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C h a p t e r 2 Virginia’s Extremity, Western Virginia’s Opportunity After the Virginia Convention of 1850–51, western Virginians stood constitutionally dissatisfied as they watched the national events involving slavery and sectionalism enflame the eastern portion of their commonwealth. In mid-decade, some of them, especially in the Northern Panhandle, began to be attracted by the free labor ideology of the Republican Party. Meanwhile, intrastate issues festered as westerners had to wait at least until 1865 for the possibility of securing a fair apportionment of both legislative houses. Also, the inequality of taxation with slave property either exempted or limited in assessment continually bothered nonslaveholders whose property interest in livestock, land, or manufacturing and trade was fully taxed.1 As the 1850s passed, many Virginia slave owners increasingly saw their political destiny tied to those who defended the institution against all critics who held views contrary to their interest. More Virginians outside the Trans-Allegheny became wedded to states’ rights advocates who opposed national interference with their peculiar institution in their own state and in the South. The rise of the Republican Party not only altered national politics but greatly affected Virginia’s internal politics more than Republican number might indicate and more than any contemporary imagined. Many Virginians came to regard the Republican Party as a threat to their domestic institutions, security of property, and political well-being.2 The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the subsequent secession of seven Southern states raised grave national constitutional issues about the ability of the United States to prevent secession and defend itself against domestic enemies. Certain Virginia politicians, a minority in the beginning, believed that these national events had, as a matter of fact, terminated the federal Union. The group, of course, favored immediate secession. The majority did not believe that Lincoln’s election was a sufficient reason to secede, but they thought coercion by the national government to preserve itself was. In the end, the idea that denied the constitutionality of national coercion resulted in the inevitable endorsement of 37 38 West Virginia’s Civil War–Era Constitution secession as the United States became compelled to use force to preserve the Union. Anticoercionists thought that the United States was constitutionally defenseless to preserve itself. The anticoercionist belief, thought at the time and by some later historians to be moderate, was simply delayed extremism, only differing from the secessionist view in the matter of timing. The questions of secession and coercion were constitutional ones that precipitated a conflict. Rational argument in a recognized national court was not destined to settle the issues, but the resort to the battlefield would. Virginia’s response to national events was a constitutional one, marred by unconstitutional procedures. Historians and others often do not fully comprehend that the Virginia Convention of 1861 was to undertake a constitutional exercise of amendment and revision. After adoption of the secession ordinance, the Virginia Convention continued to attempt constitutional revision. The process of secession, at least from the viewpoint of advocates, was a constitutional act. Spurred by reactionaries who thought the Constitution of 1850–51 was too democratic, the convention proposed retrograde constitutional change that failed in an incomplete statewide referendum in March 1862 when U.S. troops confronted Richmond. Though the idea of secession was abhorrent and unconstitutional to many from the northwest, some western Virginia delegates, perhaps foolishly, flirted with the notion that in the Convention of 1861 they could secure western Virginia’s constitutional due. Also, some Virginia secessionists harbored the idea that they could commit westerners to their greater cause by dangling the possibility of constitutional reform before them. Those who were on the political offensive to secure the goal of secession enjoyed significant advantages over compromisers and opponents who divided in opposition . After Lincoln’s election and the secession of some states, Governor John Letcher, in opposition to many northwestern Virginians who elected him, called an extra session of the Virginia General Assembly to meet on 7 January 1861 to honor a prior commitment to a canal official and to respond to ninety-four legislative petitioners. Governor Letcher’s apologists often fail to emphasize that although he appeared to regret calling the special session, he blamed Northerners for dissolving the Union and forwarded possible acts the United States might undertake for preserving it. Of course, secessionists, ignoring the governor’s economic objectives, prepared their plans for alliance with seceded states, for military preparations, and for denial of U...

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