Also, any plan to mount an armada would have been interpreted by many in the Upper South as an invasion and a reason to secede and join the Confederacy. There would have been plenty of incidents and provocations and opportunities for secessionists in those states to swing the conventions or legislatures in their direction.
If somebody today really believes in spite of everything that the Confederacy was right and secession was justified, it's strange that they'd also think that Virginia and the other Upper South states would have resisted the arguments that they find so compelling 150 years later if only those states had been exempted from the call for volunteer regiments. Feelings of regional unity that some feel so intensely today would have been all the stronger in 1861.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Ditto. You've summed up the situation very well.
Excellent point. I agree that in 1861, there was no possibility of a seaborne invasion of South Carolina -- in later years, yes, but in 1861, it was not a possibility. The Army would have had to move over land in 1861.
If Virginia had decided they did not want to supply regiments in response to Lincoln's call, that would have been a separate issue which could have been argued in congress and the courts for years.
But somehow, the neo-confederates claim even allowing the US Army to simply march through Virginia, without any Virginia regiments, on their way to South Carolina was a good enough excuse for secession.
If there had been a slave uprising or foreign invasion in South Carolina, would they still feel so offended if the US Army, even without any Virginia regiments, marched through their state to put that rebellion or invasion down?
It is sophistry to pretend that Lincoln's call for troops caused Virginia's secession. It was simply an excuse used by the radical pro-secessionist side to inflame public opinion, not a justifiable cause in the least.
And again X, I always appreciate your thoughtful posts.
AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union now existing between the State of Arkansas and the other States united with her under the compact entitled “The Constitution of the United States of America.”
Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:
Therefore we, the people of the State of Arkansas, in convention assembled, do hereby declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the “ordinance and acceptance of compact” passed and approved by the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas on the 18th day of October, A.D. 1836, whereby it was by said General Assembly ordained that by virtue of the authority vested in said General Assembly by the provisions of the ordinance adopted by the convention of delegates assembled at Little Rock for the purpose of forming a constitution and system of government for said State, the propositions set forth in “An act supplementary to an act entitled `An act for the admission of the State of Arkansas into the Union, and to provide for the due execution of the laws of the United States within the same, and for other purposes,’” were freely accepted, ratified, and irrevocably confirmed, articles of compact and union between the State of Arkansas and the United States, and all other laws and every other law and ordinance, whereby the State of Arkansas became a member of the Federal Union, be, and the same are hereby, in all respects and for every purpose herewith consistent, repealed, abrogated, and fully set aside; and the union now subsisting between the State of Arkansas and the other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby forever dissolved.
And we do further hereby declare and ordain, That the State of Arkansas hereby resumes to herself all rights and powers heretofore delegated to the Government of the United States of America; that her citizens are absolved from all allegiance to said Government of the United States, and that she is in full possession and exercise of all the rights and sovereignty which appertain to a free and independent State.
We do further ordain and declare, That all rights acquired and vested under the Constitution of the United States of America, or of any act or acts of Congress, or treaty, or under any law of this State, and not incompatible with this ordinance, shall remain in full force and effect, in nowise altered or impaired, and have the same effect as if this ordinance had not been passed.