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Stephen J. Rockwell analyzes the role of national administration in Indian affairs and other national policy areas related to westward expansion in the nineteenth century.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. The myth of open wilderness and the outlines of big government; 2. Managed expansion in the early republic; 3. Tippecanoe and treaties, too: executive leadership, organization, and effectiveness in the years of the factory system; 4. The key to success and the illusion of failure; 5. Big government Jacksonians; 6. Tragically effective: the administration of Indian removal; 7. Public administration, politics, and Indian removal: perpetuating the illusion of failure; 8. Clearing the Indian barrier: Indian affairs at the center of national expansion; 9. Containment and the weakening of Indian resistance: the effectiveness of reservation administration; 10. What's an administrator to do? Reservations and politics; 11. Conclusion: the myth of limited government.
About the author
Stephen J. Rockwell is an Associate Professor of Political Science at St Joseph's College in Patchogue, New York. He taught in the Political Science and Public Administration programs at the University of Michigan-Flint and worked as a Senior Research Analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He is the co-author (with Peter Woll) of American Government: Competition and Compromise (2001) and co-editor (with Peter Woll) of an anthology entitled American Political Ideals and Realities (2000).
Summary
Stephen J. Rockwell examines the significance of Indian affairs and national management of westward expansion in the nineteenth century. His research reveals a vibrant and complicated Indian affairs bureaucracy, and a powerful, intrusive national administrative state, in operation from the republic's earliest years.
