Rogue State by Richard H. Owens

Author:Richard H. Owens
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7618-5977-2
Publisher: University Press of America

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ROGUE STATEHOOD

According to Article IV, Section III, of the United States Constitution, “New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.” (Author’s italics).

West Virginia’s statehood leaders should have had to obtain permission from Virginia in order to satisfy this constitutional restriction. That was hard to do given Virginia’s status as a ‘state in rebellion’ and the likelihood that such permission would have not been forthcoming had it been sought in Richmond. So they conveniently created their own “Restored” Government of Virginia and then gave themselves permission to leave! The convenient creation of a “Reorganized Government of Virginia” allowed those seeking separation of the western counties to seek consent from this anti-Tidewater, pro-Union body instead of the pro-Confederate Virginia government in Richmond.

On May 6, 1862, the General Assembly of the Reorganized Government of Virginia was convened by Governor Francis Pierpont. One week later, that General Assembly passed an Act Granting Permission for the Western Counties Assembled in Wheeling to Create the New State.59 This proved to be the ‘legal’ basis for separating the western counties from Virginia with its ‘assent.’ But was it legal? Was it constitutional? Did Virginia debate the issue or assent? Or was the creation of a new state named West Virginia a political expedient that Virginia was powerless, then and after the war, to halt?

On May 29, 1862, U.S. Senator Waitman T. Willey, representing, like U.S. Senator John Carlile, “Virginia,” presented a formal petition to the United States Senate for admission of West Virginia to the Union. Willey’s petition was referred to the Committee on Territories. Senator John Carlile, who was a member of that committee, was assigned the task of writing the statehood bill.60 Apparently no one was concerned about a potential conflict of interest in this regard, since Carlile [and Willey] technically “represented” the state of “Virginia.” That, however, was the political point. It was part of the legal fiction and subterfuge by which the “State of Virginia” assented to its own amputation and the separation of fifty of its western counties to form a new rogue state.

On June 23, Benjamin Wade, who chaired the Committee on Territories, reported the bill to the Senate. Carlile personally added fifteen counties to the new state, provided only for gradual emancipation, and required a new constitutional convention. The “old” Virginia constitution had to be replaced, even though Virginia was supposedly represented by the “Restored” government of Virginia and its creature, the constitutional convention in Wheeling.61

When the West Virginia statehood bill was introduced, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, an abolitionist, called for an amendment requiring emancipation of all slaves in West Virginia on July 4, 1863. This proposal was defeated.

Eventually, the Senate agreed on a compromise. Senator Willey

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