Montani Non Semper Liberi
On June 31, 1861, Wheeling legislator George McC. Porter addressed a crowd in Wheeling and ended his speech by saying that he "was born in Virginia, but hoped to die in West Virginia!". The audience sat silently, according to the Daily Intelligencer. Clearly they thought he should make other funeral arrangements because four months later, on Oct. 24, 70% of Ohio County's voters stayed at home rather than vote on the statehood referendum. On Dec. 10, reviewing the vote results Chapman J. Stuart, Wheeling legislator and member of the Constitutional Convention, said that the people had "never come to the polls and expressed their sentiments in favor of a new State."
It is often the case in situations where a small group of powerful people want something that they arrange for "the people" to bear the onus of their actions. In every history you read "the people of West Virginia voted" or "the people of West Virginia overwhelmingly supported" statehood. Do they mean the less than 30% (1) (plus Union soldiers) who participated in the early voting in West Virginia? Wheeling was as safe a town as any in eastern Ohio or southern Pennsylvania, so fear of reprisal was hardly a factor.
How did the myth begin and why is it still the central theme of our histories?
The "Intelligencer"
It began early, before the war, when the newspapers of the northern panhandle were facing the possible exit of Virginia from the Union. The papers were generally Unionist, a few were Republican, and were rarely circulated in western Virginia outside of the panhandle. Editorials and testimonies appeared proclaiming their loyalty to the Union and threats to Richmond if secession did occur. These newspapers were the ones most likely to be read by Northerners and people in Washington who wanted news from western Virginia. From these newspapers they got a false impression, and the vote mostly against secession in western Virginia on May 23, 1861 reinforced that false impression. It was undoubtedly because of these newspapers and canvassing by the Wheeling junta that Gen. McClellan ordered supplies and uniforms for 10,000 Virginia soldiers. Two months later he wrote to Pierpont in Wheeling that "my estimate was much too large." (2)
The 1st (May) Convention gathered a lot of attention from Northern newspapers, many of whom sent correspondents to report on the proceedings. While the reporters sent home stories from divergent viewpoints, it was generally agreed that Union sentiment in western Virginia had been greatly exaggerated. The reporter for the Pittsburgh "Chronicle" said that "there were a great many in Wheeling who were going to follow the state out of the Union, and while these people were not making any noise, their opposition to the Union cause was felt none the less plainly." (McGregor, Disruption of Virginia, pg. 201)
The Wheeling "Daily Intelligencer" acted as the official organ, the "Pravda", of the Statehood movement (3), guided by the owner/editor Archibald Campbell, an Ohio-born Republican. The increasing radicalism of Wheeling can be seen in their reaction to Judge Jackson's attempt to organize a public meeting in Parkersburg against the Willey Amendment (for gradual emancipation) on March 12, 1863. A staunch Unionist, Judge Jackson was an opponent of the statehood movement. He and his supporters were met by Union troops assembled in the square and Jackson was refused the keys to the courthouse, which his money had helped build. The Intelligencer falsely reported that no one had interfered with Judge Jackson, and described the whole affair from first to last as treasonable in nature. Sherrard Clemens was heckled and threatened while giving a speech, and John J. Davis received death threats. Both were Unionists. The statehood movement, far from strengthening Union support in western Virginia, in fact splintered the Unionists. (Curry, A House Divided, pg. 128)
In an obituary for Archibald Campbell printed in the Intelligencer on Feb. 14, 1899, the reporter said "The history of the Intelligencer during the war is the history of the Union and the new state cause. They will all remain one and inseparable in the annals of West Virginia. In all those years no one threw himself more earnestly, ably and untiringly into the support of both than Mr. Campbell. President Lincoln told Governor Pierpont that it was a dispatch penned by Mr. Campbell that determined him to sign the bill (against the wishes of part of his cabinet) that admitted West Virginia into the Union as a state. The Intelligencer was the right arm of the 'Restored Government' of Virginia and Mr. Campbell was the trusted councilor and supporter of the Union authorities both in civil and military matters."
The Creation of a Border State
In almost all books of the Civil War, West Virginia is included among the Border States of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware. This is an historical convenience that has certain unaddressed problems. First, West Virginia did not become a part of the United States until June 20, 1863, when the war was half over. From the viewpoint of the Confederate States West Virginia was not a state at all, but was seen as a conquered and abused part of the Confederacy.(4) In a Confederate victory, there would have been no state. In the event of a truce between the U.S. and the C.S.A, most of the counties would have gone back to Virginia, with perhaps a state the size of Delaware, consisting of the Northern Panhandle and a few associated counties to make up the reformed state of West Virginia.
Secondly, unlike the other Border States, West Virginia did participate in an act of Secession, voting on May 23, 1861. The vote in West Virginia was less than 2 to 1 against Secession. However, those counties that did vote for Secession made up about two-thirds of the territory of the state. While these counties were less populated than the northern counties it should be remembered that no county had the right of majority over another. Historians speak of West Virginia as a whole without recognizing the serious divisions within the state.
Thirdly, West Virginia was the only Border State that did not send the majority of its soldiers to the Union. This has generally gone unrecognized, but the work of Jack L. Dickinson and James Carter Linger has shown a much higher rate of Confederate service than any previous estimates. With half its soldiers and most of its territory dedicated to the Confederacy, one could just as easily say that West Virginia supported the Confederacy as say it supported the Union.
The Federal government also treated West Virginia as something other than a border state in the post-war years. First,
the terms of surrender granted to Confederate troops at Appomattox applied only to the 11 Confederate states, and West
Virginia. Confederate soldiers from other states were required to obtain a special permit from the War Department before returning home. Second, the Southern Claims Commission was originally designed to cover the 11 Confederate states, and West Virginia.
In an obvious attempt to mitigate the damage done to the Unionist myth by historians like J.G. Randall and James McGregor, Mr. Ambler wrote this self-contradictory history. "As is usual in such crises the so-called prominent families were reluctant to break with the established order, and the plain people were slow to move. So true was this of northwest Virginia that critical scholars have been led to the false conclusion that the residents were generally favorable to the Confederacy. Admitted apathy toward the Union in its militant capacity was great."(5) At the end of the May Convention in Wheeling the feeling of many of the Northern journalists was that if this was the extent of Unionism in West Virginia then it would have to suffer along with the rest of Virginia. (6)
The Wheeling Conventions and the Restored Government of Virginia
The Wikipedia article History of West Virginia covers the mechanics of statehood adequately, so I will not repeat it here. The only things I would emphasize for anyone reading on this subject is that none of the Wheeling legislators were ever elected by the people, despite whatever you may read. (7) They were chosen by irregular groups of Unionist citizens. Unionist historians like to legitimate the Wheeling legislature by pointing out that some of the members had been elected to state offices in the May 23, 1861 elections. But they were elected to the General Assembly in Richmond, not Wheeling.
When reading any documents or speeches made by the Wheeling government, it is also important to remember that when they speak of "the people" of West Virginia, they don't mean all the people, only those who support them. A good example of this is a summary of a speech given by Mr. Crane of Tucker County at the 2nd Wheeling Convention-"yet he was authorized to say that his people were not only willing to a separation of Western from Eastern Virginia, but they wanted nothing short of separation. He was ready, and his constituents were, to go in any direction, in arms or peacefully, for the deliverance from the bondsmen of Eastern Virginia." Reading this one would suppose Tucker County was a hotbed of Unionism when in fact it had voted for the Secession Ordinance with a fair majority. Mr. Crane was not only not speaking for the majority of his county, but probably not for all the Unionists, since many Unionists opposed the statehood movement. (8)
As the 2nd (June) Convention entered August, John Carlile began his push for a new state. This prompted a response from Chapman J. Stuart on Aug. 8, 1861-"I want you to point me to a solitary act that ever authorized us to come here for the purpose of dividing the State and forming a Constitution...But I was not sent here for the purpose of dividing the State of Virginia, or making a constitution. The thing never was mooted before my people, but just the reverse."(9)
The Histories and Historians
One of the earliest books on the state was "West Virginia: Its Farms and Forests, Mines and Oil Wells", by J.R. Dodge, published in Philadelphia in 1865. It is mostly concerned with giving a physical description of the new state and its resources, but the first chapter gives a thumbnail history of statehood, which actually doesn't vary much from what you find in modern histories. The next account, "Sketch of the Formation of West Virginia", 1866, by J. Marshall Hagans, a former member of the Constitutional Convention, is little more than a hagiography which made one lasting legacy, a totally erroneous account of the secession vote, which you will sometimes see quoted today. This book was followed by histories by Granville D. Hall and Granville Parker, both Wheeling legislators, and a military history, "Loyal West Virginia", by Theodore Lang, a Union veteran.
The earliest book written from a critical viewpoint of the Statehood movement is James McGregor's "The Disruption of Virginia" and it contains much material of a "smoking gun" nature. In his essay on West Virginia in his book "Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln", James G. Randall warns us that the books by Parker, Hall, William P. Willey, and Virgil Lewis (the WV State Historian, no less) "should be used with caution." Mr. Randall's essay is mostly concerned with the Constitutional considerations of the partitioning of Virginia, though of course he does go into the mechanics. His essay is critical and sceptical of the Statehood movement, and was written before the publications of the First Constitutional Convention records, and before Richard O. Curry's "A House Divided". Those books would only have made him more critical. Mr. Randall does not hesitate to use the word "junta" in reference to Wheeling. David Donald Herbert in his landmark biography of Lincoln does not hesitate to call the Pierpont government a "puppet". One prominent West Virginia historian, Festus Summers, apparently called Richard Curry a "traitor" for publishing his book "A House Divided".
At one point it seemed as if West Virginia history was moving into a new era, and the truth would be revealed. But a new fashion took hold in historical circles, how Unionism in the South contributed to the defeat of the Confederacy. The traditional false history of West Virginia was central to these writings and once again Wheeling was defended as if against some ghostly Southern army. James G. Randall's great book "The Civil War and Reconstruction" was replaced as the standard by James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom", in which Mr. McPherson can't even get the vote of West Virginians at the Virginia Secession Convention correct.
On a more positive note, the works of John Alexander Williams and Kenneth W. Noe have done a lot to correct the historic perspective of statehood and the attitudes of all West Virginians and not just the northern panhandle.
Barbara Rasmussen, writing from an economic perspective on statehood, said in her book "Absentee Landowning and Exploitation in West Virginia, 1760-1920" (Univ. Press of KY, pg. 75) “In the midst of civil war, Virginia was severed largely for Union strategic interests, but logically to keep the mountain wealth of northern investors within the borders of the Union. Many leaders of the statehood movement, though not all, had economic ties to the Northeast. After 1865 the burgeoning industrial activity was mistaken by West Virginians as the arrival of internal improvements that had been so long in coming. What happened, in fact, was the economic and political leaders who had subjugated western interests before the war were, in the postwar years, able to manipulate western developments in order to reserve the benefits for themselves."
When the state of West Virginia was opened for business on June 20, 1863 it did so with a Governor from Pennsylvania and a legislature one-third of which were northern born. The first three governors were from Pennsylvania and New York.
Slavery and Sectional Differences
Perhaps because of this distorted history there is often a misunderstanding of the issue of slavery. West Virginians had no real antipathy towards that institution. The problem some West Virginians had with slavery was its use by east Virginians to escape their fair share of property taxes, slaves under the age of 12 escaping any tax, while slaves over 12 were valued at a fraction of actual value for tax purposes.
Despite the writings of early historians, like Charles Ambler's "Sectionalism in Virginia", there was actually no statehood movement in West Virginia until forced on West Virginians by the Restored Government and its ambitious politicians. While there were certainly differences within the state of Virginia and resentments between sections, it was not enough to sustain a separatist movement. The newly created state of West Virginia in 1863 had far greater sectional differences than the pre-war state of Virginia. At the beginning of the war Wellsburg publisher John Jacobs distrusted the Wheeling government, though he acknowledged that the recent troubles had "awakened a spirit of independence in Western Virginia that did not previously exist." The final acknowledgement that the statehood movement was a war-time political movement can be found in Francis H. Pierpont's telegram to Abraham Lincoln on the day before he was to sign the statehood bill, Dec. 30, 1862. Pierpont stated-"The Union men of West Va were not originally for the Union because of the new state-but the sentiment for the two have become identified. If one is stricken down I don't know what is [to] become of the other." Certainly not a high recommendation for the patriotism of Unionist West Virginians, and the implications of the last line are quite clear. It is surprising that Lincoln signed the statehood bill after receiving this message. Pierpont's daughter, Anna Pierpont Siviter, in her memoirs, "Recollections of War and Peace, 1861-1868", purports to quote this telegram, but it is totally bowdlerized..
Guerrilla War
On May 28, 1861, one of the first trials of the Civil War for sabotage took place in Parkersburg, (West) Virginia. A group of men were found playing cards under a B&O railroad bridge and arrested by Federal authorities. The trial was conducted by Judge William L. Jackson (later, Gen. W.L. Jackson, C.S.A.). The men were acquitted, since no actual crime had taken place, but Parkersburg was split over the decision, and Judge Jackson left Parkersburg to join Col. Porterfield at Phillipi.
With the defeat of Confederate forces at Phillipi and Cheat Mountain only ocassionally would they occupy parts of West Virginia. Local supporters of Richmond were left to their own devices, and when Gov. Letcher sent out a call for Partisan groups in 1862 many were organized in southern and central West Virginia. Contrary to what many assume, West Virginia was not in control of either Wheeling or the Federal army, who controlled only transportation and communication routes and the counties around the northern panhandle. The guerrillas continued their war to the very last days, diverting troops that could have been used elsewhere. As late as January, 1865, Gov. Boreman complained of large scale guerrilla activity as far north as Harrison and Marion counties. In one last, brazen act of the war, McNeill's Rangers of Hardy County kidnapped Generals George Crook and Benjamin F. Kelley from behind Union lines and delivered them as prisoners of war to Richmond. Mosby himself called it the most brilliant act of the war. See my section "Quotes on the Guerrilla War".
Prisoners of War
One of the little-known aspects of the war in West Virginia was the arrest of hundreds of private citizens by the Wheeling authorities, some imprisoned in the Atheneum in Wheeling, most being sent to prison camps in Ohio, Camp Chase and Johnson Island. These prisoners were sometimes entire families, including children. Thomas J. Arnold, Stonewall Jackson's nephew, described an incident in Beverly when a Union Col. T.M. Harris gathered many citizens in the town square and questioned them on their loyalty. Even those who answered "I am a Constitutional Union man", were sent to prison camps. Mr. Arnold wrote "they were rushed off to Fort Delaware...from whence but few of them returned alive." Beverly in the Sixties. Camp Chase has a mass grave of several thousands, including many West Virginians. Partial List of West Virginia Prisoners 1862, pgs. 264-268, Official Records
James Garfield was an officer at Camp Chase, and one of the early entries he made in his journal was on Aug. 19, 1861-"Six secession prisoners came in about noon, whom I had to take charge and give a receipt for. One was a hard old hunter, a leather stocking kind of man, who had killed several Federal pickets in western Virginia". In at least one case, arresting soldiers, under the command of Capt. Benjamin F. Kelley, became a death squad when they were sent to arrest Sheriff Zack Cochrane of Taylor County. Sheriff Cochrane's crimes were collecting taxes and disarming Unionists, basically the duties of a Virginia sheriff. He was shot multiple times as he fled his home.
Soldiery
One of the most common tools used to distort the history is soldier numbers. Union numbers are inflated, while Confederate numbers are minimized. The usual number seen is about 32,000 Union soldiers, as credited by the state Adjutant General. But these are misleading numbers, as they include not only thousands of re-enlistments, a single soldier being counted two or three times, but they also include thousands of Ohioans and Pennsylvanians who enlisted in West Virginia units. (12) Ohio alone gave nearly 5,000 men. Charles Ambler in his essay "Disfranchisement in West Virginia" plainly put Union numbers at about 20,000 and in a footnote he explains the deductions. (13) In his later writings he reverses the order, putting 32,000 in the main text, and footnoting the deductions, though never again giving the number of 20,000.
James Carter Linger in his study "Confederate Military Units from West Virginia" discusses Ambler's numbers, and also points to the number of medals ordered by the new state to honor their Union soldiers. That number was 26,000. Deducting for Ohio and Pennsylvania, about 6-7,000, we are left with about 19-20,000, which was Mr. Ambler's original estimate.
Confederate numbers are even more confusing. The Confederate Dept. of Western Virginia in 1864 placed the number at 18,642. (14) Mr. Linger's study of county histories, regimental histories and muster rolls places the number at close to 22,000. With adjustments made for Union home guards and West Virginians in other state's units, Mr. Linger concluded that the numbers were about even for Union and Confederate. The Moore Center in Shepherdstown is currently conducting a hand count of all soldiers.
The numbers used by the National Park Service at Gettysburg and on their websites should not be regarded at all. They give all Union soldiers from Virginia to West Virginia, and all Confederate West Virginians are given to Virginia. And they do not deduct for Ohio and Pennsylvania soldiers. The largest Confederate cavalry unit at Gettysburg was Jenkins Brigade, from West Virginia (15). There were 13 companies of West Virginians in the Stonewall Brigade (16).
A House Built Upon the Sand
The consequences of an action are indicative of its nature, and the post-war events in West Virginia are instructive. Some of the Wheeling legislators anticipated the difficulties. In 1861, Mr. Brown of Kanawha County 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." In 1863, James Ferguson of Cabell County said that if restrictions on Confederate voters were not implemented that he would lose election by 500 votes. So a voting disfranchisement was included in the new state constitution.
The end of the war made their fears a reality. Some of the counties did not recognize the new state and refused to pay taxes or obey laws made by Wheeling. In some cases Federal troops had to be employed. In 1869 Horace Greeley wrote a letter to the Daily Intelligencer and said "I speak from large experience when I tell you that your house is built upon sand. Now you can amnesty the rebels-soon the question will be, shall they amnesty you?" (17)
The state instituted voter registration boards to exclude ex-Confederates and supporters from the polls. But gradually some ex-Confederates in many counties were enrolled, and they along with some Union Democrats finally won a majority in the government in 1870. It was the end of the Wheeling junta. With less than 10 years in power, the people of West Virginia had finally defeated them, not with guns but by ballots. The constitutional ban on Confederate voters was lifted with the passage of the Flick Amendment. And although the Wheeling Constitution was a perfectly good instrument, the new leaders of West Virginia were determined to have a Constitution of their own, and get rid of the "Yankee" Constitution, as they called it.
At the new Constitutional Convention in Charleston in 1872 there were only 12 Republicans, who were dubbed "The Twelve Apostles". Among them were Waitman T. Willey and Archibald Campbell. The men who created the new state, who should have been prominent and regarded men, were now outsiders. Francis H. Pierpont, who had a chance to distinguish himself by maintaining a Unionist government in Wheeling became instead the enabler for the state-makers. He removed his "Restored Government of Virginia" to Alexandria, VA, where he was treated with disdain by the Federal authorities (18). The "Father of West Virginia" returned to West Virginia, and was elected to the House of Delegates, but lost his seat in 1870 with the Democratic takeover of the government. Arthur I. Boreman, the war-time governor, elected to the U.S. Senate in 1869, was replaced once his term was over by Allen T. Caperton, an ex-Confederate legislator. Mr. Boreman left public life to practice law in Parkersburg. Waitman T. Willey, former U.S. Senator and main architect of the new state, spent his last days as a clerk of the county court. Gen. Benjamin F. Kelley, who had once called West Virginians "savages", but had lived there since the age of 19, left the state in 1876 for a Federal job in Arkansas. That same year saw the election of Henry M. Mathews, an ex-Confederate officer, to the governorship (19). The main instigator of the new state, John Carlile, ended his days shunned not just by the ex-Confederates, but by the Radical Republicans who created the state, who considered him a "Judas" for voting against the Statehood bill in the U.S. Senate.
Whichever version of statehood you prefer, the history of the Wheeling statemakers is ultimately one of defeat. Certainly they got the state they wanted, but to what purpose. It was not they who would govern West Virginia in the post-war decades, it was not their Constitution which would guide West Virginia over the next 137 years. To paraphrase the old saying, they had won the war but lost the battle.
Memento Mori
As C. Stuart McGehee wrote in his essay in "Virginia at War, 1861", there are no statues to the statemakers, the names of Waitman T. Willey, John Carlile, and Francis Pierpont have little or no meaning to the people of West Virginia. There is a statue of Francis Pierpont, though it is not in West Virginia but in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building. There is one iconic image that I think does represent West Virginia. I would take down Pierpont's statue, and in its place hang a tiny photograph, the small tintype of Nancy Hart, the fighting mountain woman from Roane County, subdued by Union soldiers, dressed up in clothing that was not hers, a fabricated trophy in a righteous cause.
NOTES
(1) The vote on statehood took place on October 24, 1861. Forty-one counties were credited with returns, many just a few score voters. This vote reflects a 34% turnout= 19,189 voters out of a pool of 56,240. Since West Virginia consisted of forty-eight counties when it became a state and those counties had a voter pool of 65,634, this means that only 29% of West Virginia voters participated. If you then add Jefferson and Berkeley counties, which were added to West Virginia late in 1863 after official statehood, then the voter participation for the entire state is 28%. There were no returns at all from Greenbrier, Mercer, Monroe, McDowell, Wyoming, Morgan or Pendleton counties. All these figures are from the data in Richard O. Curry's A House Divided, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1964.
(2) Stephen W. Sears (ed.), The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860-1869, 1989.
Gen. McClellan to President Lincoln, May 30, 1861, Cincinnatti- "I am confidently assured that very considerable numbers of volunteers can be raised in Western Virginia..." pg. 28
Gen. McClellan to Gov. Francis H. Pierpont, July 20, 1861, Head Quarters Army of Occupation West Va., Camp near Beverly. Gen. McClellan warns that his army is anxious to assist the new government in Western Virginia, but that eventually they will be needed elsewhere and "I would respectfully urge upon your excellency the propriety, necessity, I might say, of prompt & energetic measures being taken to raise troops among the population as we pass through & protect them." "Before I left Grafton I made requisitions for arms clothing etc for 10,000 Virginia troops---I begin to fear that my estimate was much too large." pgs. 63-64
(3) Granville Davisson Hall, The Rending of Virginia, 1902. A history of statehood written by one of the Wheeling legislators. He credits the "Daily Intelligencer" as an effective instrument in the division of Virginia, and in his chapter titled "Part Played by the Fourth Estate", pg. 385, says "When the question of a separation from Virginia began to be agitated, it was one of the first to take it up and soon became conspicuously and effectively the organ of division; and probably wrought more powerfully than any single agency towards the result finally achieved;"
(4) Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, pg. 708.
"Recently I have received apparently authentic intelligence of another general by the name of Milroy, who has issued orders in West Virginia for the payment of money to him by the inhabitants, accompanied by the most savage threats of shooting every recusant, besides burning his house, and threatening similar atrocities against any of our citizens who shall fail to betray their country by giving him prompt notice of the approach of any of our forces. And this subject has also been submitted to the superior military authorities of the United States, with but faint hope that they will evince any disapprobation of the act."
(5) Charles Ambler, Francis H. Pierpont, pg. 99
(6) James C. McGregor, The Disruption of Virginia, pg. 202. Mr. McGregor's chapter "The May Convention" contains a good bit of information on the press coverage of the convention.
(7) Virgil Lewis, How West Virginia Was Made.
This book is a record of the 1st (May) and 2nd (June) Conventions in Wheeling. The original notes had been lost and Mr. Lewis compiled the records from reports printed in the Daily Intelligencer. Pages 35-41 reveal just how irregular the Conventions were, as the May Convention begins with an argument between the Jackson family of Parkersburg, Wood County, and John Carlile. Judge Jackson and his son state that the convention is a mass meeting of interested citizens, while Carlile insists that it is a legally constituted body. Virgil Lewis, in a footnote on pg. 35, sides with Mr. Carlile, saying "It has been stated that this was a Mass Convention. This is not true. The members were chosen as delegates by the people of their respective counties in compliance with the 'Call' sent out from Clarksburg."
However, the wording of the Clarksburg "Call" states- "That it be and is hereby recommended to the people in each and all of the counties composing Northwestern Virginia to appoint [italics mine] delegates, not less than five in number, of their wisest, best, and discretest men, to meet in Convention on the 13th of May next..."
Mr. Lewis writes on (pg. 34)- "Public meetings were held in counties, in cities, in towns, at churches, school-houses, and cross-roads, and delegates appointed to the proposed Convention in Wheeling." Mass convention or not, it is quite clear that these men were not elected, and just how much they represented their counties is extremely suspect, particularly since 4 of the 26 counties represented at the May Convention were in just a few days to vote in favor of secession from the United States. Of the 32 counties represented in the 2nd (June) Convention 9 had voted for the Secession Ordinance.
(8) Virgil Lewis, ibid, pg. 111.
(9) Virgil Lewis, ibid., pgs. 314-15.
(12) McClellan privately confided to Scott on June 4 [1861] that "comparatively few of the Virginia troops thus far raised," such as those in Kelley's command, were really Virginians but "mostly from Penna and Ohio." Quote from Rafuse "McClellan's War, pg. 104
(13) Charles H. Ambler, Disfranchisement in West Virginia, Yale Review, 1905, pg. 38
(14) John W. Headley, Confederate Operations in Canada and New York, 1906, pg. 471
(15) Noah A. Trudeau, Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, 2003, pg. 307
(16) James Carter Linger, Confederate Military Units of West Virginia, 2002 ed., pg. 53. Mr. Linger lists the following 13 companies of West Virginians which served with the Stonewall Brigade, plus one other which served only a few months.
1. Jefferson Guards, Co. A, 2nd Reg. VA Inf. (Jefferson County)
2. Hamtramck Guards, Co. B, 2nd Reg. VA Inf. (Jefferson County)
3. Berkeley Border Guards, Co. B, 2nd Reg. VA Inf. (Berkeley County)
4. Hedgesville Border Guards, Co. D, 2nd Reg. VA Inf. (Berkeley County)
5. Botts Greys, Co. E, 2nd Reg. VA Inf. (Jefferson County)
6. Letcher Riflemen, Co. H, 2nd Reg. VA Inf. (Jefferson County)
7. Floyd Guards, Co. K, 2nd Reg. VA Inf. (Jefferson County)
8. Monroe Guards, Co. D, 27th Reg. VA Inf. (Monroe County)
9. Greenbrier (or Lewisburg) Rifles, Co. E, 27th Reg. VA Inf. (Greenbrier County)
10. Shriver Greys, Co. G, 27th Reg. VA Inf. (Ohio County)
11. Old Dominion Greys, Co. H, (1st) 27th Reg. VA Inf. (Berkeley County)
disbanded June 1861
12. Potomac Guards, Co. A, 33rd Reg. VA Inf. (Hampshire County)
13. Hardy (or Independent) Greys, Co. F, 33rd Reg. VA Inf. (Hardy County)
14. Greenrbier Sharp Shooters, Co. F, 27th Reg. VA Inf. (Greenbrier County)
(17) Richard O. Curry, A House Divided, pg. 135.
(18) Hilary A. Herbert, Why The Solid South, 1890, pg. 225 "What wonder that President Lincoln, in conversation with Judge Campbell, said of his Alexandria experiment 'I have a government in Virginia, the Pierpoint government. It has but a small margin, and I am not disposed to increase it.'" Pages 222-225 detail Pierpont's conflict with Gen. Butler, and Lincoln's attitude towards the legitimacy of his "government".
(19) Charles H. Ambler, The History of West Virginia, pg. 376. "In 1876, their [Democratic] ticket of eight candidates-seven of whom had been in the Confederate army-was successful by majorities ranging from 12,000 to 16,000 votes."