“It has been asserted,” he said in conclusion, “and understood in some quarters, that the organization of the government at Wheeling was for the purpose of forming a new State. I am prepared to say that when the convention originally met in Wheeling, although there were a few radicals there who wanted to form a new State without reinstating the old State of Virginia, we voted them down, and commenced the exercise of our original rights as freemen to build up the loyal government of Virginia; and although we designed eventually to ask for this separation, and it was what we anxiously desired, yet we determined to be a law-abiding people, and ask for what we desired through the forms of law.”[[182]]
Representative Colfax in giving the reasons which should govern his vote stated that the restored government had been recognized by the Senate, by the President as well as other executive officers, and that the House, by admitting Mr. Segar, elected pursuant to a proclamation of Governor Pierpont, had also recognized the reorganized State. Even the political party in opposition voted for that member’s admission. He also remarked that the new State came knocking at the door for admission with the tiara of freedom on her brow.[[183]]
Mr. Olin, who opposed the bill at the preceding session, said: “I shall vote for it now with reluctance. I shall vote for it mainly upon the ground that the General Government, whether wisely or unwisely I will not undertake to say, has encouraged this movement to create a division of the State of Virginia.”[[184]] The people of West Virginia, with their experience of the evils which slavery brought on them, should not have permitted that institution to exist for an hour in their new government. For this deficiency, however, the bill provided a partial remedy.
Crittenden observed that it was the party applying for admission that gave its consent to a division of the State.[[185]] To this objection Representative Blair replied that there were counties outside of West Virginia which had assented to dismemberment. Other members, who had hitherto been hostile, now consented to support the measure from a conviction that it would weaken rebellion.
Representative Dawes said that the primary elections which sent delegates to the Wheeling convention discussed not a reorganization of the Virginia government, but the formation of an independent State in western Virginia. To accomplish that, he said, the only way was to restore the government of the entire Commonwealth. That government then had two things to do: to set up a new State within itself and secondly to give its consent thereto. This suggestion, he understood, emanated from Washington.[[186]]
In reference to the admission, Thaddeus Stevens said:
I do not desire to be understood as being deluded by the idea that we are admitting this State in pursuance of any provisions of the Constitution. I find no such provision that justifies it, and the argument in favor of the constitutionality of it is one got up by those who either honestly entertain, I think, an erroneous opinion, or who desire to justify, by a forced construction, an act which they have predetermined to do.
Now, to say that the Legislature which called this seceding convention was not the Legislature of Virginia, is asserting that the Legislature chosen by a vast majority of the people of a State is not the Legislature of that State. That is a doctrine which I can never assent to. I admit that the Legislature were disloyal, but they were still the disloyal and traitorous Legislature of the State of Virginia; and the State, as a mere State, was bound by their acts. Not so individuals. They are responsible to the General Government, and are responsible whether the State decrees treason or not. That being the Legislature of Virginia, Governor Letcher, elected by a majority of the votes of the people, is the Governor of Virginia—a traitor in rebellion, but a traitorous governor of a traitorous State. Now, then, how has that State ever given its consent to this division? A highly respectable but very small number of the citizens of Virginia—the people of West Virginia—assembled together, disapproved of the acts of the State of Virginia, and with the utmost self-complacency called themselves Virginia.