Word: frontierisms
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...enough and you'll have an education. What happens when a fine lecturer with loving knowledge of his specialty teaches that very specialty is illustrated by Frederick Merk, his watch, his pointer, and his History of the Westward Movement. Implacable enemy of the land speculator, chronicler of lusty American frontier democracy, the slight, earnest Professor is considered by many to have assumed the mantle of the late F. J. Turner as leading historian of the American West...
Born in Milwaukee and educated at the University of Wisconsin, Frederick Merk quite naturally followed in the footsteps of Turner, 1893 author of the attitude - smashing "Significance of the Frontier in American History," for the latter had been a professor at Wisconsin. His influence there was profound even before it spread throughout the "corpus of American history teaching," says Professor Merk, who, when he came to Harvard in 1918, found Turner here and worked in his seminar. In 1921 he began to teach what is now History 62, sharing it with his older colleague. Along with teaching the first half...
...example of the colorful continuity which Professor Merk maintains in his approach to history is his present attitude toward land speculators, the omnipresent villains of almost every frontier area he examines. "Speculators even today are of tremendous importance in the national economy," he says. Especially in times of high land values, in either city or country, the speculator is inevitably on hand, and helps to develop both slum districts and dust-bowls. Matter of fact, the Professor is worried right now about what speculation is doing in the way of a possible new dust-bowl out Colorado way; a combination...
...gift of a British group including Lords Kenyon and Gambier (Henry Clay, having met and liked Lord Gambier at the Treaty of Ghent negotiations, gave Chase a letter of introduction to him). Because of this backing, and because Kenyon's first building had walls four feet thick, surrounding frontier settlers suspected the college of being a British fort. Kenyon's ultimate response was the turning out of such stanch U.S. citizens as Lincoln's Secretary...
...Twas then the frontier line...