2,647 words

Brion T. McClanahan, Editor
Virginia First: The 1607 Project
McClellanville, S. C.: Abbeville Institute Press, 2024

Virginia itself was the mother of States and in Colonial times extended in fact, as other colonies did in theory, to the Mississippi . . . — Madison Grant

The earliest Anglo colony in what is now the United States was in Jamestown, Virginia, which was first settled in 1607. The first colonists of Virginia were young men from prominent families. Many of them did not survive their first year there. The colony finally stabilized around 1611 and achieved prosperity by raising tobacco for export.

By 1620, when the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth Colony, Virginia had already developed a culture derived from southwestern England — specifically, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Wessex and the English-ruled parts of Mercia during the time of the Danelaw. It is from Jamestown that America as we know it today first emerged. The United States should therefore be called the Republic of Virginia. This is in no small part due to the fact that America has two clashing origin stories. The dominant one focuses on the Pilgrims and Puritans who settled in New England in 1620. The historians of the Abbeville Institute are seeking to reorient the national narrative to focus on Virginia’s primary position in American culture.

The Abbeville Institute’s task is made more urgent by the 1619 Project, which aims

to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.[1]

The historians of the Abbeville Institute see the 1619 Project as putting a black face on what is otherwise New England’s usurpation of Virginia’s rightful primary place in American history. This Southern-leaning colorblind perspective is interwoven throughout the book. As such, its message has less of an impact than it should.

The sub-Saharan-centric view of the 1619 Project is obviously absurd. It only takes a few minutes for an objective observer to recognize that no enlightened legal, philosophical, or social order could ever emerge from African-Americans in particular or sub-Saharan Africans in general. The 1619 Project is just part of a larger lie, however, which views America is an idea — a proposition nation dedicated to the belief that “all men are created equal.” This notion emerges, ironically, from the Virginian Thomas Jefferson. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln, who also had Virginian ancestors, built upon this notion during his famous address at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg.

The metapolitical framing of America as an idea rather than as a people is what has led to the American Empire of Nothing, where Americans from the Rust Belt serve in the military to defend industrial rivals such as South Korea, or who get fired upon by Arabs who are justly seeking an end to the genocide of the Palestinians.

Virginia First

Virginia, not New England, was where American society first emerged. The first wharf, iron works, and glass factory in what would later become the United States were all located there. The first wheat was planted in Virginian soil. Virginia established the first free school in 1635 and had the first representative governing body. The successful example of Jamestown in turn inspired the Pilgrims, and it was a ship from Virginia carrying supplies that saved the Plymouth colony from starvation in 1622.

Virginia later led the way during the War for Independence. New Englanders fired its first shots, but war had been forced upon them when the British began confiscating firearms. It was the Virginians who first pushed for independence, spearheaded the drive to formally declare it, and provided the bulk of the manpower for the army. The decisive final battle of the war was fought in Yorktown, only a short distance from Jamestown.

Before and after independence, Virginians led the way in expanding the United States. Virginia’s last Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, defeated the Indians at what is now Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Later, Patrick Henry and George Rogers Clark conquered what became the Northwest Territory. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the first trans-continental exploration expedition, and presidents Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler, all of whom were Virginians, exploited every opportunity to expand. Virginia also established religious toleration, while New England remained an oligarchic theocracy where Quakers and other non-Puritans were whipped and hanged.

John Smith and Thomas Jefferson

America’s first true hero, Captain John Smith, was a Virginian. He ended a misguided policy enacted by the Virginia Company which made Jamestown in effect a Communist society, and led expeditions of discovery across the region. Captain Smith also carried out successful negotiations with the local Indians, which included their providing armed force when necessary. John Smith’s career has been emulated by Americans ever since.

The Virginian Thomas Jefferson is America’s premier political intellectual. He wrote the Declaration of Independence as well as numerous laws, including those which established religious freedom. Many Leftists cherry-pick Jefferson’s writings to make him out to have been a supporter of “woke” ideology and “civil rights.” A more careful reading of his voluminous writings shows a more balanced mind. Jefferson, for example, supported the separation of church and state, but then passed laws to protect ministers who were preaching the Gospel. Most of his criticism of religion in society was in fact a Virginian’s critique of the state-backed churches of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Ultimately, however, Jefferson failed to deal with the sub-Saharan problem in his long career as a public servant, although he knew all about racial problems. Virginia First describes Jefferson’s vacillating on the questions of race and slavery by claiming that he supported the idea of “generational sovereignty” — i.e., that future generations would simply come up with a better idea.

Virginia’s Military Men

In May 1607, the Jamestown colonists, most of whom were mere boys, defeated an Indian attack carried out by 400 warriors. Had Jamestown’s boys lost, there would have been no Virginia. More importantly, these young men became the core group which helped to establish Virginia’s culture of military excellence.

The best such example was set by Virginia’s George Washington, who bravely served during the French and Indian War and late led the war against the British. Washington’s biggest success was managing the war’s political sensitivities as well as its overall strategy. He also established the precedent, which today is becoming increasingly obscured, for civilian control over the military.

Other top military men who were Virginians include Robert E. Lee and Winfield Scott. Lee’s career as the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia is one of incredible success until he was finally overwhelmed by superior numbers. Winfield Scott’s long career began before the War of 1812, and included conquering Mexico City in 1847. He later developed the strategy that was used to defeat the Confederacy. Thus, Lee was ultimately defeated by another Virginian.

Other Virginian military greats include “Stonewall” Jackson and George S. Patton. There were also ordinary Virginians who had humble military careers, but whose actions as part of a larger team led to excellence. During the Civil War, when a frustrated President Lincoln asked Winfield Scott why an army of 100,000 men couldn’t make it to Richmond when it had taken a force of only 5,000 to take Mexico City, Scott replied that the same men who had conquered Mexico were defending Richmond. By the time of the Civil War, Virginians had expanded across the West, so even the Union Army was in part made up of men whose grandparents were Virginians.

State’s Rights, Religion, and Music

Virginia established a culture of political tolerance. Both Jefferson and Madison calmly reacted to New England’s threats of secession in the early nineteenth century and Jefferson continuously came up with ways to keep the states in harmony despite their differences. Jefferson’s tolerance policy fell apart when Abraham Lincoln was elected with a base of supporters that included radical abolitionists who wished to destroy the South more than they wished to free the slaves.

Possibly because Virgina’s government allowed for religious freedom before New England’s governments did so, Virginia can claim that it was first in the development of American Christianity. There is little of the “flash” of New England’s peculiar denominations, such as Mormonism or the Oneida Community. Instead, the Virginians supported the growth of Methodism and the Baptist denomination, which helped provide spiritual guidance for millions. Two prominent Virginia theologians were Robert Lewis Dabney and Jerry Falwell. The latter led the Religious Right through the 1980s and helped give Ronald Reagan a stable political base of support that allowed him to take the risks which ultimately won the Cold War.

In the realm of music, New England’s composers focused on writing new versions of Puritan hymns. The Virginians, on the other hand, merged their own music with that of the Indians. This led to fusions that became new musical forms such as bluegrass, jazz, ragtime, country, and rock and roll.

The Problem with the Abbeville Institute’s Southern Viewpoint

The Virginia First idea is a correct one. It is undoubtedly true that Virginia’s cultural impact on the United States needs to be understood and integrated into our educational curricula. The Abbeville Institution has a narrow Southern focus, however, and this presents a problem. The Southern viewpoint causes Virginia First, as well as the Institute’s sponsored lectures online, to miss who the actual critical drivers of “civil rights,” anti-white animus, and the “woke” 1619 Project actually are.

The Abbeville Institute claims that the 1619 Project and the idea that America is a “proposition nation” came out of New England’s historical theocracy is only a half-truth. That the US comprises two large, regional super-cultures is true. But both the 1619 Project and the “proposition” idea are racial and ethnic attacks being carried out by sub-Saharans and ethnonationalist Jews.

Of the two, the Jewish angle is the more important. By declaring that the basis of American citizenship is support for a vague, secular creed of “Americanism” rather than race and the culture of the founding Virginians and other Anglo groups, Jewish ethnonationalists can claim to be “Americans” while their true loyalty is to the Zionist Entity and global Jewry.

Furthermore, exploiting a well-understood cultural split is an easy way to divide and rule. By expressing the view that the “woke” revolution of 2020 was the Second Coming of Abraham Lincoln, the Abbeville Institute is inadvertently fooling Southerners. “Yankees” are not behind the Great Replacement. Neither is the ghost of Connecticut’s Federalist Party driving deindustrialization, the opium crisis, or involving America in wars across the world. Furthermore, the basic ideas of the old Federalist Party — protection for industry and a strong military — are not wrong. The Puritans’ group evolutionary strategy was effective.

The idea that “state’s rights” is a noble goal in all circumstances is likewise questionable. The South relied on the federal government to return escaped slaves and otherwise support Southern interests right up until the moment that they lost control of the federal government in the election of 1860. Additionally, what happens when a state is effectively controlled by foreign groups, and that state’s government power is then used against whites? “State’s rights” is certainly not the answer.

We have an ongoing example of this today. New York’s judiciary is made up of sub-Saharans, Jews, and immigrants, and a sub-Saharan Attorney General is using lawfare against prominent whites such as Donald Trump. Rudy Giuliani, who ended the sub-Saharan crime wave in the city when he was Mayor, has now been disbarred by a group of sub-Saharan judges there. The immigration reform website VDARE has likewise been battered by subpoenas in New York, and its Editor-in-Chief has noted that “not once, in vdare.com’s journey through the New York State judicial system, have we met with a judge who was white gentile, let alone a WASP.”

The Republic of Virginia

Virginia’s cultural impact extends beyond the South. In colonial times, Virginians populated Tidewater Maryland and southern Delaware as well. Between 1790 and 1840, Virginia supplied more western pioneers than all of the states north of the Mason-Dixon Line combined. As David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly have written:

The great outpouring of people from Virginia tended to flow in distinct streams, not only to particular destinations outside its boundaries but also from specific regions within the state. The first great flow of emigration to the Carolinas came from [Virginia’s] Southside and the southern parts of the Shenandoah Valley. The second wave left from the Valley of Virginia to the Southwest, from the piedmont to Kentucky, and from the Northern Neck, western Virginia, and the northern Valley to the Ohio Country.[2]

Madison Grant pointed out in his book The Conquest of a Continent that Virginians were often the first pioneers across in the West:

As in the States of the Old Northwest Territory, the early population of Iowa was made up principally from the Southern States; and when Dubuque was formally declared to be a town in 1834 its 500 citizens were mostly from Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina.[3]

Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina were states that had been populated by Virginians. Grant goes on to say that “Virginia still [in 1933] sends out a surplus population.” Many of them moved to the Pacific Coast. The South therefore doesn’t have a total claim to Virginia’s legacy.

Virginia First certainly got me thinking. It would be nice to see a map showing where the original Virginians had expanded across North America in the same way that there are maps showing the expansion of New Englanders. This map could be generated using the data from commercial genealogy and DNA databases by tracing the lineage and locations of those families who have an ancestor from Tidewater Virginia before 1700.

Like their Norman forebearers, many of the Virginians intermarried with those they encountered in the course of their expansions. Virginians intermarried with South Carolina’s elite planter class, which had originated in Barbados. The first Anglos in Michigan had roots in colonial Virginia, and they intermarried with the incoming Yankees. In Texas, many of the first settlers married old Spanish families. Jim Bowie, whose ancestors were from the Virginia-adjacent Tidewater Maryland, married Ursula Veramendi, the daughter of the Mexican Governor. Thus, the Virginians obviously developed some regional differences which could be shown on a map: Tejano-Virginians, Midwest-Virginians, West Coast-Virginians, Italian (and other European immigrant)-Virginians, and so on. Although obviously the Virginians were hostile to intermarriage with sub-Saharans, and rightly so.

Such a map and its underlying data would show how the Virginians made the continent their own, and it would also show the number of living Americans who have ancestors from the original Jamestown settlement. Since there are more than 33 million people descended from the Mayflower passengers, and given that more people went to Virginia than any other colony, the number of people of Virginian descent in the United States must be enormous.

Notes

[1] Brion T. McClanahan, Virginia First: The 1607 Project, (McClellanville, S. C.: Abbeville Institute Press, 2024), p. 42.

[2] David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly, Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2000), p. 141.

[3] Madison Grant, The Conquest of a Continent (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), pp. 197-8.