In January 1861, Virginia state senator John Herbert Claiborne faced a reckoning in the Sixth District he represented. Many of his constituents opposed secession from the United States, yet they also questioned the country’s future after a whirlwind of developments in the previous two months. Abraham Lincoln had been elected president in November 1860, prompting South Carolina to secede in December. By early January 1861, four more states followed: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia.
Claiborne had no reservations about the country’s direction. A fervent pro-slavery Virginian who favored state authority over federal power, he held a hierarchical worldview that regarded slavery as both an economic necessity and a biblical mandate. A well-educated physician, he enslaved 18 people and owned real and personal property valued at $43,000 in 1860, equivalent to roughly $1. 7 million today.
On January 20, 1861, just two weeks after five states had seceded, Senator Claiborne took his case for secession directly to the public through the press. “My dear fellow citizens,” he wrote, “I desire to say a few plain words to you upon the subject which engrosses the attention of the public mind. ”
“I know of no more easy mode of reaching you than through the public press. ”
Claiborne described the divisions among people “united by interest, bound together by honor,” and called the situation “deplorable” and “often disastrous,” especially at a time of public danger.
“We stand,” he said, “in the presence of an enemy, an enemy that is relentless and unappeasable, an enemy elated with the intoxication of its first success. ”
He urged citizens to come together and examine their hearts, setting aside party prejudice for the sake of preserving “this ancient Commonwealth. ”
Claiborne identified the enemy as a political party that had grown steadily over 40 years and had now won the ballot box. He argued that this party, which he called the “Black Republicans,” would run the government according to its declared principles, principles he viewed as undermining southern interests and destroying property.
He asked whether the dangers contemplated were real or imaginary, and whether the institution of slavery was worth preserving. His answer was clear: “It is worth fighting for. ”
Claiborne traced the party’s history, accusing it of unlawfully seizing territory in the Louisiana Purchase era, admitting California through what he called a coup, and barring slaveholders from vast western lands. He pointed to John Brown’s raid, noting that within the past 18 months the party had inspired an outlaw gang to incite rebellion in Virginia, and that Northern outcry had followed Brown’s conviction and execution.
“Those,” he wrote, “are some of the unlawful acts of that party. ”
Claiborne listed alleged abuses: theft of property, refusal to return fugitive slaves, jails built for those who sought to recover them, citizens killed for pursuing their rights, and the protection of criminals who fled north. He argued that in eleven states, Republicans had nullified the Fugitive Slave Act and ignored the Constitution, and that penalties against slaveholders seeking to enforce their rights included fines and imprisonment of up to 15 years in some cases. “Has its president-elect wrapped himself in profound silence?
” he asked. “Does its prime minister hold out no hope of better counsel, while its arrogant followers in Congress defiantly reject all proposals of compromise? ”
Claiborne then asked whether Virginia would cower before the rule of this party, quoting former president Millard Fillmore on sectional candidates. He warned that the newly elected Republican president had declared the nation must be all slave or all free, and warned that Virginia would not give up its $300 million in enslaved property on his opinion.
He invoked the enslaved people themselves, refusing to abandon “our present helpless and faithful dependents” to the “false mercies of Beecher or Stowe or Garrison. ”
“No,” he declared. “When the hypocritical abolitionists of the North fill the mouths of the hungry at their doors and clothe their nakedness, then we will listen with more patience to their sentimental sermons on the sin of slavery. ”
Claiborne defended slavery as an institution “sanctioned by every ordinance of divine law and sustained by constitutions of human enactment,” saying he would work to perpetuate it in his state and preserve it for his descendants.
But if slavery could not be protected under Republican rule, he asked what course Virginia should follow. He believed only one answer could be heard across the state: “The day of reckoning has arrived, and we must obtain new terms and an affirmation of our rights, or an end to this partnership. ”
He dismissed resistance within the Union, noting that five states had already left and five stars had been erased from the flag. Virginia’s remaining representatives in Congress, he argued, would soon be powerless, mere “puppets” entertaining the dominant party.
He urged readers to withdraw their representatives from Washington, raise their own flag, and declare independence through a secession ordinance adopted by a sovereign convention of the people. Claiborne reminded his constituents that the Virginia General Assembly had called a convention to meet in Richmond on February 13. He noted that a commission of five distinguished citizens had been appointed to carry Virginia’s final ultimatum to Washington, with all states invited to send similar commissions to meet on February 4. He expressed hope that a plan might restore peace and union to the divided country.
But he warned that he saw “every reason to fear the worst. ”
“I have the firm conviction that the party in power will yield no principle, and relinquish no demand,” he wrote. “Without promise of indemnity for the past or guarantee for the future, you will be called upon to vote upon the question whether Virginia shall adhere to the North or the South. ”
Claiborne declared his own ballot was already prepared: “Let Virginia be our first consideration.
Her interests, her honor, her safety are our chief concern. ”
“For myself, I give her my affection, my life, and all that I possess. ”
He warned that in a southern union, Virginia would naturally look for sympathy and partnership, but that broken covenants and misplaced trust should teach caution. He reminded readers that Virginia had once ceded an empire in the Northwest, and now held only “a desecrated flag and a threat of enslavement” in return.
“Weigh well the price before you execute the deed of conveyance to another purchaser,” he said, “and may the Lord help you to a better bargain in the future, but I share your loss and divide your fate for better or worse. ”
Less than three months later, on April 4, 1861, Virginia voted against secession. But after the bombardment of Fort Sumter and President Lincoln’s call for troops to suppress the rebellion, Claiborne got what he wanted. Virginia seceded in May 1861.
Claiborne used his medical training to serve as a surgeon in the Confederate army, organizing a hospital in Petersburg, his home district. Union forces captured him on April 7, 1865, two days before the Battle of Appomattox. He lived to the age of 76, with no regret for what had passed, and died in 1905. A year before his death, his memoir was published under the title “Seventy-Five Years in Old Virginia.
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