West Virginia.
May 1, 1863
The vote on the Constitution of the State of West Virginia was made up in great part by the votes of soldiers : those Northern men and Germans, and other foreigners generally, who serve in Lincoln's army : who were present on the soil of Virginia only to repress any loyal demonstration on the part of her true citizens, and to maintain the authority of the Federal Government. The creation of this new State by Federal authority, in defiance of the very Constitution it effects to support and fight for, is one of the greatest national outrages ever perpetrated. Even the ablest of the corrupt leaders of the Pierpont Government had not the conscience to approve it. But they were silenced by the military power. They were not allowed to speak; and few of them were permitted even to vote. Little sympathy is left for men who purchased safety or office by degrading themselves. They became the tools of the Washington despotism : were traitors to their own State, and sided in the oppression of their fellow- citizens, who, not corrupt and dishonest like they, refused to foreswear their true allegiance. It is an even-handed parties that commends the poisoned chalices to their lips, and honest people rejoice when the race of Carlisle and Clemencies are made to cry cut against the oppression they helped to inaugurate.
The establishment of the State of West Virginia is a matter of no consequence whatever. The event only serves to illustrate the utter unscrupulousness and atrocity of the Government now trying to subjugate the South. If it could succeed the mere division of the State of Virginia or any other State would be a small matter compared with the horrible cruelties it would pour out upon our devoted country and people. If it fails, as every true man in the South feels that it will, Virginia will retain her boundaries intact, and remain the same Virginia in lands, in mountains. in forests, and streams, that her children have known flier. Not even an inch of the "Fan-Handle" will be surrendered; but it will stand unchanged in size and shape still the soil of Virginia, and it will consecrate itself to the service of humanity by becoming the wedge that will spilt asunder the Federal Union, and dissolve forgoer that power whose brutalities and depravities make it the interest of humanity that it should be broken, and its example receive the signal condemnation of Heaven as wall as mankind.
Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: Undated: May 1863