Map of Slave Populations in Virginia, 1860
From the very beginning, there was division between eastern and western Virginia. Families in western Virginia did not usually own the land on which they lived which excluded those white men from voting, and they generally did not own slaves. This was very different than eastern Virginia where there was a larger degree of land and slave ownership. Western Virginia was largely tied to white wage labor in a rapidly industrializing economy and many of the area’s residents supported abolition because they felt slaves were taking jobs that white laborers should be paid to do. This led to steady conflict over the years about voting rights and representation in the state government. In October 1829, prominent Virginians met to develop a new constitution and eastern conservatives defeated every reform proposed by western Virginians. The new constitution was approved statewide 26,055 to 15,566, but in western Virginia voters rejected it 8,365 to 1,383.
There was some resolution in 1850 at a Reform Convention in which eastern and western Virginians compromised on many of the issues left unresolved from 1829, and with the 1850 Constitution eastern and western Virginians seemed politically closer than ever before. National depression in 1857, however, defeated most attempts to support the industry in the western counties and tension rose again. The start of the Civil War brought those tensions to a head. On April 17, 1861, right after the firing on Fort Sumter, a convention of Virginians voted to submit a bill of secession for a vote of the people. Many western delegates marched out of the Secession Convention and vowed to create a state government loyal to the Union. These delegates met at Clarksburg, WV on April 22 and called for a pro-Union Convention which met in Wheeling from May 13 to 15. Days later, on May 23, Virginia voters approved the Ordinance of Secession and the state joined the Confederacy.
