Edward Pollard on West Virginia

 Edward A. Pollard, "The First Year of the War", Richmond, 1862, pg. 177  

"We have already adverted to the causes which contributed to

make the campaign in western Virginia a failure. The cause which furnished

the most popular excuse for its ineffectiveness---the disloyalty of the resident

population---was, perhaps, the least adequate of them all. That disloyalty

has been hugely magnified by those interested, in finding excuses in it

for their own inefficiency and disappointment of public expectation. While

Maryland, Kentucky, and other regions of the South, which not only

submitted to Lincoln, but furnished him with troops, were not merely

excused, but were the recipients of overflowing sympathy, and accounted

a charitable stretch of imagination "sister States" of the Southern

Confederacy, an odium, cruelly unjust, was inflicted upon western

Virginia, despite of the fact that this region was enthralled by Federal

troops, and, indeed, had never given much evidences of sympathy with the

Lincoln government as had been manifested both by Maryland and Kentucky

in their State elections, their contributions of troops, and other acts of

deference to the authorities at Washington. It is a fact, that even now, "Governor"

Pierpont, the creature of Lincoln, cannot get one-third of the votes in a

single county in western Virginia. It is a fact, that the Northern journals

admit that in a large portion of this country, it is unsafe for Federal troops to

show themselves unless in large bodies."