as a villain. Their risk was high, however. The high interest the credit merchants charged partially reflected the risk they were taking. As a direct result of the crop lien system, many poor white and black farmers became landless tenant farmers or sharecroppers. They generally got supplies and half the crop for their effort. Tenant farmers worked the land but used their own equipment and draft animals and bought their own seed.

They usually earned three-fourths of the cash crop and two-thirds of the subsistence crop. The owner of the land received the remainder as rent.

This system encouraged taking as much as possible from the land on a short-term basis and making no provision for the long term. The economics favored using up the nutrients in the soil without replacing them, and there was no incentive to prevent erosion from wind or water.

Tenants and landlords were constantly suspicious that they were being cheated and used by the other. By the s, 20 percent of southern farmers were tenants, most of whom were freed slaves. By , 50 percent of southern farmers were tenants, many newly landless whites.

This situation resulted in a massive migration of Americans out of the southern Cotton Belt. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner believed that the strength and the vitality of the America identity lay in its land and vast frontier. The greatest example of American character is our ability to rise to the occasion in spite of insurmountable odds.

Our nation, built from the sweat and blistered hands of frontiersmen and revolutionaries, was established with the intent on being a land of new beginnings. This was the visage of American ideals. The frontier thesis or Turner thesis also American frontierism , is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in that American democracy was formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process.