{"id":8362,"date":"2013-03-26T22:00:57","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T02:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=8362"},"modified":"2024-12-04T17:49:14","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T22:49:14","slug":"the-citizen-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=8362","title":{"rendered":"The Citizen Key"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"23<\/a>Linda Burton posting from Charleston, West Virginia \u2013<\/i> On the front steps of the West Virginia state capitol is a statue of Abraham Lincoln. It\u2019s a nine-foot bronze, designed by Fred Martin Torrey and installed in 1974. The inscription reads: Abraham Lincoln created the state of West Virginia by proclamation and signature. West Virginia joined the Union June 20, 1863<\/i>. A woman wearing a bright orange jacket and bright orange shoes walked up just as I was snapping pictures; she had her camera out too. I offered to take her picture beside the Lincoln statue; she declined. \u201cIt\u2019s impressive as it is,\u201d she said, shaking her head. \u201cI\u2019ll remember I was here.\u201d Faye and I exchanged names; she said she was from Bristol, right on the Virginia-Tennessee line. \u201cI\u2019m wearing my Tennessee orange, did you catch that?\u201d she laughed, pointing to her shoes. \"23<\/a>We chatted about the building in front of us, and the statue. \u201cHe looks so sad,\u201d she said. \u201cDo you think he\u2019s upset about making West Virginia a state, or just the war?\u201d I had to admit I didn\u2019t know; in fact, I was unclear on the sequence of events that led to West Virginia\u2019s statehood, although I knew the split from Virginia happened during the Civil War. We walked around the statue, studying it more carefully. On the side of the pedestal were the words Abraham Walks At Midnight from a poem by Vachel Lindsay<\/i>. Faye and I agreed we needed to beef up our knowledge of West Virginia history. Which I did. And the answer to Faye\u2019s question was \u201cNo.\u201d His pose is related to the Lindsay poem written in 1914. Statehood, well that\u2019s another story. <\/p>\n

\"26<\/a>When American poet Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) wrote the poem in 1914, he was distressed by World War I; his poem was intended to arouse \u201cthe Lincoln in us all.\u201d Vachel was born in Springfield, Illinois and grew up across the street from the governor\u2019s home, so his childhood was influenced by the \u201cLincoln atmosphere\u201d of the town; he wrote other poems about Lincoln too. As to Fred Martin Torrey \"26<\/a>(1884-1967), he was a West Virginia native who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago; he sculpted a number of historic figures including George Washington, George Washington Carver, and Stephen Douglas. The \u201cMidnight\u201d design depicting a robed Lincoln walking the streets of Springfield, as described in the Lindsay poem, was exhibited as a small plaster model at the 1939 New York World\u2019s Fair; Torrey died before completing the statue. The elegant nine-foot bronze now greeting all who come to the capitol steps was executed by \"26<\/a>Charleston artist Bernard Wiepper (1926-2009) and installed in 1974; the plaster model is displayed in the WV State Museum. The story goes that the legislature did not want to pay for the project; after many fundraising efforts the Journalism Class at Fairmont Senior High (Torrey\u2019s birth city) got the ball rolling with a dance and a bake sale. That\u2019s as far as I can trace the story of the statue and those whose story is linked; so on to the issue of West Virginia statehood, and Lincoln\u2019s part in it.<\/p>\n

West Virginia is a \u201cchild\u201d of the Civil War, one of only two states that came into being during that time (the other is Nevada). The complexities of this event are confusing; the West Virginia Department of Archives and History displays an article by Sheldon Winton entitled Statehood for West Virginia: An Illegal Act?<\/i> http:\/\/www.wvculture.org\/history\/journal_wvh\/wvh30-1.html<\/a> . It is well-documented that tension between western and eastern Virginia goes back to at least 1776; the Virginia Constitution allowed only white males owning substantial land the right to vote, and allowed only two delegates per county. In the rugged western portion of the state farms were small and counties were large; those residing on the western side did not have equal representation. The Virginia Constitution was amended in 1830, addressing some issues; however it was rejected by western counties and a call for secession began, led by newspapers such as the Kanawha Republican<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"26<\/a>In 1831, the issue of African Americans came to the forefront following Nat Turner’s raid, which killed sixty-one whites in Southampton County, Virginia. William Lloyd Garrison first printed his newspaper, The Liberator<\/i> that year; it marked the beginning of an organized national movement to end slavery, called abolitionism. Some abolitionists disapproved of slavery on a moral basis. Others supported abolitionism because they felt slaves were performing jobs that white laborers could be paid to do. Washington College President Henry Ruffner, son of Kanawha Valley salt industry pioneer David Ruffner and a slaveholder himself, wanted to end slavery in trans-Allegheny Virginia in order to provide more paying jobs for white workers. His theory, given as a speech in 1847 and later printed and distributed nationally, stated that slavery kept white laborers from moving into the Kanawha Valley.<\/p>\n

The catalyst that led to the final break between western and eastern Virginia occurred in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln. On April 17, 1861, days after Lincoln’s order to seize Fort Sumter in South Carolina, a convention of Virginians voted to submit a secession bill to the people. Many western delegates marched out of the Secession Convention, vowing to form a state government loyal to the Union; they met in Wheeling in May. However, on May 23, a majority of Virginia voters approved the Ordinance of Secession. Was there vote tampering? That is argued to this day.<\/p>\n

Following a Union victory at the Battle of Philippi and the subsequent occupation of northwestern Virginia by General George McClellan, the Second Wheeling Convention met \"26<\/a>between June 11 and June 25, 1861, when delegates formed the Restored Government of Virginia. On October 24, 1861, residents of thirty-nine counties in western Virginia approved the formation of a new Unionist state. The accuracy of these election results also has been questioned.<\/p>\n

Fifty counties were selected to become part of the new state (all of present-day West Virginia’s counties except Mineral, Grant, Lincoln, Summers, and Mingo, which were formed after statehood). Most of the eastern and southern counties did not support statehood, but were included for political, economic, and military purposes. The mountain range west of the Blue Ridge became the eastern border of West Virginia to provide a defense against Confederate invasion. One of the most controversial decisions involved the Eastern Panhandle counties, which supported the Confederacy. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which ran through the Eastern Panhandle, was important for the economy and troop movements; inclusion of these counties removed the railroads from the Confederacy.<\/p>\n

\"26<\/a>In terms of the new state constitution, the subject of slavery produced the most controversy; the final version banned the introduction of slaves or free African Americans into the state of West Virginia, but did not address the issue of immediate or gradual emancipation. Now to the tricky legal part. The United States Constitution says a new state must gain approval from the original state, which never occurred in the case of West Virginia. However, since the Restored Government was considered the legal government of Virginia, it granted permission to itself on May 13, 1862, to form the state of West Virginia. When Congress addressed the West Virginia statehood bill, intense controversy ensued regarding the issue of slavery; Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner demanded an emancipation clause to prevent the creation of another slave state. On December 10, 1862, the House of Representatives passed the act; on December 31, President Lincoln signed the bill into law, approving the creation of West Virginia as a state loyal to the Union, with an amendment \"26<\/a>calling for gradual emancipation of slaves. The next step was to put the statehood issue to a vote by West Virginia citizens; on March 26, 1863, the majority approved and elections were held for governor and other offices; on June 30, the state of West Virginia came into being.<\/p>\n

So, to Faye of the orange shoes from Bristol, and to all who walk by with camera in hand \u2013 that weathering statue of Lincoln in a somber pose on the capitol steps isn\u2019t about his worries over the Civil War, or West Virginia statehood; it came from the imagination of a sculptor inspired by a 20th<\/sup> century poet. Nor did Lincoln sit at his desk on June 30, 1863 and simply create a state. History has far more layers than that, and citizen involvement is the key.<\/p>\n

About West Virginia Statehood http:\/\/www.wvculture.org\/history\/statehoo.html<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight by Vachel Lindsay, 1914<\/em><\/p>\n