For God, Family and Republic

Today, April 17, 2006 marks the one-hundred and forty-fifth anniversary of the secession of my native Commonwealth of Virginia from the Union.

When Lincoln took office as President, eight southern states Union in the upper south remained in the Union. Yet Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops to suppress the "rebellion" prompted four of them -- Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas -- to join the Confederacy. The political situation in Virginia was somewhat different than in the deep south. Interestingly, in the 1860 election, in both Virginia and Kentucky carried heavily in favor of the Constitutional Union Party, including my hometown Danville, Virginia. Virginians were not quic

Virginia was prudent and not quick to seek secession as a rightful remedy, but Lincoln's pronounced hostile intentions towards Virginia's sister states in the deep south antagonized her, and compelled Virginia to cast her lot with the Confederacy.

Virginia governor John Letcher wrote to Lincoln: "You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has exhibited toward the South."

In point of fact, on April 17, 1861, the Virginia legislature assembled in convention, and passed the following ordinance of secession, following a popular referendum among the citizens:

AN ORDINANCE to repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United State of America by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said Constitution.

The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitition 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 slave-holding 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 and 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 voter 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.

Adopted by the convention of Virginia April 17,1861

A Brief Vindication of Secession as a Right
Secession as a right emanated from popular sovereignty, which was the crux of republicanism. Original intent and the common sentiment throughout the United States was in favor of the compact nature of the Union, and even northern Federalists readily acknowledged the right of secession. In fact, the first states to seriously entertain secession was those of New England in 1815 at the Hartford Convention.

Almost seventy-five years before Virginia's secession, in the Virginia Convention of 1788 to ratify the U.S. Constitution, the right of secession was readily conceded. As a matter of fact, the Virginia Convention made it explicit, in her ordinance adopting the U.S. Constitution:

We the Delegates of the People of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the General Assembly and now met in Convention having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us to decide thereon, do in the name and in behalf of the People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the People of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will...
–Ordinance of the Virginia State Ratifying Convention, June 27, 1788, 1 Eliot’s Debates 327, 3 Elliot’s Debates 656, Tansill’s Documents.

The debate background to this ordinance in the Virginia Convention is even more eye-opening. It was declared, "That all power is naturally vested in, and consequently derived from the people." Every state seemed to take secession for granted, though cautious in the sentiment that compelled advocacy of the U.S. Bill of Rights, the states of Virginia, Rhode Island, and New York make the affirmation of the right of secession explicit in their ordinance of ratification. After all, republicanism had its foundation in rule by consent of the governed, and such consent is not imposed but also entered intent voluntarily. Nine-tenths of the other states, could not bind the holdout states of Rhode Island or North Carolina who delayed considerably in their ratification of the Constitution.

On June 5, 1788, Judge Edmund Pendleton declared:

We the people, possessing all power, form a government, such as we think will secure our happiness. And suppose, in adopting this plan, we should be mistaken in the end. Where is the cause of alarm in that quarter? In the same plan we point out an easy and peaceable method of reforming what may be found amiss. No but, say gentleman, we have put the introduction of that system in the hands of our servants, who will interrupt it for motives of self-interest. What then? We will resist, did my friend say, conveying the idea of force? Who shall dare resist the people? No, we will assemble in Convention, wholly recall our delegated powers, or reform them to prevent such abuse, and punish those servants who have perverted powers and designed for our happiness to their own emolument.

John Marshall, later U.S. Supreme Court Justice, forthrightly proclaimed the sovereignty was inherent in the people, and he basically conceded that should the people be threatened with palpable oppression by the new general government, they could summarily withdraw their assent to the Union:

We are threatened with the loss of our liberties by the possible abuse of power, notwithstanding the maxim that those who give may take away. It is the people that give power and can take it back. What shall restrain them? They are the masters who give it, and of whom their servants hold it.

In that same Virginia Convention, James Madison conceded the right of secession: "If we be dissatisfied with the national government, if we choose to renounce it, this is an additional safeguard to our defence."

Substantiating Evidence
A Brief Enquiry into the Nature and Character of the Federal Government by Abel Parker Upshur, 1840.
A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States by Alexander Hamilton Stephens, 1868.