It’s July 1, 2009, which means that 146 years ago today the Army of Northern Virginia tripped over some Union cavalry stationed at a small, college-friendly crossroads called Gettysburg. The Confederate troops were from A. P. Hill’s corps and included men in Henry Heth’s division. Yes, they had been looking for shoes, but they found [...]

Click to continue →

I grew up in a neighborhood of Davenport, Iowa, called McClellan Heights. I delivered papers along McClellan Boulevard. George B. McClellan, in his day, was the man, and I’m sure that neighborhoods and streets across the country still bear his name. (Just as there is a Pershing Street in Davenport and an Eisenhower Elementary School.) [...]

Click to continue →

Massive Resistance represented something like Virginia’s last stand against desegregation. State leaders actually closed public schools rather than desegregate them as the U.S. Supreme Court, beginning with its Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, had required. How to justify such a move?
By the time the General Assembly met in January 1956, key Byrd [...]

Click to continue →

Our Jefferson Davis entry has been published on the site. I like this bit of drama from Davis’s early career:
Davis missed the Black Hawk War (1832) due to illness—Lincoln, however, battled the Sac and Fox tribes as a member of the Illinois militia—but returned in time to escort the Indian chief into captivity. (Davis “treated [...]

Click to continue →

We’re going to start using this space to regularly spotlight new Encyclopedia Virginia entries. Today, it’s the Rye Cove Cyclone, about a tornado that struck a Scott County school in 1929, inspiring a country music song.
After the disaster, a relief train took some of the injured to Clinchport for treatment. Others were taken by ambulance [...]

Click to continue →