History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia

by James William Head

Following the resolute lead of the other southern States, the legislature of Virginia, on January 14, 1861, authorized a State convention to consider the advisability of secession, and the members elected in pursuance thereof met in the capitol, at Richmond, at 12 o'clock a.m., on Wednesday, the 13th day of the February following. They constituted what was perhaps the ablest body of men that ever assembled in the State, and the friends and foes of secession were alike represented. The delegates from Loudoun were John Janney and John A. Carter, both of whom had represented her in the constitutional convention of 1850,51.

Roll call was followed by the election of a permanent chairman, Mr. Janney, of Loudoun, receiving a majority of the whole number of votes cast. Two of the members were then designated a committee to wait upon the president of the convention to inform him of his election and conduct him to his seat. Whereupon he addressed the convention as follows:[29]

[29] The unabridged publication in this work of Mr. Janney's speech of acceptance has seemed specially appropriate. It is the plea of a Loudoun man for conservative action boldly put forth at a time when men's passions were inflamed almost beyond human credulity, and while he himself was the presiding officer of a body which had met to decide the destiny of the Old Dominion and whose deliberations were to be watched with breathless interest by the people of both hemispheres.

"Gentlemen of the Convention: I tender you my sincere and cordial thanks for the honor you have bestowed upon me by calling me to preside over the deliberations of the most important convention that has assembled in this State since the year 1776.

"I am without experience in the performance of the duties to which you have assigned me, with but little knowledge of parliamentary law and the rules which are to govern our proceedings, and I have nothing to promise you but fidelity and impartiality. Errors I know I shall commit, but these will be excused by your kindness, and promptly corrected by your wisdom.

"Gentlemen, it is now almost 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 which she could not disregard, to save the monuments of her own glory. Her honored son who sleeps at Mount Vernon, the political mecca of all future ages, presided over the body which framed the Constitution; and another of her honored sons, whose brow was adorned with a civic wreath which will never fade, and who now reposes in Orange county, was its principal architect, and one of its ablest expounders—and, in the administration of the government, five of her citizens have been elected to the chief magistracy of the Republic.

"It can not be that a Government thus founded and administered can fail, without the hazard of bringing reproach, either upon the wisdom of our fathers, or upon the intelligence, patriotism, and virtue of their descendants. It is not my purpose to indicate the course which this body will probably pursue, or the measures it may be proper to adopt. The opinions of today may all be changed to-morrow. Events are thronging upon us, and we must deal with them as they present themselves.

"Gentlemen, there is a flag which for nearly a century has been borne in triumph through the battle and the breeze, and which now floats over this capitol, on which there is a star representing this ancient Commonwealth, and my earnest prayer, in which I know every member of this body will cordially unite, is that it may remain there forever, provided always that its lustre is untarnished. We demand for our own citizens perfect equality of rights with those of the empire States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, but we ask for nothing that we will not cheerfully concede to those of Delaware and Rhode Island.