Settlement did not expand equally away from a central point at Jamestown, with new farms and communities emerging a few miles in every direction every few years. Panhandle of West Virginia showing Morgan,īerkeley, and Jefferson counties in the Shenandoah ValleyĮuropean settlers did not spread out through Virginia after 1607 like ripples from a rock thrown into a pond. In the end, West Virginia included only three Shenandoah Valley Counties - and the southwestern Virginia counties within the Valley and Ridge province stayed with "old" Virginia, due to the influence of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. The new state could have included all Virginia counties west of the Blue Ridge, and even all the counties along the Potomac River downstream to the Occoquan River. Some boundaries proposed for West Virginia during the Civil War extended much further to the east. And now, to-day after many long and weary years of insult and injustice, culminating on the part of the East, in an attempt to destroy the Government, we have the proud satisfaction of proclaiming to those around us that we are a separate State in the Union. Thus nature, our commerce, travel, habits, associations, and interests, all - all say that West Virginia should be severed from the East. The mountains intervene between us, the rivers rise in the mountains and run towards the Northwest and, as if to make the separation more complete, Eastern Virginia adopted the fatal doctrine of secession, while the West spurned and rejected it as false and dangerous in the extreme. Our markets, our trade and our travel are North and West of Virginia, through natural channels, or those constructed through the enterprise of our own people, or such means as they could procure. The farmers do not take their stock, grain, wool and other agricultural products there to sell the merchants do not go there to sell or buy the manufacturers have no market there indeed, we have had nothing to do with the Eastern people, except that our Senators and Delegates have gone to Richmond to sit in the Legislature and our Sheriffs have gone there to pay in the revenue as an annual tribute from this section of the State for the inequality and unfairness with which we have always been treated by them. Our people seldom visit the East for pleasure. There has been little intercourse between them, either social or commercial. The East and the West have always been two peoples. The unfairness and inequality of legislation is manifest on every page of the statute book they had an unjust majority in the Legislature by the original Constitution of the State, and have clung to it with the utmost tenacity ever since they have collected heavy taxes from us, and have spent large sums in the construction of railroads and canals in the East, but have withheld appropriations from the West they have refused to make any of the modern improvements by which trade and travel could be carried on from the one section to the other, thus treating us as strangers our people could not get to the Capital of their State by any of the usual modes of traveling, without going through the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia.
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The East has always looked upon that portion of the State west of the mountains, as a sort of outside appendage - a territory in a state of pupilage.
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West Virginia should long since have had a separate State existence. In the first inauguration speech of a West Virginia Governor, Arthur Boreman made clear why splitting from Virginia was justified: 1 These differences led to a formal split and the creation of a new state, West Virginia, in 1863. Political conflicts among Tidewater, the Piedmont, Northern Virginia, and however many regions you wish to identify are a long part of the state's history. Source: Library of Congress, Map showing the Fredericksburg & Gordonsville Rail Road of Virginia Virginia and Tennessee railroad, built before the Civil War, linked eastern and southwestern Virginia
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Why Virginia Split Into "East" and West Virginia (But With Only Three Shenandoah Valley Counties, and Without Southwest Virginia) Why Virginia Split Into "East" and West Virginia (But With Only Three Shenandoah Valley Counties, and Without Southwest Virginia)