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Myth of the American Frontier #2
The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890
Book by Slotkin, Richard
648 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
34 people are currently reading
643 people want to read
About the author
Richard Slotkin
21 books61 followersRichard Slotkin is an American cultural critic, historian, and novelist. He is Olin Professor of English and American Studies Emeritus at Wesleyan University, where he was instrumental in establishing the American Studies and Film Studies programs. His work explores the mythology of the American frontier and its influence on national identity. His trilogy—Regeneration Through Violence, Fatal Environment, and Gunfighter Nation—is widely regarded as a seminal analysis of the frontier myth in American culture. Slotkin has also written historical novels, including Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln and The Crater: A Novel of the Civil War. His contributions to scholarship and literature have earned him numerous accolades, including the Albert J. Beveridge Award and multiple National Book Award nominations.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 19, 2014
It's Slotkin's thesis that America's myths of the frontier are central to her history and that at their core is the belief that economic, moral, and spiritual progress can only be achieved by the advance of civilized society into virgin wilderness and by the subjugation of the nature and savage peoples encountered there. Slotkin says the meaning of the Myth and the direction of American history can be seen as various representations of Indian wars. And so in this 2d volume of Slotkin's monumental trilogy analyzing the idea of the American frontier, we read about the impact of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking myth, the Mexican War seen as the elimination of savagery, the railroad frontier, Custer seen as redemptive sacrifice, and a deep study of why Indian and Negro policies differed, all of it leading to the new reality of class in a rapid industrialization at the close of the century seen as another kind of frontier. This is big history. I believe it great history.
August 8, 2021
“Grant was still revered as the victor of Appomattox, but even that great victory had been tarnished and cast in doubt. In the South the issues of the Civil War had recrudesced in a new form. The terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan combined with revelations of corruption in the Reconstruction governments to demoralize and displace black and white politicians who still sought genuine reforms” (7).
“When Frederick Douglass attempted to speak at the Exposition on July 4 he was physically blocked from the podium and responded angrily. A delegation of women’s rights activists attempted to speak, and were also denied. But their presence alone was testimony to the fact that the Exposition’s imagery of singing darkies and little girls running pin-setters was a mask for the reality of racial inequality, sexual oppression, and child labor” (7).
“Myth does not argue its ideology, it exemplifies it” (19).
“One of the ways of escaping the fatality of that environment is through the demystifying of specific myths and of the mythmaking process itself. The center of any such effort necessarily involves the rehistoricizing of the mythic subject, and a historical account of its making” (20).
“The economics of farming on the Great Plains did not at all accord with the vision of a ‘fee-simple empire’ embodied in the Homestead Act. Unlike homesteading in the well-watered and forested Middle West, plains farming required considerable investment of capital and a larger scale of operations to make it profitable; and the railroads whose presences linked the western farmer to his market, used their political and economic leverage to control the best land of the region, and to keep farmers in their debt. Indeed, the greatest beneficiaries of the Homestead legislation were railroad, banking, and landholding corporations” (285).
Jay Cooke’s Northern Pacific Railroad and the Panic of 1873“The ‘magical’ expansion of business on which railroad entrepreneurs counted did not—could not—materialize, and Cook had to save his existing investment by a resort to chicanery; ‘cooking’ his accounts, corrupting influential politicians to protect his interests, milking capital and operating funds to meet debt payments. When European creditors—alerted by the similar scandals that attended the building of the Union Pacific—called his notes, the Northern Pacific went bankrupt, and with it the banking house over which Cooke presided. The failure of Cooke’s bank—one of the largest in the nation, headed by the most prestigious of bankers—precipitated a financial panic of unprecedented scale, a ‘crash’ of the capital market, and a nationwide depression of unparalleled severity. In that downfall, the projects and expectations of the generation who had won the Civil War were wrecked or discredited” (288).
“When Frederick Douglass attempted to speak at the Exposition on July 4 he was physically blocked from the podium and responded angrily. A delegation of women’s rights activists attempted to speak, and were also denied. But their presence alone was testimony to the fact that the Exposition’s imagery of singing darkies and little girls running pin-setters was a mask for the reality of racial inequality, sexual oppression, and child labor” (7).
“Myth does not argue its ideology, it exemplifies it” (19).
“One of the ways of escaping the fatality of that environment is through the demystifying of specific myths and of the mythmaking process itself. The center of any such effort necessarily involves the rehistoricizing of the mythic subject, and a historical account of its making” (20).
“The economics of farming on the Great Plains did not at all accord with the vision of a ‘fee-simple empire’ embodied in the Homestead Act. Unlike homesteading in the well-watered and forested Middle West, plains farming required considerable investment of capital and a larger scale of operations to make it profitable; and the railroads whose presences linked the western farmer to his market, used their political and economic leverage to control the best land of the region, and to keep farmers in their debt. Indeed, the greatest beneficiaries of the Homestead legislation were railroad, banking, and landholding corporations” (285).
Jay Cooke’s Northern Pacific Railroad and the Panic of 1873“The ‘magical’ expansion of business on which railroad entrepreneurs counted did not—could not—materialize, and Cook had to save his existing investment by a resort to chicanery; ‘cooking’ his accounts, corrupting influential politicians to protect his interests, milking capital and operating funds to meet debt payments. When European creditors—alerted by the similar scandals that attended the building of the Union Pacific—called his notes, the Northern Pacific went bankrupt, and with it the banking house over which Cooke presided. The failure of Cooke’s bank—one of the largest in the nation, headed by the most prestigious of bankers—precipitated a financial panic of unprecedented scale, a ‘crash’ of the capital market, and a nationwide depression of unparalleled severity. In that downfall, the projects and expectations of the generation who had won the Civil War were wrecked or discredited” (288).
August 15, 2024
yeah insane.
December 24, 2018
This is the second in Richard Slotkin’s trilogy of books on the myth of the frontier in American life. This one covers the nineteenth century, and benefits from Slotkin having gotten most of the theory — especially the Jung and Campbell — out of his system in the first volume. Slotkin reads the literature of nineteenth century America — especially the sort of frontier writing we tend to forget but which was much more popular than the rarified names like Melville and Hawthorne we remember — along the lines of the historical crises of the frontier.
The frontier myth — the notion that social conflict can be resolved by people moving to the frontier, wherever it is instead of resolving issues at home — is one of the most powerful ideological solvents we’ve seen in modern history. But it’s considerably more delicate than we appreciate. The frontier can also be seen as a site of degeneration and danger. More pressingly in the nineteenth century, there’s always been the threat of the frontier closing. This was true both in the imagination — how “open” a frontier is is a question of opinion, after all — and in fact. Americans in the mid-nineteenth century were genuinely unsure about their expansive possibilities, between Mexican and British opposition and the sheer size and climatological variance of the trans-Mississippi West.
This led to some interesting ideological fantasies. Some Philadelphian wrote a sort of Philadelphia-apocalypse where, without the safety valve of the west, urban industrial society loses all financial and sexual morality until mobs just roam the street burning everything. Northerners tried to sell the Lowell mills and Southerners tried to pitch the plantations as potential solvents for the sort of social conflict westward expansion was supposed to solve.
Of course, the US wound up stealing half of Mexico and convincing Britain that Oregon wasn’t worth it. But something funny happened- Mexico didn’t quite fit the American frontier fantasy. It was too densely populated- Americans worried that they would wind up like their image of the Spanish, mixing with the Mexicans and ruling them over in a way that degenerated their faculties or whatever the nineteenth century racist jargon would be. Along with that, the Mexican conquest brought in enough territory to set north and south fighting over whose social system would prevail in the spoils, especially California. Both were terrified of a societal collapse if the wrong system prevailed in the west. We know how that wound up.
There’s also a lot of stuff in here about Custer, but truth be told that was less interesting to me. Slotkin is a somewhat “thesis-heavy” writer, and the Custer-as-metaphor thing is something he leans heavy on in the second half of the book. But when he gets away from that, his encyclopedic knowledge of American cultural history returns dividends to the reader. Among other things, I really want to read that Philadelphia apocalypse book and see if it features Gritty. ****’
The frontier myth — the notion that social conflict can be resolved by people moving to the frontier, wherever it is instead of resolving issues at home — is one of the most powerful ideological solvents we’ve seen in modern history. But it’s considerably more delicate than we appreciate. The frontier can also be seen as a site of degeneration and danger. More pressingly in the nineteenth century, there’s always been the threat of the frontier closing. This was true both in the imagination — how “open” a frontier is is a question of opinion, after all — and in fact. Americans in the mid-nineteenth century were genuinely unsure about their expansive possibilities, between Mexican and British opposition and the sheer size and climatological variance of the trans-Mississippi West.
This led to some interesting ideological fantasies. Some Philadelphian wrote a sort of Philadelphia-apocalypse where, without the safety valve of the west, urban industrial society loses all financial and sexual morality until mobs just roam the street burning everything. Northerners tried to sell the Lowell mills and Southerners tried to pitch the plantations as potential solvents for the sort of social conflict westward expansion was supposed to solve.
Of course, the US wound up stealing half of Mexico and convincing Britain that Oregon wasn’t worth it. But something funny happened- Mexico didn’t quite fit the American frontier fantasy. It was too densely populated- Americans worried that they would wind up like their image of the Spanish, mixing with the Mexicans and ruling them over in a way that degenerated their faculties or whatever the nineteenth century racist jargon would be. Along with that, the Mexican conquest brought in enough territory to set north and south fighting over whose social system would prevail in the spoils, especially California. Both were terrified of a societal collapse if the wrong system prevailed in the west. We know how that wound up.
There’s also a lot of stuff in here about Custer, but truth be told that was less interesting to me. Slotkin is a somewhat “thesis-heavy” writer, and the Custer-as-metaphor thing is something he leans heavy on in the second half of the book. But when he gets away from that, his encyclopedic knowledge of American cultural history returns dividends to the reader. Among other things, I really want to read that Philadelphia apocalypse book and see if it features Gritty. ****’
July 28, 2014
Slotkin's work is a must-read in this field for obvious reasons: his scope is incredible, and his thesis - even when you find yourself disagreeing with it in certain cases - is incredibly potent.
November 16, 2024
More really dense cultural history and analysis, up to Custer, you know, some guy who charged into a vastly superior force and died, but still became a legend. (Arguably, the sheer senselessness of his act is a large part of why he became a legend; myth of the frontier doesn't allow for a Custer to lose and not be lionized.)
September 2, 2014
100 pages in and I'm willing to give it 5 stars.
Fantastic work based simply on its explanation of the workings of myth and how narratives are used by social and political systems. A must read for perspective on how 'culture' can be defined by its stories. An academic work in its disposition, it's nevertheless a compelling read.
Fantastic work based simply on its explanation of the workings of myth and how narratives are used by social and political systems. A must read for perspective on how 'culture' can be defined by its stories. An academic work in its disposition, it's nevertheless a compelling read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews