History of West Virginia

West Virginia was the only American state formed as a direct result of the American Civil War. It was originally the western part of the state of Virginia, whose population became sharply divided over the issue of secession from the Union.

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 metalurgy.

European exploration and settlement

Thomas Lee, the first manager of the Ohio Company of Virginia

In 1671 General Abram Wood, at the direction of Royal Governor William Berkeley of the Virginia Colony, sent a party which 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 (see 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 ath 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

Further information: Virginia

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 ground 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

Main article: West Virginia in the Civil War

Separation

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John Carlile, a leader during the First Wheeling Convention

In 1861, only nine of the forty-six 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 this 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 seccession 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 was 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, but in the western counties 40,000 votes out of 44,000 were cast against it. 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 owning 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 the August 6, then reassembled (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. The 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. Though the new state's government was avowedly unionist, the counties it contained were divided in their secession votes. 18 West Virginia counties voted in favor of secession, 20 voted against secession, and one resulted in a tie. Voting records for the remaining 9 counties were lost during the war.[1]

Harpers Ferry (as it appears today) changed hands a dozen times during the American Civil War.

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 Feburary 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. 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 in 1871 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. 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 Lees 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.

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First Confederate Memorial, Romney.

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. 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. Thomas DiLorenzo, author of The Real Lincoln, claims that Lincoln "unconstitutionally created the state of West Virginia to shore up his electoral college vote count." 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

The new state benefited from development of its mineral resources more than any other single economic activity after Reconstruction. Salt mining had been underway since the 18th century, though it 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. 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. 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. Geologists such as Dr. David T. Ansted surveyed potential coal fields and invested in land and early mining projects.

The completion of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) across the state to the new city of Huntington on the Ohio River in 1872 opened access to the New River Coal Field. Soon, the C&O was building its huge coal pier at Newport News, Virginia on the large harbor of Hampton Roads. In 1881, the new Philadelphia-based owners of the 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 his wife named "Pocahontas," the N&W redirected its planned westward expansion to reach it. Soon, the N&W was also shipping from new coal piers at Hampton Roads.

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. 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.

Beginning in 1898, Dr. Ansted's protégé William Nelson Page, a civil engineer and mining manager in Fayette County, teamed with 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 competitive "warfare" with deep pockets. Instead of giving up, Page (and Rogers) quietly planned and then built their tracks all the way east to across Virginia, using Rogers' private fortune to finance the $40 million cost. When the renamed Virginian Railway 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.

As coal mining and related work became a major employment activities in the state, there was was considerable labor strife as working conditions and safety issues, as well as economics 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.

References

• Charles H. Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia from 1776 to 1861 (1910)
• Charles H. Ambler, A History of Education in West Virginia From Early Colonial Times to 1949 (1951), 1000 pages
• Charles H. Ambler and Festus P. Summers. West Virginia, the Mountain State (1958) a standard history
• Jane S. Becker, Inventing Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930-1940 1998.
• Richard A. Brisbin, et al. West Virginia Politics and Government (1996)
• James Morton Callahan, History of West Virginia (1923) 3 vol
• John C. Campbell, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland (1921)reissued 1969.
• David Alan Corbin, Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922 (1981)
• Phil Conley, History of West Virginia Coal Industry (Charleston: Education Foundation, 1960)
• Richard Orr Curry, A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and Copperhead Movement in West Virginia (1964)
• Richard Orr Curry, "A Reappraisal of Statehood Politics in West Virginia", Journal of Southern History 28 ( November 1962): 403-21. in JSTOR
• Donald Edward Davis. Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians 2000.
• Keith Dix, What's a Coal Miner to Do? The Mechanization of Coal Mining (1988), changeS in the coal industry prior to 1940
• Ronald D, Eller. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930 1982.
• Carl E. Feather, Mountain People in a Flat Land: A Popular History of Appalachian Migration to Northeast Ohio, 1940–1965. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998.
• Thomas R. Ford ed. The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1967.
• Horace Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan, 1922. Reprinted as Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life among the Mountaineers . With an Introduction by George Ellison. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.
• Ronald L. Lewis. Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987.
• Richard D. Lunt, Law and Order vs. the Miners: West Virginia, 1907-1933 (Hamden CT: Archon Books, 1979), On labor conflicts of the early twentieth century.
• Gerald Milnes, Play of a Fiddle: Traditional Music, Dance, and Folklore in West Virginia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
• Kenneth W. Noe. "Exterminating Savages: The Union Army and Mountain Guerrillas in Southern West Virginia, 1861–186." In Noe and Shannon H. Wilson, Civil War in Appalachia (1997), 104–30.
• Mary Beth Pudup, Dwight B. Billings, and Altina L. Waller, eds. Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
• Otis K. Rice, The Allegheny Frontier: West Virginia Beginnings, 1730-1830 (1970),
• Michael P. Riccards, "Lincoln and the Political Question: The Creation of the State of West Virginia" Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 27, 1997
• Otis K. Rice and Stephen W. Brown, West Virginia: A History, 2d ed. ( Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), standard
• Dan Rottenberg, In the Kingdom of Coal: An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2003), owners' perspective
• Curtis Seltzer, Fire in the Hole: Miners and Managers in the American Coal Industry (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985), conflict in the coal industry to the 1980s.
• William G. Shade, Democratizing the Old Dominion: Virginia and the Second American Party System, 1824–1861. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996.
• Festus P. Summers, William L. Wilson and Tariff Reform, a Biography (1953)
• Joe William Trotter Jr., Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32 (1990)
• John Alexander Williams, West Virginia: A History for Beginners. 2nd ed. Charleston, W.Va.: Appalachian Editions, 1997.
• John Alexander Williams. West Virginia: A Bicentennial History (1976)
• John Alexander Williams. West Virginia and the Captains of Industry 1976.
• John Alexander Williams. Appalachia: A History (2002)

Primary sources

• Elizabeth Cometti, and Festus P. Summers. The Thirty-fifth State: A Documentary History of West Virginia. Morgantown: West Virginia University Library, 1966.

See also

• History of Virginia
• Lost counties, cities, and towns of Virginia
• Readjuster Party
• Wheeling Convention