Seceding from Secession Quotes

“He concluded, “I’m sure there will be lawyers all over this thing if the citizens of Frederick County decided they wanted to join (West Virginia).”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“Further Resolved, That the 158 years which have elapsed since this invitation was first extended have not diminished the feelings of deep affection in which Frederick County and her citizens are held by the citizens of West Virginia; and, be it”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“The division of a state is dreaded as precedent. But a measure made expedient by war is no precedent for times of peace. It is said that the admission of West Virginia is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is difference enough between secession against the constitution and secession in favor of it.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“She [Virginia] can have no right, years after all this has been settled, to come into a court of chancery to charge that her own conduct has been a wrong and a fraud.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“Congress quickly increased the number of Supreme Court Justices from seven to nine, enabling Grant to nominate two new members of the Court. The plan to pack the Court with Republican justices had worked.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“In short, a government created by the Unionist portion of Virginia—a minority of the total population—purported to speak for the entire state, including the majority of the state that supported secession.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“Because the B&O ran through these counties, the new government intended to incorporate them into West Virginia. Not trusting the outcome of the vote, these counties were simply excluded from participating in the election.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“Talk about Northern oppression, talk about our rights being stolen from us by the North; it’s all stuff and dwindles into nothing when compared, to our situation in Western Virginia. The truth is the slavery oligarchy, are impudent boastful and tyrannical. It is the nature of the institution to make men so; and tho I am far from being an abolitionist, yet if they persist, in their course, the day may come when all Western Virginia will rise up, in her might and throw off the Shackles, which thro this very Divine institution, as they call it, has been pressing us down.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“in 1866, with the Civil War over and Reconstruction under way, the Commonwealth of Virginia sued the State of West Virginia in the United States Supreme Court, seeking the return of Berkeley and Jefferson Counties to Virginia. For five contentious years, the case languished before a deadlocked Supreme Court, with a final decision denying Virginia’s claims issued in March 1871. In the end, the Supreme Court avoided the question of whether West Virginia’s creation complied with the requirements of the Constitution.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“Article IV, Section 3 of the United States Constitution requires the consent of a state before a new state can be formed from its territory.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“Of these was the town of Romney, which changed hands fifty-three times throughout the war.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“Lincoln was not keen on admitting West Virginia as it had “seceded” from Virginia—which was a state and Lincoln would never concede that it, and other “so called” Confederate states, had left the Union.11 So, supporters of West Virginia created a legal fiction that what became West Virginia, was really the authentic Commonwealth of Virginia.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia

“Garrison believed that the Constitution “was ‘a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”
― Eric J. Wittenberg, Seceding from Secession: The Civil War, Politics, and the Creation of West Virginia