The Virginia Convention



Virginia Convention of 1861

Introduction

In the weeks between the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in November 1860 and his inauguration on March 4, 1861, the crisis that had been impending for at least a decade culminated in seven slave states making good their threat to secede. Lincoln's election precipitated the secession from the United States, first of South Carolina in December 1860, then of five more states between January 9 and February 1, 1861. The six states South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana then sent delegates to a convention in Montgomery, Alabama, over the period February 4-9, to write a constitution and select a provisional president for the Confederate States of America. Texas seceded later in February and joined the Confederacy in early March.

The American Civil War (1861-65) ended with a victory for the Union over the secessionist Southern states. But the end of the war was just the beginning of a new chapter in American history. The following period of Reconstruction (1865-77), during which the Confederate states were reintegrated into the Union, was one of the most controversial chapters in American history. Well before Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses Grant at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the Civil War, controversy raged in Congress and throughout the country concerning the terms under which the secessionist states would be allowed back into the Union. This was all connected with the Virginia convention.

Virginia started its convention after succession on February 13th 1861. This happens when six states withdraw to make the confederate States of America in February 1861. The Virginia convention last for several months however, in the month of April Lincoln call troops form all the states. He wanted to attack the Fort of Sumter. On 17th April 1861, the convention started to succeed. With the entry of Virginia into the Confederacy, the decision to move Confederate capital of Montgomery (Alabama) to Richmond was taken on May 6 and enacted on May 29. Virginia ratified the articles of secession on May 23. The next day the Union army moved north from Virginia and captured Alexandria without a fight.

Virginia, comprised largely of Southeastern slaveholders and non-slaveholders

Nat Turner launched a slave insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831 that killed almost 60 whites before it dissolved. The massacre horrified white Virginians and prompted the most intense debate over the future of slavery ever witnessed in Virginia's history or in any southern legislature.

In the early morning hours of Monday, August 22, 1831, the most famous slave uprising in United States history erupted in remote, sparsely inhabited Southampton County in Southside Virginia, near the forebodingly named Dismal Swamp. Nat Turner, an influential slave in the neighborhood, and a handful of enslaved followers launched what they considered a spiritual mission by murdering Turner's master and his family. They then marched to nearby farmhouses, gathering new slave recruits to continue their works of ...