Iowa

IOWA WAS INHABITED by at least 17 different tribes of Native Americans, with the first official American settlement established in June 1833. Subsequently, many settlers came to Iowa from Indiana, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, with some of the early settlers in Iowa moving to other states. Three of the first 17 governors of Indiana were born in Iowa, showing the level of movement between the states. On December 28, 1846, Iowa gained statehood and became the 29th state in the Union.

The first elected governor, Ansel Briggs, was from Vermont, and was a Democrat. Stephen P. Hempstead succeeded him. He was another Democrat, who after his term of office, in 1854, became a judge for 12 years. The elections in 1854 were particularly important with the possible opening up of the Kansas-Nebraska territory, which saw Curtis Bates for the Democrats competing against James W. Grimes of the Whigs in the gubernatorial elections. Grimes won, and as the third governor, he was one of the last Whigs elected as a governor in the United States. Grimes had been elected to the Iowa House of Representatives on many occasions. It was during his tenure that, in 1857, that Des Moines becomes the state capital. In that year Republican Ralph P. Lowe narrowly won the gubernatorial election: 38,498 votes to 36,088.

In 1859, the voters of Iowa elected another Republican, Samuel J. Kirkwood, as governor. In the 1860 U.S. presidential election, Abraham Lincoln easily won the state, with 70,302 votes (54.6 percent) against Stephen Douglas of the northern Democrats, who received 55,639 votes (43.2 percent). Kirkwood brought Iowa to support the Union during the American Civil War, raising and equipping large numbers of soldiers. The Civil War dominated Iowa politics for many years, when most of the subsequent governors up until 1898 were war veterans. Kirkwood himself served in the artillery, Buren R. Sherman served in the infantry and was injured at Shiloh, and Francis M. Drake commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. Three more Republican governors succeeded Kirkwood before he served his second non-consecutive term. It was not until 1889 that a Democrat won the gubernatorial elections. This was when Horace Boies was elected, mainly because of his opposition to the Republicans, who wanted to introduce Prohibition. When an economic recession hit Iowa, the popularity of Boies fell, and he lost the 1892 gubernatorial election. He also ran a distant third in the presidential nominations at the Democratic National Convention in 1892, where Grover Cleveland was chosen as the Democratic Party candidate.

Albert B. Cummins, governor 1902–08, was yet another example of a state governor who then served for a long period in the U.S. Senate. The most controversial governor during this period was William L. Harding, who won the gubernatorial election in 1916. A Republican, he had campaigned against Woodrow Wilson's pro-British stance, and gained support from many German-American voters. However, in 1918, he issued the Babel Proclamation that forbade the use of foreign languages in public, in school, in religious services, or even over the telephone. Becoming steadily more anti-German (and also anti-Norwegian), Harding justified it as necessary in war, but the proclamation is now considered unconstitutional.

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