Economic, cultural, and religious differences: there was no shortage of reasons for tension
among the people of the Virginia colony.
However, the story behind the creation of our 35th state is a lot more complex than
you might think.
Here's the real reason West Virginia broke away from Virginia.
Virginia was first formally colonized by the English in the early 17th century.
The eastern part of the state was dominated by English tobacco farmers dependent on slave
labor.
The western part of the colony was settled by German and Scotch-Irish immigrants.
Even after the American Revolution and statehood, Virginia continued to be a state with two
identities.
These differences were enshrined in the state's 1776 constitution, which explicitly tilted
power towards the east, in terms of voting power, taxes, and public spending.
The west's breakaway during the Civil War was the culmination of more than a century
of cultural, political, and economic division in the area.
We tend to think of events like secession in political or economic terms.
Those certainly played a huge part in West Virginia's decision to break away from Virginia.
But underlying those broad issues are the geographical features that caused them in
the first place.
One example is the Allegheny Mountain range, which formed a natural barrier that allowed
the western portion of the state to develop independently.
It also impacted the types of crops that could be grown, tobacco being the most important.
Another example is the natural flow of rivers throughout the area.
After settling Jamestown in the early 17th century, the English didn't move westward,
but instead headed north and south.
See, eighty percent of the rivers in the western part of the state flow into the Mississippi
River, not the Chesapeake Bay.
As a result, tobacco farmers couldn’t use the waterways to transport their crops for
export.
This lack of access to ports prevented their westward move.
This also meant that the wealthy eastern part of the state, where all the political power
was concentrated, didn't spend much in terms of infrastructure in the west.
Improvements west of the Alleghenies simply wouldn't benefit power centers in the east,
so there was continuous resistance to such investment, which led to deepening resentment
in the western population.
The area known as Tidewater Virginia, where the original colonial settlements began, was
almost exclusively English.
Descendants of those English colonists established the large plantations and created the slave
economy of Virginia.
They also dominated politics and the economy.
Just five percent of the English-descended families in the colony controlled everything.
But the high-quality land in West Virginia encouraged enthusiastic land speculation,
and most of the families that moved into the area didn't come from the east and weren't
Anglican English.
Instead, they came from the north, mainly Pennsylvania.
Because the land in West Virginia is very different from the Tidewater area, the western
economy had little to do with the eastern portion of Virginia.
Instead, West Virginians largely traded with areas north of them, primarily Baltimore.
As a result, western and eastern Virginia developed independently, setting up a deepening
rift.
The eastern part of Virginia was originally settled by English immigrants who were primarily
members of the Church of England.
The Anglicans came to dominate every aspect of Virginia.
The Church of England was the official religion of Virginia until 1786 when the state adopted
the concept of separation of church and state.
In the western part of the colony however, cheap land prices drew immigrants from a Protestant
religious background.
Many of these families had traveled to Pennsylvania to escape the religious intolerance back in
England.
In other words, they'd fled England to escape Anglicans, then moved into a colony controlled
almost exclusively by English Anglicans.
That proved to be a good way to set up a future split.
From its earliest days, West Virginia was different from the eastern part of the colony.
The people of West Virginia were very aware of this, and long before the Civil War brought
these differences to a final head, they were ready to break away.
In fact, they tried to form their own colony in 1775.
The idea dates back to at least 1763.
In the wake of the French and Indian War, a group of influential Americans floated the
idea of a separate colony formed out of lands ceded by Native tribes on the losing side
of the conflict.
The idea didn't take off, but after the Continental Congress was formed, residents in West Virginia
tried again, sending a petition in 1775 asking that a 14th colony called Westsylvania be
formed.
The 2,000 petitioners certainly thought big.
Their proposed borders included not just what is modern-day West Virginia but also portions
of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.
These efforts were a direct result of the growing differences between the eastern and
western populations of Virginia.
The West's lack of political power made forming their own colony an attractive idea.
The Continental Congress ignored the petition, and in 1783 ignored a second petition asking
that Westsylvania be made the 14th state.
The tax code in Virginia before the Civil War benefited the eastern elites much more
than their less affluent western counterparts.
The code was designed to favor people who owned huge plantations and many slaves, which
was only possible in the eastern Tidewater region of the state.
Not only did this mean westerners paid an unfair share of the taxes, it also meant the
eastern elites who controlled the government saw no reason to spend money in the west.
As a result, the western portion of the state languished in terms of infrastructure investments.
This lack of response from their government stoked the feeling in western Virginia that
they had to stage their own mini-American Revolution to escape what was essentially
taxation without representation.
Many divisions pulled West Virginia away from Virginia, but one of the biggest and most
important centered on slavery.
There was a large abolitionist sentiment in the western portion of the state.
This was, in part, because there was a near absence of slavery in the region.
This wasn't so much a moral issue as a practical one, however.
The eastern plantation owners were heavily invested in slave culture and a slave economy,
whereas the western part of the state was less conducive to the economics of slavery.
When the abolitionist John Brown staged his raid on Harpers Ferry, today part of West
Virginia, his main reasons for choosing that location were practical.
Harpers Ferry was a federal arsenal filled with the weapons Brown thought rebellious
slaves would need to fight for their freedom.
Another reason was the emergence of a strong anti-slavery ideology.
While this position against slavery wasn't necessarily a moral one, it suggested a friendly
reception to the abolitionist movement.
When the whole country split apart largely along slavery lines, it was natural for West
Virginia to side with the Union.
While slavery was a huge issue contributing to West Virginia's push for independence from
Virginia, it wasn't necessarily an abolitionist, moral stance.
West Virginia wasn't so much anti-slavery as it was anti-slaveowner.
It was more about politics than morality.
The wealthy slaveowners of eastern Virginia owned lots of slaves, and those slaves counted
towards deciding how many representatives a county could send to the state government.
The result was political dominance by the eastern elites, making the western counties
seethe.
This resulted in a slow boil of resentment, as the east-dominated state government ensured
that everything from taxes to infrastructure investments heavily favored the eastern portion
of the state.
Because their lack of slaves and property kept them trapped in a powerless cycle, western
Virginians couldn't do much about it.
That is until the outbreak of the Civil War offered them an opportunity to finally formally
break away.
This mostly political motivation becomes evident when you note how weak West Virginia's anti-slavery
stance was once it became a state.
Its constitution originally only freed slaves gradually, and many would have remained slaves
their entire lives.
It wasn't until 1865, two years after statehood and just before the passage of the 13th amendment
abolishing slavery, that West Virginia officially ended legal slavery outright.
The wealthy landowners that dominated Virginia before the Civil War were very much aware
of the fact that the Virginians living in the west of the state were unhappy.
While they weren't much inclined to do anything about it, enough political pressure was brought
to bear on several occasions to force them to at least try.
The first time these efforts achieved any results was in 1816, when western agitation
convinced the legislature to establish some canal projects and banks in the west, but
no significant political change came of it.
The exercise was repeated in 1825, as reformers pushed for a revised constitution and received
minor concessions instead.
In 1830 things looked better for the West Virginians.
The census had proved the population was booming in the west.
This pressured the eastern leaders to call for a constitutional convention.
While the new constitution made significant changes to how power was distributed in the
state, the balance of power was still tilted in favor of the old eastern families.
Most of the West voted against it as a result.
It wasn't until a second constitutional convention in 1850 that real concessions were made to
the west's growing importance.
By then it was too late.
The obvious answer for why West Virginia split away from Virginia is always the Civil War
and the issue of slavery.
While that's certainly true, West Virginia's anti-slavery position was more about economics
and power than morality.
As was its decision to go its own way when Virginia voted to secede.
When the Civil War seemed inevitable, Virginia's government debated what to do, and ultimately
voted to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy.
But the vote reflected the uneven balance of power in the state.
Eighty-five percent of the secede vote came from the wealthy landowners in the east, while
two-thirds of the votes against came from the western counties.
The west's inability to affect the secession vote was the final humiliation.
Almost immediately, anti-secession conventions were organized in the western portion of the
state in defiance of the state legislature.
West Virginia was decidedly more pro-Union than the rest of the state, especially in
the counties that bordered Maryland and Washington, D.C.
Their votes against secession were the first step towards statehood.
Although it's clear that most of the people in western Virginia were opposed to secession,
anti-slavery to some extent, and tired of being under the thumb of the wealthy eastern
landowners, the population of West Virginia wasn't 100% in agreement.
Politicians in the region moved quickly to call anti-secession conventions with an eye
towards breaking away from the rest of the state, but the outcome wasn't guaranteed.
The number of troops from West Virginia who committed to the confederate army shows just
how contentious secession was.
"More recent scholarship has updated that number to about 20,000.
So, if you look at it that way, it has got to be the most divided state in the nation."
The final push may have come from the Union Army.
General William S. Rosecrans moved quickly to secure West Virginia for the Union, driving
Confederate General John B. Floyd out.
West Virginia remained under the control of the Union Army from that point forward, with
about 40,000 troops in place there.
While the troops weren't effective against guerrilla fighters in the mountains, the army
helped the nascent West Virginian government maintain control.
It also helped to force statehood on their citizens.
The army's presence allowed West Virginian politicians to more or less declare statehood
without ever needing to take a vote.
And it’s a vote that might not have succeeded.
The Union Army also made it possible to include counties in West Virginia that didn't actually
want to split away from Virginia, but the Confederate Army wasn't there to enforce their
will.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about U.S. history are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.