Virginia's Attitude Toward Slavery and Secession

by Beverley B. Munford

Accompanying this report, as above indicated, was an amendment to the constitution of the United States, the most important features of which dealt with the matter of slavery in the territories, and the institution in the states where it was established by law.

PURPORT OF PROPOSED AMENDMENT

With respect to the first, the amendment provided that in all the territories north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes, slavery should be forever prohibited, and in all the territory south of that line, slavery was to be permitted; any territory, however, south of that line to have the privilege to permit or deny slavery by its constitution adopted preliminary to its admission as a state into the Union.

The amendment also provided that no territory should thereafter be acquired by the United States except for naval and other like depots, without the concurrence of a majority of the Senators from the states which "allowed involuntary servitude and a majority of the Senators from the states which prohibited that relation."

The amendment further provided that Congress should never have the power to abolish slavery in the states where it existed, nor in the District of Columbia without the consent of Maryland and Virginia. The slave trade in the District of Columbia and the foreign slave trade were forever prohibited, as was also the custom of bringing slaves into the District of Columbia for the purpose of their sale or distribution to other parts of the country. Congress should provide for the payment to the owner for any fugitive slave whose return was prevented by mobs or intimidation, after his arrest; and the elective franchise and the right to hold office were not to be accorded persons of the African race.[^[382]]

While no final action had been taken upon this report, with the accompanying amendment, by the Convention at the time of Virginia's secession, yet the votes taken in the Committee of the Whole on the various paragraphs of the report indicated that had not Virginia's secession been precipitated, the report would have been adopted by the body in substantially the form in which it came from the Committee on Federal Relations.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND COERCION

What would have been the attitude of the other states to the amendment to the constitution so proposed, must, of course, be a matter of conjecture, but the adoption by Congress, though controlled by the Republican Party, of the joint resolution providing for an amendment which should forever prohibit Congress from interfering with slavery in the states where it existed, and the enactment of the statute organizing the territories of Dakota, Colorado and Nevada without prohibition as to slavery, would seem to indicate that the principal provisions of the amendment proposed by Virginia would have met the approval of the requisite number of the states.

FORT SUMTER AND ITS OCCUPATION

As above indicated, the crucial point, with the group holding the balance of power in the Convention, was the position of the Federal Government upon the question of coercing the Cotton States. The employment of force to compel three millions of people to submit to a government not of their own choice, was at war with the Declaration of Independence and repugnant to thousands of the American people North as well as South. That the Federal Government would have been sustained in a bald invasion of the Southern States, may well be questioned. The situation, however, was not quite so embarrassing for the Government. Many of these states had formally ceded to the Union jurisdiction over parcels of land within their respective limits, upon which had been erected forts, post offices or custom houses. These constituted coigns of vantage, where the rights of the Federal Government were of a dignity higher, or at least more manifest, to the popular mind, than those rights which obtained over the whole area of the states or their citizens. Thus in the great drama of diplomacy and play for position which preceded the Civil War, the rights of the nation and of the states in these forts and buildings became matters of imminent moment. When South Carolina seceded, Fort Moultrie was occupied by Federal soldiers. She appointed commissioners to negotiate with the authorities at Washington for the withdrawal of the troops, and the settlement of all questions with respect to the fort and other like properties in the state. Later these troops were transferred by the Federal authorities to Fort Sumter. Upon the organization of the Southern Confederacy, commissioners from it were substituted for those appointed by South Carolina. President Lincoln refused to recognize the Southern Confederacy, or to treat with its representatives. Negotiations, however, semi-official in character, were instituted, and upon the reports which went out from these conferences men gauged the chances of peace or war. If Fort Sumter were evacuated, the prospects of peace would be enhanced. If the Federal Government should decide to hold the fort, and provision and strengthen its garrison, then war would be imminent. Upon these contingencies, stocks rose and fell, and the friends of peace took hope or lost heart.