In a message dated 9/3/2001 9:12:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Francis Pierpont's government had some support even in
 1865.  That alone tells us that there was a considerable range of
 commitment to the union vis-a-vis commitment to the state by the mid-19th
 century (as indeed there was in earlier eras as well), and that when
 circumstances forced individuals to make a hard choice, a rather
 significant number of Virginians in the Valley and trans-montane, and
 lesser numbers elsewhere, not only saw a contradiction between state and
 federal loyalties, but decided that their national identity was more
 important. >>

The issue of loyalty to the Union is ill supported by an example of the
Pierpont government. This was the "restored government" established by the
Wheeling Convention which served as a front for the legal fiction that
Virginia had approved the division of the state to create the new state of
West Virginia. It was elected by the counties that later became the state of
West Virginia and during the war operated in Alexandria behind the federal
lines. It moved to Richmond in 1865 when the city was occupied by Federal
troops. The issue of how to categorize loyalty to the Union before secession
is more difficult. The first secession vote in Virginia at the time the
initial seven states formed the Confederacy was approximately 50,000 for
secession, 100,000 against secession, so Virginia did not participate in the
formation. The General Assembly then passed a resolution that recognized the
constitutional right of a state to withdraw. When it was clear that Lincoln
would invade the South after Fort Sumter was attacked by South Carolina, the
vote was essentially reversed with approximately 100,000 voting to secede
with most of the opposition coming from the counties west of the Allegheny.
What is also missing from this analysis of loyalty is the distinction between
the attitudes of Virginians prior to the war and then after the war. Virginia
was one of the last states to be "readmitted" under the Reconstruction Acts
but a long and bitter period followed and it is the oral legacy of that
experience that older residents today in the South remember from their family
stories. Of course, during that period the heritage of the "lost cause" was
set in place. Paradoxically, even though Virginia was now in the Union, its
anti Union fervor influenced the remembrance of its prewar attitudes.

_____________________________________________________________________
                                                Richard E. Dixon
                                                 Attorney at Law
                                              4122 Leonard Drive
                                               Fairfax, VA 22030
                                     703-691-0770 fax 703-691-0978
_____________________________________________________________________

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