Correspondence. Albermarle County, Jan, 12, 1861. Wm. C. Rives and V.W. Southall, Esq.'s...
Albermarle County, Va. January 12, 1861. 3pp., on a small bifolium. Light wear at edges. Some toning and dust soiling. Minor foxing along gutter. Good plus. Item #5473
An interesting, pre-secession Virginia imprint, in which over five hundred citizens of Albermarle County nominate politicians William Cabell Rives and Valentine Southall to be their representatives at the upcoming Secession Convention, and in which Rives refuses their request. Rives was a long-serving politician, having been a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, the Confederate Congress, as well as Zachary Taylor's Minister to France. In his refusal, Rives cites prior obligation to a separate, conflicting convention on the subject in Washington DC, in addition to the "laborious personal canvass" it would require someone of his age. He does however, advise sober reflection on the possibility of secession: "When we are called upon to break up the Union, in a moment of excitement, by the simultaneous withdrawal of the remaining slaveholding states, under the vain promise of some utopian reconstruction, it becomes us to disabuse our minds of so dangerous a delusion, and to look all the consequences of our action steadily in the face. Our rights must be maintained at all hazards...but if they can be as well, if not better, secured by a course of wise and deliberate action, accompanied with firmness, and avoiding the necessity of such bloody and costly sacrifices, every cool and sober-minded man must say, let the experiment be tried."
Price: $375.00