On the 17th of April, 1861, Virginia in Convention passed an Ordinance of Secession. The Convention, when elected on the 4th of February preceding, was largely Anti-Secession; but the events which had taken place,--the firing on Sumter, its surrender, with the machinations of the leaders of Secession,--their misrepresentations of the North, of what Mr. Lincoln would do,--their promises that there would be no war, that the Yankees would not fight,--their bullyings when they could not cajole, their threatenings when they could not intimidate,--their rejoicings at the bloodless victory won by South Carolina, single-handed, over a starved garrison,--their bonfires and illuminations, their baskets of Champagne and bottles of whiskey,--all of these forces combined were sufficient to carry the Ordinance of Secession through the Convention. But it was hampered by a proviso submitting it to the people for ratification on the Fourth Thursday of May following. John Letcher was Governor of Virginia. Weak in intellect, grovelling in his tastes, often drunk, rarely sober, at times making such beastly exhibition of himself that the Richmond press pronounced him a public nuisance, he was a fit tool of the Secession conspirators. Ready to do what he could to commit the State to overt acts against the United States Government, on the evening after the passage of the Ordinance he issued orders to the State militia around Winchester to seize the Arsenal at Harper's Ferry,--on his own sole responsibility, and without a shadow of authority from the people of the State, inaugurating civil war, a proceeding which he followed up directly afterwards by proclaiming Virginia a member of the Confederacy, and thus carrying the State at once out of the Union, without awaiting the formality of a popular vote. Already the intentions of the Confederate Government were manifest. "I prophesy that the flag which now flaunts the breeze here will float over the old Capitol in Washington before the first of May," said Mr. L.P. Walker, Secretary of War, the evening after the fall of Sumter, to a crazy crowd in Montgomery, then the Rebel capital. "From the mountain-tops and valleys to the shores of the sea, there is one wild shout of fierce resolve to capture Washington City at all and every human hazard. That filthy cage of unclean birds must and will assuredly be purified by fire," shouted John Mitchell, through the "Richmond Examiner," on the 23d of April. "Washington City will soon be too hot to hold Abraham Lincoln and his Government," wrote the editor of the "Raleigh Standard" on the 24th. "We are in lively hope, that, before three months roll by, the Government, Congress, Departments and all, will have been removed to the present Federal capital," wrote the Montgomery correspondent of the "Charleston Courier" on the 28th of the same month.