Abraham Lincoln's proclamation shattered all hope of such peaceful adjustment.
Thousands of the best men in Virginia and North Carolina had voted against secession. Not one of them, in the face of this proclamation, would dispute longer with their brethren. Whatever they might think about the expediency of withdrawing from the Union, they were absolutely clear on two points. The President of the United States had no power under the charter of our Government to declare war. Congress only could do that. If the Cotton States were out of the Union, his act was illegal because the usurpation of supreme power. If they were yet in the Union, the raising of an army to invade their homes was a plain violation of the Constitution.
The heart of the South beat as one man. The cause of the war had been suddenly shifted to a broader and deeper foundation about which no possible difference could ever again arise in the Southern States.
The demand for soldiers to invade the South was a bugle call to Southern manhood to fight for their liberties and defend their homes. It gave even to the staunchest Union men of the Old South the overt act of an open breach of the Constitution. From the moment Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a war without the act of Congress, from that moment he became a dictator and a despot who deliberately sought to destroy their liberties.
The cause of the South not only meant the defense of their homes from foreign invasion; it became a holy crusade for the reëstablishment of Constitutional freedom.
Virginia immediately seceded from the Union by the vote of the same men who had refused to secede but a few weeks before. The old flag fell from its staff on her Capitol and the new symbol of Southern unity was unfurled in its place. As if by magic the new flag fluttered from every hill, housetop and window, while crowds surged through the streets shouting and waving it aloft. Cannon boomed its advent and cheering thousands saluted it.
A great torchlight parade illumined the streets on April 19. In this procession walked the men who a week ago had marched through Franklin Street waving the old flag of the Union and shouting themselves hoarse in their determination to uphold it. They had signed the ordinance of secession with streaming eyes, but they signed it with firm hands, and sent their sons to the muster fields next day.