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[479]

If it be asked--“ What are those to do, who, in their consciences, cannot vote to separate Virginia from the United States?” --the answer is simple and plain: Honor and duty alike require that they should not vote on the question; if they retain such opinions, they must leave the State.

None can doubt or question the truth of what I have written; and none can vote against the Ordinance of Secession, who do not thereby (whether ignorantly or otherwise) vote to place himself and his State in the position I have indicated.


Under the influence of such inculcations, backed by corresponding action, the more conspicuous Unionists being hunted out, and the greater number silenced and paralyzed, the election was a perfect farce,1 throughout both Eastern and South-Western Virginia. Even Alexandria — always, hitherto, strongly Union--gave but 106 Union votes to over 900 Secession; while in lower Virginia scarcely a Union vote was polled. Thus, when the conspirators came to announce the result, they reported that, including the votes taken in camp, 125,950 had been cast for Secession to 20,373 for the Union; but they significantly added that this did not include the vote of several Western counties, which were in such a state of confusion that no returns therefrom had been received!

North-Western Virginia, including more than a third of the geographical area of the State, with from one-fifth to one-fourth of its white population, had for many years, chafed under the sway of the slaveholding oligarchy in the East. Repeated struggles respecting bases of legislative apportionment, of taxation, etc., and on questions of internal improvement, had clearly indicated that the antagonism between the East and the West was founded in natural causes, and could not be compromised nor overcome. When opportunity presented, the West had repeatedly protested against the perpetuation of Slavery, but still more earnestly against the subordination of all her interests and rights to the incessant exactions of the Slave Power; though her ruling politicians and presses were usually held in subjection to the dominant interest by the preponderating power of the East. Her people had but to look across the Ohio, whereto their streams tended and their surplus produce was sent, to convince them that their connection with the Old Dominion was unfortunate and injurious.

Ten years prior to this, Muscoe R. H. Garnett,2 a leading politician of Old Virginia, writing privately to his friend and compatriot, William H. Trescott,3 of South Carolina, who had sounded him with regard to the aid to be expected from Virginia, in case South Carolina should then secede from the Union, had responded4 as follows:

I believe thoroughly in our own theories, and that, if Charleston did not grow quite so fast in her trade with other States, yet the relief from Federal taxation would vastly

1 The Louisville Journal of June 1st, said:

The vote of Virginia last week on the question of Secession was a perfect mockery. The State was full of troops from other States of the Confederacy; while all the Virginia Secessionists, banded in military companies, were scattered in various places to overawe the friends of Union or drive them from the polls. The Richmond Convention, in addition to other acts of usurpation, provided that polls should be opened in all the military encampments, besides the ordinary voting places. * * * No man voted against Secession on Thursday last but at the peril of being lynched or arrested as an incendiary dangerous to the State.

2 Democratic representative in Congress from 1857 to 1861; since then, in the Rebel Congress.

3 Assistant Sec'ry of State under Buchanan.

4 Richmond, May 3, 1851.

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