BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Richmond -- State Capitol -- Exhibit: Struggle to Decide

VA -- Richmond -- State Capitol -- Exhibit: Struggle to Decide:

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Description of Pictures: The Struggle to Decide: Virginia's Secession Crisis
An exhibition presented by the Library of Virginia
Monday, December 13, 2010—Saturday, October 29, 2011 [but apparently held over quite awhile since I saw it in June, 2012]
In the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president in 1860, and the beginning of the secession crisis in December 1860, Virginia had a fateful choice to make: would it remain in, or secede from, the United States of America? In Virginia, the General Assembly called for a state convention to act for Virginia during the crisis. Meeting in February 1861, the 152 men elected to the convention faced the terrible task of deciding the fate of Virginia, and perhaps the nation.
The Struggle to Decide exhibition examines the actions taken by convention delegates and the governor that had a profound effect on Richmond and the Virginia State Capitol.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SCAPSD_120603_001.JPG: The Struggle to Decide Virginia's Secession Crisis An exhibition at the Virginia State Capitol Visitor Center Presented by the Library of Virginia Sponsored by the General Assembly of Virginia December 13, 2010 - October 29, 2011 [Note that it was already June 2012 and the exhibit was still there.] In the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president in 1860, and the beginning of the secession crisis in December 1860, Virginia had a fateful choice to make: would it remain in, or secede from, the United States of America? In Virginia, the General Assembly called for a state convention to act for Virginia during the crisis. Meeting in February 1861, the 152 men elected to the convention faced the terrible task of deciding the fate of Virginia, and perhaps the nation. The Struggle to Decide exhibition examines the actions taken by convention delegates and the governor that had a profound effect on Richmond and the Virginia State Capitol.
2. SCAPSD_120603_010.JPG: Richmond in 1861: American City, Southern Place Delegates to the Virginia Convention of 1861 convened in a thriving city of nearly 40,000 people. Visitors explored alleys, ravines, and cobblestone streets littered with factories, shops, homes, wharves, and outbuildings. Industrial smokestacks belched coal smoke into the air within blocks of outdoor markets that sold the produce of Virginia's farms. Flour mills, tobacco factories, and the largest ironworks in the South depended on thousands of free immigrant workers and enslaved African American laborers. Landed gentry, city merchants, Irish and German workmen, free blacks, and enslaved people mingled in busy city streets and quiet neighborhoods. On any day, visitors to Richmond might see railroad trains steaming up Broad Street, merchandise from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York unloaded at the city docks, or enslaved African Americans being exported to rapidly expanding plantations in the Deep South. Virginia's capital city epitomized Virginia's divided allegiances. Richmond embraced economic ties with the North and simultaneous provided slaves to the Cotton Kingdom of the lower South.
3. SCAPSD_120603_015.JPG: The Struggle to Decide: All eyes were on Virginia during the winter of 1860-1861, and leaders of both the United States and Confederate governments understood Virginia's pivotal role in shaping opinion on Union and Secession. Lower South states sent commissioners to convince Virginians that their fates were tied to the slaveholding South, and U.S. government officials courted Virginia leaders in hopes of brokering a compromise. Virginia's decision in April 1861 fundamentally shaped the course of all subsequent events. Sectional tensions were unusually high during the 1860 presidential election. Four candidates and two new political parties had campaigned vigorously for votes. On December 5, 1860, following the closest presidential election ever held in Virginia's history, the members of the state's electoral college met in the Capitol to cast Virginia's electoral votes for Constitutional Unionist candidates John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts. Abraham Lincoln won the election with less than 40 percent of the national popular vote. In response, South Carolina seceded from the Union in December, triggering a national crisis. By February 1861, six more Southern States had seceded and sent delegates to a southern Congress meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, to form the Confederate States of America. [If the name Edward Everett sounds familiar, he's most remembered today as the guy who spoke for more than two hours at Gettysburg national cemetery before turning the podium over to Abraham Lincoln for a few short words that became immortal. Everett campaigned extensively for Lincoln in the 1864 contest and, exhausted, died on January 15, 1865.]
4. SCAPSD_120603_022.JPG: On January 7, 1861, the General Assembly of Virginia convened in special session and called for an election of delegates to a state convention to act for Virginia. For the next five years, Virginia's Capitol Square neighborhood was a bustling hive of extraordinary activity. On February 4, Virginia voters elected 152 convention delegates and also voted to require that the convention, if it decided that Virginia should secede from the Union, submit its decision to a popular referendum for acceptance or rejection. The convention first met in the Capitol on February 13, 1861, but, because the General Assembly was then in session, moved to the Mechanics Institute nearby until the second week of April. The convention returned to the Capitol on April 8 after the General Assembly adjourned. Unlike state conventions in the lower South that met and speedily voted to secede, the Virginia Convention remained in session for two and a half months and kept Virginia in the Union. Moderate delegates attempted to enlist the other upper South slave states that remains in the Union to find a compromise that would encourage the states that had seceded to return and restore the Union. When on April 4 the convention considered a resolution on secession, the motion failed 90 to 45.
5. SCAPSD_120603_025.JPG: Events quickly sharpened the debate. The surrender of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, on April 13 and President Abraham Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress what he described as a rebellion against the authority of the federal government changed the debate radically. The question that Virginians then faced was no longer whether secession was legal or wise or in the state's interest. Virginians now had to decided which side to take: Should they fight as part of the United States against other Southerners and slave owners or join with other Southerners and slave owners against the United States? On April 17, the Virginia Convention adopted an ordinance of secession by a margin of 88 to 55. Virginia was admitted to the Confederate States of America on May 7, and on May 23 a majority of Virginia's voters approved the ordinance and severed legal ties to the United States of America.
6. SCAPSD_120603_037.JPG: (Blue) Residence of Delegates Who Voted Against Secession on April 4, 1861 (Yellow) Residence of Delegates Who Voted For Secession on April 4, 1861 On April 4, 1861, the convention rejected a motion to secede by a vote of 90 to 45. The importance of slavery in the different regions of Virginia influenced the political opinions of convention delegates when they voted on the secession resolution that day. Plotting the places of residence of the delegates on an 1861 map showing the distribution of slaves in Virginia illustrates that the strongest support for secession came from areas where slaves were most numerous and that opposition to secession came from regions where slaves were less numerous. No delegate in the Virginia Convention of 1861 favored abolishing slavery, and some opponents of secession feared that secession and civil war would endanger slavery in Virginia.
7. SCAPSD_120603_042.JPG: (Blue) Residence of Delegates Who Voted Against Secession on April 17, 1861 (Yellow) Residence of Delegates Who Voted For Secession on April 17, 1861 On April 17, 1861, the Virginia Convention voted 88 to 55 in favor of secession. That vote took place when civil war was breaking out, and the delegates had to decide which side to take. Plotting the places of residence of the delegates on an 1861 map showing the distribution of slaves in Virginia illustrated that most of the 55 delegates who opposed secession resided in the greater Ohio Valley, in or near the Shenandoah Valley, or near the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. Several of those delegates later changed their votes, and many of them signed to Ordinance of Secession.
8. SCAPSD_120603_045.JPG: Who Were the Delegates? The 152 men elected to the Virginia Convention represented all 149 counties and three independent cities. The members included one railroad executive, one newspaperman, one banker, one Methodist minister, and four medical doctors; fifteen men engaged in manufacturing or mercantile pursuits; and fewer than two dozen men who were primarily farmers or planters. Of the state's great planters owning many scores of slaves, only James Coles Bruce, of Halifax County, was elected. More than two-thirds of the delegates, 105 of them, were or had been practicing attorneys (and one of them was a professor of law at the University of Virginia), although many of those also owned farms or plantations or had substantial investments in banks or other businesses. The attorneys, the physicians, and several of the other members were graduates of or had attended universities. Almost half of the members were graduates of or had attended universities. Almost half of the members had previous experience in the General Assembly and fourteen had served in the U.S. Congress. Great planters and ordinary farmers were such a small minority that the convention could not in any way pretend to represent the agricultural elite that had once dominated Virginia's politics. A convention of delegates in any of the free states probably would have had a similar composition. In the Midst of a Revolution: Virginia Convention delegates entered a city that for many seemed strange and intimidating. Visitors remarked on the revolutionary character of the times. Delegates were subjected to constant political pressure from pro-Secession and pro-Union advocates. Union and Secession crowds called on delegates at their hotels to offer cheers or hisses. The city's meeting halls and churches rang with fiery rhetoric and political sloganeering, while residents and businesses flew U.S. or Confederate flags to declare their allegiances. Local militia units paraded in the streets with military bands and proudly carried ceremonial flags given by patriotic ladies who implored citizen soldiers to do their duty. Political activists convened their own unofficial conventions to proclaim their positions -- meetings that often devolved into chaos. Men and women eagerly crowded the public galleries of the Virginia Convention to hear and influence the ongoing debate. Some pro-Secession radicals made secret plans to force secession on Virginia if the Virginia Convention failed to endorse disunion.
9. SCAPSD_120603_048.JPG: John Tyler: John Tyler (1790-1862), of Charles City County, was elected vice president of the United States in 1840 but served one month in the office in 1841 before becoming president when William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly shortly after his inauguration. In January 1861, a few weeks after South Carolina seceded, the General Assembly called for a national Peace Conference to prepare compromise proposals that would reunite the country. The assembly appointed Tyler and four other distinguished Virginians to represent the state at the Peace Conference, which met in Washington D.C. Delegates from fourteen free states and seven slave states (but none from the seven states that had seceded) elected Tyler president of the conference. He disapproved of the report that the conference submitted to Congress late in February 1861. Largely written by the delegates from free states, the proposals did not adequately protect the rights of slave owners in the territories, in Tyler's opinion, and offered nothing substantial to bring the lower South states back into the Union. He voted against the conference's proposals, which the U.S. Senate rejected. On February 4, 1861, voters in Charles City, James City, and New Kent Counties elected Tyler to represent them in the convention that the General Assembly called to act for Virginia during the secession crisis. On April 4, Tyler voted for secession which the convention defeated by a margin of 90 to 45 a motion to submit an ordinance of secession to the voters for ratification. He voted for secession again on April 17, 1861. when it was passed by a vote of 88 to 55. On June 21, one week after Tyler signed the Virginia Ordinance of Secession, the convention elected him to represent the state in the unicameral Provisional Congress of the Confederacy, and in November 1861 he won election to the Confederate House of Representatives. John Tyler died in a Richmond hotel on January 18, 1862, before he could be sworn in. His body lay in state in the Hall of Congress at the Virginia State Capitol.
10. SCAPSD_120603_052.JPG: Allen Taylor Caperton: Representing Monroe County in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850-1851, Allen Taylor Caperton (1810-1876) voted for universal white manhood suffrage and other democratic reforms, such as popular election of the governor and other officers, that many western reformers supporter. Owner of a large amount of land and for a westerner a large number of enslaved laborers, Caperton represented Monroe County in the Senate of Virginia in the 1840s and in the House of Delegates in the 1840s and again in the 1850s. On February 4, 1861, Monroe County voters elected Caperton and his brother-in-law John Echols to represent them in the convention called to act for Virginia during the secession crisis. Both men were well known as opponents of secession when they were elected, and on April 4, 1861, when the convention first voted on the question, Caperton and Echols voted with the majority, which defeated secession by a vote of 90 to 45. Like many other opponents of secession, Caperton changed his mind only after Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, in South Carolina, and President Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers to put down the rebellion. When the question was no longer whether secession was wise or in Virginia's interest, but which side Virginia should take in the war that was about to begin, Caperton voted for secession on April 17. In explaining his vote, he declared, "War is upon us, and we are compelled to make the best of it." Caperton fully supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. In January 1863 the General Assembly elected him to the Confederate Senate, in which he served continuously until March 1865. After the war ended and Caperton's Monroe County was a part of West Virginia, he worked to develop the new state's coal and timber industries and he represented West Virginia in the United States Senate from March 1875 until he died in Washington, DC in the summer of 1876.
11. SCAPSD_120603_055.JPG: John Snyder Carlile: John Snyder Carlile (1817-1878) had been a member of the Senate of Virginia, the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850-1851, and the US House of Representatives. A Democrat until the 1850s, in 1855 he was the only Virginia candidate of the American Party (also called the Know Nothing Party) ever to win election to Congress. On February 4, 1861, Harrison County's voters elected Carlile to the Virginia Convention. Carlile quickly emerged as one of the most outspoken and controversial of the western Unionists. He denounced secession as treason. He argued forcefully that slavery in Virginia was safer if the state remained in the Union than if it seceded. Carlile voted against secession on April 4 and again on April 17, when it passed by a vote of 88 to 55. By then, Carlile had become so unpopular with Secessionists in Richmond that he feared for his personal safety, and shortly after the second vote he fled the city and returned home to Clarksburg. He issued a call for loyal Union men from western Virginia to meet in Wheeling in mid-May. Carlile was the principal draftsman of two declarations that the Wheeling convention addressed to the voters of northwestern Virginia advising them to vote against secession in the referendum of May 23 and to select delegates to a second convention. The June convention declared that state officials in Richmond had forfeited their offices by joining Virginia to the Confederacy, and it replaced them. On July 4, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln declared that the government in Wheeling was the legitimate, loyal government of the state. Elected to the US Senate on July 9, 1861, Carlile represented Virginia until West Virginia entered the Union in June 1863. More than any other man, Carlile helped create the new state, but he voted against the statehood bill because Congress amended it to require that West Virginia abolish slavery. John S. Carlile died in Clarksburg in 1878.
12. SCAPSD_120603_059.JPG: Jubal Anderson Early: Jubal Anderson Early (1816-1894) was a graduate of the United States Military Academy and served in the army's campaign against the Seminoles in the 1830s and during the war with Mexico in the 1840s. Between the two wars he practiced law in his native Franklin County, which he represented in the House of Delegates for one year early in the 1840s. On February 4, 1861, Franklin County's voters elected Early to the convention called to act for the state. Early opposed secession, which he stated was not in the interest of the state or its slaveholders, and supported proposals to enlist the upper South slave states that had not secede in a joint effort to restore the Union. He also condemned the poor condition of Virginia's militia and declared that its officers were unqualified for command, which he sited as practical reasons why Virginia should not secede and involve that state in a civil war. Early voted against secession no April 4 and again on April 17, 1861, when it passed. Like most opponents of secession in Virginia, Early accepted secession after the convention's second vote. He served on the the convention's Committee on Military Affairs and worked hard to improve the defense of the state. Promoted to lieutenant general in May 1864, Early was popular with his soldiers but had stormy relationships with his subordinate officers and also at times with his superiors. He served until the end of the war. After the war, Early spent time in Mexico and Canada before returning to Virginia, where he resumed the practice of law. He also became one of the most insistent defenders of the Confederacy. He disparaged the reputations of several Confederate generals in order to defend and enlarge the reputation of General Robert E. Lee. Early's defense of the Confederacy and of Lee played down the role of slavery in the section and secession crises that led to the Civil War. Jubal Early died at his home in Lynchburg in 1894.
13. SCAPSD_120603_062.JPG: Henry Alexander Wise: Henry Alexander Wise (1807-1876) was elected governor of Virginia in 1855. He unsuccessfully advocated for economic diversification and increased industrialization to reduce the state's dependence of slave labor. John Brown's October 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry intensified sectional tension and mistrust. Wise admired Brown's commitment to his principles and spoke often of his own dislike of slavery, but he also despised abolitionism. Wise moved to Princess Anne County early in 1860. On February 4, 1861, the voters there elected him to represent the county in the convention. Wise was one of the most outspoken members of the convention and engaged in debate almost every day he was in attendance. Although he spoke frequently about his love for the Union and his devotion to the principles of the founders, he identified Virginia's interests with those of the lower South slave states. Wise voted for secession on April 4, when it failed by a vote of 90 to 45. Even though he was a private citizen, Wise quietly gave orders to volunteer militiamen to seize the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry and the United States Navy Yard near Norfolk, effectively putting Virginia in a state of war with the United States. The convention retroactively approved the two military operations, about which Governor John Letcher, the commander of the Virginia militia, knew nothing beforehand and could do nothing to reverse afterward. On April 17, 1861, Wise again voted for secession, which passed by a vote of 88 to 55. Shortly before the war, he placed a large pistol on his desk and made a terrifying speech in favor of secession. Wise offered his services to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, who appointed Wise a brigadier general in the Confederate army. Wise commanded a mixed legion of infantry, cavalry, and artillery in western Virginia during the remainder of 1861 and commanded troops defending the North Carolina coast from 1862 to 1864. He took part in the defense of Petersburg during the siege of 1864-1865 and surrendered at Appomattox Court House in April. Henry A. Wise practiced law in Richmond from 1865 until his death in 1876.
14. SCAPSD_120603_069.JPG: Christopher Yancy Thomas: Christopher Yancy Thomas (1818-1879) was a practicing attorney in Martinsville when he won election to the Senate of Virginia for the 1859-1863 term representing Henry, Patrick, and Franklin Counties. From January 7 to April 2, 1861, he was a member of the General Assembly that called for a national Peace Conference to resolve the secession crisis and for election of delegates for a Virginia Convention to act for the state during the crisis. Peyton Gravely represented Henry County in that convention, and Thomas frequently listened to the debates in the nearby Mechanics Institute and discussed the evolving crisis with Gravely and other members of the convention. Both Gravely and Thomas initially opposed Virginia's secession. Throughout the long and evolving crisis, Thomas corresponded with family members and business associates, exchanges of letter that preserve valuable information about political conditions in Henry County and how men and women made up their minds on the critical issues as conditions changed. Through these letters, he and members of his family learned how the secession crisis interrupted business relationships between Martinsville residents and merchants in Baltimore, how enthusiasm for secession waxed and waned during the early months of 1861, and how hard choices were made when the future of the state and the nation was uncertain. Thomas completed his term in the Senate of Virginia in 1863 and also served as commonwealth's attorney of Henry County during the Civil War. He was a member of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1867-1868 and also served in the House of Delegates for the 1869-1871 term, the first in which African Americans took part. He was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives in 1872, but challenged the vote count and was seated for the remainder of the 1873-1875 term. Christopher Yancy Thomas died in Martinsville in 1879.
15. SCAPSD_120603_074.JPG: John Quincy Marr: John Quincy Marr (1825-1861) graduated from the Virginia Military Institute second in the class of 1846 and taught mathematics there during the 1846-1847 term. He then returned to his native Fauquier County and practiced law in Warrenton. Except for serving one term as county sheriff, he had no political career before 1861. On February 4, 1861, the voters in Fauquier County elected him to represent them in the Virginia Convention called to act for the state during the Secession Crisis. Marr seldom spoke during the debates, but in mid-February he announced that he not only opposed secession for Virginia, he also opposed federal coercion of the states that had already seceded. Marr voted against secession on April 4, 1861, when a motion to secede failed by a vote of 90 to 45. During the critical days in the middle fo April, a family emergency required Marr to leave Richmond and return to Warrenton. He was still in Warrenton on April 17 when the convention voted 88 to 55 in favor of secession. When he returned to the convention on April 30, the day before it adjourned, Marr requested "the privilege of recording my vote for the ordinance of secession." Following adjournment on May 1, Marr traveled back to Warrenton and assumed command as captain of the Warrenton Rifles. The company was at Fairfax Court House on June 1, 1861, when he was shot and killed in an encounter with United States volunteers. Marr was the first Virginia officer to die in the Civil War. Q. Did a dead man sign the Virginia Ordinance of Secession? A. Yes and no. Although he voted against secession on April 4, John Quincy Marr changed his mind by April 17. He was killed on June 1, 1861, before the official copy of the Ordinance of Secession was presented to the delegates for signing. The convention instructed the printer to add his signature to reprints of the original document. This is how archivists are able to determine which is the original copy of the Ordinance of Secession: it does not include Marr's name.
16. SCAPSD_120603_078.JPG: Virginia Ordinance of Secession
17. SCAPSD_120603_083.JPG: John Tyler's signature on the Virginia Ordinance of Secession
18. SCAPSD_120603_086.JPG: The Virginia Ordinance of Secession talks about the "oppression of the Southern slaveholding States."
19. SCAPSD_120603_090.JPG: The Strange Story of the Copies of the Ordinance of Secession: The Ordinance of Secession that the Virginia Convention adopted by a vote of 88 to 55 in the Capitol on April 17, 1861, and that a majority of the state's voters ratified in a referendum on May 23 of that year was written in plain, uninspired, legalistic language, but the delegates who adopted it knew that it was one of the most important documents in the state's history, and they treated it accordingly. Late in April, at the request of the delegates, the convention's secretary inscribed the text on a parchment for the members to sign. President John Janney, who had spoken and voted against secession, signed the parchment, as did ninety-seven other delegates. A few men had left town and did not sign, and several members who had opposed secession did not sign it either. That parchment, through a curious chain of events, came into the possession of Secretary of State William H. Seward in May 1865 and is now among the Department of State's records in the National Archives and Records Administration. Following adjournment of the convention on May 1, the secretary enrolled all of the ordinances and resolutions that the convention adopted on formal parchment for the president to sign. That was how acts of the assembly were officially recorded and preserved. Janney and two of the five delegates appointed by the convention to authenticate the texts signed those parchments, which are in the archives of Virginia at the Library of Virginia. After voters ratified the ordinance, the convention reconvened and late in May had William Flegenheimer, a Richmond educator and noted penman, prepare a beautiful parchment edition of the Ordinance of Secession for the ceremonial signing session. Delegates began signing on June 14, 1861. Not all of the delegates who voted for secession on April 17 signed the ordinance. Some delegates had resigned for personal reasons or to enter the army, while others were expelled for taking part in conventions in Wheeling intended to restore Virginia to the Union. Their successors in some instances signed the parchment, which bears a total of 142 signatures. Flegenheimer's parchment disappeared from Richmond at the end of the Civil War when Charles W. Bullis, a United States soldier from New York, carried it home with him. It remained in his family until December 1929, when they returned it with affidavits attesting to its provenance to the Virginia State Library, where it was authenticated and accessioned as part of records of the Virginia Convention of 1861. In June 1861, the convention authorized the Richmond lithographic studio of Lewis Hoyer and Charles L. Ludwig to print 200 copies of the Flegenheimer parchment. The delegates also authorized the lithographers to insert a facsimile of the signature of John Quincy Marr into their copy. He had signed the April parchment but been killed in an engagement at Fairfax Court House on June 1, 1861. The rare surviving copies of the Hoyer and Ludwig lithograph of the Virginia Ordinance of Secession consequently include Marr's signature halfway down the sixth column of autograph signatures. About 1873, Charles L. Ludwig published a less elegant copy of the ordinance, and the Richmond lithographers William E. Simons and William H. Keiningham also published a copy derived from the original Hoyer and Ludwig lithograph. The Simons and Keiningham lithograph is of a different size and is not so well executed as the original. Some copies of the Simons and Keiningham lithograph evidently became the property of the West and Johnston stationery shop in Richmond about 1876. West and Johnson stamped their name on the lower left corner of their copies of the Simons and Keiningham lithograph.
20. SCAPSD_120603_094.JPG: Robert Edward Lee Robert Edward Lee (1807-1870) was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a career army officer. Lee had distinguished himself during the war with Mexico in the 1840s and was superintendent of the US Military Academy from 1852 to 1855. On leave at his home, Arlington, near Washington DC, in October 1859, Lee hastened to Harpers Ferry to command the US Marines who captured John Brown following the raid on the United States arsenal there. Lee deplored secession and dreaded the prospect of civil war. Many Southern military officers resigned when their states seceded from the Union. On April 18, the day after the Virginia Convention voted to secede, Lee declined an offer to take command of the United States Army and on April 20 very reluctantly resigned from the army. He promised General Winfield Scott that "Save in defence of my native State, I never desire again to draw my sword." At the invitation of the governor and the Virginia Convention, Lee traveled to Richmond, where, in the House of Delegates on April 23, 1861, he accepted a commission as major general and commander-in-chief of the military forces of Virginia. Confirmed a brigadier general in the Confederate army on May 14, 1861, Lee commanded in western Virginia and on the coast of South Carolina. He took command of the Confederate army in Virginia on June 1, 1862, and immediately renamed it the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee became commander-in-chief of the Confederate army in February 1865 during the siege of Petersburg. He surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Later in 1865, Lee accepted the presidency of Washington College, in Lexington, and urged his fellow Southerners to reconcile themselves to defeat and work for a better future. Robert Edward Lee died in Lexington on October 12, 1870. In his honor, the college was later renamed Washington and Lee University. Q: What's wrong with this picture? A: Sculptor Rudolph Evans based his 1932 statue of Robert E Lee on an 1863 photograph of Lee in uniform. In fact, when Lee accepted command of the Virginia forces in April 1861, he wore civilian clothes.
21. SCAPSD_120603_098.JPG: One Capitol, Two Governments: Shortly after Virginia seceded, Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army and traveled to Richmond. On April 23, in the State Capitol, Lee took command of the state's defense forces. On that same day the vice president of the Confederate States of America, Alexander Hamilton Stephens, addressed the convention, encouraging Virginia to join the Confederacy. The convention agreed to cooperate with the Confederate States on April 25, invited the Confederate government to make Richmond its national capital on April 27, and elected Virginia's representatives to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America on April 29. The unicameral Provisional Congress met for the first time in the Capitol on July 20, 1861, one day before Confederate forces routed Union forces at Manassas Junction, in northeastern Virginia.
22. SCAPSD_120603_100.JPG: In October 1861, the Old State Chamber was modified and enlarged to become the Confederate "Hall of Congress". The displaced Virginia Senate moved to a chamber in the northeast corner of the third floor above the Old House Chamber. In November 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress reassembled in the "Hall of Congress" (Old Senate Chamber) and the Virginia Convention of 1861 reassembled for a final session in the Old House Chamber. In the first week of December, both houses of the Virginia Assembly reconvened at the Capitol, which was already crowded with visitors and members of the Confederate Congress and the Virginia Convention of 1861. In February 1862 the Confederate Congress became a bicameral body. The Confederate Congress became a bicameral body. The Confederate Senate met in a renovated chamber in the northwest corner on the third floor, next to the Virginia Senate. The Confederate House of Representatives began meeting in the "Hall of Congress" on the same floor as the Virginia House of Delegates, an arrangement that continued into March 1865. Sessions of the State Assembly and of Congress frequently overlapped. Between July 1861 and March 1865 there were at least 363 days when the State and Confederate legislatures were in simultaneous session (general December until March). On more than one occasion, the Virginia House and Senate extended invitations to their Confederate counterparts to meet in the larger state chambers after the Virginia Assembly adjourned.
23. SCAPSD_120603_111.JPG: Women couldn't vote or join the army, but they expressed their support by sewing flags and banners for the troops, by providing clothes for young men as they went off to war, and by writing letters. A sewing kit, called a housewife, was an essential part of a soldier's equipment.
24. SCAPSD_120603_118.JPG: Letter, George H. Thomas, New York Hotel, to Governor John Letcher, 12 March 1861 (reproduction) Governor John Letcher wrote George Henry Thomas, a Virginian and an 1840 graduate of the US Military Academy, to ask if Thomas would be willing to resign his commission in the US Army if he were offered the post of chief of ordinance for Virginia forces. Thomas politely declined and became one of the Union's ablest generals. Who was George Henry Thomas? Born in Southampton County in 1816, George Henry Thomas graduated from the US Military Academy in 1840. He served in the US Army and was an instructor at West Point for three years. At the time of Letcher's question, Thomas was a major. In his reply to the governor, Thomas wrote that, "it is not my wish to leave the Service of the United States as long as it is honorable for me to remain in it, and therefore as long as my native State Va. remains in the Union it is my purpose to remain in the Army." He served in the Union army throughout the Civil War and was one of the most successful and distinguished generals. His family disowned him, and he was buried in the state of New York.
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (VA -- Richmond -- State Capitol -- Interior Images) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2015_VA_Richmond_CapI: VA -- Richmond -- State Capitol -- Interior Images (3 photos from 2015)
- 2015_VA_Richmond_CapEC: VA -- Richmond -- State Capitol -- Exhibit: Eye on the Capitol (55 photos from 2015)
- 2012_VA_Richmond_CapI: VA -- Richmond -- State Capitol -- Interior Images (262 photos from 2012)
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2012 photos: Equipment this year: My mainstays were the Fuji S100fs, Nikon D7000, and the new Fuji X-S1. I also used an underwater Fuji XP50 and a Nikon D600. The first three cameras all broke this year and had to be repaired. Trips this year: three Civil War Trust conferences (Shepherdstown, WV, Richmond, VA, and Williamsburg, VA), a week-long family reunion cruise of the Caribbean, another week-long family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with lots of in-transit time in Ohio and Indiana), and my 7th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including side trips to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, etc). Ego strokes: I had a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. I had a photograph of the George Segal San Francisco Holocaust memorial used as the cover of Quebec Francais (issue 165). Not being able to read French, I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but, hey! And I guess what could be considered to be a positive thing, my site is now established enough that spammers have noticed it and I had to block 17,000 file description postings for Viagra and whatever else.. Number of photos taken this year: just below 410,000.
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