Virginia Secession Convention of 1861

The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861, was called in Richmond to determine secession from the United States, to govern the state during a state of emergency, and to write a new Constitution for Virginia that was subsequently voted down in referendum under the Confederate regime.

Following Abraham Lincoln's constitutional election reflecting the nation's sectional divide, and before his inauguration, the Deep South states that had cast Electoral College votes for John C. Breckinridge resolved to secede from the United States and form the Confederate States of America. The Virginia Assembly called a special convention for the sole purpose of considering secession from the United States. Virginia was deeply divided, returning a convention of delegates amounting to about one-third for secession and two thirds Unionist. But the Unionists would prove to be divided between those who would be labelled Conditional Unionists who would favor Virginia in the Union only if Lincoln made no move at "coercion", and those who would then be called Unconditional Unionists who would be unwavering in their loyalty to the Constitutional government of the United States.

The Convention met from February 3 – December 6, 1861, and elected John Janney its presiding officer. The majority at first voted to remain in the Union, but stayed in session awaiting events. Conditional Unionists objected to Lincoln's call for state quotas to suppress the rebellion, and switched from their earlier Unionist vote to secession on April 17. At the outset of the Convention, the Confederate Congress sent three commissioners to address the convened delegates in the first week of meeting. Fulton Anderson warned that the Republican Party now in control of the United States government intended “the ultimate extinction of slavery and the degradation of the Southern people.” Henry Lewis Benning explained that Georgia had seceded because “a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery.” The Virginia-born John Smith Preston insisted that when the North voted for Lincoln, it decreed annihilation of white Southerners, who must act in self-defense, and Virginia should lead the Southern host in an independent Confederacy. His speech brought the Convention to a standing ovation, but only a third of the delegates were for immediate secession. The Conditional Unionists awaited some overt action of aggression from Lincoln before deciding to secede.

At first, the speeches were mixed between Secessionists advocating leaving the Union, Conditional Unionists holding onto the patriotism of earlier times, and Unconditional Unionists insisting that secession was bad policy and unlawful. In the second week of the convention debate on February 28, Jeremiah Morton of the Piedmont’s Orange County made an early speech for secession. The Abolitionists fanaticism was "inculcated in the Northern mind and ingrained in the Northern heart, so that you may make any compromise you please, and still, until you can unlearn and unteach the people, we shall find no peace…for thirty years they have been warring upon the fifteen States of the South.” He questioned whether slavery could be safe with Black Republicans taking over all branches of the Federal Government. The Union was already dissolved, and Virginia would surely go with her Southern brethren. If the Confederacy "give us the post of danger, they will also give us the post of honor. They want our statesmen; they want our military; they want the material arm of Virginia to sustain ourselves and them in the great struggles [before us].”

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