488

THE UNIONISTS IN WESTERN VIRGINIA.

Dragoons, was stationed with several hundred insurgents. Tompkins captured the pickets and then dashed into the town, driving a detachment of the insurgents before him. These were re-enforced, and a severe skirmish occurred in the street. Shots were fired upon the Union troops from windows. Finding himself greatly outnumbered by his enemy, Tompkins retreated in good order, taking with him five fully armed prisoners' and two horses. He lost one man killed, one missing, and four who were wounded. He also lost twelve horses and their equipments. It is estimated that about twenty of the insurgents were killed or wounded. Among the killed was Captain John Q. Marr, a highly esteemed citizen of Virginia, who had been a member of the late Secession Convention. "He has been the first soldier of the South," said the Nashville Union, "to baptize the soil of the Old Dominion with patriotic blood."

This gallant dash of Tompkins gave delight to the loyal people, and made the insurgent leaders at Manassas and its vicinity very vigilant and active. They were expecting an attack from the direction of Washington City, and were alarmed by military movements already commenced in Western Virginia. Troops from the more Southern States were still crowding in, and it was estimated that these, with the Virginians under arms, comprised about forty thousand men, in the camp and in the field, within the borders of the Old Commonwealth on the 1st of June, prepared to fight the troops of the Government.

There was a civil and political movement in Northwestern Virginia at this time, in opposition to the conspirators, really more important and more alarming to them than the aspect of military affairs there. It commanded the profound attention of the Government, and of the loyal and disloyal people of the whole country.

The members of the Virginia Secession Convention from the western portion of the State, as we have observed, could not be molded to suit the will of the conspirators, and they and their colleagues defied the power of the traitors who controlled the Convention. Before the adjournment of that Convention, the inhabitants of Northwestern Virginia were satisfied that the time had come when they must make a bold stand for the Union and their own independence, or be made slaves to a confederacy of traitors whom they abhorred; and Union meetings were called in various parts of the mountain region, which were largely attended. The first of these assembled at Clarksburg, in Harrison County, on the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, on the 22d of April, when resolutions, offered by John S. Carlile, a member of the Convention yet sitting in Richmond, calling an assembly of delegates of the people at Wheeling, on the 13th of May, were adopted. The course of Governor Letcher was severely condemned, and eleven citizens were chosen to represent Harrison County in the Convention at Wheeling. Meetings were held elsewhere. One of these, at Kingwood, in PresMay 4, ton County, evinced the most determined hostility to the conspirators, and declared that the separation of Western from Eastern Virginia was essential to the maintenance of their liberties. They

1861.

1 Among the prisoners was W. F. Washington, son of the late Colonel John Marshall Washington, of the United States Army. He was sent to General Mansfield, at Washington City, with the other prisoners, where he took the oath of allegiance and was released.

UNION CONVENTION AT WHEELING.

489

also resolved to elect a representative in the National Congress. Similar sentiments were expressed at other meetings, especially in a mass convention held at Wheeling on the 5th of May, where it was resolved to repudiate all connection with the conspirators at Richmond. A similar meeting was held at Wheeling on the 11th, when the multitude were addressed by Mr. Carlile and Francis H. Pierpont.

The Convention of delegates met at Wheeling on the 13th. A large number of counties were represented by almost four hundred Unionists. The inhabitants of Wheeling were mostly loyal; and when the National flag was unfurled over the Custom House there, in token of that loyalty, with public ceremonies, it was greeted with loud acclamations of the people, and the flinging out, in response, of the flag of the Union over all of the principal buildings in the city.

The chief topic discussed in the Convention was the division of the State and the formation of a new one, composed of the forty or fifty Counties of the Mountain region, whose inhabitants owned very few slaves and were enterprising and thrifty. A division of the State had been desired by them for many years. The Slave Oligarchy eastward of the mountains and in all the tide-water counties wielded the political power of the State, and used it for the promotion of their great interest, in the levying of taxes and the lightening of their own burdens, at the expense of the labor and thrift of the citizens of West Virginia. These considerations, and their innate love for the Union, produced a unanimity of sentiment at this crisis that made the efforts of secret emissaries of the conspirators, and open recruiting officers of the military power arrayed against the Government, almost fruitless. This unanimity was remarkable in the Wheeling Convention, which, too informal to take definite action on the momentous question of the dismemberment of the State, contented itself with passing resolutions condemnatory of the Secession Ordinance, and calling a Provisional Convention to assemble at the same place on the 11th day of June following, if the obnoxious ordinance should be ratified by the voice of the people, to be given on the 23d of May. A Central Committee was appointed,' who, on the 22d of May, issued an argumentative address to the people of Northwestern Virginia.

These proceedings thoroughly alarmed the conspirators, who expected a revolt and an appeal to arms in Western Virginia, under the auspices of the National Government; and on the 25th of May, Governor Letcher wrote a letter to Colonel Porterfield, who was in command of some State troops at Grafton, at the junction of the Baltimore and Ohio and the Northwestern Railway, ordering him to "take the train some night, run up to Wheeling, and seize and carry away the arms recently sent to that place by Cameron, the United States Secretary of War, and use them in arming such men” as might “rally to his camp." He told him that it was "advisable to cut off telegraphic communication between Wheeling and Washington, so that the disaffected at the former place could not communicate with their allies at head-quarters." "Establish a perfect control over the telegraph, if kept up," he said, "so that no dispatch can pass without your knowledge and inspec

1 That Committee consisted of John S. Carlile, James S. Wheat, C. D. Hubbard, F. H. Pierpont, G. R. Latham, Andrew Wilson, S. H. Woodward, James W. Paxton, and Campbell Farr.

490

PROCEEDINGS OF THE UNION CONVENTION.

tion before it is sent. If troops from Ohio or Pennsylvania shall be attempted to be passed on the railroad, do not hesitate to obstruct their passage by all means in your power, even to the destruction of the road and bridges."

The people in all Eastern Virginia, under the pressure of the bayonet, as we have observed,' ratified the Ordinance of Secession, and gave a majority of the votes of the State in its favor, while the vote in Western Virginia was overwhelmingly against it. A Convention was accordingly held at

Wheeling on the 11th of June, in which about forty counties of the mountain region were represented. It met in the Custom House; and each delegate, as his credentials were accredited, took a solemn oath of allegiance to the National Constitution and its Government." The Conven

tion was organized by the appointment

of

Arthur J. Boreman, of Wood County, as permanent. President, and G. L. Cranmer, Secretary. The President made a patriotic speech on taking the chair, and found the delegates in full union with him in sentiment. The Convention then went to work in earnest. A committee was appointed to draw up a Bill of Rights, and on the following day it reported through its chairman, John S. Carlile. All allegiance to the "Southern Confederacy" was totally denied in that report, and it recommended a declaration that the functions of all officers in the State of Virginia who adhered to it were suspended, and the offices vacated. Resolutions were adopted, declaring the intention of the people of Virginia never to submit to the Ordinance of Secession, but to maintain the rights of the Commonwealth in the Union; also, calling upon all citizens who had taken up arms against the National Government to lay them down and return to their allegiance.

⚫ June 13, 1861.

On the third day of the session," an ordinance was reported for vacating all the offices in the State held by State officers acting in hostility to the General Government, and also providing for a Provisional

1 See page 884.

The delegates all took the following oath :-" We solemnly declare that we will support the Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, as the supreme law of the land, any thing in the Ordinance of the Convention that assembled at Richmond on the 18th day of February last to the contrary notwithstanding. So help me God."

GOVERNMENT OF VIRGINIA REORGANIZED.

491

Government and the election. of officers for a period of six months; also, requiring all officers of the State, counties, and towns to take the oath of allegiance. This movement was purely revolutionary. There was no pretense of secession from Virginia, but a declaration of the people that Governor Letcher and other State officers then in an attitude of rebellion against the National authority had "abdicated government," and were formally deposed, and that a new government for Virginia was formed. Governor Letcher had, by his acts, made war upon the people, and placed himself in the attitude of George the Third when he made war upon the Colonies, and thus, as they expressed it, he "abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and

991

waging war against us." The Convention adopted a Declaration of Independence of the old government on the 17th, which was signed by all the members present, fifty-six in number, and on the 19th the ordinance for the establishment of a Provisional Government was adopted. The Convention had already considered the propriety of forming a new State, separate from the old one; and on the 20th there was a unanimous vote in favor of the ultimate separation of Western from Eastern Virginia. On that day, the new or "restored Government" was organized. Francis H. Pierpont, of Marion County, was, on the nomination of the venerable Daniel Lamb, chosen Provisional Governor, with Daniel Polsley, of Mason County, as LieutenantGovernor, and an Executive Council of five members. The unanimous voice of the Convention was given for these officers.

Governor Pierpont was a bold, patriotic, and energetic man. His first official act was to notify the President of the United States that the existing insurrection in Virginia was too formidable to be suppressed by any means at the Governor's command, and to ask the aid of the General Government. He organized the militia; and very soon no less than twelve regiments of the loyal mountaineers of Northwestern Virginia had rallied beneath the standard of the Union. Money was needed. There was no treasury, and the Governor borrowed, on the pledge of his own private fortune, twelve thousand dollars for the public service. In every way he worked unceasingly for the permanent establishment of the "restored government," and succeeded, in defiance of the extraordinary efforts of the conspirators at Richmond to crush the new organization, and bring the loyal people into subjection. A Legislature was elected, and they were summoned to a session at Wheeling on the 1st of July. Soon after its assembling, it chose John S. Carlile and Waitman G. Willie to represent the restored Commonwealth in the Senate of the United States.

a 1861.

1861.

In the course of time the long desired dismemberment of Virginia occurred. The Convention reassembled on the 20th of August,'.

1 The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

492

STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA ESTABLISHED.

and passed an ordinance for the erection of a new State, in which Slavery was prohibited, to be called KANAWHA, the name of its principal stream. This ordinance was submitted to the people of the counties represented in the Convention on the 24th of October ensuing, when the vote was almost unanimous in its favor. At a subsequent session of the Convention, on the 27th of November, the name was changed to WEST VIRGINIA, and a State Constitution was formed. On the 3d of May following the people ratified it, and on the same day the Legislature, at a called session, approved of the division of the State, and the establishment of a new Commonwealth. All of the requirements of the National Constitution now having been complied with, West Virginia was admitted as a State of the Union on the 3d of June, 1863, by an Act of Congress, approved by the President on the 31st of December, 1862. A State seal, with appropriate inscriptions and device, was adopted,' and the new Commonwealth took its place as the Thirty-fifth State of the Union, covering an area of twenty-three thousand square miles, and having a population, in 1860, of three hundred and ninety-three thousand two hundred and thirty four.

At the beginning of the efforts of the loyal men of Northwestern Virginia to lay the foundation of a new and Free-labor State, they found it necessary to prepare for war, for, as we have observed, the conspirators were forming camps of rendezvous in their midst, and preparing to hold them in subjection to the usurpers at Richmond. Thousands of loyal men secretly volunteered to fight for the Union; and the National Government made preparations in Pennsylvania and beyond the Ohio River to co-operate with them at a proper moment. Both the Government and the loyal citizens of Virginia abstained from all military movements on the soil

1 The conspirators denounced the action of Congress and the President as usurpation, and a violation of the third section of the fourth Article of the Constitution, which says:

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State, nor any State formed by the junction of two or more States or parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress." Let us see how this matter will endure the constitutional test. The loyal people of Virginia, and who alone constituted the State as a part of the Republic, deposed Governor Letcher and his fellow-traitors in regular form, and reorganized the Government of the Commonwealth, making Francis H. Pierpont chief magistrate. The Legislature forming a part of this newly organized government agreed that a new State should be made out of a portion of the old one. One part of the Constitutional requirement was thus complied with. The other part was complied with when Congress, on the 31st of December, gave its consent to the transaction.

At midsummer, 1863, Virginia presented a curious political aspect. Its deposed Governor, Letcher, at Richmond, claimed jurisdiction over all the State. Governor Pierpont, at Alexandria, rightfully claimed authority over the whole State, excepting the fifty-one counties that composed the new State; and Governor Boreman, at Wheeling, legitimately exercised authority in that new State.

2 The above picture represents the lesser seal of West Virginia, which bears the same words and devices as the great seal. The latter is two inches and one-half in diameter. On one side are the words, "STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA," and "MONTANA SEMPER LIBERI "-that is to say, "Mountaineers are always free." In the center of the seal is seen a rock, on which ivy is growing, symbolizing stability and continuance, and bearing the inscription, "JUNE 20, 1863," the date of the organization and foundation of the State. On the right of the rock is seen a farmer dressed in the hunting-shirt worn in that region, his right hand resting on a plow-handle, and on his left is reposing a woodman's ax, indicating the great business of the people to be the clearing of the forest and cultivating the soil. There is also a sheaf of wheat and a corn-stalk near. On the left of the rock is seen a miner with his pickax, with barrels and lumps of minerals at his feet. An anvil and sledge hammer are also seen, typical of the mechanic arts. Two rifles lie in front, their junction covered by the Phrygian hood, or Cap of Liberty, indicating that the independence of the State was won and will be maintained by arms.