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How 'bout beginning a thread on my favorite Virginian? I'm certain there would be a lot of Lees, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and perhaps even a couple of Harry Flood Byrd, Woodrow Wilson, Zack Taylor, Wm. Henry Harrison or John Tyler submissions...but my favorite is William "Extra Billy" Smith. He's the only Virginian ever to be twice governor and twice a senator of the state. He joined the Confederacy at the age of 67 and preferred an umbrella to a saber. And, it was he who caused the Battle of Gettysburg to be fought...you see after the death of Stonewall, "Marse Robert" gave Jackson's corps to R.S. Ewell who also inherited Smith as a brigade commander. Seems Smith, who was a born politician and who always got a little bit "extra" when he was establishing mail contracts in the 1830s, stopped Ewell's entire column in Gettysburg while it was on its way to the real goal--Harrisburg. There, he began orating to the town of G'burg on why the Confederacy was there and how its purpose was only to defend his sacred Old Dominion soil. In the meantime, the 6 miles of stretched-out column of CSA men, wagons, and animals were getting a bit bored with Extra Billy's rantings. Someone went off and discovered that G'burg had a shoe factory, and so our "Johnnies" in desperate need of clod feet, decided they would partake--true story!