266 VIEWS OF MEMBERS OF CONVENTION Thomas Branch, speaking the day after President Lincoln's inaugural address, said: "My heart has been saddened and every patriotic heart should be saddened, and every Christian voice raised to heaven in this time of our trial. After the reception of Mr. Lincoln's inaugural, I saw some gentlemen rejoicing in the hotels. Rejoicing for what, sir? For plunging ourselves and our families, our wives and children in civil war? I pray that I may never rejoice at such a state of things. I pray that I may never have to march to battle to front my enemies. But I came here to defend the rights of Virginia and I mean to do it at all hazards; and if we must go to meet our enemies, I wish to go with the same deliberation, with the same solemnity that I would bend the knee in prayer before Almighty God." Jubal A. Early, speaking on the same day, said: "I do not approve of the inaugural of Mr. Lincoln and I did not expect to be able to endorse his policy and I did not think there was a member of this Convention who expected to endorse it; but, sir, I ask the gentleman from Halifax and the gentleman from Prince Edward, if it were not for the fact that six or seven states of this Confederacy have seceded from this Union, if the declarations of President Lincoln that he would execute the laws in all the states would not have been hailed throughout the country as a guarantee that he would perform his duty, and that we should have peace and protection for our property and that the Fugitive Slave Law would be faithfully executed? I ask why is it that we are placed in this perilous condition? And if it is not solely from the action of these states that have seceded from the Union without having consulted our views?" George W. Brent, speaking on the 8th of March, said: 'See Richmond Enquirer, March 7th, 1861. VIEWS OF A UNION LEADER 267 "Abolitionism in the North, trained in the school of Garrison and Phillips, and affecting to regard the constitution as 'a league with Hell and a covenant with Death,' has with a steady and untiring hate sought a disruption of this Union, as the best and surest means for the accomplishment of the abolition of slavery in the Southern States. . . . South Carolina and those leading statesmen of the South who have been educated in the philosophy of free trade have likewise with unwearied and constant assiduity pursued their schemes of disunion. Conscious of their inability to effect their schemes within the Union they have sought a disruption of the states. . . "In these two schools of political philosophy, Mr. President, I trace all the evils and disastrous troubles which now afflict and disturb our beloved and unhappy land. . . . Recognizing as I have always done, the right of a state to secede, to judge of the violation of its rights and to appeal to its own mode for redress, I could not uphold the Federal Government in any attempt to coerce the seceded states to bring them back in the Union." The foregoing extracts give some fairly accurate idea of the position of those members of the Convention, who, though looked upon as Union men, yet, when the final test came after President Lincoln called for troops, voted for secession. How close in sympathy with this element were many of the Union men will appear from the following extract from a speech of George W. Summers, who upon the final ballot still voted against secession: "Where would be the wisdom of passing an ordinance of secession in the face of the known sentiment of a Virginia constituency? The people do not mean to adopt such an ordinance until every available measure of adjustment has been exhausted. Come on then with your plans; and when all fail, the people of the commonwealth will be 1See Richmond Enquirer, March 9th, 1861. 268 VIEWS OF A UNION LEADER united from one end to the other. . . . No enlightened statesmanship can compare the secession of states by conventional authority with insurrectionary movements in former times. It is a new and unlooked for condition of things. I am in favor of letting the seceded states alone. The last news gives encouragement to the hope that the troops will soon be withdrawn from Fort Sumter, and time will bring back the states into the common family. It is the duty of Virginia to stand by the Union until the performance of that duty becomes impossible." 'Richmond Dispatch, March 13th, 1861. THE CONTEST IN THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION FOR AND AGAINST SECESSION FOR nearly a month and a half after President Lincoln's inauguration, the struggle in the Virginia Convention between the advocates and opponents of secession continued a contest in which the champions of opposing sides living beyond the state sought to make their influence effective. Mr. Rhodes says: "It is easy to understand why both Davis and Lincoln were so anxious for the adhesion of Virginia. Her worth was measured by the quality as well as the number of her men."1 Henry Wilson records in his Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America: "There was no state concerning whose course there was greater doubt or more anxious solicitude than Virginia. Her size, position, traditional influence and past leadership, with the knowledge that in whichever side of the scale her great weight should be thrown, the fortunes of the threatened conflict would be seriously affected thereby, intensified the anxiety felt." Commissioners from Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana appeared before the Convention on different occasions, and with impassioned eloquence, appealed to Virginia to stand with her sisters of the South. 'History of United States, Rhodes, Vol. III, p. 462. "The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Wilson, Vol. III, p. 138. 270 COERCION THE PIVOTAL FACT Mr. Lincoln's efforts were directed through prominent Union members of the Convention. His great object was to secure an adjournment sine die of that body, without the adoption of an ordinance of secession, and without the assurance on his part that no attempt would be made to coerce the Cotton States. John B. Baldwin, a leading Union man in the Convention, was one of its members brought into conference with Mr. Lincoln. On the 6th of April, 1861, Mr. Baldwin went to the White House, where, in response to the President's inquiries, he presented the attitude of the dominant element of the Virginia Convention, and heard the President's appeals and reasonings why that body should immediately adjourn. Mr. Baldwin urged upon Mr. Lincoln the wisdom and necessity of proclaiming to the world that the Federal Government had no intention of coercing the Cotton States: "Only give this assurance," said Mr. Baldwin, "to the country in a proclamation of five lines, and we pledge ourselves that Virginia will stand by you as though you were our own Washington.' How pivotal was the position of the Federal Government with reference to coercion as determining Virginia's action may be gathered not only from the speeches of the members of her Convention, but from other utterances made at the time by her leading men. Matthew F. Maury, under date of March 4th, 1861, wrote: "Virginia is not at all ready to go out of this Union; and she is not going out for anything that is likely to occur, short of coercion-such is my opinion." 'Colonel Baldwin's Interview with Mr. Lincoln, Dabney. Southern Historical Papers, Vol. 1, p. 449. 'Life of Matthew F. Maury, Corbin, p. 186. |