Virginia dynasty

1. A phrase from the nineteenth century; it points out that four of the first five presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe) were from Virginia.

Example Sentences

The case Madison had tried to make for the Potomac was simultaneously crafty and driven by romantic illusions about its prowess that were shared by Jefferson, Washington, and most members of the Virginia dynasty.

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Lamentations about the tribulations of public life, followed by celebrations of the bucolic splendor of retirement to rural solitude, had become a familiar, even formulaic, posture within the leadership class of the revolutionary generation, especially within the Virginia dynasty.

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In fact, Jefferson’s headache coincided with a veritable plague that seemed to descend on the leadership of the Virginia dynasty.

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For almost all the leading members of the Virginia dynasty, the answer was clear and negative.

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Like Jefferson and the other members of the Virginia dynasty, he regarded any explicit defense of slavery in the mode of South Carolina and Georgia as a moral embarrassment.

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