History 3260 MIDTERM PART ONE Essay - 2227 Words

1. Utah is both a product of the times in which it emerged but also a unique entity that worked to shape its own future. Robbins and Malone both describe how the west, and by a large extent Utah is a part of the great narrative of the American West and sometimes differing from it entirely. By exploring the different facets and predominant activities of 1850s and beyond we can find clues as to the origins and ultimate fate of the region . By exploring Western American capitalism, various functions of manifest destiny, and how settlers adhered to the frontier pioneer spirit we can learn the overall narrative in which the region participates. Capitalism in the West: Mormons may have been among the first to settle in Utah; however†¦show more content†¦If the thing was one pragmatic to be done, then the most immediate, rough and ready, effective way was the best way. Utah settlers followed this model, although with less personal autonomy and more respect for religious authority in worldly matters.7 Mormon settlers followed this idea in the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law in forging their new identity out west. It followed from the lack of organized political life in the backwoods society, that the individual was exalted and given free play. The West was another name for opportunity. Here were mines to be seized, fertile valleys to be claimed; all the natural resources open to the shrewdest and the boldest. The United States is unique in the extent to which the individual has been given an open field, unchecked by restraints of an old social order, or of restrictions of government.8 The self-m ade man was the Western mans ideal, was the kind of man that all men might become. Out of his wilderness experience, out of the freedom of his opportunities, he fashioned a formula for social regeneration, the freedom of the individual to seek his own. This also was the way of the Utah early settler which was effectively a country unto itself.9 Without hindrances settlers claimed the Salt Lake Valley and made it their own in the manner which they saw fit, relying only on their own better judgment and ability