Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/368

 362 Southern Historical Society Papers.

New England. When the Federal Constitution was adopted Virginia lavored the immediate abolition of the slave-trade, and the time for its abolition was extended twenty years on the demand of Massachusetts and other New England States, and when the slave-trade was abolished Virginia voted for its abolition, while Massachusetts voted for its con- tinuance. After giving with princely liberality, to the General Government for the common domain, the Northwest Territory, out of which the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota were afterwards carved, Virginia consented with surprising readiness to making this /r^-*? territory. And there can be but little doubt that the sentiments of her leading statesmen would have prevailed, and Virginia would have adopted emancipa- tion measures, but for the fact that, after finding that slavery would not pay with them, the Northern States (after selling Xheiv o-wn slaves and pocketing the money) began a system of warfare upon slavery which tended to consolidate and perpetuate the pro slavery sentiment in the State.

3. The real reason of the secession of Virginia was that she con- sidered that Mr. Lincoln's proclamation had " inaugurated civil war," and she had simply to choose whether she would lake sides with the A^orth or with the South in the great conflict.

If you could give me space to go into the details I could abun- dantly show that in all of the bitter controversies of the past the voice of Virginia had been on the side of the Union — that she had been ready to make any sacrifice, save honor, to preserve the Union which her sons had done so much to form and to perpetuate.

After other Southern States had seceded she still voted overwhelm- ingly against secession, called the " Peace Congress " which assembled at Washington, sent her commissioners to Mr. Lincoln after his in- augural, and on bended knee begged for peace and Union But she was equally emphatic in claiming that a State had the right to secede — that she had expressly reserved that right when she entered the origi- nal coinpact — and that the General Government had no right to coerce a State desiring to secede. This she had declared over and over again by the most solemn enactment, and her commissioners made her j)osition clear to the authorities at Washington. Two days, therefore, after Mr. Lincoln's call for her quota of troops to subju- gate the seceded States Virginia passed her ordinance of secession and bared hef breast to receive the coming storm.

Equally untrue to the facts of history is the attempt of Mr. John- son to make it appear that the people of Virginia were not tlien in