Arlington County, Virginia

Arlington County, or simply Arlington, is a county in the U.S. state of Virginia. The county is located in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from Washington, D.C., the national capital.

Arlington County is coextensive with the U.S. Census Bureau's census-designated place of Arlington. Arlington County is the eighth-most populous county in the Washington metropolitan area with a population of 238,643 as of the 2020 census. If Arlington County were incorporated as a city, it would rank as the third-most populous city in the state. With a land area of , Arlington County is the geographically smallest self-governing county in the nation.

Arlington County is home to the Pentagon, the world's second-largest office structure, which houses the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense. Other notable locations are DARPA, the Drug Enforcement Administration's headquarters, Reagan National Airport, and Arlington National Cemetery. Colleges and universities in the county include Marymount University and George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, School of Business, the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, and Schar School of Policy and Government. Graduate programs, research, and non-traditional student education centers affiliated with the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech are also located in the county.

Corporations based in the county include the co-headquarters of Amazon, several consulting firms, and the global headquarters of Boeing, Raytheon Technologies and BAE Systems Platforms & Services.

History

Native American settlement

Arlington County was inhabited by prehistoric Native American cultures from the arrival of the Paleo-Indians 10,000 years before European colonization. Archeological evidence, including pottery fragments, tools, and arrowheads, suggests sporadic habitation during the Archaic Period, with more permanent communities during the Formative stage and Early Woodland period. Some objects unearthed during archeological digs have been found to be from as far as southern Ontario, indicating the existence of a trade route that ran through the area.

When John Smith made contact in 1608, Arlington was populated by the Nacotchtank, an Eastern Algonquian-speaking people that were likely part of the Powhatan Confederacy. He identified a village named Nameroughquena near the present-day 14th Street bridges. The Nacotchtank farmed, hunted, and fished along the nearby Anacostia River, where they had more villages.

Later in the 17th century, the Nacotchtank became involved in the regional beaver trade instigated by Henry Fleete, which while enabling the Nacotchtank to build wealth, undermined traditional social structures and ultimately weakened them. Further pressures, including population loss due to the spread of infectious diseases from Europeans, warfare with encroaching British colonizers, and conflict with Native American tribes in northern regions forced the Nacotchtank to abandon their homeland. By 1679, they had fully left the area and were absorbed into the Piscataway.

Colonial era

Colonists began migrating from Jamestown and towards the Potomac River between 1646 and 1676, during which land speculation in the region increased substantially. Early grants were issued in the mid-17th century by the Governor on behalf of the Crown to prominent figures of Virginia society; many never inhabited their landholdings during this period. The first "seated" grant in the area was the Howson Patent, which John Alexander purchased from Captain Robert Howson on November 13, 1669, and populated with tenants by 1677. With the establishment of the Northern Neck Proprietary after the restoration of Charles II in 1660, future land grants in the region were made by inheritors of Northern Neck, namely the Lords Fairfax.

After colonists depopulated the area in the aftermath of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, migration to Northern Neck began to grow by the end of the 17th century. The increase in population justified the formation of Prince William County from parts of Stafford County in 1730, and in 1742 Fairfax County, of which present-day Arlington County was part. Early settlement patterns were defined by large plantations along waterways, where planters built wharfs that provided access to colonial trade networks. This included Abingdon Plantation, which was established by John Alexander's grandson Gerard by 1746 and was the Arlington area's first mansion house. Log cabins, such as the home built by John Ball in the mid-18th century, were common among Arlington's yeoman farming community.

Indentured servants and enslaved labor worked the land, the latter of which are first documented being in the Arlington area in 1693 and were owned by the wealthiest planters, such as the Masons and Washingtons. Tobacco was the dominant crop grown in Arlington until local soil was exhausted by the late 18th century, motivating tobacco planters to move further inland; remaining farmers turned to growing alternatives such as corn. Colonists also built gristmills along Arlington's creeks and engaged in fishing along the Potomac. Rudimentary roads, some of which were first established by Native Americans, and ferries along the Potomac connected residents and plantations with emerging towns such as Alexandria and Georgetown. The former served as the region's primary shipping and commercial district.

Revolutionary war and formation of federal district

The Stamp Act and Townshend Acts passed by the Parliament of Great Britain in the 1760s motivated planters and farmers in Fairfax County, including George Mason, George Washington, and members of the Ball family to sign agreements not to import or purchase British goods in protest. Mason later authored the Fairfax Resolves in 1774 in opposition to the policies, which were adopted by him and other landowners.

Following the Richmond Convention in 1776, Fairfax County formed a Committee of Safety that collected taxes for the war effort and enforced bans on trade with Britain. Local Fairfax militia formed before the war were dissolved after the Richmond Convention ordered for the organization of a regular state force in July 1775. Men were recruited from Fairfax County and joined the Virginia state regiment that were incorporated into the Continental Army by 1776. While the area did not see significant action during the war, Alexandria was the home port for part of the Virginia State Navy; some ships operated as privateers. Part of Rochambeau's forces likely camped near Theodore Roosevelt Island on their way to Yorktown in 1781.

After American independence from the British Empire was achieved following the Treaty of Paris and the Constitution was instituted in 1789, the federal government set about establishing the United States' seat of government, which Article 1, Section 8 enabled through the power to acquire an area of no more than ten square miles for the nation's capital. The Residence Act passed by Congress on July 17, 1790, which decreed that the federal district be located on the Potomac River between the "mouths of the Eastern Branch and the Conogochegue", settled the rivalry between states on claiming the location of the capital city. President George Washington commissioned a survey to define its borders, which reached down to Hunting Creek and were consequently beyond the Residence Act's limits; this required an amendment that was passed on March 3, 1791.

In 1789, Virginia had offered to cede ten square miles or less and provide funding for the construction of public buildings. Congress accepted this as a part of the federal district, but specified that no public buildings would be erected in the Virginia section of the capital. Boundary stones were placed at one miles intervals along the borders of the district starting on April 15, 1791. The federal government and Congress moved to the new city of Washington within the District of Columbia in 1800; the Virginia section, which included Alexandria, became known as Alexandria County through the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801.

Antebellum period

In the early 19th century, the land outside of Alexandria, termed the "country part" of Alexandria County and representative of present-day Arlington, remained rural and dominated by several large plantations and smaller farms. Migration from northern states such as New York and Pennsylvania brought investment and improved farming methods. Small communities established along the intersections of Alexandria County's growing road network, including Ball's Crossroads, became gathering places for local residents. The county's free black population, which consistent of 235 individuals outside of Alexandria in 1840, lived throughout the area in small clusters and among white neighbors. While agriculture, particularly of corn and grain, was the county's main economic output in the first half of the 19th century, some residents worked in various trades and factories in Alexandria. Other non-farming occupations included fishing and brickmaking.

Enslaved African Americans consisted of around 26% of the population in 1810, working on properties such as George Washington Parke Custis's Arlington Plantation, which Custis established with his inheritance from John Parke Custis, step-son of George Washington, in 1802; this included 18,000 acres of land across Virginia and 200 slaves, 63 of which worked on building and maintaining the plantation. The prominent African American Syphax family, whose matriarch Maria Carter Syphax was an illegitimate daughter of Custis and enslaved maid Arianna Carter, originated as enslaved servants on the Arlington estate; Custis later manumitted Maria and her children in 1845 and granted them 17 acres of land. Custis was the largest slave owner in the area until his death in 1857.

The population share of the enslaved dropped to around 20% by 1840 as a consequence of the continued movement away from labor-intensive tobacco farming and the slave trade with Deep Southern states and territories. Alexandria became a national center of this trade, with firms like Franklin & Armfield pioneering in the trafficking of enslaved people from around the Chesapeake region to New Orleans and the Forks in the Road slave market in Natchez, where they were sold to the Deep South's growing cotton plantations.

Major infrastructure, including the Chain Bridge, Long Bridge, and Aqueduct Bridge, was built in the first half of the 19th century to better connect the District of Columbia with the surrounding region. Toll roads were established between Alexandria, Georgetown, Leesburg, and other major settlements to facilitate the improvement and maintenance of thoroughfares, some of which also funded bridge construction. The Alexandria Canal, which via the 1843 Aqueduct Bridge connected Alexandria to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Georgetown, was opened in 1846. Alexandria County's first railway, the Alexandria and Harper's Ferry Railroad, was chartered in 1847; it later became part of the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad. Infrastructure expansion drove the Jackson City speculative development, which was established in 1835 by a group of investors from New York at the foot of Long Bridge. Their vision of Jackson City as a rival port to Georgetown and Alexandria was never realized, as the settlement failed to receive a charter from Congress owing to opposition from residents Georgetown and Washington.

Retrocession

The reintegration of Alexandria County into Virginia had been raised intermittently since the formation of the District, particularly by townspeople in Alexandria. Congressional debate of the issue began with discussion of the 1801 Organic Act and its implications, focusing on the lack of political rights afforded to District residents, who were not permitted to vote or have representation in Congress. Economic concerns relating to insufficient federal investment in infrastructure like the Alexandria Canal, which left Alexandria heavily indebted, motivated merchants and leaders in Alexandria to consider retrocession by the 1830s. The argument went that rejoining Virginia would bring financial relief to the municipal budget, greater support for economic development, restored political rights, and free Alexandria County from "antiquated" statutes Congress had inherited from older colonial laws and not updated.

Congress's failure to recharter banks in the District further frustrated Alexandria's business community, and in 1840 the Common Council of Alexandria convened a county-wide referendum on retrocession, with a majority voting in favor. After several years of lobbying by a committee of Alexandrians, the Virginia General Assembly introduced state legislation in July 1846 to accept Alexandria County back into Virginia territory if Congress agreed. Congress passed the Retrocession Act later that month that authorized the return of Alexandria County to Virginia pending another county referendum.

The referendum, held on September 1 and 2, passed with overwhelming support from Alexandrians, but was rejected by residents in the broader county; many in Alexandria County questioned the constitutionality of retrocession and felt marginalized by a movement that was primarily driven by Alexandria's business interests. George Washington Parke Custis, who had originally opposed retrocession due to concerns about the county's finances, changed sides after the Virginia General Assembly agreed to take on the debt incurred by the Alexandria Canal construction. Alexandria County was officially returned to Virginia on March 13, 1847, after the Virginia General Assembly passed the state's retrocession bill.

Beyond the freeholding whites in Alexandria County who were able to participate in the referendum, Alexandria County's free black community was also opposed to retrocession, as they anticipated the pro-slavery Virginia government would encroach upon their rights and institutions. This fear was realized soon after retrocession, when Virginia closed most of Alexandria County's black schools and imposed Black Codes upon all free African Americans.

While not mentioned prominently in contemporary debates about retrocession, modern historians and other figures have since argued that the future of slavery in Alexandria and Virginia more broadly was a significant factor. Growing domestic and international abolitionist sentiments stoked fears in Alexandria that slavery would eventually be abolished in the District of Columbia and by extension threaten the town's lucrative slave trade. This ultimately came to pass as a part of the Compromise of 1850, which banned Washington's slave trade. In 1907, Alexandria County attorney Crandal Mackey wrote that, given Alexandria County's existence as a destination for runaway enslaved people, Alexandrians thought they would be better served by the enforcement of slaveowners' property rights that would be guaranteed by Virginia's pro-slavery government. Retrocession also enabled the pro-slavery faction of the Virginia General Assembly to add two safe seats, strengthening their position against non-slave owning, abolitionist-leaning constituencies in Western Virginia.

Civil War

The "country part" of Alexandria County leaned strongly Unionist, as indicated by the results of the May 23, 1861 vote held on the ratification of Virginia's Ordinance of Secession; despite reports of voter intimidation from secessionists, two-thirds voted against the Ordinance. This was in part a result of the migration from northern states into Arlington County during the first half of the 19th century, some of whom were sympathetic to abolitionism and the Republican Party. Regardless, Virginia voted overwhelmingly in favor of secession and joined the Confederacy. Robert E. Lee, a colonel in the U.S. Army, son-in-law of George Washington Parke Custis, and owner of Arlington Plantation following Custis's death, left for Richmond with his family on April 22, 1861, to accept command of Virginia's army.

Union occupation

The proximity of Alexandria County to Washington, as well as the direct lines of sight it offered to important landmarks, necessitated the construction of defenses to protect the capital.Joseph K. Mansfield