Book Review: West Virginia’s War: The Civil War in Documents

West Virginia’s War: The Civil War in Documents. Edited by William Kerrigan. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2025. Softcover, 304 pp., $25.95.

Reviewed by Jon-Erik Gilot

The past quarter century has seen a resurgence in research and publishing on West Virginia’s oft-neglected role in the Civil War. As the only state born of the war, West Virginia offers a fascinating and unique study of the intersections of political, military, and civilian conflict. From campaign and regimental histories to irregular warfare, hostage-taking, constitutional law, and memory studies, recent scholars have either embraced or rejected the longstanding interpretation of the statehood movement – a clash of social, cultural, economic, and political ideals between eastern and western Virginia. Now, a new study seeks to highlight some of the primary sources that both camps have relied on in making their arguments.

West Virginia’s War marks the seventh installment in Ohio University’s The Civil War in Documents series. Stretching back nearly twenty years, the series highlights primary source material, including public documents, letters, diaries, reports, and newspaper articles. While some resources in each book may be well known and oft referenced, readers will also find tantalizing, lesser-utilized material culled from archival collections across the country. Each volume has been edited by a different academic or scholar, ensuring that readers find varying perspectives in each successive book.

This latest volume in the series was capably edited by William Kerrigan, a former longtime professor of history at Muskingum University. The editor opens with a brief introduction addressing the state’s culture, geography, and multilayered historiography. The book is thereafter divided into nine chapters, the first including documents covering Virginia’s western counties during the roughly thirty-year period prior to the Civil War during which the groundwork was laid for intrastate conflict.

Chapter two covers the Revolution of 1860, or the rise of Republicanism even among Virginia’s western counties, where papers like the Daily Intelligencer (Wheeling) championed Abraham Lincoln and the Republican platform. As the only period daily paper in western Virginia, Kerrigan heavily mined the goldmine of reporting and editorials available in the Intelligencer, though not at the expense of coverage from Richmond and other Confederate papers, which are also included.

Additional chapters explore the wartime military and political activity within the area of West Virginia, the statehood movement culminating in West Virginia’s 1863 admission to the Union, the role of women in Civil War West Virginia, and an exploration of the curious history of monumentation and memory in postwar West Virginia, most notably the first statue erected on the West Virginia statehouse grounds – a  controversial 1910 monument to Stonewall Jackson.

Most chapters highlight roughly 12 – 15 documents, with brief editorial comments preceding each entry, contextualizing the author or content for the reader. From soldiers and statesmen, to women, civilians, and the enslaved population, Kerrigan illuminates these disparate voices into a compelling and cohesive narrative.

The book concludes with a nearly 150-year timeline history of statehood events, as well as notes and a bibliography. A seasoned educator, the editor also includes a series of helpful questions (arranged by chapter) that should generate meaningful dialogue both in the classroom and among colleagues seeking a deeper understanding of the Mountain State’s place in Civil War history.

In West Virginia’s War, William Kerrigan’s thoughtfully curated, single-volume collection of primary source records will benefit West Virginia students and researchers for many years to come.