How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [121]
West Virginia’s statehood convention modified its proposed constitution as directed by Congress, and President Lincoln signed the legislation. Come June 20, 1863, West Virginia would officially become a state. Meanwhile, the Confederate army was approaching in full force. General Robert E. Lee and all of his corps—the commands of Generals James Longstreet, Richard Ewell, A. P. Hill, and J. E. B. Stuart—were moving up through much of what was scheduled to become West Virginia. “We direct particular attention to the following dispatch from Governor Pierpont of Virginia.… The rebels are advancing in force, and are only about nineteen miles distant from this city [Wheeling],” a Pennsylvania newspaper reported one day before the state’s official creation. “If ever there was a time for the citizens of western Pennsylvania to awaken in earnest, before the horrors and civil war are actually thrust upon their homes and firesides, now is the time.”8
West Virginia: idealism versus realism
As it happened, the storm clouds did not burst until two weeks after West Virginia’s birth. When they did, it was indeed in Pennsylvania, at the previously sleepy town of Gettysburg. During that military hurricane, Francis Pierpont was unpacking documents in Alexandria, Virginia. The father of West Virginia was still the governor of “Virginia.” He opted to remain in that post, in the hope that he could better serve the Union in that capacity.9 At the moment, however, there was only one place in what now remained of Virginia where he could safely locate his “government.” The town of Alexandria, just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, though Confederate in sympathies, was heavily occupied by Union troops protecting the nation’s capital.
With the end of the Civil War, Pierpont’s hopes of serving the Union by remaining in office were given the boot. Authority now resided with General John M. Schofield, who oversaw Virginia during Reconstruction. In effect, Pierpont went from being the governor of “Virginia” to being the “governor” of Virginia. But the lawyer in him continued to act on behalf of those he represented. He sought to have voting rights restored to Virginians who had served in the Confederate army, while at the same time he advocated the creation of schools for newly freed slaves. His commitment to equal justice eventually angered enough people—from ex-Confederates to progressives—that he was removed from office by General Schofield in 1868.
Returning to his hometown, Pierpont lived for the first time in the new state he had done so much to create. Virginia, meanwhile, had commenced a constitutional challenge by suing West Virginia over its possession of Berkeley and Jefferson Counties. In 1871 the Supreme Court rejected Virginia’s challenge. As significant as the decision itself was the extent to which it was covered in the press, which was precious little. Americans now had, and for many decades would continue to have, little interest in revisiting the issues of the Civil War—be it the constitutionality of West Virginia or the constitutionality of racial segregation.
Francis Pierpont lived out the rest of his life quietly. He passed away in 1899 at the age of eighty-five and was buried alongside family members in his hometown of Fairmont, now in West Virginia. Though West Virginians too did not wish to revisit the past, they did wish to revisit Francis Pierpont. An obituary in Utah’s Salt Lake Tribune noted that his “remains lay in state in the [family’s] church, and were viewed by thousands of people. The casket was almost buried in flowers.”
NEW MEXICO, ARIZONA
FRANCISCO PEREA AND JOHN S. WATTS
Two Sides of the Coin of the Realm
Mr. Perea of New Mexico Territory: I ask the unanimous consent of the Convention to allow the delegates from New Mexico to record their votes for President and Vice-President of the United States.
Chairman: The motion is not in order.
Mr. Watts of New Mexico Territory: Mr. Chairman, we are ready to pour out our life-blood in carrying your glorious heaven-born banner wherever