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 74 Southern Historical Society Papers.

rate vote whether the action of that convention should be referred back to the people for ratification, or whether its action should be binding upon the Commonwealth. The result of the popular vote not only overwhelmingly committed the convention to submit its findings to the people for ratification or rejection, but sent to the convention a majority of delegates opposed to the secession of Vir- ginia from the Union.

JANNEY'S WORDS.

The dominant element in the convention elected as its president the venerable John Janney, and the spirit and purpose of the body may be gathered from his address in accepting the position. He said:

"It is now almost seventy-three years since a convention of the people of Virginia was assembled in this hall to ratify the Constitu- tion of the United States, one of the chief objects of which was to consolidate not the government, but the union of the States. Causes which have passed, and are daily passing into history, which will set its seal upon them, but which I do not mean to review, have brought the Constitution and the Union into imminent peril, and Virginia has come to the rescue. It is what the whole country ex- pected of her her pride, as well as her patriotism, her interest, as well as her honor, call upon her with an emphasis she could not disregard, to save the monuments of her own glory."

I would that time permitted to quote the whole of his splen- did oration. The foregoing extract, however, will suffice to show the spirit in which the dominant element of that great convention approached the consideration of the grave problem which confronted them. From the day of its opening session, on the I3th of Feb- ruary, down to the iyth of April, the advocates of secession and of union confronted each other in debate. Foremost among the Union men were John B. Baldwin, Robert Y. Conrad, Jubal A. Early, Alex. H. H. Stuart, George W. Summers, Williams C. Wickham, and the president, John Janney.

RIGHT TO SECEDE.

Of the 152 members of the convention there were probably few who did not hold to the constitutional right of a State to retire from the Union; but, as I have said, a majority were opposed to the exer-