800 



VIRGINIA. 



VIRGINIA, WESTERN. 



would contravene and frustrate the indispensable prin- 

 ciples of free government; and whereas these Con- 

 federate States, being now all slaveholding, may be 

 disturbed by some act of the majority in any one of 

 them in derogation of the rights of the minority unless 

 this doctrine above declared be interposed ; therefore, 

 Unsolved, by the General Assembly of Virginia, 

 That the Governor of Virginia be, and he is hereby, 

 requested to communicate this proceeding to the sev- 

 eral governors of the Confederate States, and to re- 

 quest them to lay the same before their respective 

 legislatures, and to request their concurrence therein 

 in such way as they may severally deem best calcu- 

 lated to secure stability to the fundamental doctrine of 

 Southern civilization which is hereby declared and 

 proposed to be advanced. 



Mr. Collier, the member who submitted the 

 resolution, thus explained his purpose : 



His reason for forbearing to ask a vote at this time, 

 he said, was that he did not believe the public men of 

 the South appreciate the doctrine announced. They 

 do not appreciate it at its vital and most valuable 

 point, which is its denial of the power of the majority, 

 in making a constitution for a State, to disturb a pre- 

 existing and resident property. The prevalence of 

 this doctrine in the intelligence of the world can alone 

 give the slaveholding States exemption from war. It 

 is the repudiation of this doctrine that is at the top 

 and bottom, and in all the circumference of the strug- 

 gle in which we are engaged. If the principal senti- 

 ments asserted in that declaration, and from which the 

 doctrine proposed as the practical result is educed, be 

 not sound in the philosophy of the subject, and ought 

 not to be adopted into the public law, then negro 

 slavery ought to be abolished, and Divine wisdom will 

 accomplish the deliverance. But, he said, he did 

 believe the sentiments sound and the doctrine logical- 

 ly inevitable, and that negro slavery will exist iii the 

 countries governed by the white race until the native 

 land of the black man shall have been civilized and 

 Christianized. Mr. Collier said he would only now 

 add the desire that every newspaper in the Confeder- 

 acy, and as many elsewhere as will, would publish 

 that declaration. 



On the 10th of May the Legislature adjourn- 

 ed to the first Monday in December. But on 

 the 15th of Sept. another special session was 

 held. It was called together in reference to 

 the scarcity of salt, which had become alarm- 

 ing. The proclamation of the governor calling 

 an extra session thus explains the cause : 



WJiereas, it is represented by many citizens of this 

 State that it is impossible to obtain supplies of the 

 necessary article of salt, except at fabulous prices, 

 and even then not in sufficient quantities to supply the 

 demand, and a portion of the salt works of the Com- 

 monwealth, from which a large quantity of salt was 

 derived, being in possession of the public enemy, and 

 the remaining works, being owned by private persons 

 and carried on by private enterprise, are insufficient 

 to furnish the amount necessary for the consumption 

 of our own people, and yet a large proportion of the 

 annual product of the works is continually exported 

 into the neighboring States : 



And whereas the importation of foreign alt has 

 been prevented by the blockade of our ports, and it is 

 not probable that the demand can be supplied from 

 that source ; and the season is rapidly advancing when 

 it will be necessary to salt up meats for the ensuing 

 year to provide our armies and people with suitable 

 provision ; and the Legislature having made no appro- 

 priation of money to purchase or to manufacture this 

 essential article, or to provide a remedy. 



The result was the prohibition of the export 

 of salt from the State, except upon contracts 

 which had been previously made with the 



Confederate Government, until the State was 

 supplied. 



At this session the following resolutions 

 were offered in the Senate, relative to Presi- 

 dent Lincoln's emancipation proclamation : 



Whereas Abraham Lincoln, President of the United 

 States, by his recent proclamation, is acting in stolid 

 contempt of the principles of property in slaves of 

 African descent, which is no less consecrated in their 

 Federal Constitution than in ours, and is aiming, by his 

 said proclamation, to excite a servile insurrection in 

 our midst : 



JResolved, therefore, That no person within this 

 State shall be held to have committed any offence 

 against the criminal laws thereof, or shall be tried, or 

 imprisoned, or required by any magistrate, or judge, 

 or police officer, to answer at any time for any act 

 done in driving from the State, or putting to death by 

 any means, any person, with or without arms, who 

 may be found on our soil, aiding or abetting in any 

 way to give effect in this State, or on its border, to the 

 lawless and fiendish purposes of the said proclamation. 



No action was taken upon it, and the Legis- 

 lature, after a brief session, adjourned. 



The new Constitution which had been draft- 

 ed by the State convention was submitted to 

 the voters of the State in March, and rejected. 

 The active state of hostilities within the 

 limits of the State during the year interfered 

 with all peaceful pursuits. The manufacturing 

 industry of the people in the cities was occu- 

 pied by the demands of the Confederate Gov- 

 ernment. Agriculture suffered by the reduc- 

 tion of laborers and the laying waste of the 

 fields, except in those parts of the State 

 removed from the scene of hostilities. Com- 

 merce was entirely cut off. The public insti- 

 tutions of education were closed, and the 

 teachers became officers in the army. With 

 wonderful earnestness and simplicity, Virginia 

 sacrificed everything for the success of the 

 Confederate Government. With the single 

 exception that she would not allow conscripts 

 to be taken from the camps of her militia, all 

 the demands of the latter were acceded to. 

 The spirit of ex-Gov. Floyd prevented this in- 

 vasion of what was deemed her State rights. 

 Her blood and treasure, however, were poured 

 out as no State is recorded to have done either 

 in ancient or modern history. She gave the 

 Confederate service, from her own armories 

 and stores, 75,000 rifles and muskets, 233 pieces 

 of artillery, a magnificent armory, containing 

 all the machinery necessary for manufacturing 

 arms on a large scale, and, after dr.'iining her 

 arms-bearing population to the dregs in service 

 of the Confederacy, raised a force of her own 

 people to drive the Federal troops from her 

 western border, which the Confederate Gov- 

 ernment were either unable or unwilling to do. 

 VIRGINIA, WESTERN, which consists of the 

 counties west of the Alleghany Mountains, 

 has been represented in both houses of Con- 

 gress and finally formed into an independent 

 State. The proceedings which have been taken 

 to reach this result of the formation of a new 

 State out of a part of a State are so important 

 as to require an. accurate description. 



