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430 West Virginia’s Civil War–Era Constitution C h a p t e r 1 8 Civil War Memories and the Bulwark of Freedoms The Supremacy of the United States and the Bill of Rights Despite the war experiences that drove the majority in formulating the bill of rights, the place of the state, and state relations with the government of the United States, modern civil libertarians might well rejoice in the new, detailed bill of rights. Although the defined guarantees were based on tried-and-true English principles, Virginia precedent, and the United States Bill of Rights, the delegates did enunciate at least one new right that condemned political test oaths. Most of the Confederate majority affirmed national supremacy and attempted to guard against future state suppression of individual and political rights and freedoms. Whether all delegates seriously contemplated those protections extending to those citizens who were of a different race is another question. Debate over suffrage qualifications, qualifications for office holding, and methods of voting became indicative of possible universal applications of ringing constitutional guarantees and exposed some delegates’ reservations about the prospect.1 TheWestVirginiaConstitutionalConvention,afterfumblinginconclusivelywith an important tax issue, rapidly confronted the sensitive questions of relationship with the United States, the definition of the state, the bill of rights, and elections. The Standing Committee reports themselves as well as subsequent debate suggested how far some former Confederates had moved on the most paramount of national issues and revealed the most nostalgic Old Virginians who were unwilling to accept new political and racial realities. The constitutional debate revealed the inherent duality of what always plagued citizens and responsible representatives of the people in cathartic eras: to overcome previously accepted patterns of thought to embrace what is settled and to achieve what is principled or to permit past conditions and experiences to stimulate an attempted return to an unattainable past. Afterorganizing,establishingproceduralrules,receivingatidalwaveofproposed resolutions,disposingofsomeissues,anddebatingafewquestionsfortwoandahalf weeks, the convention on 5 February began sitting as a Committee of the Whole to 430 Civil War Memories and the Bulwark of Freedoms 431 consider standing committee reports in no particular subject order. The first three standing committee reports reached the convention on 1 February from the committees on bill of rights and elections, executive department, and taxation, finance, and education. On the Standing Committee on Bill of Rights and Elections report, the Wheeling Daily Register correspondent commented ominously that a minority reportwasfiled.Themajorityfavoreda“NewEnglandism,”“thesecret,stealthy,ballot system,” and the minority desired the “open, manly” viva voce system.2 Although the convention first entertained the taxation, finance, and education committee’s report on 5 February, it quickly turned its attention to the bill of rights and election committee report because of the initial depth of controversy among the majority on tax questions. It then devoted nine days to an extensive Committee of the Whole debate over the bill of rights and election committee report that eventually formed the first four articles of the new constitution. The report portion concerned with the state and the bill of rights and the subsequent debates were at the nexus of the former Confederates’ objectives for their post-1866 years of seeking a new constitution to ensure their political place and that state history would not repeat itself. Samuel Woods, the committee’s chairman, repeatedly expressed to his wife that all questions outside the bulwark that could be constructed to protect civil and political rights for individuals were trivial. “I want our work to be good—well done—preserving all that is good in the present constitution,” Woods reassured, but he wished to restrain “the Legislature from doing in the future, what has been done in the past, in the nature of persecution & proscription.” Woods did not share the attitudes of some of his more extreme colleagues: “We have some, that call for mercy (amnesty) but refuse to grant the same. I am not among them. My prayer is ‘What Mercy I to others shew, That mercy show to me.’” The active Methodist layman reaffirmed his objective: “I am determined that nothing of proscription or retaliation shall receive my countenance or support.” Woods remained true to his idea even when threatened proscription applied to former Unionists or African Americans. He awaited the coming of debate with confidence that his report would be “sufficient to protect us against many evils, which we have endured in the past.”3 Debate began on the bill of rights committee report on the afternoon of 6 February , and the attack...

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