Virginia - The Old Dominion State 2

Virginia – The Old Dominion State

When the American Revolutionary War began, George Washington was selected to head the colonial army. During the war, the capital was moved to Richmond at the urging of Governor Thomas Jefferson, who feared that Williamsburg’s coastal location would make it vulnerable to British attack.

Virginia - The Old Dominion State 3
Williamsburg

In 1781, the combined action of Continental and French land and naval forces trapped the British army on the Virginia Peninsula, where troops under George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau defeated British General Cornwallis in the Siege of Yorktown.

Virginia - The Old Dominion State 4
Surrender of Lord Cornwallis

His surrender on October 19, 1781 led to peace negotiations in Paris and secured the independence of the colonies.

Virginia ratified the Constitution on June 25, 1788 becoming the 10th state to do so.

Virginia - The Old Dominion State 5
Original Washington DC Boundaries

In 1790, both Virginia and Maryland ceded territory to form the new District of Columbia, though the Virginian area was retroceded in 1846.

Virginia - The Old Dominion State 6
Current Washington DC Boundaries

Virginia voted to secede from the United States on April 17, 1861, after the Battle of Fort Sumter and Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers.  On April 24, Virginia joined the Confederate States of America, which chose Richmond as its capital.

After the 1861 Wheeling Convention, 48 counties in the northwest separated to form a new state of West Virginia, which chose to remain loyal to the Union.

During the war, more battles were fought in Virginia than anywhere else, including Bull Run, the Seven Days Battles, Chancellorsville, and the concluding Battle of Appomattox Court House.  Virginia was formally restored to the United States in 1870.

Virginia - The Old Dominion State 7
Union Soldiers in Fredericksburg

Virginian James Albert Bonsack invented the tobacco cigarette rolling machine in 1880 leading to new industrial scale production centered on Richmond.

Virginia - The Old Dominion State 8
Bonsack Cigarette Rolling Machine

In 1886, railroad magnate Collis Potter Huntington founded Newport News Shipbuilding, which was responsible for building six major World War I-era battleships for the U.S. Navy from 1907 to 1923.

Virginia - The Old Dominion State 9
Newport News Shipbuilding

The civil rights movement gained many participants in the 1960s.  It achieved the moral force and support to gain passage of national legislation with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  In 1964 the United States Supreme Court ordered Prince Edward County and others to integrate schools.  In 1967, the Court also struck down the state’s ban on interracial marriage with Loving v. Virginia.  From 1969 to 1971, state legislators under Governor Mills Godwin rewrote the constitution, after goals such as the repeal of Jim Crow laws had been achieved. In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American elected as governor in the United States.

The Cold War led to the expansion of national defense government programs housed in offices in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., and correlative population growth.

Virginia - The Old Dominion State 10
Pentagon

Economy:

The Virginia economy has diverse sources of income, including local and federal government, military, farming and business.

Scroll to Top