What happened to West Virginia and Virginia (user search)
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  What happened to West Virginia and Virginia (search mode)
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Author Topic: What happened to West Virginia and Virginia  (Read 6081 times)
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darthebearnc
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 7,367
« on: June 20, 2015, 03:44:57 PM »

...
It's kind of funny that while West Virginia became a state due to left-wing causes (staying in Union/abolishing slavery), Virginia got its current borders due to right-wing causes (Confederacy). Now they're switched.
...

Roll Eyes

Heh heh heh.

Yes, Red Avatar privilege is truly cute, isn't it?

Okay, that was rude, but really a quick look at a few wikipedia articles will confirm the following:

West Virginia's cause for split from Virginia was a protest against secession, not slavery: In fact, Lincoln forced them to add in gradual emancipation to their first state constitution to be admitted to the Union.  That's right, they had to be coerced into adding abolition into their constitution.  West Virginians opposed Virginia because they wanted to be on the right side of history, but not on the issue the reddie here assumes.  There were more than a few areas in the South that had also opposed secession largely because they didn't believe that Lincoln being elected warranted seceding and/or Civil War.  In fact, West Virginia secessionists waited until Virginia officially seceded from the Union before seceding from Virginia:

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What was being argued by West Virginia secessionists was a cause to stand by American Nationalism, not radical change.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeling_Convention
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_states_(American_Civil_War)#West_Virginia (about the only support for darth's argument is the following:  The western areas were growing and were based on subsistence farms by yeomen; its residents held few slaves. The planters of the eastern section were wealthy slaveholders who dominated state government.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_in_the_American_Civil_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia#Separation_from_Virginia

Further, considering that many West Virginians did fight on the side of the Confederacy, it is intellectually dishonest to imply (like darth did) that they were united against slavery or even pro-Union.  And neither should one use the 1864 presidential election as proof that West Virginia was anti-slavery, as turnout (judging by the 1860 population vs. the total number of votes cast) was astronomically low due to many in the eastern and southern parts of the new state refusing to recognize the West Virginia state government as well as war politics (Confederates caused much more damage than Unionists did in WV).  A lot of people who would have otherwise voted Democratic likely stayed home out of the belief that the West Virginia state government was illegitimate and that West Virginia was still a part of the Confederate Virginia government.  Increased voter turnout in West Virginia for most of the late 19th century was consistently in favor of the Democrats, not the Republicans.  There was more support for anti-slavery politics in West Virginia than other similar areas, but that was largely due to how elitist the Virginia planter elite was and how much their politics disadvantaged the white lower class that populated the mountainous western region.  There is a reason why there was a lot more support for the state of West Virginia than say the State of Winston for instance.  The existence of this wealth and power disparity, however, should not be interpreted as the only motivation for staying in the Union, given that many wealthy people in the North also supported the Union for economic reasons.

Oh sure, I won't deny that West Virginia has a history of leftism, particularly labor union leftism, but arguing that the key motivation to secede from Virginia was because of some left wing ideals of race equality (I could go on for days about how anti-slavery didn't equal "left wing", but just for the sake of argument I am throwing in the one major left wing argument for abolitionism at the time) rather than political practicality and nationalism is kind of ignorant.

LOL nice rant

The whole post was a joke; read the other paragraphs.

Sheesh
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