In a contested convention held at Parkersburg, West Virginia, the Union Party nominated Judge Arthur I. Boreman over his nearest rival, Peter G. Van Winkle.

Senator Waitman T. Willey, no challenge to the Union ticket emerged from either the radical or conservative ends of the party.

He was inaugurated as the first governor of West Virginia on June 20, 1863, in a ceremony at the Linsly Institute in Wheeling alongside other officers of the new state government.

[2] By 1830, the disparity between the sections was such that Western Virginia would have elected a majority of members in the General Assembly if representation were allocated in proportion to the free population, (the "white basis,") but the Three-fifths Compromise and the mass disenfranchisement of lower-class whites allowed eastern slaveholders to dominate the Assembly and state offices, although a minority of the overall population.

[3][4] After 1830, the political orientation of the Shenandoah Valley shifted eastward as the region became more closely linked to slavery, while Northwestern Virginia grew increasingly alienated from the Tidewater.

Conservatives in the Union Party privately opposed dismemberment and attempted to undermine the statehood movement by annexing a number of secessionist southwestern counties to the proposed State of Kanawha.