A Great National Expansion in American History 1865 to 1900

Indeed, this point-of-view about ourselves is still so pervasive that, although Frederick Jackson Turner defined the verge as "closed" in the early 1900s, American politics (i.e., the gunman control issue) still resort to 19th Century images as icons of the national ideal when addressing the electorate .

This belief in the "manifest mint" of the fall in States to expand ever-westward was fueled by the constant in America's 19th Century population growth: immigration. Untouched by the fratricidal psychosis of the Civil state of war, every year hundreds of thousands more immigrants, primarily from Europe, ventured into the American "frontier" (or at least, for those immigrants staying in the settled eastern regions of the United States, they were " open ups" in their minds). Hand-in-glove with this sense of manifest destiny on the frontier was that other constant of the American Dream: rugged individualism, a term so constantly used to this day as to seem almost the centerpiece of the national identity. This frontier mindset is an important element in the next facet of post-Civil War expansion we will examine, the transition from "laissez faire" mercantilism to corporate capitalism, because it was so firmly believed by the major(ip)ity of parties involved.

You are already the peachy continent

Like Andrew Carnegie, in later(prenominal) years J. D. Rockefeller withdrew largely from condescension to devote huge portions of his wealth to philanthropic causes. With two caveats: he never stepped away from the correction entirely, and he did non question his role in the ensuing capitalist developments. It may fork over been a protective reason; if Carnegie protested his innocence too much with elaborate memories of his own struggles and the "virtues" of "honest, industrious, self-sacrificing poverty," Rockefeller fell back upon the classic excuse of ignorance of the fates: "I observe something that made a new world ... and I did not know it at the time."

Their judgments were not original, nor were they uttered against a course of contention.

Rather - from the immigrant laborer to the small merchandiser to the Western pioneer to the emerging entity of the boardroom executive - Rockefeller, Morgan and Carnegie were playing out the platitudes of the American mythos. These men, and the expanding fiscal-industrial-corporate capitalist structures they developed, demanded and received government participation of a compulsive nature in their endeavors. At the same time, in probable ignorance of the help they were receiving and the consequences of their actions, they proclaimed the "independence" and "individualism" of American business. It was not cynical public relations but true sentiment speaking through these men. They did not foresee the developments for which they laid the groundwork.

The merchant class in the republican United States did not have a royal government with which to contend. Hence, for decades, there was confusion among business interests between those who continued to resent government interference base upon the traditional notion of conflict-of-interests - and the developing "capitalists" who, grabbing onto principles expounded by Adam Smith, had the foreboding to understand that, in a democracy, they could have a major influence upon government policy to th
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