THE NEW STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA(abridged version) See virginiaplaces.org/boundaries/wvboundary.html for fuller version and more maps At various times throughout the tumultuous years of 1861-62, different names were proposed for the new state. Kanawha, Alleghany, Columbia, New Virginia, and Augusta were considered before West Virginia was finally adopted. The initial favorite, Kanawha, was dropped in part because there was already a county and a river with that same name. Creation of the West Virginia/Virginia border required multiple elections in the middle of a Civil War, two state conventions filled with debate, a US Senate vote opposed by the West Virginia Senator who originally proposed creating the new state, a decision by President Lincoln to override objections by half of his cabinet, and a Supreme Court decision validating an irregular election. In the end, 50 counties would be incorporated into a new state, and 99 counties would be left behind in the remnant of Virginia. Modern West Virginia has 55 counties, since Mineral, Grant, Lincoln, Summers, and Mingo counties were created after statehood by dividing territory of existing counties. Modern Virginia has 95 counties. There were many twists and turns throughout the process that defined which counties, or portions of counties, would split off to form a new state. Debates over the boundaries of the new state were long and emotional, with many alternatives considered. In some proposals during the 1861-62 debates, Fairfax County and Alexandria County (todays Arlington County/Alexandria City) would have been peeled off from Virginia and added to the new state. One option at the end of 1862 proposed Loudoun, Fairfax, Alexandria, and the Eastern Shore counties of Accomack and Northampton could join with the western counties to form a new West Virginia that would surround old Virginia on three sides. Modern West Virginia was 38% of Virginias land area in 1861 - 24,038 of Virginias 63,528 square miles, now shrunk to 39,490 square miles. Representatives from western Virginia counties went to Richmond and participated in the Secession Convention in February-April, 1861. After President Lincoln called for volunteers in response to South Carolina seizing Fort Sumter, the convention voted to propose secession, and scheduled a statewide vote to confirm Virginia would leave the Union. The northwestern counties of Virginia responded by holding meetings in Wheeling. After Virginia voters approved secession, the new Confederate government moved its capital to Richmond. In the midst of the Civil War that erupted, the western Virginians who opposed secession claimed to be the legitimate government of the state and completed the process of forming a separate state - West Virginia. In Map #1 the original 39 counties (yellow) included in August 20, 1862 Dismemberment Ordinance to create the new state to be named Kanawha, and the later additions (green) to form modern boundaries of what became West Virginia Map Source: Newberry Library, Virginia Historical Counties In June 1861, the Second Wheeling Convention (June Session) formed the Restored Government of Virginia as an alternative to the Confederate state government in Richmond, and elected Francis Pierpont at the new governor. While most participants in the Second Wheeling Convention (June Session) were from west of the Blue Ridge, Alexandria was occupied by the Union Army. Perhaps with optimistic hopes that other parts of eastern Virginia would recognize the Restored Government based in Wheeling, rather than the secessionists based in Richmond, the convention declared that any state taxes collected east of the Blue Ridge would be deposited into the Bank of the Old Dominion in Alexandria.2 One-third of the counties that ultimately formed West Virginia had no representatives at the Second Wheeling Convention.3 During the Civil War, many county elections to select the officials who drew the new Virginia-West Virginia boundary were irregular and decisions to accept credentials of delegates were judged based on different circumstances. Even today, despite multiple court decisions, legal scholars continue to debate the legitimacy of the process used to establish the new state and its boundaries. Debates regarding state boundaries and emancipation issues were resolved by 1866, but the complex issue of splitting responsibility for the pre-1861 Virginia state debt was not resolved until a Supreme Court decision in 1911. Final payment was not made until 1939.4 When western leaders first proposed a new state, splitting the debt was considered. One proposal was for the new state to accept no responsibility for the existing debt incurred by Virginia for roads, canals, railroads, and other public obligations. Most of that debt had been used to finance transportation improvements in the eastern portion of Virginia. Frustration over how state taxes had been raised in the western region but spent in the east, and how the voting structure guaranteed eastern dominance, pushed the western counties to form a new state. (Only in 1911 did the US Supreme Court determine how much West Virginia owed old Virginia for its share of the pre-war debt, and it took until 1939 for West Virginia to finish paying.) Those sectional differences went beyond support for the peculiar institution of slavery. After the Civil War ended in Confederate defeat and the 13th Amendment was ratified ending slavery, Eastern Virginia lost its status as a state. The former Confederate state was organized as Military District No. 1, and Congress controlled Virginias re-admission into the Union. In this time period, the western counties could have reunited with the eastern counties to re-form an intact, slave-free Virginia... but West Virginia chose to stay an independent state. At the two sessions of the Second Wheeling Convention in June/August 1861, Henry S. Martin and James T. Close from Alexandria County (now Arlington County and the City of Alexandria) and John Hawxhurst and Eben E. Mason from Fairfax County participated. Jonathan Roberts arrived n Wheeling to represent Fairfax in the August session, but despite an endorsement by John Hawkhurst the convention rejected Roberts credentials and refused to let him participate. When Rev. William F. Mercer from northern Loudoun County sought to represent that county in the Second Wheeling Convention (June Session), his credentials were not accepted. The election of Loudoun delegates was described as unrepresentative of the whole county, though only 35 people had participated in the Alexandria election. The B&O Railroad may have been working at this early stage to define boundaries for a new state that would exclude the area near the District of Columbia that was served by the Alexandria, Loudoun, and Hampshire Railroad. By the time the Adjourned Session of the Second Wheeling Convention met in August 1861, the split between the Union in the north and the Confederacy in the south threatened to become permanent. The Confederate Army had decisively won the first large battle of the war at Manassas, but was losing the war in western Virginia. The Union Army had seized the corridor of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Further south, it had recently occupied the Kanawha River valley as far east as Cheat Mountain, to block any Confederate advance on the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike. There was the potential that any boundary drawn to split Virginia could become a permanent new national boundary dividing two independent nations. Proposed southern and eastern boundaries of the potenial new state varied widely for two years. The rebel-against-the-rebellion-in-Richmond interest was concentrated in the northwestern corner of Virginia, and the new state could have been established as just Northwest Virginia.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 16:59:28 +0000