Western Expansionism

During the time of Western Expansionism, frontier ideals, pioneering traditions, and agrarian living all promote a new set of traditions, beliefs, and ideals. These traditions form a new cultural and national identity, known as "American." The American race develops from a combination of peoples that immigrated to the continent from Europe. European traditions, therefore, become a basis for the newly-forming ethnicity of the white American.

In Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer, Crèvecoeur praises the culture that emerges within the developing agrarian society. It is through agrarian living that a national pride forms because citizens will feel a pride for their country by working and surviving from the land on which they live. Essentially, Crèvecoeur believes that the American race emerges because European immigrants desire a new country as well as new freedoms and, consequently, embrace the land and the ideals of their newly-forming nation: "

One-hundred years later (in 1893) Fredrick Jackson Turner also discusses the melting pot of European cultures as a key element in defining American ethnicity. In Turner's Significance of the Frontier in American History, he claims that the frontier is the most significant element of America's national identity. Consequently, the frontier also becomes the most significant element in terms of defining the American race. According to Turner, a "composite nationality" develops within America due to the expansion of the American frontier in combination with European immigration to American soils:

"[T]he frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people. The coast was preponderantly English, but the later tides of continental immigration flowed across to the free lands. ...In the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race (Etulain, 30)."

Like Crèvecoeur, Turner believes that America accumulates a melting pot of European cultures, which consequently creates a "mixed race" of peoples known as Americans.