Tyler Finds Confederacy's Cause Just

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Fifteen years shy of its centennial, the nation sat astride a political powder keg with the secession of several gulf states from the Union and a tenuous standoff at Fort Sumter, S.C. After several failed attempts by Congress to defuse the volatile situation through legislative compromise, Virginia called for a national convention to resolve the political conflict over states' rights and the slavery issue.

Virginia, looking to reassert itself as a leader among the Southern states, extended an invitation to all states to join the Old Dominion in an "earnest effort to adjust the controversies in the spirit in which the Constitution was originally formed." They were to meet in Washington on Feb. …