foreseen defection of such staunch Union men as John Bell and
Baillie Peyton,* went Southward with the general current. Virginia
could not be restrained, although she was warned and ought to have
seen, that if she joined the Rebellion she would inevitably become
the battle-ground, and would consign her territory to devastation
and her property to destruction. The Virginia convention which
was in session before the firing on Fort Sumter, and which was
animated by a strong friendship for the Union, was carried in to
the vortex of secession by the surrounding excitement. By a vote
of 88 to 55 the State determined to join the Confederacy. The
wonder is that in the prevailing excitement and arrogant dictation,
there could have been found fifty-five men to resist so powerful
a tide of public opinion. The minority was strong enough, however,
to command the submission of the ordinance to a vote of the people,
--a submission which was in form and not in substance, for in
reality no freedom of opinion was conceded.

The ordinance which was passed on the 17th of April, three days
after the fall of Sumter, declared that "it should take effect when
ratified by a majority of the votes of the people of the State,
cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May."
The Convention did not submit its work to popular review and decision
in a fair and honorable way. Eight days after the act of submission,
the Convention passed another ordinance, by which Virginia agreed
"to adopt and ratify the Constitution of the Provisional Government
of the Confederate States." They provided that this second ordinance
should have no effect if the first should be rejected by the people.
It is not difficult to see that the action was taken in order to
render the rejection of the first ordinance impossible. Under the
second ordinance, the Convention at once entered into a formal
alliance, offensive and defensive, with the Confederate States.
Their Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens, appeared in Richmond
as commissioner of his government, and the Convention appointed Ex-
President John Tyler, William Ballard Preston, James P. Holcombe,
and other leading citizens, as commissioners for Virginia. These
joint commissioners made a formal compact between Virginia and the
Confederate States on the 25th of April, the day after the Convention
had adopted the Confederate Constitution. By this compact, Virginia,
"looking to a speedy union