University of Virginia Library

I. Before the Election of Lincoln

Had the students of the University of Virginia been
left without any check on the outbursts of their partizan
preferences, their utterances, through their various
mouthpieces, would still have faithfully reflected the currents
of tempestuous political feeling which were always
running in the world outside. As we have seen, it was
the wise policy of the authorities to avoid in word or action
the identification of the institution with any form of
factional leaning, and they were, therefore, always very
rigorous in endeavoring to put down at once any attempt
of the young men to drag the antagonisms of the existing
political parties within the college precincts. But
the impetuous political sympathies of these youthful
spirits, long before the conflict between the Northern and
Southern people had grown acute and irreconcilable,
could not always be stifled. On June 20, 1832, there
appeared on the university bulletin board a notice which
summoned all those who were in favor of Mr. Clay's
election to assemble in one of the rooms of the Rotunda.
The chairman, observing this notice before the hour appointed,
ordered the janitor to turn the lock of every
apartment in that building; but the young friends of
Harry of the West, instead of being cowed by this rude
interference, as soon as they found the doors shut against
them, trooped away to the Jefferson Society hall, and not
only drew up, with all the formality of veteran politicians,

a series of eulogistic resolutions, but actually nominated
a delegate to attend the approaching convention
in Staunton, which was expected to come out very positively
in favor of Mr. Clay.

The ardent supporters of General Jackson in college
had no intention of allowing their hero to remain in the
background while such honor was being paid to his eloquent
rival. Next day, another notice was tacked to the
bulletin board calling upon the partisans of Old Hickory
to assemble at a designated hour; but again did the ruthless
hand of the watchful chairman tear away the proclamation
for a party rally, and the youthful politicians,
—no doubt anticipating that a meeting in a lectureroom
would be blocked,—gathered together on the open
lawn and adopted a string of resolutions even hotter in
their terms of endorsement than those which, the day
before, had raised the merits of the great Kentuckian
to the skies. In one of the series, very strong approval
was expressed of the Faculty's refusal to grant the use
of an apartment to the partisans of Clay.

The chairman very probably regretted that he did not
also possess the power to curb the political transports
of some of the orators who addressed the Alumni Association
under the roof of the Rotunda; but not even these
were always permitted to speak without some form of
remonstrance, if it seemed proper. There was an unmistakable
pertinency in the resolution offered by John
B. Baldwin, a Whig, at the meeting of the association
in June, 1851, at the University: that body, this resolution
declared, should not be held responsible for the
political sentiments expressed by the speakers chosen to
entertain its members. It was known that John Randolph
Tucker was to deliver the address next day, and
precisely as was anticipated, he dwelt with emphatic approval

on the doctrine of sovereign states-rights. Mr.
Baldwin, afterwards, in a letter to the Richmond journals,
gave his reason for introducing his resolution: there had
been, he said, an effort in other parts of the country to
cast upon the University of Virginia the odium of disunion
sentiments, and several of these annual addresses
had been brought up in proof of the correctness of that
assertion. It was his wish to counteract this impression,
which he considered unjust to the institution; and he
thought that his opinion was confirmed by the adoption of
the resolution.

The prevalence of sectional partizanship was not inconsistent
with opposition to secession. When the agitation
of 1850 began, which led up to the famous compromise
of that year, a respectable number of students
organized what they styled the "Southern Rights Association
of the University of Virginia." In a series of
resolutions[1] which they passed as a declaration of principles,
they proclaimed that they witnessed with regret
the encroachments which the States of the North, hostile
to slavery, were constantly making upon the rights,
the interests, and the institutions of the commonwealths
of the South; that only a shadow of the union which the
fathers of the Republic had established remained in existence;
that compromises and remonstrances had signally
failed to check the aggressiveness of fanaticism; and
that the only means of safety still left was to be looked
for in the concerted action of the Southern people. An
appeal was sent out to the young men of the South to
join the ranks at once, under "the banners of justice and
the Constitution," by organizing similar associations
throughout that region, which would enable them to
keep in unbroken communication with each other.

As the shadow of the approaching catastrophe grew
blacker and blacker as it drew nearer, there were to be
descried many signs that the convictions of the students
about the vital question of separation were far from
being unanimous. The University of Virginia, while
favoring a strict interpretation of the Constitution, had
never, as an institution, shaken the doctrine of Secession
at the North in a threatening way. In the magazine for
October, 1857, there was published an article which
pleaded cogently and temperately for the preservation
of the sisterhood of States as it then existed. This article
had received the approval of the editors,—the most
conspicuous and talented young men within the precincts,
—whether written by a student or by a member of
the Faculty. "Will any one," its author asked, "put
forth the absurd theory of dissolution without a civil
war? We protest against such unflinching animosity on
the part of a portion of the South towards so large a majority
of the people of the North,—animosity so bitter as
to cause them to refuse to acknowledge a man chosen by a
majority of the electoral votes for the Presidency of the
United States, because that majority happens to be composed
of Northern men, members of the Republican
party. Let us strive to strengthen the bonds of Union
and forever banish from our midst any spirit of discord
or disunion. Let us of the South look upon the North
only as a portion of our common country."[2]

The invitation sent to Henry Winter Davis by the
two debating societies to deliver the annual address at
commencement, indicates that, at this time, the sentiments
of the writer just quoted were lodged in more youthful
breasts at the University than one. The Faculty required
this invitation to be recalled, in pursuance of the

general principle that a political disquisition of any kind
in the public hall was repugnant to the fixed policy of
the institution; but a large number of students protested
against its application to the proposed speaker,—an
unmistakable proof of a tolerant spirit in this hour of
commotion and recrimination. A second article was
published in the same organ of college opinion in 1858.
Its title was The Origin and Effect of Partisan Feeling,
and it urged that a patient and conciliatory attitude
should be assumed in considering the causes of controversy
between the two great divisions of the Union.
During December of this year, a resolution was offered
by Mr. Boyce at a meeting of the Washington Society,
that the committee on questions should be instructed to
submit for debate not one that would bring up any of the
political issues now distracting the country. This motion
was adopted, and an endeavor, in the following
month, to repeal it failed to come to a vote.

But a feeling of resentment, which was to increase
straight on, soon began to crop out, although not expressed
with violence. An invitation from Yale College
to the Washington and Jefferson Societies to join in
the publication of an undergraduate magazine was courteously
declined, on the ground that they were unwilling
to take part in such an enterprise until that institution
should, in admitting students to its dormitories and lecture-halls,
recognize that there was a social as well as
an ethnological inequality between the black and the
white youth who applied for entrance. This Yale had
hitherto refused to do. A second indication of rising
animosity was the order given by the Washington Society
to its committee on badges to restrict all purchases thereafter
to Southern jewellers. A third was that, by January,
1860, the ban upon the discussion of political issues

in both societies had been withdrawn. On the night of
the 14th, the question, Has a State the right to secede?
was debated in one of them with great heat, and the decision
of the members was in the affirmative.

But that the sentiment among the students in opposition
to the disruption of the National Government was
still full of vitality is demonstrated by an editorial published
in the March, 1860, number of the magazine.
"We have an abiding confidence in the stability of the
Union," it declared, "but there is a growing disposition
on the part of both sections to encourage a system of
practical non-intercourse between the North and South.
This is sadly to be deprecated. The youths of the
country, so far from growing up, each with bitter prejudice
against the people of the opposite section, and being
taught to believe that all the virtue and patriotism of
the nation is, and ever has been, confined to his own,—
the inevitable consequence of non-intercourse, a consequence
which would be still further developed into a longing
for disunion,—should be trained to regard themselves
as citizens of the broad United States, entitled
to all the privileges secured by the deeds of our forefathers,
and in duty bound to transmit them to succeeding
generations. They should be taught to venerate, not only
the name of him whose birthday, February 22, we this
day celebrate, but also that of every hero, no matter
where born, who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in
his heaven-blessed struggle. And they should also be
taught that, however much we may differ in our view
of the peculiar institution, we are still brethren of one
family, the people of one nation, with one hope, one
destiny, and one common love for the starry ensign of
freedom, and the whole country over which it floats."

It seems repugnant to probability that the principal

organ of the students would have printed these conservative
and deeply patriotic words, had it not, in doing
so, voiced the sentiment of at least a substantial majority
of their number. But events were now advancing
rapidly and by the autumn of 1860, under the influence
of the violent Presidential contest, the attitude even of
that temperate majority had become less loyal to the
Union. On November 3, the question for debate in the
Washington Society was: In case of the election of
Lincoln, should the Southern States secede? and it was
decided in favor of the affirmative by a vote of thirty-three
to six. The conclusion of the members of the Jefferson
Society was precisely the same.

What were the convictions of the professors on this
momentous subject? "Professor Bledsoe," we are
told by Randolph H. McKim, a pupil, "used to interlard
his lectures on the calculus with discussions of states-rights."
Holcombe, as the instructor in constitutional
and international law, had, with copious learning, cogent
arguments, and persuasive eloquence, advocated that doctrine
in its most emphatic form; namely, "the theories
of Jefferson amplified," as was said at the time, "into
the defiance of Calhoun." But if the majority of the
Faculty entertained the same extreme view, they did
not suffer the smallest proof of that fact to escape from
them in word or conduct. All that is recorded of them
would seem to demonstrate positively that they were
moderate and temperate in their opinions, and, therefore,
were more likely to have been in sympathy with
John B. Minor than with either Bledsoe or Holcombe.
Now, if there was one individual among them whose
conclusions on the subject of the right of Secession was
entitled to particular weight it was Minor, the incarnation
of the science of law, not only in its universal principles,

but also in its controlling spirit. His entire manhood
had been given up to its study until he had become
saturated with the genius of jurisprudence. During
some years, he had taught constitutional law as one of the
divisions of the original course, and he was as deeply
versed in that branch of the general subject as he was in
common and statute law, his special province. By nature
as well as by training he was conservative in his convictions,
and he had been identified throughout his life with
the South, as his family had been from its earliest settlement.
"I voted heartily," he tells us in his valuable
diary, "for the ordinance of secession (Virginia), not
indeed as an act of secession,—the whole doctrine touching
which I thought unwise and unwarranted by the text
or spirit of the Constitution,—but as a necessary revolution."

It was necessary, in his opinion, because it was the
only self-respecting reply that could have been returned
to the Federal call for troops after the fall of Sumter.
"I heartily approved that step (the ordinance of secession),"
he continued, "and I will add, that nothing that
has since occurred has tended to modify my convictions
of the madness and wickedness of the act of secession
by the cotton States, and of the necessity, for her own
sake, that Virginia, having exhausted all the resources of
compromise and conciliation, should, at length, have associated
herself with them. Had Virginia's demands
been satisfied, and the Gulf States held out, I should
have regarded it as an improper sacrifice of our interests
to abandon the Union merely from sympathy with
communities which had adopted an extreme course without
consultation with us, and in contempt of our wishes,
opinions, and safety."[3]