The U.S. state of West Virginia was formed out of western Virginia and added to the Union as a direct result of the American Civil War (see History of West Virginia), in which it became the only modern state to have declared its independence from the Confederacy. In the summer of 1861, Union troops, which included a number of newly formed Western Virginia regiments, under General George McClellan drove off Confederate troops under General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Philippi in Barbour County. This essentially freed Unionists in the northwestern counties of Virginia to form a functioning government of their own as a result of the Wheeling Convention. Before the admission of West Virginia as a state, the government in Wheeling formally claimed jurisdiction over all of Virginia, although from its creation it was firmly committed to the formation of a separate state.
After Lee's departure, western Virginia continued to be a target of Confederate raids. Both the Confederate and state governments in Richmond refused to recognize the creation of the new state in 1863, and thus for the duration of the war the Confederacy regarded its own military offensives within West Virginia not as invasion but rather as an effort to liberate what it considered to be enemy-occupied territory administered by an illegitimate government in Wheeling. Nevertheless, due to its increasingly precarious military position and desperate shortage of resources, Confederate military actions in what it continued to regard as "western Virginia" focused less on reconquest as opposed to both on supplying the Confederate Army with provisions as well as attacking the vital Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that linked the northeast with the Midwest, as exemplified in the Jones-Imboden Raid. Guerrilla warfare also gripped the new state, especially in the Allegheny Mountain counties to the east, where loyalties were much more divided than in the solidly Unionist northwest part of the state. Despite this, the Confederacy was never able to seriously threaten the Unionists' overall control of West Virginia.
History
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.Rice, Otis K. and Stephen W. Brown, West Virginia, A History, Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1993, pg. 118 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.Reid, Whitelaw, Ohio in the War: Her Generals and Soldiers, Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, 1861, Vol. 1, p. 39 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.Williams, John ALexander, Appalachia, A History, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2002, p. 167
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.Curry, Richard Orr, A House Divided, A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1965, pp.141-147
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.How Virginia Convention Delegates Voted on Secession
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.Ambler, Charles Henry, A History of West Virginia, Prentice-Hall, 1933, p. 318 Many of West Virginia's delegates and senators refused to join the Wheeling government and assumed their elected offices in Richmond.Leonard, Cynthia Miller, The General Assembly of Virginia, July 30, 1619 - January 11, 1978, A Bicentennial Register of Members, Virginia State Library, 1978, pp. 478-482
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.The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies; Series 1, Vol. 5, p. 564Ambler, Charles H., Francis H. Pierpont; Union War Governor of Virginia and Father of West Virginia, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1937, p. 188 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."Ambler, Charles Henry, A History of West Virginia, Prentice-Hall, 1933, p. 357 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.Fones-Wolf, Ken, Reconstructing Appalachia, The Civil War's Aftermath, Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2010, p. 239Newell, Clayton R., Lee vs. McClellan, The First Campaign, Regnery Publishing, 1996, p. 71 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.Geiger, Joe, Jr., Civil War in Cabell County, West Virginia 1861-1865, Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1991, p. 13
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.Eldridge, Carrie, Torn Apart, How Cabell Countians Fought the Civil War, Heritage Books, 2007, intro.Dickinson, Jack L., Wayne County, West Virginia in the Civil War, Hugginson Book Co., 2003, p. 164Putnam County, eWV, The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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.Francis H. Peirpoint to Abraham Lincoln, Friday, August 01, 1862 (Recruitment in Virginia) 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.Rafuse, Ethan, McClellan's War, The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union, Indiana Univ. Press, 2005, p. 104Snell, Mark, West Virginia and the Civil War, History Press, 2011, pp. 28-29 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.Wallace, Lee A., Jr., A Guide to Virginia Military Organizations, 1861-1865, Virginia Civil War Commission, 1964, pp. 261-299
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.How West Virginia Was Made, by Virgil A. Lewis, 1909, pp. 262-263 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, six 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."Rice, Otis K. and Stephen W. Brown, p. 140
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." Curry, pp. 96-97