June Twenty-First
What care I if Cyrus McCormick was born in Rockbridge County? These new-fangled “contraptions” are to the old system what the little, dirty, black steam-tug is to the three-decker, with its cloud of snowy canvas towering to the skies—the grandest and most beautiful sight in the world. I wouldn’t give Uncle Isham’s picked man, “long Billy Carter,” leading the field, with one good drink of whisky in him—I wouldn’t give one swing of his cradle and one “ketch” of his straw for all the mowers and reapers in creation.
George W. Bagby
Cyrus Hall McCormick of Virginia patents his reaping machine, 1831
June Twenty-Second
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
Edgar Allan Poe
Arkansas readmitted to the Union, 1868
June Twenty-Third
THE BROOK