sent to the Roads with a flotilla of armed vessels. The insurgents then possessed Norfolk, and had erected a battery on Sewall's point at the mouth of the Elizabeth River, where, on the morning of the 20th of May, when Ward's vessels appeared in the Roads, there  were about two thousand Confederate soldiers. Ward opened the guns of his flag-ship (the Freeborn) upon the battery. It was soon silenced, and the insurgents were dispersed. Then Ward proceeded immediately up the Potomac toward Washington, after reporting to Commodore Stringham, and patrolled that important stream. At Aquia Creek, about sixty miles below Washington, he encountered some heavy batteries, and a sharp but indecisive engagement ensued on the first of June. Soon afterward, in an attack upon other batteries at Matthias's Point, the flotilla was repulsed, and Captain Ward was killed. At that place and vicinity the Confederates established batteries which defied the National vessels on those waters; and for many months, the Potomac, as a highway for supplies for the army near Washington, was effectively blockaded by them.
The Union element in the Virginia Secession Convention was chiefly from Western Virginia, a mountain district, where the slave-labor system had not been profitable; and the loyalty of the people there to the old flag gave the Virginia conspirators much uneasiness. At the very beginning the Confederates perceived the importance of holding possession of that region, and so control the Baltimore and Ohio Railway that traversed it, and connected Maryland with the teeming West. For that purpose troops were sent from Richmond to restrain the active patriotism of the people, when the latter flew to arms under the leadership of Colonel B. F. Kelley, a native of New Hampshire, who set up his standard near Wheeling, where an important political movement had already taken place which later divided the State.
Before the adjournment of the Convention at Richmond the inhabitants of Western Virginia perceived the necessity of making a bold stand for the Union and their own independence of the oligarchy that ruled the State in the interests of the slaveholders. This first meeting was held at Clarksburg, on the line of the Baltimore and Ohio railway, on the 22nd of April. John S. Carlisle, a member of the Convention then sitting at Richmond, offered a resolution at that meeting (which was adopted) calling a Convention of delegates at Wheeling on the 13th of May. Similar meetings were held at other places. One at Kingswood, Preston county, declared that the separation of Western from Eastern Virginia was essential to the maintenance of their liberties. They also resolved to elect a representative to sit in the National Congress; and at a mass Convention held at Wheeling on the 5th of May, it was resolved to sever all political connection with the conspirators at Richmond.
The Convention of delegates met at Wheeling on the 13th of May. The Naional flag was unfurled over the Custom-House there with appropriate demonstrations of loyalty; and in the Convention the chief topic of discussion was the division of the State and the formation of a new Commonwealth composed of forty or fifty counties of the mountain region. It was asserted in the Convention that the slave oligarchy eastward of the mountains, and in all the tide-water counties, wielded the political power of the State, and used it for the promotion of their great interest, in the levying of taxes, and in lightening their own burdens at the expense of the labor and thrift of the citizens of West Virginia. These considerations, and an innate love for the Union, produced such unanimity of sentiment that the labors of the secret emissaries of the conspirators, and of the open service of recruiting officers were almost fruitless in Western Virginia. The Convention itself was a unit in feeling and purpose; but it was too informal in its character to take decisive action upon the momentous question of a division of the State. So, after condemning the Ordinance of Secession, a resolution was adopted, calling a Provisional Convention, at the same place, on the 11th of June, unless the people should vote adversely to that Ordinance, at the appointed time.
The proceedings at Wheeling alarmed the conspirators. They expected an immediate revolt in that region; and Governor Letcher ordered Colonel Porterfield, who was in command of State troops at Grafton, to seize and carry away the arms at Wheeling belonging to the United States, and to use them in arming such men as might rally around his flag. He also told Porterfield that it was "advisable to cut off telegraphic communication between Wheeling and Washington, so that the disaffected at the former
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