History of slavery in West Virginia
Early settlers of property tended to recreate the familiar structures of eastern Virginia, building Georgian and Federal homes on large estates.
[3] In the early 19th century new settlers on their way to the Missouri territory would pass through the Kanawha Valley to the Ohio River and often remained there, attracted by the low cost of land and money made by leasing the people they enslaved to the local saltmakers.
[10] The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, until purchased by Republican Archibald Campbell in 1856, routinely printed articles defending slavery and attacking abolitionism.
[11] After his acquisition of the paper, Campbell printed moderate attacks on slavery, keeping just short of breaking Virginia's laws restricting abolition propaganda.
Presidents of the United States, Supreme Court justices, and politicians such as John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster met and socialized here.
[27] Another visitor described her view behind the scenes at the Old White thus: "In the various departments we found admirable system, healthy, likely slaves all employed; yet evidently not overworked or oppressed—a corps of subordinates having their duties so arranged, that they relieved each other in quick succession whenever the work was severe.
Enslaved people were used on waterways and overland in the transportation of West Virginia products, livestock, salt, grain, tobacco, lumber and coal.
Several times a year fleets of flatboats left Charleston, manned by both slave and free workmen, to markets in Cincinnati and New Orleans.
[36][full citation needed] Much of the decreased number of enslaved people in West Virginia was due to the high demand for them in the lower South.
The opening of Cherokee lands in north Georgia and Alabama resulted in the growth of cotton and tobacco production, and the slave population there nearly tripled from 1840 to 1860.
[45] The Western Virginia Conference of the Methodist church at their meeting in March 1861, resolved to "utterly condemn any attempt to interfere with the legal relation of master and servant.
"[46] In Marion county a congregation urged the church to "send among us only such ministers as have wisdom and grace enough to enable them to preach the gospel without meddling with our civil institutions.
This made it a favorite target for local Confederate raiders like William "Rebel Bill" Smith and by the end of the war Ceredo was almost abandoned.
[58] The American Colonization Society was active from late 1816 to the end of the Civil War, their goal being the establishment of an African republic where formerly enslaved people could experience a freedom not available to them anywhere in the United States.
In 1836, William Johnson of Tyler county attempted to transport 12 freedpersons to Liberia, but lacked the connections and wealth of the Blackburn and Washington families.
Jacob Snyder, an elderly man from Jefferson county, believed that he could beat the fever by "starving" it, but succumbed to starvation after not eating or drinking for nine days after his arrival.
Samson Caesar, a Liberian from West Virginia who had left Buckhannon in 1834, despaired for the future of Liberia, blaming the United States for the lack of education and training that had been denied the former slaves.
The A.M.E. Zion Church had congregations in both Morgantown and across the border in Fayette County, Pa.[61] Slaves escaping the interior of West Virginia could follow the Kanawha River to Point Pleasant.
Just before the Civil War a slave belonging to the Jackson family in Harrison County escaped to Ohio by stealing a horse, but was returned under the act and sold lower south.
[71] When the Indiana and Ohio state troops under command of Gen. George B. McClellan invaded West Virginia on May 26, 1861, Gen. McClellan issued a proclamation "To the Union Men of Western Virginia" in which he stated "Notwithstanding all that has been said by the traitors to induce you to believe that our advent among you will be signalized by interference with your slaves, understand one thing clearly—not only will we abstain from all such interference, but we will, on the contrary, with an iron hand, crush any attempt at insurrection on their part.
"[72] Writing in his journal on January 3, 1862, in Fayetteville future president Col. Rutherford B. Hayes noted, "Nobody in this army thinks of giving to the Rebels their fugitive slaves.
Although some native Virginians, such as Methodist minister Robert Hagar, favored gradual emancipation, much of the agitation for it came from the non-native delegates such as Gordon Battelle, William E. Stevenson, and Granville Parker.
When Gordon Battelle proposed his emancipation clause Granville Parker recalled, "I discovered on that occasion as I never had before, the mysterious and over-powering influence 'the peculiar institution' had on men otherwise sane and reliable.
Waitman T. Willey, a Senator of Virginia under the aegis of the Restored Government in Wheeling, composed an emancipation amendment to the constitution to be ratified by public vote on March 26, 1863.
[78] In anticipation of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution the Wheeling legislature passed a bill ending slavery in West Virginia on February 3, 1865.
Spurred by a grant from John Storer of Stanford, Maine, which was conditional on matching funds, the Bureau facilitated the appropriation of government buildings in Harper's Ferry and 7 acres (28,000 m2) of land.
At the end of the war the Wheeling government found it necessary in order to stay in power to strip former Confederates and supporters of their civil rights- the right to vote, sit on juries, teach, practice law, or hold public office.
[91] The introduction of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1869, intended to extend the vote to black male citizens, provided an opportunity for disfranchised whites to regain their rights.
At the Union League Hall in Washington, D.C., on January 13, 1869, the National Convention of Colored Men convened with over 200 members, including Frederick Douglass.
In 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Strauder v. West Virginia that the state had "failed to permit blacks the right to serve as jurors along with its other obligations in qualifying them for citizenship.
