The General Assembly thereupon adopted a series of resolutions inviting
all such states of the Union "as are willing to unite with Virginia in
an earnest effort to adjust the present unhappy controversies ... to
appoint commissioners to meet on the fourth day of February next, in the
City of Washington, similar commissioners appointed by Virginia." The
resolutions also provided for the immediate appointment of Ex-President
John Tyler as a Commissioner to the President of the United States, and
Judge John Robertson as a Commissioner to the State of South Carolina
and to any other state that had seceded or might secede, to urge upon
them to abstain from any and all acts calculated to produce a collision
of arms between such states and the government of the United States,
pending the proceedings contemplated by the General Assembly of
Virginia.
Ex-President John Tyler, William C. Rives, Judge John W. Brokenbrough,
George W. Summers and James A. Seddon were appointed Commissioners from
Virginia to the Washington Conference—which became known in history as
the Peace Conference.
The sentiments which prompted this movement are doubtless truly
expressed in the preamble to the resolutions which declares:
"Whereas, it is the deliberate opinion of the General Assembly of
Virginia that unless the unhappy controversy which now divides the
states of this Confederacy shall be satisfactorily adjusted, a
permanent dissolution of the Union is inevitable, and the General
Assembly is desirous of employing every reasonable means to avert so
dire a calamity," etc.
Both Houses of the General Assembly, however, adopted by practically
unanimous votes resolutions declaring that the Union, having been formed
by the consent of the states, it was repugnant to Republican
institutions to maintain it by force; that the government of the Union
had no right to make war upon "any of the states which had been its
constituent members"; and that with respect to states which have
withdrawn or may withdraw from the Union, "we are unalterably opposed to
any attempt on the part of the Federal Government to coerce the same
into reunion or submission and that we will resist the same by all means
in our power."[357]