Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/56

42 a rendezvous, and hold themselves in readiness for immediate orders; telegraph or send by express to the executive the names of captains, number of men, and description of force. It is further ordered that officers of all grades on the line of the Potomac render obedience to the orders of Gen. Philip St. George Cocke, who has been assigned to the command of that section of the military operations of the State bounded by said river.

Given under my hand as governor, and under the seal of the commonwealth at Richmond, 21st April, 1861, and in the eighty-fifth year of the commonwealth.

By the Governor:, Secretary of the Commonwealth.

On April 24th the convention appointed commissioners to meet Vice-President A. H. Stephens, the commissioner of the Confederate States, to formulate an agreement for provisional co-operation in the pending conflict between the Confederate States and the United States, and on the 25th it ratified the agreement of these commissioners and conditionally adopted the provisional Constitution of the Confederate States. On the 1st of May the convention adopted an ordinance releasing all officials and citizens of the State from any obligation to support the Constitution of the United States, and absolving them from all obligations arising from oaths to support that Constitution. On the same day Governor Letcher called out the volunteer forces of the State to resist invasion, and on the 3d issued a call for volunteers. On the 4th Col. George A. Porterfield was assigned to the command of the Virginia troops in northwestern Virginia and directed to establish his headquarters at Grafton, where the two branches of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad diverge, the one to Wheeling and the other to Parkersburg. On the 10th Maj.-Gen. R. E. Lee was assigned to the command of all the Confederate forces serving in Virginia.

On the 23d of May the Virginia ordinance of secession was ratified, by a popular vote, by a majority of about 130,000. On the 24th the Federal army at Washington advanced into Virginia and occupied Arlington heights and Alexandria, and on the 26th the Federal forces under General McClellan advanced into northwestern Virginia and occupied Grafton.