FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER AS A REGIONALIST
Donald G. Holtgrieve
California State University, Hayward
FEW topics within the realms of history and geography have been victims of academic
overkill as much as regionalism and Frederick Jackson Turner. However, with the perspectives
of time as a mellowing agent and interdisciplinary study as a catalyst, these topics are again
offered to the reader’s critical judgment.
Turner ranks not only among the most eminent of American historians but also has generated
a large amount of professional comment, both positive and negative, from his colleagues as well
as from practitioners of several related fields.1 During his lifetime, he was invited to speak to
sociological societies, psychological organizations, and, of course, the Association of American
Geographers and the American Geographic Society.2 The Pulitzer Prize and lauditory obituaries
in a variety of professional journals in 1932 marked the end of a career that stimulated the
rethinking of American development by statesman and student alike.3
Turner’s two dozen essays, parts of books, lectures, and addresses can be categorized into
two main themes: the significance of the frontier in American history and the significance of the
section in American history.4 Both were new and somewhat radical explanations of America
when they were presented, and both have since undergone examination by hundreds of academic
microscopes.
While speaking to geographers in 1914, Turner summarized his two major themes as follows:
The frontier and the section are two of the most fundamental factors in American history. The
frontier is a moving section, or rather a form of society, determined by the reactions between the
wilderness and the expanding edge of settlement; the section is the outcome of the deeper seated
conditions interacting with the stock which settled the region. Sections are more important than
5
states in shaping the underlying forces of American history.
The frontier thesis, the more popular and criticized of the two themes, is too well known to
require extended comment here. Perhaps it is enough to recall that it has been discussed by
geographers in terms of comparisons with other frontiers and in terms of demographic and
economic development.6 It has been criticized, mostly by nongeographers, as being
environmentally deterministic, agriculturally oriented, ethnocentric or nationalistic, and as
having a lack of consistent terminology.7 Turner has even been accused by his fellow historians
of being a geographer! Others have said that “it is in large part the vagueness, the imprecision,
the overstatement in Turner's essays that have given them their plasticity and hence their broad
acceptance.”8
But the frontier thesis is not the subject of focus here. It is, and was, a prelude to Turner’s
later spatial analysis of American history, the significance of the section. Although not as
generally well known, the sectional essays have been probably no less influential than the
frontier thesis. The sectional theme is best exemplified in his 1925 essay. This essay, in
combination with others, was published in book form as Sections in American History.9 The
sectional interpretation was also exemplified in Turner’s posthumously-published The United
States: the Nation and Its Sections, 1830-1850 and in Rise of the New West, 1819-1829,
published in 1906.10 The latter volume divided the nation into the following sections: New
England, The Middle Region, The South, The West, and The Far West, generally following
census bureau categories. Each section was dealt with separately and included examinations of
economic, social, political, and cultural processes and events, as well as some, but not much,
physical description.
Turner’s view of sectionalism provided him with an interpretation of most national political
decisions, local struggles, party platforms, tariff and land laws, depressions, and even the
Monroe Doctrine in terms of competition between these strategic groups of states.11 In essence,
“the evolution of sections in our history is a far deeper fact than the development of state
particularism ….”12
However, the sectional essays were also criticized for being environmentally deterministic.13
This criticism, even if not correct, was certainly understandable considering the intellectual
climate among geographers at the time.14 Rather, it is curious that historians were not more
attracted to the works of Brigham, Semple, Shaler, and others.15
But, specifically, what environmentally deterministic crimes did Turner commit? One charge
was brought by a fellow historian in several condemnations similar to the following:
To many, it [Turner’s work] seems too materialistic, in fact, too deterministic; too much
occupied with economics, politics, and geography; too little concerned with ideas, education, the
16
arts, and with the whole inheritance and social tradition.
The same critic, in another essay, asked of Turner: “Above all, what happens to intellectual
history if the environment be all?”17 Of course, the reply is that Turner never said that the
environment was all. He went to great lengths to emphasize that he was not a determinist of any
sort.
I have not conceived of myself as the student of a [single] region, or of any particularly
exclusive key to American history. I have tried to make some changes in the perspective, and as a
pioneer, with others, I have found it necessary to talk a good deal about these aspects. But it is in
18
American process that I have been interested.
And, at least some of us are thankful that Turner did not or could not hear comments such as
Hofstadter’s expressing wonderment of what his [Turner’s] mind might have turned to if he had
been
… able to forget about geography and physiography, to abandon his intricate maps, and to
read with any of his former enthusiasm in contemporary sociology and literature, where he might
have found new resources for the distinctive quality of his insights, which at their least were
19
usually of a sociological character.
Other charges come from historians Pomeroy, Hayes, Wright, and Hacker, echoing Pierson’s
criticism based not so much on what Turner wrote but rather on what he neglected by focusing
on a geographic outlook.20 For example, in a 1941 survey of sixty-five historians it was
determined that thirty-eight agreed, at least in part, with the attack on “materialism, especially
deterministic interpretation of geography and migration; neglect of traditions; of variations in the
East; of influence of European ideas.”21
Certainly, references to the influences of physiography can be found in the Turner essays,
especially in his “Architecture of Oppression” (1884) and in “Problems in American History”
(1892), both written in the earlier years of his career.22 For example,
The great contrast between Spanish America and English America is to be explained not
solely by race, but also in part by the combined influences of physical geography and the Indians
23
with whom the settlers came in contact.
And,
… little has yet been done toward investigating the part played by the environment in
determining the lines of our development. In the first place, there is need for thorough study of the
physiographic basis of our history. When the geologist, the meteorologist, the biologist, and the
historian go hand in hand in this study, they will see how largely American history has been
determined by natural conditions. For example, the lines of settlement were chiefly fixed by river
24
valleys, mountain gaps, and isotherms.
Other statements in the frontier essay also had a predestinative ring. But in some of the very
same works or in others written at nearly the same time, Turner emphasized and re-emphasized
that,
The civilization of the United States could not be understood by a study of environmental
forces alone; the impact of immigration from abroad, the distribution of immigrants within the
25
new nation, and the internal migration of native stocks were equally important.
And,
If one would understand why we are today one nation rather than a collection of isolated
26
states, he must study this economic and social consolidation of the country.
Later works tended to temper even more some earlier dogmatic simplifications of reality.
Turner wrote privately in 1926 that “I think it clear that those who believe in geographic
determinism go too far.”27 Later essays on the sectional theme usually contained a cover
statement with regard to conclusions about the environment. For example,
Most of the political and economic history of such states as Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri,
Illinois Indiana, Alabama, and Mississippi can be written in terms of geology. Indeed, it is only by
full recognition of these geographic regions that we can understand the division of political parties
28
within these states and their social structure.
Another statement reads:
But there are sufficient exceptions to prevent any interpretation of political history on the
basis exclusively of geography or of economic determinism. The human factor has also to be
29
reckoned with.
Probably Turner’s strongest position statement on the issue is found in his “Section and
Nation” essay (1922).
No single factor is determinative. Men are not absolutely dictated to by climate, geography,
30
soils, or economic interests.
A last example that possibly negates the environmentalistic label is from, significantly
enough, an address by Turner to the American Geographic Society and the Association of
American Geographers.
By mapping presidential and state elections, using towns or counties as the unit, a closer
approximation to the geography of political areas is possible. Such maps show more clearly the
geographical influence, and in greater detail. They disclose the fact that there are both interstate
and intrastate party areas persisting in some cases for many decades or even generations and
having clear relations to natural geographic factors. But the country itself is too large an area to
tell the whole story. It often lies athwart diverse geographical areas, and has diverse economic and
31
social groups within it.
The point, then, is that Turner never stated what the influences were nor did he imply a
cause-and-effect relationship between environment and man’s political choices.
Further rebuffs to the environmental accusation can be based on yet another Turnerian
characteristic, often labeled the problem of terminology. It is also in the unraveling of definitions
that a number of insights into the regional thinking of Turner may be found.
Turner used the term “section” primarily to denote a group of states that had political
similarities of view. In his earlier works he used the sectional groupings of the 1850 census.
Later he adopted the then contemporary groupings. They were “New England, The Middle
States, The Southeast, The Middle West, The Great Plains, The Mountain States, and the Pacific
Coast,” each having “its own resources and economic capacities, and its own rival interests,
partly determined in the days when the geological foundations were laid down.”32
The problem of definition in regard to the term “region” was a bit more clouded in both
Turner’s use and in our present interpretation. In most of his work the term referred to
physiographic provinces as delimited by Fenneman, Lobeck, and J. W. Powell.33 “I am finding
that I have to distinguish regions within a section or across several sections, from sections as
groups of states.”34 “Natural” regions were often the building blocks for sections, according to
Turner. “The vast spaces into which the American people moved were themselves a complex of
physiographic regions.” They then developed into sections, and these “natural economic and
social sections” were fundamental in explaining American development.35
Conceivably, the reverse would also have been possible and one could identify geographic
regions by dissecting the sectional vote into election precincts, Turner tried it and made claims
for success but was careful not to attribute the difference in votes to environmentally-controlled
influences,
In 1928 he told an audience about the unusual results of his investigations. “Observe, he said,
in commenting on a lantern slide, “how, in the election of 1856, the counties that voted in favor of
Fremont almost exactly coincided with . . . [the] second glacial ice sheet. This was the land of the
basin of the Great Lakes and the prairies rejected by the Southern settler and occupied by Greater
36
New England.”
A last consideration of regions as related to sections is Turner’s observation that persons
migrating from separate sections would give obvious distinctiveness to newly settled regions,
thereby creating newer and yet different sections,37
Problems appear in some cases where the terms “region,” “section,” “province,” and “area”
are used interchangeably.
There is a sense in which sectionalism is inevitable and desirable. There is and always has
been a sectional geography in America based fundamentally upon geographic regions ….
Professor Josiah Royce defined a “province” or section, in the sense in which I am using the word
as “any one part of a national domain which is geographically and socially sufficiently unified to
have a true consciousness of its own ideals and customs and to possess a sense of its distinction
38
from other parts of the country.”
Reference was once made to “geographic provinces” and “geologic provinces” in the same
sentence regarding the same place, a questionable offense today but probably not worth a nod in
1908.39
With some agreement, if not understanding, on Turner’s use of spatial terminology, it is now
possible to see that he was consistently suggesting that single events in single places are not
necessarily caused by other single events or circumstances, be they physical, cultural, or
economic.
What is remarkable about this obvious, with hindsight, conclusion is that Turner was doing
regional geography in an age of deterministic (environmental or otherwise) interpretations of
events and places.40 And this is the revelation, if you will, that absolves Turner of the earliermentioned accusations.
Turner called his poly-causal interpretation of places his multiple working hypothesis, which
he borrowed from his former instructor, Thomas C. Chamberlin. “One must adopt the geologist’s
use of the multiple hypothesis to explain complex areas ….”41 It is generally thought that Turner
interpreted multiple hypothesis to read multiple causation.42 For example, he told one audience
in 1907 that “there is no single key to American history. In history, as in science, we are learning
that a complex result is the outcome.”43 Later he said, “I have been interested in the interrelations
of economics, politics, sociology, culture in general, with the geographic factors, in explaining
the United States of today by means of its history thus broadly taken.”44 His multicausal theory is
expressed as follows in terms of what later was called regionalism:
The students of society, historians as well as geographers, demographers, and sociologists,
have been paying attention to the significance of natural regions, and there is a growing literature
on the subject. It is seen that there are nucleal lands, and transition zones, but that the earth’s
surface is divided into geographic entities, regions, where the relations of environment and
peoples, resources, position, resulting economic, social, political and cultural phenomena, have
45
affected the history of civilization ….”
One author even thought that Turner’s multiple-causal theory might be called a theory to do
away with theories, an interesting observation about American history’s accused champion
theory maker.46 This, remember, was happening in a period when geographers were explaining
most things in terms of environmental causation.
Considering midcentury definitions of regions, it is suggested here that Turner was much
more of a regionalist in his time than his geographic brethren.47 He worked toward an
understanding of places that might be called a compage, according to Whittlesey’s definition of
the concept.48 For example, Turner consistently followed the methodology of early regional
thinkers by accumulating as many bits of information about places as he could, including:
“problems of foreign policy, political conflict, transportation, immigration, agricultural
development, interstate migrations, the disposition of the public lands, constitutional
development, even the history of ideas.”49
Turner was aware of the then growing interest in regional geography through the works of
Vidal, Brunhes, and other Europeans and felt that studies of regions logically led to consideration
of American physiographic provinces as potential nation-states.50
One of the most interesting features of recent geographical studies is the emphasis placed
upon regional geography and human geography. Europe has given more attention to such studies
in human geography than has the United States. Perhaps this is because European nations have
been forced to consider the geographical aspects of the self-determination of nations and the
51
rearrangement of the map by the treaty which seemed to close the World War.
Through the sectional essays, Turner compared European and American regions in terms of
their potential:
Regional geography played a significant role in the economic, political, and social life of a
nation whose territory came to equal Europe in size and whose various sections were comparable
in resources and extent to the greater nations of that continent. They were, indeed, potential
52
nations in themselves.
Although this attitude may be a bit unrealistic today, the then new techniques by which
Turner explained regional differences—soil analysis, vote mapping, use of diagrams, slides, and
statistics—were quite innovative.53 We are left curious to see what might have come from Turner
had he written more using these methods. It is known that he had “quite a mass of yet
unpublished material on the subject of regional geography in American history.”54
In summary, this attempted re-examination of Turnerian ideas suggests five major points.
First, although he has been most recognized for his frontier thesis, Turner’s sectional ideas can
be acclaimed as a major academic pioneering effort in their own right. Second, Turner’s writings
effectively bridged the gap between early sectional interpretations of events (1790-1900) and
later regional interpretations of places (1900-1950).55 Third, a basic ingredient in understanding
Turner’s regional and sectional ideas is the realization that he did not subscribe to the then
popular environmentalistic-deterministic causal explanation that most geographers used,
although he did praise their work.56 Fourth, his multiple working-hypothesis methodology,
although not very scientific, gave him the latitude he desired in his concern with “every aspect of
civilization.”57 His wide interests even prompted him, shortly before his death, to outline an
essay to be entitled, “The Significance of the City in American Civilization.”58 Fifth, he foresaw
the need for regional geographic study as an alternative to the somewhat static geographichistorical study of his day. To a group of geographers he said, “as the years go on and the United
States becomes a settled nation, regional geography is certain to demand at least the same degree
of attention here as in Europe.”59
Turner’s impact on geography has been direct through his writings and indirect through his
students, his espousal of geographic methodology, and his regional viewpoint.60 Just as Powell,
Marsh and Muir have become patron saints to modern geography, so we might consider
Frederick Jackson Turner a significant contributor in laying the foundations of academic
geography in the early twentieth century United States.
1
Several bibliographies of Turner’s writings and professional comment generated therefrom are available. The most
complete bibliography of Turner’s work was compiled by E. E. Edward for F. J. Turner, The Early Writings of
Frederick Jackson Turner (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1938), pp. 233-272. Sample collections of
commentary on Turner’s work include G. R. Taylor, The Turner Thesis: Concerning the Role of the Frontier in
American History (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1971); R. Hofstadter, ed., Turner and the Sociology of the Frontier
(New York: Basic Books, 1968); and Wisconsin State Historical Society, Wisconsin Witness to Frederick Jackson
Turner; A Collection of Essays on the Historian and the Thesis (Madison: n.p., 1961). Biographical material may be
found in W. R. Jacobs, The Historical World of Frederick Jackson Turner (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1968), and R. A. Billington, Frederick Jackson Turner; Historian, Scholar, Teacher (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973). These two authors have also written several articles about Turner’s life and work.
2
An address delivered by Turner to a joint meeting of the Association of American Geographers and the American
Geographic Society on April 4, 1914, is reprinted as “Geographical Influences in American Political History,”
Bulletin, American Geographic Society (1914), pp. 591-595. Another address to the AAG entitled, “Geographic
Sectionalism in American History,” is in the Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 15 (1926), pp. 8593. Both addresses are reproduced in F. J. Turner, The Significance of Sections in American History (Gloucester,
Mass.: P. Smith, 1959), pp. 183-206.
3
Turner’s obituary by L. Martin appears in The Geographical Review, Vol. 16 (1932), p. 499. Another by U.
Phillips, “Memorial to Frederick Jackson Turner,” is in the Annual Report, American Historical Association (1932),
p. 55.
4
“The Significance of the Frontier in American History” was read before a session of the Ninth Annual Meeting of
the American Historical Association at Chicago in 1893. It has been reprinted several times in various journals and
books. See Chapter 1 of F. J. Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: H. Holt, 1920). “The
Significance of the Section in American History” was first published in The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 8
(1925), pp. 255-280.
5
“Geographical Influences in American History,” reproduced in F. J. Turner, The Significance of Sections, p. 183.
6
See, for example: M. W. Mikesell, “Comparative Studies in Frontier History,” Annals, Association of American
Geographers, Vol. 49 (1960), pp. 64-74, and H. Merrens, “Historical Geography and Early American History,”
William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 73 (1965), pp. 530-538.
7
A sample of works critical of Turner on these points includes G. W. Pierson, “The Frontier and American
Institutions,” New England Quarterly, Vol. 14 (1942), pp. 224-255, and his “The Frontier and Frontiersman of
Turner’s Essays,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 64 (1940), pp. 449-479; E. S. Lee, “The
Turner Thesis Re-examined,” American Quarterly, Vol. 12 (1961), pp. 77-87; C. A. Beard, “Culture and
Agriculture,” Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. 4 (1928), pp. 272-273; J. E. Malin, “Space and History;
Reflections on the Closed Space Doctrines of Turner and MacKinder,” Agricultural History, Vol. 17 (1944), pp. 6568; and G. M. Gressley, “The Turner Thesis—A Problem in Historiography,” Agricultural History, Vol. 31 (1958),
pp. 227-249.
8
R. Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians (New York: Knopf, 1968), p. 84. See also W. Colman, “Science and
Symbol in the Frontier Hypothesis,” American Historical Review, Vol. 71 (1966), pp. 35-40.
9
Turner, The Significance of Sections, p. 183.
10
Turner, The United States, 1830-1850; The Nation and Its Sections (New York: H. Holt, 1935), and Rise of the
New West (New York: Harper, 1906).
11
Turner, Rise of the New West, passim.
12
Turner, “The Significance of the Section in American History,” in Early Writings, p. 27.
13
See, for example: E. Pomeroy, “Toward a Reorientation of Western History; Continuity and Environment,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 41 (1955), pp. 579-600.
14
The topic of environmental determinism as espoused by geographers in the first part of the twentieth century is
beyond the scope of this paper. The following sources are suggested for a survey of the topic: G. F. Lewthwaite,
“Environmentalism and Determinism: A Search for Clarification,” Annals, Association of American Geographers,
Vol. 55 (1966), pp. 1-23, and G. Tatham, “Environmentalism and Possibilism,” and “Geography in the Nineteenth
Century,” both in G. Taylor, ed., Geography in the Twentieth Century (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), pp.
128-147. A contemporary definition of geography reflecting the deterministic viewpoint is C. R. Dryer, “What is
Geography,” Journal of Geography, Vol. 4 (1905), pp. 348-360.
15
A. P. Brigham, Geographic Influences in American History (New York: Chautaugua Press, 1903); E. C. Semple,
American History and Its Geographic Conditions (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1903); N. S. Shaler, Nature and
Man in America (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1891).
16
G. P. Pierson, “American Historians and the Frontier Hypothesis in 1941,” Wisconsin Witness, p. 135.
17
Pierson, “The Frontier and American Institutions,” p. 224.
18
Quoted in J. Schafer, “Turner’s Autobiographical Letter to Constance Lindsay Skinner,” in Wisconsin Witness,
pp. 64-65.
19
Hofstadter, The Progressive Historian, p. 114.
20
Pomeroy, passim; Pierson, “The Frontier and American Institutions,” passim; L. M. Hacker, “Sections or
Classes?” Nation, Vol. 101 (1933), pp. 108-111; B. F. Wright, “Political Institutions and the Frontier,” R. D. Fox,
ed., Sources of Culture in the Middle West (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964); C. J. H. Hayes, “The American
Frontier—Frontier of What?” American Historical Review, Vol. 51 (1946), pp. 199-210, 216.
21
Pierson, “American Historians and the Frontier Hypothesis in 1941,” p. 138.
22
Turner’s lecture, “Architecture through Oppression,” was delivered as a commencement oration in 1884; reprinted
in the University Press (Madison, Wisc., 1884), p. 12. The essay, “Problems in American History,” is essay,
“Problems in American History,” is in The Significance of Sections, pp. 3-21.
23
Turner, “Problems in American History,” Early Writings, p. 77.
24
Ibid., pp. 74-75.
25
Turner, as quoted in R. A. Billington, “Frederick Jackson Turner—Universal Historian,” introduction to Turner,
Frontier and Section: Selected Essays of Frederick Jackson Turner (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961),
p. 5.
26
Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Early Writings, p. 202.
27
R. A. Billington, America’s Frontier Heritage (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 21.
28
Turner’s lecture on “Frontiers and Sections” is reproduced in W. R. Jacobs, ed., Frederick Jackson Turner’s
Legacy; Unpublished Writings in American History (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1965), p. 66.
29
Ibid., p. 67.
30
Turner, “Sections and Nation,” in The Significance of Sections, p. 137.
31
Turner, “Geographical Influences in American Political History,” in The Significance of Sections, p. 184.
32
Turner, “Sections and Nation,” in The Significance of Sections, pp. 136-137. See also pp. 86-87.
33
In Turner, The United States, 1830-1850; The Nation and Its Sections, p. 2, the following reference is given: “I
have generalized from the report of N. M. Fenneman, Physiographic Divisions of the United Stations (Annals,
Association of American Geographers, Vol. 18, 261-353), and A. K. Lobeck, Physiographic Diagram of the United
States (Madison, Wisc., 1922) … An older, and still useful, analysis is J. W. Powell, “Physiographic Regions in the
United States,” in National Geographic Monographs, Vol. 1, No. 3 (New York, 1895).”
34
Turner, in a letter to C. O. Paullin, November 20, 1928, reproduced in Jacobs, Historical World of Frederick
Jackson Turner, pp. 190-192.
35
Quoted in M. E. Curti, Frederick Jackson Turner, Historiadores De America, Insituto Pan Americano De
Geografia e Historia, Comision De Historia, Mexico, 1949, pp. 30-31.
36
Jacobs, Legacy, p. 25.
37
Examples of this process are noted in A. Craven, “Frederick Jackson Turner, Historian,” in Wisconsin Witness, p.
113. See also Turner, “Draft on Sectionalism,” in Jacobs, Legacy, p. 49.
38
Turner, “The Significance of the Section in American History,” in The Significance of Sections, p. 45. See also
Jacobs, The Historical World of Frederick Jackson Turner, p. 126.
39
Turner, “Lecture on Sectionalism,” in Jacobs, Legacy, p. 66. For information on other problems with Turner’s use
of terminology, see R. A. Billington, The American Frontier (Washington: American Historical Association, 1958),
p. 9.
40
Regional study, as the term is used here, refers to the method and definition given to it by D Whittlesey in “The
Regional Method,” in P. James and C. Jones, eds., American Geography: Inventory and Prospect (Syracuse, N. Y.:
Syracuse University Press for Association of American Geographers, 1954), pp. 31-32. An historian’s interpretation
of Turner’s deterministic-geographic environment is in Billington, The Genesis of the Frontier Thesis; A Study in
Historical Creativity (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1971), pp. 85-103.
41
W. R. Jacobs, “Turner’s Methodology: Multiple Working Hypothesis or Ruling Theory?” Journal of American
History, Vol. 54 (1968), p. 858. See also M. E. Curti, “The Section and Frontier in American History: The
Methodological Concepts of Frederick Jackson Turner,” in S. A. Rice, ed., Methods in Social Science: A Case Book
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931).
42
Jacobs, “Turner’s Methodology,” p. 858.
43
Turner, as quoted in Billington, Frontier and Section, p. 2.
44
Ibid.
45
Turner, “Draft of Sectionalism,” in Jacobs, Legacy, p. 50.
46
Jacobs, “Colonial Origins of the United States: The Turnerian View,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 39 (1971),
p. 28. See also Billington, Genesis, p. 102.
47
The most comprehensive explanation of regionalism as referred to here is M. Jensen, ed., Regionalism in America
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1952). See especially V. Carstensen, “The Development and Application
of Regional-Sectional Concepts, 1900-1950,” pp. 99-118.
48
Whittlesey, pp. 44-45.
49
Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians, p. 83. See also W. R. Jacobs, et al., Turner, Bolton, and Webb: Three
Historians of the American Frontier (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 1965), p. 14.
50
P. V. De La Blache, Principles of Human Geography, E. De Martonne, ed. (New York: H. Holt, 1926); J.
Brunhes, La Geographie Humaine (Paris: F. Alcan, 1925).
51
Turner, “The Significance of the Section in American History,” p. 39.
52
Turner, The United States, 1830-1850; The Nation and Its Sections, p. 1. See “Lecture on Sectionalism,” in
Jacobs, Legacy, p. 52.
53
Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians, p. 81.
54
Turner, in Schafer, “Turner’s Autobiographical Letter to Constance Lindsay Skinner,” Wisconsin Witness, p. 62.
55
F. Mood, “The Origin, Evolution, and Application of the Sectional Concept, 1750-1900,” and V. Carstensen, “The
Development and Application of Regional-Sectional Concepts, 1900-1950,” in Jensen, Regionalism in America, pp.
5-118.
56
See, as an example of such praise but not full agreement, Turner, “Geographical Interpretations of American
History,” Journal of Geography, Vol. 4 (1905), pp. 34-37.
57
Billington, Frontier and Section, p. 8.
58
Ibid.
59
Turner, “Geographic Sectionalism in American History,” p. 85.
60
Two works regarding Turner as a teacher are C. Becker, “Frederick Jackson Turner,” Chapter IX of American
Masters of Social Science, H. Odum, ed. (New York: Kennikat Press, 1927), and W. R. Jacobs, “Frederick Jackson
Turner—Master Teacher,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 23 (1954), pp. 49-58.