ADMISSION OF WEST VIRGINIA TO THE UNION.
The bill was not considered in the House until the next session. It was taken up on the 9th of December and was vigorously attacked by Mr. Conway of Kansas. He questioned the validity of the Pierpont Government and asked whether the law which gave him his warrant of authority had come from "a mob or from a mass-meeting." He said he had "serious reason to believe that it is the intention of the President to encourage the formation of State organizations in all the seceded States, and that a few individuals are to assume State powers wherever a military encampment can be effected in any of the rebellious districts." Mr. Conway denounced this scheme as "utterly and flagrantly unconstitutional, as radically revolutionary in character and deserving the reprobation of every loyal citizen." It aimed, he said, at "an utter subversion of our constitutional system and will consolidate all power in the hands of the Executive." He was answered with spirit by Mr. Colfax of Indiana, who reviewed the successive steps by which the legality of the Virginia government had been recognized by the President and by all the departments of the executive government. He argued that West Virginia had taken every step regularly and complied with every requirement of the Constitution.
Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky said the Wheeling government could be regarded as the government of the whole State of Virginia "only by a mere fiction. We know the fact to be otherwise." He said it was the party applying for admission that consented to the admission, and that was the whole of it. When the war should cease and the National authority should be re-established he wanted the Union as it was. This would be "a new-made Union—the old majestic body cut and slashed by passion, by war, coming to form another government, another Union. The Constitution gives us no power to do what we are asked to do." Mr. Maynard said there were "two governors and two Legislatures assuming authority over Virginia simultaneously. The question here is which shall the Government of the United States recognize as the true and lawful Legislature of Virginia?" He contended that it had already been settled, by the admission of members of both branches of Congress under the Pierpont Government. Mr. Dawes affirmed that "nobody has given his consent to the division of the State of Virginia and the erection of a new State who does not reside within the new State itself." He contended therefore that "this bill does not comply with the spirit of the Constitution. If the remaining portions of Virginia are under duress while this consent is given, it is a mere mockery of the Constitution." Mr. Brown of Virginia, from that part which was to be included in the new State, corrected Mr. Dawes, but the latter maintained that while a member of the Legislature "was picked up in Fairfax and two or three gentlemen in other parts of the State, they protested themselves that they did not pretend to represent the counties from which they hailed."
Mr. Thaddeus Stevens said he did not desire to be understood as "sharing the delusion that we are admitting West Virginia in pursuance of any provision of the Constitution." He could "find no provision justifying it, and the argument in favor of it originates with those who either honestly entertain an erroneous opinion, or who desire to justify by a forced construction an act which they have predetermined to do." He maintained that it was "but mockery to say that the Legislature of Virginia has ever consented to the division. Only two hundred thousand out of a million and a quarter of people have participated in the proceedings." He contended that "the State of Virginia has a regular organization, and by a large majority of the people it has changed its relations to the Federal Government." He knew that this was treason in the individuals who participated in it; but so far as the State was concerned, it was a valid act. Our government, he argued, "does not act upon a State. The State, as a separate distinct body, is the State of a majority of the people of Virginia, whether rebel or loyal, whether convict or free men. The majority of the people of Virginia is the State of Virginia, although individuals have committed treason." "Governor Pierpont," continued Mr. Stevens, "is an excellent man, and I wish he were the Governor elected by the people of Virginia. But according to my principles operating at the present time I can vote for the admission of West Virginia without any compunctions of conscience—only with some doubt about the policy of it. None of the States now in rebellion are entitled to the protection of the Constitution. These proceedings are in virtue of the laws of war. We may admit West Virginia as a new State, not by virtue of any provision of the Constitution but under our absolute power which the laws of war give us in the circumstances in which we are placed. I shall vote for this bill upon that theory, and upon that alone. I will not stultify myself by supposing that we have any warrant in the Constitution for this proceeding."
ADMISSION OF WEST VIRGINIA TO THE UNION.
Mr. Bingham of Ohio made an able argument principally devoted to rebutting the somewhat mischievous ground assumed by Mr. Stevens. He affirmed that "the minority of the people of the State cannot be deprived of their rights because the majority have committed treason." He argued that, the majority of the people of Virginia having become rebels, the State was in the hands of the loyal minority, who in that event had a right to administer the laws, maintain the authority of the State government, and elect a State Legislature and a Governor, through whom they might call upon the Federal Government for protection against domestic violence, according to the express guaranty of the Constitution. "To deny this proposition," continued Mr. Bingham, "is to say that when the majority in any State revolt against the laws, the State government can never be re-organized nor the rights of the minority protected so long as the majority are in revolt." He contended that the doctrine he advocated was not a new one, that it was as old as the Constitution, and he called attention to the remarkable letter of "The Federalist," addressed by Mr. Madison to the American people in which "he who is called the author of the Constitution" asked: "Why may not illicit combinations for purposes of violence be formed as well by a majority of a State as by a majority of a county or district of the same State? And if the authority of the State ought in the latter case to protect the local magistrate, ought not the Federal authority in the former case to support the State authority?"
Mr. Segar, who represented the district including Fortress Monroe, pleaded very earnestly against the dismemberment of his State and he argued, as Mr. Powell had argued in the Senate, that there was no evidence that a majority of the people within the counties which were to compose the new State had ever given their assent to its formation. The ordinary vote of those counties he said was 48,000 while on the new State question the entire vote cast was only 19,000. He named ten counties included in the new State organization in which not a single vote had been cast on either side of the question at the special election. Though loyal to the Union and grieving over the rebellious course of Virginia he begged that this humiliation might be spared her. "Let there not be two Virginias; let us remain one and united. Do not break up the rich cluster of glorious memories and associations which gather over the name and the history of this ancient and once glorious Commonwealth."
On the passage of the bill the ayes were 96 and the noes were 55. The ayes were wholly from the Republican party, though several prominent Republicans opposed the measure. Almost the entire Massachusetts delegation voted in the negative, as did also Mr. Roscoe Conkling, Mr. Conway of Kansas and Mr. Francis Thomas of Maryland. The wide difference of opinion concerning this act was not unnatural. But the cause of the Union was aided by the addition of another loyal commonwealth, and substantial justice was done to the brave people of the new State who by their loyalty had earned the right to be freed from the domination which had fretted them and from the association which was uncongenial to them.
To the old State of Virginia the blow was a heavy one. In the years following the war it added seriously to her financial embarrassment, and it has in many ways obstructed her prosperity. As a punitive measure, for the chastening of Virginia, it cannot be defended. Assuredly there was no ground for distressing Virginia by penal enactments that did not apply equally to every other State of the Confederacy. Common justice revolts at the selection of one man for punishment from eleven who have all been guilty of the same offense. If punishment had been designed there was equal reason for stripping Texas of her vast domain and for withdrawing the numerous land grants which had been generously made by the National Government to many of the States in rebellion. But Texas was allowed to emerge from the contest without the forfeiture of an acre, and Congress, so far from withdrawing the land grants by which other Southern States were to be enriched, took pains to renew them in the years succeeding the war. The autonomy of Virginia alone was disturbed. Upon Virginia alone fell the penalty, which if due to any was due to all.