The long smoldering sectional conflict between the northern and southern sections of the union had reached its ignition point with the looming national presidential elections of November 1860. Prior to the election, several southern states had provided for secession conventions of their people in the event of a Republican victory believing it would be impossible to coexist with their neighbors to the north who were bitterly opposed to the then existing southern institutions. [6] In point of fact, The Kentucky Statesman of Lexington, Kentucky on January 6, 1860 warned: “Means must be taken to overthrow and destroy the republican party, to defeat its aspirations to power and crush it out as a political organization in the country. Its success will overthrow the government and that issue must be tried in 1860.” [7] This conclusion was not new, and had been repeatedly sounded by southern politicians since the presidential campaign of 1856. [8]
Earlier, John Brown’s raid in October 1859 caused considerable anxiety through out the southland and intensified the animosity between the two sections. All through the south and particularly in Virginia, the call went out to form volunteer companies to thwart any future abolitionist raids. [9] In Culpeper [Virginia], a resident asserted, “patrols were increased, mass-meetings were held, military companies were raised and equipped and everything was done to put the State in readiness for war.” [10]
Footnotes
6 Nathaniel W. Stephenson, The Day of the Confederacy, Yale University Press, 1919, p. 2
7 Dwight Lowell Dumon, Ph.D, Editor, Southern Editorials on Secession, The Century Co., 1931, p. 5
8 Kenneth M. Stampp, And the War Came, The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860-61, Phoenix Books,
The University of Chicago Press, 1950, p. 5
9 James I. Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson, The Man, The Soldier, The Legend, Macmilliam Publishing
USA, 1997, p. 197
10 James I. Robertson, Jr., General A. P. Hill, The Story of a Confederate Warrior, Random House, New York,
1987, p. 33