The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 57, July 1953 - April, 1954 Page: 3
585 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Jacksonian Liberalism and Spanish Law in Early Texas 3
it easy for this upcountry democrat to conceive of equality and
competitive individualism as consistent elements of democracy."
The pioneer society, Turner points out, has seemed to its socialist
critics not so much a democracy as a society of expectant capital-
ists. "And this, indeed," responds Turner, "is a part of its char-
acter. It was based upon the idea of the fair chance for all men,
not on the conception of leveling by arbitrary methods and espe-
cially by law."5 Turner further states:
The section's Western quality is illustrated by the varied origin
and aggressive temper of its public men. The youth of the section;
its bold, ardent, adventurous, imperialistic qualities; its will-power,
sometimes domineering and usually exhibiting the demand for direct
action; the common feeling in the Lower South against any restraints
upon the right of the slave-holder to participate on equal terms in
the opening of new territories. .. The spirit of the western half [of
the Southern people] was that of the eastern half, but infused with
the greater recklessness, initiative, energy, and will-power of the West,
and more suffused with feeling.6
As if in anticipation of these descriptive remarks by the his-
torian, Stephen F. Austin wrote in 1834:
There has been too much of the ardent, impatient, and inflamatory
[sic] impetuosity of passion for the last three years in Texas, The
people of the U. S. are ardent in everything, it is their national
character, and what has raised that country to the unparaleled [sic]
prosperity it enjoys, and Americans carry the same ardor and enter-
prise and love of freedom wherever they go.7
Austin was evidently judging "the people of the U.S." by those
he knew best; that is, the people of the western South, whom
Turner later described in almost the same words.
The democracy of early Americans received its most energetic
development on the frontier, the Atlantic coast having been the
frontier when the first English colonists landed. As conditions be-
came more settled, economic and social stratification was re-estab-
lished. In the United States generally, the half-century following
the Declaration of Independence was a period of political struggle
between the Federalists, who believed with Alexander Hamilton
that government rightfully belongs to the rich and well-born, and
albid., 20.
*lbid., 244-245.
TEarker (ed.), Austin Papers, III, 19.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 57, July 1953 - April, 1954, periodical, 1954; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101152/m1/21/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.