408 ChApTEr 18 | isoLAteD no More | Period seven 1890 –1945American social development has been continually beginning over again on
the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion
westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of
primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. The true
point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic Coast, it is the Great
West. Even the slavery struggle, which is made so exclusive an object of attention
by writers like Professor von Holst, occupies its important place in American his-
tory because of its relation to westward expansion.Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), Pri-
mary Sources: Workshops in American History, http://www.learner.org, reprinted from Annals of
America © 1968, 1976 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.prACTICINg historical Thinking
Identify: Summarize Turner’s argument.
Analyze: What does Turner mean when he says that the “true point of view... is
the Great West”?
Evaluate: Do you think the closing of the American frontier lead to (or will lead to)
policies that were more isolationist or more expansionist? Explain.Document 18.2 US Diplomatic Cable to the Spanish Ambassador
1898Beginning in the mid-1890s, American newspapers reported on the conflicts between the
Spanish government and Cuban rebels. By 1898, President William McKinley’s adminis-
tration began to take an active interest in removing Cuba from Spanish control and giving
the island independence within an American sphere of influence. This March 26, 1898,
statement to the governor general of Cuba, Ramón Blanco, explains the official US posi-
tion on the uprising in Cuba.... The President’s desire is for peace. He cannot look upon the suffering and star-
vation in Cuba save with horror. The concentration of men, women, and children
in the fortified towns, and permitting them to starve, is unbearable to a Christian
nation geographically so close as ours to Cuba. All this has shocked and inflamed
the American mind, as it has the civilized world, where its extent and character are
known.
It was represented to him in November that the Blanco government would at
once release the suffering and so modify the Weyler order as to permit those who
were able to return to their homes and till the fields from which they had been
driven. There has been no relief to the starving except such as the American people
have supplied. The reconcentration order has not been practically superseded.
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