between Mexico and the United States. In the Mexican War which
followed, two Virginians, General Zachary Taylor of Orange County
and General Winfield Scott of Dinwiddie County, participated in
an outstanding manner: the former, in charge of the campaign at
Monterey and at Buena Vista and the latter, in charge of the
campaign at Vera Cruz and Mexico City. Other Virginians who received
first-hand military experience during the Mexican War were Robert E.
Lee, Thomas J. Jackson and Joseph E. Johnston.
On September 7, 1846, the land including the town of Alexandria
(originally Belhaven) which Virginia had ceded to Congress in
1789 was retroceded to Fairfax County. In the following year,
Alexandria County was formed from that part of the District of
Columbia which had formerly been a part of Fairfax County and the
town of Alexandria became the county seat. Five years later, the
town of Alexandria became the city of Alexandria through a charter
regulation of the General Assembly, and its status as an independent
city (not subject to county jurisdiction) was granted.
While Alexandria was changing from a town to a city, another
Virginian was elected President of the United States. Zachary
Taylor, a native of Orange County, became the twelfth President of
the United States. He had achieved national fame during the Mexican
War and had earned the title "Old Rough and Ready." He defeated his
military colleague, General Winfield Scott, at the Whig convention
by winning the presidential candidacy and proceeded to defeat Martin
Van Buren for the Presidency. After serving only sixteen months of
his term, he died of typhus on July 9, 1850. The most important
issue during his administration was the slavery controversy.
As in the slavery issue in 1820, Henry Clay once more proposed a
compromise measure in an attempt to prevent, or at least postpone, a
secession movement. The Compromise of 1850 was eventually passed and
is often referred to as the "Omnibus Bill" because it included many
miscellaneous provisions, namely: (1) California was to be admitted
as a free state, (2) slavery limitation in the Mexican cession land
was to be decided upon by the residents of the particular area
involved, (3) Texas was to pay ten million dollars for giving up
its claim to territory west and north of its present boundary, (4)
slave trade but not slavery was to be prohibited in the District
of Columbia, and (5) a more effective fugitive slave law was to be
passed and to be enforced.
While the United States government had numerous national problems
with which to cope during this period, Virginia had several
governmental problems. In 1850-1851, a second state constitutional
convention was held. The age-old feud concerning representation,
voting qualifications and election of the Governor continued until,
finally, a compromise was reached. Main provisions of the compromise
were: (1) every white male citizen, except the insane, minors,
paupers and criminals, was to be allowed to vote from that time
forward, (2) the Governor was to be elected directly by the voters
themselves rather than by the General Assembly and his term was
to be extended from three to four years, (3) the Council of State
was to be abolished, (4) membership in the House of Delegates was
to be selected upon the basis of population, thereby giving the
western counties a majority number; membership in the Senate was to
be based upon population and property, thereby giving the eastern
counties a majority, and (5) the voters were to be allowed to vote
for judges, county officials and members of the Board of Public
Works. In addition, the General Assembly was to meet every other
year instead of annually. The 1851 State Constitution was ratified
by the voters by an overwhelming majority at the next election.
The western counties of Virginia had finally been recognized as
an important area whose ideas and opinions were to be considered
seriously. Although the economic and social life of the inhabitants
of the western part of Virginia were different from those of the
inhabitants of the eastern part of Virginia, this Constitution which
granted the western counties most of their desired reforms fostered
better unity within the state.
In 1855, a dreadful epidemic of yellow fever spread throughout
Norfolk and approximately one tenth of its total population
succumbed. A Negro gravedigger, nicknamed "Yellow Fever Jack," was
considered the hero of this situation because he painstakingly kept
burying the dead until he too died from the fever. A monument has
been erected in his honor in the Norfolk Cemetery.
In 1857 James Ethan Allen Gibbs, a native of Rockbridge County,
secured a patent to make a "twisted loop rotary hook sewing
machine," an invention which he had created as a result of watching
his mother sew by hand. He was unaware at the time of Elias Howe's
sewing machine invention of 1846. After a few years, James A.
Willcox added some improvements to Gibbs' sewing machine, and their
combined efforts resulted in the Willcox and Gibbs Sewing Machine.
On October 16, 1859, John Brown, a freesoiler and an ardent white
abolitionist of Kansas and Ohio, led his five sons, eight northern
white men and a group of five Negroes on a raid of the federal
arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now located in West Virginia).
Rifles were made and stored here. John Brown had decided to show
these slaves how to revolt against their masters. Therefore, he
equipped them with arms, ammunition and with steel-tipped pikes
which he had brought with him from Kansas. After they had seized
the arsenal, he urged them to start an insurrection. They captured
many of the gentlemen slaveholders of this area, and then John
Brown suggested that they use their pikes to "strike for freedom!"
The Negroes of this area and those of the south in general did not
respond to his encouragement. His band killed five people including
the mayor of Harper's Ferry and a free Negro porter of the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad. On October 18, Colonel Robert E. Lee of the
United States Army, who was a native Virginian, was placed in charge
of the situation. James Ewell Brown Stuart (later, commonly known
as "J. E. B." Stuart) was appointed aide-de-camp to Lee. Stuart
was assigned the task of presenting the summons to John Brown to
surrender after one hundred United States Marines had surrounded
the arsenal and had captured the raiders. Stuart successfully
performed his task and was admired by many Americans for his staunch
courage in this action because John Brown was such an unpredictable
individual. Lee then sent John Brown to Charlestown, Virginia (now
located in West Virginia) where he was tried by a Virginia Circuit
Court for treason and for murder because of the capture of guns
and supplies belonging to the government, was found guilty and was
hanged on December 2, 1859. Ten of his followers were also killed.
This incident caused hostile feelings between the sections to
increase and made the Virginians very angry upon finding out the
extent to which some individuals would conspire to incite Negro
hatred for their masters.
By 1860, the population of Virginia had reached over one and a half
million including 490,865 slaves and 58,042 free Negroes. From 1851
to 1861, four counties were added: Craig (formed from Botetourt,
Giles, Monroe and Roanoke Counties and named for Robert Craig, a
Virginia Congressman), Wise (formed from Lee, Scott and Russell
Counties and named for Henry Alexander Wise, Governor of Virginia,
1856-1860), Buchanan (formed from Tazewell and Russell Counties and
named in honor of President James Buchanan) and Bland (formed from
Giles, Wythe and Tazewell Counties and named for Richard Bland, a
Virginia statesman during the Revolutionary War Period).
S U M M A R Y
After Virginia had furnished many leaders for the First Continental
Congress, another special Virginia convention was held in Richmond
where a resolution for military preparedness was passed and
delegates were elected to the Second Continental Congress. Three
additional special conventions were later held in the Virginia
colony alone which resulted in the abdication of the last colonial
Governor of the colony, the declaration of Virginia as a free
and independent State, the writing of the Virginia Declaration
of Rights, the adoption of an official State seal and motto, the
creation and adoption of a State Constitution establishing the
Commonwealth of Virginia, the adoption of the Statute of Virginia
for Religious Freedom and the eventual ratification of the United
States Constitution. In the political field, the names of Patrick
Henry, Peyton Randolph, George Washington, George Mason, George
Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, James Madison, Edmund Randolph, Archibald
Cary, Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe suggest numerous
contributions made by Virginians during the period, 1775-1860.
Virginians also had major roles in the military history of our
country during this same period: George Washington, John Mühlenberg,
Henry Lee, Jack Jouett, Andrew Lewis, Daniel Morgan, John Paul
Jones, Samuel Houston, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor,
Winfield Scott and Robert E. Lee. In the meantime, the capital had
been moved from Williamsburg to Richmond, Virginia had ceded its
Northwest Territory to the new national government and Yorktown had
become internationally famous as the area where the British had
surrendered to the Americans. It is a unique historical fact that
the site where the British armies were forced to surrender in 1781
was located only a few miles from the site where the first permanent
English settlement in America was established.
The Presidency of George Washington started the so-called "Virginia
Dynasty" of Presidents. By 1861, the Commonwealth had furnished
the United States with seven Virginia-born Presidents: George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William
Henry Harrison, John Tyler and Zachary Taylor. For this achievement,
Virginia has earned the title of "Mother of Presidents."
During the period of 1775 to 1860, many significant activities
of Virginians took place at both the state and federal levels of
government: the "Leopard-Chesapeake" Affair, Jeffersonian Democracy,
John Marshall's role as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme
Court, the consent of Virginia allowing Kentucky County to become
an independent state in the Union, the Lewis and Clark Expedition
to the Northwest, the role of Norfolk, Hampton and Falls Church
during the War of 1812, the Monroe Doctrine, the efforts of Henry
Clay ("The Great Compromiser"), the historical connotation of the
capital city, Monrovia, in Liberia, the creation of a non-sectarian
state university and of the first state military school in the
country, the attitude of Virginians toward the sectional issues
of tariff, secession and slavery, the inventions of the McCormick
Virginia Reaper and the Willcox-Gibbs Sewing Machine and the active
participation of Virginians in the Texan Revolt and the Mexican
War. John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry increased sectionalism
and intensified the slavery problem. By 1860, the population of
Virginia had reached over one and one-half million people, including
approximately 500,000 slaves.
4
Historical Life: 1860-Present
_The War Between the States_
In November 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the
United States. He represented the Republican Party which strongly
opposed slavery, and he had made numerous speeches stating his
personal opposition to it. Although Lincoln had declared that he had
no desire to interfere with slavery in the states where it already
existed, he also had made the following statement: "A house divided
against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure
permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to
be dissolved: I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect
that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or
all the other." Thus, on December 20, it was not a complete surprise
that a special convention held at Charleston, South Carolina,
resulted in the secession of South Carolina, a strong pro-slavery
state, from the Union. By February 1861, six other southern states
had acted likewise. The Confederate States of America was organized
at Montgomery, Alabama, with Jefferson Davis as its President.
Until this time, Virginia had not declared herself. Like her
neighboring states, she had to make the momentous decision. The
Governor of Virginia at this time was John Letcher, later known
as the "War Governor" of Virginia. The people of Virginia did not
enthusiastically favor secession, that is, they did not have an
ardent desire to leave the Union as South Carolina had had. Neither
did Virginia believe in the national policy of coercion of a state
to return to the Union. In an attempt to bring the seceded states
back into the Union and to try to find some solution to the slavery
problem, the Virginia legislature invited delegates from all the
states to attend a national "Peace Conference" at Washington on
February 4. Virginia appointed John Tyler (ex-President), Judge John
Robertson, James A. Seddon, William C. Rives and George W. Summers
to attend this conference. There was so much sectionalism bitter
with political and economic rivalries at the conference that it was
unsuccessful.
On February 13, 1861, a special state convention was held in
Richmond to discuss the possibility of secession. When the counties
elected the 152 delegates to this special state convention, their
choice resulted in several pro-Union, anti-secession residents of
the state. John Janney was the presiding officer of the convention.
It was evident that the majority of the delegates hesitated to
leave the Union because they had very strong ties with the Federal
government. Virginia had played an important role in creating
the Union and had furnished one-third of all the Presidents,
numerous cabinet members, a Supreme Court Chief Justice who held
this position for thirty-four years (John Marshall), and other
less important Federal officials. The convention delegates sent a
committee consisting of William B. Preston, George W. Randolph and
Alexander H. H. Stuart to President Lincoln to plead for a peaceful
solution to the slavery and secession problems.
On March 10, 1861, the Committee on Federal Relations at the
Richmond convention submitted reports consisting of fourteen
resolutions to the convention. These resolutions expressed the
doctrine of states' rights, criticized slavery interference,
advocated the right of secession and resolved that Virginia would
be justified in seceding only if the Federal government usurped
state powers or if it attempted to force the payment of tax duties
from the seceded states or if it recaptured certain Southern forts.
The first twelve resolutions had been adopted at the time of the
unofficial firing on Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina
on April 12th and the forced surrender of the Federal garrison.
The Federal government had sent arms, troops and provisions to the
aid of Colonel Robert Anderson at Fort Sumter. The Confederate
government had considered the action a hostile act and had acted
accordingly. The actual signal for the attack was given by Roger
Pryor, a strong secessionist from Virginia; furthermore, the actual
shot was fired by another Virginia secessionist, Edmund Ruffin. The
ultimate surrender of Fort Sumter to the Confederates resulted in
an immediate call from President Lincoln for volunteers to save the
Union.
Even as late as April 4, the Richmond convention had rejected
secession by a vote of two to one. Some of the minority were strong
in their wishes to secede immediately and to join the Confederacy,
and they used the issues of self-government, states' rights and
slavery as their points of variance with the national government.
Furthermore, these advocates believed that an alliance with the
Confederacy would at least remove them from the direct influence
of high protective tariffs since a clause prohibiting protective
tariffs had been included in the Constitution of the Confederacy.
Two days after the firing on Fort Sumter, April 15, President
Lincoln called on all the states in the Union to send volunteers,
numbering 75,000 total, to invade the seceding states and to coerce
them back into the Union.
Two days later, April 17, 1861, the Virginia Convention passed
an ordinance of secession by a vote of 88 to 55. Many pre-Union
Virginians at this convention preferred to choose secession rather
than to send troops to fight against their southern neighbor
states. In the previous election, the Virginia people voted
overwhelmingly to have the convention submit its results for their
voting approval or disapproval via referendum. On May 4, a large
majority of the Virginia citizens voted their approval of secession.
Nevertheless, although eastern Virginia voted almost solidly
for secession, western Virginia voted almost as solidly against
secession. Governor John Letcher of Virginia sent the following
reply to the United States Secretary of War, Simon Cameron: "In
reply to this communication I have only to say that the militia
of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for
any such use of purpose as they have in view. Your object is to
subjugate the Southern States, and a requisition made upon me for
such an object--an object, in my judgment, not within the purview
of the Constitution, or the Act of 1795--will not be complied with.
You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we
will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has
exhibited towards the South."
On April 25, the same convention members passed an act which
provided for the adoption of the Constitution of the Provisional
Government of the Confederate States of America, and Virginia became
the eighth state of the Confederate States of America. Although
Montgomery, Alabama, had been the capital of the Confederacy, one
month after Virginia joined, Virginia invited the Confederacy
to make Richmond its capital. The offer was accepted on May 21.
Virginia thus became the focus of major battles of the War between
the States during the four-year period: 1861-1865.
Colonel Robert E. Lee was a United States Army officer at this
time and had one of the most difficult decisions to make. He
was recognized as a man of great military ability, and the high
regard which the Federal government had for him was expressed in
the tremendously responsible position offered to him by President
Lincoln. Lincoln was familiar with his great military strategy which
had been followed in the Mexican War, his efficient administration
as Superintendent of West Point, his excellent cavalry supervision
on the frontier and his carefully planned capture of John Brown
and his raiders at Harper's Ferry. Consequently, on April 18,
President Lincoln had offered him the command of the Union forces.
Lee realized the wonderful honor for which he had been selected and
was deeply appreciative. However, he was a Virginian, and, after
his state had seceded from the Union, he believed that there was
no choice in the matter. His love of country was great, but the
love of his state and his fellowmen was greater. Therefore, he
sadly declined Lincoln's offer and stated that "though opposed, to
secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion
of the Southern States." Thus, as soon as Virginia seceded from the
Union, he resigned his United States Army Commission on April 20
with the words: "Sir: I have the honor to tender the resignation
of my commission as Colonel of the first regiment of cavalry. Very
respectfully, your obedient servant--Robert E. Lee."
Lee then went to Richmond at the invitation of the convention and
was made Major-General and Commander-in-Chief of the Virginia forces
on April 23. It should be noted here that Virginia did not have an
aggressive, warlike attitude toward the Union. Governor John Letcher
is quoted as speaking to Robert E. Lee in the convention itself in
the following manner: "Yesterday, your mother, Virginia, placed her
sword in your hand upon the implied condition that we know you will
keep to the letter and in spirit, that you will draw it only in her
defense, and that you will fall with it in your hand rather than
that the object for which it was placed there shall fail."
For the first three and a half years of the War between the States,
the military actions took place simultaneously in two different
areas: a small area in northern and northeastern Virginia and a
western area in the region bounded by the Mississippi River, the
Cumberland River, and the Appalachian Mountains. For most of the
war, the Confederate forces were on the defensive side. With General
Robert E. Lee as Commander-in-Chief, the Confederates had unity
of command whereas the Union forces actually had five successive
generals before appointing Ulysses S. Grant as the supreme
commander. Many of the best military minds were fighting on the
Confederate side, and it is believed by several historians that only
their great strategic ability and planning against larger military
forces with better equipment and clothing kept the war from being
concluded at a much earlier date.
The major objective of the Federal government became a clearcut one,
namely, to capture Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. Thus,
a chief aim of the military forces in Virginia was the protection
and defense of Richmond at all times. Virginia lost Accomack and
Northampton Counties on the Eastern Shore at the beginning of the
war and was unable to obtain control of Union Fort Monroe.
On May 24, 1861 the Fire Zouaves, a unit of the United States Army,
marched from Washington to Alexandria, the first point of invasion
in Virginia in the War between the States. They took possession of
Alexandria in the name of the United States and found no organized
opposition because there were no Southern troops here. Virginia had
not been ready for war and had made no preparations for war. The
only standing army in the state at the time of her secession was a
group of soldiers whose duty had been to guard public property in
Richmond. Several volunteer companies had organized in various parts
of the state for the first time after John Brown's Raid. One of the
first immediate tasks to be done was the training of soldiers in
Virginia and the acquiring of cannon and fire-arms. Consequently, it
was not unusual for Alexandria not to have had an organized force
by May 24, awaiting Federal invasion. As these Fire Zouaves entered
Alexandria, they noticed a Confederate flag flying from the top of
a small hotel called the Marshall House. Colonel Elmer Ellsworth,
the Federal commander, decided to obtain this flag. He entered the
hotel, ran up the stairs to the roof and grabbed it. He had started
to descend the stairs with his trophy when, at the first landing,
he met the hotel owner, James W. Jackson, who had been curious to
know who had been rushing up the stairs and invading his hotel. When
he saw the Confederate flag in the hands of the Federal officer,
he shot him in the breast. Ellsworth died instantly and Jackson
was immediately killed by bullets and bayonets used by Ellsworth's
troops. This was the first blood shed in Virginia in the War between
the States.
A skirmish took place at Fairfax Court House on June 1, 1861, which
caused the death of Captain John Quincy Marr of the Warrenton
Rifles. His death is considered the first Confederate battle death.
In the same month, the first land battle of the War between the
States took place around and near the town of Philippi located in
western Virginia (today, in West Virginia). On June 3, Union troops
led by Colonel B. F. Kelly clashed with Confederate troops led by
Colonel George A. Portfield. This fighting was not only a victory
for the Union forces, but the retreat of the Confederates from the
surprise Union attack on a dark, rainy night was exceedingly rapid.
The Confederates fled more than thirty miles in one day to a town
called Beverly, thereupon earning for their action the title, the
"Philippi Races."