Letter of Marque 10: Beyond the Frontier
Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” is only half of the American experience
"Can half a man live?"
- Kirk's good duplicate, to his evil counterpart
Star Trek, “The Enemy Within”
The first time I heard of Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” was not in college but in graduate school during my first course on American historians. Professor Ray Robinson stood imperiously behind the podium speaking his first words in his stentorian voice to us in 1989 – “they say, Ray, when will you retire. I tell them, ‘when they pry my cold, dead fingers from this podium.’” That was Ray - dry-witted but a powerful storyteller who had studied at Harvard under Samuel Eliot Morison. Ray was one of those we lost during COVID, long after he retired from the classroom that he said he would never leave. He became one of my mentors with many discussions and dinners he hosted in his home with my classmates. He took care of us, a tradition I continued by hosting dinners for my own students until I retired. Ray and I sometimes discussed his late brother Rem – Rembrandt Robinson, the only Navy flag officer to die during the Vietnam War when his helicopter went down in the Gulf of Tonkin as he was returning to his ship.
Few addresses at academic conferences are remembered. In 1893, however, Turner delivered “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. His thesis, which became one of the most influential interpretations of American history, argued that the existence of a frontier shaped the nation's democratic institutions, individualism, and political culture:
“The peculiarity of American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life.”
The West produced, he argued, the promotion of democracy, at least a uniquely American version that was “anti-social,” produced “antipathy to control, and particularly to any direct control.” It was a democracy “born of free land, strong in selfishness and individualism, intolerant of administrative experience and education, and pressing individual liberty beyond its proper bounds, has its dangers as well as its benefits.”
Turner wrote that “up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West.” But this statement ignores the other, equally significant aspect of American history.” Long before Americans pushed westward, the sea was the first frontier. The Atlantic coastline and its cities were hubs of international commerce, connecting the fledgling colonies to the rest of the world. It was from these coastal outposts that American merchants traded with Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa, building wealth and networks of influence that played a critical role in the birth of the nation. In short, “The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West.”
Turner didn’t entirely ignore the sea, but he wrote of it in an oblique way. He mentioned the railroads sent “an increasing tide of immigrants into the Far West” but failed to acknowledge that ships brought those immigrants to American (with the exception of French-Canadians who took railroads directly to New England.) He wrote of “the rising steam navigation on western waters” and the “opening of the Erie Canal” but, again, they are in the quiet context of supporting the frontier. It was not the railroad that conveyed resources to the world, but first to the sea and the ships on the East Coast that enabled those exports to occur.
While Turner’s frontier emphasized rugged individualism and isolation, the maritime economy cultivated a different form of individualism—one that required coordination, navigation of global markets, and diplomacy. This coastal network was outward-looking, interconnected, and cosmopolitan. From the very beginning, the sea was a political arena where American leaders negotiated their place on the world stage.
Turner highlighted the ruggedness of pioneers carving out homesteads in the wilderness, but the navy and merchant shipping firms secured America’s position in global trade and diplomacy. By controlling key shipping routes and projecting naval power, the United States was able to expand its influence far beyond the continental frontier. Just as the west gave rise to mining firms, ranchers and railroad magnates, the ocean offered opportunities to build shipping and merchant firms. The rugged individualism of the West was matched by the necessary cooperation to make a ship function in the calmest of seas and especially the most violent of tempests. The West’s self-reliance countered by maritime teamwork; frontier justice as compared to shipboard governance and courts-martial; the geographical boundaries of a frontier achieved by westward expansion opposed by the oceans which had no boundaries other than the lands they touched. A frontier that was shaped by an individual’s work to succeed was distinct from the complex, interconnectivity of individuals and organizations that comprised the nation’s maritime destiny.
Shipping posed its own character. There were the risks, the unknowns, and the lengthy periods away from home and any form of communication – or the impact of those periods waiting for the ship and crew to return. Good shipping was based on making profits, the most capitalistic idea. But every ship had regulations which tempered the dangerously unfettered aspects of individualism in order to ensure the ship’s work continued just as crews had to submit to the laws of the ports they visited. Crews were willing to be governed without question to ensure that stability. There was accountability at sea. In the antebellum United States, slavery did not exist at sea where some twenty percent of crews were African-American.
And there was the issue of peace. Peace was good for business and profit, while it seemed that in Turner’s frontier world with an “ever-present potential for violence” was simply a way of life. This was reflected in the differences between the Army and Navy. The former acted as a constabulary force in the West during comparative peacetime and as a force during conflicts, while the Navy was protecting trade (with obvious exceptions).
The maritime frontier had as much impact on American culture as the fronter. In terms of literature, Turner might have referred to James Fenimore Cooper’s “Last of the Mohicans,” (he did not that I’m aware of.) However Cooper had been a midshipman in the US Navy prior to the War of 1812, wrote a series of articles about the Navy in the 1830s, and would pen the first history of the US Navy in 1839. Other literary luminaries captured the public’s imagination with the sea such as Richard Henry Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast,” and Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” Alexis de Tocquefille found space in his own thoughts on the young republic, "Already Americans can enforce respect for their flag, soon they will be able to make it feared…. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world.”
Nor was this maritime culture isolated to the men who sailed. For every sailor, there were perhaps five jobs ashore that directly supported the shipping industry. This included provisioning, building ships, insurers, longshoremen, stevedores, and the many local small businesses in each port. Those ashore would not have understood what it meant to be on the ocean, but they recognized its importance.
Why is this discussion of the “Frontier Thesis” relevant today?
We live in a bifurcated political system, each party drawing on imagery and underlying philosophies and culture. Each party stresses its value system. Those values are different from each other. But neither, alone, is correct. Just as Turner’s thesis suggests a universality of American values, each party argues on what its policies are based, often expressing two very different cultures. So it is with the maritime counterpart of the Frontier Thesis. What emerged were two entirely different systems – one based on the land and the other based on the sea. Perhaps that is what caused the division in our American culture and our political system. One side promoting the individual based on the frontier work ethic and dreams, while the other was about accepting governance and norms. As with everything, balance is required. A bird with one wing can’t fly, nor can our political system in permanent partition.
The values that arose out of both the land and sea, nevertheless, did share some common attributes that more fully reflect Americanism. The first is choice – the choice to select either system. The second is cooperation – America could never have expanded without both the land and sea working together. The third is the ability to differ. But that third characteristic is the most important because if ever loses control, both sides lose. Fourth, and finally, neither the frontier nor the maritime destiny exist in their previous forms.
Turner would write that the frontier ended in 1890 with the closing of the west. The geographical boundary had been set. To a similar degree the country’s maritime destiny shaped by jobs and ships and trade, waned by the late 20th century. But both today’s individualism and collectivism are reflections of those earlier times, still ingrained in our collective conscience.