Frederick Jackson Turner makes the claim, in his essay The Significance of the Frontier in American History, that the ômost important effect of the frontier has been in the promotion of democracy here and in Europeö (546). One of democracyÆs most characteristic features includes restraint on government. Turner maintains that it is this lack of control, even aversion to control, which manifested itself in the Western frontier. From TurnerÆs perspective, the wilderness has a deconstructing impact on more complex societies like those that existed on the Atlantic seaboard and in Europe. Instead, the primitive conditions and focus of the family unit in frontier environments creates an attitude that remains opposed to control and complex institutions designed to enforce it. As Turner argues, ôComplex society is precipitated by the wilderness into a kind of primitive organization based on the family. The tendency is antisocial. it produces antipathy to control, and particularly to any direct controlö (546).
Government, educational, and religious institutions in the more complex societies in the East were largely absent in the formation of the frontier of the West. However, the individual liberty that manifested itself in the American Revolution was able to rebirth itself in the communities that arose in the largely unregulated frontier. Individualism may have characterized the call for revolution in the Colonies, but the harsh demands and lifestyle in the vast spaces of the West contributed to a brand of individualism more rugged and common than in the East. Such individualism was responsible for a rise in democracy to Turner, but it contained elements of both good and evil: ôThe rise of democracy as an effective force in the nation came in with western preponderance under Jackson and Harrison, and it meant the triumph of the frontierùwith all of its good and with all of its evil elementsö (546).
Turner provides a com...