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Chapter 12: Secession and Reorganized Government
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Secession and Reorganized Government Pditkal Parties in C W . At the end of the 1850s national events far overshadowed the internal affairs of Virginia. Disruptive events such as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the civil strife in Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry became "wedges of separation" between North and South. Until 1850the two great national political parties had been ableto accomodatedivergentsectionalviews,but the disintegrationof the Whig party after the Compromise of 1850 left only the Democratic party with a national character. The Republican party rose out of the ashes of the Whig party. Founded at Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854, it grew with unprecedented rapidity. Its unyielding oppositionto furtherextension of slavery in the territoriesand commitmentto a high protective tariff for American industry made it anathema to the South. In Virginia the only significant number of Republicans was in the Northern Panhandle and trans-Allegheny areas with sizable numbers of northern immigrants . Hoping to use this nucleus to advance their party into other parts of Virginia, nationally known Republicans, including William H. Seward, provided financial support for the Wheeling Intelligencer, which in 1856came under the guidance of Archibald Campbell, one of the builders of the party in West Virginia. The Electionof 1860inVirginia. The presidentialelection of 1860, one of the most critical in the nation's history, was marked by great uncertainty in Virginia. Robert M.T. Hunter and his supporters at the Democratic national convention at Charleston, South Carolina, were forced to endorse William L. Yancey's "Alabama Platform," which demanded full federal protection for slavery,the issue that broke up the convention.They reaffirmed their position in the Constitutional Democratic Convention, a gathering of Southern extremists in Richmond, althoughC.W. Russell of Wheeling, the chairmanof the Virginia delegationto the nationalconvention,and GovernorJohn Letcheropposedtheir stand. When the reassembled nationalconvention at Baltimore refused to seat the old Alabama and Louisiana delegations, Russell led supporters of both Hunter l l 2 West Virgin&: A History and Henry A. Wise out of the hall. Twenty-three of the state's thirty delegates joined 232 from seventeen other states in the "Seceders Convention" and nominated John C. Breckinridgeof Kentucky and Joseph C. Laneof Oregonfor president and vice president, respectively. The national conventionthen nominated StephenA. Douglas and Herschel V. Smith, a Georgia moderate, for the respective offices. In Virginia the real beneficiary of the split in the Democraticparty was the new Constitutional Union party, pledged to support the "Constitution of the Country, the Union of the States and the enforcement of the laws," a broad platform susceptible to various interpretations. Its candidates, John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massachusetts, won the electoral vote of Virginia, but with a plurality of the popular vote and only 1,144 more than Breckinridge. Breckinridge led in popular votes in present West Virginia, receiving 21,961 compared with 21,175 for Bell and 5,112 for Douglas. The Kanawha Valley and southeastern counties, normally Whig, supported Bell, but the usually Democratic northcentral sections gave majorities for Breckinridge. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican victor, received only 1,929votes in Virginia, about 1,200of them in the Northern Panhandle. Douglas won aplurality of votes only in Wayne County, where the northern immigrationto Ceredo was substantial . Most West Virginians who voted for Breckinridge evidently did so in the belief that he stood for both the Union and Southern rights. TheSecessionCrisis. The election of Lincolnled to the secessionof South Carolina on December20, 1860,and six other Cotton Statesby February 1.On November 7, only a few days after the election, ninety-four members of the Virginia legislature petitioned Governor Letcher to call a special session to consider the crisis produced by Lincoln's election. Letcher had already agreed, several weeks previously, to a session to consider the sale of the rights and properties of the James River and Kanawha Company to a French corporation. On November 15he issued the call for a special session, but he scheduled it for January 7, 1861, nearly a month later than the petitioners desired. Letcher recognized the strength of forces for moderation, which often coupled support for the Union with calls for defense of Southern rights. The Richmond Whig advised "a masterly inactivity,"' and the Richmond Examiner urged the state to take the lead in securing concessions from the North before other states seceded, a view shared by many Virginians, even those east of the Blue Ridge. In presentWest Virginiasentimentwas generallyUnionist.At Wheelingon December 14, Congressman Sherrard Clemens branded South Carolina as having...