Rogue State (3 page)

However, those areas contained more than half of Virginia's white population. Westerners resented counting slaves in apportionment at both the state and federal level. But it had essentially nothing to do with regional anti-slavery feeling
per se
.

Rather, people in the western regions possessed few slaves, and had little compassion for the slaves themselves. Leaders in western Virginia typically considered slavery not as an immoral and inhuman institution, but as an obstacle to their political leverage and control of Virginia politics. However, they also saw slavery as a highly effective means of racial control, as did virtually all white Southerners, whether slaveholders or not. Thus, western Virginians simply wanted to reduce the political domination of the eastern slaveholders. They were hardly of an abolitionist persuasion.

In Virginia's 1859 gubernatorial elections, western disenchantment with both political parties was evident in newspaper articles and public discourse. Effectively, politics in the region focused only on Democrats. Just a few voters claimed a Whig affiliation. After 1854, the new Republican Party was barely a factor in the region's politics.
¹¹
Historically, politicians of both the Whig and Democratic parties routinely had seemed to ignore western concerns. It was a traditional response for the east and standard grievance in the west. However, in the 1850's in Virginia, including its western areas, both the Democratic Party and the remaining southern Whigs all pressed pro-slavery arguments.

While the few antislavery Whigs in the western areas of Virginia had begun to gravitate toward the Republican Party after 1854, in the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln received just 2,000 votes from the western panhandle. Their Whig ideas were more economic, harkening back to Henry Clay's American System. And their economy was tied to and based on the area's commercial ties to the Ohio Valley. Western Virginians hardly appeared concerned with restricting slavery in the western territories of the U.S. as much as simply disallowing slavery as a factor in Virginia state politics.

In October, 1859, darker storm clouds appeared on the horizon. John Brown and a handful of followers attacked the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Beginning in Virginia, Brown hoped to attract slaves to his banner, establish a colony for runaway slaves in Virginia, and use it as a base from which to march south along the crest of the Appalachian Mountains. His goals were to free and arm more slaves, overthrow state governments in the slave states, reconstruct them, and eventually impose a new Constitution on the United States. The impact of the raid was momentous.

Brown and his men succeeded in seizing the Harpers Ferry Armory. But news of the raid resulted in townspeople resisting Brown's assault and a summons to U.S. government officials in Washington. [Brown and his men failed to cut all the telegraph lines!]. The federal government responded to the raid by sending Marines under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee to defeat the John Brown insurrection at Harper's Ferry. Brown and his band were forced
Rogue State
15 to withdraw to an engine house at the arsenal, where surviving members were captured. They were subsequently indicted and tried at Charles Town, Virginia.

John Brown's infamous raid brought national attention to the emotional divisions concerning slavery to a crescendo. In Virginia itself, the affair also served as a reminder of the continued east-west rift over the institution of slavery in the state, as well as the broader national issues of slavery, slavery expansion, free soil, and abolition. When John Brown was hung on December 2, 1859, he was mourned as a martyr by many in the North. Southerners, however, including most Virginians, were outraged by his actions. Nationally, John Brown's raid brought emotions over slavery to a fever pitch. It clearly was one of the key events that led to secession in 1860-1861 and the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War in April 1861.

But between John Brown's raid and the secession of the first seven Southern states in late 1860 and early 1861, politics also played a role in the deepening national divide over slavery. John Brown's raid 1859 on Harpers Ferry brought the debate over slavery and its westward expansion to the forefront of the nation's political agenda and debate as never before. The differences were palpable, and the consequences for the nation of the political decisions and actions of 1860 were crucial.

In 1860, the Republican Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery [but did not advocate abolition], nominated a moderate,
Abraham Lincoln
. Lincoln opposed the expansion of slavery but pledged not to interfere with the institution where it existed. To Southerners, however, Lincoln's views were tantamount to barely disguised abolitionism. They didn't believe him or any other Republicans.

By that time, to Southerners, free soil views were tantamount to abolitionism in the eyes of most Southerners. Southerners feared that Lincoln's election would lead to the decline and demise of slavery and the South itself. As a result, Southern fire-eaters vowed to leave the Union if Lincoln was elected, a result that many anticipated from reading the 1856 electoral math and continuing growth of Republican Party strength in the North since then.

The Democratic Party split during its April 1860 national convention. The Southern delegation walked out in protest against the party's failure to endorse a federal slave code for the western territories. Northern Democrats reconvened in Baltimore later that summer. They nominated another moderate,
Stephen A. Douglas
.

Douglas, like Lincoln, also was from Illinois. The Southern faction of the Democratic Party that had bolted the original convention refused to attend the Baltimore conclave. It held its own convention in Richmond and nominated the sitting Democratic Vice President of the U.S., John Breckinridge, for president. The Democratic split virtually guaranteed a Republican victory in the Electoral College in 1860.

A fourth party, the Constitutional Union Party, was another moderate party composed primarily of former Whigs, remnants of the American [Know-Nothing] Party, and other unattached groups. It drew its strength principally from the border states of the South. The Constitutional Union Party was organized just before the election of 1860, principally as a last ditch effort to bridge the gap between North and South.

The Constitutional Union Party had no greater purpose than continuing to paper over the widening crack in the Union caused by slavery. It had no substantive platform other than maintaining national unity through continued compromise [the time for which had definitely ceased for many in the North and especially the South]. The Constitutional Union Party nominated
John Bell
of Tennessee. It had little chance in the national canvas and took no effective position on slavery. Although it did fairly well in Virginia and a few other border states, it never stood a chance to capture the presidency, and nationally both pro and anti-slave advocates saw it as inconsequential. It disappeared thereafter.

Reflecting divisions in the state of Virginia over the issues of slavery and disunion, Bell carried Virginia overall [as well as the border stat es of Tennessee and Kentucky]. Representing hard core status quo, secessionist, renegade Democrats, Breckinridge ironically won most of his Virginia votes in the western areas of the Old Dominion.
¹²
Lincoln won the national election without carrying a single Southern state. The limited support he received in Virginia came almost exclusively in the Northern Panhandle around and north of Wheeling. And it was minor.

It is difficult to understand the apparent anomaly of western Virginians favoring the most ardently pro-Southern and pro-slavery candidate of the four in 1860, or even why some western Virginians would have favored Lincoln over the Southern moderate in the race, John Bell. Be that as it may, almost immediately following Lincoln's election, beginning with South Carolina on December 20, 1860, Southern states began the process of seceding from the Union. Those actions set the stage for civil war and eventual creation of the new state of West Virginia.

Virginia seceded from the Union in May1861. That action set the stage for the eventual creation of West Virginia. The latter would not have occurred without the first action.

On November 15, 1860, Virginia Governor John Letcher called the General Assembly into an extra session scheduled to begin on January 7, 1861.However, although Abraham Lincoln had been elected, he was not yet inaugurated. And South Carolina had not yet seceded when Letcher issued the call. The Palmetto State passed its ordinance of secession on December 20, 1860.

Clearly, despite remaining officially in the Union until May 1861, there were leaders in Virginia who were moving toward secession long before it actually became reality. In response to the governor's request, the Virginia General Assembly in January 1861 subsequently called for a state convention to determine Virginia's course in the crisis.

One hundred fifty-two Virginia convention delegates were elected. They convened in Richmond on February 13, 1861. During the first two months of the convention, moderate sentiment prevailed and the general mood of many of the delegates appeared to be against secession. However, on April 13, 1861, Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate forces. Within days, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteer troops to put down the Southern rebellion. That changed everything among the populace in Virginia and much of the border South.

The events of April 1861 convinced the majority of Virginia's convention delegates to leave the Union. Again indicative of hesitancy for some and continued advocacy of secession of others in the Commonwealth, the convention had remained in session for three months awaiting events. Since it had only one purpose, and in the process did not ever choose to affirm the state's loyalty to the Union, it was more a matter of time before it conceded an eventual commitment to the South and to slavery.

On April 17, 1861, delegates passed an Ordinance of Secession for Virginia by a vote of 88 to 55. Twelve delegate votes either were not counted or were cast as abstaining.
¹³
Led by John Carlile, western delegates withdrew from the convention. They returned to western Virginia and began planning opposition to the ordinance and secession itself. That momentous issue was scheduled for statewide vote by the citizens of the state on May 23, 1861.

Citizens met throughout western Virginia in support of or in opposition to actions taken by their delegates at the Richmond Convention. The majority of westerners opposed the Ordinance of Secession, but that varied from county to county. In response to an unofficial call issued two days prior, on Monday, April 22, 1861, nearly twelve hundred Harrison County citizens gathered at the courthouse in Clarksburg to respond to the Ordinance of Secession. Most of those in attendance criticized actions taken by the Virginia government and convention. John Carlile submitted resolutions calling for delegates from northwestern Virginia to gather at Wheeling on May 13, 1861 for a larger convention.
¹⁴

On May 13, 1861, delegates from twenty-seven western Virginia counties duly assembled at Washington Hall in Wheeling to consider responsive action in response to the Ordinance of Secession.
¹⁵
William B. Zinn
¹⁶
of Preston County was appointed temporary chairman of the convention, and George Latham of Taylor County was selected as temporary secretary. Virginia's April 1861 actions had precipitated consequential counter measures in May in the west.

Debate immediately ensued over which delegates should be allowed to participate in the proceedings. General John Jay Jackson of Wood County favored seating all attendees from the northwestern regions of Virginia. But John Carlile's influence was apparent in most actions by the western counties in 1861. Carlile urged that the convention should be “composed only of gentlemen who come clothed with the authority conferred upon them by the people of their counties when they appointed them.” Adoption of a compromise proposal by Chester D. Hubbard of host Ohio County to create a committee on representation and permanent organization ended the debate.
¹⁷

After resolving that issue, delegates focused on the proper response they should take to the Virginia secession crisis. General Jackson, Waitman Willey, and most other delegates believed that any steps taken prior to the May 23 statewide vote on the Ordinance of Secession would be premature and “altogether unwise.” Others, however, including John Carlile, sought immediate action. “Let us act,” Carlile declared. “Let us repudiate these monstrous usurpations; let us show our loyalty to Virginia and the Union; and let us maintain ourselves in the Union at every hazard. It is useless to cry peace when there is no peace; and I for one will repeat what was said by one of Virginia's noblest sons and greatest statesmen, ‘Give me liberty or give me death!'”
¹⁸

Carlile resolved not to await the May 23, 1861 statewide canvass on Virginia's proposed secession. On May 14, Carlile proposed a resolution for creation of a new state. Proposed names for the new state included New Virginia, Kanawa or Kanawah or Kanawha, and West Virginia, among others.
¹⁹
Opponents of such a move deemed the separate statehood proposal premature and even revolutionary. A majority of delegates supported resolutions offered by the Committee on State and Federal Resolutions. Those resolutions recommended that if the people of Virginia approved the Ordinance of Secession on May 23, 1861, western Virginians then would elect delegates to a Second Wheeling Convention to begin on June 11, 1861.
²⁰

The voters of the Commonwealth approved Virginia's Ordinance of Secession on May 23, 1861. In substance, approval by that date was merely a technicality. The state government of Virginia already had passed an ordinance of secession, proceeded to align itself with the Confederate States of America [still then headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama], and already was preparing for war even prior to the May 23 vote. During the month following passage of the secession ordinance in April by delegates at the Richmond Convention, citizens of western Virginia gathered in their communities to discuss the issue. Some voiced opposition to secession, while others supported Virginia's decision to leave the Union. The May 23, 1861 vote confirmed things and made Virginia's course of action final.