As the nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, NCSL gathered a trio of experts to discuss the origin stories of their states. We discussed the status of each state at the time of the American Revolution, how the state's constitutions were written, and some other unusual historic notes.
As the nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, NCSL gathered a trio of experts to discuss the origin stories of their states.
Our group included Tim Powers, chief technology and outreach officer in the Alaska State Legislature; Paul Smith, clerk of the House of Representatives in New Hampshire; and Pev Squire, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri, and one of the nation's experts on the history of state legislatures.
We discussed the status of each state at the time of the American Revolution, how the state's constitutions were written, and some other unusual history, such as New Hampshire crafting the nation's first state constitution, largely out of necessity, and the remarkable brevity of the Alaskan Constitution.
This podcast is part of NCSL's annual Legislative Staff Week, which celebrates the innumerable contributions legislative staff make to the effectiveness of our state legislatures.
Resources
ES: (00:12):
Hello and welcome to “Our American States,” a podcast from the National Conference State Legislatures. I'm your host, Ed Smith.
TP: (00:20):
Our constitution was written after the invention of the jet engine and the dawn of the nuclear age. The delegates new Alaska was going to be a strategic crossroad of the world positioned right between the superpowers. So, they built a government designed for speed, efficiency and global resource management rather than 19th century agriculture.
ES: (00:37):
That was Tim Powers, chief technology and outreach officer in the Alaska Legislature. He's one of my guests on this podcast, along with Paul Smith, clerk of the House of Representatives in New Hampshire, and Pev Squire, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri, and one of the nation's experts on the history of state legislatures.
As the nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, NCSL gathered this trio to discuss the origin stories of their states.
We discussed the status of each state at the time of the American Revolution, how the state's constitutions were written, and some other unusual history, such as New Hampshire crafting the nation's first state constitution, largely out of necessity, and the remarkable brevity of the Alaskan Constitution.
This podcast is part of NCSL's annual Legislative Staff Week, which celebrates the innumerable contributions legislative staff make to the effectiveness of our state legislatures.
ES: (01:PSQ:1):
Here's our discussion, starting with Paul Smith in New Hampshire.
Paul, welcome to the podcast.
PS: (01:51):
Thank you very much. My pleasure to be here.
ES: (01:5PSQ:):
So, Paul, the impetus for this podcast is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence being signed, which of course comes up this summer. But ,of course, at NCSL, we wanted to talk a little bit more about the states and the history of some of the states. And the first one we're talking about today is New Hampshire, your state. We'll also be talking about Missouri and Alaska with a couple of subsequent interviews, but why don't you start off and tell us a little bit about New Hampshire before 1776. And unlike these other states, New Hampshire was a pretty thriving entity well before the Declaration of Independence was signed, one of the original 13 colonies. So, tell us a little bit about that.
PS: (02:36):
Certainly. Well, I have to tell you that New Hampshire is quite a place. It started with some land grants, sort of the earliest being granted to a gentleman named John Mason. And so really, we don't have a clear founding in terms of exactly when or how, but the reality is we had these land grants and unfortunately, looking back in retrospect, a lot of our early history really revolves around Massachusetts' orbit. We shared a lot of mercantilism, a lot of the same sort of philosophy in certain terms of governance. But our population, unlike Massachusetts at the time, is very small and spread out, very localized. We sort of had these townships that really were little settlements that kind of popped up here and there, mostly originally sort of focused on the seacoast area, but generally starting to spread inward towards the middle of the state and toward the western part of the state.
PS: (03:PSQ:0):
Just for clarity, for a long time, there was some dispute about Vermont and who owned Vermont. Indeed, Bennington, Vermont, is named after Benning Wentworth, who was one of our royal governors before independence. Really, politically, it's an inconsistent place as well. We had periods of independence, periods of sort of outside control by the Crown, but also with the governorship. We had these royal governors that were appointed. And in some cases, the royal governors had patents as royal governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. That's why I say we sort of operated in Massachusetts' orbit. That sort of created some of the skepticism and independence here in New Hampshire because they're really starting to see, "Hey, this thing ain't so great." And that's why by the time we get to the early 1770s, we have this major event in April of 1772 called the Pine Tree Riot. These great white pines that had been growing in New Hampshire were supposed to be reserved for the king and had been marked by the king's mark so that they could be masts on ships.
PS: (05:00):
What ended up happening was the local sheriff of New Hampshire, that county, Hillsborough County at the time, found out that there was a sawmill that was cutting down and getting these pines ready for use. Interestingly, they arrested the man and 2PSQ: hours after he was arrested, he and a bunch of other townspeople ... I don't want to use the term tar and feathered because that sounds a lot more polite, but they essentially beat the sheriff and his deputies and basically to get them to run off. Eventually, what happened was they were tried, they were found guilty, but they were given very simple penalties in terms of fines. And so there really was this perception that they were sort of being kind of encouraged. And this of course happened before the Tea Party. This is an event that a lot of folks around here look at as sort of the precursor to the Tea Party.
PS: (06:07):
Then in 1774, you have a raid on Fort William and Mary in Portsmouth where the locals sort of seized the guns and the munitions there. So really going into 1776, you've got a small colony that was used to improvising with a pretty well-developed instinct for self-government.
ES: (06:30):
Well, you mentioned Massachusetts, and Massachusetts in those days was sort of the 800-pound gorilla of New England. When did New Hampshire really separate itself from Massachusetts as an entity in and to itself?
PS: (06:PSQ:6):
So, in 17PSQ:0, there was a boundary decision, so that really helped clarify the distinction of boundaries. I mentioned before about the royal governor having two patents, dual patents to govern from both, but that 17PSQ:0 boundary decision really sort of ended that. So, then we get into our royal governor phase that we have for the next few decades. What we're talking about really here, too ,at the time is we're sort of getting into this time where these batches of people are starting to really, really getting tired of the yoke from England, and they're starting to talk more. They're starting to really think about, "Hey, what does this look like going forward?" And I think that really explains a lot.
ES: (07:PSQ:PSQ:):
So, what sort of legislative body structure was there in New Hampshire, in that colonial period, before the revolution?
PS: (07:57):
So, this is where New Hampshire, in my mind, stands apart from just about anywhere in the country. And I say this with all due respect to our friends down in Virginia and that sort of stuff. But I mean, in 1680, we had a provincial legislature, and that provincial legislature really was kind of acting the way you would expect it to act. We had a royal governor, we had an appointed council and an elected assembly, and they were a provincial legislature, and they really operated as you would expect. But the interesting part of that is that after some time, they really started to push for more influence. They wanted more say over taxation and local matters and that sort of thing. So even though you had this sort of royal decree about what they could do and couldn't do and that sort of thing, when you get this group of people together, and at the time it was all men, but when you get this group of men together, they very much start acting in that independent manner.
PS: (09:03):
They really start acting in a way that they're going to start to exert the authority that they have been vested with by their comrades from across the state. They're going to be the designees to really be the voice of the people. And that's something that remains to this day with our own citizen legislature.
ES: (09:29):
Every state, we're talking about a few different states today, has a constitution as it's a seminal document, it's organizing document, how it determines its governance. And if my history's right, I think New Hampshire had the first state constitution in the country. Tell us about that. How did that come to be? And so many times when I talk to people about constitution, it's like, "Well, we copied from this and we copied from that. " Well, this is the first state constitution. So, what did New Hampshire copy from?
PS: (10:00):
That's a great question. Let me start by just sort of going back for a minute here. So, by the early 1770s, as I had mentioned with the Pine Tree Riot and that sort of thing, the system is really starting to lose some coherence. The royal authority has kind of been weakened and challenged. Provincial congresses are rising. What you're seeing here is the source of authority is really kind of shifting. In 1775, our last royal governor, this is just a few months after the raid on Fort William and Mary, the last royal governor runs off first to Boston, then to Canada, then to England, then back to Canada. Essentially, what happens is we're left rudderless for several months. The state is basically just there. There's no leadership because the royal governor is sort of ... He had prorogued the provincial legislature that was existing at the time, so there was no authority anywhere in the state.
PS: (11:00):
And so, what happened, there was sort of this provincial congress that was started in the state. This provincial congress drafted this constitution. It was drafted in such a way that it came out of necessity. Although it is the first constitution, it's about continuity of government. It's really about keeping the system running. What's interesting about it is it adopts a very straightforward and temporary executive and legislative structure, but it doesn't overcomplicate it. It's only a couple of pages long. It places a lot of authority within the hands of the people. There is appointed what they call a safety committee, which is a group of essentially legislators that basically run the affairs of government. They're the ones sort of making sure everything is happening. This is all right before July 4th. This is January. This is January 5, 1776, this constitution goes into effect. We're not waiting for a national resolution here in New Hampshire.
PS: (12:21):
We're governing ourselves because we can't wait and we're not going to wait. We're not going to wait around and see what England's going to do. We're not waiting around to see what the fellows down in Philadelphia are going to do. But as I mentioned, it is sort of temporary in nature. They fully intended to have to come back when that would need to happen so that they could have a true constitution, which they ended up doing, of course, in 1784.
ES: (12:55):
Tell me about who the key players were in New Hampshire kind of from this point as the state moves through to its final constitution and then to admission to the Union in 1788. Who are the big figures there?
PS: (13:12):
New Hampshire had a lot, but I want to mention a few. Meshech Weare is probably one of the most important during the actual revolution itself. He was officially the first president of New Hampshire. That was what it was called at the time. We really referred to him as the first governor of New Hampshire, but the title at the time was president. He was the chair of the group that drafted that 1776 Constitution. And then he was made the chair of that safety committee that operated throughout the revolution. So, he really was sort of the person in terms of governing. It's all well and good to talk about the signers and that sort of thing, but here at home, this was a gentleman who was really keeping the fires lit and making sure that we were on the straight and narrow. Interestingly enough, I'd mentioned to you before about the Pine Tree Riot.
PS: (14:15):
He was one of the four judges that found the assailants of the Pine Tree riot guilty, but also in terms of basically giving them a slap on the wrist for it. So, there's very much this you're guilty.
Speaker PSQ: (14:36):
You're not that guilty.
PS: (14:39):
Exactly. So, he was obviously a big influence. Of course, you can't talk about New Hampshire without Josiah Bartlett. No, I'm not referring to the “West Wing.” I'm talking about the real Josiah Bartlett, who obviously played roles both here in New Hampshire and at the national level. He, of course, was a signer of the Declaration and he was our fourth governor here in New Hampshire as well. But also, we have John Langdon. John Langdon served in the war. He became a member of the Continental Congress and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, along with Nicholas Gilman, where he really was an active participant in the debates and really helped shame the framework of the Constitution. Nicholas Gilman, who was the other delegate from New Hampshire, was there, but he didn't really participate in the debates to the level Langdon did. Coincidentally, at that constitutional convention, our two delegates showed up late.
PS: (15:45):
They were two months late. The reason for that is because nobody paid for them to go. So, Langdon funded himself and Gilman to actually go to the Constitutional Convention. So, this is very much in keeping with New Hampshire. We're a thrifty state, so to speak, as you know, with our lack of a sales or income tax to this day, those are some of the key figures in how we got to where we got to. And of course, heading towards ratification in 1787, the convention in 1787, but the ratification here in New Hampshire in 1788, we were the ninth state to adopt the Constitution thereby putting it into effect. But that's New Hampshire. We're first in the nation in our presidential primaries. We're the ninth United States to ratify, thereby making the United States, the United States. So, you don't always see New Hampshire at the center of everything, but we always show up when it matters.
ES: (16:55):
As we get ready to close up here, what else would you like people to know about New Hampshire in those early days?
PS: (17:02):
Well, I want to talk just a moment about Massachusetts again. As I mentioned, in 1776, we adopted the temporary constitution, which we sort of operated under for eight years. In 178PSQ: we adopted our Constitution as it exists to this day. That constitution obviously has been amended over time, but this is where our frenemy relationship with Massachusetts comes back into play because Massachusetts, and I'm speaking broadly of Massachusetts, but Massachusetts produced some truly extraordinary people. And one of those extraordinary people was John Adams, and John Adams wrote the 1780 Constitution of Massachusetts, and it was a masterpiece, so much so that New Hampshire modeled most of its entire Constitution on the 1780 Constitution of Massachusetts. And what's unique about it is that it enumerates the rights of the citizens first, and then in the second part, enumerates the functions of government. That's really unique in relation to the United States Constitution, clearly, where government is enumerated first and then the rights second, but this really gets to the whole point of not only New Hampshire, but really this New England spirit.
PS: (18:37):
You see it today still, town meetings still exist. New Hampshire has the largest state legislature. There's one representative to about every 3,PSQ:00 people in the state, and it's because of this traditional involvement. It's this traditional framework of people know who they're voting for. They know who is representing them, and that's very much inherent in the civic life of this state. And I think that's an important message that as we celebrate the 250th of this country, and we just celebrated the 250th of the state back in January, it's really about the people. And especially as certainly as the clerk of the House of Representatives in New Hampshire, the first branch of government is the legislative branch, and that is very much for a reason. That is very much that the citizens are closest to the government at this level. That ought always be the case, and that's why I think it's important as we celebrate heading into our third century, that we really take the time to reflect on our history.
ES: (20:02):
I really thank you for walking us through the New Hampshire experience. It's, I think, not only interesting New Hampshire, the state itself, but just sort of what was happening in a state right there at the beginning of the national story. So, thanks very much for taking the time to do this. Take care.
PS: (20:20):
My pleasure. Thank you so much.
ES: (20:23):
I'll be right back after this short break with Pev Squire in Missouri.
Speaker 5 (20:3PSQ:):
When it comes to podcasts, only one organization NCSL keeps a focus on the people, policy, and politics of state legislatures. Each episode of our podcast offers behind the scenes insights into the legislative process. First, the program Our American States provides in- depth discussions twice a month on key state policy issues shaping our nation or explore bipartisan dialogue with our special series Across the Aisle, where diverse political perspectives converge to create constructive conversations in state legislative chambers. And for history buffs, we've also produced a six-part series called Building Democracy: The Story of State Legislatures. Listen to learn more about the creation and development of the first branch of government in the United States. Stay connected, stay informed. Subscribe to these programs now on your favorite podcast platform. Learn more at ncsl.org.
ES: (21:50):
Pev, welcome back to the podcast. Great to talk with you again.
Speaker PSQ: (21:55):
Happy to be with you.
ES: (21:57):
We're doing a podcast here connected to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independent signing, which, of course, comes up this summer. And while a lot of people's focus will be on the origin of the nation, here at NCSL, we want to take a focus on the origin of some states. You're a professor of political science in Missouri. You've been there quite a while, and I wonder if you could start by telling us about the status of what we now know of as Missouri. Where was Missouri 250 years ago?
Speaker PSQ: (22:28):
Two-hundred and fifty years ago, Missouri was a landmass on the west side of the Mississippi River that had remarkably little connection to anybody on the East Coast that was pursuing the revolution. And so, it was land that was being used in terms of Europeans by mostly French settlers and traders, which you can tell from just looking at the place names of the places in eastern Missouri.
ES: (22:56):
You're in Missouri. I'm in Colorado, and both were part of the Louisiana Purchase, 1803, when Jefferson was able to get this huge, massive land from Napoleon, who was in a bit of a financial hole. Take us through what happened next in terms of Missouri being settled as a territory and when we see the first legislative sort of gathering there in the state, what was to become the state?
Speaker PSQ: (23:22):
Missouri was essentially the second part of the Louisiana purchase that got settled to any significant degree. The first was, of course, what was Orleans territory, which would come into the Union as Louisiana. And then around St. Louis, you had settlements on the western side of the Mississippi River, and that became eventually Missouri territory. One of the interesting things is, of course, if Orleans territory had come into the Union as the state of Orleans, Missouri today would probably be the state of Louisiana. So, they took the name Missouri and the first territorial legislature once the territory was organized met in 1812 in St. Louis.
ES: (24:13):
Constitutions are sort of the principle organizing feature of governments, whether state government, U.S. government, other nations. Missouri, I've read, was so eager to form a constitution that they actually had put it together even before they officially became a state. Tell us about those first steps, who the key players were in organizing the territorial legislature, and then eventually the actual state legislature.
Speaker PSQ: (24:41):
First territorial legislature was, again, in 1812, and it was created by Congress under the Northwest Ordinance, essentially the process by which new states were to be organized and brought into the Union. And originally it was a bicameral legislature, but it was with an elected lower house and an appointed upper house. And the upper house didn't become elected until after Missourians had pressed Congress to allow them to elect both houses, and that happened around 1816. The legislature had been preceded by a first stage government, as they were called originally, which was a governor and three judges who made all the laws. The second step was to get a territorial legislature, and then that territorial legislature, of course, began to press for statehood. They took it to Congress in 1817, had a proposal to Congress, and Congress had to admit the state into the Union, had to approve the Constitution.
Speaker PSQ: (25:46):
It ran into a number of obstacles at that point in 1817 and then didn't come into the Union until after the Missouri Compromise in 1820 where Missouri was balanced by Maine as new states in the Union.
ES: (26:03):
Tell us a little bit more about the Missouri Compromise of 1820. I think probably most people had some memory of that from their high school history class but talk to us about how that affected the creation of the state.
Speaker PSQ: (26:17):
The Missouri Compromise was, of course, the idea that the Southern states in particular wanted to maintain a balance in terms of political power with the Northern slates. And so, they wanted to have Missouri come in as a slave state and Missouri had slaves. So, when Maine wanted to separate from Massachusetts, where it was the eastern lands under Massachusetts, it would come in as a free state. And so that was the negotiated compromise that was agreed to in Congress to try to placate the South to keep them at a point where they considered themselves to be political equals with the North in terms of political power. And so, Missouri wrote its constitution, the one that was adopted by the Congress or allowed to go into effect by Congress. In a rush, they did it in 38 days. They met in the Mansion House Hotel in St. Louis, which would also be the place where the first state legislature would meet.
Speaker PSQ: (27:15):
And they put it together as most constitutions were put together by taking bits and pieces of things from existing documents. And so, Missouri's drew heavily from Illinois, which was of course just across the Mississippi River. The government in Illinois at that time was in Kaskaskia. And from Kentucky, because of course, many of the residents of Missouri had come from Kentucky, including Daniel Boone and his family who settled in the eastern part of Missouri. You can sort of trace Missouri's constitution to lots of different earlier constitutions, most directly from Illinois and Kentucky, but bits and pieces from several others as well.
ES: (27:57):
Were there elements in the Constitution that were directly affected by the fact that Missouri was a slave state, and we had this obviously big controversy over slave versus free states?
Speaker PSQ: (28:10):
There are provisions in the 1820 Constitution which deal with slavery, and which essentially prevented any free blacks from entering into the state and governed the rights that were accorded to people who were enslaved. So, it's clearly a product of slavery ,of the times. It was a constitution that remained in effect until just after the Civil War when the state was forced to replace that constitution with a new one in 1865.
ES: (28:PSQ:2):
Well, Pev, thanks for giving us this rundown. I just wonder if there's anything else you'd want to share about Missouri's origins with the listeners in the context of this big anniversary for the U.S. that we're coming up on.
Speaker PSQ: (28:55):
Well, you had noted earlier that the state government was organized before the state was formally admitted into the Union. And in fact, they had elected their senators and U.S. representatives who were in Washington awaiting their opportunity to actually join the Union. That was not peculiar to Missouri. There were lots of states where the state government was organized where the state legislature was elected and met before actual admission into the Union. So, there was a lot of pressure, a lot of desire among residents in the newly settled Western parts of the country to gain admittance to the union and to not just have a delegate representing their interest in DC, but to actually have a voting member of the US House and two senators.
ES: (29:PSQ:8):
Well, Pev, thanks so much for this. I think ,as all our discussions have been over the years about the history of legislatures, this was informative and enlightening, and I thank you for taking the time. Take care.
Speaker PSQ: (30:01):
Always my pleasure.
ES: (30:0PSQ:):
I'll be right back with Tim Powers in Alaska.
Speaker 5 (30:1PSQ:):
When it comes to election policies, do you know how laws are different in each state? There's one easy resource to find out. NCSL, partnering with the US Election Assistance Commission, has compiled a comprehensive review on those election policies in the new suit to nuts reference guide, Helping America Vote, Election Administration in the United States. All the topics are there. Voter ID, post-election audits, voter list maintenance, recounts, you name it, the book covers it. Hard copies are available to legislators and legislative staff. If you want one, send an email to elections-info@ncsl.org. That's elections-info@ncsl.org. Order yours today.
ES: (31:11):
Tim, welcome to the podcast. Glad to have Alaska on the pod here.
TP: (31:15):
Thanks for having me, Ed. It's great to be here to talk about such a fascinating piece of Alaska history. When most people think about the birth of a state, they think about the 13 colonies, but Alaska's journey is filled with this incredible frontier grit and political audacity that our listeners will find really compelling.
ES: (31:30):
Well, I'm certainly fascinated by it. This is the third conversation we're having on this podcast. I've also talked to people from New Hampshire and Missouri earlier. And of course, as I mentioned when I asked you to join me for this discussion, we're doing this in observance of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But this is NCSL and we're interested in states. As I've asked our other guests, let's go back to 1776. Where was Alaska in 1776 who lived there, who kind of controlled the territory, if anybody did?
TP: (32:06):
Well, Ed, in 1776, the East Coast was busy drafting documents and declaring independence, but Alaska was an entirely different world at that time, completely insulated from the American Revolution. The land was populated by the indigenous peoples who've lived here for thousands of years, thriving in some of the most extreme environments on earth. Tlingate and Haida were in the temperate rainforests of the southeast building complex societies. The Yup’ik and the Inupiat were in the west and the north mastering the ice and the sea, and Athabaskans lived in the interior. This isn't even a full list of the indigenous peoples that lived here prior to Western civilization entering Alaska. And they had deep, rich, established cultures with trade networks and sophisticated governance of their own. As far as European control, it was practically nonexistent. It was almost comical to use the word control for a landmass the size of that era.
TP: (32:57):
The Russians had initiated some coastal fur trading in the Aleutians, but after Bering’s 1741 voyage, he was driven entirely by hunting for sea otter pelts, and he only visited coastal regions. The sway that Russia held was tiny and it was only in isolated pockets of the coastline and it didn't venture deep inland at all. And to put that into perspective, the famous British explorer, Captain James Cook, it doesn't even arrive on the map in Alaska until 1778, two years after the Declaration of Independence was signed. So, in 1776, Alaska belonged entirely to its first nation's people in the wild geography itself.
ES: (33:33):
Talk a little bit about the evolution, how things changed in Alaska between that period, that 1776 date we were just discussing. Alaska doesn't actually become a state until 1959, but I think there was a whole lot of activity there in that century and a half. Talk about that. It's like asking somebody to summarize their career in 30 seconds but tell us a little bit about Alaska for those 175 years or so.
TP: (34:03):
Well, for a very long time, it was a classic colonial economy. And then I mean that in the most extractive sense of the term possible. The U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, and for decades after that, Washington, D.C. pretty much ignored the territory. We were treated like a forgotten closet up north. The purchase itself was actually dubbed Seward's Folly, $7.2 million. It was mocked for purchasing a whale-covered iceberg or a polar bear garden. Roughly two cents an acre though for 365 million acres that make up Alaska. At the time, Secretary of State William Seward was ridiculed for buying what many saw was a frozen wasteland. Things changed dramatically during the gold rushes in the 1890s. When gold was discovered in places like the Klondike on the beaches of Nome, it brought massive chaotic influx of prospectors from the lower 48 and all over the world.
TP: (34:57):
Even with the population boom, the territory's immense wealth--timber, fisheries, minerals like gold and copper--was largely extracted by outside corporate monopolies. This absentee business interests ran the show, and they took all the profits south, leaving very little behind for the people that actually lived and worked in the territory. We were an extraction colony, and it wasn't really until World War II that the paradigm finally shifted. The Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor, invaded the Aleutian Islands. I'm not sure how many people know that the Japanese actually occupied American soil in Attu and Kiska islands during World War II. It was a massive wake-up call for the federal government, and the military suddenly realized that they had a huge strategic location that they needed to take over and develop. They rushed to build the Alcan Highway, poured money into airfields, and heavily invested in our state's infrastructure. The military personnel that came up during this period stayed and the population boomed, and the federal government finally recognized a strategic value that this land held.
TP: (35:58):
That generation of post-war Alaskans looked around and said, "We're tired of being a colony. We want self-determination." However, it's important to note that while the Constitution was the masterpiece of this governance, it left a massive question over indigenous land claims, and they left that for a later generation to settle. The delegates essentially punted that one issue to Congress, which eventually led to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. But in the moment, the focus was pretty singular, get out from under the thumb of the federal government.
ES: (36:27):
So, Alaska, as I understand it, like many states, was very proactive when it came to becoming a state. People got themselves organized and they were ready to go when statehood actually came along in 1959. Can you talk about that process, sort of that end of World War II up to statehood? How did all that go on? Who are the players there and that kind of thing?
TP: (36:50):
Alaska definitely was proactive in our approach to becoming a state. And proactive is a pretty polite way to put it. We were incredibly aggressive with how our approach to becoming a state happened. The traditional path to statehood is pretty bureaucratic. Usually, Congress puts out an enabling act, basically tells a territory, "Okay, we give you permission to become a state. Go have that convention, write a constitution, bring it back, we're going to improve it. " Alaska got tired of waiting for DC to care about us. So, we flipped the script and did what's called the Tennessee Plan. We became the aggressor, not the follower. Instead of waiting for permission, the territory just went ahead and held the constitutional convention in 1955. We wrote a document, approved it, and we went a step further and we elected shadow senators and a representative. Men like Ernest Gruning and Bob Bartlett went to DC to knock on doors and demand to be seated.
TP: (37:PSQ:3):
And this strategy was to bundle the Constitution, the shadow delegation, and the will of the people, and hand it all together at once for Congress to force the issue. While a few states like Michigan and California tried this in the 1800s, Alaska was the first to use this kind of bold confrontational path in the modern era, and it turned out to be a brilliant strategic move. It strengthened the case for statehood in the press. Crucially, its move is to claim ownership of our land and our resources before DC could dictate the terms of them to us.
ES: (38:15):
So, we discussed a little bit of this offline, but Alaska and Hawaii were the only states to be admitted after jet air travel began and after the nuclear age. And I wonder if you can talk about how that affected statehood and also how that affected how the government was organized.
TP: (38:3PSQ:):
That modern context was everything. You have to remember that most state constitutions were drafted in the 18th or 19th centuries designed for an agrarian society moving at the speed of a horse. Our constitution was written after the invention of the jet engine and the dawn of the nuclear age, like you said. The delegates knew Alaska was going to be a strategic crossroad of the world positioned right between the superpowers. So, they built a government designed for speed, efficiency, and global resource management rather than 19th century agriculture. To execute this, they focused on three main pillars of efficiency. First and foremost, the executive branch, they created the strong governor model. They looked down south and saw how electing a separate treasurer, Secretary of State and Attorney General could cause a house divided where executive officers were continually in fighting with each other for political points or to steer the course of where their state was going.
TP: (39:25):
In Alaska, only the governor and the lieutenant governor are elected, and they're elected in a paired fashion. This ensures that the person who people elect actually has the authority to fully run the government in the state and consequently, they can be held directly accountable for when things go wrong with one single person that's elected. Secondly, the courts. They created one of the most strictly unified court systems in the country. There's no separate county courts with wildly different standards. Everything is managed centrally by the state Supreme Court. And to avoid the problem of political judges running partisan campaigns and begging for campaign contributions, we adopted the merit-based selection process via the nonpartisan judicial council with a retention vote 10 years into a judge's term to determine whether we're going to keep them or not. And last local government. We rejected the messy layer cake of local government that's seen all over the Midwest and the East Coast.
TP: (40:19):
We didn't want overlapping counties, cities, school districts, water districts, all with different reasons they're fighting for different things and different areas that they're overseeing so there's no clear boundary line between anything. Instead, they opted for a simpler system of massive regional boroughs that provide these services over large areas. And in fact, where a borough is not established, the state legislature plays the local government for that borough. So many of the villages around Alaska that are not part of a borough, the legislature is the de facto local government for them, and they have to pass all the laws for them as well. Having spent over two decades working intimately with the physical footprint of the legislature and managing the technology that spans the entire state, I can tell you firsthand that having streamlined regional government structures really makes a massive difference in how effectively we can connect with and serve the public.
ES: (40:01:08):
Let me ask you about the constitution, the constitution, of course, being the core document that determines how the state is organized. And the story about Alaska's constitution is a pretty interesting one, and I'm just going to let you tell that story.
TP:
Well, Ed, we had the incredible advantage of having a clean slate combined with 170 years of hindsight. And I say by clean slate, Alaska had indigenous peoples here first, but there was, let's take Hawaii, for example, admitted in the same year as Alaska, they had a whole large political entity that already existed with kings and there was trade being done. There was a lot more history involved that you couldn't just wipe that slate clean and start over with. We didn't have to guess with what might happen. We could just look at the lower 48 to see what worked and more importantly, what failed when we were looking at designing our constitution. And that foresight benefited us in three major ways. First, we secured our public trust resources. We had seen the robber baron era out West where private corporations stripped the land and left states with nothing but empty mines and environmental disaster to clean up afterwards.
TP:
And to ensure that our subsurface mineral wealth remained permanently in the hands of the state, our delegate to Congress Bob Bartlett fought incredibly hard to preserve Alaska's resources for Alaskans. They wanted to make sure that all the wealth that was generated here state here.
TP:
Second, with that 170 years of hindsight, we resulted with a short and sweet constitution. We're roughly 12,000 words in our constitution, and it's about one-tenth the length of many other state constitutions. We intentionally avoided what is called "constitutional bloat." By not in shining hyper-specific administrative rules like the exact cost of a fishing license or the required width of a highway into the bedrock document, it allows our state lawmakers to be incredibly nimble. In my day-to-day operations of the legislature, I see the value of this consistently where we can quickly respond to changing technological and economic landscapes without getting bogged down with a multi-year long drawn-out process to amend the constitution for every single minor operational issue that we encounter. And finally, because it is such a general and focused document with broad principles, it serves as a true living document. The courts have interpreted our constitution to include very strong explicit right to privacy under Article one, Section 22, which is very vague.
TP:
When I open up my constitution and I read it to you in its entirety, "The right of the people to privacy is recognized and shall not be infringed. The legislature shall implement this section." That's it. That's our right to privacy, but it has been broadly ruled that it covers Alaskans in almost every aspect. I mean, if you think of legalizing marijuana, Alaska had personal use limits on what you could have in your house before the time when it was even close to being legalized anywhere in the country. This foresight has made Alaska one of the most fiercely protective and progressive states in the country when it comes to personal freedoms and keeping the government out of the private lives of its citizens.
ES:
Can you talk a little bit about who the big figures were in terms of that march to statehood, writing the constitution? Who are the people who kind of stand out from that era in the 1940s and ’50s?
TP:
This is my favorite part of the story because the group that wrote it represents a cross section of Alaskan life that you'll rarely, if ever, see in modern politics. There's no big names here, or at least not at the time. Sure, there were some lawyers present, but the 55 delegates who drafted our constitution included a territorial dog musher, several rugged bush pilots, miners, a photographer and a significant number of homemakers. These everyday Alaskans brought incredibly practical community focused ground level perspectives to the table, and they brought a lot of youthful energy also. The average age was only … with many delegates in their 20s and 30s, and they weren't looking backward at how things used to be. They were building a state that they personally planned to live in and raise their families for the next half a century. What really stands out, especially today, is their strict bipartisan unity.
TP:
Even with the intense Cold War tensions of the ’50s, they intentionally avoided party labels. Inside the hall that they drafted in, they actually mandated that seating happen in an alphabetical order rather than dividing the room by party. And this forced the urban lawyers to sit next to the rural miners and making sure that everyone saw each other as an Alaskan first, not as a Democrat or Republican. And where they met was just important as who they were. Meeting at the University of Alaska Fairbanks wasn't just about showing off the frontier grit. It was also highly calculated to ensure total independence. In the 1950s in Alaska, air travel, while present, is still difficult and costly, and Juneau is several hundred miles away from Fairbanks. By moving the convention that distance away from the territorial capital in Juneau, the delegates effectively marooned themselves in the interior winter.
TP:
And I'm not sure if you've ever experienced or heard about winter in Fairbanks. Negative 40 is not terribly cold. They get a lot colder than that. Cars don't like to start. That is the level of insulation they wrap themselves in. And in ’55, Fairbanks was remote enough that the high-paid lobbyists from the canned salmon industry couldn't easily influence them or get into the daily debates that they were having. They met in what's now called Constitution Hall at the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. And to this day, that building is treated with deep reverence and it still houses the desks used by the delegates. They're preserved there today. Finally, they were incredibly forward thinking in their operational process. Because it was a modern territory, Alaska was the first state to record its entire constitutional convention in high quality audio tape. As someone whose career involves overseeing an AV and IT infrastructure for the legislature, I'm in absolute awe of that decision.
TP:
Well, not so much of a decision. Other states didn't even have the option of it prior to Alaska, but legislative history is invaluable, legislative intent is invaluable. And how many states can claim that they have virtually all of their legislative history documented and recorded for posterity? When judges are trying to interpret the Constitution, they don't have to read between the lines of any transcript. They can actually just go back and listen to the people that were actually debating it, and they can listen for the actual intent of what people were intending to do.
ES:
Well, wouldn't it be unbelievable to be able to listen to the delegates when they signed the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago? That is quite a story, Tim. That's really a great tale. This has been fascinating. And I want to ask you before we finish up, what else would you like to share about the state of Alaska with our listeners and its origin story?
TP:
Well, the absolute most impactful legacy of our early days, the thing that defines modern Alaska is how the founders handled our natural resources. We watched the company store model in Appalachia where out-of-state coal companies essentially owned towns and issued their own dollars and collected their own dollars and just all the money flowed back into the pockets of the company by the people that worked there and lived in that town. And they remembered the absentee corporations that dominated Alaska during the Gold Rush. Businesses that just took the money and the resources out of the ground and shipped it all south. And maybe a few people made a buck here, but most of the bucks to be made were happening down south. To prevent that from happening again, they wrote Article 8, which is widely considered the strongest resource provision in any state constitution in the country.
TP:
It mandates very clearly that our natural resources must be developed for the quote “maximum benefit of the people.” And crucially, the state retained the ownership of all subsurface minerals. That one lesson learned about our resource depletion eventually provided the rock-solid legal foundation for the Alaska Permanent Fund in the 1970s. Because the state owned the oil underground, they were able to take a portion of that resource wealth, put it into a constitutionally protected investment fund, and turned our nonrenewable resources into a lasting renewable financial legacy for every single citizen. We have gone from an extraction colony to being our own owner state, and it's a massive achievement, and it's a big reason why legal scholars across the country have often cited the Alaska Constitution as one of the best written and most effective governing documents in the United States.
ES:
Well, Tim, thank you so much for running down this story for us. I think it's a great capstone to this podcast about states and how they evolved at the same time as our nation evolved. Thanks a lot, and take care.
TP:
Thanks, Ed. You too.
ES:
I've been talking with Paul Smith in New Hampshire, Pat Squire in Missouri, and Tim Powers in Alaska about how their states came to be states. Thanks for listening.
Search for NCSL podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast, our American states, dives into some of the most challenging public policy issues facing legislators. Our occasional series across the aisle features stories of bipartisanship. Also, check out our special series, Building Democracy on the History of Legislatures.