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The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 was called in the state capital of Richmond to determine whether Virginia would secede from the United States, govern the state during a state of emergency, and write a new Constitution for Virginia, which was subsequently voted down in a referendum under the Confederate Government.
As a Southern slave-holding state, Virginia held the state convention to deal with the secession crisis and voted against secession on April 4, 1861. Opinion shifted after the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, and April 15, when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln called for troops from all states still in the Union to put down the rebellion.
Although providing for a vote on May 23, 1861, the Virginia state convention voted for and effectively accomplished the secession of that state from the Union on April 17, 1861, which was three days after the surrender of Fort Sumter to Confederate forces and two days after President Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers to reclaim federal property and to suppress the rebellion. [4]
When Virginia declared its secession in April 1861, Robert E. Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. Lee's biographer, Douglas S. Freeman , asserts that the army received its final name from Lee when he issued orders assuming command on June 1, 1862. [ 138 ]
Virginia's second Convention of 1861 was a Unionist response to the secessionist movement in Virginia. The First Wheeling Convention meeting at Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia), sat on May 13–15. It called for elections to another meeting if Virginia's Ordinance of Secession were to pass referendum.
In 1861, Alexandria's voters elected Brent, a Unionist and pro-slavery, as the city's delegate to the Virginia Secession Convention. [1] Days after Virginia seceded despite his votes, on May 2, 1861, Brent fulfilled his promise to put the state's interests first and was commissioned a major in Company S, 17th Virginia Infantry.
The Virginians were technically still Virginia militiamen although Virginia forces had been acting under the direction of Confederate President Jefferson Davis after an agreement on April 24, 1861, between Virginia and the Confederate States as well as after approval on May 23, 1861, by Virginia voters of the ordinance of secession enacted by ...
The Restored (or Reorganized) Government of Virginia was the Unionist government of Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865) in opposition to the government which had approved Virginia's seceding from the United States and joining the new Confederate States of America. Each state government regarded the other as illegitimate.