The great leaders of the American Revolution dominated the consideration of great and influential Virginians of the 18th century. Ross Mackenzie and Todd Culbertson, both of The Times-Dispatch, in effect threw up their hands after trying to single out any one, and both listed George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Mason.

There were many other great men and women who were powerfully influential in Virginia, and participants in the survey nominated several of them.

Jack P. Greene, one of the keenest students of colonial politics, suggested that Lt. Gov. Sir William Gooch be considered as the greatest 18th-century Virginian prior to the American Revolution. He presided over the colony from 1727-49 following a period of political turmoil.

Greene wrote that Gooch "managed to bring that turmoil to an end and to foster an atmosphere of cooperation and moderation, promoting the ideals and the institutions that produced the brilliant generation of statesmen that dominated Virginia during the last quarter-century of the Colonial period and during the Revolutionary era, the generation that contributed so much to the creation of the United States."

Another man of great influence was Richard Bland, the best-informed student of Virginia's history and legal position within the British empire. During the two decades before the Revolution began he published essays and pamphlets outlining and defending the colony's General Assembly against British challenges. Historian Bland Whitley wrote that "his pamphlets opposing Parliament's authority to make laws for the colony were crucial to the development of an anti-imperial ideology."

George Mason, draftsman of the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 and of the first Constitution of Virginia, was also a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and of the Virginia Ratification Convention of 1788. Mason opposed ratification of the United States Constitution for many reasons, in part because it had no Bill of Rights and in part because he feared that its structure would lead to a national government so strong that it would undermine the purposes of the American Revolution.

Historian Robert Hawkes stated, "Every American citizen owes a debt to George Mason. Although he never freed his slaves and never saw the free society he espoused, he helped establish the American creed of liberty and equality which we have pursued ever since."

Patrick Henry was one of the most famous Virginians when the Revolution began and served twice as the commonwealth's governor.

It was Henry's oratory in defense of liberty that was his principal contribution to Virginia and the United States. Historian Bland Whitley noted, "His words became the rallying cry of the revolution, more potent to more people than the constitutional ideals that moved his colleagues."

Historian James Sweeney concluded a long commentary on Patrick Henry with this summary: "Henry's greatest significance was his articulation of the principle of liberty. Almost 200 years after his death Chinese students demonstrating for freedom in Tiananmen Square were quoting his words. Those words will continue to inspire as long as there are lovers of liberty."

Archivist and historian Jennifer McDaid suggested that the men who fought in the American Revolution were heroes and should be remembered. To stand in for all of them, she offered the story of Edward Houchins, of Goochland County, who enlisted in the army at age 18 and was badly wounded in the arm at the Battle of Camden, S.C., two years later in August 1780.

The bullet shattered a bone in his arm, and for more than 30 years he was unable to support himself and his family of nine children. In 1818, he petitioned the General Assembly for an increase in his $40-a-year wartime pension. He sent along a fragment of the bullet, which his wife had extracted from his disabled arm, with his petition.

The assembly increased the pension of the disabled veteran.

One man who sat out the politics and fighting of the American Revolution was nominated for a great act. Robert Carter, a grandson of the famous Robert "King" Carter, had been a member of the influential Royal Governor's Council when the Revolutionary War began, but the revolution in which he took part was a religious one.

Carter became an evangelical Baptist and renounced dependence on slavery. In 1791 he drafted a deed of emancipation to free more than 500 enslaved people he owned. It was the largest emancipation of slaves before the Civil War.

To historian Cynthia Kierner, that was an act to cheer about. Even though he was not in "the pantheon of revolutionary heroes, Carter was one of the few Virginians of his generation to take radical Protestantism and natural rights theory to their logical conclusions."

A genuinely remarkable man was Thomas Fuller, who was born in Africa about 1710 and arrived in Virginia as an orphan 14 years later. Historian and archivist Ervin Jordan nominated the mathematical prodigy. Fuller never learned to read or write, but he astounded educated white men with his ability to solve complex mathematical questions speedily and accurately.

"When asked the number of seconds of a man aged 70 years, 17 days, and 12 hours," Jordan wrote, "Fuller answered 2,210,500,800 seconds. When informed he was incorrect Fuller responded that his questioner had forgotten 17 leap years."

The participants in the survey suggested only one woman for the 18th century, Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who belonged to Thomas Jefferson and is now widely believed to be the mother of several of his children. Ben Campbell wrote, "This exceptional young woman, even though a bondservant, was consort to the first American ambassador to France, hidden wife of the third president, and the unspoken mistress of Monticello. Living in the shadows, she was content to have her victory after her death, as her children established lives of freedom."

Slavery and freedom existed side by side in Virginia in the aftermath of the American Revolution. Historian and editor Katharine Harbury suggested that three white men from Chesterfield be singled out as representatives of that minority of slave-owning Virginians who recognized the contradiction and tried to end it. John Baker executed a deed in January 1793 to free an enslaved man named William. Baker and his friends Reuben Winfree and Thomas Bridgewater wrote, in imitation of the words of the Declaration of Independence, "that all men by nature are equally free and from a clear conviction of the Injustices and criminallity of depriving our fellow creatures of their natural right do hereby imancipate or set free" William.

Harbury also nominated Williamsburg attorney and judge St. George Tucker, who in 1796 published a short book titled A Dissertation on Slavery: With A Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of It in the State of Virginia. Tucker would not have granted freed people the same full rights of citizenship that white Virginians enjoyed, but he attempted to abolish slavery gradually in a way that would not injure the financial and security concerns of owners of slaves. The plan failed to attract support in the General Assembly.

Most people think that the 18th century ended on the last day of December 1799, but technically it ended on the last day of December 1800. Katharine Harbury nominated as a person of great influence an enslaved man named Gabriel, who "valued freedom above all else." At the end of August 1800, Gabriel planned to lead an uprising against slavery in the Richmond vicinity. A rainstorm washed out a bridge so that his men could not assemble, and two men gave away the plan. The state government arrested a great many conspirators and hanged most of them.

A revolt against slavery could not have been bloodless. The objective was freedom from a tyranny much worse than that against which the American Army had fought only one generation earlier. One of the conspirators stated that Gabriel wasn't planning to do anything that Gen. Washington himself wouldn't have done under similar circumstances, and another reported that Gabriel planned to seize the state Capitol and, in emulation of Patrick Henry, raise a flag bearing the words, "Death or Liberty."

One person whose name is not now known was suggested as a candidate for greatness: the person who designed Christ Church in Lancaster County. Historian Bland Whitley asked, "What better represents the aesthetics of Colonial Virginia than this most beautiful of the state's churches?"

Richmond Times-Dispatch Op/Ed editor Cynthia Paris nominated Samuel Davies as the most influential man in 18th-century Virginia. For a decade at Pole Green Church in Hanover, the Presbyterian minister introduced Virginians to the Great Awakening. Paris wrote that his influence through "his delivery of Scripture gave courage to those who penned, and legislated, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom." Moreover, "it was at Pole Green Church in Hanover that young Patrick Henry heard and was moved by Davies' pulpit oratory."

Historian John d'Entremont acknowledged the importance of the great leaders and their influential achievements but wrote that "the greatest heroes of the American Revolution -- and the greatest Virginians -- were not people at all." They were ideas:

"There were moments when each of those 18th-century people rose to greatness, whether or not he or she or anyone else recognized, recorded, or saw it. And there were times when each of them -- without exception -- betrayed or finessed principles and behaved horrifically. In that sense they were very much like 17th-century people, like 19th-century people, like 20th-century people, and like us.

"If you put your faith uncritically in a person, if you make a person your hero, you will inevitably be disappointed.

"But there is something majestic and magical -- something great -- about a fine, fresh, life-enhancing idea. A grand idea does not get weary or fickle. It does not surrender, and once born, it can never die. You may tire of an idea, or lament the burden of its company; but the idea will never tire of you.

"You may let down an idea -- we do it all the time -- but an idea will never let you down. The greatness of the United States -- and of Virginia as a leading player in the American story -- is that it is centrally about ideas." -- Brent Tarter