CONCLUSION THE crisis arose and thus was precipitated Virginia's secession. To many of her people it came as a long hoped for event. They rejoiced that Virginia was now to enter upon a more inspiring career untrammelled by associates divergent in sentiments and hostile in interests. They hailed the rise of the Southern Confederacy as a new nation born into the world, and with eager hearts looked forward to a future which should bring to the people of Virginia and the South a measure of self-government, peace and prosperity they had never known before. To the majority, however, of the Virginia people the event came as one long dreaded and much to be deplored. They met it with a firm adherence to the principles so often declared, but with profound regret that the occasion had arisen which rendered their assertion imperative. The pathos no less than the determination which marked the hour may be read in the contemporary utterances of her foremost men. Her Governor, John Letcher, in his message to the General Assembly, January 1861, said: "Surely no people have been blessed as we have been, and it is melancholy to think that all is now about to be sacrificed on the Altar of Passion. If the judgments of men were consulted, if the admonitions of their consciences were respected, the Union would yet be saved from overthrow." 302 VIRGINIANS DEPLORE DISUNION Three months later, however, in response to the call for Virginia's quota of troops, he wrote to the authorities at Washington: "You have chosen to inaugurate civil war; and, having done so, we will meet you in a spirit as determined as the Administration has exhibited toward the South." Robert E. Lee, anticipating the event, in January, 1861, 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 defense, will draw my sword on none." Three months later, in accepting the command of Virginia's army of defense, he said: "Trusting in Almighty God, an approving conscience and the aid of my fellowcitizens, I devote myself to the service of my native state." Equally significant were the sentiments of the wife of this great Virginian. Writing to General Winfield Scott, May 5th, 1861, Mary Custis Lee said: "No honors can reconcile us to this fratricidal war which we would have laid down our lives freely to avert . . . Oh! that you could command peace to our distracted country. Yours in sorrow and sadness." 772 John Janney, on accepting the Presidency of the Virginia Convention, February 13th, 1861, said: "Gentlemen, there is a flag which now floats over this Capitol on which there is a star representing this ancient commonwealth and my earnest prayer, in which I know every member of this body will cordially unite, is 'Memoirs of Robert E. Lee, Long, p. 88. 'See letter from Mrs. R. E. Lee to General Winfield Scott, in Life of Robert E. Lee, Fitzhugh Lee, p. 93. RACIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGINIANS 303 that it may remain there forever, provided always that its lustre is untarnished." On the 23d of April, 1861, in notifying Robert E. Lee of his appointment as chief in command of Virginia's militia, he said: 'Virginia having taken her position, as far as the power of this Convention extends, we stand, animated by one impulse, governed by one desire and one determination— and that is, that she shall be defended; and that no spot of her soil shall be polluted by the foot of an invader." Matthew F. Maury writing on the 11th of May, 1861, said: "I grant them (certain of his Northern friends) sincere, but I cannot but lament in the depths of my heart and in excruciating agony that their delusion is such as to have already allowed the establishment of a military despotism." Again he wrote: "All of us are of one mind, very cool, very determined, no desire for a conflict. We are on the defensive." John B. Baldwin, when asked after President Lincoln's proclamation what would be the position of the Union men in Virginia, wrote: "We have no Union men in Virginia now. But those who were Union men will stand to their guns, and make a fight that will shine out on the page of history as an example of what a brave people can do after exhausting every means of pacification.' 773 In addition to all the considerations set forth in the foregoing pages, the student of history must, if he would fully appreciate the forces which controlled their action with respect to secession and the Civil War, take into 'Journal of Virginia Convention, 1861, pp. 9 and 187. 304 VIRGINIA'S STAND PREDETERMINED account the racial characteristics of the Virginia people. A full portrayal of these characteristics, strongly marked and persisting from generation to generation, must be the work of some other pen. Suffice it here to say that as a people they exalted honor and courage-both in the individual and in the clan; they exhibited the strength of the idealist, combined, on the part of many, with the limitations of the doctrinaire; they decided questions by the standards of abstract right rather than in their relation to the duties and interests of other peoples and other times; they were self-reliant, content to justify the integrity of their conduct to their own consciences rather than to the world; they were tenacious of their rights and regarded a threatened invasion as not only justifying but compelling resistance if the ideals and conditions which make men patriots and freemen were to find an abiding place in their state. "We are not contending," wrote Washington in 1774, against paying the duty of three pence per pound on tea as burdensome, no, it is the right only that we have all along disputed." "It is the principle," wrote Lee in 1861, "I contend for, not individual or private benefit.” Such were some of the predominant characteristics of the people whom President Lincoln's proclamation called to war. In the conflict thus joined between the Federal Government and the Southern Confederacy, the people of Virginia took a stand, predetermined by the beliefs and avowals of successive generations, and impelled by an unswerving idealism found their supreme incentive to action in their determination to maintain the integrity of principle. 'History of the United States, Bancroft, Vol. 4, p. 29. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abridgment of Debates in Congress. Adams, Charles Francis. Lee at Appomattox and Other Papers, 2nd Edition, 1902. Adams, Rev. Nehemiah. A South Side View of Slavery, or Three Months at the South in 1854. African Repository and Colonial Journal. American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings of. New Series, Vol. V. American Colonization Society, Reports of. 1817-1860. 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