Virginia, state, United States: Postwar Political Reform and a New Economy

The war left its marks on the land and the people. The Shenandoah Valley was particularly desolate after the campaigns of Confederate Gen. Jubal A. Early and Union Gen. Philip H. Sheridan in 1864. But poverty-stricken as it was after the war, the state, under Gov. Francis H. Pierpont, escaped the worst aspects of Reconstruction. Radical Republicans were but briefly in power. On the recommendation (1869) of President Ulysses S. Grant, Congress allowed Virginia to vote without coercion, and the state passed the essential clauses of a constitution that the Radicals had drafted (1868), providing for free public schools and heavy taxes on land. More importantly, Virginia was allowed to elect to office its own moderate party, the “white Republicans,” led by Gen. William Mahone. Radical sway was ended. In 1870, after the Virginia assembly had ratified the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, the state was readmitted to the Union.

The abolition of slavery and the hard agricultural times of postwar decades ended the plantation system in Virginia and brought some increase in farm tenancy, but the economy benefited from diversification as fruit farming and the tobacco industry became important. To offset declines in demand for dark Virginia tobacco, the bright-leaf variety was increasingly grown.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Desegregation and Growth
• Politics and Industry in the Early Twentieth Century
• Postwar Political Reform and a New Economy
• Slavery, Insurrection, and Civil War
• Virginia's Role in the New Nation
• The American Revolution
• Tidewater Plantations and Westward Migration
• A Royal Colony
• Early Settlements of the Virginia Company
• Government, Politics, and Higher Education
• Economy
• Geography
• Facts and Figures

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