The Long Roll | Page 4

Continental Congress, "That we desire
no change in our government whilst left to the free enjoyment of our
equal privileges secured by the CONSTITUTION; but that should a
tyrannical SECTIONAL MAJORITY, under the sanction of the forms of
the CONSTITUTION, persist in acts of injustice and violence toward us,
they only must be answerable for the consequences."
That liberty is so strongly impressed upon our hearts that we cannot
think of parting with it but with our lives; that our duty to God, our
country, ourselves and our posterity forbid it; we stand, therefore,
prepared for every contingency.
RESOLVED THEREFORE, That in view of the facts set out in the
foregoing preamble, it is the opinion of this meeting that a convention
of the people should be called forthwith; that the State in its sovereign
character should consult with the other Southern States, and agree
upon such guarantees as in their opinion will secure their equality,
tranquillity and rights WITHIN THE UNION.

The applause shook the air. "Yes, yes! within the Union! They're not
quite mad--not even the black Republicans! We'll save the Union!--We
made it, and we'll save it!--Unless the North takes leave of its
senses.--Go on!"
And in the event of a failure to obtain such guarantees, to adopt in
concert with the other Southern States, OR ALONE, such measures as
may seem most expedient to protect the rights and ensure the safety of
the people of Virginia.
The reader made an end, and stood with dignity. Silence, then a
beginning of sound, like the beginning of wind in the forest. It grew, it
became deep and surrounding as the atmosphere, it increased into the
general voice of the county, and the voice passed the Botetourt
Resolutions.
CHAPTER II
THE HILLTOP
On the court house portico sat the prominent men of the county,
lawyers and planters, men of name and place, moulders of thought and
leaders in action. Out of these came the speakers. One by one, they
stepped into the clear space between the pillars. Such a man was cool
and weighty, such a man was impassioned and persuasive. Now the
tense crowd listened, hardly breathing, now it broke into wild applause.
The speakers dealt with an approaching tempest, and with a gesture
they checked off the storm clouds. "Protection for the manufacturing
North at the expense of the agricultural South--an old storm centre!
Territorial Rights--once a speck in the west, not so large as a man's
hand, and now beneath it, the wrangling and darkened land! The
Bondage of the African Race--a heavy cloud! Our English fathers
raised it; our northern brethren dwelled with it; the currents of the air
fixed it in the South. At no far day we will pass from under it. In the
mean time we would not have it burst. In that case underneath it would
lie ruined fields and wrecked homes, and out of its elements would
come a fearful pestilence! The Triumph of the Republican Party--no

slight darkening of the air is that, no drifting mist of the morning! It is
the triumph of that party which proclaims the Constitution a covenant
with death and an agreement with hell!--of that party which tolled the
bells, and fired the minute guns, and draped its churches with black,
and all-hailed as saint and martyr the instigator of a bloody and servile
insurrection in a sister State, the felon and murderer, John Brown! The
Radical, the Black Republican, faction, sectional rule, fanaticism,
violation of the Constitution, aggression, tyranny, and wrong--all these
are in the bosom of that cloud!--The Sovereignty of the State. Where is
the tempest which threatens here? Not here, Virginians! but in the
pleasing assertion of the North, 'There is no sovereignty of the State!'
'A State is merely to the Union what a county is to a State.' O shades of
John Randolph of Roanoke, of Patrick Henry, of Mason and Madison,
of Washington and Jefferson! O shade of John Marshall even, whom
we used to think too Federal! The Union! We thought of the Union as a
golden thread--at the most we thought of it as a strong servant we had
made between us, we thirteen artificers--a beautiful Talus to walk our
coasts and cry 'All's well!' We thought so--by the gods, we think so yet!
That is our Union--the golden thread, the faithful servant; not the
monster that Frankenstein made, not this Minotaur swallowing States!
The Sovereignty of the State! Virginia fought seven years for the
sovereignty of Virginia, wrung it, eighty years ago, from Great Britain,
and has not since resigned it! Being different in most things, possibly
the North is different also in this. It may be that those States have
renounced the liberty they fought for. Possibly Massachusetts--the
years 1803, 1811, and 1844 to the contrary--does