So I want you to imagine a place that is just
so incredibly rugged, completely defined by its
geography. Yeah, a landscape that really dictates
everything. Right. And its mountains didn't just
shape its ancient cultures, but they eventually
caused the land to literally break away from
its parent state. During the bloodiest conflict
in American history, no less. Exactly. I mean,
you usually think of political borders being
drawn on a map by politicians in a room somewhere.
But what if the landscape itself drew the line?
It really is the ultimate example of how geography
is destiny. I mean, when you look at the history
of West Virginia, you aren't just looking at
dates and political treaties. You were looking
at a master class in how physical terrain dictates
economic survival, social structures, and eventually
the creation of an entirely new identity. And
that is exactly the mission of our deep dive
today. We have a comprehensive historical overview
source from Wikipedia that details the history
of West Virginia. It's a fascinating source.
It really is. We are going to figure out exactly
how the mountain states challenging terrain forged
this unique identity, how it quite literally
fueled the American Industrial Revolution. Yeah,
and how it sparked some of the most intense violent
labor battles in the history of the United States.
OK, so let's unpack this. Because to really understand
this place, we have to start. long before European
settlers ever saw these mountains, right? We
absolutely do. And it's vital to start there
because there is this persistent, really outdated
historical myth of the empty frontier. Right,
like the idea that Europeans arrived in this
pristine, untouched wilderness. Exactly. But
the archaeological record in West Virginia tells
a completely different story. I mean, as of 2009,
there are over 12 ,500 documented archaeological
sites in the state. Wait, over 12 ,000? Yeah,
over 12 ,000. So we aren't talking about like
a few wandering hunters here. That is a massive,
thriving, highly populated landscape. Precisely.
The people living here were actively managing
and utilizing this environment for thousands
of years. If we go back to the early woodland
period, we see the Adena culture. These were
people who were practicing the cold working of
copper. Wait, cold working? What does that actually
mean in a prehistoric context? Why? I mean, they
didn't have modern tools. Right. So it means
they weren't smelting or melting the metal down
in furnaces. They were taking raw nuggets of
native copper and painstakingly hammering, annealing,
and shaping it by hand at room temperature. Wow.
That sounds incredibly tedious. It was. But they
used this technique to craft these absolutely
exceptional ceremonial pipes, which were just
incredible works of art. And they lived in these
really distinct round houses built with a double
post method. How did that work? Well, they would
drive two parallel rows of wooden posts into
the ground, weaving wicker between them, and
then capping it with bark sheet roofs. Which
I imagine provided fantastic insulation against
those harsh mountain winters. Oh, definitely.
It was very well adapted to the climate. And
as time moves on, the architecture and the lifestyle
evolve. Right. The source mentions the Fort Ancient
tradition and the Monongahela culture coming
later. Yes. And this is where we see major ag...
agricultural terraforming. The four ancient people
were building much larger rectangular houses
that were covered in hides. So they're scaling
up. Exactly. And they weren't just foraging anymore.
They were heavy into agriculture. They farmed
a massive field of corn, beans, sunflowers, and
squash, including pumpkins. Pumpkins. That's
awesome. Yeah. They even raised domestic turkeys
and kept dogs as pets. It's so relatable. It
is. And up in the northern part of the state,
the Monongahela culture lived in circular houses.
houses, and they often had these unique storage
nooks attached to them to hoard surplus food.
So it paints a picture of a very settled, complex
society. But the source also makes it clear that
this region wasn't, you know, static. It was
highly contested. It was incredibly dynamic.
By the time we get to the historic period in
the 17th century, the region is completely disrupted
by the Beaver Wars. Let's break that down for
a second, because Beaver Wars sounds almost,
well, craned. but it was driven by some pretty
ruthless economic mechanics, wasn't it? Oh, absolutely.
The European demand for beaver pelts created
a highly lucrative, completely cut -throat fur
trade. Right. The Iroquois Confederacy, which
was based further north in modern -day New York,
essentially ran out of beavers in their own territory.
So they just decided to take someone else's?
Pretty much. They began aggressively expanding
their influence southward into the Ohio Valley
and West Virginia just to control those hunting
grounds. It's honestly like a geopolitical chess
Yeah, that's a great way to describe it. You
have these massive native empires strategically
managing and fighting over this land long before
the British or the French even showed up. That's
exactly it. The Iroquois were essentially placing
allied or conquered tribes, like the Susquehannocks,
in the West Virginia region as buffer states
to hold the territory for them. Yeah. Eventually,
due to this pressure, and of course later colonial
expansion and broken treaties, tribes like the
Shawnee and the Lenape were pushed further and
further westward. The mountains made it a highly
strategic, defensible zone. And that strategic
mountainous zone became a massive physical barrier
when European settlers finally started crossing
over the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains,
right? It did. And this is where the geography
begins to literally fracture the state of Virginia.
Because those mountains created a massive cultural
and economic wedge between the new settlers in
the West and the elite political class back in
Eastern Virginia. Right. It's the classic East
versus West divide. In the East, you had the
Tuckahos. The Tuckahos. Yeah. That was the nickname
for the Tidewater elite who lived on these massive
plantations running on enslaved labor. But in
the West, you had the Cohes. OK. And who were
they? Well, the rugged West of the Allegheny
Mountains made plantation -style agriculture
and slavery completely unprofitable. I mean,
you simply cannot run a massive tobacco or cotton
plantation on the side of a steep, rocky Appalachian
mountain. So the demographics and the daily lives
of the people were fundamentally different from
day one. Entirely different. The West was settled
mostly by Protestant Scots, Irish, and German
immigrants. They ran small subsistence family
farms. Just trying to get by. Right. They grew
corn, raised some animals, maybe grew a little
wheat. It was a completely different world from
the coastal plantations. But, and this is the
crazy part, they were governed by the exact same
state legislature in Richmond. They were. And
this is where the source material highlights
something truly audacious. The Eastern planters
held all the political power and they used it
to write a state tax code that heavily favored
their own economic interests. Very heavily. Wait,
how did they even justify the mechanics of this
tax inequality? Because it sounds blatantly rigged.
Oh, it was explicitly designed to protect the
wealth of the Eastern elite. So the Eastern controlled
government decided that small farmers in the
West would have all their assets like their land,
their cows, their pigs. Right, the stuff they
need to survive. Exactly. All of that would be
taxed at its full, true market value. But for
the wealthy Eastern planters. Well, the government
completely exempted enslaved children under 12
from being taxed at all, and older enslaved people
were taxed at a flat capped rate of just $300,
which was a tiny fraction of their actual financial
value at the time. Wow. So Core Farmer in the
Mountains is paying full price on a single horse,
while a massive plantation owner is getting a
huge tax shelter. on an enslaved labor force
that is generating immense wealth. Exactly. That
is staggering. And it bred deep, deep resentment.
The Western Virginians were being heavily taxed,
yet the state refused to spend any of that tax
money on internal improvements in the West, like
turnpikes or railroads. Of course not. Because
of the mountains, commerce in the West naturally
flowed down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers toward
the Gulf of Mexico. The East looked toward the
Atlantic, so they shared a name on a map, but
they shared zero economic interests. And then
we hit the boiling point. Yeah, 1859. Right.
In 1859, the abolitionist John Brown leads his
famous raid on the federal armory at Harpers
Ferry, which is in modern -day West Virginia.
He's trying to start a massive armed slave insurrection.
Right. And he's captured by U .S. Marines, led
by Robert E. Lee, convicted of treason against
Virginia, and hanged. The entire South is terrified
and enraged. The nation is spiraling toward the
Civil War. And when the Civil War finally kicks
off in 1861, Virginia votes to secede from the
United States and join the Confederacy. But the
Western counties overwhelmingly vote against
secession. Because remember, they have no economic
ties to the slaveholding plantation system, and
they have spent decades despising the Richmond
government. So here's where we get to the legal
mechanics of the split. And it is honestly fascinating.
It's wild. The Western counties decide they don't
want to leave the union. But the U .S. Constitution,
specifically Article 4 Section 3, says a new
state cannot be carved out of an existing state
without the original state legislature's permission.
Right, you need permission. So how do they get
Virginia's permission when Virginia has just
joined the Confederacy? They execute what I can
only describe as a political and corporate hostile
takeover. That analogy fits perfectly. Think
of it like a corporate board of directors just
going rogue. Exactly. The Western leaders basically
say, well, the board in Richmond just committed
treason, so they are fired. They hold a series
of meetings called the Wheeling Conventions,
and they declare that because the pro -secession
government in Richmond acted illegally, all of
those state offices are now legally vacant. So
the Western Unionists simply form their own shadow
government. Just like that. Just like that. They
call it the restored government of Virginia,
and they elect their own governor, Francis H.
Pierpont. Wow. And because President Lincoln
and the U .S. Congress desperately want to keep
this territory in the union, they officially
recognize this small group of Westerners as the
true legitimate government of the entire state
of Virginia. Which is an incredible constitutional
loophole. They become the real Virginia, and
then acting as the real Virginia legislature,
they basically just politely ask themselves,
hey, can we have permission to break off and
form our own new state called Kanawha? And they
vote yes, absolutely, permission granted. It's
a brilliant piece of legal gymnastics. And Kanawha
later gets renamed West Virginia. It is clever,
but we also have to look at this impartially
based on the source material. Right, of course.
The historical reality is that the creation of
West Virginia was highly irregular, and the popular
vote that officially approved the new state really
reflects that. How so? There was an incredibly
low turnout out of nearly 70 ,000 qualified voters
in the region. There were only eighteen thousand
four hundred and eight votes in favor and a mere
seven hundred eighty one against. Wait, that
is a wildly skewed ratio. What was actually happening
on the ground to cause that kind of split? Several
factors heavily influenced the outcome. First,
there were union soldiers actively guarding the
polling places. Oh, wow. That would do it. Yeah.
Which certainly discouraged anyone with Confederate
sympathies from showing up to vote. Right. Second,
federal authorities had actively arrested many
prominent local secessionists and interned them
in prison camps like Camp Chase in Ohio. I had
no idea. And third, most of the pro -Confederate
citizens in the region simply refused to vote
at all because they no longer considered themselves
citizens of the United States. They viewed themselves
as citizens of a foreign country, the Confederacy.
So they just opted out entirely. Exactly. In
some specific counties, the only votes cast were
actually by the Union soldiers stationed there.
That is a very messy birth for a state. Extremely.
And Congress almost didn't let them in even after
all that. The initial West Virginia Constitution
didn't actually abolished slavery. No it didn't.
They just had a policy of Negro exclusion hoping
to keep any new slaves or free men out of their
territory entirely. It actually took a federal
mandate called the Willie Amendment which required
the gradual emancipation of slaves based on their
age. for President Lincoln to finally approve
their statehood in 1863. So West Virginia has
now achieved its political independence, but
they face a massive immediate problem, which
is they are a brand new state, completely isolated
by their rugged geography, and they desperately
need an economic engine to survive. And as it
turns out, the exact same mountains that isolated
them from the East Coast held the natural resources
that were about to power the entire American
Industrial Revolution. I'm talking about the
billion -dollar coal field. But why was this
specific coal so valuable? I mean, coal is coal,
right? Not exactly. Beneath those small family
farms lay massive, pristine seams of bituminous
coal. Bituminous coal? Yeah. Bituminous coal
is relatively soft. It burns incredibly hot.
And it is the perfect metallurgical and steam
coal. It was exactly what was needed to run the
massive steel mills, the factory steam engines,
and the National Railroad Network. OK, that makes
sense. The issue was transportation. You couldn't
easily get the coal out of those remote, steep
halls. Right. That change with the arrival of
the major railroads, which were heavily funded
by national out -of -state capital. Right. Massive
national monopolies like the Chesapeake and Ohio
Railway and the Norfolk and Western, they start
blasting tunnels and laying track into the deepest,
most remote parts of the state. They do. And
the source details the story of the Virginian
Railway, which is just wild. It really is a crazy
story. I have William Nelson Page. a mining manager,
and Henry Hudson Rogers, who is a millionaire
executive from John D. Rockefeller's Standard
Oil Trust. The existing big railroad monopolies
try to block them from building a competing line.
So what do they actually do? They launch a stealth
operation. I love this. They secretly use $40
million of Standard Oil money to build a brand
new, highly efficient, 440 -mile railroad straight
from the southern West Virginia coal fields all
the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Oh, wow. They
called it the richest little railroad in the
world. The sheer volume of wealth being extracted
was just staggering. I mean, the population in
those southern Coalfield counties quadrupled
between 1890 and 1920 just to keep up with the
labor demand. See, I have to push back on that
billion dollar Coalfield nickname, though. Yeah.
Because if it's a billion dollar Coalfield, who
is actually getting that billion dollar? Because
based on the safety records in this source, it
clearly wasn't the local miners. You are exactly
right. The wealth flowed almost entirely out
of the state to the industrialists and shareholders
in New York and Philadelphia. Leaving the miners
with what? Well, the miners paid the ultimate
price. Just look at the mechanics of early mining.
There were virtually no safety regulations. None.
Barely any. Mines weren't properly ventilated,
which allowed highly flammable methane gas and
coal dust to build up in the shafts. Which leads
to December 6, 1907, the Monongah mining disaster.
Yeah. It remains the worst coal mine explosion
in American history. A spark ignited the gas
and dust, causing a massive underground explosion.
Go ahead, that's horrific. The official death
toll is 362 men and boys, though the actual number
is likely higher because company records were
just so poor. And a lot of them were immigrants,
right? Yes, half of those killed were Italian
immigrants who had just arrived seeking a better
life. And tragically, at the time, mine accidents
like this were just considered an inevitable
cost of doing business. That is incredibly bleak.
And it wasn't just coal extracting wealth from
the land. The timber industry completely stripped
the state. Oh, yeah. Between 1870 and 1920. 30
billion bored feet of virgin forests were logged.
They used these horse -drawn logging trams and
built temporary railroad spurs deep into the
woods to literally clear cut the mountains. Today,
there are only tiny pockets of original virgin
forests left in the entire state. So you have
a situation where massive wealth is being extracted
by out -of -state tycoons, the working conditions
are lethal, and the workers are living in extreme
poverty under strict corporate control. Right.
This inevitably leads to a breaking point, and
that breaking point ushers in an era of intense
social upheaval and literal warfare in the mountains.
From 1912 to 1921, miners are demanding the right
to unionize with the United Mine Workers of America,
really just to secure basic pay and survivable
conditions. Exactly. But the coal companies hold
all the cards. I mean, they own the company towns
where the miners lived. We really need to explain
how absolute this system of control was. The
coal companies didn't pay the miners in U .S.
dollars. Wait, really? Yeah, they paid them in
company, essentially private currency that could
only be spent at the company owned store. Which
I'm guessing charged a premium. Oh, highly -
inflated prices for basic goods. And if a miner
tried to strike or join a union, the company
didn't just fire them, they legally evicted the
miner and their entire family from their company
owned home. So you lose your job and your house
on the same day. Exactly. The union had to set
up literal tent colonies in the freezing winter
for these displaced families. That's brutal.
And to enforce all of this, the coal operators
hired private detective agencies, like the Baldwin
-Fels agents, to act as heavily armed private
police forces. It's a complete pressure cooker.
Yeah. and the tensions escalate into open violence.
In 1920, there was a deadly shootout in the town
of Manawan between the private guards and the
local pro -union police chief, Sid Hadfield.
Right. And that sparks the Battle of Blair Mountain
in 1921, which, this blew my mind, wasn't just
a riot. It was the largest labor uprising in
United States history. It was a literal war.
Roughly 10 ,000 armed coal miners marched to
free union men who had been imprisoned under
martial law. 10 ,000. 10 ,000. And they were
met by a private army of 3 ,000 heavily armed
mine guards and state police entrenched on the
ridge of Blair Mountain. For over a week, there
was intense sustained gunfire. Wow. The coal
operators even hired private biplanes to drop
homemade bombs and tear gas on the miners' positions.
Dropping bombs on American citizens on American
soil. That is just... I can't even wrap my head
around it. Yeah. Eventually, the governor begs
the federal government for help. President Warren
G. Harding sends in 2 ,500 U .S. Army soldiers
to crush the strike. Yeah. And here is the historical
irony that just leaps out at me. The Western
Virginians fought so hard, used every legal loophole
imaginable to side with the federal government
during the Civil War. They created their state
just to stay in the Union. But 60 years later,
that exact same federal government sends the
U .S. Army into those mountains to crush their
own citizens' labor strike on behalf of out -of
-state corporations. It's a stark reality check
on the balance of power, isn't it? It really
is. The strike was broken. The federal government
refused to prosecute the coal operators for the
violence. And the state government ended up prosecuting
hundreds of union leaders for treason and murder.
But this era of marginalized groups fighting
entrenched power structures wasn't just happening
in the coal fields, right? While the miners were
fighting for an economic voice, women in West
Virginia were fighting for a political voice.
Yes, the early 20th century also saw major progressive
era victories. We have to highlight Lena Lowe
Yost. OK, who was she? She was the chair of the
state's ratification committee for women's suffrage.
In 1920, she organized what was called a living
petition. I love this concept. Instead of just
mailing letters, suffragists physically flooded
the state capitol. Right. They personally greeted
and lobbied every single state legislator face
to face. as they prepared to vote. That's a brilliant
strategy. And it worked. West Virginia became
the crucial 34th state to ratify the 19th Amendment,
helping secure the right to vote for women nationwide.
It was a massive civil rights victory. But unfortunately,
the state's reliance on single industry resource
extraction remained a severe vulnerability. Because
of the coal. Exactly. When the Great Depression
hit in 1929, West Virginia's economy entirely
collapsed. Coal production plummeted by over
40 percent, bankruptcies were everywhere, unemployment
soared to over 25 percent in the cities, and
it was even higher in the mining towns. Nearly
half of all families in the state were totally
destitute. And this is where the federal government
steps back into West Virginia. This time, not
with the Army to break a strike, but with jobs.
Right, the New Deal. Specifically, the Civilian
Conservation Corps, the CCC, which was hugely
impactful here. The mechanics of the CCC were
brilliant for the time. They took 55 ,000 young,
unemployed men from relief families and put them
to work in 65 rural camps across the state. And
the catch was how they were paid, right? Yes.
They earned $30 a month, but the government required
that $25 of that be sent directly home to support
their families. So it fed the families back home,
and it built the state. They constructed infrastructure
that you can still use today. They built state
parks like Cabway Lingo State Forest. They constructed
bridges and engaged in massive reforestation
efforts. Literally planting the trees to replace
the virgin forest that had been clear -cut decades
earlier. That's incredible. And this era also
saw the revival of the United Mine Workers under
John L. Lewis. The New Deal legislation finally
gave unions the legal protection they needed
to organize without facing, you know... private
machine guns. Which is a pretty nice perk. Yeah,
definitely a step up. Lewis rebuilt the Union
into a massive political force. Eventually, during
World War II, he used the threat of strikes to
secure better wages and safety conditions. all
while West Virginia was serving as the arsenal
of democracy. Providing the immense amounts of
coal and steel required to actually win the war.
Exactly. It is an incredible journey. If we step
back and look at the whole picture, the history
of West Virginia is fundamentally a story of
resilience in the face of incredible geographical
and economic odds. It really is. Physical geography
dictated their political separation from Virginia.
It provided the immense natural resources that
drove their economy. and it created the isolated
conditions that led to their historic bloody
labor struggles. Exactly. When you turn on the
lights in your home today, or you look at the
steel framing, the buildings in your city, you
have to remember that those modern conveniences
likely have roots deeply buried in the hard fought
rugged history of the mountain state. Yeah. You
are benefiting from the labor of people who fought
literal wars for the weekend and for basic workplace
safety. And the fascinating thing is the influence
of that geography hasn't vanished. It continues
to shape the state's political realities right
now. It does. The source notes that in recent
years there has been a serious movement in the
eastern panhandle, so in counties like Morgan,
Berkeley, and Jefferson. Right. Due to their
proximity to Washington, D .C., residents there
have felt increasingly economically neglected
by their own state capital over in Charleston.
There has actually been legislative momentum
to allow those counties to secede from West Virginia
and rejoin the Commonwealth of Virginia. which
leaves you with this incredible thought to mull
over. West Virginia was quite literally born
out of western counties, feeling economically
neglected and ignored by their eastern capital,
Enrichment. Could the future of this state involve
a reverse secession, driven by the exact same
feelings of geographic and economic alienation?
It all comes back to the mountains. When the
landscape is rugged enough, it doesn't just shape
your culture, it might just draw the borders
for you.