Intro

• America, since its founding, has operated on boundless expansionism, from the physical frontier to technology to military
• Talk of the frontier = talk of capitalism, endless growth

1. All That Space

• Belief that America could avoid market distortions from overcrowding like in Europe with near infinite ability to expand
• Absolutely brutal treatment of indigenous peoples
• Can a nation be both vast and virtuous?
  • Montesquieu: no, too many considerations will overwhelm the common good
  • Madison: yes, these considerations are the common good
  • Also Madison: expanding the “sphere,” essentially spreading people out, will limit power coalescing in a tyrannical majority or minority
• Always: expansion as the answer to the problems of expansion

2. The Alpha and the Omega

• Louisiana Purchase → both national security benefits and more rapturous, setting a virtually nonexistent border so far away
• Expansion included subjugation, dominion over “nature”
• Restraint with property rights, no restraint with territorial rights

3. A Caucasian Democracy

• US inherited all GB’s treaties with indigenous people, then made scores of their own … widely ignored by states
• Jacksonian era → subjegation of black peoples, rise in power of white men → heights of racism known thus far
• Indian Removal Act → 25 million acres turned over to US
• Building pressure on all frontiers of the country
• Indigenous people considered not foreign states nor states of the union, but something else undefined
  • Similar ambiguity with “Indian Country” and internationally recognized US borders
• Never before had white men been so free wrt property, expansion, land; defined their liberty in opposition to people of color they oppressed

4. The Safety Valve

• Steam boats moved people west even more rapidly, metaphorical safety valve for the Constitution
• Frontier also metaphorical safety valve for race and class tensions
• “The West was America’s asylum.”

5. Are You Ready for All These Wars? (The Cause of the Cause)

• Texas = epitome of Jacksonian democracy before annexation
  • End of reverse Underground Railroad, enslaving free blacks
• JQA → most powerful anti-war speech in US history after loss of presidency to Jackson once he was elected to HoR
• Mexican-American War = much more costly than usually described, contributed to momentum to Civil War
  • Gave US full Southern border

6. The True Relief (A Kind of Life Not Incompatible with Health)

• Many barriers to operating the Freedmen’s Bureau
  • Grant → Dominican Republic could be replacement for the Bureau

7. The Outer Edge

• Germ Theory: straightforwardly racist, one of ascent of Saxons across the continent
• Evolution of the word “frontier,” beyond a political boundary, into something more expansive and fuzzy— a cultural zone
• Historian Turner establishing ideas of common person beyond Jacksonian racism, lots of philosophizing on the frontier, de-emphasized brutal racism as driver of expansion (sort of eliminated this reality), dismissed slavery as essential to building the nation
• As continent began to fill, idea of the frontier expanded to public policy, to international territories (Sp Am War, South America)… imperial republic

8. The Pact of 1898 (Peace Among the Whites)

• One of few things Northerners and Southerners agreed upon after Civil War = Manifest Destiny
• Continued racism in the South with Jim Crow; tension over black soldiers from wars in PR, Cuba
• Demand for Confederate flag grew with wars of early 1900s through WWII and Korean War (till Vietnam), when original meaning returned
• Military expanded American frontier, and became its own kind of frontier, giving all soldiers access to education, etc.

9. A Fortress on the Frontier

• Borders can’t stop historical change, but highlight moments when history changes direction
• Land in Texas distributed to white settlers, while export agriculture displaced much of the rest of Mexican residents
• Mass murders of Mexicans (indigenous people, Spanish descent): lynching, executions
• Migrants treated terribly, “deloused” in procedure similar to gas chambers in WWII
• KKK → “frontier facism”

10. A Psychological Twist (To Subdue the Social Wilderness)

• FDR influenced by writings of Turner
  • New Deal → socialization of frontier thesis
    • De-exceptionalized US history
    • More inclusive (despite removing Native Americans from many parts of New Deal for political reasons)
  • WWII → wrapping up reform movements w migrants, bc low cost labor for agriculture required
• After war, attempts to pass human rights faced opposition

11. A Golden Harvest

• “Frontier” lost any negative associations post-war, began again to mean a boundary to be crossed
  • Frontiers of the mind, science
  • Security frontier around the world (Cold War) — liberal multilateralism
• Treated developing countries in its sphere as the old western frontier— under domain of Department of Interior
• Legislation over migratory birds → tension between conservatives and liberals, federal and state govts (fitting, because also tension over migrants)
• Puerto Rico’s attempts to constitutionalize right to work shows failure of social democracy in US

12. Some Demonic Suction Tube

• Vietnam— another frontier war
• King’s speech against Vietnam and expansionism in general was almost a call and response with JQA’s on who would pay for these frontier wars
  • Criticized for mixing civil rights and foreign policy, even though they were closely related (ex. how Vietnamese were treated, violence within ranks of US soldiers)

13. More, More, More

• Reagan, individual rights >>>, libertarianism (triumph of Austrian School)
  • Brutal policies abroad, esp C and S America, but “sunny” persona domestically
• Koch brothers getting involved
  • Working against environmental regulations
• Again, vigilante brutality and racism against migrants

14. The New Preemptor (Divided in Grabbing, United in Holding)

• “NAFTA = 20th century frontier”?
  • Things exported from US to MX for processing and back from MX to US only taxed for what was added— occasionally only very cheap labor, as in making clothes
• Idea for a fence/wall on the border
  • Militarization of safe crossing points
  • Other passages became much more dangerous and deadly
  • Seasonal migration decreased → once migrated, wanted to stay
• Beginning of deportation regime of migrants that exists today under Clinton

15. Crossing the Blood Meridian

• Pattern of abuses to migrants, virtually murder and torture, human trafficking
  • By officials and vigilantes alike

Epilogue

• Border/frontier isn’t just the border, but the entirety of South America; airports; etc.
  • All checkpoints deep in the country