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65 books match the query 'Virginia' and 3 start with j

cover of James Barbour, a Jeffersonian Repulican

James Barbour, a Jeffersonian Repulican

Charles D. Lowery

University of Alabama Press, 1984

Barbour, a Virginia contemporary of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, during a long public career spanning the years 1798-1842, exerted a constructive influence on the nation’s history. Active in state and national politics during the formative decades of the republic, Barbour was a political nationalist who grafted to the dominant political philosophy of the day those elements of the Hamiltonian Federalist creed necessary for governing a dynamic, changing nation.

Barbour’s life affords a unique vantage point for viewing party politics in the South and the nation during the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian periods, for understanding Jeffersonian Republicanism, and for comprehending the difficulties a Southern agrarian had in embracing the economic and political realities at the dawn of the modern commercial age.

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cover of John Dooley, Confederate Soldier: His War Journal

John Dooley, Confederate Soldier

His War Journal

John Dooley

University of Alabama Press, 2005

One of the best primary accounts of the Civil War by a Confederate.

John Dooley was the youngest son of Irish immigrants to Richmond, Virginia, where his father prospered, and the family took a leading position among Richmond’s sizeable Irish community. Early in 1862, John left his studies at Georgetown University to serve in the First Virginia Infantry Regiment, in which his father John and brother James also served. John’s service took him to Second Manassas, South Mountain, Sharpsburg (Antietam), Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg; before that last battle, Dooley was elected a lieutenant. On the third day at Gettysburg, Dooley swept up the hill in Pickett’s charge, where he was shot through both legs and lay all night on the field, to be made a POW the next day. Held until February 27, 1865, Dooley made his way back south to arrive home very near the Confederacy’s final collapse.

Dooley’s account is valuable for the content of his service and because most of the material came from his diary, with some interpolations (which are indicated as such) that he made shortly after the war’s end when his memory was still fresh. Dooley’s health seems to have been permanently compromised by his wounds; he entered a Roman Catholic seminary after the war and died in 1873 several months before his ordination was to take place.

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cover of John Letcher of Virginia: The Story of Virginia's Civil War Governor

John Letcher of Virginia

The Story of Virginia's Civil War Governor

Francis N. Boney

University of Alabama Press, 1967

Covers the life of John Letcher a virtually unknown significant leader of the Confederacy
 
John Letcher, governor of Virginia from 1860 through 1863, is one of the significant leaders of the Confederacy who is still virtually unknown. This study, covering Letcher’s entire life with emphasis on his governorship, attempts to fill an obvious gap in American history. For the first time, Letcher’s lengthy career is examined in detail: early development as a local Virginia politician during the Jacksonian era, maturity as an in­fluential congressman in the rising sectionalism of the 1850s, the crucial governorship, and finally a gradual fading away in the post­war period.
 
Letcher’s story is only a fragment of the epic of the transformation of the United States from a weak, uncertain confedera­tion into a powerful, confident nation. The emergence of the colossus of the New World is a spectacular and critical event in world history, full of grandeur and suffering, idealism and dis­illusionment. To trace the course of Letcher's life is to follow one small current in a torrential flood-but a significant one, for Letcher was not only a leader but also in many ways a typical American of his time.
 
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