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From the formation of the
earliest communities, a sectionalism developed between western
and eastern Virginia. The Virginia State Constitution, adopted
in 1776, granted voting rights only to white males owning at
least 25 acres of improved or 50 acres of unimproved land.
This reflected the interest of eastern Virginia,
discriminating against the emerging class of small land owners
in western Virginia. Furthermore, the constitution delegated a
disproportionate representation in the state General Assembly
to eastern Virginia by allowing only two delegates per county,
regardless of population. In a letter to the Richmond Examiner
in 1803, under the pseudonym "A Mountaineer", Harrison County
delegate John G. Jackson condemned both the property
qualifications and the unbalanced representation. In Virginia
at this time, only white men who owned land were allowed to
vote. Since many western Virginians did not own the land on
which they lived, they did not have the right to vote.
Delegates from the Shenandoah Valley and regions westward
attended conventions held in Staunton in 1816 and 1825. In
general, these failed to produce any long-term answers to the
problems. In response to the earlier convention, the Virginia
General Assembly passed a number of acts for the benefit of
western Virginia. The reapportionment of the Senate based upon
white population gave western region greater representation.
Previously, representation was based on total population,
including slaves. Due to the large slave population of eastern
Virginia and the general absence of slaves in western
Virginia, representation in the General Assembly favored the
East. The creation of a Board of Public Works to legislate
internal improvements provided hope of developing more roads
and canals in the West. The General Assembly also established
the first state banks in western Virginia at Wheeling and
Winchester.
In response to a referendum, a convention gathered in Richmond
on October 5, 1829, attended by such prominent Virginians as
James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, and John Tyler, to
develop a new constitution. Eastern Virginian conservatives
defeated virtually every major reform, including the most
significant issue of granting the vote to all white men
regardless of whether they owned land, and the election of the
governor and judges by the people.
Statewide, the new constitution was approved by a margin of
26,055 to 15,566, although voters in present-day West Virginia
rejected it 8,365 to 1,383. Calls for secession began
immediately, led by newspapers such as the Kanawha Republican.
Over the next twenty years, the General Assembly eased some of
this sectional tension. Nineteen new western counties were
organized, granting greater representation. A number of
internal improvements were made in the West, including the
Staunton-Parksburg Turnpike and the Northwester Turnpike.
In 1831, the issue of African Americans came to the forefront
following Nat Turner's raid, which killed sixty-one whites in
Southhampton County, Virginia. That same year, William Lloyd
Garrison first printed his newspaper, The Liberator, making
the beginning of an organized national movement to end
slavery, called abolitionism. Some abolitionists disapproved
of slavery on a moral basis. Other, including prominent
western Virginia political leaders, supported abolitionism
because they felt slaves were performing jobs white laborers
should be paid to do. Washington College President Henry
Ruffner, the son of Kanawha Valley salt industry pioneer David
Ruffner and a slaveholder himself, wanted to end slavery in
trans-Allegheny Virginia in order to provide more paying jobs
for white workers. He outlined this theory in an address
delivered to the Franklin Society in Lexington, Virginia, in
1847. His speech, later printed in pamphlets and distributed
nationally, stated that slavery kept white laborers from
moving into the Kanawha Valley. To prove his theory, West
Virginia abolitionist Eli Thayer established an industrial
town at Ceredo in Wayne County, beginning in 1857. The
laborers, white New England emigrants, were all paid for their
work. The experiment failed when some investors were unable to
contribute and a national economic depression restricted the
availability of additional money.
In 1850, the year which Congress adopted extensive compromises
to ease the growing tensions between North and South in the
country, Virginia delegates once again met in Richmond to
settle problems between East and West in its own state.
Eastern Virginian conservatives reached agreement with the
West on the major issues remaining from the 1829 convention.
All white males over the age of twenty-one were given the
right to vote regardless of whether they owned property. The
convention also approved the election of the governor and
judges by the people. Delegates, including many from western
Virginia, agreed to a provision allowing for property to be
taxed at its total value, except for slaves, who would be
valued at rates well below their actual worth. Many eastern
Virginia slaveholders now paid less in property taxes
represented by entirely new delegates, who had not
participated in the 1829 convention. Several of these
delegates to the Reform Convention rose to political
prominence, including Joseph Johnson (the first Virginia
governor from the trans-Allegheny Virginia), Charles J.
Faulkner, Gideon D. Camden, John Janney, John S. Carlile,
Waitman T. Willey, Benjamin Smith and George W. Summers.
Over the next few years, the state government tried to gain
support from western Virginia by completing various internal
improvement. However, the 1857 national depression defeated
these efforts to improve western Virginia economy. The salt
industry in the Kanawha Valley gradually collapsed. Mills and
factories throughout all the present-day West Virginia were
forced to close. Yet, due to the new 1850 Constitution,
eastern and western Virginians seemed closer politically than
they had been at any time in history.
Everything changed with the approach of the Civil War. In
November 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president, with
virtually no support for the South. His election resulted in
the country's southernmost states leaving the Union. On April
17, 1861, days after Lincoln's order to seize Fort Sumter in
south Carolina, a convention of Virginians voted to submit a
secession bill to the people. Led by Clarksburg's John S.
Carlile, western delegates marched out of the Secession
Convention, vowing to form a state government loyal to the
Union. Many of these delegates gathered in Clarksburg on April
22, calling for a pro-Union convention, which met in Wheeling
from May 13 to 15. On May 23, a majority of Virginia voters
approved the Ordinance of Secession. It is not possible to
determine accurately the vote total from present-day Virginia
due to vote tampering and the destruction of records. Some
argue that secessionists were in the majority in Western
Virginia, while others feel Unionists had greater support.
Following a Union victory at the Battle of Philippi and the
subsequent occupation of northwestern Virginia by General B
McClellan, the Second Wheeling Convention met between June 11
and June 25, 1861. Delegates formed the Restored, Reorganized,
Government of Virginia, and chose Francis H. Pierpont as
governor. President Lincoln recognized the Restored Government
as the legitimate government of Virginia. John Carlile and
Waitman T. Willey became United States Senators and Jacob B.
Blair, William G Brown, and Kellian V. Whaley became
Congressmen representing pro-Union Virginia.
On October 24, 1861, residents of the thirty-nine counties in
western Virginia approved the formation of a new Unionist
state. The accuracy of these election results have been
questioned, since Union troops were stationed at many of the
polls to prevent Confederate sympathizers from voting. At the
Constitutional Convention, which met in Wheeling from November
1861 to February 1862, delegates selected the counties or
inclusion in the new state of West Virginia. From the initial
list, most of the counties in the Shenandoah Valley were
excluded due to their control by Confederate troops and a
large number of local Confederate sympathizers. In the end,
fifty counties were selected (all of present-day West
Virginia's counties except Mineral, Grant, Lincoln, Summers
and Mingo, which were formed after statehood). Most of the
eastern and southern counties did not support statehood, but
were included for political, economic, and military purposes.
The mountain range west of the Blue Ridge became the eastern
border of West Virginia to provide a defense against
Confederate invasion. One of the most controversial decisions
involved the Eastern Panhandle counties, which supported the
Confederacy. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which ran
through the Eastern Panhandle, was extremely important for the
economy and troop movements. Inclusion of these counties
removed all the railroad from the Confederacy.
In terms of the constitution itself, the subject of slavery
produced the most controversy. Delegate Gordon Battelle
proposed the gradual emancipation of slaves already in the
state and freedom to all children born to slaves after July 4,
1865. Although some delegates opposed Battelle's position,
they knew they could not created a pro-slavery document and
gain approval from Congress. Following much debate and
compromise, the provision was written into the constitution
banned the introduction of slaves or free African Americans
into the state of West Virginia, but did not address the issue
of immediate or gradual emancipation.
The United States Constitution says a new states must gain
approval from the original state, which never occurred in the
case of West Virginia. Since the Restored Government was
considered the legal government of Virginia, it granted
permission to itself on May 13, 1862, to form the state of
West Virginia.
When Congress addressed the West Virginia statehood bill, West
Virginia Senator Charles Sumner demanded an emancipation
clause to prevent the creation of another slave state.
Restored Government Senator Carlile wanted a statewide
election to decide the issue. Finally, a compromise between
Senator Willey and Committee on Territories Chairman Benjamin
Wade of Ohio, determined that, after July 4, 1863, all slaves
in West Virginia over twenty-one years of age would be freed.
Likewise, young slaves would receive their freedom upon
reaching the age of twenty-one. The Willey Amendment
prohibited some slavery but it permitted the ownership of
slaves until the age of twenty-one.
The United State Senate rejected a statehood bill proposed by
Carlile which did not contain the Willey Amendment and then on
July 14, 1862, approved a statehood proposal which included
the Willey Amendment. Carlile's vote against the latter bill
made him a traitor in the eyes of many West Virginians and he
was never again elected to political office. On December 10,
1862, the House of Representatives passed the act. On December
31, President Lincoln signed the bill into law, approving the
creation of West Virginia as a state loyal to the Union
without abolishing slavery. The next step was to put the
statehood issue to a vote by West Virginia's citizens. Lincoln
may have had his own reasons for creating the new state,
knowing he could count of West Virginia's support in the 1864
presidential election. On March 26, 1863, the citizens of the
fifty counties approved the statehood bill, including the
Willey Amendment, and on June 20, the state of West Virginia
was officially created.
In May 1863, the Constitutional Union party nominated Arthur
I. Boreman to run for governor. Boreman ran unapposed, winning
the election to become the first governor of West Virginia.
The Restored Government of Virginia, with Pierpont continuing
as governor, moved to Alexandria, Virginia and eventually to
Richmond following the war. Peirpont ordered an election to
allow the residents of Jefferson and Berkeley counties to
determine whether their counties should be located in West
Virginia or Virginia. Despite local support of Virginia,
residents actually filled out ballots voted overwhelmingly to
place both counties in West Virginia. In 1865, Pierpont's
government challenged the legality of West Virginia statehood.
In 1871, the United States Supreme Court awarded the counties
of Jefferson and Berkeley to West Virginia.
The new state of West Virginia had sectional divisions of its
own. While there was widespread support for statehood, public
demands for the separation from Virginia came primarily from
the cities, namely Wheeling and Parkersburg. As a growing
industrial region with improved transportation, northwestern
Virginia businesses desired a more independent role in
government. With the extension of the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad to Wheeling in 1853 and Parkersburg in 1857, the
northwest depended much less on Richmond and eastern Virginia
markets.
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