Free Rogue State by Richard H. Owens Page A

Dominion, consent to its own dismemberment? And did the government of the United States condone illegal and unconstitutional acts of rebellion and secession by those western counties in 1863?
    Deep and serious sectional and political differences continued in the new state of West Virginia. Public demands for separation from Virginia had come primarily from northern towns and cities, especially around Wheeling and Parkersburg, where ties to Midwestern commerce and the Ohio Valley were strongest and desire for independence from the eastern slave establishment of Virginia was greatest. Extension of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad west to Wheeling in 1853 and southwest to Parkersburg in 1857 made the northwestern area of Virginia less focused and dependent on Richmond and eastern Virginia markets, just as sectional divisions over slavery and states’ rights were leading the nation to civil war. Smaller southern communities in West Virginia, however, were more closely tied economically, politically, and culturally to southern ways and Virginia.
    Other divisions continued in West Virginia after the Civil War ended. Addition of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution reopened the West Virginia debate over slavery and racial equality. And it produced a divisive and dramatic reaction.
    The Democratic Party secured control of West Virginia’s state government in 1870. In 1871, following adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the new state of West Virginia actually abrogated its acceptance of the Fourteenth Amendment [originally adopted by West Virginia in 1866].
    First steps in this regard already had been taken by West Virginia Republicans in 1870. Thus, critical issues related to emancipation and civil rights showed bipartisan opposition to equality for freed slaves and African-Americans in the state.
    On August 22, 1872, an entirely new West Virginia state constitution was adopted that included recognition of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, non-recognition of which might have jeopardized West Virginia statehood. But the differences and prejudices continued. In fact, pro-Southern and anti-black aspects of the 1872 West Virginia constitution, as well as the reality of subsequent political behavior and state laws, already linked West Virginia for the next century and a half with the status quo , segregationist South.

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E PILOGUE
    The long and bloody American Civil War ended with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. Nearly two years earlier, on June 20, 1863, the fifty western counties of the Old Dominion joined the Union as the state of West Virginia.
    As a result of the Civil War, nearly 500,000 Virginia slaves gained their freedom. Over 600,000 Americans died in the conflict, many from western Virginia, most of them fighting on the side of the Union. The Old Dominion had to accept provisions of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 in order to regain statehood and reinstatement to the Union. In October 1867, a convention met in Richmond. The resulting constitution contained all the required measures, and on July 6, 1869, the Virginia electorate approved it.
    In January 1870, Virginia returned to the Union. It returned minus fifty western counties. Not surprisingly, the Constitution of 1869, frequently referred to as the Underwood Constitution, was never popular among the large numbers of Virginians who cherished their pre-war institutions, and who had not consented to the territorial reduction of their state.
    Through that action of approval, however, the state of Virginia gave implied consent to the wartime severance of its western counties and creation of the new rogue state of West Virginia. In the process, the Old Dominion of Virginia lost nearly thirty five percent of its land area and about a quarter of its pre-war population. Virginia in that way appeared to recognize the legality and existence of