Even though Virginia was the tenth state to join the United States of America after breaking away from Britain in 1776, they became the 8th state to secede from the Union. After the election results of the first republican ever in 1860 by Abraham Lincoln, the South was worried about the diminishing slave economy and backed secession. Lincoln wanted to eliminate both and make slaves free.
On February 13, 1861, the convention of the Virginia secession started. Many delegates from across Virginia voted in favor of secession. The pivotal movement was on April 17, 1861 where the vote was 88 to 55 persons. It took awhile for Virginia to enter into the Confederacy, but about 2 months later on June 19, 1861, the state seceded from the Union. The Civil War had already begun after the bombing of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.
At Gettysburg, the Virginia monument is at the location where Robert E. Lee sent off the Confederate soldiers during the attack on July 3rd, 1863. The monument was also the first of the Confederate state monuments on the battlefield. It was dedicated on June 8, 1917. The interesting fact to the dedication was that the unveiling was done by Miss Virginia Carter, who was the niece of Robert E. Lee.
The monument represents the abundant number of soldiers over 20,000 men that were at Gettysburg. Virginia represented the largest contingent of the twelve Confederate states. Of this number, along 1/4 of them would become casualties. The monument has a statue of Robert E. Lee on his house, Traveler, looking east towards the Union line. There was fifteen regiments at the Battle of Gettysburg that was from the state of Virginia.