tion and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. (Turner 4)
Turner says that the further West we move, the more American the frontier becomes because it is farther from Europe. Turner shows how the frontier was pushed back by settlers over successive generations and how each region was settled in its own way, with its own economic structure, agricultural produce, and mode of life:
Each of these areas has had an influence in our economic and political history; the evolution of each into a higher stage has worked political transformations. (Turner 12)
Turner shows how the existence of the frontier shaped the American individual, the state, the economy, and the culture. He shows that for most of American history, the frontier was the challenge, an ever-present test that had to be met and defeated. This frontier was pushed back unevenly but steadily until the census of 1890 showed that it no longer existed. However, what Turner's analysis really shows is that the frontier continued to exist as a given in the American mind. It remained a driving force in the shaping of the American way of life, and a motivating factor in the growth of the nation:
The legislation which most developed the powers of the national government, and played the largest part in its activities, was conditioned on the frontier. . . The growth of nationalism and the evolution of American political institutions were dependent on the advance of the frontier. (Turner 24)
Turner notes that one of the effects of the frontier was an increase in democratization. the frontier states came into the Union with democratic suffrage provisions and showed reactive effects on the states from which people had come to the new regions:
The rise of democracy as an effective force in the nation came in with western preponderance under Jackson and William Henry Harrison, and it meant the triumph of the frontier--with
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