Declaration of Causes for Secession of Virginia

Overview

…After the international slave trade was abolished by Congress in 1808, the slave trade became Virginia’s largest industry. By the 1860s, one-third of Virginia’s population was enslaved African Americans. Virginia’s slave codes, which among other rules set up harsh punishments for enslaved people and made it impossible for white people to be convicted of killing slaves, were copied throughout the other slave-owning colonies.

Enslaved people escaped and revolted against inhumane treatment by breaking equipment and stealing food. In 1831, Virginian Nat Turner led 19 fellow enslaved people to kill at least 55 white people in what became known as the Nat Turner Revolt, the bloodiest slave revolt in American history. White vigilantes killed 40 Black people in retaliation. The Virginia legislature considered abolishing slavery but eventually put in stricter slave codes, including rules that made it illegal to teach a Black person to read. In 1859, white abolitionist John Brown led a raid to steal weapons from Harper’s Ferry (now in West Virginia) in order to start a slave revolt, but most people in his party were captured or killed…

…Virginia was initially reluctant to secede from the Union. When the men who attended its convention voted for secession in April 1861, it was the third time they had brought the issue to a vote. They voted to secede only after President Abraham Lincoln issued a call to arms in order to suppress the secessionist tendencies in the Southern states…

…Rather than join the Confederacy, people living in the western part of Virginia—who did not own enslaved people due to the area’s terrain—created the state of West Virginia. Virginia became central to the Confederacy’s Civil War efforts. The state was a manufacturing hub with many railways, and Richmond was the Confederacy’s capital due to its proximity to the Union’s capital of Washington, D.C….

 

Sources:

History.com /“Slavery and the Civil War”

https://www.history.com/articles/virginia

 

American Battlefield Trust

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/civil-war-virginia

 

Source Links - Secession Ordinance

Key Causes for Virginia Secession

1. The non-slave holding States voted together to elect a president and vice president of the United States men who approve and pledged to continue anti-slavery initiatives.
2. The Federal Government had used its powers to oppress and injure the people of Virginia and Southern Slave-holding States. Possible Examples: 
   1. 9th Amendment: 

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

b. Constitution Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

c.  Election of president and vice president who were anti-slavery

d.  Failure to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act. Failure to return runaway slaves. Entice slaves to run away. Assist slaves who ran away. 

Copy of the Declaration of Causes for Virginia Secession