Virginia

This document, drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and introduced to the Virginia General Assembly in 1779, called for freedom of religion for peoples of all faiths and disestablished the Church of England in Virginia. The statute was a precursor to the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise…

The Virginia Declaration of Rights, primarily written by George Mason, was one of the first founding documents that called for freedoms such as freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The ideals in this declaration can be found in other…

<p><span class="deck"> Five successive Benjamin Harrisons created a private empire of tobacco and trade and a great Virginia plantation</span> </p>

<p>The Jamestown founder is one of those early American heroes about whom historians are apt to lose their tempers</p>

<p><span class="deck">A noted newspaperman writes of his birthplace, a community in which time stood still—and then started backwards</span></p>

<p>Where the written word leaves off, the spade must often take over. A well-known archaeologist relates what the earth has revealed about the first permanent British colony in America</p>

<p><span class="deck"> The idea goes back to the very beginnings of our national history. Then as now, it was built upon human relationships, and these—as Mr. Jefferson found to his sorrow—make a fragile foundation.</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> Sure that he was divinely appointed, Nat Turner led fellow slaves in a bloody attempt to overthrow their masters</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> A STUDY IN HISTORICAL SILENCES</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">Nobody was murdered or maimed, but nobody backed down for twenty years in the struggle over school integration in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Who finally won?</span> </span></p>

<p><span class="deck"> It saved the early Colonists from starvation, it has caused men to murder each other, it used to be our most democratic food—in short, an extraordinary bivalve</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> How the happy combination of a millionaire and, a parson gave us Colonial Williamsburg, a place of surpassing loveliness—and a continuing reminder of what a truly bold enterprise our Revolution was</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">Everything depended on a French fleet leaving the Indies on time; two American armies meeting in Virginia on time; a French fleet beating a British fleet; a French army getting along with an American one; and a British general staying put.</span> </span></p>

<p><span class="deck"> A pictorial history of the state from discovery to the Revolution</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> The first settlers marked the borders of their lives with simple fences that grew ever more elaborate over the centuries</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> From Fort Ticonderoga to the Plaza Hotel, from Appomattox Courthouse to Bugsy Siegel’s weird rose garden in Las Vegas, the present-day scene is enriched by knowledge of the American past</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck"> The pilasters and pediments of an architecture perfectly suited to our eighteenth-century aristocracy flourish in today’s skyline and suburb</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck">At war’s outbreak, a frightened commander was ready to give away the Union’s greatest navy yard.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">During three days in May 1863, the Confederate leader took astonishing risks to win one of the most skillfully conducted battles in history. But the cost turned out to be too steep.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">How to know the unknowable man</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">The Colonial Revival was born in a time of late-19th-century ferment, and, from then on, the style resurfaced every time Americans needed reassurance.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">The author joins the thousands who feel compelled to trace the flight of Lincoln’s assassin.</span></span></p>

<p><span class="deck">On the 25th anniversary of the most controversial historical novel in memory, the author of <em><span class="typestyle"> The Confessions of Nat Turner</span> </em>speaks of a novelist’s duty to history and fiction’s strange power not only to astonish, but to enrage.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">THIS SPRING, THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF JEFFERSON’S BIRTH, RESTORATION BEGINS ON POPLAR FOREST, WHICH HE ONCE CALLED “THE BEST DWELLING HOUSE IN THE STATE, EXCEPT THAT OF MONTICELLO.” WHILE THE WORK PROGESSES, THE HOUSE IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, AND ITS GHOSTLY EMPTINESS HEIGHTENS THE SENSE OF ITS ORIGINAL OCCUPANT.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">He told President Lincoln that he was better than any other officer on the field at Bull Run, and he got the Army’s top job. He built a beaten force into a proud one, and stole a march on Robert E. Lee with it. He was 24 hours away from winning the Civil War. Then, he fell apart.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">The young German fought for American independence went home and returned as a man of peace.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">A CENTURY AGO, you’d eat steak and lobster when you couldn’t afford chicken. Today, it can cost less than the potatoes you serve with steak. What happened in the years between was an extraordinary marriage of technology and the market.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">COMING TO TERMS WITH THE MOST COMPELLING AND MYSTERIOUS OF CIVIL WAR HEROES</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">From Richmond to Appomattox Court House, roads unchanged for 140 years tell the story of the final days and the final hours of the Confederacy.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">A descendant of Thomas Jefferson comments on the quarrel over who can be allowed in the family graveyard, and the missing remains of Sally Hemings. The outcome of the dispute is important to every American.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">It is a place of noble harbors, a convergence of strong rivers and a promontory commanding a wind-raked bay; a shoreline enfolding towns older than the republic and the most modern and formidable naval base on Earth; a spot where a four-hour standoff between two very peculiar ships changed the course of warfare forever—and the breeding ground of crabs that people travel across the country to eat. Fred Schultz explains why the fifth annual American Heritage Great American Place Award goes to ...</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">How Jamestown got us started</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">New research shows that Lee's momentous decision to fight for the South was far from inevitable.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">If the colony had collapsed, England might not have been established as the major colonial power in North America.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Sharp business skills ensured the first president’s phenomenal success.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck"> The vivacious Sally Fairfax stole the young man’s heart long before he met Martha</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck">A diminutive, persuasive Virginian hijacked the Constitutional Convention and forced the moderates to accept a national government with vastly expanded powers.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck"> A southern writer analyzes the handicaps unwittingly laid on the general by President Davis</span> </p>

<p>The archaeologist who discovered the real Jamestown debunks myths, and answers age-old mysteries about North America's first successful English colony.</p>

<p>Patrick Henry adhered to five ideas that drove him and his neighbors first to resist, and then to declare themselves independent of Great Britain.</p>

<p>Four hundred years ago this year, two momentous events happened in Britain’s fledgling colony in Virginia: the New World’s first democratic assembly convened, and an English privateer brought kidnapped Africans to sell as slaves. Such were the conflicted origins of modern America.</p>

<p>The first votes of the fledgling Virginia Assembly in 1619 marked the inception of the most important political development in American history — the rise of democracy.</p>