Editorializing "The Indian Problem": The New York Times on Native Americans, 1860-1900 - Softcover

Hays, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809327627 ISBN 13: 9780809327621

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Drawing on four decades of New York Times editorials, Robert Hays demonstrates the magnitude of the conflict between Native American and white European cultures as settlers and adventurers spread rapidly across the continent in the post–Civil War period.




From 1860 through 1900, the Times published nearly a thousand editorials on what was commonly called “the Indian problem.” Selecting some of the best of these editorials, Hays gives readers what current accounts cannot: contemporary writers’ perspectives on the public images of Native Americans and their place in a nation bent on expansion. Some editorials express the unbridled bitterness and raw ambition of a nation immersed in an agenda of conquest, while others resonate with the struggle to find a common ground. Still others evince an attitude of respect, which set the tone for reconciling national ambition with natural rights.
American history demonstrates time and again the price of Manifest Destiny.



Many of the issues confronting nineteenth-century Native Americans remain alive today: unemployment, infant mortality, suicide, crime, alcoholism, and poverty. In presenting the authentic and urgent voices of a national newspaper’s daily record, Hays illuminates the roots of our current challenges.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Hays has been a newspaper reporter, public relations writer, magazine editor, political campaign manager and university professor and administrator. A native of Illinois, he taught in Texas and Missouri and retired from a long journalism teaching career at the University of Illinois. He also has spent a great deal of time in South Carolina, the home state of his wife Mary, and was an active member of the South Carolina Writers Workshop. He served in the U.S. Army and holds three degrees, including an interdisciplinary Ph.D., from Southern Illinois University. His publications include academic journal and popular periodical articles and 12 books (one of these a re-titled paperback edition). His most recent non-fiction book is a biographical memoir about his close friend and collaborator, Gen. Oscar Koch, who was World War II intelligence chief for Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. Three of his five novels have been honored with Pushcart Prize nominations. Robert and Mary live in Champaign, Illinois. They have two sons and a grandson.

Edition details

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809327627
• ISBN 13: 9780809327621
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 392