XXXV THE BIRTH OF WAR

IT was the seventeenth of April, 1861. It was the fateful day on which the greatest, the most terrible, the most disastrous of modern wars was born.

On that day the long struggle of devoted patriots to keep Virginia in the Union and to throw all her influence into the scale of peace, had ended in failure.

A few days before, Fort Sumter had been bombarded and had fallen. Still the Virginia convention had resisted all attempts to drag or force the Mother State into secession. Then had come Mr. Lincoln’s call upon Virginia for her quota of troops with which to make war upon the seceding sister states of the South and the alternative of secession or dishonor presented itself to this body of Union men. They decided at once, and on that seventeenth day of April they made a great war possible and indeed inevitable, by adopting an ordinance of secession and casting Virginia’s fate, Virginia’s strength, and Virginia’s matchless influence, into the scale of disunion and war.

Richmond was in delirium—a delirium which moved men to ecstatic joy or profound grief, or deeply rooted apprehension, according to their several temperaments. The thoughtless went parading excitedly up and down the streets singing songs, and making a gala time of it, wearing cockades by day and carrying torches by night, precisely as if some long hoped for and supremely desired good fortune had come upon the land of their birth. The more thoughtful looked on and kept silent. But mostly the spirit manifested was one of grim determination to meet fate—be it good or bad—with stout hearts and calmly resolute minds.

In that purpose all men were as one now. The vituperation with which the people’s representatives in the convention had been daily assailed for their hesitation to secede, was absolutely hushed. The sentiment of affection for the Union which had been growing for seventy years and more, gave way instantly to a determination to win a new independence or sacrifice all in the attempt.

Jubal A. Early, who had from the beginning opposed secession with all his might, reckoning it not only insensate folly but a political crime as well, voted against it to the last, and then, instantly sent to Gov. Letcher a tender of his services in the war, in whatever capacity his state might see fit to employ him. In the same way William C. Wickham, an equally determined opponent of secession, quitted his seat in the convention only to make hurried preparation for his part as a military leader on the Southern side.

No longer did men discuss the merits and demerits of one policy or another; there could be but one policy now, one course of action, one sentiment of devotion to Virginia, and an undying determination to maintain her honor at all hazards and at all costs.

The state of mind that was universal among Virginians at that time, has never been quite understood in other parts of the Union. These men’s traditions extended back to a time before ever the Union was thought of, before ever Virginia had invited her sister states to unite with her, in a convention at Annapolis, called for the purpose of forming that “more perfect Union,” from which, in 1861, Virginia decided to withdraw. Devotion to the Union had been, through long succeeding decades, as earnest and as passionate in Virginia as the like devotion had been in any other part of the country. Through three great wars the Virginians had faltered not nor failed when called upon to contribute of their substance or their manhood to the national defence.

The Virginians loved the Union of which their state had been so largely the instigator, and they were self-sacrificingly loyal to it. But they held their allegiance to it to be solely the result of their state’s allegiance, and when their state withdrew from it, they held themselves absolved from all their obligations respecting it. Their very loyalty to it had been a prompting of their state, and when their state elected to transfer its allegiance to another Confederacy, they regarded themselves as bound by every obligation of law, of honor, of tradition, of history and of manhood itself, to obey the mandate.

Return we now to Richmond, on that fateful seventeenth day of April, 1861. There had been extreme secessionists, and moderate ones, uncompromising Union men, and Union men under conditions of qualification. There were none such when that day was ended. Waitman T. Willey and a few others from the Panhandle region, who had served in the convention, departed quickly for their homes, to take part with the North in the impending struggle, in obedience to their convictions of right. The rest accepted the issue as determinative of Virginia’s course, and ordered their own courses accordingly. They were, before all and above all Virginians, and Virginia had decided to cast in her lot with the seceding Southern States. There was an end of controversy. There was an end of all division of sentiment. The supreme moment had come, and all men stood shoulder to shoulder to meet the consequences.