Virginia Vignettes

It was bad. The war took place at the end of the “Little Ice Age,” a period of general cooling and unpredictability that scholars date from 1310 to 1850. Despite what its name suggests, the Little Ice Age actually encompassed intense fluctuations in weather, with one year bringing an intensely cold winter and easterly winds, [...]

The Ruffner Pamphlet was an economic argument for the gradual emancipation of slaves in western Virginia put forth in 1847 by Henry Ruffner, president of Washington College in Lexington. Ruffner was no William Lloyd Garrison; like the congressman and University of Virginia professor George Tucker, he opposed slavery for practical, not moral, reasons and made [...]

Antonia Ford was a Confederate spy during the American Civil War (1861–1865), credited with providing the military information gathered from her Fairfax Court House home during the First Battle of Manassas (1861) and in the two years following. In October 1861, Confederate cavalry general J. E. B. Stuart issued an order declaring her an honorary [...]

Sapphira is the protagonist of Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), the last novel by Willa Cather and the Virginia-born writer’s only book set entirely in the state. Based on an incident in Cather’s own family, in which her maternal grandmother helped a slave escape in 1856, the novel details the complicated marriage of Henry [...]