Secession Crisis: In Two Virginia Communities

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Historical Background:

Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election of 1861 by carrying all states of the North and Northwest. Not one slaveholding state, however, went for Lincoln. Within six weeks of Lincoln's election, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas passed secession ordinances and joined to form the Confederate States of America. During this period, the people of the Upper South states of Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas, and Kentucky debated their future, and leaders in Washington engaged in a futile pursuit of a compromise that would prevent the secession of the border states and bring the already seceded states back into the union.

Virginia's electoral votes had been won by Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Bell had an especially strong showing in Augusta County. After Lincoln's election, Augusta's political leaders urged moderation, and at Virginia's convention on secession, Augusta's delegates resisted moves to join the seceded states. There was an important qualification to Augusta County's unionism, however. Most leaders, although calling for Virginia to remain in the Union, insisted that secession was legal and that the federal government must not use force against the seceded states. Furthermore, some Augusta politicians argued that Virginia should stay in the union only on the condition of specific federal concessions to southern demands. In light of Augusta's tenuous unionism, then, Lincoln's April 1861 decision to fortify U.S. Fort Sumter in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor was enormously important. Even more significant would be Lincoln's call for troops to put down the rebellion after Confederate cannons fired on Sumter.