e past quarter century to interpret the relations
of the present to the past. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the
various societies and periodicals which have given permission to reprint
the essays.

Various essays dealing with the connection of diplomatic history and the
frontier and others stressing the significance of the section, or
geographic province, in American history, are not included in the
present collection. Neither the French nor the Spanish frontier is
within the scope of the volume.

The future alone can disclose how far these interpretations are correct
for the age of colonization which came gradually to an end with the
disappearance of the frontier and free land. It alone can reveal how
much of the courageous, creative American spirit, and how large a part
of the historic American ideals are to be carried over into that new age
which is replacing the era of free lands and of measurable isolation by
consolidated and complex industrial development and by increasing
resemblances and connections between the New World and the Old.

But the larger part of what has been distinctive and valuable in
America's contribution to the history of the human spirit has been due
to this nation's peculiar experience in extending its type of frontier
into new regions; and in creating peaceful societies with new ideals in
the successive vast and differing geographic provinces which together
make up the United States. Directly or indirectly these experiences
shaped the life of the Eastern as well as the Western States, and even
reacted upon the Old World and influenced the direction of its thought
and its progress. This experience has been fundamental in the economic,
political and social characteristics of the American people and in their
conceptions of their destiny.

Writing at the close of 1796, the French minister to the United States,
M. Adet, reported to his government that Jefferson could not be relied
on to be devoted to French interests, and he added: "Jefferson, I say,
is American, and by that name, he cannot be sincerely our friend. An
American is the born enemy of all European peoples." Obviously erroneous
as are these words, there was an element of truth in them. If we would
understand this element of truth, we must study the transforming
influence of the American wilderness, remote from Europe, and by its
resources and its free opportunities affording the conditions under
which a new people, with new so