Issues Divide Virginia
Special to Huntingtonnews.net
The state of Virginia prior to the Civil War was divided both politically and geographically by the mountains that now form the eastern boundary of West Virginia.
By 1850 the term “western Virginia” had come to represent the land west of the Allegheny Mountains. The two parts of Virginia disagreed on slavery, education, and what constituted proper representation in government.
Some settlers in western Virginia had struggled over the mountains, but many more had come south along the valleys from Pennsylvania and Maryland. Some of these new Virginians, in contrast to their neighbors from eastern Virginia, were more strongly aligned with northern attitudes.
Economic differences were also related to geography. Eastern Virginia’s economy relied on large-scale plantation labor which was not suitable for the Trans-Allegheny counties. Western Virginians depended more on small-scale subsistence agriculture with corn being the staple crop. Most of these counties remained predominantly rural with large unsettled sections.
Long before the Civil War, western Virginians felt left behind as turnpikes and other improvements brought progress and prosperity for their eastern neighbors. Many western residents felt that eastern interests dominated the state legislature, and resented seeing their taxes going toward improvements that did not directly benefit them. When turnpikes were finally completed across the mountains, such as the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike in 1847, they became vitally important avenues for commerce and regional growth.
The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad reached western Virginia at Wheeling in 1853. The largest city in western Virginia, Wheeling had become a hub of commerce and industry due to its strategic location along the Ohio River and to the railroad, which would later be of critical importance during the war. Industry and the oil-boom of 1859 brought greater numbers of northern investors and immigrant workers into the western counties. Other towns like Parkersburg and Charleston were also growing because of their positions on transportation routes, including turnpikes and navigable rivers. Milling and salt production were important industries, with limited coal mining in some areas.
These divergent economic influences and regional values contributed to the difference of opinion between Virginians on opposite sides of the Alleghenies concerning the issue of slavery. Voting provisions in the state constitution gave slaveholders extra political clout. Only about 25 percent of Virginia’s total slave population was held in the counties that later became West Virginia, and most of these were concentrated around the Potomac River, the Kanawha River valley, and what is today southeastern West Virginia. Slaves accounted for only one percent of the population in one third of the western counties.
Opposing values concerning slavery as well as discontent among western Virginians about under-representation in state government and lack of state investment in infrastructure west of the Alleghenies would set the stage for the creation of a new state only a few years later.
Civil War Journal is produced by the Rich Mountain Battlefield Foundation and Historic Beverly Preservation in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. For more information, please visit www.richmountain.org.