VA-074
Remembrance
In memory of my mother. She loved Virginia more than she ever let on. The garden, the seasons, the quiet of a Sunday afternoon.
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Where America’s Story Began
Mother of Presidents
Virginia is the oldest continuous English settlement in North America. Jamestown, planted in 1607 on a James River swamp, survived starvation, disease, and conflict to become the seedbed of what would eventually be the United States. Within a generation, tobacco had made the colony prosperous and the plantation system — built on enslaved labor — had taken root. That contradiction between liberty and bondage would haunt Virginia, and the nation, for centuries.
Virginia produced the intellectual architecture of the American republic. George Washington commanded the Continental Army from a Virginia background of land and ambition. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and built Monticello as a monument to Enlightenment ideals, even as he enslaved the people who constructed it. James Madison drafted the Constitution. James Monroe completed the Virginia Dynasty’s grip on the presidency. Eight Virginians in all would hold the nation’s highest office.
The Civil War tore Virginia apart more literally than almost any other state. Richmond became the Confederate capital, and the state became the central theater of the war. The Peninsula Campaign, the Wilderness, Chancellorsville, Cold Harbor — the bloodiest battles in American history were fought across Virginia’s fields. The war ended at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, where Lee surrendered to Grant in Wilmer McLean’s parlor, closing four years of devastation.
The 20th century remade northern Virginia beyond recognition. The Pentagon opened in 1943, and the federal government’s gravitational pull steadily transformed Fairfax, Arlington, and Loudoun counties from rural farmland into one of the wealthiest suburban regions on earth. Technology firms, defense contractors, and government agencies turned northern Virginia into a global hub, while the rest of the state — Southside, the coalfields, the Shenandoah Valley — followed a different trajectory.
Today Virginia holds its contradictions in careful balance: ancient tobacco country and a booming technology corridor, Confederate monuments under removal and a thriving African American political voice, mountain isolation and Pentagon power. The state motto — “Sic semper tyrannis,” thus always to tyrants — was borrowed for both liberation and assassination. Virginia never lets you forget that history is still happening here.
1607
Jamestown Founded
English settlers establish Jamestown on the James River, the first permanent English settlement in North America.
1619
First General Assembly
Virginia’s House of Burgesses meets at Jamestown — the first representative legislative body in the Americas.
1776
Virginia Declaration of Rights
George Mason drafts the Virginia Declaration of Rights, a direct model for the U.S. Bill of Rights.
1781
Yorktown Surrender
Cornwallis surrenders to Washington at Yorktown, ending the major combat of the American Revolution.
1788
Statehood
Virginia ratifies the Constitution and becomes the 10th state, after a fierce debate between Patrick Henry and James Madison.
1831
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
Nat Turner leads a slave uprising in Southampton County; the rebellion triggers brutal reprisals and tighter slave codes across the South.
1865
Appomattox
Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, effectively ending the Civil War.
1943
Pentagon Opens
The Pentagon opens in Arlington, the largest office building in the world, anchoring Virginia’s transformation into a national security hub.
1989
Wilder Elected
L. Douglas Wilder of Richmond becomes the first African American governor elected in U.S. history.
2001
Pentagon Attack
American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon on September 11, killing 184 people on the ground and aboard.
