To secede or not to secede

Virginia’s decision to secede from the Union in 1861 was the subject of a mock trial on Saturday afternoon at the Old Court House Civil War Museum on the Loudoun Street Mall in Winchester. At the end of the event, part of the museum’s weekend-long “Gathering of Eagles” Civil War commemoration, the judges ruled that Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina had the constitutional right to withdraw from the United States of America and join the Confederacy. U.S. Attorney General Edward Bates, portrayed by David Townsend of Tampa, Fla. (center), argues against Virginia’s secession before the seven justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Looking on are Jim Opdenaker of Quarryville, Pa. (left), who played the role of Hannibal Hamlin, the vice president of the United States in 1861, and David Trimble of Georgetown, Ky., who played then-Attorney General of Virginia John Randolph Tucker.
(Rick Foster)

Wayne Ritchie of Rocky Mount, N.C., portraying Civil War-era photographer Mathew Brady, keeps a pictorial record of the Commonwealth of Virginia vs. United States of America. In the foreground is a camera similar to those used in Brady’s time.
(Rick Foster)