West Virginia broke off from
Virginia
at the beginning of the
Civil War.
The colony of Virginia was the largest of the thirteen original colonies
that formed the United States of America. Roughly the southeastern half
of the state was the first area to be settled, and came to be dominated by
planters and other high-society types, plus the small farmers that formed the
vast majority of what became the Confederate population. The northwestern
third of the state (starting at the Alleghenies, the first mountain range after the Blue Ridge) was different; the terrain was notably more rugged and totally unsuitable
for plantation agriculture, or in fact for much large-scale development of
any kind. The people that settled this area, roughly in the middle of the
Appalachian Mountains range, were generally from the second wave of
immigration, especially Scots-Irish Presbyterians, and often had no
greater desire than to be left alone to scratch out a subsistence-level crop
from their land.
The northwesterners and the southeasterners didn't get along too well, as
one might imagine; the culture clash was too great, and the interests of
the more populous southeast almost always won out when the two sides clashed
in the General Assembly. Economically, the two sides had almost nothing
in common; slaveholders, who dominated the ruling class from the southeast,
simply didn't exist in the northwest.
Virginia was finally pushed out of the Union when President Abraham
Lincoln called for troops from Virginia to help put down the rebellion
in South Carolina after Fort Sumter, and announced that more troops would
be marching through the state. This touched off Virginia's main fear, that
of "coercion" -- being forced to stay in the Union by occupying soldiers --
and Governor Henry Wise immediately called for secession. After long
arguments, the Articles of Secession were approved, with most of the
opposition coming from the northwest.
With Union troops massing on the Ohio River, and most of its citizens
not too keen on secession anyway, the next step was clear; the northwest
decided to secede from Virginia. Protected by Union General George
McClellan, who stopped a column of now-independent Virginia forces advancing
toward it, the Wheeling Convention formed a Unionist state government, which
led eventually to the establishment of the new state of West Virginia. WV's
statehood was proclaimed on 13 May 1862.