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Why was the Turner Thesis abandoned by historians

Fredrick Jackson Turner’s thesis of the American frontier defined the study of the American West during the 20th century. In 1893, Turner argued that “American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.” ( The Frontier in American History , Turner, p. 1.) Jackson believed that westward expansion allowed America to move away from the influence of Europe and gain “independence on American lines.” (Turner, p. 4.) The conquest of the frontier forced Americans to become smart, resourceful, and democratic. By focusing his analysis on people in the periphery, Turner de-emphasized the importance of everyone else. Additionally, many people who lived on the “frontier” were not part of his thesis because they did not fit his model of the democratizing American. The closing of the frontier in 1890 by the Superintendent of the census prompted Turner’s thesis.

Despite its faults, his thesis proved powerful because it succinctly summed up the concerns of Turner and his contemporaries. More importantly, it created an appealing grand narrative for American history. Many Americans were concerned that American freedom would be diminished by the end of colonization of the West. Not only did his thesis give voice to these Americans’ concerns, but it also represented how Americans wanted to see themselves. Unfortunately, the history of the American West became the history of westward expansion and the history of the region of the American West was disregarded. The grand tapestry of western history was essentially ignored. During the mid-twentieth century, most people lost interest in the history of the American West.

While appealing, the Turner thesis stultified scholarship on the West. In 1984, colonial historian James Henretta even stated, “[f]or, in our role as scholars, we must recognize that the subject of westward expansion in itself longer engages the attention of many perhaps most, historians of the United States.” ( Legacy of Conquest , Patricia Limerick, p. 21.) Turner’s thesis had effectively shaped popular opinion and historical scholarship of the American West, but the thesis slowed continued academic interest in the field.

Reassessment of Western History

In the last half of the twentieth century, a new wave of western historians rebelled against the Turner thesis and defined themselves by their opposition to it. Historians began to approach the field from different perspectives and investigated the lives of Women, miners, Chicanos, Indians, Asians, and African Americans. Additionally, historians studied regions that would not have been relevant to Turner. In 1987, Patricia Limerick tried to redefine the study of the American West for a new generation of western scholars. In Legacy of Conquest, she attempted to synthesize the scholarship on the West to that point and provide a new approach for re-examining the West. First, she asked historians to think of the America West as a place and not as a movement. Second, she emphasized that the history of the American West was defined by conquest; “[c]onquest forms the historical bedrock of the whole nation, and the American West is a preeminent case study in conquest and its consequences.” (Limerick, p. 22.)

Finally, she asked historians to eliminate the stereotypes from Western history and try to understand the complex relations between the people of the West. Even before Limerick’s manifesto, scholars were re-evaluating the west and its people, and its pace has only quickened. Whether or not scholars agree with Limerick, they have explored new depths of Western American history. While these new works are not easy to categorize, they do fit into some loose categories: gender ( Relations of Rescue by Peggy Pascoe), ethnicity ( The Roots of Dependency by Richard White, and Lewis and Clark Among the Indians by James P. Rhonda), immigration (Impossible Subjects by Ming Ngai), and environmental (Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon, Rivers of Empire by Donald Worster) history. These are just a few of the topics that have been examined by American West scholars. This paper will examine how these new histories of the American West resemble or diverge from Limerick’s outline.

Defining America or a Threat to America's Moral Standing

Peggy Pascoe’s Relations of Rescue described the creation and operation of Rescue Homes in Salt Lake City, the Sioux Reservation, Denver and San Francisco by missionary women for abused, neglected and exploited women. By focusing on the missionaries and the tenants of these homes, Pascoe depicted not just relations between women, but provided examples of how missionaries responded to issues which they believed were unique in the West. Issues that not only challenged the Victorian moral authority but threatened America’s moral standing. Unlike Turner, the missionary women did not believe that the West was an engine for democracy; instead, they envisioned a place where immoral practice such as polygamy, prostitution, premarital pregnancy, and religious superstition thrived and threatened women’s moral authority. Instead of attempting to portray a prototypical frontier or missionary woman, Pascoe reveals complicated women who defy easy categorization. Instead of re-enforcing stereotypes that women civilized (a dubious term at best) the American West, she instead focused on three aspects of the search for female moral authority: “its benefits and liabilities for women’s empowerment; its relationship to systems of social control; and its implication for intercultural relations among women.” (Pascoe, p. xvii.) Pascoe used a study of intercultural relations between women to better understand each of the sub-cultures (missionaries, unmarried mothers, Chinese prostitutes, Mormon women, and Sioux women) and their relations with governmental authorities and men.

Unlike Limerick, Pascoe did not find it necessary to define the west or the frontier. She did not have to because the Protestant missionaries in her story defined it for her. While Turner may have believed that the West was no longer the frontier in 1890, the missionaries certainly would have disagreed. In fact, the rescue missions were placed in the communities that the Victorian Protestant missionary judged to be the least “civilized” parts of America (Lakota Territory, San Francisco’s Chinatown, rough and tumble Denver and Salt Lake City.) Instead of being a story of conquest by Victorian or western morality, it was a story of how that morality was often challenged and its terms were negotiated by culturally different communities. Pascoe’s primary goal in this work was not only to eliminate stereotypes but to challenge the notion that white women civilized the west. While conquest may be a component of other histories, no one group in Pascoe’s story successfully dominated any other.

Changing the Narrative of Native Americans in the West

Two books were written before Legacy was published, Lewis and Clark Among the Indians (James Rhonda) and The Roots of Dependency (Richard White) both provide a window into the world of Native Americans. Both books took new approaches to Native American histories. Rhonda’s book looked at the familiar Lewis and Clark expedition but from an entirely different angle. Rhonda described the interactions between the expedition and the various Native American tribes they encountered. White’s book also sought to describe the interactions between the United States and the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos, but he sought to explain why the economies of these tribes broke down after contact. Each of these books covers new ground by addressing the impact of these interactions between the United States and the Native Americans.

Whether or not Rhonda’s work is an example of the New Western History is debatable, but he sought to eliminate racial stereotypes of Native Americans and describe the first governmental attempt to conquer the western landscape by traversing it. Rhonda described the interactions between the expedition and the various Indians who encountered it. While Rhonda’s book may resemble a classic Lewis and Clark history, it provides a much more nuanced examination of the limitations and effectiveness of the diplomatic aspects of the Lewis and Clark expedition. He took a great of time to describe each of the interactions with the Indian tribes in detail. Rhonda recognized that the interactions between the expedition and the various tribes were nuanced and complex. Rhonda’s work clarified that Native Americans had differing views of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Any stereotypes the reader may have regarding the Native Americans with would have shattered. Additionally, Rhonda described how the expedition persevered despite its clumsy attempts at diplomacy.

Instead of describing the initial interactions of the United States government with the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos, White explained how the self-sufficient economies of these people were destroyed. White described how the United States government turned these successful native people into wards of the American state. His story explained how the United States conquered these tribes without firing a shot. The consequence of this conquest was the creation of weak, dependent nations that could not survive without handouts from the federal government. Like Rhonda, White also sought to shatter long-standing stereotypes and myths regarding Native Americans. White verified that each of these tribes had self-sufficient economies which permitted prosperous lifestyles for their people before the devastating interactions with the United States government occurred. The United States in each case fundamentally altered the tribes’ economies and environments. These alterations threatened the survival of the tribes. In some cases, the United States sought to trade with these tribes in an effort put the tribes in debt. After the tribes were in debt, the United States then forced the tribes to sell their land. In other situations, the government damaged the tribes’ economies even when they sought to help them.

Even though White book was published a few years before Legacy, The Roots of Dependency certainly satisfies some of Limerick’s stated goals. Conquest and its consequences are at the heart of White’s story. White details the problems these societies developed after they became dependant on American trade goods and handouts. White also dissuaded anyone from believing that the Native American economies were inefficient. The Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos economies were successful. The Choctaws and Pawnees had thriving economies and their food supplies were more than sufficient. While the Navajos were not as successful as the other two tribes, their story was remarkable because they learned how to survive in some of the most inhospitable lands in the American West. These stories exploded the myths that the Native Americans subsistence economies were somehow insufficient.

The Impact of Immigrants to the West

The American West was both a borderland and a destination for a multitude of immigrants. Native Americans, Spaniards, Mexicans, Anglos, and Asians have all immigrated into the American West. The American West has seen waves of immigration. These immigrants have constantly changed the complexion of its people. Starting with the Native Americans who first moved into the region and the most recent tide of undocumented Mexican immigrants, the West has always been a place where immigrants seeking their fortunes. The California gold rush brought in a number of immigrants who did not fit their American ideal. When non-whites started immigrating to California, the United States was faced with a new problem, the introduction of people who could not become citizens. Chinese immigrants troubled the Anglo majority because they could not be easily assimilated into American society. Additionally, many Americans were perplexed by their substantially different appearances, clothing, religions, and cultures. Anglos became concerned that the new immigrants differed too much from them. In 1924, after 150 years of unregulated immigration, the United States Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act, the most restrictionist immigration law in US history. The Johnson-Reed Act was specifically designed to keep the most undesirable races out of America, but immigrants continued to arrive in America without documents. Ming Ngai’s Impossible Subjects addresses this new class of immigrants: illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants began to flow into the United States soon after the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act.

While illegal immigration is not an issue isolated to the history of the American West, the immigrants moved predominantly into California, Texas and the American Southwest. Like Anglo settlers who were attracted to the West for the potential for new life in the nineteenth century, illegal immigrants continued to move in during the twentieth. The illegal immigrants were welcomed, despite their status, because California’s large commercial farms needed inexpensive labor to harvest their crops. Impossible Subjects describes four groups of illegal immigrants (Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese and Mexican braceros) who were created by the United States immigration policy. Ngai specifically examines the role that the government played in defining, controlling and disciplining these groups for their allegedly illegal misconduct.

Impossible Subjects is not a book on the American West, but it is a book that is very much about the American West. While Ngai’s story primarily takes place in the American West she does not appear to have any interest in defining the West because her story has national implications. The American West is relevant to her study only because it was where most of the illegal immigrants described in her story lived and worked. Additionally, it is not a story of conquest and its consequences, but it introduced the American public and scholars to members of the American society that are silent. Limerick even stated that while “Indians, Hispanics, Asians, blacks, Anglos, businesspeople, workers, politicians, bureaucrats, natives and newcomers” all shared the same region, they still needed to be introduced to one another. In addition to being a sophisticated policy debate on immigration law, Ngai’s work introduced Americans to these people. (Limerick, p. 349.)

The Rise of Western Environmental History

Environmental history has become an increasingly important component of the history of the American West. Originally, the American West was seen as an untamed wilderness, but over time that description has changed. Two conceptually different, but nonetheless important books on environmental history discussed the American West and its importance in America. Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon and Rivers of Empire by Donald Worster each explored the environment and the economy of the American West. Cronon examined the formation of Chicago and the importance of its commodities market for the development of the American West. Alternatively, Worster focuses on the creation of an extensive network of government subsidized dams in the early twentieth century. Rivers of Empire describes that despite the aridity of the natural landscape the American West became home to massive commercial farms and enormous swaths of urban sprawl.

In Nature’s Metropolis , Cronon, used the central place theory to analyze the economic and ecological development of Chicago. Johann Heinrich von Thunen developed the central place theory to explain the development of cities. Essentially, geographically different economic zones form in concentric circles the farther you went from the city. These different zones form because of the time it takes to get the different types of goods to market. Closest to the city and then moving away you would have the following zones: first, intensive agriculture, second, extensive agriculture, third, livestock raising, fourth, trading, hunting and Indian trade and finally, you would have the wilderness. While the landscape of the Mid-West was more complicated than this, Cronon posits that the “city and country are inextricably connected and that market relations profoundly mediate between them.” (Cronon, p. 52.) By emphasizing the connection between the city of Chicago and the rural lands that surrounded it, Cronon was able to explain how the land, including the West, developed. Cronon argued that the development of Chicago had a profound influence on the development and appearance of the Great West. Essentially Cronon used the creation of the Chicago commodities and trading markets to explain how different parts of the Mid-West and West produced different types of resources and fundamentally altered their ecology.

According to Donald Worster’s Rivers of Empire, economics played an equally important role in the economic and environmental development of the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Slope states. Worster argued that the United States wanted to continue creating family farms for Americans in the West. Unfortunately, the aridity of the west made that impossible. The land in the West simply could not be farmed without water. Instead of adapting to the natural environment, the United States government embarked on the largest dam building project in human history. The government built thousands of dams to irrigate millions of acres of land. Unfortunately, the cost of these numerous irrigation projects was enormous. The federal government passed the cost on to the buyers of the land which prevented family farmers from buying it. Therefore, instead of family farms, massive commercial farms were created. The only people who could afford to buy the land were wealthy citizens. The massive irrigation also permitted the creation of cities which never would have been possible without it. Worster argues that the ensuing ecological damage to the West has been extraordinary. The natural environment throughout the region was dramatically altered. The west is now the home of oversized commercial farms, artificial reservoirs which stretch for hundreds of miles, rivers that run only on command and sprawling cities which depend on irrigation.

Both Cronon and Worster described how commercial interests shaped the landscape and ecology of the American West, but their approaches were very different. Still, each work fits comfortably into the new western history. Both Cronon and Worster see the West as a place and not as a movement of westward expansion. Cronon re-orders the typical understanding of the sequence of westward expansion. Instead of describing the steady growth of rural communities which transformed into cities, he argued that cities and rural areas formed at the same time. Often the cities developed first and that only after markets were created could land be converted profitable into farms. This development fits westward development much more closely than paradigms that emphasized the creation of family farms. Worster defines the West by its aridity. While these definitions differ from Limerick’s, they reflect new approaches. Conquest plays a critical role in each of these books. Instead of conquering people, the authors describe efforts to conquer western lands. In Cronon, westerners forever altered the landscape of the west. Agricultural activities dominated the zones closest to Chicago, cattle production took over lands previously occupied by the buffalo, and even the wilderness was changed by people to satisfy the markets in Chicago. The extensive damming of the West’s rivers described by Worster required the United States government to conquer, control and discipline nature. While this conquest was somewhat illusory, the United States government was committed to reshaping the West and ecology to fit its vision.

Each of these books demonstrates that the Turner thesis no longer holds a predominant position in the scholarship of the American West. The history of the American West has been revitalized by its demise. While westward expansion plays an important role in the history of the United States, it did not define the west. Turner’s thesis was fundamentally undermined because it did not provide an accurate description of how the West was peopled. The nineteenth century of the west is not composed primarily of family farmers. Instead, it is a story of a region peopled by a diverse group of people: Native Americans, Asians, Chicanos, Anglos, African Americans, women, merchants, immigrants, prostitutes, swindlers, doctors, lawyers, farmers are just a few of the characters who inhabit western history.

How the Myth of the American Frontier Got Its Start

Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis informed decades of scholarship and culture. Then he realized he was wrong

Colin Woodard

Illustration of people on horseback looking at an open landscape

On the evening of July 12, 1893, in the hall of a massive new Beaux-Arts building that would soon house the Art Institute of Chicago, a young professor named Frederick Jackson Turner rose to present what would become the most influential essay in the study of U.S. history.

It was getting late. The lecture hall was stifling from a day of blazing sun, which had tormented the throngs visiting the nearby Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, a carnival of never-before-seen wonders, like a fully illuminated electric city and George Ferris’ 264-foot-tall rotating observation wheel. Many of the hundred or so historians attending the conference, a meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA), were dazed and dusty from an afternoon spent watching Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show at a stadium near the fairground’s gates. They had already sat through three other speeches. Some may have been dozing off as the thin, 31-year-old associate professor from the University of Wisconsin in nearby Madison began his remarks.

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Turner told them the force that had forged Americans into one people was the frontier of the Midwest and Far West. In this virgin world, settlers had finally been relieved of the European baggage of feudalism that their ancestors had brought across the Atlantic, freeing them to find their true selves: self-sufficient, pragmatic, egalitarian and civic-minded. “The frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people,” he told the audience. “In the crucible of the frontier, the immigrants were Americanized, liberated and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics.”

The audience was unmoved.

In their dispatches the following morning, most of the newspaper reporters covering the conference didn’t even mention Turner’s talk. Nor did the official account of the proceedings prepared by the librarian William F. Poole for The Dial , an influential literary journal. Turner’s own father, writing to relatives a few days later, praised Turner’s skills as the family’s guide at the fair, but he said nothing at all about the speech that had brought them there.

Yet in less than a decade, Turner would be the most influential living historian in the United States, and his Frontier Thesis would become the dominant lens through which Americans understood their character, origins and destiny. Soon, Jackson’s theme was prevalent in political speech, in the way high schools taught history, in patriotic paintings—in short, everywhere. Perfectly timed to meet the needs of a country experiencing dramatic and destabilizing change, Turner’s thesis was swiftly embraced by academic and political institutions, just as railroads, manufacturing machines and telegraph systems were rapidly reshaping American life.

By that time, Turner himself had realized that his theory was almost entirely wrong.

American historians had long believed that Providence had chosen their people to spread Anglo-Saxon freedom across the continent. As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, Turner was introduced to a different argument by his mentor, the classical scholar William Francis Allen. Extrapolating from Darwinism, Allen believed societies evolved like organisms, adapting themselves to the environments they encountered. Scientific laws, not divine will, he advised his mentee, guided the course of nations. After graduating, Turner pursued a doctorate at Johns Hopkins University, where he impressed the history program’s leader, Herbert Baxter Adams, and formed a lifelong friendship with one of his teachers, an ambitious young professor named Woodrow Wilson. The connections were useful: When Allen died in 1889, Adams and Wilson aided Turner in his quest to take Allen’s place as head of Wisconsin’s history department. And on the strength of Turner’s early work, Adams invited him to present a paper at the 1893 meeting of the AHA, to be held in conjunction with the World’s Congress Auxiliary of the World’s Columbian Exposition.

a painting depicting the idea of Manifest Destiny

The resulting essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” offered a vivid evocation of life in the American West. Stripped of “the garments of civilization,” settlers between the 1780s and the 1830s found themselves “in the birch canoe” wearing “the hunting shirt and the moccasin.” Soon, they were “planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick” and even shouting war cries. Faced with Native American resistance—Turner largely overlooked what the ethnic cleansing campaign that created all that “free land” might say about the American character—the settlers looked to the federal government for protection from Native enemies and foreign empires, including during the War of 1812, thus fostering a loyalty to the nation rather than to their half-forgotten nations of origin.

He warned that with the disappearance of the force that had shaped them—in 1890, the head of the Census Bureau concluded there was no longer a frontier line between areas that had been settled by European Americans and those that had not—Americans would no longer be able to flee west for an easy escape from responsibility, failure or oppression. “Each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past,” Turner concluded. “Now … the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”

When he left the podium on that sweltering night, he could not have known how fervently the nation would embrace his thesis.

a head and shoulders portrait of a man with parted hair and a mustache wearing a bowtie

Like so many young scholars, Turner worked hard to bring attention to his thesis. He incorporated it into the graduate seminars he taught, lectured about it across the Midwest and wrote the entry for “Frontier” in the widely read Johnson’s Universal Cyclopædia. He arranged to have the thesis reprinted in the journal of the Wisconsin Historical Society and in the AHA’s 1893 annual report. Wilson championed it in his own writings, and the essay was read by hundreds of schoolteachers who found it reprinted in the popular pedagogical journal of the Herbart Society, a group devoted to the scientific study of teaching. Turner’s big break came when the Atlantic Monthly ’s editors asked him to use his novel viewpoint to explain the sudden rise of populists in the rural Midwest, and how they had managed to seize control of the Democratic Party to make their candidate, William Jennings Bryan, its nominee for president. Turner’s 1896 Atlantic Monthly essay , which tied the populists’ agitation to the social pressures allegedly caused by the closing of the frontier—soil depletion, debt, rising land prices—was promptly picked up by newspapers and popular journals across the country.

Meanwhile, Turner’s graduate students became tenured professors and disseminated his ideas to the up-and-coming generation of academics. The thrust of the thesis appeared in political speeches, dime-store western novels and even the new popular medium of film, where it fueled the work of a young director named John Ford who would become the master of the Hollywood western. In 1911, Columbia University’s David Muzzey incorporated it into a textbook—initially titled History of the American People —that would be used by most of the nation’s secondary schools for half a century.

Americans embraced Turner’s argument because it provided a fresh and credible explanation for the nation’s exceptionalism—the notion that the U.S. follows a path soaring above those of other countries—one that relied not on earlier Calvinist notions of being “the elect,” but rather on the scientific (and fashionable) observations of Charles Darwin. In a rapidly diversifying country, the Frontier Thesis denied a special role to the Eastern colonies’ British heritage; we were instead a “composite nation,” birthed in the Mississippi watershed. Turner’s emphasis on mobility, progress and individualism echoed the values of the Gilded Age—when readers devoured Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches stories—and lent them credibility for the generations to follow.

a still from the television The Lone Ranger with the main characters on horseback

But as a researcher, Turner himself turned away from the Frontier Thesis in the years after the 1890s. He never wrote it down in book form or even in academic articles. He declined invitations to defend it, and before long he himself lost faith in it.

For one thing, he had been relying too narrowly on the experiences in his own region of the Upper Midwest, which had been colonized by a settlement stream originating in New England. In fact, he found, the values he had ascribed to the frontier’s environmental conditioning were actually those of this Greater New England settlement culture, one his family and most of his fellow citizens in Portage, Wisconsin, remained part of, with their commitment to strong village and town governments, taxpayer-financed public schools and the direct democracy of the town meeting. He saw that other parts of the frontier had been colonized by other settlement streams anchored in Scots-Irish Appalachia or in the slave plantations of the Southern lowlands, and he noted that their populations continued to behave completely differently from one another, both politically and culturally, even when they lived in similar physical environments. Somehow settlers moving west from these distinct regional cultures were resisting the Darwinian environmental and cultural forces that had supposedly forged, as Turner’s biographer, Ray Allen Billington, put it, “a new political species” of human, the American. Instead, they were stubbornly remaining themselves. “Men are not absolutely dictated to by climate, geography, soils or economic interests,” Turner wrote in 1922. “The influence of the stock from which they sprang, the inherited ideals, the spiritual factors, often triumph over the material interests.”

Turner spent the last decades of his life working on what he intended to be his magnum opus, a book not about American unity but rather about the abiding differences between its regions, or “sections,” as he called them. “In respect to problems of common action, we are like what a United States of Europe would be,” he wrote in 1922, at the age of 60. For example, the Scots-Irish and German small farmers and herders who settled the uplands of the southeastern states had long clashed with nearby English enslavers over education spending, tax policy and political representation. Turner saw the whole history of the country as a wrestling match between these smaller quasi-nations, albeit a largely peaceful one guided by rules, laws and shared American ideals: “When we think of the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, as steps in the marking off of spheres of influence and the assignment of mandates [between nations] … we see a resemblance to what has gone on in the Old World,” Turner explained. He hoped shared ideals—and federal institutions—would prove cohesive for a nation suddenly coming of age, its frontier closed, its people having to steward their lands rather than striking out for someplace new.

a man in a suit at a podium gives a speech

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Colin Woodard is a journalist and historian, and the author of six books including Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood . He lives in Maine.

Conquering the West

The west as history: the turner thesis.

In 1893, the American Historical Association met during that year’s World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The young Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his “frontier thesis,” one of the most influential theories of American history, in his essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”

Turner looked back at the historical changes in the West and saw, instead of a tsunami of war and plunder and industry, waves of “civilization” that washed across the continent. A frontier line “between savagery and civilization” had moved west from the earliest English settlements in Massachusetts and Virginia across the Appalachians to the Mississippi and finally across the Plains to California and Oregon. Turner invited his audience to “stand at Cumberland Gap [the famous pass through the Appalachian Mountains], and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file—the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer—and the frontier has passed by.”

Americans, Turner said, had been forced by necessity to build a rough-hewn civilization out of the frontier, giving the nation its exceptional hustle and its democratic spirit and distinguishing North America from the stale monarchies of Europe. Moreover, the style of history Turner called for was democratic as well, arguing that the work of ordinary people (in this case, pioneers) deserved the same study as that of great statesmen. Such was a novel approach in 1893.

But Turner looked ominously to the future. The Census Bureau in 1890 had declared the frontier closed. There was no longer a discernible line running north to south that, Turner said, any longer divided civilization from savagery. Turner worried for the United States’ future: what would become of the nation without the safety valve of the frontier? It was a common sentiment. Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Turner that his essay “put into shape a good deal of thought that has been floating around rather loosely.”

The history of the West was many-sided and it was made by many persons and peoples. Turner’s thesis was rife with faults, not only its bald Anglo Saxon chauvinism—in which non-whites fell before the march of “civilization” and Chinese and Mexican immigrants were invisible—but in its utter inability to appreciate the impact of technology and government subsidies and large-scale economic enterprises alongside the work of hardy pioneers. Still, Turner’s thesis held an almost canonical position among historians for much of the twentieth century and, more importantly, captured Americans’ enduring romanticization of the West and the simplification of a long and complicated story into a march of progress.

This chapter was edited by Lauren Brand, with content contributions by Lauren Brand, Carole Butcher, Josh Garrett-Davis, Tracey Hanshew, Nick Roland, David Schley, Emma Teitelman, and Alyce Vigil.

American Yawp. Located at : http://www.americanyawp.com/index.html . Project : American Yawp. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

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17.9: The West as History- the Turner Thesis

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American anthropologist and ethnographer Frances Densmore records the Blackfoot chief Mountain Chief in 1916 for the Bureau of American Ethnology. Source: Library of Congress.

In 1893, the American Historical Association met during that year’s World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The young Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his “frontier thesis,” one of the most influential theories of American history, in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”

The history of the West was many-sided and it was made by many persons and peoples. Turner’s thesis was rife with faults, not only in its bald Anglo-Saxon chauvinism—in which nonwhites fell before the march of “civilization” and Chinese and Mexican immigrants were invisible—but in its utter inability to appreciate the impact of technology and government subsidies and large-scale economic enterprises alongside the work of hardy pioneers. Still, Turner’s thesis held an almost canonical position among historians for much of the twentieth century and, more importantly, captured Americans’ enduring romanticization of the West and the simplification of a long and complicated story into a march of progress.

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Frontier Thesis

The Frontier Thesis or Turner Thesis , is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that American democracy was formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed results, especially that American democracy was the primary result, along with egalitarianism , a lack of interest in high culture , and violence. "American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Sarah Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier," said Turner. In the thesis, the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled " The Significance of the Frontier in American History ", delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner elaborated on the theme in his advanced history lectures and in a series of essays published over the next 25 years, published along with his initial paper as The Frontier in American History.

Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.

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Books/Sources

The Frontier Thesis: Valid Interpretation of American History? - Ray Allen Billington
The Turner Thesis: Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American History (Problems in American civilization)... - George Rogers Taylor
Block 6 Lecture 1 Turner's Frontier Thesis
7 1 c 6 TURNER'S THESIS OF EXPANSION OF FRONTIER 7 1 C 6

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Was Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis Myth or Reality?

Two scholars debate this question.

Written by: (Claim A) Andrew Fisher, William & Mary; (Claim B) Bradley J. Birzer, Hillsdale College

Suggested sequencing.

Use this Point-Counterpoint with the Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 1893 Primary Source to give students more background on individualism and western expansion.

Issue on the Table

Was Turner’s thesis a myth about the individualism of the American character and the influence of the West or was it essentially correct in explaining how the West and the advancing frontier contributed to the shaping of individualism in the American character?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

Every nation has a creation myth, a simple yet satisfying story that inspires pride in its people. The United States is no exception, but our creation myth is all about exceptionalism. In his famous essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Frederick Jackson Turner claimed that the process of westward expansion had transformed our European ancestors into a new breed of people endowed with distinctively American values and virtues. In particular, the frontier experience had supposedly fostered democracy and individualism, underpinned by the abundance of “free land” out West. “So long as free land exists,” Turner wrote, “the opportunity for a competency exists, and economic power secures political power.” It was a compelling articulation of the old Jeffersonian Dream. Like Jefferson’s vision, however, Turner’s thesis excluded much of the nation’s population and ignored certain historical realities concerning American society.

Very much a man of his times, Turner filtered his interpretation of history through the lens of racial nationalism. The people who counted in his thesis, literally and figuratively, were those with European ancestry—and especially those of Anglo-Saxon origins. His definition of the frontier, following that of the U.S. Census, was wherever population density fell below two people per square mile. That effectively meant “where white people were scarce,” in the words of historian Richard White; or, as Patricia Limerick puts it, “where white people got scared because they were scarce.” American Indians only mattered to Turner as symbols of the “savagery” that white pioneers had to beat back along the advancing frontier line. Most of the “free land” they acquired in the process came from the continent’s vast indigenous estate, which, by 1890, had been reduced to scattered reservations rapidly being eroded by the Dawes Act. Likewise, Mexican Americans in the Southwest saw their land base and economic status whittled away after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that nominally made them citizens of the United States. Chinese immigrants, defined as perpetual aliens under federal law, could not obtain free land through the Homestead Act. For all these groups, Euro-American expansion and opportunity meant the contraction or denial of their own ability to achieve individual advancement and communal stability.

Turner also exaggerated the degree of social mobility open to white contemporaries, not to mention their level of commitment to an ideology of rugged individualism. Although plenty of Euro-Americans used the homestead laws to get their piece of free land, they often struggled to make that land pay and to keep it in the family. During the late nineteenth century, the commoditization and industrialization of American agriculture caught southern and western farmers in a crushing cost-price squeeze that left many wrecked by debt. To combat this situation, they turned to cooperative associations such as the Grange and the National Farmers’ Alliance, which blossomed into the Populist Party at the very moment Turner was writing about the frontier as the engine of American democracy. Perhaps it was, but not in the sense he understood. Populists railed against the excess of individualism that bred corruption and inequality in Gilded Age America. Even cowboys, a pillar of the frontier myth, occasionally tried to organize unions to improve their wages and working conditions. Those seeking a small stake of their own—what Turner called a “competency”— in the form of their own land or herds sometimes ran afoul of concentrated capital, as during the Johnson County War of 1892. The big cattlemen of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association had no intention of sharing the range with pesky sodbusters and former cowboys they accused of rustling. Their brand of individualism had no place for small producers who might become competitors.

Turner took such troubles as a sign that his prediction had come true. With the closing of the frontier, he said, the United States would begin to see greater class conflict in the form of strikes and radical politics. There was lots of free land left in 1890, though; in fact, approximately 1 million people filed homestead claims between 1901 and 1913, compared with 1.4 million between 1862 and 1900. That did not prevent the country from experiencing serious clashes between organized labor and the corporations that had come to dominate many industries. Out west, socialistic unions such as the Western Federation of Miners and the Industrial Workers of the World challenged not only the control that companies had over their employees but also their influence in the press and politics. For them, Turner’s dictum that “economic power secures political power” would have held a more sinister meaning. It was the rise of the modern corporation, not the supposed fading of the frontier, that narrowed the meanings of individualism and opportunity as Americans had previously understood them.

Young historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his academic paper, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago on July 12, 1893. He was the final presenter of that hot and humid day, but his essay ranks among the most influential arguments ever made regarding American history.

Turner was trained at the University of Wisconsin (his home state) and Johns Hopkins University, then the center of Germanic-type graduate studies—that is, it was scientific and objectivist rather than idealist or liberal. Turner rebelled against that purely scientific approach, but not by much. In 1890, the U.S. Census revealed that the frontier (defined as fewer than two people per square mile) was closed. There was no longer an unbroken frontier line in the United States, although frontier conditions lasted in certain parts of the American West until 1920. Turner lamented this, believing the most important phase of American history was over.

No one publicly commented on the essay at the time, but the American Historical Association reprinted it in its annual report the following year, and within a decade, it became known as the “Turner Thesis.”

What is most prominent in the Turner Thesis is the proposition that the United States is unique in its heritage; it is not a European clone, but a vital mixture of European and American Indian. Or, as he put it, the American character emerged through an intermixing of “savagery and civilization.” Turner attributed the American character to the expansion to the West, where, he said, American settlers set up farms to tame the frontier. “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.” As people moved west in a “perennial rebirth,” they extended the American frontier, the boundary “between savagery and civilization.”

The frontier shaped the American character because the settlers who went there had to conquer a land difficult for farming and devoid of any of the comforts of life in urban parts of the East: “The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails.”

Politically and socially, according to Turner, the American character—including traits that prioritized equality, individualism, and democracy—was shaped by moving west and settling the frontier. “The tendency,” Turner wrote, “is anti-social. [The frontier] produces antipathy to control, and particularly to any direct control.” Those hardy pioneers on the frontier spread the ideas and practice of democracy as well as modern civilization. By conquering the wilderness, Turner stressed, they learned that resources and opportunity were seemingly boundless, meant to bring the ruggedness out of each individual. The farther west the process took them, the less European the Americans as a whole became. Turner saw the frontier as the progenitor of the American practical and innovative character: “That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and acquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom – these are trains of the frontier.”

Turner’s thesis, to be sure, viewed American Indians as uncivilized. In his vision, they cannot compete with European technology, and they fall by the wayside, serving as little more than a catalyst for the expansion of white Americans. This near-absence of Indians from Turner’s argument gave rise to a number of critiques of his thesis, most prominently from the New Western Historians beginning in the 1980s. These more recent historians sought to correct Turner’s “triumphal” myth of the American West by examining it as a region rather than as a process. For Turner, the American West is a progressive process, not a static place. There were many Wests, as the process of conquering the land, changing the European into the American, happened over and over again. What would happen to the American character, Turner wondered, now that its ability to expand and conquer was over?

Historical Reasoning Questions

Use Handout A: Point-Counterpoint Graphic Organizer to answer historical reasoning questions about this point-counterpoint.

Primary Sources (Claim A)

Cooper, James Fenimore. Last of the Mohicans (A Leatherstocking Tale) . New York: Penguin, 1986.

Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” http://sunnycv.com/steve/text/civ/turner.html

Primary Sources (Claim B)

Suggested resources (claim a).

Cronon, William, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds. Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past . New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.

Faragher, John Mack. Women and Men on the Overland Trail . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.

Grossman, Richard R, ed. The Frontier in American Culture: Essays by Richard White and Patricia Nelson Limerick . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994.

Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West . New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987.

Limerick, Patricia Nelson, Clyde A. Milner II, and Charles E. Rankin, eds. Trails: Toward a New Western History . Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1991.

Milner II, Clyde A. A New Significance: Re-envisioning the History of the American West . New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Nugent, Walter. Into the West: The Story of Its People . New York: Knopf, 1991.

Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 . Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.

Suggested Resources (Claim B)

Billington, Ray Allen, and Martin Ridge. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier . Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001.

Etulain, Richard, ed. Does the Frontier Experience Make America Exceptional? New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999.

Mondi. Megan. “’Connected and Unified?’: A More Critical Look at Frederick Jackson Turner’s America.” Constructing the Past , 7 no. 1:Article 7. http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/constructing/vol7/iss1/7

Nelson, Robert. “Public Lands and the Frontier Thesis.” Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States , Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond, 2014. http://dsl.richmond.edu/fartherafield/public-lands-and-the-frontier-thesis/

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Frederick jackson turner, “significance of the frontier in american history” (1893).

Perhaps the most influential essay by an American historian, Frederick Jackson Turner’s address to the American Historical Association on “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” defined for many Americans the relationship between the frontier and American culture and contemplated what might follow “the closing of the frontier.”

In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant words: “Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports.” This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.

Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. The peculiarity of American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people—to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life. Said Calhoun in 1817, “We are great, and rapidly—I was about to say fearfully—growing!” So saying, he touched the distinguishing feature of American life. All peoples show development; the germ theory of politics has been sufficiently emphasized. In the case of most nations, however, the development has occurred in a limited area; and if the nation has expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it has conquered. But in the case of the United States we have a different phenomenon. Limiting our attention to the Atlantic coast, we have the familiar phenomenon of the evolution of institutions in a limited area, such as the rise of representative government; the differentiation of simple colonial governments into complex organs; the progress from primitive industrial society, without division of labor, up to manufacturing civilization. But we have in addition to this a recurrence of the process of evolution in each western area reached in the process of expansion. Thus American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West. …

In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civilization. Much has been written about the frontier from the point of view of border warfare and the chase, but as a field for the serious study of the economist and the historian it has been neglected.

From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. The works of travelers along each frontier from colonial days onward describe certain common traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still persisted as survivals in the place of their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom—these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even been forced upon them. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is not tabula rasa . The stubborn American environment is there with its imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, 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.

Source: Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History, 1919.

What was Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis”?

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American Democracy’ History: Turner’s Thesis Essay

The Turner Thesis claimed that American democracy was formed out of the American Frontier, whereby the process had a great impact on the natives. The interaction with the people at the frontier resulted in the adoption of moderate culture, democracy, and violence towards the people of color. In his analysis of Turner’s article, Ridge observed that American democracy was never brought in the country, but instead, it developed in the forests; and every time the locals interacted with the foreigners in the frontier, new ideals were acquired.

The “principle function” of the frontier in American history was that through the American frontier, liberty was established since Americans were freed from the hands of Europeans who had taken over all major societal activities, especially in economics and politics.

Additionally, the American frontier did away with dysfunctional customs and traditions that had threatened the American Dream. There was no need for the militias, religion, aristocrats, and the rich in the frontiers because they simply played a negative role since they interfered with individual fulfillment in the sense that they threatened individual liberty and security. In this regard, the frontier land was expected to be free for anybody, and the idea of charging taxes was against societal ideals.

Americans had to forge a unique identity for them to achieve the much-needed civilization that would spark economic and political development. Through this, citizens would be given full power and authority to domesticate the wild animals. With time, many people moved from the exterior to the interior, making some people move to towns, but the conflicts between man and nature existed. As the generations became more American, they built autonomy and intolerance to oppression. Unfortunately, these developments never had a good effect on the community because people became more violent, individualistic, and distrustful of the authority, which is a characteristic of the American culture.

The frontier served a great purpose of transforming the American culture from the animalistic nature to what it currently presents. For instance, people were able to adapt to new things in society, leading to the domestication of plants and animals. Through this, people learned to be independent, whereby they were expected to be self-sufficient in the sense that they produced goods that satisfied their needs. Instead of subscribing to the ideas of scientists, Americans decided to live their lives without forming the government.

However, community-based organizations were formed to resolve the local problems that faced the locals. In this case, no person was supposed to be superior, but instead, people were considered equal, and both genders were allowed to enjoy their lives. Through the frontier, the current democratic ideas were developed, and the idea of egalitarianism was established whereby people were expected to be provided with certain inherent rights and freedoms. In modern society, human rights organizations are always concerned with the government’s attempt to deny individuals their basic rights, such as the right to free will.

Additionally, the process of selecting leaders is always based on democracy whereby the majority should have their way, but the minorities must be represented. Turner’s thesis had a great impact on the lives of many Americans in the sense that they started demanding for their rights when the regime mistreated people based on their race, social positions, and ethnicity. It was clear that an individual had the right to do as he or she wishes, and the only role of the government was to provide an enabling environment to ensure individual fulfillment.

Chicago (A-D)
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IvyPanda. (2020, July 6). American Democracy' History: Turner’s Thesis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-democracy-history-turners-thesis/

"American Democracy' History: Turner’s Thesis." IvyPanda , 6 July 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/american-democracy-history-turners-thesis/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'American Democracy' History: Turner’s Thesis'. 6 July.

IvyPanda . 2020. "American Democracy' History: Turner’s Thesis." July 6, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-democracy-history-turners-thesis/.

1. IvyPanda . "American Democracy' History: Turner’s Thesis." July 6, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-democracy-history-turners-thesis/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "American Democracy' History: Turner’s Thesis." July 6, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-democracy-history-turners-thesis/.

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Let’s Call the Golden Bachelor’s “Divorce” What It Really Is

Gerry and theresa weren’t married long enough to intertwine their lives..

I was still foggy at 8:32 this morning from the rush of lunch-making, dishwasher unstacking, and child-to-school shepherding that I do on weeks when my daughter is with me, when my phone chimed with a text: “Who woulda thought? The Golden Couple already split. I didn’t think they would stay together forever but I would have guessed they’d be too embarrassed to quit so soon. I forgot; it’s reality tv.”

The incoming was from my friend and mentor Ann, who had gotten hooked on the Golden Bachelor at Slate’s suggestion (and wrote this great piece about being 67 and single when the show’s finale aired last November). It took me a second: Who was she talking about? Ah, Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist, the senior citizen–aged lovebirds who had emerged triumphant at the end of Gerry’s turn as the septuagenarian Bachelor. Officially donezo. Talk about out of sight, out of mind. As Scott Nover wrote in Slate on Friday about the end of the pair’s three-month marriage, “the American attention span for Gerry and Theresa’s abbreviated love story had ended.”

Well, I guess I have a little more room in my personal attention span because I spent most of the day trying to figure out why these headlines about the Golden Couple’s divorce were bothering me so much. Yes, I admit, I followed the ins and outs of the whole season . I had even found peace with their match at the end. But I found their wedding—broadcast live on TV—to be both boring and ick . And, as they gave follow-up interviews about their future together, I did keep wondering: Were these two really going to move away from their respective grandchildren in Indiana and New Jersey and settle in … Charleston , South Carolina, as they claimed they would ?

Now we know the answer is no. Per their rehearsed announcement on Good Morning America on Friday morning, they are splitsville. But I refuse to call it a divorce. At best, it is a “divorce,” the same way their relationship was a “marriage.” A divorce entails a splitting of assets. Discussions around family holidays and time spent with children. Decisions around who gets how much of the retirement funds, or the shared compact car. A divorce requires difficult decisions—notably, to end a marriage! There’s no way Gerry and Theresa had enough time together to assemble anything that requires a divorce as we commonly think of it. And even if they had to have some big talks about breaking up—deciding to get divorced can take some couples years!—how many discussions could there have truly been? They got married in January!

Now, it’s possible they’ll have an argument over that Golden Bachelor money , but I doubt it. Seems like the kind of thing that was worked out in reams of paperwork with ABC months ago. Surely they didn’t have a shared bank account at the time they were married, so they probably each got paid via ACH right into their own coffers—no stress there!

In case it is not clear by now, I’m speaking from experience. I am divorced. And I probably have one of the best divorce stories you will ever hear, in that my ex-husband and I are incredibly close, devoted co-parents and forever family. We have keys to each other’s houses, and we see each other all the time. Last weekend, our daughter stayed home with my (second) husband while I went to see a concert with my first husband. Can you follow that? It confuses people all the time!

But it wasn’t easy to get here. It was hard, because getting divorced is really hard! Even if, like us, you don’t own a home and things are relatively simple, the years of shared life and things and feelings are hard to parse. In the best case, you can end up like us. But often, the ending of a life together brings up so much stuff we try to shove in the back of the proverbial closet that the mess can never totally be cleaned up. Every divorced person I know tries their best. But there is a specific kind of lasting sadness—and often much worse—even when things are as amicable as humanly possible.

I am not sorry that Gerry and Theresa will be spared this lasting rubble. But let’s call the end of their “marriage” what it is: a breakup. They couldn’t decide on where to live , and things didn’t work out. It may legally be a divorce, but it amounts to little more than a short-lived, broken engagement.

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Jesse Palmer, who hosted "The Golden Bachelor," said that he wished Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist "nothing but happiness" after the pair announced that they were filing for divorce after being married for only three months.

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Golden Bachelor ’s Gerry Turner Officially Files for Divorce from Theresa Nist 3 Months After Wedding

Turner and Nist fell in love and got engaged on season 1 of the ABC reality television show, which aired in Fall 2023

Abigail Adams is a Human Interest Writer and Reporter for PEOPLE. She has been working in journalism for seven years.

Gerry Turner has officially filed for divorce from Theresa Nist .

The Golden Bachelor star, 74, submitted a petition to Pike Circuit Court in Indiana on Friday, April 12, to dissolve the marriage with his wife, 70, according to public records viewed by PEOPLE.

Turner listed the reason for their split as an “irretrievable breakdown” of their marriage, according to US Weekly .

Turner and Nist were together for just three months after tying the knot on national television on Jan. 5. The two fell in love on season 1 of the Golden Bachelor, which aired in Fall 2023, and got engaged at the end of the show.

The couple announced the end of their marriage in a joint interview on Good Morning America . They said the decision was agreed upon mutually.

"Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations, and we've looked closely at our situation, our living situation and so forth, and we've kind of come to the conclusion mutually that it's probably time for us to dissolve our marriage," Turner explained.

An attorney for Turner did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

Gerry Turner/Instagram

Despite their previous claims that they were “100% committed” to making their marriage work, Turner and Nist said distance ultimately became an issue. Turner lives in Indiana, and Nist in New Jersey.

The couple said they looked for homes in South Carolina, but simply never found a place to land together.

Turner and Nist suggested they did not fall out of love, telling ABC News' Juju Chang they are "best friends" and plan on remaining in each other’s lives.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Anthony Behar courtesy of ABC

“I still love this person. There’s no doubt in my mind, I still am in love with her. I root for her every day,” Turner said. Nist replied, “I still love him.”

But a source tells PEOPLE that “it was never going to work” between Turner and Nist. "Things have been tough for months," the source adds. "They’ve been fighting since right after the wedding."

They also did not make it to their Italian honeymoon, which was planned for May 2024. Nist previously said on Instagram that the couple intended to fly into Rome and spend a few days in Tuscany before "heading down to Sorrento and the Amalfi coast" to wrap up the trip.

Frank Micelotta/Disney via Getty

The couple went on to thank everyone who has shown support for their relationship, as well as those they inspired.

"We have received so much love and support from so many people who watch the Golden Bachelor and I don't think we can tell you how many people told us it gave them so much hope," Nist said. "We want none of that to change for anybody."

"Don't give up," she added. "Stay in it. Stay hopeful. 'Cause we are.”

Now, both Turner and Nist are looking for love once again. "And we tell everybody else to continue to look for love," Nist explained.

Though Nist plans to give back the ring, which she was still wearing, Turner told her, "We don't have to give back the memories."

'Golden Bachelor' couple Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist announce they are divorcing

The pair sat down with Juju Chang for "Good Morning America."

"The Golden Bachelor" couple Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist are getting divorced.

The couple, who fell in love on the first season of "The Golden Bachelor" last fall before tying the knot in a televised wedding earlier this year, announced the news Friday exclusively on "Good Morning America."

MORE: 'The Golden Bachelorette' announced for fall 2024

“Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations, and we’ve looked closely at our situation, our living situation, so forth and -- and we’ve kind of come to the conclusion mutually that it’s probably time for us to -- dissolve our marriage,” Turner told Juju Chang in an interview for “Good Morning America.”

“Get a divorce?” Chang clarified. “Yes,” Turner said.

“We have received so much love and support from so many people who watched ‘The Golden Bachelor,’ and I don’t think we can tell you how many people told us that it gave them so much hope,” Nist said. “We want none of that to change for anybody.”

Turner proposed to Nist on the season 1 finale of "The Golden Bachelor," which aired on Nov. 30.

During an interview that aired the morning after the finale, each told "GMA" they had found their "person."

In the new interview, Turner said, “The thing that strikes me the most in our conversations, it’s been how dedicated both of us are to our families … So we look at these situations and I think we just feel like it’s best for the happiness of each of us to, to live apart.”

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When asked how this fell apart after both said they were 100% committed to making this work, Nist said “that was the plan.”

“We looked at homes in South Carolina, we considered New Jersey, and we just looked at homes after home, but we never got to the point where we made that decision.”

Turner and Nist got married during a televised wedding that aired Jan. 4, with their children and grandchildren in attendance.

MORE: Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist tie the knot during a golden wedding

The pair, holding hands during the interview, reiterated that they did not fall out of love.

“I still love this person,” Turner said. “There’s no doubt in my mind, I still am in love with her. I root for her every day.”

Nist added, “Yeah, I still love him.”

PHOTO: Theresa Nist and Gerry Turner attend "The Walt Disney Company celebrates the official launch of Hulu on Disney+" at an exclusive cocktail reception hosted by Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, along with special guest Bob Iger, April 5, 2024.

The couple who brought hope to many looking for love later in life told “GMA” their message for others is to “‘Stay in it, stay hopeful,’” Nist said, “because we are.”

Both Turner and Nist were previously wed to their high school sweethearts, each of whom passed away after more than 40 years of marriage.

The couple was challenged with the realities of being in the public eye after their televised experience.

Both told “GMA” that reports of their dating history and past did not play into this decision.

“Gerry had already discussed that with me,” Nist said. He had explained it to me before the report was ever released, so we were good with that.”

Although this announcement seems abrupt, Nist said “We didn't want to pretend to anybody.”

The pair will give their rings back, “I think that’s the rule,” Nist said with a laugh. “But you know what? We don't have to give back the memories,” Turner added.

The couple had a prenuptial agreement and said they highly recommend it to others.

Nist also shared advice for the new, yet to be announced, Golden Bachelorette, "be authentic, be yourself."

The pair both said separately that they will continue to look for love.

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'Golden Bachelor' breakup bombshell: Look back at Gerry Turner, Theresa Nist's romance

Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist went from "I do" to "I don't" in just three months.

" The Golden Bachelor " couple surprised fans on Friday, announcing their divorce plans on " Good Morning America ."

"Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations, and we've looked closely at our situation, our living situation, so forth and — and we've kind of come to the conclusion mutually that it's probably time for us to dissolve our marriage," Turner told Juju Chang on "GMA."

Turner, 72, and Nist, 70, married on live television in January with the season's other elder contestants in attendance.

Ahead of their wedding, Turner told USA TODAY, "I'm 1000% committed to this; I wouldn't have asked Theresa to marry me if I wasn't. When you're older, the clock ticks faster. If you love someone, say it. If you believe you're with the right person and want to be married forever, do that. You don't wait."

Look back at their romance from meeting on the ABC series to their split.

'The Golden Bachelor' divorce: Couple Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist announce split

Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist fell hard and fast on 'The Golden Bachelor'

Turner and Nist hit it off from the Sept. 28 "Golden Bachelor" premiere , with Nist arriving at the Bachelor Mansion on her 70th birthday with the other 21 contestants. The two kissed that night after Turner smeared birthday cupcake frosting on his lips and asked Nist for clean-up help. "That was the best present ever," Nist said after the smooch.

Feelings grew when the couple went on an Episode 2 solo date. After Nist calmed Turner during a harried Los Angeles highway drive, the two bonded over a diner dinner. They found common ground and solace in discussing the loss of their respective spouses.

Turner was married to his wife Toni Turner for 43 years before she died in 2017 and Nist was married to husband Billy Nist for 42 years before he died in 2017.

By Episode 8, Turner had expressed love and spent a night with each of the show's two finalists, Nist and Leslie Fhima, 65, a Minneapolis-based fitness instructor.

Gerry Turner proposes to Theresa Nist, leaving contestant Leslie Fhima 'blindsided'

On the Nov. 30 finale of the reality dating show's first senior edition, Turner made his final choice from the original group of 22 contestants, dropping down on one knee to propose to Nist, a financial adviser from Shrewsbury, New Jersey.

Theresa giddily exclaimed "Yes! Yes!" in response.

"I had a million things going through my mind: Is he going to ask me to marry him? Is he going to ask Leslie? Will he ask no one?" Nist recalled after the finale. "It was nerve-wracking. So I was completely surprised."

Turner giddily told Fhima ahead of the finale, "I think you're the one," which later caused controversy.

Fhima tearfully expressed her rightful displeasure to Turner on live TV during the "After the Final Rose" ceremony, telling Turner she was "heartbroken" by the sudden reversal of feelings and expression of love.

"I was blindsided," Fhima said. "Because I wasn't sure how it changed or what happened."

'Golden Bachelor' after that proposal: Gerry and Theresa talk finale drama, 'naughty' outing

Gerry Turner, Theresa Nist solidified their bond during Fantasy Suites week

Turner told USA TODAY in December his feelings for Nist and his decision to propose were cemented after off-camera discussions the two had during the Fantasy Suites week, which aired Nov. 16.

"We were able to talk without the witness of the whole country: No camera, no microphones," said Turner. "I saw the real Theresa. All of a sudden it was like, I thought something was here. Now I know it's here. I told her, 'I'm going to ask you to marry me. I don't know if you will or not. But I'm going to ask.'"

The two even discussed a possible compromise location between Turner's Indiana home and Nist's New Jersey digs. Nist, a widow, has a grown son who lives in Charleston, South Carolina, an appealing location for Turner. "So that's going to make life pretty easy; we'll start looking in that area," he said.

The couple noted on "GMA" Friday that deciding where to settle down contributed to their decision to split.

"We looked at homes in South Carolina, we considered New Jersey, and we just looked at homes after home, but we never got to the point where we made that decision," Nist told Chang.

What you didn’t see on 'Golden Wedding': Gerry Turner actually walked down the aisle twice

Gerry Turner, Theresa Nist tie the knot in front of fellow contestants

"The Golden Wedding" two-hour special aired live on ABC on Jan. 4 and fan favorite Susan Noles officiated.

Both Turner and Nist cried throughout their emotional vows.

More than anything, Nist said she wants "to have fun for the rest of the days we have left on this earth." Laughing about their ages, she added: "Which could be another hour.

"I love you with all my heart," she said, turning serious, "and I cannot wait to be your wife."

Turner then told her that he knows "the hand of God and the winds of fate have ordained this moment."

Turner continued to say that "it wasn't my ear that you whispered in when you said the I love yous, but my very soul." The camera then cut to heartbroken runner-up Fhima, who attended despite being hospitalized in the days before .

Gerry Turner, Theresa Nist never went on their honeymoon

During the "Golden Bachelor" finale, host Jesse Palmer gave Turner and Nist (on behalf of ABC) a trip to Italy to serve as their honeymoon, just as the couple talked about on their first date.

In late January, fans began to question when the duo would go on the trip.

Nist shared a mood board on Instagram on Jan. 28, telling fans she was "having so much fun planning and dreaming about our honeymoon in May to Italy…flying into Rome, spending a few days in Tuscany and then heading down to Sorrento and the Amalfi coast.

"I’ve been to Italy twice, once when I was 18, and again to visit my daughter when she studied abroad there. I can’t wait to experience it with Gerry!" she added.

The Essentials: 'Golden Bachelor' Gerry Turner talks pickleball, secret to youth and his 'fast fix'

Gerry Turner, Theresa Nist tape for 'Family Feud' days before divorce announcement

The couple continued to share bits of their relationship on social media, from supporting their respective step-children and step-grandchildren to appearing on latest "Bachelor" contestant Joey Graziadei's "After the Final Rose" live reunion on March 25 to taping "Celebrity Family Feud" with their blended families days before announcing their divorce.

"Had a GREAT time at Celebrity Family Feud with the blended family," Turner posted on Instagram Sunday .

His daughter Angie also shared photos from the taping on Instagram. "MY LIFELONG DREAM was finally fulfilled! Since I was little I wanted to be on family feud. I would dream about it and assemble my team in my mind," she captioned the post.

"Yesterday…it happened!!!! We played celebrity family feud!!! It was so much fun. Our team was my Dad, Theresa, my sister, me, Tommy and Jen!" she added. "Tune in sometime in August!"

Gerry Turner, Theresa Nist announce divorce

Turner and Nist, while holding hands, emphasized on "GMA" that they had not fallen out of love despite seperating.

"I still love this person," Turner said. "There's no doubt in my mind, I still am in love with her. I root for her every day."

"Yeah, I still love him," Nist added.

The pair also emphasized that claims of Turner being deceitful about his dating history had no bearing on their split. A Nov. 29 Hollywood Reporter expose claimed the widower deceived viewers and other contestants by not revealing romantic relationships that followed.

"Gerry had already discussed that with me," Nist said to Chang. "He had explained it to me before the report was ever released, so we were good with that."

Contributing: Taijuan Moorman, Amanda Lee Myers

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Breaking Down All of Drake’s Shots at Kendrick (and Half the Rap Game)

Drake responded with a diss song aimed at Kendrick Lamar, Future, Metro Boomin, Rick Ross, The Weeknd, and more. Here’s a full breakdown of every jab.

It finally happened. After weeks of silence, Drake has responded to Kendrick Lamar’s “Like That” verse (and both of Future and Metro Boomin’s albums ) with a diss song of his own.

On Saturday morning, an unmixed version of the track leaked online, causing many to question whether it was real or AI-generated. A few hours later, a new version of the song appeared online (and in a DJ Akademiks stream) with a different beat, slightly updated lyrics, and much better mixing, leading most people to assume that the song is real and will be officially released any moment.

The four-minute track is full of smoke for Kendrick, Future, Metro Boomin, Rick Ross, The Weeknd, and more. Over an ominous beat that sounds like something from the OG Halloween soundtrack, Drake takes aim at half the rap game for four minutes straight, acknowledging the fact that he’s facing an army of foes: “What the fuck is this, a twenty-V-one, nigga?"

In the leaked version of the track, he also trashed the idea of a “Big 3,” rapping, “It’s me twice in my Big 3, I had to leave you out,” before hinting at a rumor that Kendrick’s been sitting on a Drake diss for years, spitting, “You had a song for four years, drop that shit and shut your mouth.” However, neither of those lines made it on the updated version of the song.

Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they’re punched in the mouth,” and after Kendrick delivered the first blow, Drake has gathered himself and responded. With plenty of slick jabs and cryptic lines to address, here is a line-by-line breakdown of every person Drake dissed on the song.

Kendrick Lamar

After opening the verse by calling himself the hit-maker that other rappers depend on, Drake throws a jab at Kendrick’s stature, asking, “How the fuck you big steppin’ with a size 7 men’s on?” Then he responds to Dot’s “‘all your dogs getting buried” line by claiming that this is the “bite” everyone has been waiting for. (Sidebar: how did Drake find out Kendrick’s shoe size? Did he estimate based on Kendrick’s height? According to the research of the Complex Sneakers team, anyway, Kendrick’s real shoe size is actually 8.5 or 9.)

Next, Drake raps, “Extortion baby, whole career you been shook up/ ’Cause Top told you drop and give me 50 like some push-ups (huhh).” He makes a point to repeat this “drop and give me 50” lyric throughout the song, which pokes fun at a recent IG post of Kendrick doing push-ups , while playing into rumors that Dot is stuck in unfavorable record label deals. By rapping “drop and give me 50,” Drake is alluding to the idea of Top Dawg Entertainment CEO Anthony “Top” Tiffith taking 50% of Kendrick's publishing splits and "extorting" him for his entire career.

Drake goes on to say that Mr. Morales and The Big Steppers “bricked” and that rap fans “make excuses for you because they hate to see me lit.” Then he references Kendrick’s contract again and blasts Dot’s records with pop stars like Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift when he raps, “Pull your contract ‘cause we gotta see the split, aye/ The way you doing splits, bitch, your pants might rip/ You better do that muthafuckin show inside the bitty/ Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty/ Then we need a verse for the Swifties/ Top says drop, you better drop and give him 50.” For years, people have been trying to discredit Drake as a rapper by labeling him as a “pop star,” so The Boy is cleverly pointing out that Dot isn’t immune from the same criticism. Despite being known as a lyrical rapper, Kendrick has also made off-brand pop hits with the likes of Taylor Swift and Maroon 5, possibly at the encouragement of his label, in an attempt at chart success.

A few bars later, Drake hits Kendrick with some Big 3 lyrics, rapping, “Pipsqueak, pipe down/ You ain't in no Big 3, SZA got you wiped down/ Travis got you wiped down/ Savage got you wiped down.” Here, he’s implying that major artists like SZA, Travis Scott, and 21 Savage have been more successful and should be counted in the Big 3 ahead of Kendrick.

Drake comes after Kendrick’s financial situation again on the next bar, rapping, “Like your label, boy, you in the scope right now/ And you gon' feel the aftermath of what I write down.” The first line is a double entendre about Kendrick being in Drake’s scope now that they're exchanging shots, while also making fun of Dot’s rumored unfavorable situation with Interscope Records. Then Drake references Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Records, an Interscope-distributed label that Kendrick signed to early in his career, while boasting about the effects of his own disses on Dot’s career.

Next, Drake delivers a sharp response to Kendrick’s “Prince outlived Mike Jack” line by rapping, “Big difference between Mike then and the Mike now [...] What’s a Prince to a King, he a son nigga?” Pointing out that a prince is literally the son of a king might feel obvious, but Prince Jackson is also the name of Michael Jackson’s literal son, which gives the bar extra significance. Drake also claims that he “gets more love in the city that you from, nigga,” arguing that he gets more respect in LA than Kendrick does.

Later in the song, he responds to Kendrick’s line about Drake and Cole bringing “three switches,” by rapping, “Hugs and kisses, man, don't tell me 'bout no switches/ I be rockin' every fuckin' chain I own next visit,” before referencing Whitney Houston’s The Bodyguard (“I be with some bodyguards like Whitney”) in a double entendre that also includes a namedrop of Kendrick’s wife Whitney Alford. (Did Drake not learn anything from his Pusha-T beef and the “Virginia Williams” line ?!) Then he calls Kendrick a “midget,” and falls back on his “I’m richer than you” tactics by bragging about how, “Numbers-wise, I'm out of here, you not fuckin' creepin' up/Money-wise, I'm out of here, you not fuckin' sneakin' up,”

After shooting at some other rappers, Drake finishes his jabs at Kendrick by calling “Like That” “weak as fuck” and clarifying that the song didn’t “start the beef with us,” pointing out that “this shit been brewin' in a pot, now I'm heatin' up.” Clearly, the animosity between Dot and Drake has been bubbling for years.

Musician on stage singing, wearing a beanie, tank top, and chain necklace

Drake opens the whole song by rapping, “I could never be nobody number one fan/Your first No. 1 I had to put it in your hand,” which is seemingly a response to Future’s line on “We Don’t Trust You” when he rapped, “You a nigga number one fan, dog/Sneak dissin', I don’t understand, dog/Pillowtalkin', actin' like a fed, dog.” The second half of the bar is a reminder that Future finally got his first No. 1 song (“Way 2 Sexy”) in 2021 thanks to Drake.

Metro Boomin

Metro Boomin has been at the center of this feud the entire time, but he’s not a rapper, so he can’t air out his grievances with rhymes like Future, Drake, and Kendrick can. Still, it’s hilarious that despite how much Metro has fanned the flames of this war, Drake only gives him one line. Still, it’s very effective and quotable, so it will likely be the main line getting chanted if this song is ever played outside: “Metro, shut yo hoe ass up and make some drums, nigga.”

The Weeknd (and XO management)

After The Weeknd fired at Drake on “All to Myself,” The Boy comes right back at him when he raps, “I’m a 6 God, I’m the front-runner/ Y’all nigga manager was Chubbs lil blunt-runner/ Claim the 6 and you boys ain’t even come from it/ And when you boys got rich, you had to run from it.” Drake is implying that The Weeknd’s manager (presumably Wassim “Sal” Slaiby) was at one point his best friend Chubbs’ “blunt-runner.” Then Drake calls out The Weeknd by name and says that XO co-founder Amir “Cash” Esmalian wastes all of his money (“Cash blowin' Abel bread out here trickin'/ Shot we do for bitches he doing for niggas”) before playing with the chorus of Future’s “Wicked” (“Jets, whips, chains, shit get wicked, wicked, wicked/Spendin like you tryna fuck, boy you trippin”) to emphasize their poor financial decisions. All of Drake’s references to The Weeknd’s behind-the-scenes XO management team is a major clue that messy Toronto drama and personal issues might be lurking behind this whole beef.

Drake sounds as surprised as the rest of us that Rick Ross involved himself in this war, rapping, “I might take your latest girl and cuff her like Ricky/ Can’t believe he’s jumping in, this nigga turning 50/ Every song that made it on the chart he got from Drizzy/ Worry 'bout whatever going on with you and—.” The bar about taking “your latest girl” seemingly confirms that Drake did invite Ross’ ex Cristina Mackey to his recent concert. And the fact that Drake took credit for Ross’ biggest songs while using his own ad-lib against him makes this one of the best shots on the whole track. In fact, it was so effective that Ross has already responded with a track of his own, where he calls Drake a “white boy” and claims that he’s had cosmetic surgery on his nose. The immediate return fire from Ross was surprising, but not as surprising as Drake also taking a shot at…

Drake raps, “Shoutout to the hooper that be bustin’ out The Griddy/ I know why you mad, nigga, I ain’t even trippin/ All that little heartbroken Twitter shit for bitches.” So let’s break it down: “The Griddy” is Ja’s celebration dance , and while Drake doesn’t spell out why the NBA player would be “mad,” it could have something to do with rumors that Ja was dating his ex at one point.

Travis Scott (Maybe?)

Early in the song, Drake seems to give Travis Scott props by rapping, “Travis got [Kendrick] wiped down,” but fans think the Houston rapper might've still been hit with a stray later in the track when Drake raps, “Rolling Loud stage, y’all were turnt, that was slick as hell,” alluding to Future and Metro Boomin’s recent Rolling Loud performance where they played a snippet of “Like That.” Footage from the concert showed Travis hyping up Future and Metro to play “Like That,” and while it’s unclear if he had heard the final version of the song that included a diss from Kendrick, some fans are speculating that Drake is talking about him in the very next line when he says, “Shit’ll probably change if your BM starts to kiss and tell.” This line is a little unclear, though, and could be interpreted as a shot at either Travis or Future. Time will tell.

Drake mentions J. Cole…

Drake namedrops Cole in the second half of the song when he raps, “I don't care what Cole think, that Dot shit was weak as fuck/ ‘Champagne trippin', he is not fuckin' easin' up’/ Nigga called up Top to see if Top wanna peace it up/ "Top, wanna peace it up? Top, wanna peace it up?"/ Nah, pussy, now you on your own when you speakin' up.” Drake’s bar about how he “don’t care what Cole think, that Dot shit was weak as fuck” is a reference to Cole’s speech at Dreamville Fest where he apologized to Kendrick and described “Like That” as a “bazooka.” People are also speculating that on the rest of these bars, Drake is saying that Cole called Top Dawg in an effort to squash the entire beef.

And then he shoots at everyone:

Drake closes the song by spraying at everybody. First, he acknowledges that Metro and Future “done rolled deep to this” before boasting that “it's not fuckin' deep enough.” Then he namedrops Kai Cenat (“Beggin Kai Cenat when you not fuckin beatin us”) while hinting that some of his foes may have tried reaching out to the streamer in an attempt to bring more attention to their Drake disses, something that Cenat likely declined and relayed to Drizzy.

Drake ends the track with an ominous hint that this whole song is just a warning shot: “This ain’t even everything I know, don’t wake the demon up/ Drop and give me 50 all you fuck niggas teamin’ up.” Then there’s a short beat switch at the end, which feels like Drake’s way of teasing that he has a whole other track ready to go whenever someone responds next.

So… Was it enough?

While it wasn’t “nuclear” like Joe Budden described, Drake still manages to take solid shots at nearly every rapper who has said something slick about him in the last two weeks. It’s impressive that Drake was able to address all of his foes while still making the song feel fluid, especially when going up against elite artists like Kendrick Lamar, Future, Rick Ross, and The Weeknd. I can’t lie, though, Kendrick Lamar feels bulletproof. J. Cole already apologized, and all that Drake had to offer against Kendrick was that he’s short, Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers was mid, and he has questionable business practices. None of these jabs feel very damaging to Kendrick’s place in the rap hierarchy, and these bars might not be enough when you’re going against a guy who won a Pulitzer but still does prison workouts in his front yard. Namedropping Kendrick’s wife was a questionable move that will likely elicit some type of response from Dot, but it sounds like Drake is ready for whatever smoke might be coming his way. If this is just a warning shot like he alluded to, things might get a lot more serious (from both sides) in the next round. Drake answered the opening shots, and it's now anyone's game to win this brawl.

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The ‘Golden Bachelor’ Is Getting a Divorce

The “Golden Bachelor” couple, Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist, said they are getting a divorce, just three months after getting hitched.

A still from ”The Golden Bachelor” showing its lead, Gerry Turner, left, and Theresa Nist dressed in formal wear and raising glasses of champagne.

By Callie Holtermann

The reporter wrote a profile of Gerry Turner and traveled to California to report from his wedding to Theresa Nist.

Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist were the first couple to meet and marry on “The Golden Bachelor,” ABC’s spinoff of “The Bachelor” featuring cast members 60 and older.

On Friday, the newlyweds announced that they will also be the spinoff’s first couple to divorce.

They made the announcement in a joint appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations, and we’ve looked closely at our situation, our living situation, and we’ve come to the conclusion mutually that it’s probably time for us to dissolve our marriage,” Mr. Turner, 72, said.

The anchor Juju Chang replied in shock. “Three months after getting married?” she said. “I mean, what the heck, guys?” she asked later in the interview.

Explaining their decision, Mr. Turner said both were dedicated to their families — each has children from previous marriages, as well as grandchildren — and that it made the most sense for them to live separately. Ms. Nist, 70, added that they had looked at homes near family members in South Carolina and New Jersey but that they had been unable to reach a conclusion.

The couple, through a representative, declined to be interviewed for this article.

The franchise had positioned the pair as evidence that invigorating love stories can unfold later in life . Before marrying Ms. Nist, Mr. Turner, a retiree from Indiana, was married for 43 years to his high school sweetheart, Toni. She died in 2017 after a brief illness.

“People my age still fall in love,” Mr. Turner told The New York Times after he was announced as the series lead of the first “Golden Bachelor” season. “People my age still have hope, and they still have vigorous lives.”

On the show, he quickly connected with Ms. Nist, a financial services professional from Shrewsbury, N.J., and one of 22 women vying for his affection. The couple bonded over their experiences of loss — Ms. Nist’s first husband, Billy, died in 2014.

Mr. Turner proposed to Ms. Nist on the “Golden Bachelor” season finale, which was broadcast in November. The pair married in a televised ceremony in Southern California in January, which was attended by several of Mr. Turner’s ex-girlfriends from the season.

Around the time of the “Golden Bachelor” finale, The Hollywood Reporter published an article in which a woman claiming to have dated Mr. Turner said he had misrepresented his romantic history on the show, and that the two had been in a serious relationship that he had omitted. Mr. Turner told The Times that he had given the article only a “cursory look” and could not speak to its accuracy.

“The Golden Bachelor” renewed interest in the “Bachelor” franchise at a time when its ratings had been slipping. According to Nielsen statistics, the eight episodes before the “Golden Bachelor” finale on average received more viewers than any full seasons of the franchise that have aired since 2021. In February, ABC announced plans for “The Golden Bachelorette,” a version of the spinoff with a female lead.

After Mr. Turner and Ms. Nist announced their plans to divorce on Friday, some “Golden Bachelor” viewers expressed disappointment and the occasional “I told you so” on social media. The split was not unusual for the “Bachelor” franchise, which has produced far more breakups than marriages .

Ms. Nist said on “Good Morning America” that she hoped the pair’s divorce would not discourage viewers who had been inspired by the couple. “We say, ‘Don’t give up,’” she said. “We say, ‘Stay in it, stay hopeful, because we are.’”

Callie Holtermann reports on style and pop culture for The Times. More about Callie Holtermann

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GOP Rep. Mike Turner: Russian propaganda is 'being uttered on the House floor'

GOP Rep. Mike Turner said Sunday that Russian propaganda has taken hold among some of his House Republican colleagues and is even "being uttered on the House floor."

"We see directly coming from Russia ... communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor," Turner, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union."

"There are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not," he added.

Turner's office did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for clarification about which members of Congress he was referring to.

His comments come on the heels of remarks House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul made this week about how Russian propaganda has taken root among the GOP.

McCaul, a Texas Republican, told Puck News that he thinks "Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base."

Turner and McCaul each tied Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, to other authoritarian leaders, including President Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea.

"[The propaganda] makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle, which is what it is," Turner told CNN, adding, "President Xi of China, Vladimir Putin himself have identified as such."

McCaul described explaining to colleagues that the threat of Russian propaganda is similar to threats made by other U.S. adversaries.

"I have to explain to them what’s at stake, why Ukraine is in our national security interest," he said. "By the way, you don’t like Communist China? Well, guess what? They’re aligned [with Russia], along with the ayatollah [of Iran]. So when you explain it that way, they kind of start understanding it."

The committee chairs' remarks about Russian propaganda came as they spoke about the need for Congress to approve more military aid to Ukraine.

"Ukraine needs our help and assistance now, and this is a very critical time for the U.S. Congress to step up and provide that aid," Turner told CNN.

The House in recent months has stalled on efforts to pass Ukraine aid, with Speaker Mike Johnson refusing to put an aid package the Senate passed in February that would provide resources to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan on the House floor.

Last week, Rep. Don Bacon said on NBC News' "Meet the Press" that he had commitments from Johnson and McCaul that they would allow a bipartisan Ukraine military aid package to advance to a vote.

Rep. French Hill echoed this point on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday morning, saying he believes Johnson will bring Ukraine aid to the floor "immediately after completing the work on [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] and FISA's extension — that deadline of April 19 makes it a priority for the first few days we're back."

"I believe he's fully committed to bringing it up to the floor immediately thereafter," Hill added.

But Bacon, R-Neb., also warned that Johnson could face a vote to oust him from the speakership if he moves forward with Ukraine aid.

On Sunday, Turner downplayed the notion that Johnson's position was at risk over Ukraine aid.

"I don't think he's at any risk," Turner said. "I think that what people have been referring to as the 'chaos caucus,' those individuals who are seeking attention for themselves and trying to stop all of the important work in Congress, are now seen as merely disruptive."

Democrats have signaled that they could join several Republicans in helping to save Johnson's speakership if a motion to vacate, such as the one filed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene just before the House left for a two-week Easter recess, were brought to a vote.

Alexandra Marquez is a politics reporter for NBC News.

The honeymoon is over: ‘The Golden Bachelor’ and his bride call it quits after 3 months

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“The Golden Bachelor” star Gerry Turner was overjoyed when he proposed to financial services professional Theresa Nist , putting a fairy-tale stamp on his journey to find love again at 72. The couple rushed to get married, eager to start their new life together.

But the fairy tale is over. Just more than three months after their sprint to the altar, in a gala ceremony televised live on ABC , the widower and his new bride are breaking up.

The couple announced the bombshell during an emotional interview Friday on “Good Morning America.” While maintaining that they still love and cherish each other, they say they realized the obstacles of moving forward as husband and wife are too daunting.

After a number of heart-to-heart conversations, “we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably time to dissolve our marriage,” Turner said in the interview. They also said they were nervous about how fans would react to the shocking news.

Much of the decision was linked to the inability to decide how to merge their lives. One challenge? Nist lives in New Jersey, while Turner is from Indiana. They had hoped to compromise by moving to South Carolina, but they could never reach an agreement.

“The thing that strikes me the most has been how dedicated we are to our families,” Turner said. “We just feel like it’s the best, for the happiness of both of us, to live apart.”

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA - AUGUST 11: Portrait of Gerry Turner, the "Golden Bachelor", at Westlake Village Inn on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023 in Westlake Village, CA.(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

22 women and a second chance at love: Gerry Turner’s ‘whirlwind’ moment as ‘The Golden Bachelor’

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Aug. 31, 2023

The announcement marks a stunning epilogue to the wildly successful launch of “The Golden Bachelor,” a spinoff of “The Bachelor” reality franchise. The show’s popularity, which extended beyond the core Bachelor Nation fan base, was largely credited to Turner’s natural warmth and charisma, which transformed the retired restaurateur into a national celebrity.

Episodes showing Turner dating a pool of 22 women, inspiring viewing parties at retirement homes and senior centers across the nation. And while Turner’s primary goal was to find a life partner, he also wanted to convey a message of hope to older viewers that they should never give up on finding romance and love.

“I feel we accomplished something very meaningful and historic,” Turner told The Times in November . “Because of how strong the women were and how much I enjoyed the journey, the message of hope that at our age we were still meaningful and we can still find love came out so strongly. That is the part of history that I hope carries on. Theresa and I have gotten so many letters from people who have said, ‘We’ve watched you on the show and we have developed so much confidence that we are going to go out there and date.’ ”

Gerry Turned and Leslie Fhima in the final episode of "The Golden Bachelor."

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Dec. 1, 2023

A key part of the connection between Turner and Nist were their similar personal histories. Both were married for more than 40 years to their high-school sweethearts. Turner’s wife, Toni, died of a bacterial infection; Nist’s husband, Billy, died of kidney failure. Both said they had not been involved in a serious relationship since their spouses passed away.

In the season finale, Turner chose Nist over finalist Leslie Fhima as his bride-to-be. Holding hands as they faced each other in a lush field, Turner told Nist, “You’re not the right person for me to live with,” pausing dramatically before declaring: “You’re the person I can’t live without.”

In the “After the Final Rose” segment of the November finale, the couple declared they would get married in January. The lavish ceremony was held at the La Quinta Resort & Club and was attended by hundreds, including several alumni of “The Bachelor” franchise. The reception featured Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,’ ” which the couple adopted as their song.

In his interview with The Times after the finale, Turner said the two were close to figuring out how they would blend their lives.

“For the last couple of years at Christmastime, my family and I would talk about how the fall chores at the lake house were getting too much for me to handle by myself,” he said. “I had identified Charleston, S.C., as a place I could possibly move to and live. In conversations near the end of my journey, Theresa talked about having a son and three grandsons in the Charleston area. All of a sudden, the possible obstacle of geography melted away. Maybe it’s fate that really helped us in that department, but it really lifted a burden off both of us on what that compromise would be.”

Although the inaugural season of “The Golden Bachelor” did not have a happy ending, plans are still moving forward for the franchise’s launch of “The Golden Bachelorette,” with the announcement of its star forthcoming.

Introducing Jenn Tran: The first Asian woman to lead ‘The Bachelorette’ — finally

March 26, 2024

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AUSTELL, GEORGIA - FEBRUARY 25: Simon Guobadia and Porsha Williams attend the 2023 Pink Awards at Riverside EpiCenter on February 25, 2023 in Austell, Georgia. (Photo by Derek White/Getty Images)

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A lifelong Los Angeles resident, Greg Braxton has written for the Los Angeles Times for more than three decades. He currently is a staff writer covering television for the Calendar section, and has also written extensively about trends and cultural issues in the entertainment field.

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The Turner Thesis: A Problem in Historiography
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THE TURNER THESIS A PROBLEM IN HISTORIOGRAPHY

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Turner Thesis
'Golden Bachelor' Gerry Turner accused of blindsiding runner-up Leslie Fhima: 'I don't respect what
'Golden Bachelor' Gerry Turner accused of blindsiding runner-up Leslie Fhima
From Heroism to Heartbreak: The Tragic Tale of William Turner and the Unseen Aftermath 👨‍🚒

COMMENTS

Frontier Thesis
The Frontier Thesis, also known as Turner's Thesis or American frontierism, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that the settlement and colonization of the rugged American frontier was decisive in forming the culture of American democracy and distinguishing it from European nations. He stressed the process of "winning a wilderness" to extend the frontier line ...
Why was the Turner Thesis abandoned by historians
Why was the Turner Thesis abandoned by historians. Fredrick Jackson Turner's thesis of the American frontier defined the study of the American West during the 20th century. In 1893, Turner argued that "American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its ...
How the Myth of the American Frontier Got Its Start
Like so many young scholars, Turner worked hard to bring attention to his thesis. He incorporated it into the graduate seminars he taught, lectured about it across the Midwest and wrote the entry ...
The Turner Thesis: A Historian's Controversy
In this paper he brings together the historians' "pros and cons" of the Turner frontier thesis. He con- cludes the controversy over Turner with the solution that is advanced by Professor John Hicks in his "The 'Ecology' of Middle-Western Historians," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, 24:348 (June, 1941).
Frederick Jackson Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner (born November 14, 1861, Portage, Wisconsin, U.S.—died March 14, 1932, San Marino, California) was an American historian best known for the " frontier thesis." The single most influential interpretation of the American past, it proposed that the distinctiveness of the United States was attributable to its long history of "westering."
The Turner Thesis and the Role of the Frontier in American History
the frontier, argued Turner, was in. promoting democracy. The fron tier produced a fierce individual. ism which opposed outside controls. and promoted a pure form of dem ocratic action. The West, according to Turner, had done more to devel op self-government and to increase. democratic suffrage than any other.
The West as History: The Turner Thesis
The young Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his "frontier thesis," one of the most influential theories of American history, in his essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History.". Turner looked back at the historical changes in the West and saw, instead of a tsunami of war and plunder and industry ...
PDF Frontier Democracy: The Turner Thesis Revisited
there is arguably something about Turner and his frontier thesis, in-spired as it was by the twilight years of the nineteenth century, that speaks directly to our condition in the waning years of the twentieth. The normally optimistic Turner wrote his celebrated frontier es-say in an odd moment of anxiety, as he fretted over a casual observa-
17.9: The West as History- the Turner Thesis
The history of the West was many-sided and it was made by many persons and peoples. Turner's thesis was rife with faults, not only in its bald Anglo-Saxon chauvinism—in which nonwhites fell before the march of "civilization" and Chinese and Mexican immigrants were invisible—but in its utter inability to appreciate the impact of ...
Frontier Thesis
The Frontier Thesis or Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that American democracy was formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed results, especially that American democracy was the primary result, along with egalitarianism ...
PDF The Turner Thesis
The Turner thesis reigned almost un¬ challenged until the early 1930 s. Since then a growing revolt has spread as one scholar after another has trained his heaviest guns on various aspects of the frontier hypothesis. The readings provide. sampling of the chief criticisms which have been raised.
PDF Turner Is Still on The Burner "Turner Is Still on The Burner:" a
The purpose of this essay is to explore the presence of Turner's thesis in frontier and Western historiography, ranging from the work of Turner himself to the so‐called "new" western historians of the present. By examining the pantheon of the twentieth century's "old" and "new" Western historians, this paper will illustrate ...
Digital History
The Turner Thesis In 1893, three years after the superintendent of the Census announced that the western frontier was closed, Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian from the University of Wisconsin, advanced a thesis that the conquest of the western frontier had given American society its special character.
PDF The Myth of the Frontier
Frederick Jackson Turner pointed out a century ago).ﬂ Those who have contested this view (Walsh, 2005, for an excellent discussion) have tended to focus on the extent to which the Frontier did or did not have the postulated e⁄ects within the United States. At some level the acceptance of the Frontier thesis and the nature of the debate is quite
Turner Thesis
Turner's thesis argued that American uniqueness and vitality lay in its land and vast frontier. Since the eastern coast of the United States was the first to be settled, the American frontier ...
Was Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis Myth or Reality?
Claim A. Every nation has a creation myth, a simple yet satisfying story that inspires pride in its people. The United States is no exception, but our creation myth is all about exceptionalism. In his famous essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," Frederick Jackson Turner claimed that the process of westward expansion ...
The West as History: The Turner Thesis
The young Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his "frontier thesis," one of the most influential theories of American history, in his essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History.". Turner looked back at the historical changes in the West and saw, instead of a tsunami of war and plunder and industry ...
Frederick Jackson Turner, "Significance of the Frontier in American
Frederick Jackson Turner, "Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893) Perhaps the most influential essay by an American historian, Frederick Jackson Turner's address to the American Historical Association on "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" defined for many Americans the relationship between the frontier and American culture and contemplated what ...
The Turner Thesis Reexamined
The Turner Thesis Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American History (Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1949), p. 1. great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom-these are traits of the frontier."
What was Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis"?
How did Americans justify their settler colonialism? February 19, 2021. How were other imperial powers competing for territory around the turn of the twentieth century? February 19, 2021. What was Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis"? February 19, 2021. Analysis of "American Progress" by John Gast (1872) February 19, 2021.
American Democracy' History: Turner's Thesis Essay
The Turner Thesis claimed that American democracy was formed out of the American Frontier, whereby the process had a great impact on the natives. The interaction with the people at the frontier resulted in the adoption of moderate culture, democracy, and violence towards the people of color. In his analysis of Turner's article, Ridge observed ...
Let's Call the Golden Bachelor's "Divorce" What It Really Is
Now we know the answer is no. Per their rehearsed announcement on Good Morning America on Friday morning, they are splitsville. But I refuse to call it a divorce. At best, it is a "divorce ...
'Golden Bachelor' host Jesse Palmer breaks silence on Gerry Turner's
Jesse Palmer, who hosted "The Golden Bachelor," said that he wished Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist "nothing but happiness" after the pair announced that they were filing for divorce after being ...
Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner Files for Divorce From Theresa Nist
Golden Bachelor's Gerry Turner Officially Files for Divorce from Theresa Nist 3 Months After Wedding. Turner and Nist fell in love and got engaged on season 1 of the ABC reality television show ...
'Golden Bachelor' couple Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist announce they
The pair, holding hands during the interview, reiterated that they did not fall out of love. "I still love this person," Turner said. "There's no doubt in my mind, I still am in love with her.
'Golden Bachelor' split: Timeline from romance to divorcing
Gerry Turner proposes to Theresa Nist, leaving contestant Leslie Fhima 'blindsided' On the Nov. 30 finale of the reality dating show's first senior edition, Turner made his final choice from the ...
Breaking Down All of Drake's Shots at Kendrick (and Half ...
Drake opens the whole song by rapping, "I could never be nobody number one fan/Your first No. 1 I had to put it in your hand," which is seemingly a response to Future's line on "We Don't ...
'Golden Bachelor' Couple Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist Announce Divorce
The "Golden Bachelor" couple, Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist, said they are getting a divorce, just three months after getting hitched. By Callie Holtermann The reporter wrote a profile of ...
GOP Reps. Mike Turner and Mike McCaul say Russian propaganda is being
GOP Rep. Mike Turner said Sunday that Russian propaganda has taken hold among some of his House Republican colleagues and is even "being uttered on the House floor."
'The Golden Bachelor': Gerry, Theresa announce divorce on GMA
"The thing that strikes me the most has been how dedicated we are to our families," Turner said. "We just feel like it's the best, for the happiness of both of us, to live apart." ...