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An abiding issue that initially confounded the new nation was the question of its essential character: Was there anything in the American experience worth writing about. It took less than two decades to resolve the problem with the growing, popular fascination with the American wilderness and frontier. Feared as the seat of Satan by some, others embraced the vast, forested lands which promised rewards equal to the labor it took to domesticate it. For others, the "great frontier" demonstrated spiritual properties and metaphors for meaningful individual and social life. From it grew regional identities that would define some of the initial cultural conflicts between the American communities.
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