Editor's Note: "Countdown to Statehood" is a weekly series highlighting the historical events that eventually led to West Virginia becoming a state on June 20, 1863. This article is the fourth in the series.
The irreconcilable differences between western and eastern Virginia continued long after the ink had dried on the first Virginia Constitution in 1776.
The state continued to grow and prosper. Although the growth in the west far outdistanced that of the eastern section, it never put a dent in the population differential between the two sections. In the first census (1790), the eastern region showed a 13-to-1 population edge, creating much larger representation for their portion of the state. As the plurality decreased from 6-to-1 in the 1820 Virginia Census and 3-to-1 in the 1860 Census, eastern Virginia still controlled all the actions of the Virginia General Assembly because it still maintained a wide majority of the legislative seats.
Eastern Virginia also had twice as many counties as its counterparts.
A western Virginia legislator added fuel to the fire when he wrote a letter to the newspaper in 1803. In his letter to the Richmond Examiner, John G. Jackson, a Harrison County delegate from western Virginia, complained about the inequality between the two ends of Virginia. Jackson, writing under the pseudonym "A Mountaineer," said that although western Virginians paid property taxes on their land, they had virtually no voting rights.
Jackson reasoned that the Virginia Constitution actually violated the Declaration of Independence because it was "taxation without representation."
Here's part of Jackson's actual letter:
"The disfranchisement of all the freemen of Virginia, except those possessing lands, is so impolitic a measure, and so subversive of natural right, that if the constitution were perfect in every other part, it would demand a prompt interference, and decisive change. The late enumeration of appeals the inhabitants of the United States affords a strong argument of it's impolicy; for to what other cause can we attribute the great proportional increase of the white population in those states where that right of suffrage is extended to all citizens paying taxes-and the comparative diminution, in the states, where the right is circumscribed in the narrowest limits. These are strong confirmations of the idea suggested, that the measure is impolitic. That it is subversive of natural right and will not be denied. Your civil policy has robbed me of my right of suffrage."
Those who lived in the western areas agreed with Jackson, sensing all along that the eastern areas dominated the Legislature and seemed unwilling to listen to the western wants and needs. And because of the overloaded Legislature, western Virginians could never get enough support for their ideas and thus were never able to overcome the odds.
Jackson not only served in the Virginia General Assembly, he also served in the U.S. House of Representatives and as a U.S. District Court judge from western Virginia. "The Mountaineer" died in 1825 at age 47.
With all its flaws, the first Virginia Constitution lasted until April 1830.