A Race at Bay

de Robert Hays

Drawing on four decades of New York Times editorials, Robert G. 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 it commonly called "the Indian problem." Selecting some of the best of these editorials, Hays provides today's readers with a comprehensive picture of what people at the time thought about this enduring national conflict. The authentic voices of a national newspaper's daily record speak with an urgency both immediate and real. These editorials express the unbridled bitterness and raw ambition of a nation immersed in an agenda of conquest. They also resonate with the struggle to find common ground.