The Constitutional Convention met at the scheduled time in the United States Court room at Wheeling.[62] Thirty-four delegates of the forty chosen were present. No time was lost in effecting a permanent organization of the Convention, in order that the momentous problems to be solved might be brought before that august body. Not the least important one of these questions was that of the disposal of slavery. The questions of the hour were these: Was the new State to be a free or a slave State? Would the Union admit another slave State?
It was on the fourteenth day of the Convention that Robert Hagar, a Methodist preacher from Boone county, offered a resolution to the effect that the convention inquire into the propriety of making the new State free, by incorporating into the Constitution a clause for gradual emancipation.[63] A counter proposal was offered on the same day by Mr. Brown, an ardent pro-slavery advocate, from Kanawha. His resolution asserted that it was "unwise and impolitic to introduce the question of slavery into the Convention."[64] Despite the fact that the organic law of the new State was then being framed, this pro-slavery champion deplored any attempt of the body to discuss or decide upon the question of slavery, the most vital question of economic policy with which the people would be concerned. There were present, however, other men who were determined to champion the cause of freedom.
On the sixteenth day of the convention the courageous Mr. Gordon Battelle, a delegate from Ohio county, offered for reference the following proposition:[65]
(1) "No slave shall be brought into the State for permanent residence after the adoption of this constitution.
(2) "The legislature shall have full power to make such just and humane provisions as may be needful for the better regulation and security of the marriage and family relations between slaves, for their proper instruction, and for the gradual and equitable removal of slaves from the State.
(3) "On and after the fourth day of July 18—, slavery or involuntary servitude, except for crime, shall cease within the limits of this State."
On the twenty-seventh day of January, Mr. Battelle offered the following:[66]
(1) "No slave shall be brought into the state for permanent residence after the adoption of this constitution.
(2) "All children born of slave parents in this state on and after the fourth day of July 1865 shall be free; and the Legislature may provide by general law for the apprenticeship of such children during their minority and for their subsequent colonization."
It is obvious that the first set of propositions provided for the total abolition of slavery, the date undetermined; whereas the second, while providing for the freedom of the children, born of slave parents on and after a specified date, condemned to perpetual slavery all other persons who prior to that date were slaves.
In line with the proposals of Mr. Battelle was the pertinent and clear-sighted editorial of The Wheeling Intelligencer under date of December ninth, 1861. It said: "We have endeavored to show how entirely adverse to the best interests of Western Virginia it would be for the present convention to adjourn without first engrafting a free State provision on our constitution in shape of a three, five or ten years emancipation clause. We should esteem it far better that the Convention had never assembled than that it should omit to take action of this character.... Congress would hesitate long before it will consent to the subdivision of a slave State simply that two slave States may be made out of it. The evil which has so nearly destroyed not only Western Virginia, but the whole country, will find that its tug-of-war is yet to come, when it has run the gauntlet of our Convention and our Legislature. We believe that when it reaches Congress, it will reach its hitherto and that it will never pass. It will avail very little for this convention to remain in debate on this subject for a month at a heavy expense and consummate a work which will only last end in a defeat and entail upon its framers the cold distrust of the only friends they have in the world. The loyal masses of the free States who are fighting the great battle of Constitutional freedom, who are endeavoring to stay the absorbing and consuming demands of slavery upon this continent, will never consent that in the very midst of them it shall burst out, in a new place, with the extraordinary demands that its present representation of a state in their Senate shall be doubled.... We say then to the members of our convention that before you waste your time and money on a constitution you look to its probable fate."[67]
That this prophetic message from the Intelligencer reflected the opinion of the people of Western Virginia and the state of mind of the Congress, was clearly shown by subsequent events. On the nineteenth day of the Convention an adroit attempt was made to have West Virginia become a slave State.[68] Thomas Harrison, of Harrison county, offered a resolution providing that the making of a new constitution be dispensed with for the present, and that the Virginia Constitution be referred to a Committee of Five with instructions to modify it to suit the needs of the proposed new State. Significant among the provisions of the Virginia Constitution was one altered at the Richmond Secession Convention to the effect that the General Assembly should have power to prohibit the future emancipation of slaves. By its provisions, therefore, the slave could never become free during his residence in the State. On motion of Mr. Van Winkle, the Convention voted that action on the resolution be indefinitely postponed.[69]
Battelle, persistent in his efforts to make some provision in reference to the freedom of the slaves, decided to submit emancipation to the people. Accordingly, therefore, on the twelfth of February, 1862, he offered the following:[70]