To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 17:10:15 -0500
Subject: [WSFA] West Virginia
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 11:08:52 -0500 "Michael Walsh"
<MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu> writes:
> U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 3:
> "New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no
> new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any
> other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more
> states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of
the
> states concerned as well as of the Congress."
>
> So . . . West Virginia?  Ok, it was wartime and the legislature of
> Virginia really wasn't in a position to object . . .
>
> mjw

In a nutshell.  The counties west of the Alleghany ridge had their
markets to the west, and had long felt separate from the rest of VA,
including the attitudes toward slavery.  After VA passed the ordinance of
secession in 1861, unionists met at Wheeling and formed the state of
'Kanawha'.  Congress admitted the state as West Virginia on June 20,
1863.

So we might have had a state named Kanawha.  Other state names which did
not make it include Westmoreland (part of PA), and Franklin (which ended
up as Kentucky, I think).  But Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
merits a lame' whoopie cushion.

Ron Kean

.

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