Virginia

From the beginning Virginians have styled their government a conservative commonwealth seeking stability amid change and often fashioning change to fit their concept of what Virginia―and America―should be like. In the eighteenth century Golden Age Virginia was a world of broad acres and country gentlemen. To preserve the world Virginians led a revolution and helped to found a government that they believed would secure their children’s future. In the name of old and tried principles Virginians in 1861 seceded from the Union to defend a way of life that to them seemed worth fighting for. In the twentieth century they “paid as they went” convinced that debt meant the end of good government.