The campaign season ended with the Union forces practically in possession of the forty-eight counties, soon to become the State of West Virginia.(15)
A convention held at Wheeling, June 11, 1861, declared the State offices of Virginia vacant by reason of the treason of those who had been chosen to fill them, and it then proceeded to form a regular state government for Virginia, with Francis H. Pierpont for its Governor, maintaining that the people loyal to the Union should speak for the whole State. The Pierpont government was recognized by Congress. This organization, on August 20, 1861, adopted an ordinance "for the formation of a new State out of a portion of the territory of this State." This ordinance was approved by a vote of the people, and, November 26, 1861, a convention assembled in Wheeling and framed a constitution for the proposed new State. This also was ratified, April, 1862, by the people, 18,862 voting for and 514 against it. The recognized Legislature of Virginia, in order to comply with the Constitution of the United States, May 13, 1862, consented to the creation of a new State out of territory hitherto included in the State of Virginia. The people of the forty-eight counties having thus made the necessary preparation, Congress, December 31, 1862, passed an act for the admission of West Virginia into the Union, annexing, however, a condition that her people should first ratify a substitute for the Seventh Section, Article Eleven of her Constitution, providing that children of slaves born in her limits after July 4, 1863, should be free; that slaves who at that time were under ten years of age should be free at the age of twenty-one; and all slaves over ten and under twenty- one years of age should be free at the age of twenty-five; and no slave should be permitted to come into the State for permanent residence.
March 26, 1863, the slavery emancipation clause was almost unanimously ratified by a vote of the people, and, April 20, 1863, President Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring that West Virginia had complied with all required conditions and was therefore a State in the Union.
The anomalous creation and admission of this new State was justified only by the rebellious times and in aid of the loyal cause. It is the only State carved out of another or other States. It remains a singular fact that the day preceding the final Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln, he approved a law of Congress admitting West Virginia as a slave State (with gradual emancipation) into the Union. The proclamation excepted the counties, commonly then called West Virginia, from its application.
The fruit of the successful occupancy of Western Virginia in 1861 by the Union Army and the consequent failures there in the same year of the Confederate leaders, Lee, Floyd, Wise, and others, was the formation of a new State, thenceforth loyal to the flag and the Constitution.
We now dismiss West Virginia, where we first learned something of war, but in time shall return to it again. I have in this chapter dealt more largely in detail than I intend to do in those to follow, as the reader, if even inexperienced in war, will have by this time learned sufficient to enable him to comprehend much belonging to a great military campaign which is often difficult and sometimes impossible to narrate.
( 1) No order assigning Lee to Western Virginia seems to have been issued, but see Davis to J. E. Johnston of August 1, 1861, War Records, vol. v., p. 767.
( 2) An abstract of a return of Loring's forces for October, 1861, shows present for duty 11,700 of all arms.—War Records, vol. v., p. 933.
( 3) While the Third Ohio was temporarily camped in Cheat Mountain Pass (July, 1861) word came of the Bull Run disaster, and while brooding over it Colonel John Beatty, in the privacy of our tent, early one morning before we had arisen, exclaimed in substance: "That so long as the Union army fought to maintain human slavery it deserved defeat; that only when it fought for the liberty of all mankind would God give us victory." Such prophetic talk was then premature, and if openly uttered would have insured censure from General McClellan and others.
( 4) This prediction has been fulfilled. Major Wm. McKinley was inaugurated President of the United States March 4, 1897.