Getting ready to return to Virginia that "Mother of States"

R.L. Dabney writes in The Life and Campaigns of Lt. Gen. T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson, about the series of events that led to secession in Virginia, one of the last straws being Lincoln's resupplying Ft. Sumter, which is an act of war, and then declaring war without the proper Constitutional authority. Virginia could no longer stay in a union that would tear the binding compact in two, and then try to coerce a sovereign state back into a voluntary union. I thought Dabney's words on these events were very moving and inspiring, I wish we had MEN enough to stand up today for what is just and right! R. L. Dabney writes:

"But they did not stop here: on April 14th, Lincoln made a proclamation, without the authority of a shadow of law from Congress, declaring war against South Carolina and the Confederate Government, and calling upon the States for seventy-five thousand soldiers to invade them. The Governors of all the Southern States, except Maryland, refused compliance. In Virginia all remains of hesitation were instantly extinguished; the Convention, which was in session, on the 17th of April, passed an ordinance resuming the seperate independence of the State; and the Governor immediately began to prepare for war."

..."They said, the old "Mother of States and statesmen" was decrepit, that her genius was turned to dotage, that her breasts were dry of that milk which suckled her Henrys and Washingtons. They thought her little more than a cowering beldame, whom a timely threat would reduce to utter submissiveness. And thus they dared to stretch over her head the minatory rod. But when the tyrant tried the perilous experiment, he was startled by a result as unexpected as that which followed the touch of Ithuriel's spear. She, whom he thought a patient, hesitating, helpless paralytic, flamed up at the insolent touch, like a pyramid of fire, and Virginia stood forth again in her immortal youth, the unterrified Commonwealth of 1776, a Minerva radiant with the terrible glories of policy and war, wielding that sword which ever flashed before the eyes of her aggressors, the "Sic semper Tyrannis."