Johnw Daniel News Today

Twenty-five years ago:

Gov. Ralph Northam announced additional appointments to his administration on Friday. 

At issue was whether or how to pay almost $34 million in debt that the Commonwealth of Virginia incurred when it sold bonds between 1822 and 1861 to raise money to subsidize construction of canals, toll roads, and railroads. The state sold most of the bonds during the 1850s for railroad construction and used the money to purchase stock in the corporations that the General Assembly created for constructing what at the time were called internal improvements. Most of the debt was in the form of bo...

An African-American family in Southern Mississippi in 1895.Credit...Sepia Times/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images This is the story of how a bill to save the vote and preserve a semblance of democracy for millions of Americans died at the hands of an intransigent, reactionary minority in the Senate, which used the filibuster to do its dirty work. In the summer of 1890, the state of Mississippi held its second constitutional convention of the post-Civil War era. The first, in 1868, was an...

Early Years John Strode Barbour was born on December 29, 1820, in Culpeper County, the eldest of five sons and second of seven children of John Strode Barbour (1790–1855) and Eliza A. Byrne Barbour. He was educated in private schools before attending the University of Virginia from 1838 to 1842. He studied law before leaving the university and was a practicing attorney in Culpeper County from 1842 until about 1851. In 1847 Barbour was elected as a Democrat to the House of Delegates. He served...