and true to the Commonwealth of Virginia so long as I continued a citizen thereof."
Is it possible, that in giving these repeated pledges, I Was forsworn; and that in calling my Maker to witness the sincerity and singleness of purpose of what I regarded as a sacred promise, I was but invoking his wrath upon my false heart, and devoting my immortal soul to everlasting perdition? Has my country been so cruel and so base to one who wished to be dutiful, as to transfer his allegiance to another, and then to steal from his strong attachment to her, an abjuration of the very allegiance which she had transferred, and a solemn assurance of the continuation of that fidelity to her, which she had already relinquished and renounced? It cannot be. The Commonwealth of Virginia could never trifle thus and so meanly and wantonly too, with her faithful people. If they have been led into error by her, it is because she was first deceived.
Tell me then, any of you who deceived her, you who assisted in the formation and the adoption of any instrument that has transferred your allegiance to another, and afterwards took this oath of abjuration and fidelity to yourselves, were you for-sworn in doing so? I answer for you all, for those who are dead, as well as for those who survive, that you were not, and for you as well as for myself, I throw back this foul charge upon us all, come it from what quarter it may. Let the author of this Proclamation blunder as he may, in reciting our past political history—let him involve himself in whatever absurdities and inconsistencies he lists, in seeking to establish his new theory—let him reason as erroneously as he pleases, as to the powers and authorities of his government—all this may be pardoned. But when he assails the faith of States, and seeks to falsify the truth of their people, he touches subjects, upon which no man living should even sportively descant, because they involve relations far above his wisdom, even if that was much greater than it is.
The Commonwealth of Virginia has never transferred the allegiance of her citizens, to the government of the United States, either in the first instance," or at any other time. She claims it of them all now, as strongly as she did on the 29th of June, 1776, when she first demanded it, and at any and at every other
