Snow fell lightly that December 10, 1860, afternoon as Judge
John James Allen steadied himself for a meeting of Botetourt citizens. The
country had been in turmoil since the election of Abraham Lincoln. He was about
to try to convince his neighbors that the fledging nation could no longer exist
in her present condition.
He was going to urge his beloved state to secede from the
Union.
Allen, then President of the Supreme Court of Virginia,
wrote the Botetourt Resolutions, a document that outlines states rights issues
and urges the Virginia legislature to move to secure equality within the Union
or to immediately withdraw.
The lengthy document, recorded in the Southern Historical
Society Papers, lays out in detail the feelings of the people about the issues
of the day. “They deem it unnecessary and out of place to avow sentiments of
loyalty to the constitution and devotion to the union of these States,” Allen
argues.
He presented his Resolutions to his fellow citizens in an
undocumented general meeting of the people. He was a strong supporter of the
southern cause. In A Seed-Bed of the Republic, Robert Douthat Stoner
calls the Botetourt Resolutions “a brilliant commentary on Virginia’s position
in the impending Civil War.”
The Resolutions left a “profound impression on the public
mind as a condensed and powerful statement of the doctrine of Secession,”
Stoner writes.
It was a state sovereignty issue, heightened by the desires
of northern abolitionists, which led Allen to bring the document to Botetourt
citizens. A year earlier, abolitionist John Brown seized a store of arms in
Harpers Ferry and incited enslaved persons to rebellion in October 1859. Allen alludes to
the incident in his Resolutions.
Virginians were alarmed at the federal invasion of the
state, as federal soldiers, not Virginians, seized Brown and his small army.
Four civilians were slain. Northern abolitionists applauded Brown. Newspapers
in Virginia began to write openly of dissolution of the Union.
Home guards sprang up as volunteers stepped forward to
defend the state. In Botetourt, the “Blue Ridge Rifles” formed on December 27,
1859, near Mill Creek Church. Fifty-five young men stood ready to serve.
Then in November 1860, Abraham Lincoln won the election.
Allen does not mention Lincoln by name in his Resolutions but quotes him as
saying “that there is an “irrepressible conflict” between free and slave labor,
and that there must be universal freedom or universal slavery.”
In 1858 Lincoln had given a speech that said the government
could not endure “permanently half slave and half free . . . It will become all
one thing or all the other.” Although Lincoln was born in Kentucky, southerners
feared the new president would move to abolish slavery, even though it was
thought that Congress had no right to do so.
Allen calls Lincoln’s sentiments a declaration of “warfare
between the two sections of our country without cessation or intermission until
the weaker is reduced to subjection.” Allen abhors the election of the man “by
a sectional majority” and charges that the election is a direct assault upon
the institutions of the South.
Ultimately, after invoking slavery and the issue of state
sovereignty, the document urges the state to find harmony with other states or
to secede from the Union.
After stating his case, Allen stood before his fellow
citizens. The statesmen of Botetourt agreed with Allen’s sentiments and when
the vote was taken, only two dissenters volunteered their objections. The
document was forwarded to the Virginia legislature.
Arguments about slavery and states rights had taken place
for forty years but heated up in the 1850s. The issue exploded on December 20,
1860, when South Carolina seceded from the Union, 10 days after Botetourt
citizens approved its Resolutions urging secession.
Virginia declared its separation from the Union on April 17,
1861. The War Between the States, with the first shots fired five days earlier
at Fort Sumter, had come to the Old Dominion in earnest.
Allen was born in Woodstock, Shenandoah County, on September
25, 1797. He attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, in 1811 and 1812 and
attended Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, in 1814 and
1815.
After reading law with his father, James Allen, Allen was
admitted to the bar in 1819 and began his practice at Campbell Courthouse.
Eventually he moved to Clarksburg, now in West Virginia, to practice law. He
served in the Virginia senate from 1828-1830, and was commonwealth attorney for
Harrison, Lewis, and Preston Counties in 1834.
He served in the 23rd Congress from 1833-1835. He
was elected as an Anti-Jacksonian, also known as a Whig. He served with such
famous members as John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, David Crockett, Millard
Fillmore, John Randolph, John Tyler, and Daniel Webster.
His ties with Botetourt lay with his family. His father
purchased land in Botetourt in 1814. The land was known as “Beaverdam” and is
located on State Rt. 636 a few miles south of Buchanan. Judge Allen took over
his father’s estate in 1837.
After serving in Congress, he was named judge of the 17th
Circuit Court from 1836-1840, a position previously held by his father. He then
served as judge of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals from 1840-1865. He was
the presiding justice from 1852-1865.
Judge Allen retired to Beaverdam and died there in 1871. He
is buried in a cemetery on the property, known as Beaverdam Cemetery or
Lauderdale Cemetery.
Allen
married Mary E. Payne (1805-1891), who was a sister of General Thomas
(Stonewall) J. Jackson’s wife, a niece of Dolly Madison. Judge Allen was
instrumental in Jackson’s promotion from Major to Colonel. He served as the
executor of General Jackson’s will.
Several of
Allen’s descendants remain in Botetourt.
The Botetourt Resolutions – excerpted
The Resolutions begin with a recitation of Virginia’s accomplishments before, during, and after the Revolutionary War.
“Throughout the whole progress of the republic she [Virginia] has never infringed on the rights of any State, or asked or received an exclusive benefit.
“On the contrary, she has been the first to vindicate the equality of all the States, the smallest as well as the greatest.”
“But claiming no exclusive benefit for her efforts and sacrifices in the common cause, she had a right to look for feelings of fraternity and kindness for her citizens from the citizens of other States, and equality of rights for her citizens with all others; that those for whom she had done so much would abstain from actual aggressions upon her soil, or if they could not be prevented, would show themselves ready and prompt in punishing the aggressors; and that the common government, to the promotion of which she contributed so largely for the purpose of “establishing justice and insuring domestic tranquility,” would not, whilst the forms of the constitutions were observed, be so perverted in spirit as to inflict wrong and injustice and produce universal insecurity.”
“These responsible expectations have been grievously disappointed.”
“Owing to a spirit of pharisaical fanaticism prevailing in the North in reference to the institution of slavery, incited by foreign emissaries and fostered by corrupt political demagogues in search of power and place, a feeling has been aroused between the people of the two sections, of what was once a common country, which of itself would almost preclude the administration of a united government in harmony.”
“For the kindly feelings of a kindred people we find substituted distrust, suspicion and mutual aversion. For a common pride in the name of American, we find one section even in foreign lands pursuing the other with revilings and reproach. For the religion of a Divine Redeemer of all, we find a religion of hate against a part; and in all the private relations of life, instead of fraternal regard, a “consuming hate,” which has but seldom characterized warring nations.”
“This feeling has prompted a hostile incursion upon our own soil, and an apotheosis of the murderers, who were justly condemned and executed.”
Allen goes on to say the northern areas of the nation were spreading “incendiary publications” in an effort to “incite to midnight murder and every imaginable atrocity against an unoffending community.” …
“It is shown in their openly avowed determination to circumscribe the institution of slavery within the territory of the States now recognizing it, the inevitable effect of which would be to fill the present slaveholding States with an ever increasing negro population, resulting in the banishment of our own non-slaveholding population in the first instance and the eventual surrender of our country, to a barbarous race, or, what seems to be desired, an amalgamation with the African.”
“And it has at last culminated in the election, by a sectional majority of the free States alone, to the first office in the republic, of the author of the sentiment that there is an “irrepressible conflict” between free and slave labor, and that there must be universal freedom or universal slavery; a sentiment which inculcates, as a necessity of our situation, warfare between the two sections of our country without cessation or intermission until the weaker is reduced to subjection.”
The document continues to say Virginians would not censure others for “resorting to their ultimate and sovereign right to dissolve the compact which they had formed and to provide new guards for their future security.”
Allen then explains how the states separately and together “dissolved their connection with the British Empire.” He emphasizes the sovereignty of the separate states and the right of each separate sovereign state to care for itself. “The foundation, therefore, on which it was established, was federal, and the State, in the exercise of the same sovereign authority by which she ratified for herself, may for herself abrogate and annul.”
He writes that the states had an obligation to uphold the constitution while a part of the union, “but when a State does secede, the constitution and the laws of the United States cease to operate therein. No power is conferred on Congress to enforce them.”
He calls the use of power by the federal government “a dangerous attack on the rights of the States,” comparing it to the British government and colonies. He writes that the people have the right to take back the powers granted under the constitution and calls the election of Abraham Lincoln “a standing menace to the South – a direct assault upon her institutions – an incentive to robbery and insurrection,” because he has the power to appoint postmasters and other officers in the southern states.
He then echoed the words of the forefathers by reciting what freeholders of Botetourt said in February 1775 to the Virginia 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 wicked and tyrannical sectional majority, under the sanction of the forms of the constitution, persist in acts of injustice and violence towards 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.””
The document resolves that a convention should be called immediately so the people can decide if Virginia should remain in the Union. The state should remain in the Union only if its “equality, tranquility and rights” are guaranteed; otherwise, the State should “adopt in concert with the other Southern States, or alone, such measures as may seem most expedient to protect the rights and insure the safety of the people of Virginia.”
The document can be viewed in its entirety in the Southern Historical Society Papers, volume 1, in the Virginia Room of the Roanoke City Library, Main Branch. There are minor differences in various copies of the documents; the above quotes are copied from the source cited.
A version of The Botetourt Resolutions can be found online here.
This article originally appeared in The Fincastle Herald under my byline in 2004.
