Part 12
While the United States government had numerous national problems with which to cope during this period, Virginia had several governmental problems. In 1850-1851, a second state constitutional convention was held. The age-old feud concerning representation, voting qualifications and election of the Governor continued until, finally, a compromise was reached. Main provisions of the compromise were: (1) every white male citizen, except the insane, minors, paupers and criminals, was to be allowed to vote from that time forward, (2) the Governor was to be elected directly by the voters themselves rather than by the General Assembly and his term was to be extended from three to four years, (3) the Council of State was to be abolished, (4) membership in the House of Delegates was to be selected upon the basis of population, thereby giving the western counties a majority number; membership in the Senate was to be based upon population and property, thereby giving the eastern counties a majority, and (5) the voters were to be allowed to vote for judges, county officials and members of the Board of Public Works. In addition, the General Assembly was to meet every other year instead of annually. The 1851 State Constitution was ratified by the voters by an overwhelming majority at the next election. The western counties of Virginia had finally been recognized as an important area whose ideas and opinions were to be considered seriously. Although the economic and social life of the inhabitants of the western part of Virginia were different from those of the inhabitants of the eastern part of Virginia, this Constitution which granted the western counties most of their desired reforms fostered better unity within the state.
In 1855, a dreadful epidemic of yellow fever spread throughout Norfolk and approximately one tenth of its total population succumbed. A Negro gravedigger, nicknamed "Yellow Fever Jack," was considered the hero of this situation because he painstakingly kept burying the dead until he too died from the fever. A monument has been erected in his honor in the Norfolk Cemetery.
In 1857 James Ethan Allen Gibbs, a native of Rockbridge County, secured a patent to make a "twisted loop rotary hook sewing machine," an invention which he had created as a result of watching his mother sew by hand. He was unaware at the time of Elias Howe's sewing machine invention of 1846. After a few years, James A. Willcox added some improvements to Gibbs' sewing machine, and their combined efforts resulted in the Willcox and Gibbs Sewing Machine.
On October 16, 1859, John Brown, a freesoiler and an ardent white abolitionist of Kansas and Ohio, led his five sons, eight northern white men and a group of five Negroes on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now located in West Virginia). Rifles were made and stored here. John Brown had decided to show these slaves how to revolt against their masters. Therefore, he equipped them with arms, ammunition and with steel-tipped pikes which he had brought with him from Kansas. After they had seized the arsenal, he urged them to start an insurrection. They captured many of the gentlemen slaveholders of this area, and then John Brown suggested that they use their pikes to "strike for freedom!" The Negroes of this area and those of the south in general did not respond to his encouragement. His band killed five people including the mayor of Harper's Ferry and a free Negro porter of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. On October 18, Colonel Robert E. Lee of the United States Army, who was a native Virginian, was placed in charge of the situation. James Ewell Brown Stuart (later, commonly known as "J. E. B." Stuart) was appointed aide-de-camp to Lee. Stuart was assigned the task of presenting the summons to John Brown to surrender after one hundred United States Marines had surrounded the arsenal and had captured the raiders. Stuart successfully performed his task and was admired by many Americans for his staunch courage in this action because John Brown was such an unpredictable individual. Lee then sent John Brown to Charlestown, Virginia (now located in West Virginia) where he was tried by a Virginia Circuit Court for treason and for murder because of the capture of guns and supplies belonging to the government, was found guilty and was hanged on December 2, 1859. Ten of his followers were also killed. This incident caused hostile feelings between the sections to increase and made the Virginians very angry upon finding out the extent to which some individuals would conspire to incite Negro hatred for their masters.
By 1860, the population of Virginia had reached over one and a half million including 490,865 slaves and 58,042 free Negroes. From 1851 to 1861, four counties were added: Craig (formed from Botetourt, Giles, Monroe and Roanoke Counties and named for Robert Craig, a Virginia Congressman), Wise (formed from Lee, Scott and Russell Counties and named for Henry Alexander Wise, Governor of Virginia, 1856-1860), Buchanan (formed from Tazewell and Russell Counties and named in honor of President James Buchanan) and Bland (formed from Giles, Wythe and Tazewell Counties and named for Richard Bland, a Virginia statesman during the Revolutionary War Period).
S U M M A R Y
After Virginia had furnished many leaders for the First Continental Congress, another special Virginia convention was held in Richmond where a resolution for military preparedness was passed and delegates were elected to the Second Continental Congress. Three additional special conventions were later held in the Virginia colony alone which resulted in the abdication of the last colonial Governor of the colony, the declaration of Virginia as a free and independent State, the writing of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the adoption of an official State seal and motto, the creation and adoption of a State Constitution establishing the Commonwealth of Virginia, the adoption of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and the eventual ratification of the United States Constitution. In the political field, the names of Patrick Henry, Peyton Randolph, George Washington, George Mason, George Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, James Madison, Edmund Randolph, Archibald Cary, Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe suggest numerous contributions made by Virginians during the period, 1775-1860.
Virginians also had major roles in the military history of our country during this same period: George Washington, John Mühlenberg, Henry Lee, Jack Jouett, Andrew Lewis, Daniel Morgan, John Paul Jones, Samuel Houston, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Winfield Scott and Robert E. Lee. In the meantime, the capital had been moved from Williamsburg to Richmond, Virginia had ceded its Northwest Territory to the new national government and Yorktown had become internationally famous as the area where the British had surrendered to the Americans. It is a unique historical fact that the site where the British armies were forced to surrender in 1781 was located only a few miles from the site where the first permanent English settlement in America was established.
The Presidency of George Washington started the so-called "Virginia Dynasty" of Presidents. By 1861, the Commonwealth had furnished the United States with seven Virginia-born Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler and Zachary Taylor. For this achievement, Virginia has earned the title of "Mother of Presidents."
During the period of 1775 to 1860, many significant activities of Virginians took place at both the state and federal levels of government: the "Leopard-Chesapeake" Affair, Jeffersonian Democracy, John Marshall's role as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, the consent of Virginia allowing Kentucky County to become an independent state in the Union, the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Northwest, the role of Norfolk, Hampton and Falls Church during the War of 1812, the Monroe Doctrine, the efforts of Henry Clay ("The Great Compromiser"), the historical connotation of the capital city, Monrovia, in Liberia, the creation of a non-sectarian state university and of the first state military school in the country, the attitude of Virginians toward the sectional issues of tariff, secession and slavery, the inventions of the McCormick Virginia Reaper and the Willcox-Gibbs Sewing Machine and the active
## participation of Virginians in the Texan Revolt and the Mexican
War. John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry increased sectionalism and intensified the slavery problem. By 1860, the population of Virginia had reached over one and one-half million people, including approximately 500,000 slaves.
4
Historical Life: 1860-Present
_The War Between the States_
In November 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. He represented the Republican Party which strongly opposed slavery, and he had made numerous speeches stating his personal opposition to it. Although Lincoln had declared that he had no desire to interfere with slavery in the states where it already existed, he also had made the following statement: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved: I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." Thus, on December 20, it was not a complete surprise that a special convention held at Charleston, South Carolina, resulted in the secession of South Carolina, a strong pro-slavery state, from the Union. By February 1861, six other southern states had acted likewise. The Confederate States of America was organized at Montgomery, Alabama, with Jefferson Davis as its President.
Until this time, Virginia had not declared herself. Like her neighboring states, she had to make the momentous decision. The Governor of Virginia at this time was John Letcher, later known as the "War Governor" of Virginia. The people of Virginia did not enthusiastically favor secession, that is, they did not have an ardent desire to leave the Union as South Carolina had had. Neither did Virginia believe in the national policy of coercion of a state to return to the Union. In an attempt to bring the seceded states back into the Union and to try to find some solution to the slavery problem, the Virginia legislature invited delegates from all the states to attend a national "Peace Conference" at Washington on February 4. Virginia appointed John Tyler (ex-President), Judge John Robertson, James A. Seddon, William C. Rives and George W. Summers to attend this conference. There was so much sectionalism bitter with political and economic rivalries at the conference that it was unsuccessful.
On February 13, 1861, a special state convention was held in Richmond to discuss the possibility of secession. When the counties elected the 152 delegates to this special state convention, their choice resulted in several pro-Union, anti-secession residents of the state. John Janney was the presiding officer of the convention. It was evident that the majority of the delegates hesitated to leave the Union because they had very strong ties with the Federal government. Virginia had played an important role in creating the Union and had furnished one-third of all the Presidents, numerous cabinet members, a Supreme Court Chief Justice who held this position for thirty-four years (John Marshall), and other less important Federal officials. The convention delegates sent a committee consisting of William B. Preston, George W. Randolph and Alexander H. H. Stuart to President Lincoln to plead for a peaceful solution to the slavery and secession problems.
On March 10, 1861, the Committee on Federal Relations at the Richmond convention submitted reports consisting of fourteen resolutions to the convention. These resolutions expressed the doctrine of states' rights, criticized slavery interference, advocated the right of secession and resolved that Virginia would be justified in seceding only if the Federal government usurped state powers or if it attempted to force the payment of tax duties from the seceded states or if it recaptured certain Southern forts. The first twelve resolutions had been adopted at the time of the unofficial firing on Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina on April 12th and the forced surrender of the Federal garrison. The Federal government had sent arms, troops and provisions to the aid of Colonel Robert Anderson at Fort Sumter. The Confederate government had considered the action a hostile act and had acted accordingly. The actual signal for the attack was given by Roger Pryor, a strong secessionist from Virginia; furthermore, the actual shot was fired by another Virginia secessionist, Edmund Ruffin. The ultimate surrender of Fort Sumter to the Confederates resulted in an immediate call from President Lincoln for volunteers to save the Union.
Even as late as April 4, the Richmond convention had rejected secession by a vote of two to one. Some of the minority were strong in their wishes to secede immediately and to join the Confederacy, and they used the issues of self-government, states' rights and slavery as their points of variance with the national government. Furthermore, these advocates believed that an alliance with the Confederacy would at least remove them from the direct influence of high protective tariffs since a clause prohibiting protective tariffs had been included in the Constitution of the Confederacy. Two days after the firing on Fort Sumter, April 15, President Lincoln called on all the states in the Union to send volunteers, numbering 75,000 total, to invade the seceding states and to coerce them back into the Union.
Two days later, April 17, 1861, the Virginia Convention passed an ordinance of secession by a vote of 88 to 55. Many pre-Union Virginians at this convention preferred to choose secession rather than to send troops to fight against their southern neighbor states. In the previous election, the Virginia people voted overwhelmingly to have the convention submit its results for their voting approval or disapproval via referendum. On May 4, a large majority of the Virginia citizens voted their approval of secession. Nevertheless, although eastern Virginia voted almost solidly for secession, western Virginia voted almost as solidly against secession. Governor John Letcher of Virginia sent the following reply to the United States Secretary of War, Simon Cameron: "In reply to this communication I have only to say that the militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use of purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern States, and a requisition made upon me for such an object--an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution, or the Act of 1795--will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has exhibited towards the South."
On April 25, the same convention members passed an act which provided for the adoption of the Constitution of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America, and Virginia became the eighth state of the Confederate States of America. Although Montgomery, Alabama, had been the capital of the Confederacy, one month after Virginia joined, Virginia invited the Confederacy to make Richmond its capital. The offer was accepted on May 21. Virginia thus became the focus of major battles of the War between the States during the four-year period: 1861-1865.
Colonel Robert E. Lee was a United States Army officer at this time and had one of the most difficult decisions to make. He was recognized as a man of great military ability, and the high regard which the Federal government had for him was expressed in the tremendously responsible position offered to him by President Lincoln. Lincoln was familiar with his great military strategy which had been followed in the Mexican War, his efficient administration as Superintendent of West Point, his excellent cavalry supervision on the frontier and his carefully planned capture of John Brown and his raiders at Harper's Ferry. Consequently, on April 18, President Lincoln had offered him the command of the Union forces. Lee realized the wonderful honor for which he had been selected and was deeply appreciative. However, he was a Virginian, and, after his state had seceded from the Union, he believed that there was no choice in the matter. His love of country was great, but the love of his state and his fellowmen was greater. Therefore, he sadly declined Lincoln's offer and stated that "though opposed, to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States." Thus, as soon as Virginia seceded from the Union, he resigned his United States Army Commission on April 20 with the words: "Sir: I have the honor to tender the resignation of my commission as Colonel of the first regiment of cavalry. Very respectfully, your obedient servant--Robert E. Lee."
Lee then went to Richmond at the invitation of the convention and was made Major-General and Commander-in-Chief of the Virginia forces on April 23. It should be noted here that Virginia did not have an aggressive, warlike attitude toward the Union. Governor John Letcher is quoted as speaking to Robert E. Lee in the convention itself in the following manner: "Yesterday, your mother, Virginia, placed her sword in your hand upon the implied condition that we know you will keep to the letter and in spirit, that you will draw it only in her defense, and that you will fall with it in your hand rather than that the object for which it was placed there shall fail."
For the first three and a half years of the War between the States, the military actions took place simultaneously in two different areas: a small area in northern and northeastern Virginia and a western area in the region bounded by the Mississippi River, the Cumberland River, and the Appalachian Mountains. For most of the war, the Confederate forces were on the defensive side. With General Robert E. Lee as Commander-in-Chief, the Confederates had unity of command whereas the Union forces actually had five successive generals before appointing Ulysses S. Grant as the supreme commander. Many of the best military minds were fighting on the Confederate side, and it is believed by several historians that only their great strategic ability and planning against larger military forces with better equipment and clothing kept the war from being concluded at a much earlier date.
The major objective of the Federal government became a clearcut one, namely, to capture Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. Thus, a chief aim of the military forces in Virginia was the protection and defense of Richmond at all times. Virginia lost Accomack and Northampton Counties on the Eastern Shore at the beginning of the war and was unable to obtain control of Union Fort Monroe.
On May 24, 1861 the Fire Zouaves, a unit of the United States Army, marched from Washington to Alexandria, the first point of invasion in Virginia in the War between the States. They took possession of Alexandria in the name of the United States and found no organized opposition because there were no Southern troops here. Virginia had not been ready for war and had made no preparations for war. The only standing army in the state at the time of her secession was a group of soldiers whose duty had been to guard public property in Richmond. Several volunteer companies had organized in various parts of the state for the first time after John Brown's Raid. One of the first immediate tasks to be done was the training of soldiers in Virginia and the acquiring of cannon and fire-arms. Consequently, it was not unusual for Alexandria not to have had an organized force by May 24, awaiting Federal invasion. As these Fire Zouaves entered Alexandria, they noticed a Confederate flag flying from the top of a small hotel called the Marshall House. Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the Federal commander, decided to obtain this flag. He entered the hotel, ran up the stairs to the roof and grabbed it. He had started to descend the stairs with his trophy when, at the first landing, he met the hotel owner, James W. Jackson, who had been curious to know who had been rushing up the stairs and invading his hotel. When he saw the Confederate flag in the hands of the Federal officer, he shot him in the breast. Ellsworth died instantly and Jackson was immediately killed by bullets and bayonets used by Ellsworth's troops. This was the first blood shed in Virginia in the War between the States.
A skirmish took place at Fairfax Court House on June 1, 1861, which caused the death of Captain John Quincy Marr of the Warrenton Rifles. His death is considered the first Confederate battle death.
In the same month, the first land battle of the War between the States took place around and near the town of Philippi located in western Virginia (today, in West Virginia). On June 3, Union troops led by Colonel B. F. Kelly clashed with Confederate troops led by Colonel George A. Portfield. This fighting was not only a victory for the Union forces, but the retreat of the Confederates from the surprise Union attack on a dark, rainy night was exceedingly rapid. The Confederates fled more than thirty miles in one day to a town called Beverly, thereupon earning for their action the title, the "Philippi Races."
On July 21, along a creek called Bull Run, near Manassas, approximately twenty-five miles from Washington, some Union forces under the leadership of General Irvin McDowell met Confederate forces under the leadership of General Pierre G. T. Beauregard. Manassas was the site of a key railroad junction, an important line of supply and communication. Although the Union forces were at first successful, the firm stand taken by the Confederate forces on Matthews Hill and on Henry Hill led by General Thomas Jonathan Jackson and a counter-attack led by Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston's forces resulted in chaos in the Union army and a panicky retreat to Washington. This was a most unexpected defeat for the Union forces. "J. E. B." Stuart served under Joseph Johnston at this time and led a successful mounted charge against the Federal infantry. He also helped create disorder and panic in their lines. This first Battle of Bull Run or Battle of Manassas was the occasion for T. J. Jackson's famous nickname: "Stonewall." General Bernard E. Bee, a South Carolinian, headed some troops which had become panicky, and, as he saw T. J. Jackson's brigade in correct line formation, he is said to have made the following comment to his group: "Look! There is Jackson and his brigade standing like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians." From that time on, T. J. Jackson was called "Stonewall" Jackson. As the Union forces neared Manassas, Captain Alexander, a Confederate officer, spotted their coming from his lookout station. He relayed their approach by wigwagging signals with flags. This action is believed to be the origin of semaphoring. This battle caused the North to realize that the conquering of the South was not the easy task that it had predicted or had assumed. Their military slogan "On to Richmond" became a military challenge rather than an accepted conclusion.