"Episcopal saw itself as part of Old Virginia. If the country was a chessboard, Virginia was the white queen, the most important state in the nation, the home of presidents. As a child, I memorized every president in order as a kind of parlor trick. My dad had given me three-inch white figurines of each president, and I could perform on command, placing them in chronological order. Asked to choose my favorites, I picked, in order, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe. Four of the first five presidents were from Virginia. (I would never pick John Adams from Massachusetts.) I knew more Virginia trivia. The American Revolution ended with the American victory at Yorktown- in Virginia. The Old Dominion hosted more Civil War battles than any other state. First again. I knew that Virginia was so far and away the best, but a Virginian would never say that. Boasting? That was for Texans. One writer described the Virginia state of mind five years before I was born as a "regal humility" or a mystique "rooted in instincts of graciousness, chivalry, generosity and a benevolent aristocratic idealism, all attributes of the plantation society.""