Political events On April 17, 1861, the
Virginia state convention in
Richmond declared secession from the union. There were 49 delegates representing the 50 counties that became West Virginia. On April 17 they voted 32 against the ordinance, 13 in favor, and 4 absent or abstained. The convention adjourned on May 1, to be reconvened in June. Most of the 49 delegates returned to Richmond in June and a majority signed the ordinance of secession. Of the 49 delegates 29 signed the ordinance. On May 15,
western Virginia Unionists convened the first session of the
Wheeling Convention. Most of the 436 delegates were informally selected or self-appointed, over 1/3 were from the 4 counties of the
northern panhandle. During the convention
Gov. Dennison of Ohio requested that John Carlile and other Unionists meet with his Attorney General
Christopher Wolcott in
Bridgeport, OH. They were told if they would break off from Virginia that Ohio would send military force to protect them. The convention denounced secession and called for a more formal selection of delegates. However no official county elections for delegates were held, as most county officials were still supportive of the Richmond government. Returns from the western counties were slow in arriving when Gov. Letcher announced Virginia's passage of the secession ordinance. Some published returns were conflicting and some were missing. Historian Richard O. Curry estimated an approximate vote on the secession ordinance from West Virginia's counties as 34,677 against and 19,121 in favor of secession, with 24 counties supporting the ordinance and 26 rejecting it. Although most of West Virginia's delegates to the Richmond convention had opposed the secession ordinance, the initiation of war in the west prompted most of them to return to Richmond in June for the second meeting of the convention, at which time they signed the secession ordinance, 29 of the original 49 members signing. With Virginia now part of the Confederacy a convention of Unionists in Wheeling organized a
rump government on June 11, with
Francis H. Pierpont as governor and a legislature composed of elected state delegates and senators who had refused to serve in the Richmond government. This "
Restored Government of Virginia" was officially recognized by the Lincoln administration. The members of this government and the Wheeling convention that organized it had not been elected by the people of West Virginia for this purpose, however, and faced much opposition in the region. Many of West Virginia's delegates and senators refused to join the Wheeling government and assumed their elected offices in Richmond. The extent of control by the Wheeling government was limited to the counties of the northern panhandle and the counties along the line of the
B&O railroad, and depended upon the presence of the Union army in garrisoning towns and patrolling turnpikes and roads. Historian Charles H. Ambler has said "There was no denying the fact that West Virginia was largely the creation of the
Northern Panhandle and the counties along the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, which supplied her officers and funds for her public institutions." The construction of the B&O railroad in the 1850's connecting
Baltimore to towns in northwestern Virginia resulted in the settlement of thousands of northerners and immigrants in towns located along the railroad. In
Wheeling by 1860 two of three heads-of-households were not native Virginians, and in the town of
Grafton, an important hub for the railroad, about half the adult males were Irish or other immigrants. While Grafton became a Unionist town, a short distance away secession flags flew from the courthouses of
Barbour county in
Philippi and
Tucker county in
St. George. On the Ohio river the town of
Guyandotte in
Cabell county raised the secession flag and began recruiting for the
8th Virginia Cavalry, while
Mason County just to the north was heavily Unionist in sentiment. The May 23rd county vote on the secession ordinance was no guarantee of Union support once the war started in the west.
Berkeley County, which had voted 3 to 1 against the ordinance, gave twice the number of men to the Confederate army than to the Union. Similarly, the counties of Cabell,
Wayne,
Putnam and others in the southwest, while voting 3 or 4 to 1 against the ordinance, gave half or nearly half their available men to the
Confederate army. Partisan rangers and guerrillas were active in much of the interior of western Virginia. The Richmond government still had nominal control over counties in the southeastern section of West Virginia, with neither side able to claim many interior counties where local government had been abandoned. Recruitment was slow for both Union and Confederate forces. The Wheeling government leaned on Ohio and Pennsylvania for men to help fill the "Virginia" quotas required by the Federal government, and the Confederacy was effectively blocked from recruitment in the populous counties of the northwest by the Union army. When Gov. Letcher called out local militias for mustering most counties in the upper northwest refused to assemble, though many in the central and southern counties responded in varying degrees. Some members of the Wheeling convention, such as
John Carlile, had been demanding that western Virginia be organized as a new state and separated from Virginia. Others, such as Daniel Lamb, questioned the propriety of creating a new state and writing a constitution which included counties that could not or would not freely vote. Nevertheless, the 2nd Wheeling Convention approved a statehood ordinance on August 20, with a public vote to be held of Oct. 24, 1861. The Convention was not the same as the Reorganized Government, though there were some crossover members. The statehood vote was 18,408 in favor and 781 against, with only 41 of the 50 counties included on the returns, 6 of which provided no votes at all. While the vote was successful in providing a referendum to offer Congress with the statehood bill, it was a failure in terms of sentiment in favor of statehood. With 79,515 voters enumerated by the 1860 census in the 50 counties the turnout was extremely low. As historian Otis K. Rice noted-"Although the Wheeling Intelligencer professed to see an "astonishing unanimity" of sentiment in the vote, in reality the returns reflected the deep division of feeling in western Virginia and intimidation on the part of supporters of the new state. Seventeen counties giving majorities for dismemberment had ratified the Virginia secession ordinance earlier in the year." The issue fractured the Unionist movement. Richard O. Curry divided the Unionists into four groups. "Thus, by the spring of 1862, Unionists of western Virginia had divided into four distinct factions: (1) opponents of statehood under any circumstances; (2) a militant free state group; (3) a moderate wing that feared the complications of the slavery question and attempted to avoid it; (4) a conservative faction that would oppose dismemberment rather than submit to Congressional interference." A convention to draft the new state constitution met in Wheeling on Nov. 26, 1861, with 61 members. The original name of the new state
Kanawha was changed to "West Virginia". Delegates began to expand the boundaries of the new state to include more counties, at one time taking in all of the
Shenandoah Valley, but the final tally was 48 counties, and the counties of Berkeley and Jefferson, provided they approved the constitution, which was done by a very small turnout of voters and which led to the
1871 Supreme Court decision which permanently gave those counties to West Virginia. On April 3, 1862 a public vote was held on the constitution for the new state with 51 counties listed in the returns, with only Frederick county not included in the new state. The results were nearly identical to the vote on the statehood ordinance; 18,862 in favor and 514 against, with 13 counties giving no vote at all. Unionists who had been prominent supporters of the Wheeling government in 1861 found themselves on the outside by 1862.
John Jay Jackson retired to his plantation in Wood County,
Sherrard Clemens spoke against dismemberment throughout 1862, and even John Carlile, one of the primary proponents of statehood and one of Wheeling's "Virginia" senators in Washington, D.C., used his influence to derail the statehood bill. Wheeling's other senator,
Waitman T. Willey, was able to restore the bill and attach an amendment to it authorizing gradual emancipation of slaves in the new state. Lincoln signed the statehood bill on Dec. 31, 1862. On Jan. 1, 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed slaves in territory in rebellion against the United States. The proclamation specifically exempted the 48 counties which at that time constituted West Virginia, since as a newly constituted Union state West Virginia was technically not "in rebellion." In reality much of West Virginia was in
de facto rebellion, particularly those counties that had voted for the secession ordinance.
Arthur Boreman wrote to Gov. Pierpont on Feb. 27, 1863, stating "After you get a short distance below the Panhandle, it is not safe for a loyal man to go into the interior out of sight of the Ohio River." Nevertheless, with West Virginian statehood Lincoln and his administration was willing to treat the whole of the new state as if it had never rebelled, and any localities under Richmond's control as if they had been invaded and occupied by hostile
Confederate forces regardless of the local population's views (i.e. a similar position to how the Union government regarded Maryland territory
invaded by Lee a few months earlier, and Pennsylvanian territory
occupied by the Confederate army later in 1863). West Virginia's constitutional emancipation amendment, known as the
Willey Amendment, was put to a public vote on April 4, 1863. If passed, the new state was to take effect on June 20, 1863, which it did. The Willey amendment freed no slaves during the war and provided no emancipation for any slave over the age of 21. Slavery was ended in West Virginia by the legislature on Feb. 3, 1865. May 28, 1863 was the election date for new state offices.
Arthur Boreman was elected the first governor of the new state. Elections were also held for Virginia state offices under the Confederacy and West Virginians in at least nine counties voted in those elections, though returns are incomplete. With the creation of West Virginia on June 20, 1863, Pierpont and the
Restored Government of Virginia removed themselves to
Alexandria, which was in Union control and later established themselves in
Richmond at the war's end in 1865. West Virginia civilians were arrested by both Confederate and Union authorities. Historian Mark E. Neely, Jr., found 337 cases of civilian arrest by the Confederacy in western Virginia, although this includes present-day southwestern Virginia as well as West Virginia. Hundreds of civilians were also arrested by Union authorities, although the total number has not yet been determined. Most were held in the Union prison
Camp Chase in
Columbus, Ohio, though some were also held at
Fort Delaware.
Slavery During the Civil War, a
Unionist government in
Wheeling, Virginia, presented a statehood bill to Congress in order to create a new state from 48 counties in western Virginia. The new state would eventually incorporate 50 counties. The issue of slavery in the new state delayed approval of the bill. In the Senate
Charles Sumner objected to the admission of a new slave state, while
Benjamin Wade defended statehood as long as a gradual emancipation clause would be included in the new state constitution. Two senators represented the Unionist Virginia government,
John S. Carlile and
Waitman T. Willey. Senator Carlile objected that Congress had no right to impose emancipation on
West Virginia, while Willey proposed a compromise amendment to the state constitution for gradual abolition. Sumner attempted to add his own amendment to the bill, which was defeated, and the statehood bill passed both houses of Congress with the addition of what became known as the Willey Amendment. President Lincoln signed the bill on December 31, 1862. Voters in western Virginia approved the Willey Amendment on March 26, 1863. President Lincoln had issued the
Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which exempted from emancipation the
border states (four slave states loyal to the
Union) as well as some territories occupied by Union forces within Confederate states. Two additional counties were added to West Virginia in late 1863,
Berkeley and
Jefferson. The slaves in Berkeley were also under exemption but not those in Jefferson County. As of the census of 1860, the 49 exempted counties held some 6000 slaves over 21 years of age who would not have been emancipated, about 40 percent of the total slave population. The terms of the Willey Amendment only freed children, at birth or as they came of age, and prohibited the importation of slaves. West Virginia became the 35th state on June 20, 1863, and the last slave state admitted to the Union. Eighteen months later, the West Virginia legislature completely abolished slavery, and also ratified the
13th Amendment on February 3, 1865.
Military events In April 1861, Virginia troops under
Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson occupied
Harpers Ferry and part of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad leading into western Virginia. They
seized many B&O locomotives and railcars on May 23. In May and June 1861, Confederate forces advanced into western Virginia to impose control by the Richmond government and the Confederacy. They got no further than
Philippi, due to bad roads. Then Union troops under
McClellan drove them back in July. There was additional campaigning further south, where
Greenbrier County was pro-Confederate, enabling Confederate troops to enter
Nicholas County to the west. In September 1861, Union troops
drove the Confederates out of Nicholas County and
defeated their counterattack at Cheat Mountain. Thereafter all of the trans-Allegheny region was under firm Union control except for the southern and eastern counties. Greenbrier County was occupied in May 1862. Pro-Confederate
guerrillas burned and plundered in some sections, and were not entirely suppressed until after the war was ended. There were two minor Confederate expeditions against the northeastern corner of the west later on: Jackson's
Romney Expedition in January 1862; and the
Jones-Imboden Raid in May–June 1863. ,
Romney. Union strategy for the region was to protect the vital B&O Railroad and also attack eastward into the Shenandoah Valley and southwestern Virginia. This latter goal proved impossible, due to the poor roads across mountainous terrain. The B&O passed across the lower (northern) end of the Shenandoah, east of the Alleghenies. This area was therefore occupied by Union troops for nearly all of the war, and was a scene of frequent combat. Harpers Ferry was the site of a major U.S. Army arsenal, and was taken by Confederates in the opening days of the war, and again during the
Maryland Campaign of 1862. During the Maryland Campaign it was a route of invasion and retreat for the
Army of Northern Virginia; the campaign concluded there with the
Battle of Shepherdstown. Soldiers from West Virginia served on both sides in the war. Because those in Confederate service were in "Virginia" regiments, the number of West Virginians who joined the Confederate States Army can only be roughly estimated. However, it is generally accepted that a clear majority of men under arms from the West Virginian counties on the new 1863 state border enlisted and fought with the Confederate forces. Conversely, most soldiers from the state's more northerly counties enlisted in the Union Army. The men in Union service were also in "Virginia" regiments until statehood, when several Unionist "Virginia" regiments were redesignated "West Virginia" regiments. Among these were the
7th West Virginia Infantry, famed for actions at
Antietam and
Gettysburg, and the
3rd West Virginia Cavalry, which also fought at Gettysburg. On the Confederate side,
Albert G. Jenkins, a former
U.S. Representative, recruited a brigade of cavalry in western Virginia, which he led until his death in May 1864. Other western Virginians served under Brig. Gen.
John Imboden and in the
Stonewall Brigade under Brig. Gen.
James A. Walker. ==Guerrilla warfare==