produced the wildest excitement in and out of the Convention. "The war has begun; what will Virginia do?" asked Governor Pickens, by telegraph. Governor Letcher replied, "The Convention will determine." That determination was speedily made. When, on Monday the 15th of April, the President's call for troops to suppress the rising rebellion was read in the Convention, that body was shaken by a fierce tempest of contending passions. Reason and judgment fled, and the stoutest Union men bent before the storm like reeds in a gale. Yet when the Convention adjourned that evening, and the question was pending, Shall Virginia secede at once? there was a strong majority in favor of Union.
The conspirators were now desperate. They perceived that the success of their grand scheme, the seizure of the National capital, depended upon the action of Virginia at that crisis. Richmond was then in the hands of an excited populace ready to do the bidding of the leading politicians, and the latter resolved to act with a high hand. They perceived that the absence of ten Union members from the Convention would give a majority for secession. Accordingly ten of them were waited upon by the conspirators on that evening, and informed that they must choose between three modes of action, namely, to vote for secession, absent themselves, or be hanged. They saw that resistance to these desperate men would be vain, and they absented themselves. These violent proceedings awed other Union men in the Convention, and on Wednesday the 17th of April, 1861, an Ordinance of Secession was adopted. Unlike the conventions of other "seceding" States, it referred the Ordinance to the people to vote on at a future day. But this show of respect for the popular will was not sincere. A despatch was immediately sent to Jefferson Davis, telling him that Virginia was "out of the Union"; and within twenty-four hours after the passage of the Ordinance, and while it was yet under cover of an injunction of secrecy, Governor Letcher set in motion expeditions to capture the Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and the Navy-yard at Gosport, opposite Norfolk, preparatory to the seizure of the National capital. Davis sent his lieutenant, Alexander H. Stephens, from Montgomery to Richmond, to urge the Convention to violate its faith pledged to the people, and to formally annex Virginia to the Confederacy without their consent. This was done within a week after the passage of the Ordinance of Secession, and a month before the day appointed for the people to vote upon it.
Stephens arrived in Richmond on the evening of the 23rd of April. The Convention appointed a commission, with ex-President Tyler at its head, to treat with this representative of the "Confederacy" for the annexation of Virginia to that league. The act was accomplished the next day. The "treaty" provided that "the whole military force and military operations" of Virginia, "offensive and defensive, in the impending conflict with the United States," should be under the chief control of Jefferson Davis. Then they adopted and ratified the "Provisional Constitution of the Confederacy;" appointed delegates to the "Confederate Congress;" authorized the banks of the State to suspend specific payments; made
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