Read Henretta, Chapter 14. Southern secession, while hardly surprising given the deterioration of sectional relations in the 1850s, was hardly the only thinkable sentiment for many southerners. Following Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency in 1860, people in the Upper South (Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas, and Kentucky) debated a course of action. Constitutional Union candidate John Bell won Virginia’s electoral votes in the election. Many Virginia counties clung to unionism (support of the United States government), however precariously. As a result, Lincoln’s decision to fortify Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina in April 1861–and his subsequent call for U.S. troops to retaliate after Confederate cannons fired on the fort–held tremendous implications for the president’s ability to hold on to Virginia. With these events in mind, read the following documents about sentiments toward southern secession in Augusta County, Virginia, in the Valley of the Shadow online exhibit: “God Save Our Union” and “A Southerner on Secession,” “Policy of the Border States,” and “Seventeenth Volume.” Augusta County is located near the Blue Ridge of the Appalachian Mountains and stood uneasily between the stronger unionism of the mountain region and the stronger secessionism of the Piedmont and Tidewater regions. In a comment to this blog post, write a paragraph in which you explain the views about secession that each author holds.  What conclusions can you draw about the state of public opinion in Virginia in early 1861?