and take it for granted that you mean to do right."
Are Virginians celebrating Nat Turner's Rebellion this month in their great state? Nat Turner's Rebellion was a Slave Rebellion-August 1831 in Southampton County Virginia that left 60 white people dead; the rebellion lasted just a few days-the rebels were easily defeated. Would it be appropriate to celebrate a rebellion that ended with 60 deaths? How many deaths does it take to make an official History month in Virginia 2010? Perhaps 6,947? This-the number of soldiers who Died in during the Civil War from battle wounds or disease from Virginia.* Just Imagine the outrage if this month was Nat Turner's Rebellion History Month, Would there be outrage? This month in Virginia is Confederate History Month (read this)The toll the Civil War took on the people of Virginia was great. The history of the state's role in the war is apparent to all Virginians. Why an official Confederate History Month?
"What a cruel thing is war:
to separate and destroy families and friends,
and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world;
to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors,
and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world."
The absence of acknowledging Slavery as a chief cause of the Civil War-still with out greatest casualties of war as a nation. The 2010 Virginia Proclamation made by Republican Governor Bobby McDonnell said he did not include a reference to slavery because "there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia." To deny the obvious- to glorify the war in the way this governor has done-sets the great state back-about 50 years. This is the first time in about 10 years the state has marked the war in a way to promote tourism.the State's slogan was onceVIRGINIA is for LOVERS. McDonnell issued an apology the next day here
"So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery,
I am rejoiced that Slavery is abolished.
I believe it will be greatly for the interest of the South.
So fully am I satisfied of this that I would have cheerfully lost all that I have lost by the war, and have suffered all that I have suffered to have this object attained."
As a proud child of the South and the 60's, I find romanticizing the devastation of the Civil War to the South and its loss of life futile. Many of the generals on both sides had studied at West Point-Lee was offered the command of the union forces. His devotion to Virginia and his family outweighed acceptance and Lee returned to Virginia to his fate.
My ancestors in North Carolina fought in the Civil War- they were Southerners. My ancestors from Maryland-fought for the union -and brother fought against brother-where is the glory?
more:
*In North Carolina over 20,000 casualties of war.
The Civil War here.
quotations are from Robert E Lee, Virginian, General of all the Confederate forces.
as envisioned & drawn by Jefferson image from wikipedia
Jefferson's sketch of the University of Virginia Rotunda
The rotunda at the University of Virginia was planned by Thomas Jefferson to represent the authority of nature and the power of reason. The classical architecture of Palladio best represented the ideals of Jefferson's vision for the architecture. The University's Library was originally housed in the Rotunda-Jefferson considered the library to be the beacon of enlightenment and wisdom.
Jefferson is the only US President to found a university- and to design one.
"Its soul, its climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people, and manners.
My god! how little do my countrymen
know what precious blessings they are in possession of,
and which no other people on earth enjoy!"
image from the Library of Congress
HOW CHRISTIAN WERE THE FOUNDING FATHERS? NYTIMES MAGAZINE HERE , A MUST READ
The Texas Board of Education has removed Thomas Jefferson and the influence of the Enlightenment from the Texas curriculum, "replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin."
from AP reporter April Castro AUSTIN, Texas — A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade. Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic," and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard. Following three days of impassioned and acrimonious debate, the board gave preliminary approval to the new standards with a 10-5 party line vote. A final vote is expected in May, after a public comment period that could produce additional amendments and arguments.- April Castro AP reporter
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of the body and mind will vanish like the evil spirits at the dawn of the day. Thomas Jefferson
Writing the things one reads- Telling the story, Explaining the story, Switching it up, Words moved about for a fresh take and new look- and then sometime just the story you read.-The story can not be touched.
It is just right this way.
Photograph by Hans Namuth
William Styron, a child of the South, of Virginia, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, poet in prose. Some things are beautiful to return to- even within its dark shadows.
If the accident of birth caused you to spend most of your early life, as I did, on what is known as the Virginia historic peninsula, you were apt to grow up with a ponderous sense of the American past...Part of my spirit was always mysteriously drawn to the James River mansions. They spoke to me in a secret, exciting way that the other landmarks could never speak, and I still consider them among the state’s truly captivating attractions.
Westover and Brandon. Shirley and Carter’s Grove. There are other fine Colonial structures in the Tidewater, but these four remain the exemplars of the noble species of dwelling that the early planters built on the banks of the James, creating, from native brick and timber, likenesses of the country houses of England they had left behind, but in each case, out of some quirky genius, imparting to the whole an individuality that remains arrestingly American.
The mansions have of course undergone much restoration since the mid-18th century, when they were built. (William Byrd’s Westover, perhaps the most splendid of the group, was badly mutilated by fire during the Civil War.) But one of the remarkable things about these houses is the way they have escaped the look of having been prettified by the embalmer’s hand. Although they are linked in spirit by their obviously Georgian origins, part of the charm of each lies in its almost defiant distinctiveness—Shirley, with its absence of wings, having a lofty solidity, in contrast, say, to the dignified horizontal expansiveness of Brandon and its rectangular wings attached to the center by connecting passageways. Each is unique, and a surprise.
Brandon staircase
There are perhaps few habitations anywhere that ever so successfully fused aesthetic delightfulness with unabashed commerce. The plantation houses were really the headquarters for complex business enterprises. Their situation on the river happened not primarily because of the ingratiating view, but because the James was the means whereby each estate’s golden harvest of tobacco was shipped back to the insatiable pipe smokers and snuff dippers of England and the Continent. What strikes one, then, is that the homes—created by gentlemen for whom profit was a paramount concern—are so fastidious yet so sensuous in their elegance, so satisfying in terms of all those components that make up the nearly perfect human abode. And all of this took place on the breast of a raw and primitive continent whose often violent settlement began not many years before.
How easy the temptation must have been to erect something tacky and utilitarian and to make one’s getaway; the banks of the waterways of the earth have been littered by exploiters’ shameless eyesores. But Virginia planters like William Byrd and his fellow proprietors, entrepreneurial though they were, made up a rare breed whose sense of environment was subtle and demanding. We know from the records they left that they responded with passion to the music of Purcell and Lully, to the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil; why should they not be determined that their surroundings be imbued with equal serenity and refinement?
Among other things, these fog-dampened Britons were plainly intoxicated with the flowering of Virginia’s lush and sun-drenched countryside. And so what impressed me as a boy, perhaps unconsciously, impresses me now with logic and force; the harmonious connection between the mansions and their natural surroundings, each of them seeming to grow like an essential ornament in a landscape of huge, hovering shade trees, boxwood-and-rose-scented gardens, and a sumptuous lawn undulating to the river’s edge. Two hundred and fifty years later this mingling of elements has a flowing integrity and authenticity. Also, humanity and wit.
Look for humanity and wit almost everywhere in one of the James River mansions. In the great downstairs hall, the visitor will see how two doors facing each other allowed guests to arrive from opposite directions: by way of a tree-lined carriage road or, for people coming by barge or boat, across the lawn from the bank of the river. In the solitude of that barely civilized wilderness, guests were welcome and fussed over, and they came incessantly. Isolation made hospitality more than a ritual: It was part of a hungry need for communion, and the splendidly paneled rooms that give off the main hall saw manic activity: dancing and reading aloud; parlor games; music played on spinet and mandolin and harpsichord; gossip, flirtation and seduction; card games; much drinking of local applejack and fine Bordeaux wine around fireplaces that were everywhere and fueled from inexhaustible sources of Tidewater timber. Early on, Virginia developed a serious cuisine. At tables in the big dining room, the food—usually supplied from outside cookhouses—was served to the household and to the endless stream of visitors in orgiastic plenty that still makes one marvel..One discordant presence was usually forgotten, or overlooked, even then. ..
As the present-day visitor looks out across the tidy beds of flowers bordered by boxwood and traversed by brick walls, his gaze may linger on the outbuildings (or the spot where they once stood), and they too will seem to fall symmetrically into place. These smaller buildings—servants’ quarters, cookhouse, tannery and smokehouse, carpenter’s shop, all decently contrived of honest and workmanlike construction—were, of course, the demesne of the black slaves, whose toil had been essential to the creation and success of the mansions, and continued to assure their perpetuation. The “people,” as they were so often called, had been generally treated with care and kindness, so it is understandable that the planters suffered vexation over their common plight and cursed heaven for their predicament. However, not knowing what else to do, they allowed the problem to pass into the hands of later generations, who resolved the matter in one of the most murderous wars ever fought. Meanwhile, the beautiful mansions endured, and still endure.
