Referring to the Virginia convention, he observed that, "the people had chosen a large majority of professed Union men" as delegates.

"After the fall of Sumter, many members of that majority went over to the original Disunion minority, and with them adopted an ordinance withdrawing the State from the Union." In his own peculiar style, Mr.Lincoln made the stinging comment, "Whether this change was wrought by their great approval of the assault upon Sumter, or by their great resentment at the government's resistance to that assault, is not definitely known." Though the Virginia convention had submitted the ordinance of Secession to a vote of the people, to be taken on a day nearly a month in the future, the President informed Congress that "they immediately commenced acting as if the State was already out of the Union." They seized the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and the navy-yard at Norfolk, and "received, perhaps invited, large bodies of troops from the so-called seceding States." They "sent members to their Congress at Montgomery, and finally permitted the insurrectionary government to be transferred to their Capitol at Richmond." Mr.Lincoln concluded with an ominous sentence which might well have inspired Virginians with a sense of impending peril; "The people of Virginia have thus allowed his 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." In that moment of passion these words, with all their terrible significance, were heard by Southern men only to be jeered at.
When the President came to specific recommendations he was brief and pointed.

He asked that Congress would place "at the control of the government at least four hundred thousand men, and four hundred millions of money." He said this number was about one- tenth of those of proper age within the regions where all were apparently willing to engage, and the sum was "less than a twenty- third part of the money value owned by men who seem ready to devote the whole." He argued that "a debt of six hundred millions of dollars is now a less sum per head than the debt of the Revolution when we came out of that struggle, and the money value in the country bears even a greater proportion to what it was then than does the population." "Surely," he added, "each man has as strong a motive now to _preserve_ our liberties as each had then to _establish_ them." After arguing at length as to the utter fallacy of the right of Secession, and showing how the public "mind of the South had been drugged and insidiously debauched with the doctrine for thirty years," the President closed his message "with the deepest regret that he found the duty of employing the war power of the government forced upon him;" but he "must perform his duty, or surrender the existence of the government." Compromise had been urged upon the President from every quarter.

He answered all such requests frankly: "No compromise by public servants could in this case be a cure; not that compromises are not often proper, but that no popular government can long survive a marked precedent that those who carry an election can only save the government from immediate destruction by giving up the main point upon which the people gave the election.
The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decision." Mr.Lincoln thus saw his duty clearly and met it boldly.

In his own person was centred, as he profoundly realized, the fate of Republican government.