John Letcher

John Letcher (1813–1884), Governor of Virginia from 1860 to 1864, was born into a middle-class family in Lexington, Virginia, where his parents worked as shopkeepers and held modest aspirations for their son. His father hoped he would become a carpenter, but Letcher had little interest in manual labor. He attended Washington College for a year before turning to politics. He later became editor of the Lexington Valley Star and passed the bar to establish a private law practice.

Nicknamed “Honest John,” Letcher held moderate views on many of the contentious issues of his time. Though not a fire-eating secessionist, he believed Virginia had the right to leave the federal union if a majority of its citizens voted to do so. He advocated reforms to bridge the political and economic divide between eastern and western Virginia and, for a time, supported the gradual emancipation of slaves as a practical step toward that end.

He was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1851 and ran for governor of Virginia in 1859. Support from western Virginians helped secure his victory, and he assumed office on January 1, 1860. Although he publicly expressed hope that the growing sectional crisis could be resolved peacefully and supported Northern Democrat Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 presidential election, he nonetheless took steps to prepare the state for the possibility of war.

In early 1861, Letcher helped organize a peace conference in Washington, D.C., which ultimately failed to defuse the growing conflict. Like many conditional Unionists, he was outraged by President Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to “suppress the rebellion” in the Deep South. In response, the bespectacled governor replied defiantly, declaring that Lincoln had “chosen to inaugurate civil war.”

After the Richmond Secession Convention voted to withdraw from the Union, a decision ratified by a majority of white male voters on May 23, 1861, Letcher mobilized the state militia and helped enlist prominent figures such as Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson to the Confederate cause. He served as Virginia’s wartime governor until January 1, 1864, when he was succeeded by William “Extra Billy” Smith.

Reports and Letters

Updated: 20 September 2025
Created: 19 September 2025