West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, and was a key border state during the American Civil War. It was the only state to form by separating from a Confederate state, one of two states (along with Nevada) admitted to the Union during the Civil War, and the second state to separate from another state, after Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820. Some of its residents held slaves, but most were yeoman farmers, and the delegates provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in the new state constitution. The state legislature abolished slavery in the state, and at the same time ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery nationally on February 3, 1865.
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Front page above the fold of an issue of the Virginia Argus and Hampshire Advertiser published on October 7, 1852.
The Virginia Argus and Hampshire Advertiser, often referred to simply as the Virginia Argus, was a weekly newspaper published between July 1850 and August 1861 in Romney, Virginia (now West Virginia). The paper's circulation of 800 copies was the second-highest in Hampshire County, after the South Branch Intelligencer's. The Virginia Argus ceased publication following its closure by the Union Army during the American Civil War, after which it was not revived.
Brown's party of 22 was defeated by a company of U.S. Marines, led by First Lieutenant Israel Greene. Ten of the raiders were killed during the raid, seven were tried and executed afterwards, and five escaped. Several of those present at the raid would later be involved in the Civil War: Colonel Robert E. Lee was in overall command of the operation to retake the arsenal. Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart were among the troops guarding the arrested Brown, and John Wilkes Booth was a spectator at Brown's execution. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his transformative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was prevented by illness and Douglass declined, as he believed Brown's plan was suicidal. (Full article...)
Image 5Turnout by county in the October 24, 1861, West Virginia statehood vote (from History of West Virginia)
Image 6Map of Virginia dated June 13, 1861, featuring the percentage of slave population within each county at the 1860 census and the proposed state of Kanawha (from West Virginia)
... that the China Folk House Retreat dismantled a Chinese folk house and rebuilt it in West Virginia?
... that James Dillon Armstrong was a Virginia state senator, a delegate to West Virginia's constitutional convention, and a circuit court judge while serving for more than 43 years as a Presbyterian church elder?
... that part of West Virginia's Princeton–Deepwater District railway was so steep that only shortened coal trains could ascend it?
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