Virginia Vignettes

In their public rhetoric, delegates to Virginia’s secession convention justified their vote to secede in April, 1861 because the Lincoln Administration in Washington with its attempt to re-supply Fort Sumter and its subsequent call-up of troops was subverting constitutional authority and states’ rights and practicing tyranny. In reality, secession was a mechanism to address fears they had regarding the future of slavery. John Brown’s raid, the election of a Republican president committed to restricting slavery in the territories, and acts of resistance by slaves themselves raised questions about its long-term prospects. Slaveholding Virginians came to believe that their property, their social and political status, and their honor could best be preserved in a proslavery Confederacy rather than in a modernizing American nation that appeared to be drawing Virginia into its vortex. As John Randolph said years before, “Slavery is to us a question of life and death.” Non-slaveholders, who benefited from slavery’s system of race control, followed their lead, driven more by a desire to defend the homeland against an invading foe than their support for slavery.

Further Reading

William Link, Roots of Secession. Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia.

This Vignette Provided By

William Shade and Ronald Heinemann, Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: The History of Virginia, 1607-2007