Virginia

History

Early peoples

The original inhabitants of Virginia arrived some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. These were people of Paleo-Indian culture, who, like their successors, the Archaic-culture people, lived mainly by hunting and fishing. From about 1000 BCE the Woodland culture began to make pottery and to grow such crops as corn (maize), beans, and squash. The coastal areas of eastern Virginia supported a significant population of indigenous peoples who fished in the rivers and bays and hunted wild fowl. At the time of European settlement, in the early 17th century, various tribal groups lived in the area. However, the early English settlers dealt mostly with the Powhatan confederacy, an alliance of some 30 Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Tidewater region, united under the powerful chief Powhatan.

The colonial period

The purposes of the representatives of the Virginia Company of London, who landed at present-day Jamestown in May 1607, were not only to colonize but also to Christianize, to open new areas for trade, and to guard against further inroads by the Spanish, who already had colonized what is now Florida. Hunger, poor shelter, hostility from the indigenous peoples, and rampant disease plagued the company's early years, but, while the settlement tottered constantly on the brink of dissolution, a tobacco industry was established by John Rolfe and a representative assembly was convened. Rolfe's marriage in 1614 to Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, brought temporary peace between the indigenous populations and the English; however, after the death of Pocahontas and her father, a war broke out between the two groups. In 1624 the company's charter was revoked, and Virginia was established as England's first royal colony. In the following years new settlements were made, and local administrative systems were developed.

The governorship of Sir William Berkeley—begun in 1642, interrupted from 1652 to 1660 by Puritan rule in England, and ended in 1677—marked the solidification of the colony. The many anti-Puritan supporters of Charles I who fled to Virginia after the king's death in 1649 added an important element to the population, much of which consisted of indentured servants of European or African descent. The first Africans had been taken to Virginia in 1619, but race-based slavery began to grow rapidly only after the 1660s. Soon the institution was protected by Virginia law, and the number of slaves in the colony rose steadily until the American Revolution (1775–83). (For a more detailed account of the nature of slavery in the colonies, see race: The history of the idea of race.)

In 1676 a rebellion of colonists led by Nathaniel Bacon, though short-lived, led to Berkeley's recall and signaled a growing desire for more self-government among the colonists. This sentiment intensified during the century that followed, when England attempted to govern fairly but did not allow the inhabitants of its American colonies the full rights of the English at home.

In 1699 the colony's capital was moved from Jamestown to Williamsburg. The next several decades were a period of expansion as well as of internal strengthening. Virginia had the largest population of any American colony, and, as tobacco crops wore out the soil, Virginians began to move steadily westward in search of new land. Settlers from the Tidewater region spilled over into the Piedmont, across the Blue Ridge, and, by the 1740s, into the Ohio country beyond, there running afoul of French ambitions for that region. For decades the popularly elected assembly of colonial Virginia, the House of Burgesses, led the way in opposing royal prerogatives in the colony, and, following England's prohibition of westward expansion in 1763, a concerted drive to rationalize rebellion began. On the eve of the American Revolution, Virginia had more than 120,000 residents, many of them persons of considerable sophistication and learning, and a stable—if narrowly based—economy.

Independence and statehood

Virginians were among the leaders of the American Revolution and of the events leading to it, including the convening of the First Continental Congress, a body of delegates to speak on behalf of the colonies, in 1774. It was at a convention in Virginia in 1775 that the legislator Patrick Henry uttered his famous words, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, while George Washington assumed command of the armies. It was at Yorktown that the British armies were forced to surrender to combined American and French forces on Oct. 19, 1781, which led to acknowledgement of the colonies' independence in the Treaty of Paris (part of the Peace of Paris collection of treaties) in 1783. In 1788 Virginia became the 10th state to ratify the Constitution.

The state continued its national leadership in the following decades, furnishing four of the first five presidents of the United States, including Jefferson (1801–09) and James Madison (1809–17). Another Virginian, John Marshall, served as chief justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835 and was largely responsible for establishing an independent federal judiciary in the early republic.

The state had abolished the African slave trade in 1778, and many of the revolutionary generation, including Washington, freed their slaves. (Jefferson was highly critical of the institution of slavery in his writing but freed only some of his slaves.) Nevertheless, the institution of slavery thrived in Virginia in the early 1800s, especially as slave owners began to sell their slaves to new plantation areas in the southeast. In 1831 Nat Turner, a slave preacher, encouraged a slave insurrection in Southampton county that resulted in many deaths and spread fear across the slaveholding South.

Charles Loreaux Quittmeyer

Robert J. Norrell

Civil War and Reconstruction

Controversy over the movement to abolish slavery intensified in the mid-19th century, particularly after the election of Abraham Lincoln, an advocate of emancipation, to the presidency. The Southern states perceived an increasing threat to their agricultural livelihood, which was based on the institution of slavery; in 1861 Virginia followed 10 other Southern states in seceding from the Union to become the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy. Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy, and Virginia was the chief battleground during the ensuing war—the American Civil War—between the United States of the North and the Confederate States of the South.

The Confederacy's Army of Virginia and the United States's Army of the Potomac engaged each other throughout the war. The most noteworthy encounters in Virginia included the battles of Bull Run near Manassas in 1861 and 1862; the Seven Days' Battles near Richmond and the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862; the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863; and the Battle of the Wilderness and the Petersburg Campaign in 1864–65. In April 1865 the Confederate commander Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union commander Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in southern Virginia to end the war. During the war the state lost one-third of its territory, the 50 counties west of the Allegheny Mountains, to the formation of a new antislavery state, West Virginia (1863).

In 1867 Congress placed the South under military rule, and the Republican Party became the dominant political influence for a brief period. Under Republican Reconstruction in Virginia, African American men were granted the right to vote, education was improved, and a commitment was made to supporting and rebuilding the railroads. Virginia was readmitted as a state of the Union in 1870.

Strife over the state debt, much of which had been accrued through the construction of railroads during the prewar period, was a prominent feature of Virginia's political life during the 1870s and '80s. When former Confederates in the Democratic Party regained control of the government, they provided for payment of the entire debt. The bankrupt state could not, however, meet its obligations to its citizens and pay interest to its creditors, and the new system of public schools, organized in 1870, suffered. Then in 1882 a group known as the Readjusters, claiming that the debt and interest needed pruning, seized control of the government (with the aid of the Republicans) and “readjusted” the debt downward.

Virginia's economy recovered slowly from the devastation of war. Agriculture remained the largest sector of the economy and tobacco the main crop, though it offered little latitude for development. The rebuilding and expansion of the railroad network created some new opportunities, as did the emergence in southwestern Virginia of timber and coal industries. The state's growing manufacturing sector, centred on textiles and cigarettes, also opened new avenues for growth.

Virginia, c. 1900–50

In 1902 the state adopted a new revision of its constitution that contained measures, such as a poll tax and a literacy test, that disenfranchised virtually all African Americans and most poor white citizens. For the first half of the 20th century, only a tiny fraction of Virginians were able to go to the polls. The Democratic Party dominated state politics for most of the period. Thomas Martin, U.S. senator from Virginia from 1893 to 1919, organized a Democratic program that emphasized low taxes, few government services, administrative efficiency, and white privilege. Harry F. Byrd, a newspaper editor and farmer who was elected governor in 1926 and U.S. senator in 1933, continued Martin's policies and consolidated control of the state. The Byrd organization dominated Virginia's politics into the 1960s.

After World War I the state's prosperity increased as agriculture diversified, manufacturing grew in importance, and tourism became a major enterprise. The Great Depression of the 1930s, although less severe in Virginia than in many other states, nevertheless devastated the agricultural and industrial sectors. However, World War I had established an important foundation of Virginia's future economy: federal government spending for military purposes. In the period before U.S. entry into World War II, Virginia was the first to set up a state defense system; the war then drew tens of thousands of soldiers into its military camps. The Hampton Roads area had a great boom with the expansion of the Norfolk naval base and the shipbuilding activities in Newport News. Employment continued at a high rate after the war, with ongoing growth in the nonagricultural sectors, including government.

Virginia since the mid-20th century

Following the U.S. Supreme Court's order in 1954 to desegregate public educational facilities, the Byrd administration, popularly called the “Byrd machine,” promoted a policy of “massive resistance” to the desegregation order. The schools of Prince Edward county gained nationwide attention by closing their doors from 1959 to 1964 rather than allowing black and white students to attend classes together. Although some large-scale protests against segregation took place in the state in the 1960s, Virginia experienced little of the violence that marked similar protests elsewhere in the South.

Byrd remained in office until 1965, and, after his death the following year, his organization collapsed. By the late 1960s segregation had ended, schools were open to both black and white students, and African Americans were voting freely. In 1989 Virginia elected its first African American governor, Douglas Wilder. Meanwhile, Virginia also developed solid two-party competition, with the Democratic and Republican parties controlling the state legislature and the governorship at various times. The Republicans generally have won most of Virginia's congressional seats and at least one of the state's two seats in the U.S. Senate since the 1960s.

During the last quarter of the 20th century and the early 21st century, Virginia experienced rapid suburban growth, especially in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., but also around Richmond and in the Hampton Roads area. Dynamic growth has taken place in the state's economy, notably in the government and technological segments of the service sector. Per capita income has remained above the national average, and the state has continued to devote a higher portion of its resources to education than have most other Southern states.

Charles Loreaux Quittmeyer

Robert J. Norrell

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