previous next


[Communicated]
the Senatorial election.

The time is approaching for the meeting of the Legislature of this State. One or its first duties, it may be assumed, will be the choice of a proper person to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Mr. Wm. Ballard Preston. In him the Commonwealth has lost a public servant of unquestioned patriotism, of great purity in private life, and ripe experience in official duty. We have every confidence in the Legislature about to assemble that it will take care to select one not less competent. The times imperatively require us to choose our strongest man, without regard to personal or old party distinctions. All must desire to see Virginia represented in a manenr worthy of her past renown and present high position in this great struggle for independence. What is wanted is a wise and thoughtful statesman, calm amid the storm of revolution, patriotic, conciliatory, and just, possessed of solid information and a ripe judgment, and gifted with the eloquence to clothe his arguments in an attractive form. Many excellent and able names have been presented for this office; but it is no disparagement to any of them to express our conviction that no one of them seems to possess these qualifications in so eminent a degree as the Hon. Charles W. Russell, of Wheeling.

The considerations already adduced would lead us to prefer this gentleman; but other arguments are not wanting. His private character is irreproachable. Although living in a section of the State where so many have bowed the knee to the infamous yoke of Abolition, he has ever been, in word and deed a true Virginian--‘"faithful found among the faithless." ’ A large practice and a considerable property — the fruit of half a life of constant labor and honorable exertion — were sacrificed by him at the beginning of the war, a voluntary and cheerful offering upon the altar of liberty. With his family he left the home of his attachment, and nobly preferred exile to submission. We doubt whether any man in the State has made more sacrifices for the cause. It would seem that some recognition is due to the noble band of patriots from the Northwest, who, under every adverse temptation, have been faithful to the flag of the old Commonwealth; and surely in no possible way could Virginia better attest, than by the election of Mr. Russell, her fixed and stern determination to insist, at every cost, upon the whole of her ancient boundaries, without mutilation or abridgment.

It was, we presume, a sense of these considerations which led so many of the members of the Legislature to cast their votes for Mr. Russell at the last election. Without any special effort in his favor, he then came very near being elected. Since that time Mr. Russell's course in Congress has added largely to his reputation. In the House of Representatives he is justly regarded as one of the ablest men of the body, and the reputation thus acquired would at once give weight to his counsels in the Senate. Judging by the vote of the last session, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that the choice of the Legislature will fall upon Mr. Russell; and as no possible objection can be urged to him, we believe his election would give general satisfaction to the public.

[*] Roanoke.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Wheeling, W. Va. (West Virginia, United States) (1)
hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Charles W. Russell (5)
William Ballard Preston (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: