The Restored Government attempted to assume de facto control of the Commonwealth's northwest with the help of the Union Army but was only partly successful.

It raised Union regiments from local volunteers but depended upon recruits from Pennsylvania and Ohio to fulfill its commitments.

The Restored Government thereafter continued to operate, albeit with very limited actual authority, within what it considered to be the Commonwealth's new borders under the protection of the Union Army.

From August 26, 1863, until June, 1865, it met in Alexandria on the right bank of the Potomac River, which had been occupied by Union Army forces in 1861 to protect the adjacent national capital of Washington, D.C.

It eventually moved there near the end of the war after the Confederate States government and General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia evacuated it as their capital in late March 1865, and the city returned to Federal control.

[3] The convention then elected Francis Harrison Pierpont as governor, along with other executive officers, with Wheeling as the provisional state capital.

A popular referendum in October 1861 was called on the creation of the new "State of Kanawha" from the northwestern counties of the old Commonwealth of Virginia.

At the constitutional convention delegate Chapman J. Stuart detailed the results- "...even a majority of the people within the district composed of the thirty-nine counties have never come to the polls and expressed their sentiments in favor of a new State.

[11] The U.S. Congress then passed a statehood bill for West Virginia, but with the added condition that slaves be emancipated in the new state, and that certain disputed counties be excluded.

[12] President Lincoln, although reluctant to divide Virginia during a war aimed at re-uniting the country, eventually signed the statehood bill into law on December 31, 1862.

Statehood was achieved on June 20, 1863 as West Virginia was admitted as the 35th state in the Union and an additional star was added to the American flag a few weeks later on Independence Day on the Fourth of July.

[19] A Union captain, investigating conditions at Camp Chase for Col. William Hoffman, reviewed the records of West Virginia civilian prisoners and reported- "Many others have been sent here under equally slight charges whose cases I will soon submit to you, at least copies of their official records as transmitted by him to Camp Chase, for I believe it cannot be your desire that this camp should be filled to overflowing with political prisoners (made by half depopulating a section of country where inhabitants are often compelled to expressions of apparent sympathy) arrested on frivolous charges, to be supported by the General Government and endure a long confinement.

The numerous arrests, particularly in the case of Judge George W. Thompson of Wheeling, prompted the U.S. Judge-Advocate General, Joseph Holt, to complain to the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, that Gov.

Pierpont was interfering with the Federal prisoner exchange program and that he was transcending the ordinary police power "which he is authorized as Governor to exercise over rebels within his jurisdiction..."[21] No actual violation of law was required for arrest, just the suspicion of disloyalty to the Union and Wheeling governments.

Further laws were enacted requiring an oath of loyalty for anyone seeking a business license and applied as well to "Grand and Petit Jurors, to lawyers, doctors, dentists, ministers of the gospel, who desire to solemnize marriages, surgeons, and so forth.".

[22][23] There were some prominent Unionists, such as John Jay Jackson Sr. and Sherrard Clemens, who believed that the Wheeling government was not legitimate.

Candidates for the primary offices ran unopposed; Francis H. Pierpont for governor, Daniel Polsely for Lt.

[26]The Union regiments recruited in 1861 under the Restored Government contained a large number of Pennsylvania and Ohio men who had not been accepted in their states' first call.

[27] The 2nd West Virginia Cavalry had originally been an Ohio regiment that had not been accepted by their state and chose to volunteer as "Virginians".

[31] In the southern and eastern counties that became West Virginia the militias generally assembled on Letcher's call, many of them eventually entering Confederate service.

Located in northeast Virginia proper, across the Potomac River from Washington, the city of Alexandria remained under Union control for most of the war since May 1861.

"[4] But outside the few jurisdictions that Pierpont's government administered under Federal military and naval arms along the Potomac River and around the Hampton Roads harbor and along the Chesapeake Bay, control of the state was mostly in rebel Richmond, for instance, in collecting taxes.

However, there were very few suitably qualified Unionists with ties to a locale within the Commonwealth's reduced borders and none who expressed interest in replacing Pierpont to become essentially a figurehead chief executive.

Therefore, Pierpont reluctantly agreed to continue to head the Restored Government in Alexandria while Arthur I. Boreman became the first Governor of West Virginia.

In this role, Pierpont ensured the Restored Government would continue to assert its authority over the remainder of the Commonwealth and conduct whatever business it could.