History of the United States II / Unit 7 USH2 0901 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Turner's Frontier Thesis
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The idea
At the Columbian Exposition of eighteen ninety-three, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that western expansion had shaped American democracy.
In practice
Turner's claim that for nearly three centuries expansion had been the dominant fact in American life.
Where people slip
Teach it as an argument, not a verdict. Its importance here is what it suggested to expansionists: with the frontier gone, look abroad.
Your place on the trail
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