John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

[145] appointed F. H. Pierpoint Governor, with an advisory council of five, to wield executive authority. A legislature was constituted by calling together, on July 1st, at Wheeling, such members chosen at the election of May 23d as would take a prescribed oath of allegiance to the United States and the restored government of Virginia, and providing for filling the vacancies of those who refused. A similar provision continued or substituted other State and county officers. After adding sundry ordinances of urgent necessity to this groundwork of restoration, the convention on the 25th took a recess till August. The Legislature, however, met according to call, and took up the difficult task of devising legal enactments suitable to the revolutionary crisis; and on July 9th, it chose two United States Senators, who, four days later, were admitted and took part in the national legislation.

So far, the work was simply a repudiation of secession, and a restoration of the usurped government of the whole State. But the main motive and purpose of the counterrevolution was not allowed to halt or fail. In August the Wheeling Convention reassembled, and on the 20th adopted an ordinance creating the new State of Kanawha, and providing for a ratifying popular vote to be taken on the question in the following October. It is not the province of this volume to follow further the political transformation of the “Old Dominion,” thus inaugurated, except to add that the proposed “State of Kanawha” became the “State of West Virginia,” and was duly admitted to the Union about two years later.

Governor Peirpoint, the head of the provisional government thus organized at Wheeling, made a formal application under the Constitution, to the Government of the United States, for aid to suppress rebellion and protect the