Even
as she asks, Professor Dunn knows that readers can
reflect on the discussion she's just completed of
just how difficult walking ahead of the times can
be. Dunn documents how what once was a state that
produced a dynasty of colonial leaders and early
presidents slipped steadily downhill in the first
decades of the 19th century. Observations of
visitors and residents, alike, detail a Virginia
of isolated towns, depleted soil, low land value
(the value of farmland in Virginia was less than
one-third of that in Pennsylvania), few industries
(Virginia exports were half those of Maryland),
poor and illiterate citizens (illiteracy among
whites was four times higher than in other
mid-Atlantic and New England states), a slow
growing population, even Mount Vernon and
Monticello in disrepair.
Those
who did rise to leadership after Virginia's
founding generation, Dunn concludes, were "a
dismal failure" who "possessed neither
(George) Washington's inclusive continental
vision, nor Jefferson's passion for democracy and
equality, nor Madison's nationalism, nor John
Marshall's faith in the Constitution."
Challenges
then resembled challenges Virginia faces now. How
can we diversify the economy, encourage
entrepreneurship and build new companies and new
industries? What mix of public and private
investment are best to build and maintain a modern
transportation system? How can government be made
more democratic, dynamic and responsive?
In
addition to his brilliant system of checks and
balances in government, Madison had suggested that
public elementary schools, teacher training and
proper textbooks were an integral part of progress
and a democratic society. Jefferson had written
not only of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, but also of the "one fatal
stain" on the future, slavery.
But
Virginians in the early decades of the 1800s
looked past ideals to a more limited future.
Property still defined citizenship and
representation in government. Only a small number
of white men could vote in Virginia (out loud, not
by secret ballot), each county regardless of size
elected two delegates and the House of Delegates
chose the Governor, the Governor's Council,
judges, even local officials. They opposed a
system of public schools, federal roads and canals
and the rulings of the Supreme Court (despite
Chief Justice John Marshall of Virginia).
"Government,
rightly understood, is a passive, not an active
machine," declared Gov. William Branch Giles
in 1827 in the most succinct summary of the
mindset that Dunn could find. "The less
government has to do with the concerns of society,
the better."
As
Virginia ever more strongly embraced slavery
despite its declining wealth, it began to lead
what Dunn calls a "discourse of the
absurd" that perversely turned the
"fatal stain" into an institution that
could not only generated prosperity and preserved
order, but furthered spiritual harmony. The pull
of states' rights, theories of nullification and a
drift toward disunion in Virginia were rooted in
this absurd view of slavery. The growing cultural
and political isolation that resulted, Dunn notes,
drained Virginia of population, energy, innovation
and hope.
"Are
we a beggared and exhausted people?" the Richmond
Enquirer editorialized in 1829 in an attempt
to encourage more investment by government and
private interests alike. "Can we raise no
money? Have we no credit?" But Virginia
leaders seemed actually to praise their own lack
of progress, of organizing principles or positive
agenda despite a decline in the status quo.
The
result was predictable. "The reluctance of
Virginians in the early nineteenth century to
dismantle slavery and launch practical plans to
improve their state and enrich the lives of
ordinary Virginians," Dunn writes,
"would condemn the Old Dominion to
irrelevance and poverty." Dunn even projects
the mindset forward a hundred years in an attempt
to explain Virginia Senator Harry Byrd's response
to questions about government stimulus programs
during the Great Depression -- "wait and
see."
It
may be tempting to project Professor Dunn's review
of 19th century Virginia onto 21st century
Virginia, but that is neither necessary nor fair.
Challenges today in Virginia -- the pace of
technological change, declining traditional
revenue sources for roads, reform of lending
practices, expanding education programs, a
independent commission to handle legislative
redistricting -- do continue what Dunn describes
as a tug of war over the right to own Jefferson
and Madison. But she considers the ultimate
Jefferson legacy to be his writing to Madison that
"Earth belongs to the living" and that
societies, laws, constitutions and institutions
must evolve "with the progress of the human
mind."
Progress,
Dunn convincingly explains, does require leaders
ready to slip the bonds of the present, not just
the past, and walk boldly ahead of their times.
