"Thus be it always remembered," says Charles Francis Adams, "Virginia did not take its place in the secession movement because of the election of an anti-slavery President. It did not raise its hand against the National Government from mere love of any peculiar institution, or a wish to protect or perpetuate it. It refused to be precipitated into a civil convulsion; and its refusal was of vital moment. The ground of Virginia's final action was of wholly another nature, and of a nature far more creditable."[[364]]
The importance of Virginia's position was well appreciated, both by the friends of the Union and by the advocates of secession. On the day before the election, William H. Seward wrote from Washington: "The election to-morrow probably determines whether all the slave states will take the attitude of disunion. Everybody around me thinks that that will make the separation irretrievable and involve us in a flagrant civil war. Practically everybody will despair." A day or two later, he wrote that the result of the Virginia election had come "like a gleam of sunshine in a storm," and that "at least the danger of conflict, here or elsewhere, before the 4th of March has been averted."[[365]]
Charles Francis Adams has placed upon record the impressions of the hour.
"Though over forty years ago, I well remember that day—gray, overcast, wintry—which succeeded the Virginia election. Then living in Boston, a young man of twenty-five, I shared—as who did not—in the common deep depression and intense anxiety."
After describing the first receipt of news from the election, Mr. Adams adds: "Virginia, speaking against secession, had emitted no uncertain sound. It was as if a weight had been taken off the mind of every one. The tide seemed turned at last."[[366]]
James Ford Rhodes says:
"The election in Virginia for members of her State Convention had much significance. The one hundred and fifty-two delegates chosen were, with substantial correctness, classed as thirty so-called Secessionists, twenty Douglas men and one hundred and two Whigs, which proves, asserted the Richmond Whig, a journal which argued strenuously for delay, that 'the Conservative victory in Virginia is perfectly overwhelming,' the precipitators having sustained 'a Waterloo defeat.'"[[367]]
LEADERS IN VIRGINIA CONVENTION OF 1861
The Convention assembled the 13th of February, and the friends of the Union elected to its presidency the venerable John Janney. The spirit and purpose of this dominant element may be gathered from a few extracts in the speech of President Janney, on assuming his position:
"It is now seventy-three years since a convention of the people of Virginia was assembled in this hall to ratify the constitution of the United States, one of the chief objects of which was to consolidate—not the government but the union of the states. Causes which have passed, and are daily passing, into history which will set its seal upon them, but which I do not mean to review, have brought the constitution and the Union into imminent peril, and Virginia has come to the rescue. It is what the whole country expected of her. Her pride, as well as her patriotism; her interest, as well as her honor, called upon her with an emphasis she could not disregard, to save the monuments of her own glory....