Mr. Dixon says that a long, bitter period followed Appomattox in Virginia.
Yet, Virginia and Tennessee were the only Confederate states that
seemed to have finessed Reconstruction altogether;  with TN
immediately admitted to the Union while VA Democrats united with
conservative Republicans, to seize state government in the election
of 1869.  The legend of the postwar period probably stems more
powerfully from the decade long battle between the Readjuster-
Republican coalition and the Democrats, that commenced in 1879.
  This latter story is not the tradition story of carpetbaggers,
Yankee armies of occupation, and slaves turned masters of the
day.  In the Readjuster movement, Confederate veterans mainly,
led an interracial coalition with seasoned and often educated black
politicians with their own independent base, to "modernize" or
"liberalize" Virginia.  The old Conservative Party (the Democrats),
claimed to represent the "Old South," but as C. Vann Woodward
noted in Origins of the New South, at its founding all ten members
of its governing board lived in Richmond:  giving mastery to a city
party of a countryman's states.  (As one Mecklenburg County
white Readjuster wrote William Mahone sometime about 1879;  he
back Mahone because the Readjusters would give Virginia a
governor who came from some place that wasn't a "suburb of
Baltimore.")
  The race baiting, etc., that went on in VA in the 1880s and 1890s,
the era to which Mr. Dixon may be alluding in his comment, was a
direct result of attempts to democratize VA's government and
modernize it economy with a policy that would raise all boats, not
just those of a governing elite.  Hence, the R-R coalition generated
more white voters for coalition with blacks, than was accomplish
anywhere else in the South until modern times.

Harold

Date sent:              Mon, 03 Sep 2001 23:01:52 -0400 (EDT)
From:                   "Richard E. Dixon" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:                Re: Virginian and American patriotism
To:                     [log in to unmask]
Send reply to:          Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
        <[log in to unmask]>

> In a message dated 9/3/2001 9:12:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> << Francis Pierpont's government had some support even in
>  1865.  That alone tells us that there was a considerable range of
>  commitment to the union vis-a-vis commitment to the state by the mid-19th
>  century (as indeed there was in earlier eras as well), and that when
>  circumstances forced individuals to make a hard choice, a rather
>  significant number of Virginians in the Valley and trans-montane, and
>  lesser numbers elsewhere, not only saw a contradiction between state and
>  federal loyalties, but decided that their national identity was more
>  important. >>
>
> The issue of loyalty to the Union is ill supported by an example of the
> Pierpont government. This was the "restored government" established by the
> Wheeling Convention which served as a front for the legal fiction that
> Virginia had approved the division of the state to create the new state of
> West Virginia. It was elected by the counties that later became the state
> of West Virginia and during the war operated in Alexandria behind the
> federal lines. It moved to Richmond in 1865 when the city was occupied by
> Federal troops. The issue of how to categorize loyalty to the Union before
> secession is more difficult. The first secession vote in Virginia at the
> time the initial seven states formed the Confederacy was approximately
> 50,000 for secession, 100,000 against secession, so Virginia did not
> participate in the formation. The General Assembly then passed a
> resolution that recognized the constitutional right of a state to
> withdraw. When it was clear that Lincoln would invade the South after Fort
> Sumter was attacked by South Carolina, the vote was essentially reversed
> with approximately 100,000 voting to secede with most of the opposition
> coming from the counties west of the Allegheny. What is also missing from
> this analysis of loyalty is the distinction between the attitudes of
> Virginians prior to the war and then after the war. Virginia was one of
> the last states to be "readmitted" under the Reconstruction Acts but a
> long and bitter period followed and it is the oral legacy of that
> experience that older residents today in the South remember from their
> family stories. Of course, during that period the heritage of the "lost
> cause" was set in place. Paradoxically, even though Virginia was now in
> the Union, its anti Union fervor influenced the remembrance of its prewar
> attitudes.
>
> _____________________________________________________________________
>                                      Richard E. Dixon
>                                      Attorney at Law
>                                      4122 Leonard Drive
>                                      Fairfax, VA 22030
>                                      703-691-0770 fax 703-691-0978
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
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Harold S. Forsythe
Assistant Professor History
Director:  Black Studies
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT 06430-5195
(203) 254-4000  x2379

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