I.

CHAPTER XI.

THE NEW STATE MOVEMENT.

The Transalleghany State.-Even before the Declaration of Independence many schemes were on foot for the formation of new provinces west of the Alleghany Mountains. Large and influential companies were engaged in the movements, such as the Ohio Company, the Walpole Company, and the Indiana Company. Washington, Franklin, and many men of prominence, both in the mother country and in the colonies, were identified in the movements.

2.

Province of Vandalia.-The colony of Vandalia was proposed, and had received the approval of the King and the Board of Trade and Plantations (1775), when further proceeding were suspended on account of the outbreak of hostilities. Vandalia included nearly all of West Virginia as far east as the western boundary of Maryland, and extended southwestward to a line drawn from the mouth of the Scioto to the Cumberland Gap. Point Pleasant was to be the capital.

3. State of Westsylvania—After the Declaration of Independence and prior to 1780 a movement was set on foot for the formation of a "Sister Colony and the fourteenth Province of the American Confederacy," west of the Alleghanies, under the name of "Westsylvania." The boundaries were identical with those of Vandalia, with a part of Maryland and a section of Pennsylvania extending as far east as Altoona and northward to the line established by the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) about fifty miles north of Pittsburg, added. A memorial

was presented to the Continental Congress, under the caption of "The Memorial of the Inhabitants West of the Alleghany Mountains." It alleges that 25,000 families had settled in the region since 1768, and that they were separated from the rest of Pennsylvania and Virginia "by a vast, extensive & almost impassable Tract of Mountains by nature itself formed as a Boundary between this country and those below it."

4. Origin of the New State Idea. The notion of a new state had been set going in the minds of the people between the Alleghany Mountains and the Ohio River; it took deep hold upon them; and was never abandoned in the region south of the Mason and Dixon line until a new state was carved out on the western slope of the mountains..

5. A Mingling of Elements Resulting in Individualism.— The settlement of the western slope of the Alleghanies was effected by types of men somewhat "different from the planters of the South and the merchants and seamen of the New England coast." The Germans of the Palatinate were found all along the frontier. The ever persistent Scotch-Irish element entered the forest, cleared his fields, built his cabin, constructed a stockade at some point of vantage, and held his ground at the price of his blood. To these were added the elements of migration from the older colonies-from Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and New England-- already partly divested of their “Old World characteristics." A fusion of these elements in the new environments rapidly developed a new character distinctively individual in his qualities. Social distinctions were broken down; economic equality prevailed; and the result was a large degree of individualism, which meant the development of a tendency toward political equality.

6. Causes of the Desire for Separation.-Popular opinion assigns the immediate cause of the formation of West Virginia first, to the loyalty of the people to the Union, and second, to their inherent antagonism to the institution of slavery.

Loyalty to the Union was a potent factor, but no well formed sentiment existed in opposition to the institution of slavery. The number of slaves held was indeed small, and they were chiefly used as household and farm servants. Slavery never obtained a firm foothold in West Virginia for the same reason that it never flourished in New England and Pennsylvania-it was not economically profitable. The causes of the desire for separation are therefore deeper seated.

7. Physical Separation of the Virginias.-The States of Virginia and West Virginia are geographically distinct. West Virginia lies almost entirely on the western slope of the Alleghanies. Nature placed it in the valley of the Ohio, not in the Tidewater region. Nearly all of its streams flow into the Ohio. Not a single avenue of commerce, since transportation by packhorses and packsaddles was abondoned, led into or through Virginia until the building of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway long after the Civil War. Its available commercial connections were south and west with Cincinnati, Columbus, Chicago, and the Gulf of Mexico; north with Pittsburg and the region of the Great Lakes; east with Baltimore and Philadelphia. In order that three-fourths of the people of Western Virginia might reach the region of the capital (Richmond), it was necessary to flank the impassible barrier of the Alleghanies and pass through Maryland and the District of Columbia; and in so doing one must avail oneself of the transportation afforded by the enterprise of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, built by a foreign corporation, for which the naked right of way, across the northwest section of the State, was reluctantly granted by the General Assembly of Virginia, after years of petitioning on the part of the inhabitants of the region through which the road passed. In a letter published in 1866 Waitman T. Willey, then a Senator from West Virginia, says: "Who carries anything from west of the Alleghanies to eastern Virginia to sell? Who brings anything from East Virginia to West Virginia to sell? There are and

have been almost literally no business and no intercourse between the two sections for twenty-five years, excepting what was connected with matters of revenue and legislation at Richmond. There is no State in the Union, which has been admitted ten years ago, of which the people of East Virginia know less than they do of West Virginia; and, excepting the capital of the State, the people of West Virginia are equally unfamiliar with East Virginia."

8. Political, Social, and Economic Separation.-Social, political, and economic differences, like an entering wedge driven deeper and deeper, had been progressively forcing the sections wider and wider apart. The habits and feeling, the education and customs, of the people of the two sections, were radically different. In the West personal industry was honorable, and, when accompanied by intelligence, it enhanced the respectability of the man. He was not excluded from society because he was a laborer. In the East the occupation of manual labor, no matter how skilful and intelligent the laborer might be, excluded him from polite circles. The organization of society, doubtless, rather than the deliberate choice of the people, made his social ostracism inexorably necessary. Let Judge Benjamin Watkins Leigh, the leader of the aristocracy on the floor of the Constitutional Convention of 1829; speak for them. Hear his opinion of the influence to be exerted by the free, intelligent, white laborers of the West. His words penetrated like a barbed point into the minds of self-respecting men west of the mountains. "What real share," said he, "so far as mind is concerned, does any man suppose the peasantry of the West-that peasantry which it must have when the country is completely filled up with daylaborers as ours is with slaves-can, or will take in affairs of state?" The historian of the Convention calls him "the chivalrous and accomplished champion of the eastern aristocracy." But this champion was met by Philip Doddridge, a new knight that came out of the West, and with his lance of argument,