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But in the case of Virginia there wasn't any legislature which recognized any obligation to the United States. Now unless the Virginia constitution or the laws of the state laid out how the legislature was to be recreated in the event that most of them were participating in an illegal rebellion then you can't say that the people of western Virginia actually broke any laws by convening the new legislature out of a convention, can you. And without a legislature, Virginia could not have the representation in Congress that the Constitution says that they were entitled to so the federal government had the duty to recognize the reformed Virginian legislature as legitimate. Again, unless you can show where any laws were broken then the illegality of any of these acts are only your opinion.

Your positition is that the seceding states were in rebellion, thus they remained a state that had never left the Union. Multiple governors refused to supply Lincln with troops, the request forced Virginia into the Confederacy. On May 23, 1861, the Virginia Secession Ordinance was ratified by the people of Virginia 20,373 to 125,950 (20,390 to 124,896 in another source) Of the 39 former Virginia counties now in West Virginia only 19 voted to join WV.

Since when does minority rule? Especially against a 6-1 ratio of "the people"? The legally expressed decision of the majority was the true voice of the state of Virginia. The Constitution REQUIRES the "Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned", yet there was only one legislature represented - the one which you claim was the legal representative of Virginia. If that be true, once West Virginia was admitted, Virginia had no representation. Able to give it's assent and then magically dissapear into thin air?

"We may admit West Virginia as a new state, not by virtue of any provision of the constitution, but under an absolute power which the laws of war give us. I shall vote for this bill upon that theory, for I will not stultify myself by supposing that we have any warrant in the constitution for this processing."Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, as noted by John T. Favio, Romance of the Boundaries (New York: Harper & Bros., 1926), p. 266).

Which is why I post from ex parte Milligan - in a 9-0 decision all justices agreed that the Constitution cannot be suspended even in war:

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.

Either the states had legally seceded, or the state of WV was formed illegally. One legislature, the MINORITY by a factor of 6, allegedly speaking for the majortiy, speaking for both the original and new state at the same time is a violation of the Constitution.