ABSTRACT
Tracing the great changes in the relationship between Washington and the state-local systems over the last two hundred years, however, provides only part of the picture of the American federal system. So as better to judge the current condition and future course of our federal system, the year 1989 is staked out in this paper as the high vantage point from which to look back and examine the major changes in the relationship between the federal government and the state-local systems since George Washington first assumed the presidency in 1789. The stock market crash of 1929 set in motion economic forces that hastened the collapse of Constitutional Federalism. To sum up, the era of Crisis Federalism—1929 to 1953—must stand out as the truly revolutionary period in the two hundred year history of American federalism. A searing national crisis—the Great Depression—left in its wake an unprecedented number of unemployed persons, bank failures, business bankruptcies, and farm and home foreclosures.
