t approval of the assault upon Sumter, or their
great resentment at the government's resistance to that assault, is not
definitely known. Although they submitted the ordinance for ratification
to a vote of the people, to be taken on a day then somewhat more than
a month distant, the convention and the Legislature (which was also in
session at the same time and place), with leading men of the State not
members of either, immediately commenced acting as if the State were
already out of the Union. They pushed military preparations vigorously
forward all over the State. They seized the United States armory at
Harper's Ferry, and the navy-yard at Gosport, near Norfolk. They received
perhaps invited--into their State large bodies of troops, with their
warlike appointments, from the so-called seceded States. They formally
entered into a treaty of temporary alliance and co-operation with the
so-called "Confederate States," and sent members to their congress at
Montgomery. And finally, they permitted the insurrectionary government to
be transferred to their capital at Richmond.

The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant insurrection to make
its nest within her borders; and this government has no choice left but
to deal with it where it finds it. And it has the less regret as the loyal
citizens have, in due form, claimed its protection. Those loyal citizens
this government is bound to recognize and protect, as being Virginia.

In the border States, so called,--in fact, the middle States,--there are
those who favor a policy which they call "armed neutrality"; that is, an
arming of those States to prevent the Union forces passing one way, or
the disunion the other, over their soil. This would be disunion completed.
Figuratively speaking, it would be the building of an impassable wall
along the line of separation--and yet not quite an impassable one, for
under the guise of neutrality it would tie the hands of Union men and
freely pass supplies from among them to the insurrectionists, which it
could not do as an open enemy. At a stroke it would take all the trouble
off the hands of secession, except only what proceeds from the external
blockade. It would do for the disunionists that which, of all things, they
most desire--feed them well and give them disunion without a struggle of
their own. It recognizes no fidelity to the Constitution, no obligation to
maintain the Union; and while very many who have favored it are doubtle