January 31, 1861, The Charleston Mercury
Our Richmond Correspondence.
RICHMOND, January 29. Richmond Waking Up – Speech of Judge Robertson – What Virginians think of South Carolina – Future Course of the Old Dominion – The Inevitable Botts – A Slow Legislature, etc., etc.
At last the darkness seems about to break here. The day is about to dawn. Last night an immense meeting of the citizens took place at the African Church, and the policy of taking Virginia out of the Union before the fourth of March was announced by every speaker, and received with deafening applause and cheers. Let me not forget to notice, too, that the very mention of South Carolina was met with shouts, and that the call of three cheers for her was responded to with a voice of thunder. The meeting was held to nominate candidates to represent the metropolis in the Convention to assemble on the 13th February, and the gentlemen selected by the assemblage are all out and out, open avowed secessionists. They are Captain GEORGE W. RANDOLPH, Mr. JOHN O. STEGER, and Judge JOHN ROBERTSON. In their responses to the nomination these gentlemen avowed their willingness to remain in the present Union, if every guarantee demanded by the South was yielded, and the Constitution so amended that it would embrace thorough protective provisions, placing it out of the power of the North to invade Southern rights. But both Captain RANDOLPH and Mr. STEGER – Judge ROBERTSON was with you – declared that they had not the least expectation of any such event. The adoption of any such policy, by the present legislators in Congress, or by a Convention – and that the conclusive remedy, the panacea for all our woes, was secession before the fourth of March, confederation with our Southern sisters, and armed defiance of the vulgar oppressor of the North. In addition to making these good and sound nominations, the meeting adopted a resolution calling on the Legislature to redeem its pledge, that no Southern State should be invaded – in view of the intelligence received that day, that Fort Monroe was being reinforced, and her guns, that should have pointed seaward, turned upon the town of Hampton, inward. This resolution passed unanimously with deafening applause, and a reference by one of the speakers to the timidity of the Legislature, and its utter failure to represent the feelings of the people, was greeted in the same unmistakable manner.
The time for talking has passed – the hour for action has arrived.