Virginia Secession Convention of 1861

If not constitutionally yet, then as a matter of fairness and in defense of their slave-based civilization when faced with a Republican (Whig) presidency with Abolitionist political allies.Fulton Anderson, a commissioner from Mississippi, warned that the Republican Party, now in control of the United States government, intended "the ultimate extinction of slavery and the degradation of the Southern people."In the second week of the convention debate on February 28, Jeremiah Morton of the Piedmont's Orange County made an early speech for secession.In his inaugural speech, Lincoln supported the Corwin Amendment to constitutionally guarantee Congress would not interfere with slavery in the states where it currently existed.[3] John S. Carlile of transmontane Alleghany County, like Willey, an Unconditional Unionist, stressed that western Virginians were committed to slavery as "essential to American liberty."[4] Thomas Jefferson's grandson, George Wythe Randolph, now a Richmond lawyer, made a secessionist speech, observing that although the Republicans had captured the United States Government "in strict accordance with Constitutional forms", it was merely sectional."[5] Throughout March 21–23, John Brown Baldwin of the Valley's Augusta County made a Unionist speech, beginning with a defense that "African slavery, as it exists in Virginia, is a right and a good thing".The three branches of government, with their Constitutional checks and balances, protect against "encroachment upon the liberties of the minority of the people or upon the rights of the States."And even with the withdrawal of Southern delegations, the remaining Republican majority passed a Constitutional Amendment for ratification prohibiting the Federal Government to interfere with slavery in the states in any respect.Unionists sought to delay any military action on secession that would violate Virginia's neutrality until the people's referendum approved it, as mandated in the Assembly's call to the convention.[10] The next day, former Governor Henry Wise announced that he had set the "wheels of revolution" against the U.S. Government in motion with loyal Virginians seizing both the Harper's Ferry federal armory and the Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk.Wise, who had participated as the second in a fatal duel in 1838 in which a U.S. Representative from Maine was killed, drew his horse pistol at the podium and waved it in the air as his speech progressed.Wise intended to persuade the recalcitrant small enslavers from the Piedmont and Valley who had previously voted to remain in the Union with his words and deeds.Most of the Convention's Conditional Unionists then joined the secessionist camp, and the resolution for Virginia to secede passed 88–55, with nine delegates not voting after the Henry Wise remonstrance.[16] Unionist George W. Summers, who had represented Kanawha County several times in the Virginia General Assembly as well as the 27th and 28 Congresses before becoming a judge, also resigned and was succeeded by Andrew Parks.