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The Westward Movement
"[N]one has contributed more to the peopling of the new states, than Virginia."
-- Benjamin Watkins Leigh, 1829
As early as the 1600s, Virginians in pursuit of land and opportunity began to push settlement westward. Later, Revolutionary War veterans were rewarded with land grant in the near West. Soil exhaustion in eastern Virginia after 1800 spurred massive relocation. By 1861, one million Virginians, slaves included, had left. The exodus caused Virginia to slip politically and economically, but westward-bound Virginians spread their culture across America. |