Showing results for "Frederic L Paxson" in History

Frederic L Paxson’s History of the American Frontier offers a sweeping account of the American West and the country’s westward expansion from 1763-1893.

History of the American Frontier 1763-1893 by Frederic L. Paxson, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. Houghton Mifflin Company 1924. Pulitzer Prize-winner in History, 1925. The prize-winning History of the American Frontier, 1763-1893 covers a very wide sweep of topics, with unusual strength in handling violent relations between the frontiersman and the Indians. Paxson emphasized the impact on people of the process of moving to the west, downplaying the static aspects of specific localities.

Though several historians had published works on America's westward expansion prior, Paxson's Pulitzer Prize winning study was groundbreaking in its complete and unified presentation. Beginning with a survey of the frontier at the end of the French and Indian War and proceeding to follow the frontier westward until the close of the period of settlement in about 1890, Paxson's cross-sectional method carries the narrative in a wide windrow of detail, serving as a detailed and scholarly synthesis of the fragmentary work of previous historians.

This book attempts to show that the Civil War was more than a succession of battles; it was a struggle between two civilizations... The motive for secession, slavery, was indefensible in the long run...It is reasonably clear today, that the South would have discarded slavery in another generation; and that the New Nationalism would have come about without the Civil War. Yet the war dominated the American mind for forty years and is worthy of study if only on this account.