Virginia in the American Civil War Virginia in the American Civil War The Commonwealth of Virginia became a prominent part of the Confederate States of America when it joined the Confederacy during the American Civil War. As a Southern slave-holding state, Virginia held a state convention to deal with the secession crisis, and voted against secession on April 4, 1861. Opinion shifted after April 15, when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln called for troops from all states still in the Union to put down the rebellion, following the capture of Fort Sumter, and the Virginia convention voted to declare secession from the Union. A Unionist government was
Issues of the American Civil War Issues of the American Civil War Issues of the American Civil War include questions about the name of the war, the tariff, states' rights and the nature of Abraham Lincoln's war goals. For more on naming, see Naming the American Civil War. The question of how important the tariff was in causing the war stems from the Nullification Crisis, which was South Carolina's attempt to nullify a tariff and lasted from 1828 to 1832. The tariff was low after 1846, and the tariff issue faded into the background by 1860 when secession began. States' rights was the justification for nullification