Happy 162 Birthday West Virginia

On June 20, 1863, West Virginia became the 35th state in the Union. It is a state that was born out of the Civil War. It’s also the only state that separated itself from its parent-state, in our case the State of Virginia.

West Virginia has a complicated history. Formerly, we were a part of the Old Dominion, the State of Virginia. But all of that changed when Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861. A number of the Virginia legislators who represented the western part of Virginia didn’t agree to separate. In fact, one of the first meetings to discuss the issue of statehood was held in my hometown of Clarksburg, western Virginia in April of 1861. John C. Carlisle and other legislators who had fled Richmond immediately after the debate and vote to secede met in Clarksburg to discuss what those who were opposed to secession should do. For a town of about 800, the meeting was enormous.

According to newspaper articles somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 people met at the Harrison County courthouse. Carlisle and other orators discussed the situation and at the time no one disagreed with them that perhaps the western part of the state should divide itself from Virginia.

Now to think that this was an original idea, it really wasn’t. About the time of the War of 1812 a similar sentiment was held by people living in the western side of the state. It was felt that all of the tax money was going to support the Tidewater area of eastern Virginia and the taxpayers in the western part of the state were not getting anything that would benefit them. Nothing came of the original meetings because of the fact that the war was ongoing and sentiment just wasn’t there at that point.

Later in the 1840s a similar meeting was held in Winchester VA.  One of the reports indicated that a petition was actually signed and sent to the governor of Virginia demanding that either the western counties receive some support, or they would invoke Article 4, Section 3, of the US constitution and sue the state of Virginia to allow the western counties to secede and become a new state.

This didn’t fall on deaf ears in Richmond. In order to placate the western counties a number of initiatives were offered that allowed for internal development of the western counties. Three new turnpikes were designed and constructed. One ran from Stanton to Beverly and another from Winchester all the way to Parkersburg on the Ohio River.  A third was the Valley Pike that connected the Shenandoah Valley (Now US 11). The Virginia legislature also began constructing the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston and the State prison and Moundsville. For the time being it seemed to settle the issue. The western counties got some roads, the state’s prisoners and the mentally insane! Additionally, they ended up getting forced to pay the State of Virginia for these internal improvements after the Civil War.

These internal improvements were beneficial to the state of Virginia and to the people of the western counties. But by 1860 businessmen in the western counties began to realize that they did very little trade across the mountains to Winchester or to Richmond. Most of the trade went north to Wheeling and Pittsburgh and from there along the B&O railroad to Baltimore and the East Coast. With the introduction of the railroads the majority of travel and trade went west to Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio. This trade became more prominent than trade with Richmond. This was noted during the first Wheeling convention that was held to consider separating the western counties from the Old Dominion.

Additionally, the western counties weren’t conducive to slavery. There were slaves in the western counties, but most were farm hands on small farms, there were no really large plantations. Most enslaved persons were house servants, farm hands and general laborers. Some slaves worked in some light industries especially in the salt and tanning industries. Here in Clarksburg the largest number of enslaved persons owned by a single individual was 11. The way that slaves were taxed versus taxation on other types of property did not sit well with people in the western counties. So, there were a number of reasons why the western counties looked north, and West as opposed to east towards the capital in Richmond.

There’s always a lot of discussion about the legitimacy of West Virginia. A number of Civil War sites will often get into arguments about whether or not West Virginia should exist as a state. Some still feel that we should be a part of Virginia, and Virginia thought the same thing at the end of the Civil War.

Even President Lincoln struggled with the idea of the division of one state. He was trying to save the Union from disunion and if he was doing that how could he legitimately allow the western counties of Virginia to separate and secede from their home state?

It took the opinion of Chief Justice Salmon Chase to finally allow Lincoln to agree to allow for the establishment of West Virginia. Even in 1863 the decision was still controversial. A friend of mine asked me one time if I felt that West Virginia was a legitimate state. I said yes, it is, and he asked me why?

“Well,” I told him, “West Virginia is a legitimate state because the Supreme Court said it was.”

Any and all disputes between states are resolved by the Supreme Court. After the Civil War Virginia tried to sue the state of West Virginia and have it returned. The Supreme Court looked at all of the information about the founding of the state and decided that they had legitimately formed a government in exile, representing the state of Virginia. They had elected senators and congressmen, they had kept the federal courts open, they had paid federal taxes throughout the entire war, and they had raised troops to support the Union cause. Each of these was something that a legitimate State was required to do. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of West Virginia. Additionally, the legislature or the ‘government-in-exile’, representing the State of Virginia, voted to make the division. They had ‘followed the Constitution’.

The original state capital was established in Wheeling, West Virginia. Initially this was done for the protection of the “Loyal and Restored Government of Virginia”. Wheeling is in the Northern Panhandle between two pro-Union states of Ohio and Pennsylvania; the legislators felt that they had some degree of protection there.

But eventually there was a movement to move the state capital to a more central location. This was an era where governments preferred to have the state capital in a central location rather than favoring one specific area of the state. You can look at Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Michigan and you can see to some degree that the state capitals are located in the central part of the state. Some West Virginians thought that the same thing would be a good idea here.

Even our little town of Clarksburg was considered for the site of the new state capital. Unlike most of the parts of the state, Clarksburg had a rail line that was a central point of communications between Baltimore and the east and Parkersburg in the West. The Baltimore and Ohio railroad, and the western Virginia Railroad, a subsidiary line of the B&O, allowed for rapid movement of people across the state. There were road nets connecting the northern part and the southern part of the state that ran through Clarksburg as well as a macadamized turnpike that connected the Ohio River to the Shenandoah Valley. Clarksburg was one of about four locations that was considered.

What the state intended to do was either purchased or use eminent domain to seize tracts of land in the location that they would select to be the new capital. They would then sell that land and use the proceeds to build a capital complex. The town of Weston, and the area around Flatwoods were also considered as state capitals. Flatwoods was considered to be the central part of the state, but the area was totally undeveloped. However, in Flatwoods the state could easily acquire large tracts of land. Ultimately Wheeling continued to be the site of the state capital until well after the Civil War when it was moved to Charleston.

There was even some consternation of what to call this new state that had been created. Some had actually suggested the title of ‘Kanawha’ in honor of a major waterway in West Virginia. It’s said that the reason that ‘Kanawha’ was dropped was that no one could pronounce it. They finally settled simply on West Virginia.

So, we have West Virginia; “The Mountain State”, our motto is “Mountaineers are always free. The state takes a lot of heat; some think of us as being backwards, hillbillies; the most notable historical event that seems to be recognized in the state is the Hatfield and McCoy feud. But it’s actually a great place to live. People are friendly and self-reliant. Neighbors help neighbors in this state, and we don’t rely as much on the federal government as others do. We take care of our own.

We have our problems in West Virginia, and we have our issues; but as a retired military man I’ve lived all over the United States and I visited a lot of places in the world, but West Virginia has become home. Happy birthday from an adopted son.

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