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"The Vindication Of The South
Brilliant Address of Hon. B. B. Munford 
An Array of Facts--The Right of Secession is Set Forth Unmistakably.  

The South Not Alone in its Interpretation of the Constitution--Virginia's Love for the Union--The Institution of Slavery--Good of the Negroes. 
At the unveiling of the monument to' the Confederate soldiers of Accomac and Northampton at Parksley, Friday last, Hon. Beverley B. Munford, of this city, delivered an address which excited widespread interest, and brought out facts unknown to the majority of the present generation. 

 

Mr. Munford, after an appropriate allusion to the West-Harmanson Camp of Confederate Veterans, under whose leadership the monument had been erected, proceeded to portray the heroic conduct of the Confederate soldiers from Accomac and Northampton counties. Cut off from the balance of the State, their section early passed under the control of the Federal power. Uninfluenced either by the safety of their situation, or by the fears of the dominant power, the men of this sea-girt land sped to the succor of their State and to their brethren on the other shore of the bay. Mr. Munford paid a high tribute to the valor of the men in whose honor the West-Harmanson Camp was named, of the various officers and privates from Eastern Shore who bore heroic parts in the great struggle, and then proceeded as follows: 
 

 

But, my countrymen, while the erection of monuments to commemorate the heroism of the Confederate soldier is a work worthy of the highest commendation, there remains for this generation a still more sacred and important duty--the duty of portraying the high motives which impelled him, and of vindicating his name from the charge of treason. 

 

The world acknowledges the splendid valor with which he maintained his cause, yet waits to declare whether his course was justified by the tests of ethical and constitutional right. It is only by repeated expositions that our children, and the mind and conscience of the outside world will be informed both with respect to his rights and the motives which influenced his conduct. This exposition is due as well to the actors in that great contest as to our countrymen of every phase of thought. The Union, and love for the Union, the closer sympathy between the States and sections, will be strengthened rather than hindered by a correct understanding of the rights asserted by the parties to that, the mightiest conflict of modern times. 

 

THE RIGHT OF SECESSION. 

 

First and foremost of the States which seceded appealed to the Constitution in justification of their course. The rightfulness of this contention must be determined not by our conceptions of what would have been the best system of government or the best form of constitution, but what, in the light of the admitted facts of history, and the actual terms of the Constitution as adopted, were the relative rights of the States and of the Union, with respect to this great problem. I can not, upon this occasion, do more than epitomise the facts and reasoning upon which the advocates of secession maintained the justice of their cause. It will help to a clearer understanding if we take one Commonwealth and portray her relations to the Union, and as we are to-day to honor the memory of Virginians, I shall select for that purpose our native State. 
 

 

Virginia was one of the original colonies, having a separate existence from the other colonies, and yet, like the others, forming an integral part of the British Empire. Pending this political relation, the allegiance of her citizens was due the British crown. 
On the 15th of May, 1776, the people of Virginia met in convention, and acting without association with any of the other colonies, declared her separation from and independence of Great Britain.

 

 
BILL OF RIGHTS. 

 

On the 12th of June, 1776, she adopted and proclaimed her bill of rights; and on the 29th of June adopted her Constitution. She declared all power of government vested in her own people, who alone succeeded to the rights and territories of the crown. Her governor and State officers were elected, taking an oath of fealty to the Commonwealth of Virginia. All this was accomplished before the 4th of July, 1776--before the Declaration of Independence, which declared the colonies free and independent States, had been proposed at her instigation and prepared by her great son. 
 

 

Thus, the people of Virginia became citizens of the State, and she their sovereign. The Declaration of Independence, so far from changing the allegiance of her citizens or proclaiming the independence of the country as a whole, by its very terms declares that the several colonies are "free and independent States." 

 

The Articles of Confederation were formulated by the Continental Congress in November, 1777, and submitted to the legislatures of the respective States as such, and not to the people, for ratification. 
These articles constituted by their very terms a compact between States, naming them, and not the people of the whole, country; and declare that each State retains its sovereignty and every power which is not expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled. While numerous powers were vested in the Federal Congress, yet it had no power, except acting on and through the States as such, even to collect taxes or to enlist troops for the prosecution of the war of the Revolution. 

 

NOT AS A WHOLE. 

 

When, by the treaty of peace with Great Britain, our independence was acknowledged, the independence of the people of the United States as a whole was not recognized, but each of the separate Commonwealths, naming them, was declared a free, sovereign and independent State. 
Thus stood the government--Federal and State--and the allegiance of the citizen, after the treaty of peace with Great Britain acknowledging our independence. 
 

 

In 1787 the Constitutional Convention, as it was called--a body authorized by no Federal enactment--assembled at Philadelphia, prepared and proposed to the several States for adoption a new constitution. The old Confederacy was abandoned, and by the express terms of the Constitution it was not to be effective until nine States should have ratified the same. 

 

The adoption of the Constitution was not the act of the people of the whole country, but of each State, as only by the separate acceptance of its terms by each State could it become binding upon her. The States were absolutely free to enter the new Union, or to retain their complete independence. Thus North Carolina and Rhode Island--the latter not being even represented at the Philadelphia convention--refused to enter. The Congress of the United States laid tariff duties upon imports from both of these Commonwealths, as in the case of other foreign States--acts which were not repealed until they entered the Union. 

 

CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT. 

 

When Mr. Henry, who was not a member of the Philadelphia convention, charged that the expression, "We, the people of the United States," in terms implied a consolidated government. Mr. Madison, the foremost architect of the Constitution, replied: "Who are the parties to it? (the Constitution). The people. But not the people as composing one great body, but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties. Were it, as the gentlemen asserts, a consolidated government, the consent of a majority of the people would be sufficient for its establishment." 

 

The bare recital of these facts would seem to demonstrate that in the formation of the Constitution, and the resulting Union, the States acted as separate sovereignties, and that the government thus created, was the result of a compact between them, and not the act of the people as a whole. 
 

 

The powers of the Federal Government, therefore, were delegated and not inherent; and to ascertain them it is only necessary to search the Constitution, where those so delegated are enumerated. 
 

 

In the conventions of Virginia and New York, the question was raised as to the relative rights and powers of the State and Federal governments, and in order to define more clearly the meaning of the Constitution, and to establish more firmly the rights of the States, the resolution of the Virginia convention, in adopting the Constitution, uses this language: 

 

VIRGINIA CONVENTION. 

 

"We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, do in the name and behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." 
 

 

The resolution of adoption by the New York convention is of very much the same import. These two States also proposed amendments to the Constitution, which were quickly ratified and made a part of the instrument itself. The amendment bearing specifically upon the point under consideration, was the 10th, which expressly provides "That the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Thus, with the very adoption of the Constitution, the position maintained by the statesmen that the Constitution was a compact between States, was established, as they thought, beyond a question. 

 

If it was a compact between separate sovereignties, and the compact enumerated all the powers surrendered to the federal head, then the parties to the compact could withdraw as an incident to their sovereignty, and because that right had not been surrendered. The citizen, as we know, was the citizen of the State, and not of the Union. If the State had a right to secede, it had the supreme claim upon the allegiance of all its citizens, even in a controversy between the State and the federal head. 

 

POSITION OF THE FOUNDERS. 

 

This was the position of the advocates of the right of secession, and the reasoning upon which they based their claim. The principle so declared, had been frequently asserted by States and statesmen, in the most solemn manner. Thus, upon the passage of the Alien and Sedition laws, the celebrated resolutions of 1798 were adopted by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia--the first of which was prepared by Jefferson, and the second by Madison. These resolutions, thus prepared by the author of the Declaration of Independence and the father of the Constitution, asserted in the most solemn form that the government was a compact between States; that its powers were limited to those specifically delegated in the Constitution; and that the States had the right to determine for themselves when the Federal government exceeded its authority. 

 

These declarations became the subject of assault and defence, but so far from the principles annunciated being repudiated, at the very next election, Mr. Jefferson was elected President of the United States, and after a service of eight years, was succeeded by Mr. Madison, who filled the office for a like period.CAUSE OF DISSOLUTION. 
In 1804, the legislature of Massachusetts passed an act declaring that the purchase and annexation of the territory of Louisiana by the general government was a sufficient cause for the dissolution of the Union. 

 

In 1814 the representatives from the six New England States assembled in the celebrated Hartford convention, and, because of their opposition to the war with England, declared that unless the policy of the administration in prosecuting this war was changed, they would be forced to adopt measures for withdrawing from the Union. The convention adjourned to meet the following June, when the timely ending of the war prevented the necessity of its reassembling. 
 

 

Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, in a speech delivered in the House of Representatives upon a bill for the admission of the first State from the Louisiana purchase, declared: "It is my deliberate opinion that if this bill passes, the bonds of the Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which oppose it are morally free from their obligations, and that as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation." 
 

 

In 1839 John Quincy Adams, in an address before the New York Historical Association, declared: "We may admit the same right has vested in the people of every State of the Union with reference to the general government, which was exercised by the people of the united colonies with reference to the supreme head of the British Empire, of which they formed a part, and under these limitations have the people of each State in the Union a right to secede from the Confederate Union itself." 

NO BINDING FORCE. 

 

In 1845 the legislature of Massachusetts, in view of its opposition to the proposed annexation of Texas, passed a series of resolutions in which, after declaring that there was no precedent for the admission of a foreign State or territory into the Union, and as the powers granted in the Constitution do not provide for such legislation, so "an act of admission would have no binding force whatever upon the people of Massachusetts." 
 

 

These various resolutions and enactments of State authorities, and declarations of statesmen both of the Revolutionary and later periods, were accepted as avowals of constitutional rights, implying no lack of loyalty or patriotism. 
 

 

If the States had the right under the Constitution to secede, then the Federal government had no constitutional right to coerce them. The inability of the Federal government to coerce States had been frequently illustrated by the refusal of governors to honor requisitions made upon them by governors of other States for the rendition of fugitive slaves, though the statute under which the requisitions were made was passed by Congress, and the government stood pledged to enforce its execution. 
 

 

Thus stood the historical and legal features of the great controversy. To say that the people of Virginia, or of any other State, acting under the forms of law, could not withdraw from the Union without a violation of the Constitution, was to contest what was an accepted theory of the government, held by leaders of thought in every section, from the day of its foundation. 
 

 

We are not discussing either the wisdom of exercising the right of secession or the wisdom of the fathers in the formation of such a government, but we are considering the actual terms of the Constitution and the truths of history. And in the light of these conditions, that man is indeed reckless of inexorable facts who avows that men who died in the maintenance of rights so time-honored and so widely accepted were guilty of treason. 

 

THE RIGHT OF REVOLUTION. 

 

The statesmen of the seceding States founded their action, as we have seen, upon their rights under the Constitution. They never admitted that it was necessary to have recourse to the right of revolution. Mixed, however, in the popular mind with the right of secession was the conviction that the right of revolution was one that could not be denied. They had never learned to admit that George Washington was a traitor, only saved from the scaffold by the adventitious fortunes of war. Less than one hundred years before, their fathers had decided for themselves the great question of their political destiny, with no higher warrant than the brave avowal of the declaration that governments are instituted among men, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." 
 

 

The people felt that they had walked the path blazed out by the fathers, and asserted rights which had been vindicated in the heroic days from Lexington to Yorktown. If thirteen colonies, with a population of less than three million of free men had the right to determine for themselves their form of government, and secede from the mother country, how much more should this new nation, possessing a territory twice as great, with a population of over six million of free men, exercise the same prerogative? 

 

SOUTH NOT ALONE. 

 

And not alone was this the conviction of the people of the seceding States, but the same sentiment was wide-spread among leading statesmen, journalists and the people of the North. Thus, the New York Tribune, foremost among the organs which had supported Mr. Lincoln, declared: "If the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of three million of subjects in 1776, it was not seen why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the Union in 1861."
 

 

At a great meeting held in New York on the 31st of January, 1861, after the Cotton States had seceded, addresses were delivered by ex-Governor Seymour, Chancellor Walworth, and other leading citizens. Governor Seymour asked whether "successful coercion by the North is less revolutionary than successful secession by the South? Shall we prevent revolution by being foremost in overthrowing the principles of our government and all that makes it valuable to our people, and distinguishes it among the nations of the earth?" 
Chancellor Walworth declared: "There were laws that were to be enforced in the time of the American Revolution. Did Lord Chatham go for enforcing those laws? No, he gloried in the defence of the liberties of America." 

 

Here was an imperial empire, four times as large as either Germany or France, peopled by a self-reliant race, the descendants of men who had established the great principle that the power to determine their form of government is inherent in the people; and avouching these facts they demanded of their sister Commonwealths of the Union and the world, what they regarded was a birthright bequeathed them by the fathers. To maintain this principle the Confederate soldier fought and sealed with his life his devotion to the cause. The country at whose call he went forth to battle, now appeals to the world for a recognition of the high motives which impelled his conduct, and an acknowledgment of the great avowal that he died for principle. 

 

VIRGINIA'S LOVE FOR THE UNION. 

 

But while Virginia was foremost among the States in her efforts to maintain their rights, she was none the less conspicuous in her efforts to preserve the Union. While jealous of the rights of local self-government, as the surest guarantee of the liberties of the citizen, she none the less loved the Union. In every stage of the country's history, and at no time more earnestly than in the fateful days of 1860-'61, the dominant element of the Virginia people stood as well for the Union of the States as for the rights of the States. 
 

 

The part which Virginia played in the formation of the government, and in augmenting the glory and power of the Union, may be found on every page of our country's history. It was her great son, Patrick Henry, who, as far back as 1765, prepared the resolutions denouncing the Stamp Act, and supported them with his thrilling arraignment of British tyranny. 
It was Virginia who proposed the Committee of Correspondence between the colonies, from which sprung the Continental Congress. She gave to that body its President in the person of Peyton Randolph, and fired the representatives of the several colonies with the spirit of co-operation and nationalism in the words of her Henry, who declared: 
"British oppression has effaced the boundaries of the several colonies. The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." 

 

WASHINGTON'S WORDS. 

 

And in the brave words of her Washington before the convention: "I will raise 1,000 men, subsist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston "--words of patriotism, breathing a love for the whole country--quickly to be followed by the march of Virginians under Daniel Morgan, to the succor of that besieged city. 
It was her legislature that passed the resolution calling upon Congress to declare that the colonies were free and independent States. It was Richard Henry Lee who submitted this brave motion, and Thomas Jefferson who penned the Declaration. It was her great son who took command of the Continental armies, and under his matchless leadership brought victory to a cause which, but for him, would undoubtedly have suffered overwhelming defeat. 
 

 

While bearing her part in maintaining the cause of the colonies in their great struggle with the mother country, she commissioned and equipped the expedition which, under the leadership of her son, George Rogers Clarke, conquered the empire of the northwest; and then, in the plenitude of her patriotism, she donated this great territory to the Union. 

 

A CLOSE UNION. 

 

When the Revolution had finally triumphed in the great battle fought out on her soil, her statesmen were the first to realize the necessities of a closer union, and under her leadership the Constitutional Convention was called. George Washington presided over its deliberations; Edmund Randolph proposed a plan which was the basis of the new Constitution, and James Madison was at once the foremost architect in its construction, as he was the ablest advocate in favor of its subsequent adoption by the States. For thirty-six years--save four--Virginia furnished the Presidents who shaped the destinies of the infant republic. John Marshall, first among the foremost jurists of the English-speaking world, for thirty-five years filled the high place of Chief Justice, and by his great decisions performed a work of incomparable importance in the making of the Union. Under the leadership of Jefferson, the empire stretching from the mouth of the Mississippi to Canada and the Pacific was acquired from France, while Monroe secured from Spain the cession of Florida. 
 

 

Her Taylor and Scott led the triumphant forces of the Union in the war with Mexico, while a brilliant of younger sons, Lee, Jackson, Johnston and others, shed new lustre upon American arms by their personal heroism in that war. 
 

 

Wherever the genius and prowess of leadership had added strength and glory to the Union and her institutions, whether in the cabinet, in the council, or on the field, Virginia had been foremost in her contributions of wisdom and of heroism. Thus was the Union so indissolubly linked with her own interests and glory that she was presently to be called upon to declare whether she would aid and abet it in the policy of what she regarded as unconstitutional coercion, or stand forth herself to brook its power. 

 

TO PRESERVE THE UNION. 

 

The foregoing constitutes but an imperfect recital of the part borne by Virginia in the making of the Union, and so whenever the clouds of civil dissention arose, and peace between the States or between a State and the Union, was imperilled, Virginia was foremost in her mediations. Thus in 1832, when South Carolina, by her Ordinance of Nullification, brought on the crisis involving a conflict between the State and Federal powers, it was Virginia who stepped forward as the peace-maker, and as a result of her mediations, the threatened rupture was averted. 
Again, in 1860, the alignment of parties demonstrated that the election of either Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Breckinridge to the Presidency would be followed by a rupture, and so Virginia, with her eldest daughter, Kentucky, alone of the States of the Union except Tennessee, cast her vote for Bell and Everett, the Union candidates, standing on the platform, "The Constitution of the country; the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws." 
 

 

But Mr. Lincoln and his associate upon the ticket, Hannibal Hamlin, were elected, and for the first time in the history of the government these high offices were to be filled by men from one section of the country, elected by the electoral votes only of States from the same geographical division, and that too despite the fact that the opposing tickets combined received a majority of over a million of the popular vote. 
 

 

Following the election of Mr. Lincoln, under the leadership of South Carolina and Cotton States, seven in number, withdrew from the Union and formed a government, and adopted a constitution in February, 1861. While there was a strong party in Virginia which not only believed in the right of secession, but advocated the immediate assertion of the right, yet the dominant voice of her people was still for the Union, and in obedience to this sentiment every possible effort was put forth to avert a collision between the Federal power and the seceding States, and to bring the latter back into affiliation with the Union. 

 

THE PEACE CONGRESS. 

 

Her legislature was called in extra session and resolutions immediately adopted calling for a meeting of commissioners from the States still in the Union, to assemble at Washington and to devise means to avert the threatened calamity. The resolutions of the legislature recite that: "Whereas it is the deliberate opinion of the General Assembly of Virginia that unless the unhappy controversy which now divides the States of this Confederacy shall be satisfactorily adjusted, a permanent dissolution of the Union is inevitable, and the General Assembly, representing the wishes of the people of the Commonwealth, is desirous of employing every reasonable means to avert so dire a calamity"; and then proceeds to call upon the States to send commissioners to what has been known in history as the "Peace Congress." To this Congress Virginia sent as her representatives ex-President John Tyler, William C. Rives, John W. Brockenbrough, George W. Summers and James A. Seddon. 
 

 

The Peace Congress accordingly met in Washington in February, 1861, where representatives from twenty-three States assembled and took part in the deliberations, though there were, of course, no representatives present from the seven Commonwealths who had already formed the Southern Confederacy. John Tyler, of Virginia, was elected its president, and his speech accepting the position thrilled with sentiments of patriotism and devotion to the country. He declared: 
 

 

"The voice of Virginia has invited her co-States to meet her in council. In the initiation of this government that same voice was heard and complied with, and the result seventy odd years has fully attested the wisdom of the decisions then adopted. Is the urgency of her call now less great than it was then? Our Godlike fathers created! We have to preserve. They have built up through their wisdom and patriotism monuments which have eternized their name. You have before you, gentlemen, a task equally grand, equally sublime, quite as full of glory and of immortality: you have to snatch from ruin a grand and glorious confederation; to preserve the government, and to renew and invigorate the Constitution. If you reach the height of this great occasion, your children's children will rise up and call you blessed." 

 

WITHOUT AVAIL. 

 

The deliberations of the Peace Congress availed nothing to stem the tide of disunion, which seemed to flow in from both sections. It is almost pathetic to read the speeches of some of the participants in that great conference, as evidencing their yearnings for reconciliation between the sections and to avert the threatened calamity of civil war. Over against this sentiment was a counterspirit which foreboded no good for the peace of the country. As an example of the first, let me quote a few sentences from a speech of William C. Rives, one of the Virginia delegates: 

 

"Mr. President, the position of Virginia must be understood and appreciated. She is just now the neutral ground between two embattled legions--between two angry, excited and hostile portions of the Union. Something must be done to save the country, to allay these apprehensions, to restore a broken confidence. Virginia steps in to arrest the progress of the country on its way to ruin. She steps in to save the country. * * * Sir, I have had some experience in revolutions in another hemisphere; in revolutions produced by the same causes that are now operating among us. What causes led to the revolution in France? 

 

"One I saw myself, where interest was arrayed against interest, friend against friend, brother against brother. I have seen the pavements of Paris covered and her gutters running with fraternal blood. God forbid I should see this horrid picture repeated in my own country; and yet it will be, sir, if we listen to the counsels urged here." 
THE OPPOSITION. 
 

 

From these appeals and warnings of this distinguished son of Virginia, I turn to the characteristic utterance of one of the leaders in the opposing element. The Peace Conference had been from the first opposed by a faction, and under the influence of their leadership, several of the Northern States had refused to send delegates. As the patriotic character of the Congress, however, and of the great mission which it had in hand, impressed itself more and more upon the thought and conscience of the country, other States sent forward their representatives. Then fearing that the friends of reconciliation would be dominant in the congress, this ultra element sought to secure the appointment of delegates from the States not represented, who would combat this sentiment and defeat the accomplishment of any practical results. It was in this spirit that Zachariah Chandler, then a Senator from 

Michigan, wrote the following letter to the Governor of that State: 
"WASHINGTON, Feb. 11, 1861. 

 

My dear Governor: 
Governor Bingham and myself telegraphed you on Saturday, at the request of Massachusetts and New York, to send delegates to the Peace, or Compromise Congress. They admit that we were right, and that they were wrong; that no Republican State should have sent delegates; but they are here and cannot get away. Ohio, Indiana, Rhode Island are caving in, and there is danger of Illinois; and now they beg us for God's sake to come to their rescue and save the Republican party from rupture. The whole thing was gotten up against my judgment and advice, and will end in thin smoke. Still, I hope as a matter of courtesy to some of our erring brethren, that you will send the delegates. 
Truly your friend, 
Z. W. CHANDLER. 
His Excellency, Austin Blair. 
P. S.--Some of the manufacturing States think that a fight would be awful. Without a little blood-letting, this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush." 

 

LEE'S DECLARATION. 

 

It may not be amiss to quote at this point from the declarations of Robert E. Lee, made in January, 1861, as the sentiment of the leading Virginian of his time. Referring to Washington, he wrote: 
"How his spirit would be grieved, could he see the wreck of his mighty labors. I will not, however,, permit myself to believe, until all ground for hope has gone, that the fruit of his noble deeds will be destroyed, and that his precious advice and virtuous example will be so soon forgotten by his countrymen. As far as I can judge from the papers, we are between a state of anarchy and civil war. May God avert both of these evils from us." 
 

 

In the same month he again wrote: "I shall mourn for my country, and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved, and the government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and save in defence will I draw my sword on none." 

 

Thus at this momentous crisis Virginia furnished the "neutral ground between the embattled legions "--and declared in the words of her great son, "Save in defence will I draw my sword on none." 
 

VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1861 
The same legislature which called the Peace Congress passed an act providing a popular convention of the people to consider what should be the course of Virginia in the crisis with which she was confronted. By the terms of the act the people were not only to select delegates to a convention, but they were to declare by a separate vote whether the action of that convention should be referred back to the people for ratification, or whether its action should be binding upon the Commonwealth. The result of the popular vote not only overwhelmingly committed the convention to submit its findings to the people for ratification or rejection, but sent to the convention a majority of delegates opposed to the secession of Virginia from the Union. 

 

JANNEY'S WORDS. 

 

The dominant element in the convention elected as its president the venerable John Janney, and the spirit and purpose of the body may be gathered from his address in accepting the position. He said: 
"It is now almost seventy-three years since a convention of the people of Virginia was assembled in this hall to ratify the Constitution of the United States, one of the chief objects of which was to consolidate--not the government, but the union of the States. Causes which have passed, and are daily passing into history, which will set its seal upon them, but which I do not mean to review, have brought the Constitution and the Union into imminent peril, and Virginia has come to the rescue. It is what the whole country expected of her--her pride, as well as her patriotism, her interest, as well as her honor, call upon her with an emphasis she could not disregard, to save the monuments of her own glory." 

 

I would that time permitted to quote the whole of his splendid oration. The foregoing extract, however, will suffice to show the spirit in which the dominant element of that great convention approached the consideration of the grave problem which confronted them. From the day of its opening session, on the 13th of February, down to the 17th of April, the advocates of secession and of union confronted each other in debate. Foremost among the Union men were John B. Baldwin, Robert Y. Conrad, Jubal A. Early, Alex. H. H. Stuart, George W. Summers, Williams C. Wickham, and the president, John Janney. 

 

RIGHT TO SECEDE.

 

 
Of the 152 members of the convention there were probably few who did not hold to the constitutional right of a State to retire from the Union; but, as I have said, a majority were opposed to the exercise of that right, and clung tenaciously to the hope that the alternative would never be put to Virginia--either to draw her sword to coerce the States of the Southern Confederacy, or withdraw from the Union. 
 

 

This alternative, however, at length came, when on the 15th day April, Mr. Lincoln made his call for 75,000 men with which to invade the Southern Confederacy, and demanded of Virginia her quota. To honor this call was to abandon her principles, join in an unconstitutional invasion of the Southern States, and inaugurate a cruel war upon their people. 

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