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The Ordinance of Secession that the Virginia Convention adopted by a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five in the Capitol in Richmond on 17 April 1861 and that a majority of the state's voters ratified in a referendum held on 23 May of that year is unquestionably one of the pivotal documents in the state's history. The text of the brief ordinance is dry and uninspiring, utterly unlike the eloquent language of the Declaration of Independence. The ordinance merely rescinded the 1788 state convention's ratification of the Constitution of the United States and all of the General Assembly's resolutions ratifying amendments to the Constitution. The men who voted for the ordinance (and also the men who voted against it) knew at the time how significant it was, and they treated the original documents that preserved the text with an appropriate regard to the ordinance's historic importance. They creared three formal parchments and authorized the printing of a lithographic copy, and two lithographers later produced copies of that lithograph.
Five days after the convention's vote, and even as some delegates who voted against secession began to have second thoughts and ask to have their votes changed, Richard Henry Cox of King and Queen County arose in the convention and moved that a formal copy be prepared on parchment "to be open to the signatures of members from the time of enrollment till the final adjournment of the Convention." Another delegate pointed out that the ordinance would not legally take effect until ratified in a statewide referendum a month later and that a formal signing should not take place before then. A third delegate suggested that in the meantime the members could sign the "rough draft" of the ordinance, but the delegates adopted Cox's motion.1 Two days later William H. Dulaney of Fairfax County, who had twice voted against secession and was preparing to return home, sought and received permission "to sign the enrolled ordinance of secession forthwith."2
The ruled parchment measures 15 1/2 inches by 26 7/8 inches and contains the signatures of convention president John Janney and ninety-one other men who signed it during the final days of the first session of the convention, which adjourned on 1 May 1861. Some delegates who voted for secession...