![]() ![]() But the Democratic Party split into Northern and Southern wings, primarily over the issue of slavery, helping Lincoln to win the election in November 1860. Southerners attempted to link Lincoln to John Brown and the potential for violence. Few Southerners complained about these uses of federal power, but they worried that Republican Party candidate Lincoln, if elected president in 1860, would prevent slavery from expanding into the western territories won during the Mexican War (1846–1848). Sandford (1857) ruled that African Americans could never be citizens. Fearing such threats, they had used their political power to pass legislation that protected their “peculiar institution.” The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, for instance, forced Northerners to return escaped slaves to their owners in the South. While they objected to the power of the federal government, their objections were loudest when they thought slavery was threatened. Proponents of states’ rights argued that states had joined the United States voluntarily following the American Revolution (1775–1783) and could leave voluntarily. Although many Northern politicians, including Lincoln, expressed their disapproval of Brown, Ruffin became convinced that Northerners were conspiring to use politics and violence to destroy slavery and with it the Southern economy and culture. Ruffin was a farmer from Prince George County who for much of his life was interested in finding new and scientific ways to grow crops. So-called fire-eaters, such as Edmund Ruffin, argued that states like Virginia must secede, or leave the Union. Most Virginians did not question slavery, and some were radical in its defense. Virginia abolitionists, like Moncure Daniel Conway, were rare more common were Virginians like George Tucker, a professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville who had not always supported slavery but didn’t want Northerners interfering with it. However, Virginians made much of their money selling enslaved people to the cotton plantations of the Deep South. Some worked on tobacco farms, some were employed in light industry, and others were rented out to companies building railroads and mines. Enslaved laborers were an integral part of the Virginia economy. In Virginia, which had the largest population of African Americans of any state, Brown was especially feared and reviled. Even in the North, where the states had outlawed slavery, his views were uncommon. ![]() Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859.īrown was a radical abolitionist who opposed slavery and treated African Americans as his equals. Wise met with him personally and decided to let the execution go ahead. After Brown was sentenced to die for murdering five men (four white and one Black), Virginia governor Henry A. Brown was tried in Charles Town, where cadets from the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, led by Thomas J. In October 1859, a small band of white and Black men, led by John Brown, attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in an attempt to start a rebellion of enslaved people. In the years that followed, many white Virginians saw their fight for independence as the Lost Cause, while black Virginians struggled to overcome institutionalized white supremacy and earn full citizenship rights. But the end of fighting also meant emancipation, or freedom, for enslaved African Americans. By the time Lee surrendered in 1865, much of the state had been ravaged by war. The Confederate government instituted a draft, or conscription law, and in some cases impressed, or confiscated, private property. ![]() On the home front, both white and African American families suffered food shortages or were forced to flee their homes. In 1863, Unionists in the western part of the state established West Virginia. Most, but not all, Virginians supported the Confederacy. Lee twice invaded the North, only to be defeated in battle. Union forces made several failed attempts to capture Richmond, and Confederate general Robert E. After Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, the war moved to Virginia. Worried that Lincoln would interfere with slavery and citing states’ rights as a justification, Southern leaders established the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as its president and Richmond as its capital. It began after Virginia and ten other states in the southern United States seceded from the Union following the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. ![]() The American Civil War was fought from 1861 until 1865. ![]()
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