How does Article IV, Section 4 square with the creation of West Virginia. Did I miss the news of the Virginia legislature approving the creation of West Virginia from Virginia’s territory? Or were the Radical Republicans ignoring the constitution out of ingrained habit?
I’ll ignore the pig-headed comment about the radical republicans. It is obvious that they cut corners and created a new state without participation of the rest of the state. There are still some who believe that West Virginia is a fraudulent state.
However flawed in execution the formation of W. Virginia was it stands as a fascinating “story within a story”. When Virginians voted for secession the vast majority of representatives from the western part of the state voted against seceding. The passage of the secession vote left them angry and alienated from their own state. There had always been stress between the east and the west and westerners thought this “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. West Virginians had no desire to leave the union and less desire to go to war against their neighbors.
Sound familiar?
The average westerner felt like they had no say in their destiny and had been abandoned by the insurrectionists. So they decided that, if the State of Virginia could quit the union then the western part of the state could quit Virginia.
The difference in circumstance and process was that Virginians created a process (secession) out of whole cloth. West Virginians applied to Congress for admission to the United States.