16thVA
First Sergeant
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2008
- Location
- Philadelphia
The Confederacy did not lose West Virginia to guerrilla war. Confederate forces were pushed out of the far northwest by McClellan and other Union commanders, and on paper West Virginia became a US state in 1863, but as the governor of the new state said a few months before he took office-
"After you get a short distance below the Panhandle...it is not safe for a loyal man to go into the interior out of sight of the Ohio River." Arthur I. Boreman, Feb. 27, 1863.
Chief responsibility for this condition was attributed to Sherrard Clemens, John S. Carlile and John J. Davis, who, through their speech-making activities against the new state constitution as amended by Congress and the general policies of the Federal government, were sowing seeds of discord and keeping alive guerrilla warfare.
As a result it had become next to impossible for Union men to travel in West Virginia "without being shot down or carried off to Richmond," while Confederates and their sympathizers in the guise of State rights men, came and went at pleasure, with direful effects upon Union soldiers. Charles H. Ambler, "Francis H. Pierpont", pg. 188
I take issue with Ambler shifting blame onto politicians, I don't think their speeches were made much outside the border counties to the north. Carlile, Clemens and Davis were known as Unionists, and it would be dangerous for them to travel much further into West Virginia, which is where most of the secessionist counties were.
On Feb. 18, 1864, the Gallipolis (Ohio) Journal complained about the lifting of restrictions on river traffic on the Ohio.
"This will prove highly gratifying to the rebels on Kanawha, and their sympathizing friends in Ohio. With the commanding General of the Department [Scammon] and his Quarter Master, in Libby prison, captured by rebels within 35 miles of Gallipolis-a government steamer burned at the same time, it might seem to an unpracticed eye, that the State of West Virginia was not so intensely loyal as some persons wish it to be considered. The fact is that region of country is just as well stocked with rebels both armed and unarmed as any other portion of the South."
The political separation of western Virginia that took place in Wheeling and Washington, DC, had very little input from most of the people in the new state.
Scott A. MacKenzie, an historian from Canada who inexplicably took an interest in West Virginia, just published an essay in Ohio Valley History, which pretty much agrees with what I have posted here for some time. I'm afraid full access to the article is only through Project Muse, but the first page is available.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/666080/pdf
"After you get a short distance below the Panhandle...it is not safe for a loyal man to go into the interior out of sight of the Ohio River." Arthur I. Boreman, Feb. 27, 1863.
Chief responsibility for this condition was attributed to Sherrard Clemens, John S. Carlile and John J. Davis, who, through their speech-making activities against the new state constitution as amended by Congress and the general policies of the Federal government, were sowing seeds of discord and keeping alive guerrilla warfare.
As a result it had become next to impossible for Union men to travel in West Virginia "without being shot down or carried off to Richmond," while Confederates and their sympathizers in the guise of State rights men, came and went at pleasure, with direful effects upon Union soldiers. Charles H. Ambler, "Francis H. Pierpont", pg. 188
I take issue with Ambler shifting blame onto politicians, I don't think their speeches were made much outside the border counties to the north. Carlile, Clemens and Davis were known as Unionists, and it would be dangerous for them to travel much further into West Virginia, which is where most of the secessionist counties were.
On Feb. 18, 1864, the Gallipolis (Ohio) Journal complained about the lifting of restrictions on river traffic on the Ohio.
"This will prove highly gratifying to the rebels on Kanawha, and their sympathizing friends in Ohio. With the commanding General of the Department [Scammon] and his Quarter Master, in Libby prison, captured by rebels within 35 miles of Gallipolis-a government steamer burned at the same time, it might seem to an unpracticed eye, that the State of West Virginia was not so intensely loyal as some persons wish it to be considered. The fact is that region of country is just as well stocked with rebels both armed and unarmed as any other portion of the South."
The political separation of western Virginia that took place in Wheeling and Washington, DC, had very little input from most of the people in the new state.
Scott A. MacKenzie, an historian from Canada who inexplicably took an interest in West Virginia, just published an essay in Ohio Valley History, which pretty much agrees with what I have posted here for some time. I'm afraid full access to the article is only through Project Muse, but the first page is available.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/666080/pdf