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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.
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]
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.
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.
On May 23, the Virginia Secession Convention voted to secede, and, shortly thereafter, the Virginia legislature invited the Confederate Congress to move to Richmond. After the state's voters overwhelmingly ratified the secession decisions a month later, the Congress ordered the next session to convene in Richmond on July 20. [36]
He discouraged secession but actively sustained the ordinance passed by Virginia on April 17, 1861. Despite scheduling a popular vote to determine whether Virginia would declare secession from the United States, ultimately, the actions of the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 and the state government, especially Letcher, effectively led ...
When the American Civil War started, Virginia seceded from the United States in 1861 over slavery, [1] but many of the northwestern counties of Virginia were decidedly pro-Union. [2] [3] At a convention called by the governor and authorized by the legislature, delegates voted on April 17, 1861 to approve Virginia's secession from the United ...