|
When Spanish explorers entered the Virginia region in 1570,
several Indian tribes inhabited the area. Missionaries built
a settlement along the York River, but were killed only a
few months later. English explorers also arrived in the late
1580s, but their expedition failed due to lack of supplies.
Colonization
The history of America is closely tied to that of Virginia,
particularly during the Colonial period. After the failure
of several attempts by Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter
Raleigh to plant a settlement in Virginia and after
Gilbert's death, Raleigh in 1606 transferred his interests
to the Virginia Company of London. The first settlers, 144
in number, left England in December of that year in the
"Susan Constant," the "Godspeed," and the "Discovery" and
arrived at Jamestown on May 13, 1607. The colony was kept
alive during the first years mainly through the efforts of
Capt. John Smith, who secured food, made peace with the
Indians, explored the country, wrote the first published
book on Virginia (A True Relation, London, 1608), and drew a
map of Virginia remarkable for its accuracy. After Smith
left in 1609 the colonists experienced a year of great
suffering-the "starving time."
Jamestown, founded in 1607, was the first permanent English
settlement in North America which was reorganized and almost
absolute control over the colony was placed in the hands of
the governor. The first governor was Sir Thomas West, Lord
De la Warr, whose arrival in 1610 saved the colony from
being abandoned as a hopeless venture. Attempts to set up
industries such as glassmaking, shipbuilding, and the
production of naval stores failed. In 1622 there occurred an
Indian massacre, followed by a siege of the plague.
Yet the colony survived. Settlements spread beyond
Jamestown. A head right system was established for land. The
New World's first English women and Africans came to
Jamestown in 1619, the year and place where the Western
Hemisphere's first representative legislature met. Virginia
was the largest, most populous and prosperous of the
original 13 colonies.
Royal Rule
In 1624 the English government revoked the charter of the
Virginia Company and organized in Virginia its first royal
colony. During the century and a half that followed, the two
outstanding factors in the colony's history were the
northern and western expansion of the population and a
growing political maturity that produced a strong
representative lower house in the Assembly, an able group of
leaders, and a spirit of independence. g
The first serious attempts to explore the Trans-Allegheny
region were made during Sir William Berkeley's
administrations (1641-52; 1660-77). The Indian massacre of
1644, in which at least 500 colonists perished, delayed
exploration, but trading routes soon led from the sites of
Richmond and Petersburg to the Indians in the southwest.
Virginians remained loyal to Charles I during his struggle
with Parliament, but in 1652 parliamentary commissioners
with an overwhelming force assumed control of the colony.
During the eight years of rule by Parliament, life in
Virginia changed but little.
Berkeley's second administration was marked by difficulties:
the establishment of proprietorships in Virginia, human and
cattle plagues, wars, hurricanes, oppressive trade laws,
threats from the Indians, who resented English encroachment,
and, among the people, widespread discontent and growing
distrust of those who governed the colony.
The climax came when the Indians, made desperate by English
encroachment, began to war on the colonists. When in 1676
the people found Berkeley unable or, as they believed,
unwilling to protect them, they chose young Nathaniel Bacon
as their leader, compelled the governor to give him a
commission, followed him against the Indians, and forced
reforms through the assembly. When the governor threatened
to use military force against them, Bacon and his men defied
him. On the death of Bacon, however, Berkeley soon ended the
struggle with a series of hangings that shocked the home
government and From the en
d of Bacon's rebellion to the revolution of 1688 in England,
Englishmen in Virginia, like their kinsmen in England,
struggled to lessen the royal prerogative represented in the
colony by a succession of autocratic governors.
During the remainder of the colonial period, Virginia
generally had able and conscientious governors. But
conflicts inevitably arose when the mother country failed to
realize the growing independence of the colony and refused,
in such matters as the use of veto, trade regulations, and
taxation, to keep the promise of early charters that
Virginians would "enjoy all liberties, franchises and
immunities…to all intents and purposes as if they had been
abiding and borne within this our realm of England...".
Presbyterians gained a strong foothold in Virginia during
the 1730s and 1740s and organized Hanover presbytery, and in
the 1750s the Separate Baptists from New England entered the
colony. Both denominations increased rapidly.
During the quarter-century before the Revolution, as
Virginia grew in strength and political maturity, its House
of Burgesses became increasingly active in opposing the
royal prerogative in matters as the veto of the colony's
laws, the Proclamation of 1763 restricting westward
expansion, and taxes imposed by Parliament. Before 1776
leaders such as Richard Bland and Jefferson were formulating
the constitutional and ethical bases for revolt, Patrick
Henry was becoming an orator, and Washington was acquiring
military and political experience.
Virginia in 1763 had an estimated total population of
121,022, almost evenly divided between whites and slaves.
The population was increasing rapidly. The great planters
were building substantial homes; the homes of lesser farmers
were neat and well built.
Revolutionary Period
Virginians took the lead in the constitutional crises
preceding the Revolutionary War. They passed the Stamp Act
resolutions of 1765; started in 1769 the boycott of British
goods in order to cause the repeal of the Townshend Acts;
revived in 1773 the Committee of Correspondence of 1759 and
brought about an intercolonial committee; called the first
Continental Congress in 1774 and furnished its president,
Peyton Randolph; set up a Revolutionary Committee of Safety
and armed for defense in 1775; called on Congress on May 15,
1776, to declare independence; furnished the author, Thomas
Jefferson, of the Declaration of Independence; and provided
the leader of the Revolutionary Army, George Washington. The
May 1776 convention, in addition to proposing that Congress
declare independence, form a union, and make foreign
alliances, also set up a commonwealth and chose Patrick
Henry as its first governor. Meanwhile, in 1775, Gov. John
Dunmore, fearful of the volunteer riflemen gathering in
Williamsburg, had fled to the safety of the British fleet.
On November 7 he declared martial law and waged war against
Virginia until forced to leave the following July.
In 1778 George Rogers Clark led an army of Virginia and
Kentucky riflemen in the conquest of the Northwest
Territory; his campaign ended the Indian menace At Yorktown
on Oct. 19, 1781, British forces under General Charles
Cornwallis surrendered to the combined French and American
forces serving under the command of General George
Washington.
Virginia moved its capital from Williamsburg to Richmond in
1780. Previously, it had set up 19 counties in the west
(1776-82), abolished its African slave trade (1778), and
reformed its code of laws (1779). The British captured
Portsmouth (q.v.) in October 1780. In January 1781 Benedict
Arnold took Richmond and set up headquarters at Portsmouth.
Cornwallis brought his army into Virginia from the south
that spring, and Jefferson, governor of the state, with
inadequate forces, was unable to stop him. Cornwallis, after
marching through Richmond, Williamsburg (near which, at
Green Spring, he was attacked by Lafayette), and Portsmouth,
came to Yorktown and fortified the place. There, trapped by
the American and French armies under Washington and
Rochambeau and by French naval forces under the comte de
Grasse, he was forced to surrender on Oct. 19, 1781. This
practically ended the war.
Post-Revolutionary Period
For almost half a century after the Revolution, Virginia,
impoverished by two wars and finding its soil depleted as a
result of tobacco growing, suffered economically, and
Virginians migrated to the west, northwest, and southwest.
But the foundations for future progress were being laid.
Virginia began an efficient system of chartered banks in
1804. The state undertook, or aided in the building of
roads, canals, and railroads, and Virginians began direct
trade with Europe and South America. By 1860 Virginia was
the leading manufacturing state in the South. A state
university and several colleges had been founded before
1850, public schools were being established by local option
in 1846, and numerous private schools were flourishing. The
constitution of 1851 provided white manhood suffrage,
popular election of many officials (including the governor),
and ended sectional inequalities in representation.
Slavery, however, remained an unsolved evil. In January
1832, after Nat Turner's slave insurrection in Southampton
the previous year, the Virginia Assembly tried in vain to
find a solution; and Abolitionists' indiscriminate abuse
almost silenced native reformers.
Civil War and Reconstruction
In 1861 Virginia seceded from the Union. Richmond became the
capital of the Confederacy, and Virginia was a battleground
throughout the war that followed. In 1863 the state lost
one-third of its territory to form West Virginia.
More major battles of the American Civil War were fought in
Virginia from 1861 through 1865 than in any other state.
Today, one-third of America's most important Civil War
battlefields are in Virginia, and most are open to the
public. In 1867 Congress placed the South under military
rule, Virginia being Military District No. 1, with Gen. John
M. Schofield in command.
Under the Reconstruction acts most Virginians with any
experience in government were disfranchised. A
constitutional convention drew up a new constitution, which
included articles that would have excluded thousands of
whites from voting and disqualified almost every native
white citizen from holding office. A committee of nine
citizens headed by Alexander H. H. Stuart, however, secured
permission from the federal authorities to vote separately
on these articles and they were rejected by the voters. The
remainder of the constitution, including manhood suffrage,
was adopted ( 1869), and Congress readmitted the state to
the Union on Jan. 26, 1870.
Virginia escaped much of the punishment that Reconstruction
inflicted on other states, but it had lost thousands of its
young men and had been devastated by invading armies, its
banks, had been closed, its labor force demoralized, and its
territory occupied by its former enemy.
The Democratic Party was revived in 1883. Virginia adopted a
new constitution in 1902.
20th Century
In 1926 Harry F. Byrd became governor of Virginia and within
four years had revolutionized the governmental machinery.
During the first 60 days of his administration, the General
Assembly instituted a remarkable group of reforms through
statutes or constitutional amendment. The years after World
War I found the state's prosperity increasing as agriculture
was diversified, manufacturing grew in importance in the
economy, and the tourist business became a major enterprise.
The depression of the 1930s was less severe in Virginia than
in many other states. Employment continued at a high rate
after the war, with continued growth in the nonagricultural
sector, including government. and agricultural production
became more diversified.
The 1969 state elections resulted in Linwood Holton being
elected the first Republican governor since Reconstruction.
America's first seven astronauts trained at NASA Langley Air
Force Base in Hampton.
Blacksburg, home of Virginia Tech, is renowned as one of the
world's first electronic villages.
Newport News is the site of the nation's most powerful
continuous electron beam accelerator, located at the Thomas
Jefferson National Acceleration Facility.
Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first test tube baby born in the
U.S., was delivered Dec. 28, 1981, at Norfolk General
Hospital.
Recently, pollution has become a problem in the Chesapeake
Bay. State leaders area striving to protect the water and
wildlife of the bay. Virginia continues to maintain a strong
diversified economy. Industrial growth has expanded into
many areas such as chemical, clothing, and computers.
Eight states were also formed in whole or in part from
Virginia, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana,
Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. The state is
called the “Mother of Presidents” because eight U.S.
Presidents were born there. Virginia has produced more U.S.
presidents than any other state: George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry
Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson.
Commonwealth
You will often hear Virginia called the Commonwealth of
Virginia. This doesn't mean Virginia has a different form of
government than any other state." Commonwealth" is defined
by Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary as a political unit
or government
(1) "founded on law and united by compactor tacit agreement
of the people for the common good," or
(2) "one in which supreme authority is vested in the
people."
Using these definitions, it could be said that all 50
states, as well as our national government, are
common-wealth's. Besides Virginia, three other states -
Kentucky, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania - use the term
common-wealth as part of their official names.
The first use of commonwealth in Virginia was early in its
history. One reason given by Governor George Yeardley for
authorizing the first General Assembly meeting at James-town
in 1619 was "for the better establishing of a commonwealth
here." From 1649 to 1660, England and Virginia did not have
a king. Instead, the Puritans ruled under a Lord Protector,
Oliver Cromwell. The government was called the Commonwealth
of England. This commonwealth ended when King Charles II
reclaimed the throne in 1660.
In Colonial times, Virginia was officially known as the
Colony and Dominion of Virginia. When the 13 colonies broke
ties with the British Crown during the Revolution, the old
name was no longer suitable. The delegates to the convention
in Williamsburg, when the first Constitution of Virginia was
adopted on June 29, 1776, used common-wealth as the name for
the new form of government. It is very likely they had in
mind the Puritans' rebellion against the Crown in England
more than 100years earlier. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts
also chose to be called commonwealths after independence
from Great Britain. The other 10 former colonies took the
name "state," the term used in the Declaration of
Independence. Kentucky was once part of Virginia. When
Kentuckians joined the Union as the 15th state in 1792, it
kept the name commonwealth.
There are several other uses of the word "commonwealth" in
the world today The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is not a
state, but a territory. In this case, commonwealth refers to
the free association with the United States chosen by the
Puerto Rican people. The Commonwealth of Nations is a
voluntary association of Great Britain and about 50
countries that were once part of the British Empire. Some of
these nations, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the
Bahamas, Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, still
recognize the British monarch as their official head of
state. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia and
other former Soviet republics formed the Commonwealth of
Independent States, a loose alliance set up to handle
certain matters of mutual interest among these newly
independent countries.
|
