The town of Wheeling, located along the Ohio River in what was then the Virginia panhandle (today, West Virginia), was Virginia’s fourth largest city in 1860. Sandwiched between the free states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, it was largely populated by German immigrants with no affinity for Virginia’s Anglo-American planter class. When the Secession Convention in…
While staunch unionists were rare among Virginia's political class, opinions differed on the secession question. The events of early 1861, however, would push nearly all of them into the same camp. When the Civil War broke out, Virginia had one sitting governor and eight living ex-governors. All owned slaves, though their opinions on slavery and…
Continue reading ➞ How Did Virginia’s Governors Respond to Secession?
In dispelling a myth about the origin of the Civil War, this author created one of his own. In 2017, the American Civil War Museum in Richmond published an article in its Myths & Misunderstandings series that contained erroneous information about the Commonwealth of Virginia's stance toward the Federal Government prior to its secession. In…
Continue reading ➞ Did Virginia Submit a list of Demands to Remain in the Union?
The Old Dominion played a principal role in America's independence from England and had a reputation as the "birthplace of presidents." As 1861 dawned, however, would it turn its back on the country it helped create? At the dawn of 1861, war clouds gathered over the United States. Before president-elect Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on…
Thursday, May 23, 1861, was a solemn day throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. It was the day its white, male citizens over the age of 21 would decide whether to ratify an Ordinance of Secession adopted in Richmond on April 17th. Though U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and many throughout the North viewed secession as illegal,…
Continue reading ➞ 160 Years Ago Today: Virginia Voters Ratify Secession
By mid-May 1861, the secession crisis in Virginia had reached a boiling point. In response to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln calling for a volunteer army to suppress the rebellion in the Deep South, on April 17th delegates at the Virginia Secession Convention in Richmond passed an ordinance of secession, pending the results of a popular…
Continue reading ➞ 160 Years Ago: The First Wheeling Convention
160 years ago today, Wednesday, April 17, 1861, 143 delegates from across the Commonwealth of Virginia crowded into the neoclassical Capitol of Virginia at 10:00am to debate secession from the United States. Six Southern states had already seceded. South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas formed the Confederate States of America on February…
Continue reading ➞ 160 Years Ago Today: Virginia Adopts Ordinance of Secession
