West Virginia: A History

Chapter 11: Politics and Slavery

Politics and Slavery MaryPblitks.The decade of the 1850sbegan on a note of harmony in Virginia. The constitutional reforms of 1850-1851 removed some of the political issuesthat had dividedeasternand western sectionsof the stateforhalf a century. Whigs and Democratshad drawn closer together as a result of threats to Southern "rights" and the "peculiar institution" perceived in the Wilmot Proviso. As sectionaltensions in the nation deepened, most Virginians, including present West Virginians, opposed extremism and supported compromise proposals before Congress. Although John C. Calhoun urged Virginia to support the Nashville Convention , called to protest congressional action regarding slavery in California and New Mexico, the legislature leaned toward Daniel Webster, who in his famousSeventhof March Address in 1850,called for support of the Union. The legislaturedeclinedeitherto selectdelegatestothe Nashville gatheringortopay expensesof those chosenby other methods. It left the selectionof any delegates to congressional district conventions, held in May. Only seven of the fifteen districts elected delegates, and of the fourteen persons chosen only six went to Nashville. Jefferson was the only county in present West Virginia even to send representatives to a district conference. In the gubernatorialelection of 1851both Whigs and Democratsendorsed the Compromiseof 1850,but with varying degrees of enthusiasm. George W. Summersof Kanawha County, the Whig nominee, echoed Unionist sentiments of John Minor Botts, who not only denied the right of secessionbut also urged the president to use force against South Carolina if she attempted to withdraw from the Union. The Democratic candidate, incumbent governor Joseph Johnson of HarrisonCounty, assumeda moremoderate attitudeandcarriedeven the extreme northwestern part of the state by a majority of over six thousand votes. Johnson, the first popularlyelectedchief executiveof Virginia and alsothe first from the trans-Alleghenysection,had been in politics since 1815,when he won election to the House of Delegates. A protCgC of John G. Jackson, he defeated the influential Philip Doddridge for congressman from the First District in 1823. He served, with several intermptions, six terms as congressman . In 1847and 1848he returned to the House of Delegates. As governor- 100 West Virginia: A Hidoy elect by legistative choice, he participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1850-1851. Transpodon Improvements. Johnson's governorship produced tangible as well as psychological gains for the West. During his tenure the General Assembly incorporated ten independent banks west of the Blue Ridge. From 1850to 1854it incorporatedmore turnpike and railroad companies for internal improvementsin the West than in allprevioushistory. In addition,the stateitself made liberal appropriationsfor western turnpikes, althoughit contributedeven more to railroads east of the Blue Ridge. Johnson told the lawmakers in 1855 that northwestern Virginia was "most happily situated and that her network of macadamized turnpikes and feeder roads provided "all the facilities for travel and transportation the most fastidious could desire."' Of special importance to transportation were the Baltimore and Ohio and Northwestern Virginia railroads, which placed residents of Wheeling and Parkersburg within sixteen hours of Baltimore and even closer to Alexandria. Grafton and Fairmont, on the Baltimore and Ohio, developed into industrial centers, and nearly every villageand farm alongthe rail line feltthe exhilaration of contact with the world beyond its environs. Towns along the Northwestern Virginia, such as Clarksburg, Salem, West Union, Pennsboro, and Cairo, also experienced industrial and business growth. The arrival of the railroads in Wheeling and Parkersburgfurther stimulatedtheir development as Ohio River towns. Southern West Virginia, particularly the Kanawha Valley, evinced new interest in railroad construction. An internal improvementconvention at White Sulphur Springs in 1854 endorsed the Covington and Ohio Railroad, which proposed to connect the James River with the Ohio by way of the Kanawha Valley. Supporters of the railroad emphasized its importance to the economic development of the Kanawha Valley, but many easterners feared that it would divert western trade to Baltimore by way of the Shenandoah Valley unless it joined the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, of which Richmond was the eastern terminus. Moreover, residents of northern West Virginia, who enjoyed the advantages of the privately built Baltimore and Ohio and Northwestern Virginia lines, had no desire to tax themselves for a railroad through the southern part of the state. Spumd in part by threats of secession of the Southern states in the 1850s, the legislature of Virginia recognized a need to bind western parts of the state more firmly to the Old Dominion. At its 1857-1858 session it appropriated $800,000 toward the construction of the Covington and Ohio Railroad. The following year it added $2,500,000, part of it to prepare a roadbed between Charleston and the "Mouth...