Confederate Veteran Volume 20, No. 4 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 Excerpt: ...on January 19 was an invitation to all the States "willing to unite with Virginia in an earnest effort to adjust the present unhappy controversies in the spirit' in which the Constitution was originally framed, to consider and, if practicable, to agree upon some suitable adjustment." The basis proposed was the Crittenden resolution, with slight modifications. In answer to this invitation, South Carolina sent word that she had "no further interest in the Constitution of the United States." It was, in part, with reference to the Peace Conference that Lowell spoke in this wise: "The usual panacea of palaver was tried, Congress doing its best to add to the general confusion of thought." (Atlantic Monthly, June, 1861, p. 758.) Nevertheless, the conference was an honestly intended protest on the part of the Border States against secession. Virginia instigated it, and it showed a lingering hope of an avoidance of separation on the part of North Carolina and Tennessee. Their judgment and cooler reasoning called for the preservation of the Union. But the mainsprings of action lie ever in the emotions. Virginia's secession, April 17, followed fast on the fall of Fort Sumter, the conservative opposition element being overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and high feeling of the secessionists' attack. The prompt result of the formation of the northwestern counties into what later became the State of West Virginia showed the strength of the opposition to secession in that quarter. A few days after Virginia's secession, a convention in Arkansas, which first had voted in opposition to secession, reassembled and with but one dissenting vote framed an ordinance of secession on May 6. The records of this convention show that Arkansas had not at first re...