Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/28

14 of the towns and villages throughout the commonwealth.

Her military population, the white men of the State between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, was 196,587; a striking contrast to the 1,099,855 at that time within the limits of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, States to the west of her borders that had, by her own action, been cut from her territory, and a very large percentage of whose population was of Virginian origin; and yet her fighting population was considerably larger than that of any other Southern State except Missouri. The available number of Virginia's arms-bearing population in 1860 was so decreased by the Union element and the secession from the State by West Virginia that she had not more than 150,000 fighting men to respond to her call for troops after the secession from the Union in 1861.

Prior to the first census Virginia had 10 representatives in the United States Congress; the first census, that of 1790, gave her 19, the second 22, the third 23, the fourth 22, the fifth 21, the sixth 15, the seventh 13, and the eighth, that of 1860, 11. The center of population of the United States at each of the five decades, from 1810 to 1850, was within her borders. Her density of population in 1860 was about 25 to the square mile.

From the historical standpoint, Virginia occupied an enviable position. From the threshold of 1860 she looked back upon an heroic and glorious past. Her Capt. John Smith—leader, diplomat, fighter, explorer, geographer, historian and adventurer—would have been a notable figure in any age. In 1619, before the establishing of any other English colony in America, she assembled an elected house of burgesses and entered upon a representative career which, from that time forward, stoutly maintained the rights of her people to govern themselves; and even in submitting to the Cromwellian parliament in 1652, she secured a continuance of her representative law-making privileges. Proud of her loyalty in the restoration of 1660, she hesitated not to rebel, in 1676, against the usurping authority of the royal parliament, and against that of the royal governor who failed to obey her orders and protect the colony against Indian outrages, and endeavored to rule without consent of the people. Her Governor Spotswood, who came in 1710, was by far the most prominent figure of his time in the American