After the passage of the ordinance of secession, provision was made for submitting it to the popular vote for ratification, at the elections to be held on the fourth Thursday in May. In the meantime steps were taken for placing the state in a condition of defence, and an ordinance was passed directing the governor to call into service of the state as many volunteers as might be necessary to defend it against invasion. Colonel Robert E. Lee, a native and citizen of Virginia, who had resigned his commission in the United States Army on hearing the action of his state, was appointed by the governor, with the consent of the convention, commander-in-chief of all of the forces of the state with the rank of Major General. In the meantime an arrangement was made with the Confederate Government for assistance in defending the state, in the event of an attempt by the government at Washington to march troops into or through it with a view to an invasion of any of the seceded states, and the Confederate Government was invited to remove to the City of Richmond. The convention remained in session until the first day of May, when it adjourned over to the second week in June to await the result of the popular vote on the ordinance of secession. The ratification was given by an overwhelming majority of the popular vote, and upon the re-assembling of the convention the ordinance was duly signed by the greater part of the members. I had voted for the ratification at the polls and now put my signature to the ordinance. Virginia now had fully and completely dissolved her connection with the United States, and resumed the powers she had delegated when she ratified the Constitution. To this step she had been impelled against her previous inclinations, by the course of the government at Washington, to avoid being dragged into an unholy war against the Cotton States, and to maintain the cherished principles for which she had fought, and which she had uniformly asserted since the adoption of the United States Constitution. When the act of secession was complete, she adopted the Constitution of the Confederate States, both provisional and permanent, and was fully admitted into the Confederacy.