Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, and the Decline of VirginiaFor decades, the Commonwealth of Virginia led the nation. The premier state in population, size, and wealth, it produced a galaxy of leaders: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Mason, Marshall. Four of the first five presidents were Virginians. And yet by the middle of the nineteenth century, Virginia had become a byword for slavery, provincialism, and poverty. What happened? In her remarkable book, Dominion of Memories, historian Susan Dunn reveals the little known story of the decline of the Old Dominion. While the North rapidly industrialized and democratized, Virginia's leaders turned their backs on the accelerating modern world. Spellbound by the myth of aristocratic, gracious plantation life, they waged an impossible battle against progress and time itself. In their last years, two of Virginia's greatest sons, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, grappled vigorously with the Old Dominion's plight. But bound to the traditions of their native soil, they found themselves grievously torn by the competing claims of state and nation, slavery and equality, the agrarian vision and the promises of economic development and prosperity. This fresh and penetrating examination of Virginia's struggle to defend its sovereignty, traditions, and unique identity encapsulates, in the history of a single state, the struggle of an entire nation drifting inexorably toward Civil War. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 15 | |
| 31 | |
Let Us Have Our Own Schools | 61 |
Moving in Place | 85 |
Deluded Citizens Clamoring for Banks | 113 |
The Case of Virginia v John Marshall | 133 |
Another Constitutional Convention | 149 |
Tariff Wars | 171 |
Abolitionists and Other Enemies | 191 |
Jefferson and Virginia a Hundred Years Later | 213 |
Notes | 225 |
Acknowledgments | 289 |
Other editions - View all
Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, and the Decline of Virginia Susan Dunn No preview available - 2007 |
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abolitionists agrarian agricultural American banks bill blacks Bonus Bill Brant Byrd Calhoun Charlottesville citizens Congress Coolidge debate December economic emancipation February federal government Ford G. P. Putnam’s Sons George Fitzhugh George Tucker George Washington ginia governor Henry Hugh Blair Hugh Blair Grigsby Ibid idea industry internal improvements Italics added James Madison January John Marshall John Quincy Adams John Randolph John Tyler labor Lafayette land legislation legislature liberty Library of America manufacturing Monticello moral national government Nicholas Trist North Carolina Press northern nullification Old Dominion Peterson planters political president principles proposed republican Richmond Enquirer roads and canals Robert schools Senator slaveowners slavery slaves society soil South southern Spencer Roane state’s Supreme Court tariffs Thomas Jefferson Tidewater tion Tyler Union University of Virginia University Press Virginia Press vols vote wealth western William Branch Giles Writings of James Writings of Thomas York young
Popular passages
Page 2 - What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man ! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and, the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery, than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
Page 15 - Let me describe to you a man, not yet forty, tall and with a mild and pleasing countenance, but whose mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every exterior grace. An American, who, without ever having quitted his own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman.