Their localism has been given far too little attention and too little credit. In these days, when States' rights are out of fashion, we are too often told that a man's preoccupation with the habits of the place where he lives can only drag on the national progress. We are fortunate that 18th-century Virginia thought differently...
The Federal Constitution was a national road on which there was no return. The leadership of Virginians in Federal life continued only so long as the national government was an aristocratic comradery like that of Virginia. When the United States ceased to be a greater Virginia, Virginians ceased to govern the United States. The virtues of 18th-century Virginia, when writ large, would seem to be vices. Localism would become sectionalism; the special interest of where a man lived would come to seem petty and disruptive."
Of course the biggest vice was slavery which would in time lead to the Civil War.
