Crossroads: High School Curriculum
Unit VII: "What, Then, Is This American?" ca. 1865-1900

THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER

Supplemental Lesson

THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER

Distribute copies of Frederick Jackson Turner's essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" for students to read at home. This essay is widely available -- for example, in the several editions of Turner's collected historical essays and in Daniel J. Boorstin's American Primer.

This supplemental classroom activity can be used as the basis either for class discussion or for a persuasive-writing exercise.

1. After the students have read the essay, the teacher can lead a discussion organized around the following questions:
   1. What characteristics did Turner identify as integral to the frontier?
   2. What, according to Turner, is the significance of the frontier in American history?
   3. What significance did Turner associate with the passing of the frontier? What effects did Turner think the passing of the frontier will have on America?
   4. On what occasion did Turner deliver this lecture? What effect do you think the setting of his lecture had on the argument he made in it?

2. After these questions, designed to demonstrate students' comprehension of Turner's argument, the teacher can then steer the argument to a consideration of the significance of Turner's thesis (i) for this era of American history and (ii) for the nature of history:
   1. The passing of the frontier coincided with the explosion of urbanization in American history. Does your reading of Turner's essay suggest what effects he thought the urbanization of America would have on American history?
   2. Turner seems in this essay to offer the frontier as the central explanatory factor in American history. What in the essay confirms this reading? What grounds do you have for questioning this reading?
   3. Turner repeatedly told his students, "There is no one cause for anything in American history." Why, then, did he write this lecture, which historians cite as the classic example of one-cause history? Think about your answer to question 1d above; do you think that the setting of this lecture had any effect on the message he sought to present?