Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/78

 70 Southern Historical Society Papers.

State and the Union, was imperilled, Virginia was foremost in her mediations. Thus in 1832, when South Carolina, by her Ordinance of Nullification, brought on the crisis involving a conflict between the State and Federal powers, it was Virginia who stepped forward as the peace-maker, and as a result of her mediations, the threatened rupture was averted.

Again, in 1860, the alignment of parties demonstrated that the election of either Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Breckinridge to the Presidency would be followed by a rupture, and so Virginia, with her eldest daughter, Kentucky, alone of the States of the Union except Ten- nessee, cast her vote for Bell and Everett, the Union candidates, standing on the platform, "The Constitution of the country; the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws."

But Mr. Lincoln and his associate upon the ticket, Hannibal Ham- lin, were elected, and for the first time in the history of the govern- ment these high offices were to be filled by men from one section of the country, elected by the electoral votes only of States from the , same geographical division, and that too despite the fact that the opposing tickets combined received a majority of over a million of the popular vote.

Following the election of Mr. Lincoln, under the leadership of South Carolina and Cotton States, seven in number, withdrew from the Union and formed a government, and adopted a constitution in February, 1861. While there was a strong party in Virginia which not only believed in the right of secession, but advocated the imme- diate assertion of the right, yet the dominant voice of her people was still for the Union, and in obedience to this sentiment every pos- sible effort was put forth to avert a collision between the Federal power and the seceding States, and to bring the latter back into affiliation with the Union.

THE PEACE CONGRESS.

Her legislature was called in extra session and resolutions imme- diately adopted calling for a meeting of commissioners from the States still in the Union, to assemble at Washington and to devise means to avert the threatened calamity. The resolutions of the legislature recite that: " Whereas it is the deliberate opinion of the General Assembly of Virginia that unless the unhappy controversy which now divides the States of this Confederacy shall be satisfac- torily adjusted, a permanent dissolution of the Union is inevitable,