The border States, so called, were not uniform in their action, some of them being almost for the Union, while in others—­as Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas—­the Union sentiment was nearly repressed and silenced.  The course taken in Virginia was the most remarkable—­perhaps the most important.  A convention elected by the people of that State to consider this very question of disrupting the Federal Union was in session at the capital of Virginia when Fort Sumter fell.  To this body the people had chosen a large majority of professed Union men.  Almost immediately after the fall of Sumter, many members of that majority went over to the original disunion minority, and with them adopted an ordinance for withdrawing the State from the Union.  Whether this change was wrought by their great approval of the assault upon Sumter, or their great resentment at the government’s resistance to that assault, is not definitely known.  Although they submitted the ordinance for ratification to a vote of the people, to be taken on a day then somewhat more than a month distant, the convention and the Legislature (which was also in session at the same time and place), with leading men of the State not members of either, immediately commenced acting as if the State were already out of the Union.  They pushed military preparations vigorously forward all over the State.  They seized the United States armory at Harper’s Ferry, and the navy-yard at Gosport, near Norfolk.  They received perhaps invited—­into their State large bodies of troops, with their warlike appointments, from the so-called seceded States.  They formally entered into a treaty of temporary alliance and co-operation with the so-called “Confederate States,” and sent members to their congress at Montgomery.  And finally, they permitted the insurrectionary government to be transferred to their capital at Richmond.

The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant insurrection to make its nest within her borders; and this government has no choice left but to deal with it where it finds it.  And it has the less regret as the loyal citizens have, in due form, claimed its protection.  Those loyal citizens this government is bound to recognize and protect, as being Virginia.

In the border States, so called,—­in fact, the middle States,—­there are those who favor a policy which they call “armed neutrality”; that is, an arming of those States to prevent the Union forces passing one way, or the disunion the other, over their soil.  This would be disunion completed.  Figuratively speaking, it would be the building of an impassable wall along the line of separation—­and yet not quite an impassable one, for under the guise of neutrality it would tie the hands of Union men and freely pass supplies from among them to the insurrectionists, which it could not do as an open enemy.  At a stroke it would take all the trouble off the hands of secession, except only what proceeds from the external blockade.  It would do for the disunionists that which, of all things, they most desire—­feed them well and give them disunion without a struggle of their own.  It recognizes no fidelity to the Constitution, no obligation to maintain the Union; and while very many who have favored it are doubtless loyal citizens, it is, nevertheless, very injurious in effect.