The following is the “ordinance to repeal the ratification of the
Constitution of the United States of
America, by the
State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said constitution,” which passed the State Convention on the 17th of April, 1861:
The people of
Virginia, in the ratification of the
Constitution of the United States of
America, adopted by them in convention, on the 25th day o June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said constitution were derived from the people of the
United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the
Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of
Virginia, but to the oppression of the
Southern slaveholding States;
Now, therefore, we, the people of
Virginia, do declare and ordain, that the ordinance adopted by the people of this State in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the
Constitution of the United States of
America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying or adopting amendments to said constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the
Union between the
State of Virginia and the other States under the constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved, and that the
State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.
And they do further declare that said
Constitution of the United States of
America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.
This ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day, when ratified by a majority of the votes of the people of this State, cast at a poll to be taken thereon, on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.
Done in convention in the city of
Richmond, on the seventeenth day of April, in the year of our
Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the eighty-fifth year of the
Commonwealth of
Virginia.
A true copy,
The announcement that the Convention of Virginia had passed an Ordinance of Secession, was received with the most universal and profound satisfaction.
There are no longer in
two parties.
The Union men and the Secessionists are arrayed in a solid band of brotherhood under the flag of
.
The only rivalry is which shall do and suffer most in defence of our common honor against the monstrous despotism at
is but the echo of the people's will.
The old Union, for which our fathers fought and bled, has been wilfully sacrificed by a Black Republican despot, and he now seeks to wrench from us our Liberty and Independence.
, which led the van in the war of ‘76, now meets him on the threshold.
She has been slow to act, but she will be slower still to retrace her steps.
The Union has lost its brightest planet, but it will henceforth beam as a star of the first magnitude in the purer, brighter, and grander constellation of the
.
