Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 22.djvu/378

 366 Southern Historical Society Papers.

English historian of the time: " Twice the Republicans were asked simply to execute the existing law and sustain in the future that exclusive constitutional right of the States over their internal affairs and that equality in the common Territories which scarcely admitted of rational dispute, and twice the party pronounced against the least that the South could safely or honorably accept."

At length, on April 15, 1861, the newly inaugurated President, transcending the authority vested in him by the Constitution, which he had just sworn to support, issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 men to coerce the States which had withdrawn from the Union.

This call for troops destroyed the last lingering hope of peace. It left no doubt as to the purpose of the party in power. It meant a war of invasion and subjugation. It left the South no choice but between cowardly surrender of rights held sacred and manly resist- ance to the invading foe. Between these alternatives she was not slow to choose. States which had been hesitating on the ground of expediency, and hoping for a peaceable adjustment of issues, wheeled into line with the States which had already seceded.

VIRGINIA'S NOBLE STAND.

Virginia mother of States and Statesmen and warriors who had given away an empire for the public good, whose pen had written the Declaration of Independence, whose sword had flashed in front of the American army. in the war for independence, and whose wisdom and patriotism had been chiefly instrumental in giving the country the Constitution of the Union Virginia, foreseeing that her bosom would become the theatre of war with its attendant horrors, nobly chose to suffer rather than become an accomplice in the pro- posed outrage upon constitutional liberty. With a generosity and magnanimity of soul rarely equalled and never surpassed in the history of nations, she placed herself in the path of the invader, practically saying: Before you can touch the rights of my Southern sisters you must cut your way to them through my heart.

From the Potomac to the Gulf, from the Atlantic to the Rio Grande, the sons of the South sprang to arms. From stately mansions and from humble cottages, from the workshop and from the farm, from the storeroom and from the study, from every neigh- borhood, and from every vocation of life, with unanimity almost unparalleled, they rallied for the defence of the land they loved, and