The Commonwealth of Virginia is a Southeastern state historically considered part of the Southern region of the United States of America. Named after Queen Elizabeth I of England, who was known as the Virgin Queen because she never married. The Virginia Colony was the first part of the Americas to be continuously inhabited by British colonists from its founding as a European colony up to the American Revolution. It included area explored by the 1584 expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh along the coast of North America, and at one time it also included Bermuda (or Virgineola). The commonwealth became was one of the thirteen colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution to form the United States of America.
Virginia is known as the "Mother of Presidents," because it is the birthplace of eight U.S. presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson), a number exceeded by no other state. Most of the United States' early presidents were from the state. Virginia has also been known as the "Mother of States" (sometimes "Mother of States and Statesmen") because portions of the original Colony subsequently became Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, as well as some portions of Ohio. Additionally, most of what is now Wisconsin and Michigan was also briefly claimed by Virginia during the Revolutionary War. As a result of the American Civil War (1861-1865), many western counties formed a separate state which was admitted to the Union as West Virginia.
The capital is Richmond and the most populous city is Virginia Beach. Due to the nature of independent cities in Virginia, the most populous local jurisdiction is Fairfax County in Northern Virginia. Independent cities and counties function in the same manner; according to the US Census Bureau independent cities are considered county-equivalent. The largest city in land area is Suffolk, which includes a large portion of the Great Dismal Swamp.
Virginia has a diverse economy, with many federal and military employees in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, which includes the world's largest naval base. In modern times, the Historic Triangle of Colonial Virginia area includes Jamestown, Yorktown and the restored area and living museum of Colonial Williamsburg. Linked by the Colonial Parkway, they combine to form one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world.
At the time of the English colonization of Virginia, Native American people living in what now is Virginia includes tribes known as the Cherokee, Chesepian, Chickahominy, Chiskiack, Mattaponi, Meherrin, Monacan, Moobs, Nansemond, Nottoway, Pamunkey, Povic, Powhatan, Occoneechees, Rappahannock, Saponites and others. The natives are often divided into three groups, based to a large extent upon language differences. The largest group are known as the Algonquian who numbered over 10,000, most of whom were united in the Powhatan Confederacy led by Chief Powhatan. The other groups are the Iroquoian (numbering 2,500) and the Siouan.
A Spanish exploration party had come to the lower Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia 1565 and met the Native Americans living on the Virginia Peninsula. A 17-year old teenage Powhatan boy from the village of Chiskiack (located on the lands of the present-day U.S. Naval Weapons Station Yorktown), who was the son of a chief, agreed to leave with them. He was baptized and renamed Don Luis, in honor of his sponsor, Luis de Velasco. Don Luis was educated in Mexico and Madrid, Spain.
In the fall of 1570, the native-convert Don Luis returned to Virginia to help as a guide and translator in the establishment of the Jesuit's planned Ajacan Mission to be named for St. Mary on the lower peninsula. Shortly after they were dropped off by a Spanish ship, Don Luis abandoned the group, returning to his people, where he became a Weroance. The following February, Don Luis and a group of Powhatans returned and killed the 8 Jesuit missionaries, stealing their clothes and possessions, sparing only the life of a Spanish servant boy named Alonzo. This young boy escaped and made his way to a rival tribe, where he stayed until later rescued by another Spanish ship bringing supplies.
When told of the events by young Alonzo, in the early part of 1572, the Spanish Governor of Florida, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, returned to Virginia to retaliate. The Spanish ultimately captured and hanged some of the Indians believed responsible for the massacre, but they were unable to locate Don Luis. While this marked the end of Spanish efforts to colonize the area which became Virginia, some historians believe that Don Luis and Opechancanough, who was later Chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, may have been the same individual. The name Opechancanough meant "He whose Soul is White" in the Algonquin language used by the Powhatan people.
At the end of the 16th century, when England began to colonize North America, Queen Elizabeth I of England gave the name "Virginia" to the whole area explored by the 1584 expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh along the coast of North America. The name eventually applied to the whole coast from South Carolina to Maine. The London Virginia Company became incorporated as a joint stock company by a proprietary charter drawn up on April 10, 1606. The charter granted lands stretching from approximately the 34th parallel (North Carolina) north to approximately the 45th parallel (U.S.-Canada border) and from the Atlantic Ocean westward. It swiftly financed the first permanent English settlement in the New World, which was at Jamestown, named in honor of King James I, in the Virginia Colony, in 1607. The settlement was founded by Captain Christopher Newport and Captain John Smith. Its Second Charter was officially ratified on May 23, 1609. The Virginia Company was also left in control of Bermuda from 1609, when its flagship was wrecked there en route to Jamestown. Its Royal Charter was extended to include the Islands of Bermuda, alias The Somers Isles (sometimes known as Virgineola), in 1612. Bermuda remained part of Virginia until 1614, when its administration was handed to the Crown (although a spin-off of the Virginia Company, the Somers Isles Company, would oversee it from 1615 to 1684).
Jamestown was the original capital of the Virginia Colony, and remained so until the State House burned (for the fourth time) in 1698. After the fire, the colonial capital was moved to nearby Middle Plantation, which was renamed Williamsburg in honor of William of Orange, King William III. Virginia was given the title, "Dominion," by King Charles II of England at the time of The Restoration, because it had remained loyal to the crown during the English Civil War. The present moniker, "Old Dominion" is a reference to that title. To try to attract more settlers, Virginia used the headright system, in which each family of settlers got 50 acres per person.
Virginia sent delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, beginning in 1774. On June 12, 1776, the Virginia Convention adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights written by George Mason, a document that influenced the Bill of Rights added later to the United States Constitution. Then on June 29, 1776, the convention adopted a constitution that established Virginia as a commonwealth independent of the British Empire.
Patrick Henry served as the first Governor of the new commonwealth from 1776 to 1779, and again from 1784 to 1786. In 1780, the capital was moved to Richmond at the urging of then-Governor Thomas Jefferson, who was afraid that Williamsburg's location made it vulnerable to a British attack during the American Revolutionary War.
In the autumn of 1781, the combined action of Continental and French land and naval forces trapped the British on the Yorktown peninsula. Troops under George Washington and French Comte de Rochambeau defeated British General Cornwallis in the crucial Battle of Yorktown. The British surrender on October 19, 1781 ended the major hostilities and secured the independence of the former colonies, though sporadic fighting continued for another two years.
In 1790, both Virginia and Maryland ceded territory to form the new District of Columbia, but in an Act of the U.S. Congress dated July 9, 1846, the area south of the Potomac that had been ceded by Virginia was retroceded to Virginia effective 1847, and is now Arlington County and part of the City of Alexandria.
Virginia seceded from the Union (on April 17, 1861) in response to Lincoln's call for volunteers to attack the Confederate States of America after its attack on Fort Sumter. Virginia briefly operated as an independent state until it joined the Confederacy. It turned over its military on June 8 and ratified the Constitution of the Confederate States on June 19. Upon its admission, the CSA moved its capitol from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond. In 1863, during the Civil War, 48 counties remaining loyal to the Union in the northwest of the state separated from Virginia to form the State of West Virginia, an act which was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 1870. More battles were fought on Virginia soil than anywhere else in America during the Civil War including the First Battle of Manassas, Second Battle of Manassas, the Seven Days Battles, the Battle of Fredricksburg and the Battle of Chancellorsville. Virginia formally rejoined the union on January 26, 1870, after Reconstruction.
Virginia remained under military control until 1869, since the Union commander, General John M. Schofield, refused to authorize a vote on the constitution drafted by a Radical convention. President Grant called for a vote in 1869 that included a vote on the Constitution, a separate one on its disfranchisement clause that would have stripped the vote from most former rebels, and a separate vote for state officials. The Radicals nominated Henry H. Wells, a former general and provisional governor who was close to Schofield. The leader of the Democrats was William Mahone, a Democrat who said it was time for a New Departure. That is, Democrats had to accept the results of the war, including civil rights and the vote for Freedmen. He denounced the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad railroad as too powerful, and called for new Virginia-based railroads that would lead the state to prosperity. He won over many moderate pro-business Republicans.
Mahone's candidate for governor Gilbert C. Walker was elected and the disfranchisement clause defeated. The new Underwood Constitution was approved by a vote of 210,585 to 9,136, while the disfranchisement clauses were rejected by votes of 124,715 to 83,458 and 124,360 to 84,410 respectively. The state did not experience the corruption and race conflict that characterized the Reconstruction period in other southern states, yet white Virginians generally came to share the bitterness so typical of the southern attitudes. Virginia was thus the only southern state not to have a civilian Radical government.
The Readjuster Party was a political faction formed in Virginia in the late 1870s during the turbulent period following Reconstruction. The so-called Readjusters aspired "to break the power of wealth and established privilege" and to promote public education. The Readjusters were led by Harrison H. Riddleberger of Woodstock, an attorney, and William Mahone, a former Confederate general who was president of several railroads. Mahone was a controlling force in Virginia politics from around 1870 until 1883, when the Readjusters lost control to the "Conservative Democrats."
A division among Virginia politicians occurred in the 1870s, when those who supported a reduction of Virginia's pre-war debt ("Readjusters") opposed those who felt Virginia should repay its entire debt plus interest ("Funders"). Virginia's pre-war debt was primarily for infrastructure improvements overseen by the Virginia Board of Public Works, largely in canals, roads, and railroads. Prior to 1861, the State had purchased a total of $48,000,000 worth of stock in turnpike, toll bridge, canal, and water and rail transportation enterprises. Many these improvements were heavily damaged or destroyed during the Civil War by Union forces. Much of those remaining were located in the portion of the state which became West Virginia and much of the debt was held by "northerners", making the issue of debt repayment complex.
After his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1877, Mahone became the leader of the "Readjusters", forming a coalition of conservative Democrats, as a Republicans, and African-Americans seeking a reduction in Virginia's prewar debt, and an appropriate allocation made to the former portion of the state which constituted the new State of West Virginia. For several decades thereafter, the two states disputed the new state's share of the Virginian government's debt. The issue was finally settled in 1915, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that West Virginia owed Virginia $12,393,929.50. The final installment of this sum was paid off in 1939.
The Readjuster Party promised to "readjust" the state debt, repeal the poll tax and increase funding for schools and other public facilities. The Readjuster Party was successful in electing its candidate, William E. Cameron as governor, and he served from 1882-1886. Mahone served as a Senator in the U.S. Congress from 1881 to 1887. However, in Congress, he became primarily aligned with the Republican Party, as did fellow Readjuster Harrison H. Riddleberger, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1883-1889. Both Mahone and Riddleberger were replaced in the U.S. Senate by Democrats.
Readjusters effective control of Virginia politics lasted until 1883, when they lost majority control in the state legislature, followed by the election of Democrat Fitzhugh Lee as governor in 1885. Mahone stayed active in politics, but lost his bid for reelection as U.S. Senator, and as well as another bid for Governor (as a Republican). Riddleberger died in 1890, Mahone in 1895. After the Readjuster Party disappeared, Virginia's Democratic Party was to rule the state's politics for the next 80 years.
The Pentagon was finished in 1943. The recent expansion of government programs in the areas near Washington has profoundly affected the economy of Northern Virginia, and the subsequent growth of defense projects has also generated a local information technology industry. The Hampton Roads region has also experienced much growth.
On January 13, 1990, Douglas Wilder became the first African American to be elected as Governor of a US state since Reconstruction when he was elected Governor of Virginia.
Virginia was targeted in the September 11, 2001 attacks, as American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington County.
