The city of WASHINGTON DC and the four states of
VIRGINIA, WEST VIRGINIA, MARYLAND and DELAWARE
constitute a cross-section of the nation. Since the days of the
first American colonies, US history has been shaped here, from
agitation towards independence to the battles of the Revolutionary
and Civil wars. Now, the contrasts and incongruities of
contemporary America are shown in high relief: the corridors of
power in Washington are literally a stone's throw away from dire
inner-city poverty while, nearby, dozens of time-worn farming and
fishing towns seem straight out of some Norman Rockwell idyll.
Early in the seventeenth century, the first British settlements
began to take root along the rich estuary of the Chesapeake
Bay ; the colonists hoped for gold, but found their fortunes
growing tobacco. Virginia , the first settlement, was the
largest and most populous; it originally included most of what are
now Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, and as late as the 1790s had
double the population of any other state. Fully half of these
people were slaves , brought from Africa to do the
backbreaking work of harvesting the tobacco. Despite its central
position on the east coast, the whole region lies below the
Mason-Dixon Line - the symbolic border between North and South,
drawn up in 1763 as the boundary between slave and free states -
and until the Civil War one of the country's busiest slave markets
was just two blocks from the White House.
Besides generating the bulk of colonial wealth, the region also
produced many of early America's great leaders, from firebrand
politicians like Patrick Henry ("Give me Liberty or Give me
Death") to patrician intellectuals such as Thomas Jefferson
. Another Virginian, George Washington , led the Continental
Army against the British in the Revolutionary War and served as the
first president, while James Madison was the primary author
of the Constitution.
For all its colonial importance, by the mid-nineteenth century
the region had lost power and status to the industrial and
mercantile centers of Philadelphia and New York. Tensions between
North and South finally erupted into the Civil War , of
which traces are still visible everywhere. The hundred miles
between the capital of the Union - Washington DC - and that of the
Confederacy - Richmond, Virginia - were a constant and bloody
battleground for four long years. This sense of a nation divided
against itself is especially acute at the grand manor of Robert
E. Lee , the Confederacy's military leader: high on a hill
overlooking the heart of Washington DC, its grounds are now filled
with the war dead of the Arlington National Cemetery.
Washington DC itself, with its magnificent monumental
architecture, is an essential stop on any tour of the region.
Virginia , to the south, holds literally hundreds of
historic sites, from the homes of early politicians to the colonial
capital of Williamsburg , as well as the narrow forested
heights of Shenandoah National Park , along the crest of the
Blue Ridge Mountains. Much greater expanses of wilderness, crashing
white-water rivers and innumerable backwoods villages await you in
less-visited West Virginia .
Most tourists come to Maryland for the maritime
traditions of Chesapeake Bay - though many of its quaint old
villages have been gentrified by weekend pleasure-boaters.
Baltimore is full of character and enjoyably unpretentious
(and has a phenomenal concentration of bars), while
Annapolis , the pleasant state capital, is linked by bridge
and ferry to the eastern shore , where Assateague
Island remains an Atlantic paradise. New Castle , across
the border in Delaware , is a perfectly preserved
colonial-era town; nearby are some of the east coast's best and
least crowded beaches.