This result was, in fact, eloquently predicted by Patrick Henry, George Mason, William Grayson, and other members of the same Convention. This argument proceeded on the supposition, either that Virginia would not have the right to secede from the Union, or else that this right would be denied by her oppressors. The debates in the Virginia Convention of 1788 are, indeed replete with passages of burning eloquence, which predict the calamities that would fall on that noble State, as well as on other Southern States, from the oppressions of “the Northern majority.” Hence, the people of Virginia,
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