Today, I’ll share a bit of trivia that I often save for my fellow Virginians—residents of a state that has long been obsessed with history. The question is, “Who were the thirteen presidents born in Virginia? Or, perhaps more accurately, who were the twelve-and-a-half presidents born in Virginia?” The question stupefies my listeners, as Virginia schools drilled into us that eight U.S. presidents saw their first light in our state. So, who are the other five (or four-and-a-half) presidents of whom I speak? I’ll note first that the stories of all thirteen men are deeply intertwined with Virginia’s legacy of slavery.
Virginia’s State Capitol has long featured the great marble statue of George Washington by Jean-Antoine Houdon and, nearby, marble busts of the other seven Virginia-born U.S. presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson. Virginia schoolchildren have long heard their state referred to as the “Mother of Presidents,” though decades ago, some wag said it was more properly “the Mother of Presidents — Who Hasn’t Been Pregnant in a Century.” Virginia’s U.S. presidents were a complex and strikingly accomplished lot. Unfortunately, a common thread runs throughout the list. The first seven were all slaveholders. Woodrow Wilson was a child in the time of slavery and, a half-century after Emancipation, he arguably did more damage to race relations in America than did any of his slaveholding predecessors.
