In Virginia, the elections early in February 1861 for members of what came
to be called the Secession Convention produced a large majority of voters
and members who were opposed to secession. (So, too, in several other future
Confederate states.) And secession was voted down the first time it came up
in the Virginia convention. Not until after a war had actually begun and
Virginians had to decide which side to fight for did public opinion swerve
sharply in favor of fighting alongside the other southern states, which
meant that a good many convention members switched their votes to favor
secession.

On the efforts of the southern unionists to keep the border states in the
Union, see Dan Crofts's brilliant 1989 book, Reluctant Confederates: Upper
South Unionists in the Secession Crisis.

On the efforts of the southern secessionists to lure the border states into
the Confederacy, see Charles B. Dew's eye-opening 2001 book, Apostles of
Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War.

We may be missing an important aspect of the debates if we assume that
owners of slaves were more likely to support secession than people who did
not own slaves. Many people who owned no slaves had family members who did,
rented slaves from other people, or were engaged in economic activities
dependent on the slave economy. Economic motives may be more complex than we
realize.

Several members of the Virginia Convention of 1861 argued forcefully that
the best way to preserve chattel racial slavery was for Virginia to remain
in the Union and that a civil war would destroy slavery. On the second part
of their argument, it turns out they were right.

Other factors were at work, too. Many people took seriously the debates on
state rights regardless of whether they owned or leased slaves. If we
carefully read the newspapers, the private letters, and the speeches of
southerners during the winter of 1860-1861, we will see just how complicated
the calculus really was and that changing events changed the debate. As
Abraham Lincoln later stated about his own policies during the Civil War,
events guided him more than he guided them. I think that some southerners
might have felt the same way early in 1861.

This is a good topic for discussion, but it does not lend itself to simple
explanations.

$0.02 worth (U.S. currency) from,

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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