Category: Virginia history
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Youngkin and Confederate Heritage
by Donald Smith Does the Virginia GOP want the help and support of the Confederate heritage community? We should get a pretty good indicator this week. Three bills just passed by the General Assembly will soon land on Governor Youngkin’s desk, if they haven’t already. They will remove the tax exemptions of the United Daughters…
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The Purge Comes for Edwin Alderman
by James A. Bacon As President of the University of Virginia between 1904 and 1931, Edwin Anderson Alderman led Thomas Jefferson’s university into the 20th century. A self-proclaimed “progressive” of the Woodrow Wilson stamp, he advocated higher taxes to support public education, admitted the first women into UVA graduate programs, boosted enrollment and faculty hiring,…
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Rep. Bob Good Calls for Hearing on Naming Commission
by Donald Smith The Virginia congressman who represents Appomattox, where the Civil War started to end,* wants the House of Representatives to examine the impacts of Congress’ attempt to grapple with the legacy of that war — an attempt that could lay the groundwork for the legacies of Confederate generals and soldiers to be deemed…
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RVA HISTORY: Strides of Strength
by Jon Baliles Richmond unveiled a new sculpture last week on the site of the old Westhampton School (near St. Mary’s Hospital) that marked the desegregation of the West-End school in 1961. The 12-foot piece, entitled “Strides,” marks that day when 12-year old student Daisy Jane Cooper (now Jane Cooper Johnson) arrived as the first…
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What Do You Do If There Are No Statues Left to Tear Down?
Step #1: Reinterpret the Confederate statues; Step #2: Remove the Confederate statues from the public square; Step #3: Prevent those who want the statues from having them. Decapitate the statues, melt them down, or desecrate them in art and museum displays. What’s left? Where else is there to go? Step #4: Take away tax-exempt status…
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Rebellion Within the Rebellion: The Wayward Militiamen of Rockingham
by Karl Rhodes Thomas Jefferson once wrote that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing; as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them.” Perhaps this was the principle at work in March 1862,…
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The War Over Robert E. Lee Never Ends
by James A. Bacon First they came for the equestrian statues of Robert E. Lee. Then they removed his name from Lee Chapel at Washington & Lee University, where he is buried. Then they came for the memorial to his horse Traveller. Now they want to remove him from Virginia license plates. A bill introduced…
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Congress, Commission Renounce Reconciliation
by Donald Smith ‘In passing the 2021 William M. “Mac” Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act, the United States Congress determined that Confederates and the Confederacy no longer warrant commemoration through Department of Defense assets.’ *** At such a time and under such conditions I thought it eminently fitting to show some token of our feeling,…
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The Fighting Editor
Alexander, Ann Field. Race Man: The Rise and Fall of the “Fighting Editor” John Mitchell Jr., University of Virginia Press, 2002 Review by Dick Hall-Sizemore John Mitchell, Jr. was a major figure in Richmond and Virginia public affairs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Over the course of this career, he was a…
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Virginia Army National Guard Switches from Red to Blue
by Thomas. M. Moncure Jr. Confederate statues have come down and in some cases – to assure they will never rise again – have been melted down. Schools and roads have been purged of Confederate references. Army bases likewise are renamed in this cultural cleansing. This rewriting of history – Soviet style – would make…
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Daughter of Heroines
by Margot Heffernan The year is 2023 but it feels as if the calendar has rolled back a hundred years for women and girls in Virginia, and just about anywhere else in the Western world. Hyperbolic? Over the top? Sadly, no. Each day women are censored, denigrated, and erased; called bigots for speaking biological fact;…
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A Long Time Ago in a World Far Far Away
by Dick Hall-Sizemore This past weekend I went back in Virginia’s history. Waaaay back. Over a billion years back. The occasion was the 2023 Virginia Geological Field Conference. This is an annual event staged by a group of leading geologists in the state. Attending were faculty members from several institutions, including one community college; geologists…
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A Native Virginian Hero
by Dick Hall-Sizemore A family plot in the cemetery of a church in the Northern Neck completed in 1714 is the final resting place of a Virginia native who was one of the United States’ modern heroes. A highway historic marker caught my eye this weekend while I was exploring the Northern Neck on my…
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Thunder in the Pulpits
by Michael Giere “But this was not always so. In fact, for much of our history, it has been just the opposite. Godly men and women who were fearless, bold, strong, and savvy have been central to the American experience.” There has never been anything in history like the US Constitution, signed on September 17,…
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Revisiting the Intellectual Foundations of Conservatism — One Book at a Time
by Suzanne Munson From time to time, members of every great movement such as American Conservatism need to stop, take a breath, and see where the movement is going. Great movements, founded by great individuals, can sometimes be hijacked by lesser minds. Many of the founders of modern conservatism were intellectuals. William F. Buckley was…