VIRGINIA, FLAG OF

U.S. state flag consisting of a dark blue field (background) with the state seal in the centre. In 1776 the jurist George Wythe probably drew upon a book on Roman antiquities by Joseph Spence when he created the first Virginia state seal. It was made in two sizes and had distinctive designs on the obverse and reverse sides. The reverse showed women symbolizing liberty, eternity, and agriculture. The design on the obverse now appears on the state flag. It features a woman personifying virtue and dressed as an Amazon. She wears a helmet and holds a spear and sword above the Latin motto Sic semper tyrannis (Thus always to tyrants). She is standing on the prostrate figure of a fallen king, his crown lying to one side, thus carrying out the theme of popular victory over tyrannical government. The whip and chain held by the king have been rendered useless. The seal had already appeared on various military flags before April 30, 1861, when the legislature placed it on a blue field as the official state flag. In 1931 the ornamental border of the seal was more precisely defined as a wreath of Virginia creeper, and on March 16, 1949, exact colours were assigned to the various design elements. Whitney Smith History Settlement and colonial period The purposes of the Virginia Company that landed at present-day Jamestown in May 1607 were not only to colonize but also to Christianize, to open new areas for trade, and to guard against further Spanish inroads. Hunger, poor shelter, Indian hostility, and rampant disease plagued the early years, but, while the colony tottered constantly on the brink of dissolution, a tobacco industry was begun by John Rolfe and a representative assembly was convened. In 1624 the company's charter was revoked and Britain's first royal colony established. In the following years new settlements were made and local administrative systems were devised. The governorship of Sir William Berkeleybegun in 1642, interrupted by Puritan rule from 1652 to 1660, and ending in 1677marked the solidification of the colony. The many anti-Puritan cavaliers who fled to Virginia after 1649 added an important element to the population, much of which consisted of indentured white and black servants. A rebellion in 1676, led by Nathaniel Bacon, though short-lived, led to Berkeley's recall and signaled a growing restlessness for more self-government among the colonists. This sentiment became strong during the century that followed, when England attempted to govern fairly but did not allow the inhabitants of its American colonies the full rights of Englishmen at home. This was a period of expansion as well as of internal strengthening. Settlers from the Tidewater region spilled over into the Piedmont, across the Blue Ridge, and, by the 1740s, into the Ohio country beyond, there running afoul of French ambitions for that region. For decades the popularly elected House of Burgesses led the way in opposing royal prerogatives in the colony, and, following England's prohibition of westward expansion in 1763, a concerted drive to rationalize rebellion began. On the eve of the Revolution, Virginia had more than 120,000 residents, many of them persons of considerable sophistication and learning, and a stableif narrowly basedeconomy. Independence and statehood Virginians were among the leaders of the American Revolution and of the events leading to it, including the calling of the first Continental Congress in 1774. Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, while George Washington assumed command of the armies. It was at Yorktown that the British armies were forced to surrender to combined American and French forces on Oct. 19, 1781, leading to acknowledgement of the colonies' independence in the Treaty of Paris of 1783. In 1788 Virginia became the 10th state to ratify the Constitution. The state continued its national leadership in the following decades, furnishing four of America's first five presidents and, especially through Jefferson and James Madison, much of the intellectual ferment out of which the basic political institutions of the young nation gradually were shaped. The state had abolished the African slave trade in 1778, but slavery itself continued as the basis for the state's agricultural economy. Nat Turner's slave insurrection in Southampton county (1831) raised tensions. Charles Loreaux Quittmeyer