How Whites on the Frontier Forged a Common Identity
Robert Hampton, American Renaissance, February 2, 2021
Peter Silver,
The frontier defines America. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner famously asserted: “American democracy was born of no theorist’s dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier.” Turner believed the frontier severed the settlers from their European roots and created a new people.
Princeton historian Peter Silver agrees. However, his 2008 Bancroft Prize-winning book,
Our Savage Neighbors, emphasizes the people of the wilderness rather than the wilderness itself. The book is mainly about the middle colonies in the mid-to-late 18th century, and argues that Indian attacks forced Europeans of different backgrounds and faiths to unite against a common foe. The Indian threat created a shared white identity: “In t