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[[Image:DEMOCRATIC.JPG|thumb|350px|Turner's frontier made for democracy]]
[[Image:DEMOCRATIC.JPG|thumb|350px|Turner's frontier made for democracy]]
==Origins==
==Origins==
Benjamin Franklin can be compared favorably with Turner as a promoter of the idea of the significance of the West in the shaping of American character. Franklin used the words frontier and West interchangeably and generally equated both of them with free land. He believed that the West was decisive in producing the phenomenal population growth of the society of his day and its "middle-class agrarianism." His frontier-inspired ideas had a demonstrable effect on public events and contributed to the coming of the American Revolution. Americans eagerly gave wide currency to Franklin's ideas. His political and diplomatic exertions contributed considerably to insure that the West would be a part of the new nation he was helping to create.<ref>James H. Hutson, "Benjamin Franklin and the West". ''Western Historical Quarterly'' 1973 4(4): 425-434. 0043-3810 </ref>
Writers such as [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] had speculated on the importance of the west, and [[Theodore Roosevelt]] wrote a full-scale history of the Tennessee frontier that argued the experience formed a new "race" -- the American people. Turner drew on his knowledge of evolution, and his own research into the fur trade frontier. He first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered to the [[American Historical Association]] in 1893 at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The thesis dominated much of scholarship until the 1960s. It was then challenged by the "New Western Historians," who ignored its valid conclusions but instead charged that it ignored ethnic minorities and women and was too praiseworthy of the pioneers.
Writers such as [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] had speculated on the importance of the west, and [[Theodore Roosevelt]] wrote a full-scale history of the Tennessee frontier that argued the experience formed a new "race" -- the American people. Turner drew on his knowledge of evolution, and his own research into the fur trade frontier. He first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered to the [[American Historical Association]] in 1893 at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The thesis dominated much of scholarship until the 1960s. It was then challenged by the "New Western Historians," who ignored its valid conclusions but instead charged that it ignored ethnic minorities and women and was too praiseworthy of the pioneers.