The Golden Age: How the Virginia Gentry Cultivated the Founding Generation

This is the story of Colonial Virginia in its fullest flowering. From its unique culture to its excellent people, from the glorious Georgian mansions for which it is still remembered to the political leaders its tobacco plantations produced, this is how the special society that grew out of the Virginia Tidewater turned into the cradle of the American Revolution. Particularly, we discuss why the Virginia gentry produced such excellent leaders as it did, and how the culture of leadership and command, when paired with the sense of dignity and refinement for which the classic Virginia Gentlemen were known, created most of America's greatest heroes and most important leaders.

In this episode, we dive into both those leaders and what enabled them to be such. We uncover the importance of architecture to the Virginia gentry's social dominance, how leadership was built at the local level and cultivated from the ground up, how the political culture of Virginia's Golden Age produced the Founders, and how their reliance on depleted soil, London merchants, and British debt became a budding economic crisis for colonial Virginia. But, most of all, we discuss how the civil society of the Golden Age was refined and cultivated, and how that produced the men who led the Revolution and created the Early American Republic.

Sources for the Episode

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you would like to support the show at no added cost to yourself, you can do so by using the links below to order and read the sources I used to create this episode. Thanks!

• Sydnor, Charles S.: Gentlemen Freeholders: Political Practices in Washington's Virginia: https://amzn.to/3R0ujKf

• Isaac, Rhys: The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790: https://amzn.to/4dEcMiL

• Evans, Emory G.: The "Topping People": The Rise and Decline of Virginia's Old Political Elite, 1680-1790: https://amzn.to/430Fmpi

• Bruce, Philip Alexander: Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: https://amzn.to/4eEocVF

• Wertenbaker, Thomas J.: The Planters of Colonial Virginia, https://amzn.to/4uDFJ4Y

• Morton, Richard L.: Colonial Virginia, https://amzn.to/4ua3bqY

• Dowdey, Clifford: The Golden Age: A Climate for Greatness, https://amzn.to/4wkvVi7

• Stanard, Mary Newton: Colonial Virginia: Its People And Customs, https://amzn.to/4u5X2Mm

• Wright, Louis B.: The First Gentlemen of Virginia, https://amzn.to/3PgaHRM

• Bridenbaugh, Carl: Seat of Empire, https://amzn.to/42WMhQn

0:00 The Virginia Golden Age

2:51 The Refinement of Virginia and Creation of the Virginia Gentleman

4:39 How Architecture Supported the Gentry's Pre-Eminence

6:54 The Inheritors: How Merchants Became Gentlemen

10:20 Virginia Hospitality

11:49 How Plantations and Local Leadership Built the Great Virginia Statesmen

19:02 The House of Burgesses, The Training Ground of the Founders

23:48 The Dire Economic Reality In Colonial Virginia

28:43 How Virginia's Culture Was Refined

29:45 Liberty and Duty: Why the Founding Grew Out of Virginia

34:34 The Golden Age Fractures

38:26 The Sun Sets on Colonial Virginia, and Rises on a Republic They Built