In January 1861, Virginia possessed the largest population of enslaved people within the United States. The institution of slavery permeated the state’s social, political, economic, and legal systems. While loyalty to the Union was strong in western Virginia as Civil War loomed, the state’s elected officials painted Abraham Lincoln and Republicans as abolitionists and reaffirmed Virginia’s commitment to slavery and white supremacy.

In this annotated volume of primary source documents from Secession Winter, Dwight T. Pitcaithley presents speeches by Virginians from the United States Congress, the Washington Peace Conference which had been called by Virginia’s general assembly, and the state’s secession convention to provide readers a glimpse into Virginia’s ultimate decision to secede from the Union. In his introductory analysis of the trial confronting Virginia’s leadership, Pitcaithley demonstrates that most elected officials wanted Virginia to remain in the Union—but only if Republicans agreed to protect slavery and guarantee its future. While secessionists rightly predicted that the incoming Lincoln administration would refuse to agree to these concessions, Unionists claimed that disunion would ultimately undermine slavery and lead to abolition regardless.

Virginia deliberated longer and proposed more constitutional solutions to avoid secession than any other state. Only after the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter and President Lincoln’s request for troops to suppress the “insurrection” did Virginia turn from saving the Union to leaving it.

Throughout Pitcaithley’s collection, one theme remains clear: that slavery and race—not issues over tariffs—were driving Virginia’s debates over secession. Complete with a Secession Winter timeline, extensive bibliography, and questions for discussion, Virginia Secedes: A Documentary History is an invaluable resource for historians and students alike.

Dwight T. Pitcaithley worked for the National Park Service for thirty years, the final decade as its chief historian.  Following his retirement in 2005, he taught history at New Mexico State University until 2019.  He is the author/editor of The U.S. Constitution and Secession: A Documentary Anthology of Slavery and White Supremacy, Tennessee Secedes: A Documentary History, and Kentucky and the Secession Crisis: A Documentary History.
 

“This superbly edited documentary history of Virginia’s road to disunion in 1861 should end, once and for all, the absurd notion that secession was all about state’s rights. It was, as these documents convincingly demonstrate, all about slavery and the racial order the commonwealth of Virginia, along with the rest of the antebellum South, had erected on this benighted institution. Dwight Pitcaithley’s skilled editorial hand is present throughout this volume, from his insightful introduction to his masterful presentation of the documents themselves. It is, from start to finish, nothing short of a tour de force.”
—Charles B. Dew, author of Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War

“Pitcaithley’s valuable collection of amendments to the Constitution of the United States that Virginians proposed during the secession crisis and his judicious selection of some of the many speeches that the state’s political leaders made demonstrate that advocates and opponents of secession all wanted to protect slavery and the interests of enslavers in Virginia. Opponents of secession, who were in the majority until mid-April 1861, tried to preserve Virginia as a slave state in the old Union and to bring back the first states that seceded. The secession crisis debates in Virginia were about how best to protect the future of slavery. Nobody advocated abstract theories of states’ rights as later apologists for secession and the Confederacy asserted. The few references to states’ rights were all actually to the state-created rights of individual White Southern people to own Black people and to empower White Southerners to carry enslaved people throughout the United States and its territories without danger of their being freed, irrespective of the laws of the states without slavery. In fact, many Virginians proposed to restrict the rights of people in the states without slavery to enact and enforce their own antislavery laws and to empower Congress to reenforce those restrictions as well as to protect slavery in the western territories.”
—Brent Tarter, author of The Grandees of Government: The Origins and Persistence of Undemocratic Politics in Virginia (2013), Virginians and Their Histories (2020), and Constitutional History of Virginia (2023)

“Anyone who wants to understand Southern secession would do well to consult this illuminating volume. Pitcaithley has deftly curated and contextualized Virginia's sprawling secession debates, dramatizing how slavery and white supremacy were at the core of secessionism. Especially valuable is his attention to the various proposed constitutional amendments, all geared to preserving slavery, that failed to effect compromise. An invaluable resource for understanding the Civil War and American political polarization.”
—Elizabeth R. Varon, Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History, University of Virginia 

“These expertly edited documents clearly demonstrate that slavery and race—rather than economic policy issues like the tariff—provided the central theme in Virginia's debates over secession.”
—Jonathan M. Atkins, author of Politics, Parties, and the Sectional Conflict in Tennessee, 1832–1861

“Virginia Secedes is a valuable addition to the literature on the coming of the Civil War. Pitcaithley's comprehensive narrative and choice of documents show Virginia to be a microcosm of the larger conflict, and reinforce the importance of Virginia’s secession to the course of the war. We have needed a volume like this for a long time.”
­—Anne Sarah Rubin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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