this time, been established throughout Eastern or Old Virginia. Immigrants from Free States were hunted out on suspicion of Unionism, unless they chose to enlist at once in the Rebel army; and only the most violent and obstreperous sympathy with Secession could save them from personal outrage. Appeals from those who had formerly figured as inflexible Unionists were circulated through the journals, calling upon all true Virginians to stand by the action of their State, and thereby preserve her from the horrors of an intestine war. Thus, Mr. A. H. H. Stuart-a leading Whig of other days, an eminent member of Congress, afterward Secretary of the Interior under President Fillmore-who had been elected to the Convention as a Unionist from the strong Whig county of Augusta, and had opposed Secession to the last, now wrote a letter to The Staunton Spectator, maintaining this position: A complete reign of terror had, by | should the Ordinance of Secession be reelection?" And the frequency of the questhrough-jected by the people at the approaching tion may be an excuse for giving publicity to the answer. "In my judgment, it is the duty of all good citizens to stand by the action of the State. It is no time for crimination or recrimination. We cannot stop now to inquire who brought the troubles upon us, or why. It is enough to know that they are upon us; and we must meet them like men. We must stand shoulder to shoulder. Our State is threatened with invasion, and we must repel it as best we can. The only way to preserve peace is to present a united front. If we show divisions among ourselves, the enemy will be encouraged by them, and may make them the pretext for sending armies into our borders for the purpose of sustaining the hands of the disaffected. Our true policy, then, is to stand together as one man in the hour of danger, and leave our family feuds to be adjusted after the contest is over." To the same effect, but a little more boldly, Mr. James M. Mason, late a Senator of the United States, wrote as follows: "To the Editor of the Winchester Virginian: "The question has been frequently put to me-What position will Virginia occupy, "The Ordinance of Secession withdrew the State of Virginia from the Union, with all the consequences resulting from the separation. It annulled the Constitution the limits of this State, and absolved the citizens of Virginia from all obligations and obedience to them. and laws of the United States within "Hence, it follows, if this Ordinance be rejected by the people, the State of Virginia will remain in the Union, and the the Constitution of the United States; and people of the State will remain bound by obedience to the government and laws of enforced against them. the United States will be fully and rightfully "It follows, of course, that, in this war now carried on by the Government of the United States against the seceding States, Virginia must immediately change sides, and, under the orders of that Government, turn her arms against her Southern sisters. "From this, there can be no escape. As a member of the Union, all her resources of men and money will be at once at the command of the Government of the Union. 66 Again: for mutual defense, immediately after the Ordinance of Secession passed, a treaty or 'military league' was formed by the Convention in the name of the people of Virginia, with the Confederate States of the South, by which the latter were bound to march to the aid of our State against the invasion of the Federal Government. And we have now in Virginia, at Harper's Ferry and at Norfolk, in face of the common foe, several thousands of the gallant sons of South Carolina, of Alabama, of Louisiana, Georgia and Mississippi, who hastened to fulfill the covenant they made, and are ready and eager to lay down their lives, side by side with our sons, in defense of the soil of Virginia. "If the Ordinance of Secession is rejected, not only will this military league' be annulled, but it will have been made a trap to inveigle our generous defenders into the hands of their enemies. "Virginia remaining in the Union, duty and loyalty to her obligations to the Union will require that those Southern forces shall not be permitted to leave the State, but shall be delivered up to the Government of the Union; and those who refuse to do so will be guilty of treason, and be justly dealt with as traitors. "Treason against the United States consists as wellin adhering to its enemies and giving them aid' as in levying war. EAST AND WEST VIRGINIA. 479 If it be asked-What are those to do, | garchy in the East. Repeated strug 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. J. M. MASON. "Winchester, Va., May 16, 1861." 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,' through out both Eastern and South-Western Virginia. Even Alexandria-always, hitherto, strongly Union-gave but gles 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 sur Thus, plus produce was sent, to convince 106 Union votes to over 900 Seces- to 20,373 for the Union; but they from had been received! North-Western Virginia, including more than a third of the geographical area of the State, with from onefifth to one-fourth of its white population, had, for many years, chafed under the sway of the slaveholding oli T 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 them that their connection with the Old Dominion was unfortunate and injurious. Ten years prior to this, Muscoe R. H. Garnett, a leading politician of Old Virginia, writing privately to his friend and compatriot, William H. Trescott, 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 responded "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 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." Democratic representative in Congress from 1857 to 1861; since then, in the Rebel Congress. 'Assistant Sec'ry of State under Buchanan. 10 Richmond, May 3, 1851. stimulate your prosperity. If so, the prestige of the Union would be destroyed, and you would be the nucleus for a Southern confederation at no distant day. But I do not doubt, from all I have been able to learn, that the Federal Government would use force, beginning with the form most embarrassing to you, and least calculated to excite sympathy: I mean a naval blockade. In that event, could you withstand the reaction of feeling which the suffering commerce of Charleston would probably manifest? Would you not lose that in which your strength consists, the union of your people? I do not mean to imply an opinion; I only ask the question. If you force this blockade, and bring the Government to direct force, the feeling in Virginia would be very great. I trust in God it would bring her to your aid. But it would be wrong in me to deceive you by speaking certainly. I cannot express the deep mortification I have felt at her course this winter. But I do not believe that the course of the Legislature is a fair expression of the popular feeling. In the East, at least, the great majority believe in the right of Secession, and feel the deepest sympathy with Carolina in opposition to measures which they regard as she does. But the west-Western Virginia-there is the rub! Only 60,000 slaves to 494,000 whites." When I consider this fact, and the kind of argument which we have heard in this body, I cannot but regard with the greatest fear, the question whether Virginia would assist Carolina in such an issue." 12 Mr. Garnett had clearly and truly foreseen that Western Virginia must necessarily constitute a formidable obstacle to the triumph of Secession. The forty-two counties which now compose the State of West Virginia, had, in 1860, a free population of 349,642, with only 12,771 slaves, or but one slave to nearly thirty white persons; and even this small number of slaves were, in good part, held in the counties of Greenbrier, Monroe and Hampshire, lying on the southern verge of the new State, and, for the most part, adhering to old Virginia in the struggle for Disunion. In the nature of things, this people "Mr. Garnett counts the Valley (Shenandoah,) as a portion of Western Virginia. were not, and could not be, disposed to divide the Republic, and place themselves on the most exposed and defenseless frontier of a far smaller and weaker nation, in the interest, and for the supposed benefit, of human Slavery. And yet this enormous sacrifice was required of them by the slaveholding conspiracy, which, since it could not hope to win them by persuasion, was preparing to subject them to its sway by force of arms: and it was a secret condition of the adhesion of Virginia to the Confederacy that her territorial area was, in no case, to be curtailed by any treaty of peace that might ultimately be made with the Union. On the other hand, the accession of Virginia to the Confederacy had rendered a peaceful concession of Southern independence a moral, and well nigh a geographical, impossibility. West Virginia-but more especially that long, narrow strip, strangely interposed between Pennsylvania and Ohio, (locally designated "The Panhandle,") could not be surrendered by the Union without involving the necessity of still further national disintegration. For this "Panhandle" stretches northerly to within a hundred miles of Lake Erie, nearly severing the old from the new Free States, and becoming, in the event of its possession by a foreign and hostile power, a means of easily interposing a military force so as to cut off all communication between them. If the people of the Free States could have consented to surrender their brethren of West Virginia to their common foes, they could not have relinquished their territory without 12 Mr. G. was then a member of a Virginia State Convention. TENNESSEE UNIONISM BETRAYED. 481 consenting to their own ultimate dis- | cing at the leading events which had just occurred on the seaboard, they proceeded to say: ruption and ruin. West Virginia was thus the true key-stone of the Union arch. The Legislature of TENNESSEE, which assembled at Nashville January 7th, 1861, and elected Breckinridge Democrats for officers in both Houses, had, on the 19th, decided to call a State Convention, subject to a vote of the people. That vote was taken early in March; and, on the 10th, the result was officially proclaimed as follows: for the Union 91,803; for Disunion 24,749; Union majority 67,054. Several counties did not render their returns; and it was said that their vote would reduce the Union majority to something over 50,000; but the defeat of the Secessionists was admitted to be complete and overwhelming. Still, the conspirators for Disunion kept actively plotting and mining; and, by means of secret societies, and all the machinery of aristocratic sedition, believed themselves steadily gaining. They had no hope, however, of hurling their State into the vortex of treason, save on the back of an excitement raised by actual collision and bloodshed. Up to the hour of the bombardment of Sumter, though the Governor and a majority of the Legislature were fully in their interest, they remained a powerless minority of the people. "Tennessee is called upon by the President to furnish two regiments; and the State has, through her Executive, refused to comwe fully approve. ply with the call. This refusal of our State We commend the wis dom, the justice, and the humanity, of the secession, both as a constitutional right, and refusal. We unqualifiedly disapprove of as a remedy for existing evils; we equally condemn the policy of the Administration in reference to the seceded States. But, while we, without qualification, condemn the policy of coercion, as calculated to dissolve the Union forever, and to dissolve it in the blood of our fellow-citizens, and regard it as sufficient to justify the State in refusing her aid to the Government, in its attempt to suppress the revolution in the seceded States, we do not think it our duty, considering her position in the Union, and in view of the great question of the peace of our distracted country, to take sides against the Government. Tennessee has wronged no State nor citizen of this Union. She has vioShe has been loyal to all where loyalty was lated the rights of no State, north or south. due. She has not brought on this war by any act of hers. She has tried every means in her power to prevent it. She now stands ready to do any thing within her reach to stop it. And she ought, as we think, to decline joining either party. For, in so doing, she would at once terminate her grand mission as peace-maker between the States of the South and the General Government. Nay, more: the almost inevitable result would be the transfer of the war within her own borders; the defeat of all hopes of reconciliation; and the deluging of the State with the blood of her own people. "The present duty of Tennessee is to maintain a position of independence-taking sides with the Union and the peace of the country against all assailants, whether from the North or the South. Her position should be to maintain the sanctity of her soil from the hostile tread of any party. "We do not pretend to foretell the future of Tennessee, in connection with the other States, or in reference to the Federal Government. We do not pretend to be able to tell the future purposes of the President and Cabinet in reference to the impending war. But, should a purpose be developed by the Government of overrunning and subjugating our brethren of the seceded States, we say, unequivocally, that it will be the duty of the State to resist at all hazards, at any cost, and by arms, any such purpose or attempt. And, to meet any and all emergencies, she ought to be fully armed; and we would respectfully call upon the authorities of the State to proceed at once to the accomplishment of this object. "Let Tennessee, then, prepare thoroughly and efficiently for coming events. In the mean time, let her, as speedily as she can, hold a conference with her sister slaveholding States yet in the Union, for the purpose of devising plans for the preservation of the peace of the land. Fellow-citizens of Tennessee! we entreat you to bring yourselves up to the magnitude of the crisis. Look in the face impending calamities! Civil war what is it? The bloodiest and darkest pages of history answer this question. To avert this, who would not give his time, his talents, his untiring energy-his all? There may be yet time to accomplish every thing. Let us not despair. The Border Slave States may prevent this civil war: and why shall they not do it?" Of course, these gentlemen were, though unconsciously, on the high road to open treason, whither they all arrived ere the lapse of many weeks. How they saved their State from the woes of civil war, and preserved her soil from the tread of hostile armies, is already well known. Of the many who weakly, culpably allowed themselves to be beguiled or hurled into complicity in the crime of dividing and destroying their country, there is no name whereon will rest a deeper, darker stigma than that of John Bell. | the authorities of the Confederate States, and with the authorities of such other slaveholding States as may wish to enter into it; having in view the protection and defense of the entire South against the war which is now being carried on against it." The Governor appointed as such Commissioners Messrs. Gustavus A. Henry, Archibald O. W. Totten, and Washington Barrow; who lost no time in framing a Convention "between the State of Tennessee and the Confederate States of America," whereof the vital provisions are as follows: "First: Until the said State shall become a member of said Confederacy, according to the Constitutions of both powers, the offensive and defensive, of said State, in the whole military force and military operations, impending conflict with the United States, shall be under the chief control and direction of the Confederate States, upon the same basis, principles and footing, as if said State were now and during the interval a memgether with those of the Confederate States, ber of said Confederacy. Said force, tois to be employed for the common defense. "Second: The State of Tennessee will, upon becoming a member of said Confederacy, under the permanent Constitution of said Confederate States, if the same shall occur, turn over to said Confederate States all the public property, naval stores and munitions of war, of which she may then be in possession, acquired from the United States, on the same terms and in the same Conservatism having thus bound manner as the other States of said Confeditself hand and foot, and cast its fet-eracy have done in like cases." tered and helpless form at the feet of rampant, aggressive treason, the result was inevitable. An emissary from the Confederate traitors, in the person of Henry W. Hilliard," of Alabama, forthwith appeared upon the scene. The Legislature secretly adopted" a resolve that the Governor might or should appoint "three Commissioners on the part of Tennessee to enter into a military league with 13 Formerly a Whig member of Congress. This convention-concluded on the 7th-was submitted to the Legislature, still in secret session, and ratified: in Senate, Yeas 14; Nays 6; absent or not voting, 5. In the House, Yeas 43; Nays 15; absent or not voting, 18. This Legislature had, on the preceding day, passed an ordinance of Secession, whereof the first two, and most essential, articles are as follows: "First: We, the people of the State of "May 1, 1861. |