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Each state that withdrew from the Union prior to the Civil War did so by formally drafting an “Ordinance of Secession.” From January to May of 1861, delegates from the State of Virginia met in convention to consider their options. The deliberations, held in Richmond, proved particularly contentious. Many counties in the western part of the state displayed Unionist sentiments, feeling that they shared more in common with states to the north and west than with the eastern counties of Virginia. Of the 152 delegates to the Virginia State convention, only thirty initially wanted to secede, and a motion to withdraw from the Union was easily defeated on April 4. After the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter on April 12, however, support for secession shifted. Lincoln announced that he would require troops from states remaining within the Union. In order to prevent this, the Virginia Convention approved a motion to secede from the Union on April 17. Many delegates to the original convention, however, remained opposed to secession, and they immediately organized a new convention in the western portion of the state. Held in Wheeling, Virginia, this gathering declared Virginia’s secession ordinance void and led to a push for independence for the western counties. The agitation against secession displayed by delegates from the western counties in convention ultimately led to a constitutional convention and the creation of West Virginia as a separate state in 1863.
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To repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said Constitution.
The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution, were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States,
Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain That the Ordinance adopted by the people of this State in Convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America, was ratified; and all acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty, which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.
And they do further declare, That said Constitution of the United State of America, is no longer binding on any of the Citizens of this State.
This Ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day when ratified by a majority of the votes of the people of this State, cast at a poll to be taken thereon, on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a Schedule hereafter to be enacted.
Done in Convention in the City of Richmond, on the seventeenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the eighty-fifth year of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
JNO. L. EUBANK,
Secretary of Convention.