Governatori sudisti e crisi costituzionali negli Stati Uniti della prima metà dell'800.

[Autom. eng. transl.] This essay proposes to reassess the importance and effectiveness of the governor's work in the pre-secessionist period, highlighting the role of constitutional guarantor of the Governor in the first half of the 1800s. With particular reference to the first half of the 19th century, the American historiographical tradition has in fact always emphasized the limited role played by state governors since the origins of the federal experience; a characteristic associated with the will of the state constituents to remove as much as possible any reminiscence of the British colonial period. And yet, although reduced to the paper of most of the colonial prerogatives in the executive, legislative and judicial fields, the first revolutionary governors did not cease to be perceived as authentic heads of state, the highest representatives of the new established order. During the first seventy years of US history, and faced with the emergence of heated contrasts between the popular base and legislative assemblies, the governors also regained, step by step, the lost trust, a fact that resulted in an extension of the term of office, in the direct popular election and in the recovery of the right of veto. In analyzing the evolution of the role and functions of the state governor in the first half of the nineteenth century, this essay focuses on the Southern states, and in particular on the cases of Virginia and Georgia.