USA > West Virginia > Monongalia County > History of Monongalia County, West Virginia, from its first settlements to the present time; with numerous biographical and family sketches > Part 14
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of the executive branch, or submit it to the caprices of the legislative department ; that in fact the true theory of gov- ernment was to maintain an entire independence in the three departments of administration. Prior to that time the judges had been elected by the legislature or appointed by the Governor. Indeed all the offices in the State, and in the county organization also, had been filled by election by the legislature or appointment, save only the legislative branch, which was the solitary department filled by popular suffrage; and the' result of that convention brought about for the first time in the history of Virginia, a general exer- cise of the right to select State, county and district officers by the people. The county court was composed of the justices of the peace scattered throughout the counties, ap- pointed by the Governor ; it had enlarged powers of original general jurisdiction in law and equity. But it had evidently outlived its day, and was illy adapted to the times. Mr. Willey's practical eye as an attorney had discerned its im- perfections, and his still closer contact for so many years as its clerk had disclosed its unfitness for the new condition of things which he fondly hoped was dawning on Virginia. In this, however, he was not successful; but after under- going an eventful career, the county court, at last, by an overwhelming vote of the people in 1879, attained what is believed to be its final repose.
The Constitution submitted to the people as the work of this convention, was not satisfactory in many aspects, but as a whole it was a great advance. The influence of the West had been impressed upon it in many features. Prop- erty qualification for the suffragan was omitted, and suffrage was free and untrammeled in its exercise. It received the sanction of the people, by a large majority, in 1852.
Mr. Willey resumed the practice of the law at the bar of Monongalia in 1852. He extended his practice into the adjoining counties of Marion and Preston. He became a candidate for Congress in the same year, with no expecta- tion of being elected, but to bring out a full vote for Gen.
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Winfield Scott, the Whig candidate for the presidency. He canvassed the district thoroughly and awakened the masses, wherever he went, by his knowledge of the issues and his electrifying oratory. He ran largely in excess of the general ticket, but was defeated. In 1853 he delivered a series of lectures on the Spirit and Progress of Methodism. They were highly commended by the press and his hearers. In the same year he was elected an honorary member of various societies throughout the country. He delivered temperance lectures in many localities under the auspices of the Grand Division of the Sons of Temperance. He spoke at Pittsburgh in favor of extending slack-water to the State line.
His journal at this period is filled with accounts of active labors in the temperance cause, in the Sunday-school and everywhere that good could be accomplished. His records show a broad, catholic spirit, free from bigotry and intoler- ance. Many touching domestic scenes are committed to its pages. He speaks of his step-mother on one occasion, who had been on a visit to him, thus : "She was a step-mother only in name. She was always to me truly kind, far beyond my deserts. Heaven will reward her. She was not as a mother to an orphan. She was a mother to me in all her conduct." His mother died when he was but three years old. Of her this memory appears: "I recollect seeing her corpse and wondering why my mother had gone to sleep in so strange a place. I believe I once heard her singing with other voices in strains of no earthly melody-but this will be called superstition. I shall never forget it."
Mr. Willey wrote an article which was published in the January number of The Methodist Quarterly Review, 1853, on "The Spirit and Mission of Methodism." It was much commended by the Press of that church. The Christian Advocate and Journal, of New York, says of it: "It is pe- culiarly timely, as called for by the state of our church, and clearly pointing out the necessity of preserving the essen- tial principles of Methodism. ... We should greatly tran-
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scend the prescribed limits were we to indulge the fullness of heart which has been made to overflow in reading the article to which we refer." In 1854, he delivered at Union- town, Penn., and also at Wheeling, a lecture on "The Per- petuation of Liberty and the Union." It was published in pamphlet form and was widely circulated and read. In June, 1855, he delivered the Annual Address before the Philo-Franklin Literary Society of Allegheny College, which was published by the society. In September of the same year he delivered the address before "The Western Virginia Agricultural Society and Industrial Institute," at Wheeling. It was also published. In it he drew a picture of the the model farmer, appearing to forget nothing. It was an able speech, full of suggestions. In January, 1858, he lectured at Richmond, Va., before "The Young Men's Christian Association" of that city; and was elected an honorary member of the same. The society voted that the lecture had afforded "more than mere gratification." His theme was "Christian Missions in their Secular Influences." He discussed the rationale of Christianity as the great un- derlying basis of all our civilization, of all our social con- fidence and security, and portrayed in a narrative manner what Christianity had done for the nations that had encour- aged it. In addressing the literary societies of Monongalia Academy, he made " A Plea for Virginia," showing that her sons must develop the resources of their own State.
On the 10th of February, 1859, he was nominated by the Whig State Convention at Richmond as a candidate for the office of Lieutenant-Governor. During the campaign fol- lowing he canvassed a large part of the State, both' east and west of the mountains. He so bore himself throughout this struggle with all the dignified courtesy of the able statesman and true gentleman, that he received many com- pliments from his opponents for his ability and fairness. The ticket, of which the Hon. William L. Goggin was the head, was defeated. In his own county, however, which the Hon. Henry A. Wise had carried four years before by over
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seven hundred majority, his majority was seventeen. The following year he was a delegate to the Whig National Con- vention which met at Baltimore, and nominated John Bell and Edward Everett for President and Vice President. He took an active part in the ensuing canvass, addressing the people at various points.
In the intervening period between the close of the year 1852 and 1860, Mr. Willey was most diligently busied by a large and lucrative law practice. The intervals of respite from the demands of his profession were very few. But these golden hours were deemed a season of recreation if he could but pursue in quietness the paths of literature which he loved so well. His desire for knowledge had abated none of its vigor. He was in the full tide of his mental powers, and his physical health was much improved over the earlier years of his manhood. He seemed to have given himself wholly to the pursuit of his profession as a means of ad- vancement in tlre world, and was living happily in the enjoy- ment of great domestic felicity, content with the thought of a quiet existence and freedom from the excitement and fierce struggles incident to public station. The near future was pregnant with events in which he was destined to be an actor of no mean bearing.
Foreseeing the terrible disasters which must follow seces- sion, and utterly abhorring the treason it involved, Mr. Willey exerted himself to stem the tide of madness and folly which, during all the autumn of 1860, seemed to be flowing in the direction of National disruption. He pre- dicted from the hustings that if Virginia attempted to secede, one of the results would be her division. He wrote and published a long article of the date of December 26, 1860, which concluded in the following emphatic words :
"I am for Virginia as she is and was, as our fathers created her- one and indivisible. I have deprecated recent manifestations of a desire for her dismemberment. Let her be integral forever. But if we are to be dragged into secession or disunion ; to be made a mere outside appendage to a Southern Confederacy, defenseless and exposed as we must be, by our geographical position, to all the
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wrong and contumely that may be heaped upon us, our oppression may become intolerable ; and I for one will be ready to accept the only alternative."
The Legislature was convoked in extra session. It issued a call for a convention, fixing the time of the election of delegates thereto in February, 1861. The convention was to assemble in Richmond soon thereafter. Again the people of his native county turned to Mr. Willey. The action of the Gulf States in passing ordinances of secession, and con- federating for mutual attack and defense; the inefficiency and hesitation of the Federal Administration; the treach- ery of high officials and the general signs and sounds of the hour, filled the masses in Western Virginia with alarm. Mr. Willey was known to be in harmony with the people of his section on the questions most vitally affecting their in- terests. He was known to be for the Union and opposed to secession. No pledges were exacted from him in the canvass. There was no canvass. He was elected without opposition.
The history of this convention is remarkable as an exam- ple of the coercive power of mere local surroundings. When it assembled the large majority of its members were thoroughly opposed to any action which savored of the severance of the ties that bound Virginia to the Federal Union. They had been selected by constituencies equally loyal to the government established by Washington, and who by an overwhelming vote had declared that any action taken by the convention should be returned to them for their approval. But it was not long before the true purpose in assembling the body was disclosed. Resolutions looking to a secession of the State soon poured upon the conven- tion from those whose ultimate object could no longer be doubted. One by one many whose fealty was supposed to be unquestioned, yielded to the clamor or threats of the de- termined spirit of Secession. It was an hour of grave thought and apprehension to those whose patriotism knew no faltering, and whose anxious hearts were true to the tra- ditions and teachings of the founders of the Republic.
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None felt a more poignant sorrow at the madness of the hour than Mr. Willey. He exerted himself with all the ability and pertinacity of his character, to stop the onward rush of the swelling waters of disunion. On the 2d of March, 1861, he delivered a speech of great power, in op- position to the scheme of secession. Threats of violence had been uttered on the streets and in the very corridors of the capitol against any who dared to raise a voice of pro- test against the contemplated action of secession.
He first spoke of the attempts to suppress free speech, and declared that he spoke more with a desire to vindicate the right of free speech, than with a hope of enlightening the body; that he represented a free people and they should be heard through him. The right of free speech was a fundamental principle of republican liberty, and whenever it was destroyed the people's liberties were over- thrown; whether the suppression was the result of an imperial edict or popular violence and intimidation; in either case men were slaves. This was attested by the story of ancient Rome, which was free so long as the Forum and the Senate were the arena of free speech, but the palsy of political dissolution settled forever upon the empire, when Cicero, its last great defender, was gibbeted in the Forum. Modern history furnished a like example when the voice of liberty was drowned by the clamors of a revolu- tionary populace in France, and she found a refuge only in the arms of an absolute despotism. On the question of the right of secession he said :
"I am not here, sir, to argue the right of secession. I do not in- tend to weary the convention by entering into a discussion of that question. I shall not even pause, sir, to vindicate the founders of our Constitution from the imputation, which seems to me would certainly apply to them, of a most gross self-stultification in organ- izing a great government, in establishing a more perfect Union, by collecting together a heterogeneous mass of political elements that might dissolve and fall asunder any day. I shall never believe that Washington, and Madison, and Franklin, and the other great sages who constructed the Union in the first place and organized our Federal Government, brought their labors to no greater results
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than this ; that is to say, to bring the States of the Federal Union together, give them a simple introduction to each other, and place them side by side, under the flag of the country, without any legal bond to bind the Union. Sir, I believe in no such voluntary association."
He said that he could not conceive that the Federal Government, when purchasing Louisana, believed that State could foreclose the great commercial advantages arising from the freedom of the mouth of the Mississippi, at her pleasure, by secession. Nor, when Florida, which was acquired at such great expense, choose to so construe the bond, that she too, could quietly walk out of the Union with all the forts and arsenals belonging to the general government. Nor could Texas pass out of the Union after so great a struggle had been made in her acquirement. If so, likewise a State could refuse to participate in a war with an invading enemy, or after it was over and the invader ex- pelled, it could bid adieu to its associates whose blood and treasure had been expended in its defense, and take no part in meeting the results. He showed that the founders of the Republic did not so esteem the Constitution. That the iron logic of President Jackson had penetrated the weak defenses of the argument. He combatted the various positions offered in favor of secession with warmth, and maintained that it provided no remedy for the ills com- plained of, but rather aggravated them. To the argument that there was an irrepressible conflict between the North and the South, he spoke as follows :
"Against this mere speculative opinion I oppose stubborn facts. Against this mere prediction I present actual history. I appeal to the record of the past operation and effect of the Federal Union. It is no longer a problem to be solved. It has had a fair trial; it has been in existence seventy-five years. Look at the result of the experiment. I shall not attempt to describe it. Some traveler records that, in the great temple of St. Paul's, there is a tablet upon which the name of Sir Christopher Wren, the great architect, is engraved. Beneath it is this inscription- 'Do you ask for his monument ? Circumspice. Look around! In reference to the great experiment of the Union, I can only say with reverence, awe, and patriotic emotion-'Look around !'"
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"Whose heart does not throb, as an American citizen, in view of this experiment ? Look around you, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from the Gulf to the Lakes, from Texas to Maine. Three-quarters of a century ago we were only four or five millions of people in number, and but a few scattered and impoverished States. Now we are thirty-four States-for I will not admit that our sisters are finally gone-with cities rivaling in wealth, popula- tion, power and magnitude the oldest cities of the oldest Empire of the world ; with a people unsurpassed for intelligence, for all the appliances and means of self subsistence, for happiness and pros- perity, and the like of whom the sun of God has never before shone upon. And yet we are only upon the threshold of our glorious destiny, if we will be but faithful to our duties as true American citizens."
He spoke of the evils that would result from secession, in the establishment of a number of weak and warring confed- eracies. He declared that the moral sense of the world was against slavery. He said that one of the evils of secession would be the destruction of nationality and the prestige of the American name and citizenship.
"How is it now, Sir ?" he exclaimed : "Wherever our country's flag, with its thirty-four stars, floats on the breeze, any Virginian may stand up and proudly point to that banner as a"flag that represents his country and his country's greatness and power. Sir, it is a noble flag. It is a flag upon which victory has perched without interruption for seventy years-a flag which Perry carried in his hand through the din and smoke of battle and placed it vic- toriously upon the enemy's vessel-an enemy who once held the empire of the sea-a flag which waved in triumph at the head of our army in its victorious march from Vera Cruz to the capital of Mexico, and at last floated over the palaces of the Montezumas-a flag which protects our commerce in every port and on every sea-a flag which, in short, represents our national power, gives full pro tection to every American citizen, go where he will-whether among the savages in the steppes of Russia, or among nobles in the abodes of kings or emperors, or wherever else he may choose to wander. Secession will trail that glorious banner in the dust-de- stroy its prestige and power-and leave the American citizen to wander abroad, if he shall dare to go abroad, an object of con- tempt, for chuckling tyrants to point the finger of scorn at, while they say, 'Behold the last pitiable demonstration of the fallacy of the dogma of man's capacity for self-government.'"
Notwithstanding the powerful influence brought to bear by the Confederate Government, the convention held out
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against the efforts of the secessionists during the month of March. At length the chiefs in the movement deemed the hour for decisive action at hand. The convention went into secret session, and after a few days of intense but brief de- bate, an ordinance of sesession was passed April 17, 1861. On its passage Mr. Willey and other members, a majority of whom were representatives of western constituencies, voted in the negative. For a day or two after the fateful secret found its way to the outside world, the members who had voted against it were the objects of scorn and contumely. Many of them yielded to the storm that came from the various quarters of family and local influences. They came into the convention on the following day and by the appeals of their associates were induced to sign the fateful document after its enrollment. The last speech made by Mr. Willey, in which he was most pathetically seconded by the Hon. A. F. Haymond, of Marion County, in the convention, was in resistance to these vehement appeals. He cast no vote after the one which recorded him in the negative on the ordinance of secession, and took no further part in the proceedings. On the 21st of April, being compelled to pro- cure a permit from the Governor (Letcher) he started for his home. On arriving at Alexandria he was prohibited from going to Washington, and was forced to remain over night, during which he was seriously beset by a band of self-styled "Regulators," who threatened to cast him into the Potomac River. He retraced his course the next morn- ing to Manassas Junction, and came up the Valley to Win- chester, where he found the place full of volunteers march- ing to Harper's Ferry. He arrived at the latter place next day, to find the armory and the splendid buildings of the United States Government a mass of smoking ruins, and the place occupied by armed volunteers of Virginia. Here he was kept under military surveilance until evening, when he boarded the cars and in due time once more breathed the free air of his native hills.
When it became known to the loyal people of North-
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western Virginia that the Convention had passed an ordi- nance of secession, the excitement became intense, which was succeeded by a resolution of defiance in their minds and hearts. The remembrance of years of injustice at the hands of the eastern oligarchy rose up to stimulate their deep-seated love of the government of the fathers. This was heightened when it became known to what lengths of usurpation the convention had been extended. Its proceed- ings were thus described by Mr. Willey in a speech deliv- ered subsequently in the Senate of the United States :
"Before the seal of secrecy was removed from the proceedings of the convention ; before the people knew that the ordinance had been passed ; before the people had voted up'on it-yes, sir ! on the very next day after the passage of the ordinance, the convention began to levy war against the United States-large appropriations for military purposes were made ; field officers were appointed and commissioned ; the military stores, forts, arsenals, and arms, and custom-houses of the United States, were seized at Richmond, Norfolk, Harper's Ferry, and other places. A fortnight had not elapsed until the convention, still in secret session, and before the people knew that any ordinance of secession had passed, had, by solemn compact made with commissioners from the insurrectionary government of the so-called confederate States, annexed Virginia to that confederation, and transferred to it her entire military resources, and placed the militia under the control of the rebel chief of that insurrectionary organization. All this was done by these secret conspirators, not only before the people had voted upon the ordinance of secession, but before they were permitted to know, or did know, that any ordinance of secession had been passed. Thus were the unconscious people of Virginia, like beasts in the shambles, transferred to a new allegiance, a new govern- ment, and new rulers and political masters, in the selection of whom they had no knowledge or choice. And before the people were permitted to know of these proceedings, the 'sacred soil' of Virginia was trodden by the armed legions of South Carolina and the Gulf States, and on the fourth Thursday in May, when the ordinance was to be voted upon by the people, thirty thousand glittering bayonets surrounded the polls from the Chesapeake to the summit of the Alleghanies. Portions of the confederate forces had been pushed across the Alleghanies, and were menacing the lives and liberties of the people of north-west Virginia. Officers had been commissioned and authorized to raise troops there and to organize the militia in subjection to the military tyrants at
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Montgomery, and in hostility to the United States. The civil authorities were also threatened with condign punishment unless they instantly recognized this new order of things, and adminis- tered their offices as under the authority of the southern confeder- ation."
Alarmed and exasperated by their proceedings, the loyal people in some thirty of the north-western counties, assem- bled in primary meetings and appointed delegates to a mass convention to be held in Wheeling on the 12th of May fol- lowing. The object was to consult upon the situation and concert measures for the public safety. When the time appointed arrived there was a mass convention indeed. Some three hundred delegates were present.
Mr. Willey had not intended to be present, but at the urgent request of the Hon. F. H. Pierpont, he was induced to go. The latter gentleman informed him that the Hon. John S. Carlisle, who had been a delegate to the Richmond Convention and was an ardent Union man, intended to in- troduce a proposition to immediately create a new State out of certain north-western counties, without first having obtained the consent of either the Legislature of Virginia, or of the Congress of the United States.
Such a proposition was introduced by Mr. Carlisle early in the deliberations of the convention. It seemed to meet with great favor both in convention and among the throngs of people outside of the body. They were looking to the end without respect to the means. They were actuated by a patriotic and proper purpose; but were not advised of the essential preliminary steps to be taken in order to ac- complish that purpose. Governor Pierpont exerted himself with great energy and ability to defeat so revolutionary a project. In this he had the hearty co-operation of Mr. Willey. They spoke against it for a considerable part of two days. At first their efforts excited much angry feeling- especially against Mr. Willey. Placards were posted in the city calling a meeting to denounce him. But planting themselves on the Constitution and the law, they maintained their position boldly and unflinchingly. The convention
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