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West Virginia was the
only American state formed
as a direct result of the
American Civil War
(1861-1865). It was originally part of the British
Virginia Colony (1607-1776) and the western part of
the state of Virginia
(1776-1863, whose population became sharply divided
over the issue of secession from the
Union and
in the separation from Virginia, formalized by
admittance to the Union as a new state in 1863. West
Virginia was one of the Civil War
Border states.
West
Virginia's history was profoundly impacted by its
mountainous terrain, spectacular river valleys, and rich
natural resources. These were all factors driving its
economy and the lifestyles of residents, as well as drawing
visitors to the "Mountain State" in the early 21st century.
Pre-history
The area
now known as West Virginia was a favorite hunting ground of
numerous
Native American peoples before the arrival of
European settlers.
Many ancient man-made earthen mounds from various
mound builder cultures
survive, especially in the areas of
Moundsville,
South Charleston,
and Romney. Although
little is known about these civilizations, the artifacts
uncovered in these give evidence of a complex, stratified
culture that practiced metallurgy.
European exploration and
settlement
In 1671,
General Abram Wood, at the
direction of Royal Governor
William Berkeley of the
Virginia Colony, sent the party of Thomas Batts and
Robert Fallum into the West Virginia area. During this
expedition the pair followed the New River and discovered
Kanawha Falls. In 1716, Governor
Alexander Spottswood
with about thirty horsemen made an excursion into what is
now Pendleton
County. John Van Metre, an Indian trader, penetrated
into the northern portion in 1725. Also in 1725,
Pearsall's Flats in the
South Branch Potomac
River valley, present-day
Romney, was settled and
later became the site of the
French and Indian War
stockade, Fort Pearsall.
Morgan ap Morgan, a Welshman,
built a cabin near present-day
Bunker Hill in
Berkeley County
in 1727. The same year German settlers from
Pennsylvania founded New
Mecklenburg, the present
Shepherdstown,
on the Potomac River, and
others soon followed.
In 1661,
King Charles II of
England granted a company of
gentlemen the land between the Potomac and
Rappahannock rivers, known
as the Northern Neck. The grant
eventually came into the possession of
Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron and in 1746
a stone was erected at the
source of the North Branch Potomac
River to mark the western limit of the grant. A
considerable part of this land was surveyed by
George Washington,
especially the South Branch Potomac
River valley between 1748 and 1751. The diary kept by
Washington indicates that there were already many squatters,
largely of German origin, along the South Branch.
Christopher Gist, a surveyor for the first Ohio Company,
which was composed chiefly of Virginians, explored the
country along the Ohio River north
of the mouth of the Kanawha River
in 1751 and 1752. The company sought to have a fourteenth
colony established with the name Vandalia. Many
settlers crossed the mountains after 1750, though they were
hindered by
Native American depredations. During the
French and Indian War
(1754-1763), the scattered settlements were almost
destroyed. In 1774, the Crown Governor of Virginia,
John Murray, 4th
Earl of Dunmore, led a force over the mountains, and a
body of militia under General Andrew Lewis dealt the
Shawnee Indians under
Cornstalk a crushing blow at the
junction of the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, in the
Battle of Point Pleasant,
but Indian attacks continued until after the
American Revolutionary
War. During the war, the settlers in Western Virginia
were generally active Whigs and many served in the
Continental Army.
Trans-Allegheny Virginia,
1776-1861
Social
conditions in western Virginia were entirely unlike those
existing in the eastern portion of the state. The population
was not homogeneous, as a considerable part of the
immigration came by way of Pennsylvania and included
Germans, Protestant Ulster-Scots,
and settlers from the states farther north. During the
American Revolution, the
movement to create a state beyond the Alleghanies was
revived and, in 1776, a petition for the establishment of "Westsylvania"
was presented to Congress,
on the grounds that the mountains made an almost impassable
barrier on the east. The rugged nature of the country made
slavery unprofitable, and time only increased the social,
political and economic differences between the two sections
of Virginia.
The
convention which met in 1829 to form a new constitution for
Virginia, against the protest of the counties beyond the
mountains, required a property qualification for
suffrage, and gave the slave-holding
counties the benefit of three-fifths of their slave
population in apportioning the state's representation in the
lower Federal house. As a result, every county beyond the
Alleghanies except one voted to reject the constitution,
which was nevertheless carried by eastern votes. Though the
Virginia constitution of 1850 provided for white manhood
suffrage, the distribution of representation among the
counties was such as to give control to the section east of
the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Another grievance of the West was the large expenditure for
internal improvements at state expense by the
Virginia Board of
Public Works in the East compared with the scanty
proportion allotted to the West.
For the
western areas, problems included the distance from the state
seat of government in Richmond
and the difference of common economic interests resultant
from the tobacco and food crops
farming, fishing, and coastal shipping to the east of the
Eastern Continental
Divide (waters which drain to the Atlantic Ocean) along
the Allegheny Mountains,
and the interests of the western portion which drained to
the Ohio and
Mississippi rivers and the
Gulf of Mexico.
The western
area focused its commerce on neighbors to the west, and many
citizens felt that the more populous eastern areas were too
dominant in the
Virginia General Assembly and insensitive to their
needs. Major crisis in the Virginia state government over
these differences was adverted on more than one occasion
during the period before the
American Civil War, but the underlying problems were
fundamental and never well-resolved.
Civil War and split
In 1861, as
the United States itself became massively divided over
regional issues, leading to the conflict best known now as
the American Civil War
(1861-1865), the western regions of Virginia split with the
eastern portion politically, and the two were never
reconciled as a single state again. In 1863, the western
region was admitted to the Union as a new separate state,
initially planned to be called the
State of Kanawha, but
ultimately named West Virginia. After the War, in 1866, two
more Virginia counties (Jefferson
and Berkeley)
joined West Virginia.
Separation
In 1861,
fifteen of the forty-seven delegates from the present state
of West Virginia voted to secede. Almost immediately after
the adoption of the ordinance a mass meeting at
Clarksburg
recommended that each county in north-western Virginia send
delegates to a convention to meet in
Wheeling on
May 13, 1861.
When the
First Wheeling Convention
met, four hundred and twenty-five delegates from twenty-five
counties were present, but soon there was a division of
sentiment. Some delegates favored the immediate formation of
a new state, while others argued that, as Virginia's
secession had not yet been voted
upon or become effective, such action would constitute
revolution against the United States. It was decided that if
the ordinance were adopted (of which there was little doubt)
another convention including the members-elect of the
legislature should meet at Wheeling in June.
At the
election (May 23, 1861),
secession was ratified by a large majority in the state as a
whole, in the western counties that would form the state of
West Virginia the vote was approximately 34,677 against and
19,121 for ratification of the Ordinance of Secession.
Twenty-four counties, approximately two-thirds of the
territory of the new state, approved the Ordinance of
Secession.
The Second
Wheeling Convention met as agreed on June
11 and declared that, since the Secession Convention had
been called without the consent of the people, all its acts
were void, and that all who adhered to it had vacated their
offices. An act for the reorganization of the government was
passed on June 19. The next day
Francis H. Pierpont was
chosen governor of Virginia, other officers were elected and
the convention adjourned. The legislature, composed of the
members from the western counties who had been elected on
May 23 and some of the holdover
senators who had been elected in 1859, met at Wheeling on
July 1, filled the remainder of the
state offices, organized a state government and elected two
United States senators who were recognized at
Washington, D.C. There were,
therefore, two governments claiming to represent all of
Virginia, one owing allegiance to the United States and one
to the Confederacy.
The pro-northern government authorized the creation of the
state of Kanawha, consisting
of most of the counties that now comprise West Virginia. A
little over one month later, Kanawha was renamed West
Virginia. The Wheeling Convention, which had taken a recess
until August 6, reassembled on
August 20 and called for a popular
vote on the formation of a new state and for a convention to
frame a constitution if the vote should be favorable.
At the
election (October 24,
1861), 18,489 votes were cast for the
new state and only 781 against. At this time West Virginia
had nearly 70,000 qualified voters, and the
May 23 vote on secession had drawn
nearly 54,000 voters. Though the new state's government was
avowedly unionist, the secessionist counties consisted of
nearly two-thirds the area of the state. Votes from the
secessionist counties in the October
24 vote on statehood were mostly cast by refugees in the
area around Wheeling, not in the counties themselves. In
secessionist counties where a poll was conducted it was by
military intervention. Even in some counties that had voted
against secession, such as Wayne and Cabell, it was
necessary to send in Union soldiers. Returns from some
counties were as low as 5%, e.g. Raleigh County 32-0 in
favor of statehood, Clay 76-0, Braxton 22-0, and some gave
no returns at all. The Constitutional Convention began on
November 26, 1861 and finished
its work on February 18,
1862, and the instrument was ratified
(18,162 for and 514 against) on April 11,
1862.
The
composition of the members of all three Wheeling
Conventions, the May (First) Convention, the June (Second)
Convention, and the Constitutional Convention, was of an
irregular nature. The members of the May Convention were
chosen by groups of Unionists, mostly in the far
Northwestern counties. Over one-third came from the counties
around the northern panhandle. The May Convention resolved
to meet again in June should the Ordinance of Secession be
ratified by public poll on May 23, 1861, which it was. The
June Convention consisted of 103 members, 33 of which had
been elected on May 23 to the General Assembly in Richmond,
though they chose instead to attend the Wheeling convention.
Arthur Laidley, elected to the General Assembly from Cabell
County, attended the June Convention but refused to take
part and instead went to Richmond along with the remaining
General Assembly members elected from western Virginia. The
other delegates to the June Convention were "chosen even
more irregularly-some in mass meetings, others by county
committee, and still others were seemingly self-appointed".
It was this June Convention which drafted the Statehood
resolution. The Constitutional Convention met in November,
1861, and consisted of 61 members. Its composition was just
as irregular. A delegate representing Logan County was
accepted as a member of this body, though he did not live in
Logan County, and his "credentials consisted of a petition
signed by fifteen persons representing six families". The
large number of Northerners at this convention caused great
distrust over the new Constitution during Reconstruction
years. In 1872, under the leadership of
Samuel Price, former Lt.
Governor of Virginia, the Wheeling constitution was
discarded, and an entirely new one was written along
ante-bellum principles.
A Constitution of Our Own
The
Wheeling politicians controlled only a small part of West
Virginia. On September 20, 1862, Arthur Boreman wrote to
Francis Pierpoint from Parkersburg: "The whole country South
and East of us is abandoned to the Southern Confederacy--Men
are here from the counties above named--[Wirt, Jackson,
Roane] and indeed from Clay, Nicholas, &c &c,--who have been
run off from their homes--Indeed the Ohio border is lined
with refugees from Western Virginia. We are in worse
condition than we were a year ago--These people come to me
every day and say they can't stay at home...They must either
have protection or abandon the country entirely... If they
attempt to stay at home--they must keep their horses
hid--and they dare not sleep at home but in the woods--and
when at home in the day time they are in constant fear of
their lives... The secessionists remain at home & are safe &
now claim they are in the Southern Confederacy--which is
practically the fact..."
On
May 13, the state legislature of the
reorganized government approved the formation of the new
state. An application for admission to the Union was made to
Congress, and on December 31,
1862 an enabling act was approved by President Lincoln
admitting West Virginia on the condition that a provision
for the gradual abolition of slavery be inserted in the
Constitution. The Convention was reconvened on
February 12, 1863,
and the demand was met. The revised constitution was adopted
on March 26, 1863, and on
April 20, 1863 President Lincoln
issued a proclamation admitting the state at the end of
sixty days (June 20, 1863). Meanwhile
officers for the new state were chosen, and Governor
Pierpont moved his capital to
Alexandria from which he
asserted jurisdiction over the counties of Virginia within
the Federal lines.
Legality
The
question of the constitutionality of the formation of the
new state was eventually brought before the
Supreme Court
of the United States, in the case of Virginia v. West
Virginia, 78 U.S. 39 (1870).[13]
Berkeley and
Jefferson
counties lying on the Potomac east of the mountains, in
1863, with the consent of the Reorganized government of
Virginia voted in favor of annexation to West Virginia. Many
voters absent in the Confederate army when the vote was
taken refused to acknowledge the transfer upon their return.
The Virginia General
Assembly repealed the act of cession and in 1866 brought
suit against West Virginia asking the court to declare the
counties a part of Virginia. Meanwhile Congress on
March 10, 1866 passed a joint
resolution recognizing the transfer. The Supreme Court
decided in favor of West Virginia, and there has been no
further question.
Civil War
During the
American Civil War, West Virginia suffered comparatively
little. Union General George
B. McClellan's forces gained possession of the greater
part of the territory in the summer of 1861, and Union
control was never seriously threatened, in spite of
Confederate General Robert E. Lee's
attempt in the same year. In 1863, General
John D. Imboden, with 5,000
Confederates, overran a considerable portion of the state.
Bands of guerrillas burned and plundered in some sections,
and were not entirely suppressed until after the war was
ended. The state furnished about 36,000 soldiers to the
Federal armies and somewhat less than 10,000 to the
Confederate. The absence in the army of the Confederate
sympathizers helps to explain the small vote against the
formation of the new state. Slavery was officially abolished
by West Virginia on February 3,
1865. (It took the ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution accomplished on
December 6, 1865 to abolish slavery
nationwide).
During the
war and for years afterwards, partisan feeling ran high. The
property of Confederates might be confiscated, and, in 1866,
a constitutional amendment disfranchising all who had given
aid and comfort to the Confederacy was adopted. The addition
of the
Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution
caused a reaction, the
Democratic Party
secured control in 1870, and in 1871 the constitutional
amendment of 1866 was abrogated. The first steps toward this
change had been taken, however, by the
Republicans in
1870. In 1872, an entirely new constitution was adopted
(August 22).
Following
the war, Virginia had hoped for at least partial
reunification with West Virginia. However, West Virginia
remained as an independent state within the Union, initially
with 48 counties. In fact, two more Virginia counties
elected to join West Virginia after the War, in 1866. These
were Berkeley
County and
Jefferson County. (Five more counties were formed later,
to result in the current 55).
President
Lincoln was in a close campaign when he won reelection in
1864. However, the act that allowed the state to be created
was signed in 1862, two years before Lincoln's re-election
would have been an issue in any real way.
Enduring disputes
Beginning
in Reconstruction, and for
several decades thereafter, the two states disputed the new
state's share of the pre-war Virginia government's debt,
which had mostly been incurred to finance public
infrastructure improvements, such as canals, roads, and
railroads under the
Virginia Board of
Public Works. Virginians led by former
Confederate
General William Mahone formed
a political coalition based upon this theory, the
Readjuster Party. Although
West Virginia's first constitution provided for the
assumption of a part of the Virginia debt, negotiations
opened by Virginia in 1870 were fruitless, and in 1871 that
state funded two-thirds of the debt and arbitrarily assigned
the remainder to West Virginia. The issue was finally
settled in 1915, when the
United States Supreme
Court ruled that West Virginia owed Virginia
$12,393,929.50. The final installment of this sum was paid
off in 1939.
Disputes
about the exact location of the border in some of the
northern mountain reaches between
Loudoun County, Virginia
and Jefferson
County, West Virginia continued well into the 20th
century. In 1991, both state legislatures appropriated money
for a boundary commission to look into 15 miles of the
border area.
Hidden resources
Salt, coal: the rock that burns
The new
state benefited from development of its mineral resources
more than any other single economic activity after
Reconstruction. Much of the
northern panhandle and north-central portion of the State
are underlain by bedded salt deposits
over 50-feet thick. Salt mining had been underway since the
18th century, though that which could be easily obtained had
largely played out by the time of the American Civil War,
when the red salt of
Kanawha County
was a valued commodity of first Confederate, and later Union
forces. Newer technology has since proved that West Virginia
has enough salt resources to supply the nation's needs for
an estimated 2,000 years. During recent years, production
has been about 600,000 to 1,000,000 tons per year.
However,
after the American Civil War, there was a greater treasure
not yet developed, however, that would fuel much of the
Industrial Revolution
in the U.S. and steamships of many of the world's navies.
The residents (both Native Americans and early European
settlers) had long-known of the underlying
coal, and the fact that it could be used for heating and
fuel. However, very small "personal" mines were the only
practical development.
In the
1850s, geologists such as Dr.
David T. Ansted (1814-1880)
surveyed potential coal fields and invested in land and
early mining projects. After the War, with the new
railroads came a practical method to
transport large quantities of coal to expanding U.S. and
export markets. As the anthracite
mines of northwestern New Jersey and Pennsylvania began to
play out during this same time period, investors and
industrialists focused new interest in West Virginia.
Early railroads, shipping to East
Coast and Great Lakes
The
completion of the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) westerly across the
state from Richmond, Virginia
to the new city of
Huntington on the Ohio River
in 1872 opened access to the
New River Coalfield. Soon, the C&O was building tracks
east from Richmond down the
Virginia Peninsula to reach its huge
coal pier at the new city of
Newport News, Virginia
on the large harbor of Hampton
Roads. There, city founder
Collis P. Huntington
also developed what would become the largest shipbuilder in
the world,
Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. Among its
many products, the shipyard began building ocean-going
ships, known as colliers, to
transport coal to other eastern ports (notably in
New England) and overseas.
In 1881,
the new Philadelphia-based owners of
William Mahone's former
Atlantic,
Mississippi and Ohio Railroad (AM&O) which stretched
across Virginia's southern tier from
Norfolk, had sights clearly
set on the Mountain State, where the owners had large land
holdings. Their railroad was renamed
Norfolk and Western
(N&W), and a new railroad city was developed at
Roanoke to handle planned
expansion. After its new President
Frederick J. Kimball and
a small party journeyed by horseback and saw firsthand the
rich bituminous coal seam
(which Kimball's wife named "Pocahontas," the N&W redirected
its planned westward expansion to reach it. Soon, the N&W
was also shipping from its own new coal piers on Hampton
Roads at Lamberts Point
outside Norfolk. In 1889,
in the southern part of the state, along the Norfolk and
Western rail lines, the important coal center of
Bluefield, West Virginia
was founded. The "capital" of the
Pocahontas coalfield,
this city would remain the largest city in the southern
portion of the state for several decades. It shares a sister
city with the same name, Bluefield, in Virginia.
In the
northern portion of the state and elsewhere, the older
Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad (B&O) and other lines also expanded to take
advantage of coal opportunities as well. The B&O developed
coal piers in Baltimore
and at several points on the Great
Lakes. Other significant rail carriers of coal were the
Western Maryland Railway
(WM), Southern Railway
(SOU), and the
Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N). Particularly
notable was a latecomer, the
Virginian Railway (VGN), built in an extraordinary
manner to the latest and highest standards and completed in
1909.
New competitor helps open "Billion
Dollar Coalfield"
By 1900,
only a large area of the most rugged terrain of southern
West Virginia was any distance from the existing railroads
and mining activity. Within this area west of the New River
Coalfield in Raleigh and Wyoming counties lay the
Winding Gulf Coalfield,
later promoted as the "Billion Dollar Coalfield."
A protégé
of Dr. Ansted was William Nelson
Page (1854-1932), a civil
engineer and mining manager in
Fayette County.
Former West Virginia Governor
William A. MacCorkle
described him as a man who knew the land "as a farmer knows
a field." Beginning in 1898, Page teamed with northern and
European-based investors to take advantage of the
undeveloped area. They acquired large tracts of land in the
area, and Page began the
Deepwater Railway, a
short-line railroad which was chartered to stretch
between the C&O at its line along the
Kanawha River and the N&W at
Matoaka, a distance of
about 80 miles.
Although
the Deepwater plan should have provided a competitive
shipping market via either railroad, leaders of the two
large railroads did not appreciate the scheme. In secret
collusion, each declined to negotiate favorable rates with
Page, nor did they offer to purchase his railroad, as they
had many other short-lines. However, if the C&O and N&W
presidents thought they could thus kill the Page project,
they were to be proved mistaken. One of the
silent partner investors Page
had enlisted was millionaire industrialist
Henry Huttleston Rogers, a
principal in John D.
Rockefeller's Standard Oil
Trust and an old hand at developing natural resources,
transportation. A master at competitive "warfare", Henry
Rogers did not like to lose in his endeavors, and also had
"deep pockets".
Instead of
giving up, Page (and Rogers) quietly planned and then built
their tracks all the way east across Virginia, using Rogers'
private fortune to finance the $40 million cost. When the
renamed Virginian Railway (VGN)
was completed in 1909, no less than three railroads were
shipping ever-increasing volumes of coal to export from
Hampton Roads. West Virginia coal was also under high demand
at Great Lakes ports as well. The
VGN and the N&W) ultimately became parts of the modern
Norfolk Southern system, and
the VGN's well-engineered 20th century tracks continue to
offer a favorable gradient to Hampton Roads.
Labor, ecology issues
As coal
mining and related work became a major employment activities
in the state, there was considerable labor strife as working
conditions and safety issues, as well as economic ones
arose. Even in the 21st century, mining safety and
ecological concerns were challenging to the state whose coal
continued to power electrical generating plants in many
other states.
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