THE CONTEST IN THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION FOR AND
AGAINST SECESSION (Concluded)
On the 8th of April, the Virginia Convention adopted the following
resolution:
"WHEREAS, in the opinion of this Convention the uncertainty which
prevails in the public mind as to the policy which the Federal
Executive intends to pursue towards the seceded states is extremely
injurious to the industrial and commercial interests of the country,
tends to keep up an excitement which is unfavorable to the adjustment
of pending difficulties, and threatens a disturbance of the public
peace; therefore,
"RESOLVED, That a committee of three delegates be appointed by this
Convention to wait upon the President of the United States and present
to him this Preamble and Resolution, and respectfully ask him to
communicate to this Convention the policy which the Federal Executive
intends to pursue in regard to the Confederate States."[383]
William Ballard Preston, Alexander H. H. Stuart and George W. Randolph
were unanimously elected members of the committee thus created.
That this action of the Virginia Convention was not hypercritical, that
grave doubts actually existed as to the position of the Federal
Government, is a fact of contemporary history. Writing from Washington,
March 16, 1861, to Ex-President Buchanan, Edwin M. Stanton said:
"Every day affords proof of the absence of any settled policy or
harmonious concert of action in the Administration. Seward, Bates and
Cameron form one wing; Chase, Welles, Blair, the opposite wing; Smith
is on both sides and Lincoln sometimes on one, sometimes on the other.
There has been agreement in nothing."[384]
W. H. Russell, the well-known correspondent of the _London Times_, notes
in his diary under date of March 23d: "The Government (of the United
States) appears to be helplessly drifting with the current of events,
having neither bow nor stern, neither keel nor deck, neither rudder,
compass, sails nor steam."[385]
On the 1st of April, Secretary Seward presented to the President his now
famous memorandum, "Some thoughts for the President's consideration,"
the opening paragraph of which recited: "First. We are at the end of a
month's administration, and yet without a policy either foreign or
domestic."[386]
On the 15th of April, the Committee of the Virginia Convention appointed
to wait on the President submitted its report. It recited that because
of violent and protracted storms they had not reached Washington until
the 12th; that agreeable to the wishes of the President they appeared
before him on the 13th and presented the resolution; and that the
President thereupon read to them a paper which embodied his response to
the Convention.