virginia

"Red-Cloud Owen grew up in New York, but he spent his summers in Virginia with his cousins and other members of the tribe. At 15, he moved to Virginia so that he could attend an all-Indian school. He decided to stay for good, but his mother would never return to live in Virginia again. She died in 1974. Before she died, however, she made a request, Red-Cloud Owen says. She wanted to be buried in the Chickahominy tribal cemetery, next to the tribal center and near the small town where she grew up and knew the name of everyone and every tree. Buried in Virginia. Buried as an Indian."

"The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."

"Virginia is a beautiful state, with almost one-third of its area protected in state or national forests or parks. Virginia has barrier islands, seacost, coastal plains, piedmont, mountains, and valleys. Throughout the state are historic buildings and battlefields. The first settlers encountered Powhatan Indians, members of the Algonquin Nation. As settlers moved westward and northward, they met other tribes as well. Some of the most beautiful place-names in Virginia, such as Shenandoah and Chesapeake, come from Native American words. Today, two tribes still own reservations in King William County, the Mattaponi and the Pamunkey. In King James I's original land grant to the London Company in 1609, the territory of Virginia stretched north and south of Point Comfort on the Atlantic Ocean for 200 miles, then west and northwest to the Pacific Ocean, encompassing three-quarters of the present United States and much of what is now Canada. After England relinquished the area west of the Mississippi in 1763, Virginia still included territory northwest to the Great Lakes. Virginia gave up claims to this vast Northwest Territory when it joined the other former colonies to establish the United States of America."

"Geologically, Virginia has some unusual formations- the Natural Bridge, Natural Tunnel, and Natural Chimneys- where ancient seas once washed and shaped the limestone. In Fairystone State Park in Henry County, crystals in petrified wood have produced small crosses that are used as jewelry. Virginia has iron ore at Ferrum, bauxite at various locations, and huge deposits of coal in its western mountains. Until the California gold strike in 1849, Virginia's Goochland and Buckingham Counties were America's leading producers of gold. Both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War were fought extensively in Virginia, and the surrenders that ended both these wars took place here. Although Virginia is considered a conservative state and was the capital of the Confederacy, Virginia voters in 1989 elected the first African-American governor, L. Douglas Wilder. The history of Old Dominion is colorful and dramatic."

"Yorktown, Virginia is a small, quiet town today. The only indications of its past importance are the Victory Monument, the visitors' center, and the cannons by the river pointing at the earthworks where an empire was lost and won."

"VA? Now, that sounds great."

"On the whole, I find nothing anywhere else... which Virginia need envy."

"These people were of all races, colors, and creeds. French were in the north and in the Carolinas. Dutch had built the town on Manhattan island, and their patroons' estates in the Hudson valley; now they were building their own cabins in the Mohawk Indian country that is now New York State. Germans had settled in the Jerseys and in the far west, beyond Philadelphia. Germans and Scotch-Irish were climbing the Carolina mountains; Swedes were in Delaware, English and French and Dutch and Irish were settled in Massachusetts, the New Hampshire Grants, Connecticut, and Virginia. Mingled with all these were Italians, Portuguese, Finns, Arabs, Armenians, Russians, Greeks, and Africans from a dozen very different African peoples and cultures. Black, brown, yellow and white, all these peoples were some of them free and some of them slaves. Also they were intermarried with the American Indians."

"Save for defense of my native state, I never desire again to draw my sword."

"I, Robert E. Lee of Lexington, Virginia do solemn, in the presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Union of the States thereafter, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithful support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves, so help me God."

"I think it would be better for Virginia if she could get rid of them... I think it would be for the benefit of Virginia."

"I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the south. So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained."

"In 2021, Virginia became the first and only Southern state to pass a law amending the Code of Virginia to curtail the use and effectiveness of the LGBTQ+ "panic" defense. The law defines circumstances that do not mitigate a homicide. Specifically, it states that "notwithstanding any other provision of law, the discovery of, perception of, or belief about another person's actual or perceived sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation, whether or not accurate, is not a defense to any charge of capital murder, murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, or voluntary manslaughter and is not provocation negating malice as an element of murder.""

"The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant insurrection to make its nest within her borders, and this Government has no choice left but to deal with it where it finds it; and it has the less regret, as the loyal citizens have in due form claimed its protection. Those loyal citizens this Government is bound to recognize and protect, as being Virginia."

"On a view of all circumstances I have judged it most prudent not to force Billey back to Virginia even if it could be done; and have accordingly taken measures for his final separation from me. I am persuaded his mind is too thoroughly tainted to be a fit companion for fellow slaves in Virginia. The laws here do not admit of his being sold for more than 7 years. I do not expect to get near the worth of him; but cannot think of punishing him by transportation merely for coveting that liberty for which we have paid the prices of so much blood, and have proclaimed so often to be the right, and worthy the pursuit of every human being."

"Virginia is for lovers."

"I have never doubted what Virginia would do when the alternatives present themselves to her intelligent and gallant people, to choose between an association with her sisters and the dominion of a people, who have chosen their leader upon the single idea that the African is equal to the Anglo-Saxon, and with the purpose of placing our slaves on equality with ourselves and our friends of every condition! and if we of South Carolina have aided in your deliverance from tyranny and degradation, as you suppose, it will only the more assure us that we have performed our duty to ourselves and our sisters in taking the first decided step to preserve an inheritance left us by an ancestry whose spirit would forbid its being tarnished by assassins. We, of South Carolina, hope soon to greet you in a Southern Confederacy, where white men shall rule our destinies, and from which we may transmit to our posterity the rights, privileges, and honor left us by our ancestors."

"What was the origin of our slave population? The evil commenced when we were in our Colonial state, but acts were passed by our Colonial Legislature, prohibiting the importation, of more slaves, into the Colony. These were rejected by the Crown. We declared our independence, and the prohibition of a further importation was among the first acts of state sovereignty. Virginia was the first state which instructed her delegates to declare the colonies independent. She braved all dangers. From Quebec to Boston, and from Boston to Savannah, Virginia shed the blood of her sons. No imputation then can be cast upon her in this matter. She did all that was in her power to do, to prevent the extension of slavery, and to mitigate its evils."

"Virginia, hail, all hail! Virginia, hail, all hail!"

"There was more vindictiveness shown to me by the Virginia people for my voting for Grant than the North showed to me for fighting four years against him."

"I wrote you about my disgust at reading the Reunion speeches. It has since been increased by reading Christian's report. I am certainly glad I wasn't there. According to Christian, the Virginia people were the abolitionists and the Northern people were pro-slavery. He says slavery was 'a patriarchal' institution. So were polygamy and circumcision. Ask Hugh if he has been circumcised. Christian quotes what the Old Virginians said against slavery. True; but why didn't he quote what the modern Virginians said in favor of it? Mason, Hunter, Wise, etc. Why didn't he state that a Virginia senator, Mason, was the author of the Fugitive Slave Law, and why didn't he quote The Virginia Code that made it a crime to speak against slavery?"

"The South went to war on account of slavery. South Carolina went to war, as she said in her secession proclamation, because slavery would not be secure under Lincoln. South Carolina ought to know what was the cause for her seceding. The truth is the modern Virginians departed from the teachings of the Fathers."

"He captured Harper's Ferry, with his nineteen men so few, and frightened 'Old Virginny' till she trembled through and through. They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew. But, his soul is marching on."

"The Korean people and I were horribly shocked and deeply saddened at the tragic incident two days ago at Virginia Tech in the United States. I pray for the repose of the souls of the victims and express my wholehearted sympathy to the wounded, the bereaved families and the American people. In addition, I hope that Americans will overcome this great sorrow and difficulties and will regain peace of mind as soon as possible."

"Three centuries have passed since, with the settlements on the coasts of Virginia and Massachusetts, the real history of what is now the United States began. All this we ultimately owe to the action of an Italian seaman in the service of a Spanish King and a Spanish Queen. It is eminently fitting that one of the largest and most influential social organizations of this great Republic, a republic in which the tongue is English, and the blood derived from many sources, should, in its name, commemorate the great Italian. It is eminently fitting to make an address on Americanism."

"Even though the [Virginian] state had slaves, the Founders proclaimed all men had equal rights."

"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.""

"Today, the more I learn about segregation and the Jim Crow system in Virginia, the more I agree with the great Virginia civil rights lawyer Oliver W. Hill Sr., a law partner with Samuel Tucker. Hill found a better way to explain the "Virginia way of life" that helped form me. In 1985, he described life for southern African American citizens during the Jim Crow era: "Virginia and the whole South were police states. There isn't a question about that. Negroes didn't serve on juries... You saw no blacks in places like city hall, or public buildings, unless, maybe an elevator operator or janitor. And that's the way it was." If the Virginia of my youth was no democracy, if I call a plantation an enslaved labor farm, then I should also call segregated Virginia by its true name- a racial police state. To be clear, the South of my birth was no democracy."

"I wanted to be a Virginia gentleman, not a lawyer, not a teacher, not a businessman, and certainly not an army officer. Those were all careers, professions, jobs. I wanted to be a gentleman. That meant something to a white boy growing up in the South. A gentleman meant honor, chivalry, and good manners. It meant status."

"Maybe my wife is right. Alexandria might be a Washington suburb now. And that leaves me hopeful. Yet my white southern roots know that beneath the veneer of civility lurks a dark past of slavery, segregation, and white supremacy. Maybe we are both right. Alexandria is both southern and not so southern, trying to shed its glorification of the Confederate cause incrementally. I understand. We find it hard to confront our past because it's so ugly, but the alternative to ignoring our racist history is creating a racist future."

"The popular tourism slogan "Virginia Is for Lovers" has so many meanings to me. It certainly has meant love in the traditional sense: I fell deeply in love and got married in the Old Dominion. But the slogan also means a love of everything the state has to offer. There's a lot to love: the history, the southern charm of the people and places, the mountains, the water, the big cities, the small towns, and the many country roads. I was born and raised in Virginia and have lived in the state for all but six years of my life, when I was in the U.S. Army. My army time gave me a wanderlust that led to a career of travel. I'm a travel writer and photographer by trade and roam the world in search of a good story. But there's nothing better than roaming my own state on a country road."

""Virginia is for lovers"- of weekends. There's a lot to love: the history, the southern charm of the people and places, the mountains, the water, the big cities, and the small towns. All of this makes for many great weekend options. I was born and raised in Virginia and have lived in the state most of my life. My Army time gave me a wanderlust that led to a career of travel. I'm a travel writer and photographer by trade and roam the world in search of a good story. But there's nothing better than a weekend spent in Virginia."

"Richmond is a city rich with tradition and vibrant with growth. It's a great place to spend a weekend. Richmond is at the heart of everything wonderful about the Old (and new) Dominion, offering an interesting blend of the modern and the historic. Over a billion dollars of shiny new buildings grace the downtown skyline, but they coexist with restored mansions, museums, and warehouses. Richmonders and visitors alike enjoy the new and old riches, but city life still moves at a southern gentleman's (and gentlewoman's) pace."

"[I]n 1782, Virginia passed a bill permitting private manumissions. Over the next ten years, Virginians manumitted about 1,000 slaves, including some who had fought as substitutes for their owners. Many more, however, were returned to slavery, so many, in fact, that the legislature felt compelled to speak out against this obvious injustice. In the fall of 1783, it passed a bill condemning owners who contrary to principles of justice and to their own solemn promise," kept their substitutes in slavery. It also instructed the Attorney General of Virginia to act on behalf of slaves held in servitude despite their war-time service and grant them the freedom they had earned. It is unknown how many slaves were freed in Virginia as a reward for military service."

"Virginia led the way among the colonies in excluding blacks from militia service, when the House of Burgesses required in January 1639 that only white Virginians arm themselves."

"I think Stone Mountain is amusing, but then again I find most representations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson outside of Virginia, and, in Jackson's case, West Virginia, to be amusing."

"'The people of the South', says a contemporary, 'are not fighting for slavery but for independence'. Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new-fangled heresy, a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, nor mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland... Our doctrine is this. WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the groundwork."

"Virginians typically treated their slaves harshly."