VIRGINIA: a state some have lavishly praised and others have bitterly de-
nounced, when neither attitude was completely justified by actuality; a
land much loved, long abused, and often misunderstood; an area in which
extremes flourish more readily than means, and in which the past is not
allowed to die.

Virginia: that "symbol for romance throughout the world of English
speech," according to Alfred North Whitehead; that Commonwealth which
"looks forward in a consciousness of her responsibility to justify her past,"
according to Douglas Southall Freeman; that cultural unit which provides
the visitor with an experience "almost as definite as to cross the English
Channel," according to T. S. Eliot.

Many of the Old Dominion's citizens are irrationally proud of their birth-
right, and completely in accordance with John Esten Cooke's claim that
"Virginians have objected in all times to being rubbed down to a uniformity
with the rest of the world." But they seldom stop to analyze or document
this assumed uniqueness. These essays attempt to scrutinize closely one
aspect of the Virginia mind -- its tendency towards hero worship -- and
answer such questions as these: how and why have Virginians chosen four
men as their leading heroes? How have they preserved their memory
and exonerated them from attack? What qualities do the heroes have in
common?

To the Rockefeller Foundation, for a summer grant which enabled me
to study aspects of hero worship in America, and to the Virginia Historical
Society, for permission to use this material which first appeared in the
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, I am deeply indebted.

MARSHALL W. FISHWICK

Washington and Lee University
February, 1951

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