Disfranchisement in West Virginia

Voting in Virginia in 1861 was by voice. This way of voting meant that your neighbors knew how you felt about issues and candidates, so in times of real controversy the only means one had to protect oneself against majority opinion or intimidation was not to vote at all. While historians have been very vocal themselves about intimidation in Virginia's vote on secession on May 23, 1861, they have been singularly silent on Wheeling's voting on statehood on October 24, 1861 and their other vote initiatives.

The Wheeling government routinely enforced a mandatory oath of allegiance. Then, as now, a mandatory oath did not sit well with a  number of people. Not only did you have to swear allegiance to the United States, but included in that oath was an allegiance to the Wheeling government, which many Unionists, let alone secessionists, did not support. This oath in essence was designed to weed out any opposition to Wheeling. In a debate on the ballot or voice voting methods at the Constitutional Convention on Dec. 5, 1861, Chapman J. Stuart spoke in favor of voice, saying "Suppose, sir, we had cast our vote last May, on the ordinance of secession, by ballot; we never would have known who amongst us desired to break down and destroy our government. We could not point them out if it had not been for our mode of voting." Voice was the method used for the vote on statehood and all the Wheeling voting initiatives through 1863.

The prickly question of who would be able to vote in the new state came up quickly in the Constitutional Convention. On Dec 4, 1861, Mr. Brown of Kanawha said "When this Constitution will be in operation and a man is convicted of treason, then he is within the prohibition and must be excluded from the right of suffrage. But we will find the number to exclude will be almost legion." Under wartime conditions voting was easily controlled with military assistance, but at wars' end this would not be a real option.

When Union soldiers entered Ripley, Ravenswood and Belleville in Jackson County in June 1861, mass arrests occurred and oaths of loyalty extracted. The Ripley postmaster was replaced with a Wheeling appointee.(OR, Series 1, Vol. 2, pg. 214)

Refusal to take the oath could have serious consequences, arrest, fines and bonds, or even a long prison stay. Judge George W. Thompson of Wheeling was a Unionist who did not support the Wheeling regime and refused to take their oath of office and was removed. In May of 1861 he wrote "Whoever attempts and makes any overt acts toward establishing without authority of the state legislature any government within the limits of the state separate from the existing government, or shall hold or execute any office in such usurped government, or shall profess allegiance of fidelity to it, or shall resist the execution of the laws...is guilty of treason." (McGregor, 205, note) In late May of 1863, Dr. Thomas B. Camden, on his way to the Camp Chase prison camp in Ohio, was held at the Atheneum prison and while there met Judge Thompson. Dr. Camden wrote-"We found Judge G. W. Thompson of Wheeling, Mrs. J. N. Camden's [a sister-in-law] father, a prisoner there. When I started to step over a white line on the floor, he said, 'Don't do that.' I asked why. He said, 'That is the dead line, and if you pass it, the guard will fire.' Later I noticed a similar dead line at Camp Chase, some distance from the high fence. I did not pass [it] either. The judge gave us a can of peaches, saying, 'You'll need them.' I carried them to Camp Chase, and my wife and children enjoyed them in their prison a few days after we got there." The consequences of opposing the Wheeling regime were Draconian.

The degree to which the Pierpoint regime used arbitrary arrest has never been studied, but it was extensive enough to draw the ire of the US Judge-Advocate General Joseph Holt. He wrote "Unless some special authority has been given to Governor Peirpoint by the War or State Office to act in this manner he should be advised that he cannot without embarrassing the Government transcend the ordinary police power which he is authorized as Governor to exercise over rebels within his jurisdiction..."(OR Series 2, Vol. 5, pg. 611)

In 1863 the National Intelligencer spoke of the lack of free speech in western Virginia. Sherrard Clemens, a prominent Unionist and former delegate to the Richmond Convention, where he voted against secession, stated to the Wheeling Press that he could not address the people on the new-state question because he was threated by violence, "force and riot", by Federal soldiers and "certain officials connected with the administration or convention at Wheeling..."(Ault, Wheeling, West Virginia, During the Civil War, pg. 10)

Chapman J. Stuart's defense of the voice vote as a way to repress opposition was shown effectively in the Wheeling city elections of 1864 and the Presidential election in November that same year. The state's new constitution introduced the ballot vote, which reduced the Republican majority to half the number of just a few months before.(Ault, pg. 12)

The Wheeling legislature, sensing their peril, were quick to act. In 1865 James Ferguson of Cabell County proposed a Voter's Test-oath. On introducing the measure he stated "I do not want the rebels to have any share in the government. If they do, I shall be defeated by five hundred votes". (Ambler, pg. 41)

While in 1865 the legislature of Kentucky repealed the Act of Expatriation, restoring full civil rights to their ex-Confederates, the legislature in Wheeling enacted the Test-oath which allowed anyone to challenge a voter at the polls on the question of wartime "loyalty" and thus deny them the right to vote. This apparently was not enough, for in May of 1866 an amendement was made to the state constitution for a voters' registration law and a law requiring a test oath for lawyers. Aside from depriving former Confederates the right to vote a secondary purpose was to drive former Confederates from the state. Some veterans with more resources, such as Generals William L. Jackson and John Echols, did indeed relocate to Kentucky and Virginia, respectively. But for most Confederate veterans this was not an option, all they had left was their land or what remained of their businesses and there was nowhere to go.

 "Meanwhile, the legislature imposed other disabilities on former Confederates. It required test oaths of litigants, attorneys, public school teachers, and office holders. Jurors had to be registered voters. Taxes were disproportionately imposed on counties with strong rebel sympathies. The 1867 legislature, a particularly vindictive lot, prohibited any Virginian from collecting a debt from any citizen of West Virginia, except that no person who had given aid to the rebellion could invoke the protection of the law. The registration law was then amended to make it even more stringent. A year later, another law barred recovery for any interest on any debt incurred prior to April 1, 1865, if the creditor had participated in the rebellion. The registration act was again tightened; persons whose names had been stricken from the rolls could not subsequently be registerd except with board consent.

    Former Confederates suffered blows to their property rights as well as their political rights. During the war, many suits had been initiated against Confederates in their absence, resulting in the attachment of their property. Although the law allowed other defendants in similar cases five years to reopen the proceedings and regain their property, ex-Confederates were barred by the test oath from using that procedure. The oath also prevented them from filing civli actions to regain property from persons who moved in on it during the war. Finally, the courts allowed recovery against former Confederate officers for losses that rebel army raids had inflicted on loyal citizens during the war. These "war trespass" suits succeeded even if the defendant had received a presidential pardon." (Bastress, The West Virginia State Constitution: A Reference Guide, pgs. 16-17)

State registrars removed at times as much as 85% of the voters from county rolls. In Greenbrier County registrar J.F. Caldwell removed so many voters from the lists that he was nicknamed "Old Scratch". Trouble of course began to occur with acts of hostility and violence, troops being needed in such counties as Monroe, Randolph, Tucker, Barbour, Marion, Cabell, Wayne, and Logan. Three of those counties, Marion, Cabell and Wayne, are considered among the "Unionist" counties because they had voted against Virginia's secession, but their behavior during and after the war was less than cooperative.

Charles Ambler compiled the statistics on the votes of 1868 and 1870. In 1868 there were 24 counties with less than 50% turnout, with 7 of those counties 18% or less. While the statistics look more encouraging for the 1870 vote their comparison to the 1870 census of eligible voters shows overall participation at 61%, the same percentage of participation as in 1868. In 1870 there were 17 counties with under 50% voter turnout.

Article from the Daily Union and American, Nashville, TN, June 8, 1866. Click image to enlarge.

References:

Ambler, Charles H. "Disfranchisement in West Virginia", Yale Review, May and August, 1905

(OR) The War of the Rebellion, A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

Ault, Hewetson, "Wheeling, West Virginia, During the Civil War", Master of Arts Thesis, Ohio State University,

1930. This was published in paperback by Nail City Publishing in 1999, though my page references are for the

actual thesis.

McGregor, James C., "The Disruption of Virginia", Macmillan, 1922

Bastress, Robert M, "The West Virginia State Constitution, A Reference Guide", Greenwood Publishing