During Ray's term as governor the state experienced a period of economic prosperity and a 45 percent population increase.

Ray moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, when he was still a boy, where he studied law in the office of General Gano, and was admitted to the bar in 1816.

On January 30, 1824, the same day Lieutenant Governor Ratliff Boon resigned to take a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, Ray was elected the Indiana Senate's president pro tempore.

The lieutenant governor's office had remained vacant after Boon's departure for the U.S. House of Representatives the previous year.

During the 1820s national parties were generally divided among Jeffersonian Republicans, who followed Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, and Jacksonian Democrats, who supported Andrew Jackson.

His wife found the Governor's Mansion in Monument Circle to lack privacy, and the couple refused to live there.

[10] On December 8, 1825, Ray delivered his first address to the Indiana General Assembly and called for internal improvements in the state's transportation system.

As governor, Ray requested state legislature to create a committee to explore the possibilities of building new railroads.

[11] The state's first railroad was also constructed, a short line connecting Shelbyville, Indiana to Indianapolis as a compromise with the governor to approve funds for the canal.

The plans for the road would extend from the Ohio River in the south to Lake Michigan in the north, and pass through Indianapolis in the central part of the state.

The new road would require the Potawatomi and the Miami people to cede their lands in northern and central Indiana to the federal government to make way for its construction.

Adams responded by appointing Ray, Michigan governor Lewis Cass, and John Tipton as commissioners to negotiate a treaty, which was concluded in the fall of 1826.

[11][14] Ray's opponents in the state legislature seized the opportunity to attack him for taking a commission from the federal government as a treaty negotiator, claiming that it violated Indiana's constitution.

A motion to bring impeachment proceedings against Ray was narrowly defeated in the Indiana General Assembly by a vote of 31 to 27.

It marked the first documented trial, sentencing, and execution of whites for the murder of Native Americans under United States law.

Two of the convicted men were hanged; however, Ray arrived to issue a dramatic, last-minute pardon to seventeen-year-old John Bridge Jr. after local residents petitioned the governor to intervene.

Merrill specifically tried to incriminate him for making a secret deal with the Indians when negotiating the treaty in 1826, claiming that he had accepted a bribe from them.

[23] Merrill's charges were ambiguous, lacking considerable detail, but was enough to stir a controversy and give an excuse to Ray's opponents to further again attack.

Ray's supporters included Lewis Cass, governor of the Michigan Territory, who wrote a letter to the Indiana General Assembly on his behalf.

When Ray ran for reelection in 1828, he was approached by pro-Jackson men to join the Jacksonian party, which was just beginning to form in the state.

[25] Nearing the end of his term in office, Ray became defensive, accused his critics with conspiring against him, and claimed he was the "victim of misrepresentation and malicious envy.

[24][25] Ray resumed a law practice in Indianapolis after his term as governor ended, but found the business did not meet his expectations.

Ray purchased a home in Indianapolis that was built in 1835 and originally stood on the site where the Marion County Jail now stands.

His behavior only worsened the situation; he was known to walk with a cane, for appearance only, and stop in the street and write in the air with it for no apparent reason.

[3] Ray fell ill during a trip to Wisconsin in the summer of 1848 and returned to a relative's home in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he died of cholera on August 4, 1848, aged 54.