Richmond resident and U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, who was tapped to be Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate, introduced her Wednesday before her concession speech. His wife, Anne Holton, former Virginia secretary of education, was by his side:

My wife Anne and I are so proud of Hillary. I am proud of Hillary Clinton because she has been and is a great history-maker in everything she has done — as a civil rights lawyer, and first lady of Arkansas, and first lady of this country, and senator and secretary of state. She has made history in a nation that is good at so many things, but that has made it uniquely difficult for a woman to be elected to federal office. She became the first major-party nominee, as a woman, to be president, and last night won the popular vote of Americans to be president.

That is an amazing accomplishment. It is an amazing accomplishment.

I’m proud of Hillary Clinton because, in the words of Langston Hughes, she has held fast to dreams. She was inspired at a young age to an epiphany that if families and children do well, that’s the best barometer for whether society does well. And in everything she’s done, she’s focused on that. We know she would have made history as a president in one sense, but we never have had a president who’s made their whole career about the empowerment of families and children, and I was as excited about that in the Oval Office as I was excited to have my friend Hillary there and make history as the first woman president.

I’m excited and proud of Hillary because she has built such a wonderful team. There is a beautiful and kind of comical parable in the New Testament about a vineyard owner who hires people to work and says, “And I’m going to pay you this for a full day.” Then he hires people at noon, “And I’m going to pay you the same thing for the half day.” Then he hires people one hour before — “I’m going to pay you the same.” And those who started early in the day say, “Hold on, we don’t like this that you’re treating everybody who came late just as well as you’re treating us.”

I’m going to tell you something. Here’s what I’ve come to know so well about Hillary. The team that she has assembled over the years, of people that are so deeply loyal to her because she is so deeply loyal to them, is inspiring. But I’ve seen that same degree of loyalty and compassion and sensitivity extended to the most recent folks who have joined the team, the folks who came to the vineyard with just one hour to go. Her loyalty and compassion, of Hillary and Bill, to people — if they’re with you, they’re with you, and that is just something so remarkable.

And finally, I’m proud of Hillary because she loves this country. Nobody, nobody had to wonder about Hillary Clinton, whether she would accept an outcome of an election in our beautiful democracy. Nobody had to ask that question. Nobody had to doubt it. She knows our country for what it is. She knows the system that we have, and in its warts and blemishes, she’s deeply in love with it and accepts it. She’s been in battles before where if it didn’t go her way, she accepted it but then woke up the next day and battled again for the dreams that she’s held fast to. And that love of country is something that I think is obvious to everybody, obvious to everyone.

I want to thank Hillary Clinton for asking Anne and I to join this wild ride. About a week before she asked if I would be her running mate, Anne and I went up to Westchester and we sat down with Hillary and Bill and with Chelsea and Marc and with Charlotte and Aidan for about three hours of conversation to try to determine whether we would be the right people to be on the ticket. And when we got in the car to head back to the airport after the three-hour discussion, I said to Anne, “Honey, I don’t know whether we’re going to be on this ticket or not, but I do know this: We’re going to remember that three hours for the rest of our life.” And now we’ll remember 105 days that we’ve had with this fantastic couple of public servants and all of you for the rest of our life.

I’ll just say this: Hillary and I know well the wisdom in the words of William Faulkner. He said, “They kilt us but they ain’t whupped us yet.” They kilt us — they kilt us but they ain’t whupped us yet. Because we know, we know that the work remains. We know that the dreams of empowering families and children remain. And in that work, that important work that we have to do as a nation, it is so comforting, even at a tough time, to know that Hillary Clinton is somebody, until her very last breath, who’s going to be battling for the values that make this nation great and the values that we care so deeply about.

So now, please join me in welcoming Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton.