In May 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt convened the nation’s governors at the White House to discuss conserving the country’s resources. Both the president and vice president attended, as did cabinet members, Supreme Court justices and thirty-nine state and territorial governors. They were joined by a cadre of guests known for their innovative thinking and influential actions, including populist William Jennings Bryan and industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

The meeting achieved its goal, yielding a policy declaration concerning conservation, but it also was notable for another idea—the creation of a national organization for governors. As Louisiana Governor Newton Blanchard noted, “Personally, I...

In May 1908, Governor Joseph W. Folk of Missouri stood before an unprecedented assembly of governors at the White House. While every man there carefully guarded the sovereignty of his state, these governors believed that the interests of their states as well as the nation as a whole necessitated greater communication and cooperation. Standing before his peers, Folk declared that the meeting had transpired by the providence of history, a country no longer hampered by sectional strife and poor transportation. “We [meet] here now as one large family,” Folk mused, “In looking at the map on the wall before us...

Reflecting the optimism of the Progressive Era, governors in the 1910s were excited about the opportunity for greater interstate cooperation. Reuniting in 1910, they began to lay the framework for their association. Charles Evans Hughes (1907–1910), then governor of New York and later secretary of state and chief justice of the Supreme Court, predicted, “The future prosperity of the country must largely depend upon the efficiency of State governments,” an efficiency possible because of “an increasing intimacy of relations and facility of communication” among states. Hughes proudly proclaimed, “The ancient jealousies that have divided us are now forgotten. The...

The early years of the twentieth century before World War I were a glorious time for America’s governors. The challenges of the industrial revolution, particularly the rise of big business and its ties to political machines, were slow to be addressed by government at the national level, particularly after conservative forces won a decisive electoral victory in 1896 under President William McKinley and his pro-business wing of the Republican Party. McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, would be a different kind of Republican, and he would gradually begin to push a reform agenda in Washington. In the meantime, dynamic governors and state-level...

In the 1920s and 1930s, governors embraced interstate cooperation and became confident this practice would empower governors and states. They began to enjoy the expanded scope of their office while warily noting similar expansion in the national government. In these years, governors led the nation through prosperity and pitfalls. They drew on the strength of the Governors’ Conference to voice their concerns and affect national events. In the midst of this sea change, governors became even more convinced of the benefits of cooperation, assured of their association, and willing to consider new national and international perspectives. They overcame their hesitancy...

From 1928 until his violent death in 1935, Huey Long did more good for the people of Louisiana than any politician before or since. In the midst of the Great Depression, he built nine thousand miles of new roads, erected more than a hundred bridges over swamps and rivers, and pulled his state from the horse-and-buggy days into the age of modern transportation. By giving free textbooks to students he allowed thousands of poor children to attend school, and his adult night classes taught 175,000 illiterate Louisianans to read, including many poor blacks. He doubled the number of beds in...

In the 1940s, national emergency and the expanded activism of state and federal governments convinced governors that they had not only a right to become involved in national concerns, but a responsibility. Although Roosevelt’s policies had gone far toward relieving the suffering of Americans, many governors were frustrated about the consequences of the New Deal—the erosion of state autonomy with an unprecedented expansion of the federal government. At the 1940 Governors’ Conference meeting, Governor Herbert O’Conor of Maryland (1939–1947) announced that he would “like to see the Federal departments withdraw gradually from the field of direct administration, and...

New Yorkers like their governors strong, stylish, and, like themselves, a little bigger than life. After all, what is an Empire State without an emperor? It was Alexander Hamilton, that quintessential New Yorker, whose theories celebrating an energetic executive first found expression in The Federalist Papers, and then in shaping the American presidency to which so many New York governors have aspired. Ironically, Hamilton and his nation-making brethren may have drawn inspiration from New York’s (seeming) governor for life, George Clinton. The son of Irish immigrants, Clinton opposed Hamilton’s federal system as arbitrary and aristocratic, yet over time Clinton himself...

In the 1950s, governors and the nation as a whole found themselves in a changed world. The United States was now a leading world power and the Cold War was heating up, forcing Americans and their leaders to rethink their own government and institutions. In reaction to this international uncertainty and a new war in Korea, many Americans in the 1950s sought a life of domestic tranquility and cultural unity. Increased population mobility from south to north and east to west had begun to meld regional cultures, creating, among other things, a musical genre called rock-and-roll that appealed to a...

The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways has become an asphalt and concrete monument to greatness in government. A half-century after work on the project began it stands as a primary example of the powerful partnership between states and the federal government. The Interstate System, built by a state and federal coalition, has physically united the nation, modernized the economy, and strengthened national security. When he took office in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower knew that in order to succeed this largest of federal programs needed the backing of every governor in the United States. Logically,...

In the 1960s, the turbulence of events at home stirred American citizens to action and forced governors to confront controversial issues. Governors could not ignore the grassroots polarization of their constituents, particularly concerning Vietnam and the civil rights movement. Antiwar and civil rights marches attracted hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country. And as the decade neared an end, a new subculture of rebellion flowered among the post–World War II baby boom generation embodied in the hippie movement, experimentation with drugs, and an evolution of rock-and-roll from simple chord progressions and tame lyrics to hard, dissonant sounds bearing...

In mid-July 1963, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace traveled to Miami Beach, Florida, to attend his first Governors’ Conference meeting. Riding a wave of white southern popularity after his infamous inaugural address—“segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”—and the staged stand at the schoolhouse door, Wallace could not resist the opportunity to further elevate his profile. “This is the first Conference I have ever attended,” Wallace bellowed, “and if it is going to turn out to be a civil rights debating society, it is going to be the last one I ever attend. In my judgment, you are going...

Although Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon in 1969 had left Americans hopeful for the future, a number of pressing issues remained to be resolved and new crises arose in the 1970s that drew governors ever further into national and international concerns. Political scandal made many Americans distrustful of government. As this disaffection grew, governors responded by reviving the ideal of state government as close to its citizens and the protector of American democracy. But the challenges of the decade made this goal difficult. Deindustrialization began as jobs in the manufacturing sector shrank, displacing workers in steel and other industries...

On November 18, 1980, two weeks after he was elected the fortieth president of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan sat down with Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill, Speaker of the House of Representatives. The two men knew one another only by reputation, and O’Neill, whose Democrats held a commanding majority in the House, suspected that Reagan was in over his head. He told the president-elect that Sacramento, where Reagan had spent eight years as governor of California, was the “minor leagues.” Now they were in Washington, where O’Neill had been a member of the House since 1952. “This is the...

As world events improved and discontent was quelled, governors in the 1980s refocused on needed domestic reforms. The first year of the decade, however, witnessed the persistence of many of the same troubles that had plagued the 1970s—an energy crisis, economic downturn, and what President Carter perhaps correctly but unpopularly labeled a “crisis of confidence.” The taking of American hostages by Iranian militants in 1979 was among the obstacles to Carter’s presidential reelection campaign in 1980 and a factor in his defeat by Ronald Reagan. Then, on January 20, 1981, Iran released their fifty-two remaining American hostages. This event...

Experts have many ways and words to describe American federalism—dual, cooperative, competitive, marble cake, coercive, and picket fence. Actually, there is no one best characterization for all time. American federalism is not static; it changes over time. For a century after the Constitution was ratified, the role of American government was relatively much smaller than it is today. The national government generally stayed out of what were considered the appropriate areas of responsibility of state governments and their component local governments. Examples abound of colorful language by presidents warning against the danger of creeping centralization via the adoption by...

In the 1990s, America enjoyed an era of relative economic and international ease allowing governors to continue domestic reforms, focus on integrating new technology, and turn greater attention to the demands of economic globalization. Although the decade began with a brief recession in 1991–1992, the 1990s proved prosperous for much of the nation. The “dot-com” industry boomed, and even foreign affairs seemed less dire following the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the successfully short Gulf War in 1991. Political opportunities broadened. For the first time in the nation’s history, an African American, Douglas Wilder of Virginia (1990...

Hardly anyone who witnessed Ann Richards’s inauguration as governor of Texas in January 1991 has any idea what she said in her speech. She was drowned out by her own celebrity.¹

Three years earlier, she had been a fifty-five-year-old state treasurer who was little known outside Texas liberal and feminist circles. A divorced mother of four, a former schoolteacher, and a recovering alcoholic who first won office as a county commissioner in Austin, Richards had a long record as a civil rights and Democratic Party activist and a reputation as a witty, sharp-tongued orator. One afternoon a travel aide gave...

The modern American governorship evolved from a very difficult beginning under a colonial regime. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the English monarch appointed governors to serve as representatives and enforcers of British rule. Colonists came to resent these men as impediments to their liberty. After the revolutionaries signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and led their states into open rebellion, representatives creating new state governments were considerably more inclined to place power in the hands of state legislatures rather than in those of governors. Fearing a return to the oppressive colonial style of governing, these Americans instituted a...

From the Great Depression to the Great Society, World War I to the Iraq war, U.S. governors have answered the call of history. Their experiences have shaped the modern governorship with its increased responsibilities, broader perspectives, and heightened expectations. Over the past one hundred years, governors moved into national and international political circles. But their primary responsibilities still lie at home. Within the constraints of a federal system, governors have a unique opportunity for creativity working in the middle space of American government—the states. A freedom when wielded by the right hands to redefine government, blaze trails down paths...