Portal:Virginia
The Virginia Portal Location of Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. Its geography and climate are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay. The state's capital is Richmond. Its most-populous city is Virginia Beach, and Fairfax County is the state's most-populous political subdivision. Virginia's population was over 8.68 million, with 35% living within the Greater Washington metropolitan area. Virginia's history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607, the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent English colony in the New World. Virginia's state nickname, the Old Dominion, is a reference to this status. Slave labor and land acquired from displaced native tribes fueled the growing plantation economy, but also fueled conflicts both inside and outside the colony. Virginia was one of the original Thirteen Colonies in the American Revolution, and several Revolutionary War battles were fought in Virginia. During the American Civil War, Virginia was split when the state government in Richmond joined the Confederacy, but many of the state's northwestern counties remained loyal to the Union, separating as the state of West Virginia in 1863. Although the Commonwealth was under one-party rule for nearly a century following the Reconstruction era, both major political parties are competitive in modern Virginia. (Full article...) Selected article
On the first day, the Confederate ironclad ram CSS Virginia (built from the remnants of the USS Merrimack), opposed only by conventional, wooden-hulled ships, destroyed two ships and damaged a third. During the night, the USS Monitor arrived. The two ironclads fought for about three hours, with neither being able to inflict significant damage on the other. The duel ended indecisively, the ships did not fight again, and the blockade remained in place. The major significance of the battle is that it was the first meeting in combat of ironclad warships. It received worldwide attention; Great Britain and France halted further construction of wooden-hulled ships, and others followed suit. The use of a small number of very heavy guns, mounted so that they could fire in all directions, was first demonstrated by Monitor, and soon became standard in warships of all types. Selected biography
Johnston had been ineligible to serve in Congress because of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbade anyone from holding public office who had sworn allegiance to the United States and subsequently sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. However, his restrictions were removed at the suggestion of the Freedmen's Bureau when he aided a sick and dying former slave after the War. He was the first person who had sided with the Confederacy to serve in the United States Senate. He was caught in the middle during the debate over the Arlington Memorial. Johnston was an outspoken opponent of the Texas-Pacific Bill, a sectional struggle for control of railroads in the South, which figured in the Compromise of 1877. He was also an outspoken Funder during Virginia's heated debate as to how much of its pre-War debt the state ought to have been obliged to pay back. The controversy culminated in the formation of Readjuster Party and the appointment of William Mahone as its leader; this marked the end of Johnston's career in the Senate. This month in Virginia history 19th-century painting depicting the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe
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Selected image P-51 Mustang flying above Langley Field in Hampton, which has been in operation as a military airfield since 1916. Did you know -
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