, impatience of its
restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have
accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks,
breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new
institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating
frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of
Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery of
America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution,
the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of
American history.

FOOTNOTES:

[1:1] A paper read at the meeting of the American Historical Association
in Chicago, July 12, 1893. It first appeared in the Proceedings of the
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, December 14, 1893, with the
following note: "The foundation of this paper is my article entitled
'Problems in American History,' which appeared in _The Aegis_, a
publication of the students of the University of Wisconsin, November 4,
1892. . . . It is gratifying to find that Professor Woodrow
Wilson--whose volume on 'Division and Reunion' in the Epochs of American
History Series, has an appreciative estimate of the importance of the
West as a factor in American history--accepts some of the views set
forth in the papers above mentioned, and enhances their value by his
lucid and suggestive treatment of them in his article in _The Forum_,
December, 1893, reviewing Goldwin Smith's 'History of the United
States.'" The present text is that of the _Report of the American
Historical Association_ for 1893, 199-227. It was printed with additions
in the _Fifth Year Book of the National Herbart Society_, and in various
other publications.

[2:1] "Abridgment of Debates of Congress," v, p. 706.

[5:1] Bancroft (1860 ed.), iii, pp. 344, 345, citing Logan MSS.;
[Mitchell] "Contest in America," etc. (1752), p. 237.

[5:2] Kercheval, "History of the Valley"; Bernheim, "German Settlements
in the Carolinas"; Winsor, "Narrative and Critical History of America,"
v, p. 304; Colonial Records of North Carolina, iv, p. xx; Weston,
"Documents Connected with the History of South Carolina," p. 82; Ellis
and Evans, "History of Lancaster County, Pa.," chs. iii, xxvi.

[5:3] Parkman, "Pontiac," ii; Griffis, "Sir William Johnson," p. 6;
Simms's "Frontiersmen of New York."

[5:4] Monette, "Mississippi Valley," i, p. 311.

[5:5] Wis. Hist. Cols., xi, p. 50; Hinsdale, "