Southeastern Geographer

FORMATION OF THE WEST VIRGINIA-VIRGINIA BOUNDARY* John J. Winberry Rooted in social and economic differences, dispute between the plantation-dominated coast and small farmer back country characterized the politics of every ante-bellum southern state. Only in Virginia , however, did it lead to dismemberment and the creation of a new state. The causes, process, and legality of this act have been well studied, but of equal interest are the rationale for and nature of the boundary between the new and old states. This line follows a peculiar course, trending southwest-northeast along the Allegheny Front but deviating east-west to include groups of counties in the Valley of Virginia (Figs. 1 and 2). This paper studies the formation of that boundary, considering both the general principles that guided the West Virginia state-makers and the reasons for including particular counties. It also analyzes the boundary to determine whether it, as has been argued, "approximates a genuine cultural divide." (1) Before turning to these questions, however, the sectional differences between the Tidewater and back country and the events leading up to the formation of West Virginia will be reviewed. SECTIONAL DIFFERENCES. By the eighteenth century a plantation economy based on tobacco had been established in Tidewater Virginia and began spreading toward the Piedmont. Simultaneously, Scotch-Irish and German small farmers migrated from the Middle Atlantic colonies into the Valley of Virginia and the Appalachian Plateau. Differences between Virginia's Tidewater and her western counties soon arose and through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries focussed on nationalism, slavery, and taxation and representation . The Blue Ridge Mountains initially separated the adversaries, but by the 1830s the plantation system had spread across this divide * The author thanks Dr. William R. Stanley, from whose initial query during a field trip in April, 1974, this study evolved. Dr. Winberry is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC 29208. Vol. XVII, No. 2 109 I«..«,« WEST VIRGINIA - VIRGINIA BOUNDARY, 1977 , MARYLAND FIODKE PENNSYLVANIA WuCKEB / / OHIO LOUDOUN ?? «*\mis,. 0* ß*/*·" MtETTr ^^ KENTUCKY ?h y>H07~--' ß?ß??\t \ *p\, />" ¦ "C DOWtLL TMEHCE ^????^?..^ ? ftc«e*A r\ Wevhli S bland EHANKLl)..? / _, \ ^-, /?* . HENRY *¦ TENNESSEE NORTH CAROLINA Figure 1. into the Valley. The center of western small farmer opposition to the Tidewater thereafter shifted to the trans-Allegheny. Western Virginia supported a strong national government, initially because of the Indian threat but later because the Federal government seemed more committed than the state to improving transportation in the back country. (2) The Commonwealth of Virginia supported internal improvements in the Tidewater and the Piedmont, but did little for the western counties. By 1860 the Virginia Central Railroad did not extend beyond Alleghany County (Fig. 3) . The canal to connect the James and Kanawha rivers progressed slowly, but was disrupted sporadically and was never completed. (3) The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was forbidden to build to the Kanawha River because of fear that western trade, normally directed to Richmond and eastern Virginia, would be diverted to Baltimore. The westward extension of the Staunton and Potomac Railroad likewise was impeded because it connected with the Baltimore and Ohio. (4) Public expenditures underscored the imbalance; in 1837-38 the Virginia Assembly appropriated more than $8,000,000 for railroads east of the Blue Ridge 110 Southeastern Geographer RIVERS AND PHYSIOGRAPHIC FEATURES X Figure 2. and the James River Canal, which then was entering the Valley of Virginia, but only $315,000 for turnpikes and roads in the trans-Allegheny counties. (S) Slavery spread into the Valley after completion of the James River Canal to Botetourt County in 1825, but the trans-Allegheny counties opposed its continued expansion. The westerners were not abolitionists , but they associated slavery with arresting the growth of population and of the economy. As evidence of the negative impact of slavery it was noted that the population of Pennsylvania's Valley counties increased 38 percent between 1830 and 1840, but that of the Valley of Virginia rose only 14 percent. By the late 1840s legislation was offered to make slavery illegal in the western counties because of fear that declining cotton prices and the resultant close of southwestern slave markets would cause eastern planters "to dump...