Politics April 1, 2016

Virginia is southern, but not like the rest of the South. Whereas other states flaunt their Dixie bona fides—their drawls, their barbecue, their own unique balance of manners and swagger—Virginia plays everything a bit cooler. Site of the earliest American dynasties and still home to five of the ten wealthiest counties in the nation, the Commonwealth (as natives fondly call it) has an altogether different attitude toward southernness than the rest of the region. For those Virginians who still consider themselves southern at all, theirs is the baronial South, the mint-julep South; they are descendants of what W. J. Cash