Frontier values, for the most part then, were democratic in tendency. Noteworthy for their attitude of community cooperation and mutual helpfulness, supported by a faith which could not afford to be exclusive, temperate in their personal habits, particularly in the use of alcohol, the patriots of the Fair Play territory looked to a future filled with promise and opportunity for all the diverse elements of their society. This is the democracy which the frontier nurtured. It flourished in the West Branch Valley.
In summary then, was self-determination the central theme in the Fair Play territory? Did the Fair Play settlers truly determine their own political, economic, and social institutions? The available data suggest that they did.
The democracy of the Fair Play settlers encompassed popular sovereignty, political equality, popular consultation, majority rule, religious freedom, an open class structure, free land, free labor, and a value system whose dominating feature was mutual helpfulness. The democracy of Fair Play was basically the fair play of democracy.
Observable in this atmosphere were the traits of a developing American character, traits which the frontier historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, defined as democratic.[24] These included the composite nationality of a population of mixed national origins; the self-reliance which the new experience of the frontier developed; the independence, both of action and in spirit, which the relative isolation of the environment promoted; a rationalistic, or pragmatic, approach to problems necessitated by circumstances lacking in precedents for solution; and perhaps a growing nationalism, marked by an identification with something larger than the mere Provincial assembly, something existing, but not yet realized, the American nation.
These traits, in conjunction with Turner's thesis, are a major concern of the final chapter. That chapter will provide an evaluation of frontier ethnography as a technique for testing the validity of this interpretation of Turner's thesis on the Fair Play frontier of the West Branch Valley.
[1] Quoted in Austin Ranney and Willmoore Kendall, _Democracy and the American Party System_ (New York, 1956), pp. 23-24.