King Size Papa - Julia Lee & Her Boy Friends (1948)

Westward to the Great War in Europe: Federick Jackson Turner and American Nationalism

Westward to the Great War in Europe: The Evolution of American Nationalism























(Illustrations: Pantheon de la Guerre, Liberty Memorial, Kansas City, Missouri)

























"We are great, and rapidly--I was about to say fearfully--growing!"
--John C. Calhoun, 1817, as quoted by Frederick Jackson Turner in the Significance of the Frontier in American History.













Historical theory is a powerful construct. The writings of Herder, Hegel and Marx and the pronouncements of historians from Vico to von Ranke give ample testimony to the potency of historical theory and its effect on modern western civilization. The discourses of educated persons are often adopted by others as blueprints for action, or as useful fuel for political or economic conquest. These academic and often abstruse ideas are often willfully appropriated in selectively edited versions and put into action. Theoretical ideas are often used politically, exploding as a perversion of the original in which academic dialogue becomes political dogma. The fate of nations and wars often hinge on these pronouncements of professors and students within the seemingly safe confines of some distant seminar room.

One product of the misapplication of historical inquiry, the concept of nationalism, has proven to be the single most dangerous construct to which historical theorizing has been applied thus far. Its aims are always selfish and, more often than not, founded in concepts of exclusivity and uniqueness that serve to oppress those found outside its specific boundaries.

Today, Americans are stumbling through the legacy of a national identity gone awry. In the wake of World War II, the American nation took its place as the democratic world leader, more by victorious fiat than global consensus. Since 1945, the United States has assumed rule of the western powers with an unsteady hand, not entirely sure of how to balance the ideas of democracy and empire.

Until the last twenty or so years, prudent and educated minds of both major political parties kept the economically rapacious, religiously possessed and politically profligate more or less in check. To quote President Dwight Eisenhower

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security,
unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm
programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political
history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes
you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires . . .
and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas.
Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

But President Eisenhower did not foresee today’s America. Many businessmen and politicians are intent on taking out to the world at large an outmoded 19th century nationalistic vision of the United States based in images of the American West, combining and manipulating diverse conservative imagery ranging from John Wayne and John Birch to St. John of the Apocalypse.

How did American nationalism become a byword for oppression in many parts of the world? How have we gone so far astray from the ideals of the American Revolution? And where will we go now that the first African-American president is a reality? How will Americans define themselves now? What will our new national vision be?

Conservative thought, like its liberal counterbalance, has always been a part of American vision and the United States has never lacked for conservatives or fundamentalists--or religious opportunists, for that matter. Even before the revolution, Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening seared into the New England psyche the ”Seventy times Seventy” and “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God” mentality. After the revolution, the Enlightenment principles of the new nation found critics in people like Edward’s grandson, Dr. Timothy Dwight, who “reclaimed” Yale for Christian thought as its president in 1795. To Dwight, liberal thinkers such as Jefferson were anathema and he remained a vociferous opponent of Deism—indeed, he even lamented the loss of Harvard to the liberal and free thinking Unitarians. Dwight and his adherents saw the United States as the exclusive purview of Christians. All others were heretics—and should be cast out so that the “City of God” might be established on earth and thrive in the New World.

These ideas remained active in American life in the first part of the 19th century, fueling social unrest such as the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s and 30s—a period that witnessed the beginning of a variety religious and philosophical movements and social experiment from Mormonism to the Oneida Community. In the 1840s and 50s, American xenophobia manifested itself in anti-Masonic hysteria and nativist parties like the “Know-Nothings” that vilified Catholics and immigrants, among others. After the Civil War, conservative thought both religious and otherwise, gave rise to new institutions of exclusive membership including both the Ku Klux Klan as well as the American Greek fraternity system. Regimented and secret, their agendas attempted to protect the status quo and, more often than not, invoked the Edwardian “angry God” imagery with Old Testament malevolence.

For all the religious fustiness in the nineteenth century, the American nationalistic ideal remained tied to the revolution. The Fourth of July invoked the ideas of individual liberty and the virtues of the founding fathers. Stridently independent in nature, Americans refused to be master by religious demagogy of any stripe. Overt or singular religious activity, whether Mormon, Mennonite or Catholic was often viewed with suspicion and hostility. The United States remained individually reverent and staunchly politically secular.

But the image of the Enlightenment and revolution could not be sustained in a nation made up of aggressive merchants and backwoods millianialist clerics bent on their own Calvinist explanation of the new nation and its history. After the Civil War, the nationalistic ideal of the Revolution made industrialists increasingly uneasy. Mark Twain’s “Gilded Age” required something less philosophical, less intellectual--less egalitarian and more phenomenal and exclusive to explain the great successes and uniqueness of Americans as Americans, a breed apart.



Originally, American nationalism evolved in the midst of revolutionary crisis. Indeed, some founders of the new nation, Washington among them, worried that the nation could survive at all. The country first couched its nationalism in Enlightenment terms. At the same time, the concepts of divine approbation and racial exclusivity also appeared in American thought. America was republicanism's "last, her only asylum"; the country's children must be taught to revere "'the lofty vestibule' of Freedom's Shrine, which was the temple of 'NATIONAL GLORY'".

Most importantly, the Americans had fought their revolution "not because they felt themselves un-English, but because they were English." Franklin's statement that the Americans were actually loyal to English traditions found its basis in documents such as the Magna Carta and in actions such as Cromwell's--when a government failed in its duty to its adherents, the government must change. But it would be change rationalized within the British tradition of liberty. Other peoples or philosophies were not a consideration. Anglophilia became an inherent part of American nationalism.

Immigrations from other nations modified America's original ethnocentric stance. Irish and German peoples supported a broader concept of nationalism as the 19th century progressed. These new immigrants caused the inheritors of the revolution initial discomfort. They were seen as potential threats to the new republic unless they could be Anglicized. As the century progressed, both race and class became an important part of the country's nationalism. Ultimately. American statesmen sought to broaden the founding father's initial pronouncements regarding the superiority of English civilization and, ultimately, the United States accepted most northern European groups after an initial period of hostility. As immigrants lost their distinctive traits and language and became Anglicized, they became more or less accepted.

At the same time, Americans continued to be obsessed by human coloration. David Watson, in the Atlantic Monthly in 1858, noted that the American was of lighter complexion and "sharper features" than his English cousins--a hardy and superior race evolving from contributions and mixtures of northern European groups. By the time of the Civil War, the nation had convinced itself of its "Manifest Destiny", its divine mandate to take its superior civilization to the ends of the North American continent. The nationalism of the county, firmly grounded in racism both overt and implied, saw a noble white American republic bringing democracy to the continent's far reaches. Entangling world alliances were inconsistent with the revolutionary ideals of isolationism as noted by Washington in his Farewell Address. No one thought to ask what the nation's goals might be after the continent was subdued—the imperial adventures of citizens like Wilkinson, Burr and Walker and events such as the Mexican War notwithstanding.

Frederick Jackson Turner was among the first historians to address this omission in American nationalist thought. Trained at the University of Wisconsin and Johns Hopkins, Turner represented an emerging generation of American scholars not content to look to Europe for explanations of American success. At Chicago's Columbian Exposition on July 12, 1893, he delivered his paper entitled, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." His ideas were more synthetic than original, combining various concepts prevalent in American thought over the preceding forty years. Turner used as his central point a notice appearing in the United States census report of 1890, which stated that the frontier was now officially closed. Turner maintained that the frontier experience had created a new nation, independent of European traditions. Turner considered the "germ theorists", historians who conceived of American civilization as having grown from European plantings, to be inaccurate. The forests of America were more important in explaining American character than the forests of Germany. Americans were unique, a new breed. And, although he did not state so in his paper, they were, implicitly, a new white breed. The census of 1890 had proclaimed the end of the American frontier. According to the United States government, the continental bastions of white America were secure. But did this pronouncement by the Office of the Census mean that American dynamism was finished? Turner maintained that the American people and democracy had been created in the very act of its expansion. "Up to our own day American history has been in large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West", stated Turner. "The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development." No, America's expansion clearly was not finished, stated Turner; to do so was to call an end to America itself. In bald cadences Turner asserted:

. . .the people of the United States have taken their
tone from the incessant expansion that has not only
been open but has even been forced upon them. He
would be a rash prophet who should assert that the
expansive character of American life has now entirely
ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and,
unless this training has no effect upon a people, the
American energy will continually demand a wider field
for its exercise.

Over the next twenty years, Turner's history of the west became the basis for a new American nationalism; for the first time the United States had a historical theory that bound the country together--or so it seemed. That it ignored all but "Anglo-Saxons" did not trouble the power structure that adopted it. According to Turner and his adherents, the various white European nations had supplied peoples to the United States that had forged a new nation founded in expansion and western independence. Americans were a new people and a new nation--a successful, dynamic, neo-Darwinian hybrid of colossal strength and promise.

Politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt quickly adopted Turner's historical theory as the new nationalism. In the wake of its pronouncement, the United States turned from its domestic conquests in the American West to a world arena. At the end of his Chicago paper, Turner warned that, although the American frontier had been pronounced closed in 1890 by the federal government, one could hardly expect the United States to discontinue the expansion that had created her democracy and her people. Turner's frontier thesis was nothing less than a confirmation and announcement of imperialism on the part of the United States--this time to be played out on the international stage. The nationalist mentality reflected in Turner's 1893 thesis would help to turn the United States from the traditional isolationism of revolutionary America and the nationalism of the early republic, and drive it toward world imperialism and ultimately into World War I.

Oddly enough, this provocative end to Turner's presentation caused no immediate clamor; in fact, the presentation was politely ignored. Turner, however, applied himself to the promulgation of his new theory and its sister theory of sectionalism. In supporting the newly formed American Historical Review two years later in 1895, Turner joined forces with other historians that sought to give the nation a new historical tradition and sense of identity. By 1906, he had established himself as an important American historian. Between 1896 and 1917 there would be few editions of the American Historical Review that would not contain some article or book review by Turner, or some notice of his participation in the administration of the newly formed American Historical Association. Just as Twain and Whitman had given the United States an "American" literature based in western imagery, so Turner and his colleagues sought to give the American nation a history based on a new nationalism. It is true that writers like Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau and others had established an American literary tradition--but these were men of the East, men still tied to European traditions. Frederick Jackson Turner's West promised the nation a new nationalism seemingly free of European taint. The success of the American experiment could be seen in the conclusion of the Western experience, as noted by the census of 1890. The first chapter, the subjugation and conquering of the region, had been accomplished. What would the second chapter be?


The second chapter, a chapter to be written in the bloody ink of a new American nationalism based on expansion and international imperialism was already being written. In fact, it had already been penned in rough draft in Mexico, Central American, the Pacific and the Caribbean. To resist expansion, according to Turner, would be to resist the impulse that had created the American nation and it's Democracy. The lifeblood of the American nation sprang from its continuous western movement. Such ideas were tailor-made for the political and imperialistic ambitions of men like Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt agreed with Turner's theory, stating that he had hit upon "some first class ideas" and had molded "into shape a good deal of thought that has been floating around rather loosely." Roosevelt sensed that Turner had given historical voice to a new American nationalism. Although Turner's review of Roosevelt's fourth volume of his work The Winning of the West (1896) was fairly critical, the two found in each other the combination of historian and politician necessary to take forward both the new western history and the new nationalism. They remained good friends for many years.

The preceding decades had witnessed an increasing involvement of the United States in world affairs. In the 1880s, The United States, Great Britain and Germany agreed on a mutual recognition of the King of Samoa, to protect their commercial interests. The first International Congress of American States was suggested by United States Secretary of State James G. Blaine in 1881 and realized in 1889. The United States Senate recognized the Geneva Convention of 1864, which set international rules for the conduct of warfare. An international agreement divided the United States into four time zones. The United States negotiated a naval base at Pearl Harbor and consolidated its administration of Alaska. At home, Chinese Exclusion Acts pointed to the typical American brand of racism. The opening of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show pointed a nascent mythology of the American West. What Buffalo Bill could not accomplish, authors such as Brete Harte did, taking his lecture entitled, "The Argonauts of '49" to the London lecture halls. But for the most part, American identity remained parochial, focused on Enlightenment models and European history.


When Turner addressed the intellectuals gathered at the Columbian Exposition in 1893, he did so in the midst of a national economic collapse and depression. The United States of the 1890s was a nation of unrest, uncertainty and repression. Women's rights, labor violence, the Homestead steel worker's slaughter, socialism, racism as reflected in Plessey vs. Ferguson, Chinese Exclusion Acts, Jim Crow and outright murder, the “opening” of the Oklahoma Territory, Wounded Knee, the “end” of the frontier, Populism--all created the impression for American citizens that the United States was under siege from within. In addition to economic catastrophe, unprecedented events seemed to take the United States away from traditional isolationism and toward international involvement. In 1893, United States troops occupied the Hawaiian Islands. Pope Leo XIII appointed the first Apostolic Delegate to the United States in 1893 (while also issuing his encyclicals Rerum Novarum (Of New Things, 1891) and Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (Testament of Good Will 1899) that outlined the papacy’s problems with economic systems and religious heresy—specifically referring to “Americanism”. And, in anticipation of new duties abroad, the United States Congress passed the Diplomatic Appropriations Act in 1893, a piece of legislation that created a new and useful foreign diplomatic corps. The new nationalism, as voiced by Turner, was in perfect step with the both the needs and ambitions of the nation. Domestic unrest needed to be quieted by a new focus. The domestic economy needed new impetus. The new imperialistic nationalism of Turner and Roosevelt provided both. In reality, the continental American empire existed only as a politician's dream; the American West was hardly subdued. But the pronouncement had been made, and by 1895 a front page Fourth of July article, entitled "A Cow Puncher's Fourth", occupied the front page of the eastern New York Times, reflecting the new interest in things “Western”. Like the article's illustration of the little cowboy and the recalcitrant horse, the new nationalism, mounted on the new American history, was off and running.

The beginnings of nationalistic American history, as espoused by Turner and its effects on the world can be traced through both the academic and popular media in the second half of the nineteenth century. From Sullivan’s pronouncement of Manifest Destiny in the 1850s onward, nationalism and west became increasingly familiar and attractive to Americans. And although the Civil War would for a brief time impede such musings, by 1876 the idea had fully resurrected itself and ever popular and uniting idea that bound together the post war federal nation..

The American Historical Review and The New York Times provide excellent vehicles by which to gauge the changing values of the nation and its increasing participation in imperialist thought and actions. Before the1890s, perhaps the single most telling omission in American thought was the lack of a genuine historical school or publication dealing with American history. American historians generally subscribed to the "germ" theory of American history--American civilization had evolved as a germination of English civilization which, in turn, had its roots in the forests of Germany. Americans still looked to Europe for legitimacy. In 1875, The New York Times noted the celebrations by Americans in London on the 4th of July at the Crystal Palace in anticipation of the next year's revolutionary centennial. The notices thus published were conciliatory, not nationalistic. "The subject of the demonstrations will be to promote good feeling between Englishmen and Americans", stated the Times. An address by Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey on July 4, 1875, rather than displaying the bad feeling held on previous 4th of Julys in England, stated from the pulpit that "Now every American was proud of his English ancestry and every Englishman was proud of Washington." "After all, blood is thicker than water; and our English brother is thrice welcome here", reported the New York Times on the comments of an American clergyman. In the July 7 edition of the New York Times, another reason for the late blooming of a new nationalism was evident. The United States was still recovering from a stupendous Civil War. A political desire for national solidarity short of actual nationalism was apparent, even if it was not grounded in reality. Blacks were noted as having forgiven their old enemies and southerners such as ex-vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, "took the Fourth of July as an occasion to recant whatever heresies he had aforetime preached." "After all", stated the Times, "we are one people . . .Our estrangement antedates the rebellion. Our reunion shall be perpetual." Although based in fantasy and wishful thinking, conciliation nevertheless seemed to be the order of the day. Consistent with the old Anglo centric nationalism, true Americans were Englishmen at heart. The United State's past was firmly grounded in European history. The Civil War had tried the nation by fire, and it was stronger for it. Most importantly, Americans were now "one people".

But other news and opinions also crowded the paper. In the July 4th issue of the Times, the front page proclaimed that Washington, D.C., would not sponsor fireworks that year due to expense. Additionally, an editorial entitled "Patriotism" noted that the 4th of July should be a time of "self-examination rather than of self-glorification." The article emphasized the responsibility of government to the people and the responsibility of the people to change that government when it failed to respond. "There is not much of 'country right or wrong' in this", stated the Times, "but there is in it the grandeur of the spirit which tries all things but holds fast only that which is good." The Times continued:

There is not in the Declaration that love of country
which is not better than a passion. The servile crowd
of placemen may be possessed of that, but it is not
worthy of the name of patriotism, and it is certainly
out of place when we are commemorating the event and
the men such placemen called treason and traitors.
Instead of it--and in this lies the real strength of
any government that has any claim to be called free--
is the bravery that puts before everything, justice,
and that follows no flag upon which that word is not
written, and keeps to no music which has not that for
its key note. . .We do not need our anniversaries to
kindle anew the fires of patriotism that holds life
cheap in the fierce struggle for national life, but
rather to arouse the every-day love of country that
esteems every sacrifice worth making that brings us
closer to the ideal state.

The sentiments expressed do not reflect a rabid nationalism. However, it is important to note that the conquering of the American West was at the same time rapidly proceeding. On the front page of the same paper, a massacre of Osage Indians by forty Kansas citizens, with the collusion of the Kansas governor in August of 1874, was being investigated by the Department of Interior. If a reparation of $5,000 could not be wrung from Congress to cover the deaths of the four Osages, the theft of 60 ponies, bridles and other camp equipment by the Kansas militia, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs requested that the local Osage agent be given "all the means in his power. . .to prevent the Osages from taking justice into their owns hands." The racist nationalism of the United States was still in formation in the American west; the justice referred to in the "Patriotism" editorial of that edition was evidently meant only for the Anglo Saxon. Such events reflect the inherent disparity of fact and thought of the future American western history and later interpreted by Turner and the nationalism espoused by Roosevelt in the 1890s.

The next year, the centennial of the American Revolution prompted the expected nationalistic fervor. A poem composed by American poet Bayard Taylor presaged Turner's thesis in a variety of ways:

Sun of the stately day.
Let Asia into the shadow drift,
Let Europe bask in thy stately ray,
And ever the severing ocean lift
A brow of broader splendor. . .

She planted homes on the savage sod:
Into the wilderness alone
She walked with fearless feet
In her hand the divining rod
Till the veins of the mountain beat
With fire of metal and force of stone. . .

Oh sacred woman-form
of the first Peoples need and passion wrought--
No thin, pale ghost of Thought. . .
No more a chiefteness with wampum-zone
and feathered-cinctured brow--
No more a new Britannia, grown
to spread an equal banner to the breeze
And lift thy trident o'er the double seas
But with no unborrowed crest,
In thy own native beauty dressed
The front of pure command, the unflinching eye,
thy own!

Mr. Taylor's recitation was frequently interrupted by "storms of applause, showing how deeply he was touching the popular heart." Most of this was to be expected on so great an anniversary. However, a nation of one American people remained a poet's dream. The Times also noted a "Centennial Saenger Verband", a celebration by Germans of the American Revolution with speeches, American and German Flags, addresses by German scholars, the reading of the Declaration of Independence in German and the reading of a historical piece by a Dr. Theodore Heidenfeld, also in German. Performances of German composers by an orchestra of 50 and a chorus of 500 voices completed the celebration. The Times also reported that diplomat, Charles Frances Adams, had delivered a Fourth of July speech in Massachusetts during which he extolled European colonization and excused the debasing and destruction of the native population as the natural order of things. The United States continued to be focused on problems at home; her own continental empire was still being conquered and consolidated. But a true nationalism based on an American historical ideal of the West still remained to be voiced.

Increasingly, however, a new international self-consciousness began to trouble Americans. Domestic problems still plagued the country, as the articles on Black participation in government underscored. Also underscored was the evident resolve of national leaders to ignore those problems, as illustrated by the comments of General Ulysses S. Grant in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1880, when, upon addressing a crowd of 15,000 person stated :

"It has been my effort, in the positions I have held,
to render the very best service in my power for the
whole people, without respect to race, color, or
previous condition. . .we are citizens in common of
one great Nation, and the greatest Nation that the
sun shines upon to-day."

The nationalism expressed by Grant was of the old style. Its efficacy still resounded in the applause that attended its pronouncement. But Americans needed something more. A growing dissatisfaction with other countries began to manifest itself in the newspapers. Reports of attacks by Spanish ships and conflicts with German interests in the Pacific gave rise to a new irritation with things European. An editorial in the Times on July 4, 1880, entitled "Americans and Money" reflected this irritation. "Ever since we became a nation the charge has been brought against us by Europeans, particularly by Englishmen, that we, as a people, are absorbed in, and are eternally talking about, making money." The article charged that Americans were no more obsessed by lucre than Europeans. Money-mad Americans? "Who of us recognizes its fidelity?” asked the Times. "If it has a degree of verity, it does not fit us any more than it fits Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians or Russians." "Who thinks more or talks more of money than the people of the Old World?” asked the Times. "We like to get it; but we like better to spend it. We are perfectly familiar with money, and our familiarity begets a sort of contempt displayed in the national lavishness and extravagance." The editorial ended on a significant note, allowing that the United States should not be required to labor under such criticism any longer:

We are not to be cajoled anymore with the shallow
iteration. We are well acquainted with Europe; it
has become our field of recreation, and we find we
need to go there thoroughly to learn how much money
may be prized and what unworthiness it breeds. Even
if we talk of money as much as the Old World does,
we esteem it mainly for the excitement of winning it
and the pleasure of seeing it fly.

The tone of the editorial not only reflected impatience but outright hostility. To refer to Europe as America's "field of recreation" required a cheek seldom demonstrated in so blatant a fashion just a few years earlier. Clearly, Americans were beginning to conceive of themselves as something other than just inheritors of a European culture and tradition. And just as clearly, those outside the United States were beginning to see Americans as something other than distant and provincial cousins.

As the United States increasingly came in contact with other nations of the world and failed to resolve domestic questions such as Black enfranchisement and Asian immigration, racism and xenophobia seemed to become more and more a part of American nationalism and the American scene. In July of 1893, the month of Turner's presentation at the Columbian Exposition, the Times noted the arrival of Japanese engineers in New York to study various American accomplishments, also specifically noting that the English of their interpreter was so deficient that an American had to be called in to remedy the situation. The July Times reported that James A. Bradley of Asbury Park, New Jersey, had posted a notice in his music pavilion that Blacks were not wanted there and that Black attorneys in New York were indignant and ready to fight the exclusion. Throughout the paper were references to America's "Great White Fleet", Chicago as "the White City", advertisements for the "White Star Line"; The following years would see references to New York’s “Great White Way” and professional boxing’s “Great White Hope”. The Executive Mansion adopted its long-held nickname “The White House” as its official designation under the sponsorship of President Theodore Roosevelt. The nation seemed engulfed in the idea of whiteness and race. An article on the summer watermelon crops and the Black people who enjoyed them appeared, complete with illustrations, and dialect quotations. Socialists meeting in New York received coverage specifically noting that their meetings were conducted in German. Sioux Indians were portrayed as being on the verge of another war on the plains. Articles appeared noting the expulsion of Blacks from a town in Arkansas. Racism and nationalism were growing at an even pace. John Philip Sousa performed his new work, "Salute of the Nations to Columbia" at Manhattan Beach for the Fourth of July festivities. In Sousa's musical terms, the nations of the world now paid homage to the United States. As the decade progressed, both nationalism and racism increased. In July of 1895, an interview with by a reporter in Ireland who looked up his servant girl's mother found the entire town of characters in a bar and chose to report the incident using brogue. Chinese revolts against American missionaries were reported, noting "That it was an organized and systematic attack upon the Christians is obvious." A telegram printed in the North China Daily News was quoted as saying, "Urge foreign nations to act promptly." Nationalist clubs were organized across the nation in the 1890s and by 1910 Theodore Roosevelt was proclaiming a “New Nationalism”, based in the progressive reforms that would characterize the ill-fated Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party. And although this political effort would fail, the image of a new American nationalism continued to grow with the West as its centerpiece. This activity in history, nationalism and racism did not go unnoticed by others. Other nations were curious about both America's historical perception of itself and its future plans, as exemplified by the French Institute's establishment in 1893 of an award for the best work in American history. At last, the changing national attitudes of the United States America and its history commanded analysis and study by academies other then American.


Publications in the American Historical Review paralleled those in the New York Times as the new nationalism continued to build. And here Turner found an arena in which to expound. His article in the first edition of the AHR entitled, "Western State Making in the Revolutionary Era", noted that “The West in American History is not limited to a single area." The entire nation was the West at one time or another, and in this westering experience lay the creation of a new people. Turner stated that an important difference in Europeans and Americans was the American moving west to "unoccupied territories" and free lands; native Americans or other groups never entered his discussion, save for the Scotch-Irish and German pioneers. His historical view remained comfortably racist. Turner not only plagued the nation with racist history; predictably, sexism also reflected from his writing: in a review of Roosevelt's The Winning of the West, he stated

The difficult question of the relations between the
Indian and the pioneer he has handled in a courageous
and virile way that enables the reader to correct the
well-intentioned, but not altogether well-founded views
of the Indian relations of the nation by Eastern writers.

Turner applauded Roosevelt's characterization of pioneer dealings with French and Spanish explorers as "tortuous"; he noted these items as the "strong features of Mr. Roosevelt's work." Turner further stated, "They indicate the value of his contribution to the work of constructing a truly national history of the United States--a work that remains to be accomplished." Clearly, Turner understood the relationship of nationalism to history. Clearly, he knew exactly what he was up to in the way of his own historical development and career and the implications of works such as Roosevelt's. While it is true that the bulk of Turner's review was critical, noting that Roosevelt's judgment on various historical matters was often brash, Turner nevertheless approved of the basic tenor of the work. For Turner, history, in many ways, became the servant of American nationalism.

The new American history accompanied the new nationalism, in a symbiotic progression toward increasing involvement in world affairs. By the time of the Spanish American War and end of the century, the question of American imperialism and Turnerian historical theory found themselves the subjects of presidential candidates. William Jennings Bryan stated that one must be able to discern between Republican imperialism and Democratic expansion--Democratic expansion limited itself to the continent, stated Bryan, while Republican "bandits" cruised the world in search of empire. The possibility of American imperialist expansion caused alarm in Washington, giving rise to wild theories of presidential takeover of government with the help of the military. Meanwhile, Turner popularized his viewpoints, submitting his western theories to various encyclopedias and publications from the Atlantic Monthly to the International Socialist Review. By 1906 Turner was recognized as a major American historian; by 1911 volumes of American history were being dedicated to him by former students. The history of the American West, of Theodore Roosevelt and the American imperialists was now the nation's history replacing the former ideal of revolution. It spoke of an American people without relation to the peoples of Europe--a new and more vital race. Its mission was to spread democracy to the world. American history and American nationalism had come of age.

Given the general tenor of the nation, it is curious that it took so long to encourage the United States to enter the war in Europe. Its official imperialist history was in place and its national spirit ready. It is interesting to note that another historian, President Woodrow Wilson, succeeded for a time in keeping the nation from war. Turner had been highly critical of Wilson's history of the United States; his politics were not sufficiently "western" for Turner. It is not surprising that these two students of history found themselves on opposite sides of the issue. Turner feared that delay on the part of the United States to enter the war would result in the end of his new American people and the "Balkanization" of the United States into "hyphenates"--Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, German-Americans and so forth. America must enter the war to preserve its identity and newly found nationalism. For Turner, America had to enter the war to preserve his view of history and to fully establish the idea of its new Western nationalism

The dangers of nationalism did not go unnoticed in the years before America's entry into World War I. However, an article by historian H. Morse Stephens did appear in the American Historical Review in 1916. The article was a reprint of an address given by Stephens upon his election as president of the American Historical Association the previous year. In it, Stephens noted that "Every generation writes its own history of the past", and that "Each generation looks at the past from a different angle, and the historian is inevitably controlled by the spirit of his age." In his address Stephens recounted the history of nationalism in Western Europe, citing historians who had promoted nationalist thought. Stephens’s treatment in relationship to the United State and its historians was tempered with political judiciousness, "It would be ungracious in this presence to deal at any length with American nationalist historians. . .” he stated. Some historians yield to the spirit of nationality as extant in their age, noted Stephens. The results were "Hymns of hate" that promoted violence and bloodshed among nations. His summation is worth citing in its entirety:

Nationalist historians must bear their share of
Blame for this . . . The historian is influence by
the prevailing spirit of his age, and he feeds the
spirit of national intolerance to-day as his
predecessors fed the flames of religious intolerance
in days gone by. . . Woe unto us! professional
historians, professional historical students,
professional teachers of history, if we cannot see,
written in blood, in the dying civilization of Europe,
the dreadful result of exaggerated nationalism as
set forth in the patriotic histories of some of
the most eloquent historians of the nineteenth century.
May we not hope that this will be but a passing phase
of historical writing, since its awful sequel is so
plainly exhibited before us, and may we not expect that
the historians of the twentieth century may seek rather
to explain the nations of the world to each other in
their various contributions to the progress of
civilization and to bear ever in mind the magnificent
sentiment of Goethe, "Above the Nations is humanity."

Stephen's paper was an indictment of Turner and his history, yet no outcry accompanied his address. Stephen's refusal to address the subject in American terms underscores the extent to which Turnerian nationalist history had permeated the American historical field. Stephen's warnings did not stop Americans from participating in World War I, for those warnings were not what Americans wanted to hear.

Although nationalistic sentiment had been building regarding the war in Europe ever since 1914, The New York Times remained fairly rational in its presentations until 1917. In July of that year, nationalistic fervor exploded across its pages; Germans immediately became "Teutons"; some attempted to explain the cause of the war because of Germans having been in a mildly alcoholic state for generations due to their fondness for beer. The United State was united in hate and war. "This is a glorious Fourth, stated the Times. The American navy "inaugurated the war between Germany and the United States by two battles--both victorious." A Socialist peace parade was attacked in Boston by soldiers and sailors and the headquarters of the organization were sacked and destroyed; no arrests of the soldiers were made although the Socialists were carted off to jail. Teddy Roosevelt's own sons arrived in France--and one later died as a result of his participation in the "war to end all wars." The Times reported that the United States had "outstripped" other nations in their three month's participation in the war and that "the strides already made convict (sic) Washington that our power is unlimited." The country was portrayed as one people; Roosevelt lambasted ethnicity with frightful rhetoric and mad, illogical references, stating that there was no room for "fifty-fifty allegiance" and "roughneck pacifists" in the United States. Only one language should be spoken in the country. Roosevelt advocated putting conscientious objectors in the front ranks "to dig trenches” or to work at kitchen sinks. There he could be shot at, and he could satisfy his conscience by not being compelled to shoot." Roosevelt's political and racial fascism and totalitarian view of the nation as a bulwark of American unity rang hollow in the wake of race riots in East Saint Louis. In those riots, between 20 and 75 persons were killed, only three of which were white. Many of the Blacks were lynched and the government was finally required to send in the military to quell the disturbance. Obviously, all was not well or united in wartime America.


But, for the most part, middle class white America believed in the history of Turner and the politics of Roosevelt. Turner’s western American history played an unconscious but potent role in the wartime news. The flag of the United States was presented to the French Army by soldiers attached to the Leland Stanford University Unit of California; battleships such as the Oklahoma steamed into the battle lines; General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force and a product of the American western experience, figured prominently in Rotogravure section as did the one hundred and fifty new officers recently graduated from Army Service Schools at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, "which take up the Soldier's education where West Point leaves off"; and a Texan was noted as having "went into the battle of Vimy with the American colors wrapped around him". Westerner Will Rogers appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies as a cowboy, commenting on various aspects of politics and the war, the very embodiment of Turnerian and Rooseveltian nationalism, despite his mixed Anglo and Indian backgrounds. On other pages of the newspaper, Uncle Sam was portrayed in a cartoon as a rail splitting pioneer confronting a rabid Hun with a torch. The effects of the burgeoning nationalism American historical interpretation did not go unnoticed. They were made of record to the American public by the condemnation of histories written by the George Creel and the Public Information Committee by professors from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago, who stated that the government sponsored "Red White and Blue" book intended for the nation's school children was "as full generalities and little proof". "Here is a book", stated Professor Latane of Johns Hopkins, "so full of errors in fact and inference that it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. It is garbled as badly as the German publications which we condemn." But the American public was little concerned. The nations’ old nationalism, based in the imagery of the American Revolution would finally be put to rest as General Pershing stood at the graveside of an American patriot, uttering the words “Lafayette, we are here”. From that point, the old American nationalism of the Revolution was formally exchanged for the new hybrid nationalism of Turner's new America western history and Roosevelt's nationalism. With this greeting, a large majority of the independent and democratic citizenry of the United States enthusiastically went to war in Europe for eighteen horrific months. And at the end of the that war, in which hundreds of thousands of Americans died, a national memorial was built at Kansas city, Missouri to commemorate that great, unprecedented conflict. Named the Liberty Memorial, it was dedicated in 1921 by the four Allied Commanders and President Calvin Coolidge, the only time all four generals were ever assembled at the same time. In the Memorial’s Hall of Memory, west of the towering central cenotaph, portions of a panoramic mural of the Great War dominate the room. At the center of this metaphoric work, a group of five Americans march by ruins and representative peoples of Europe carrying a large American flag—a West Point cadet leads the group that includes a Cowboy and an Indian. The American West and American Nationalism now paraded victorious before the world.

A new American nationalism required a new federal agency to guarantee the preservation of the Western national icon and to promote the new national ideal of the American West as the universal national identity. Its evolution had been concurrent with the work of John Muir and Sierra Club and the Hetch Hetchy controversy and also with other promoters Western image promoters such as William F. “Wild Bill” Cody and the American railroad and hotel industries. In 1916, as Dr. Stephens warned against the dangers of nationalism and the people of the United States struggle with the idea of World War, the US government established a new federal agency dedicated to the preservation of the American landscape and its resources, founded in both conservation and tourism. Its first Director, Chicago borax businessman and University of California graduate Stephen T. Mather personified the proto-typical National Park adherent—wealthy, privileged and visionary. Secretary of the Interior Frank Lane (A Wilson appointee also from a University of California background), inspired by a letter from Mather, asked him to head up a new Department dedicated to conservation. Mather took under his wing a young bureaucrat on Lane’s staff by the name of Horace Albright (also a University of California graduate) and fashioned a new federal agency from the variegated holdings of the Departments of Agriculture, War and Interior. When Mather’s actions became erratic due to manic depressive afflictions, Albright stepped in as the second Director, thus establishing a NPS tradition for leadership being draw from ranks of the federal bureaucracy and primarily from its own ranks; this tradition would continue until the late 1980s. 25

The new American nationalism, embodied in the image of the American West and the frontier experience was institutionalized in the formation of the National Park Service and concurrently tried out on the battlefields of Europe during World War I. Once successful in that international area, it would set the standard for American historical scholarship and international image for the next ninety years. Only after another World War and a succession of smaller, unsuccessful confrontations in Asia, would the United States begin to seriously question Turner's thesis and nationalist history. And it would not be until 1994 that American historians began to look at a “New West” interpretation of American history that included a diversity of landscape and peoples.26

Since World War II, the United States has attempted to take its Turnerian nationalism out to a world increasingly hostile to such ideas. Whether in the steamy jungles of Viet Nam, Central America or the arid plains of Korea and the Middle East, the participation of United States diplomats, intelligence and troops in the affairs of foreign nations has been the hallmark of much of the world’s history at large. The colonial legacy of the British Empire that was thought to have dissolved in the flames the Second World War has only been adopted by its former American colonies who now espouse the promulgation of worldwide “democracy”, constantly and continuously expanding under Turner’s original thesis. The military industrial complex warned of by Eisenhower and others continues to survive successive conflagrations. Its ever-widening maw and rapacious appetite for the nation’s young soldiers continues to make it, literally, morbidly obese. And the industrialists of many of the participating nations not only survived but prospered in the post war worlds. Many of their children and grandchildren are in positions of authority today.


On November fourth of 2008, the United States made an unprecedented choice for President, electing Senator Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois as its 44th Chief Executive. The nation now stands ready to reinvent itself once more. Will the American West still remain as the national image of America? Will it continue to change to more accurately reflect its true history of people, places and events? Or will it be replaced by a new image of both cultural diversity and ecological responsibility that transcends any vision of cultural background, regional image or military might—an image that speaks to its vast collections of peoples, cultures and traditions within the context of the world in which they all live? Will documentary specials, like Ken Burn’s “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” serve as a catalyst to recast Turner’s Western American Experience into a nationalistic celebration of democratic diversity and environmental consciousness?

Whatever lies ahead, historians will both help understand and shape it. Histories like Turner's and nationalism like Teddy Roosevelt's helped to both create agencies like the National Park Service and to drive the United States into World War I. Stephen's address to the American Historical Association is as timely today as it was when it was published in 1916. Historical nationalism has no place in a moral, humane society. To a great extent, the writings of both American and European historians and their irresponsible application by politicians and industrialists helped decide the fate of nations in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Students of history must be aware of the power they wield and their responsibility to the world at large for the ethical and moral practice of their profession. They must always recall Goethe’s sentiment as quoted by H. Morse Stephens: "Above the Nations is Humanity”, for such ideas brought about the United Nations.

Today, the study of history is often referred to as obsolete by those that are economically driven; constant public assessment and reassessment can get in the way private enterprise. Nevertheless, students of history hold in their hands the fate of today's world. Science created the bomb, but, in many ways, the theories and attitudes of the world’s historians and their students will decide if it is used. The historian, perhaps more than any other scholar, can set in motion philosophies of either hatred or understanding. The erudite and seemingly arcane discussions of the seminar room can ultimately move nations and kill millions. Those discussions, however, also hold the power to transform prejudice and provide a forum for intelligent and beneficial thought. Incredible consequences often result from the most unlikely ideas.





FOOTNOTES