The Child of the Rebellion-West Virginia
On June 20, 1863, the revolutionary spirit of a tough and
resourceful people led to the creation of the 35th state of the
Union. West Virginia first tried to
become it’s own entity in 1769, when land speculators tried to form the colony
of Vandalia. This was before the
American Revolution, but the people in the highlands were already aware that
they were not like the aristocratic families of the tidewater. In 1775, 2000 colonists petitioned the
Continental Congress to created Westsylvania, a separate 14th colony
out of western Virginia. The petition
was denied, and so was another attempt in 1783.
We West Virginians battle so many stereotypes. We get called kissing cousins, and there are
the teeth jokes, the barefoot jokes, and the trailer jokes. But if we really knew our history, we would
hold our heads even higher. We are the
state that rebelled from the Confederacy, that rebelled from the Union, that
rebelled from Britain. We are steeped in
a spirit of going our own way, and demanding the freedom that is reflected in
our state motto, “Mountaineers are always free.” So why don’t we learn about it in this
way? That’s a great question. In fourth grade, we learn about our state
bird (the cardinal), our state animal (the black bear), and our state flag
(those crossing rifles are meant to represent the fight for liberty during the
Civil War). We learn about the state
capital moving around (Wheeling anyone?), and we learn about some important
people associated with our state (Mary Lou Retton). What we don’t learn about is why we became a
state. In eighth grade, we memorize the
55 counties and their county seats (Barbour, Berkley, Boone, Braxton, Brooke,
Cabell, Calhoun, Dodridge…okay, I’ll stop).
We learn about the Marshall plane crash, and the coal miner wars. But we still don’t really learn why we became
a state.
Archaeologists think that native Americans came to the West
Virginia area about 14,000 years ago.
They were likely following large animals that made up their food source. They know that mound building tribes were in
the region about 2500 years ago. Many of
those mounds still dot the landscape.
Between the 1600s and the 1800s, many of the native peoples in the area
were forced off of their lands, and moved further south and west. Those peoples included the Shawnee. They were first documented by French trappers
and traders in the late 1600s. The Shawnee
were spread throughout the Ohio Valley. There
were also Delaware, Mohawk, and Seneca.
The Shawnee often fought with the Iroquois to the north. The Cherokee also had territory in southern
West Virginia, but did not really live there or manage it, but did use it as
hunting land. The heritage of the first
West Virginians lingers in artifacts, place names, and approximately 11,000 descendants
still living in the state. I often hike through the foothills, visit the
waterfalls, or kayak on the Kanawha and it’s easy to imagine why the native
peoples came to West Virginia to live, hunt, and be free.
The first European explorers began arriving in 1607, after
King James I gave the Virginia Company a charter for land that included
Virginia, West Virginia, and parts of Kentucky, North Carolina, Delaware,
Pennsylvania and even New York. As the
settlers spread over the land, Native Americans, who were already familiar with
warfare with each other, became resistant.
Bloody clashes resulted, and the move west was seen as dangerous. Until 1660, few settlers made their way
across the mountains. Then a sudden
surge of explorers headed into the mountains and rivers of West Virginia. 1675 marked another wave of push back from
native Americans, this time the Susquehannock.
Bacon’s Rebellion exacerbated the violence between Europeans and native
Americans.
In 1706, the search for land that would work for a
settlement in western Virginia began anew.
It is thought that Potomoke, near Shepardstown, may have been the first
true settlement. Morgan Morgan, a Welsh
immigrant is known to have settled in 1731 in Berkley County. This was after Virginia encouraged people to
move west by offering 1000 acre tracts.
Immigrants from Germany, Scotland, Ireland, and Switzerland began to
fill the valleys. France and England
began to dispute the territory, and this lead to the French and Indian
War. Britain prevailed, and the native
tribes banded together to try to hold them out of the area. The Battle of Point Pleasant caused the
native Americans to stay out of the American Revolution until 1777. After the war, settlers and speculators began
to pour into the area, and absentee landownership gained a foothold that
remains until this day.
So let’s look at what led us to continually push for our own
name, our own borders, and ultimately, our own state. Much of West Virginia is hilly, and the farm
land is often rocky. The flat areas tend
to flood. It was not great for big cash
crop plantations the way eastern Virginia was.
The climate is a bit more disagreeable to farming things like cotton and
rice. Winters can be extreme, and the
mountains can make shadows that make it hard to grow crops in some areas. Some industries grew during the Industrial
Revolution, such as saltworks and timbering.
Out of those industries, flatboats became a way to quickly transport
goods. Ironworks grew in some areas, and
by the 1830s, the inland waterways were gaining importance in the movement of
people as well as goods. Flatboats were
replaced by steamboats, and the rivers needed to be made more navigable. Locks
and dams were built, and coal was becoming a hot commodity. Railroads began to slowly make their way into
the northern part of the state.
It was during this time that the sectionalism that had been
present since the Vandalia days became even more pronounced. Eastern Virginia was very different from
Western Virginia. The origins of the
settlers was the first difference. In
Eastern Virginia, many of the settlers were descended from wealthy British
aristocrats. They were educated by
private tutors, and lived in vast estates.
They were often men of leisure, and were very involved in the political
structure that protected their way of life.
The area of Virginia they lived in lended itself well to labor intensive
cash crops, like tobacco, and plantations were common. Those plantations were often run on the backs
of slave labor.
It was also very different in terms of politics. Western Virginians felt that they were not
properly represented in Virginia politics.
They also felt they were taxed unfairly.
Tax rates were decided in Richmond by the political powers mostly made
up of the wealthy. They decided that all
property except slaves were subject to taxation. Slavery was another area of
contention. This map from 1861 does a
great job of illustrating the differences between the two areas of the
state. https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/docs/hires/SlaveMap_HR.pdf. Prominent Western Virginians began to speak
out against slavery. One of those men
was Henry Ruffner from Kanawha County.
He was the president of Washington College (Washington and Lee
University), and he argued that gradual emancipation would improve immigration
economic development, and education. Abolitionists
travelled to the area to encourage free
labor. And John Brown’s raid on Harper’s
Ferry for the cause of abolition caused southerners so much fear that it was
likely the final straw before Lincoln’s election broke the camel’s back.
Virginia delegates voted 88 to 55 to secede from the
Union. 47 of the delegates were from the
western part of the state. 32 of the 55
against secession were from the western part of Virginia. 4 declined to cast a vote.
This quote from Dennis Frye, the chief historian at Harper’s
Ferry National State Park says it well when he told the Washington Post,
“When secession occurred, Western Virginians felt
that they were being told that this is what you’ve got to do, and they rebelled
against that. That’s another part of West Virginia’s soul . . . that there is a
rebellious nature to them and they exhibited that very, very much with respect
to the Civil War. It’s really fascinating how they were willing to declare
their own declaration of independence.”
Those who did not want secession worked to bring popular
opposition to secession. A convention was arranged in Wheeling, and 37 counties
showed up. Discussion began on breaking
away from Virginia formally. Another
convention was held in 1861. They chose
a governor and a delegate for the US Senate.
By October of 1861, the voters from 41 counties agreed to separate from
Virginia. April of 1862 saw a
constitution approved by the voters. A
petition was taken to Congress to make it official. It almost stalled in the house until a bill
was proposed to gradually abolish slavery in the new state. This gave the push necessary to get the new
state approved by Congress, and then signed into law by Lincoln on June 20,
1863. Division in the state continued
during the war, with historians estimating that 80% of the West Virginians who
served fought for the Union. However,
the state that rebelled from the Confederacy, still marches to the beat of its
own drum, with a unique culture and resilient people. No matter where we roam, West Virginia is
always home.
