The Controversial Truth About How West Virginia Became a State

West Virginia:  An illegal, unconstitutional, "bastard" state?  There is in fact strong evidence to say   so.  Was West Virginia's creation as a state legal and constitutional or the act of an insurrectionist and rogue group of politicians way up north in Wheeling who forced it through Congress, fixed the voting of the people, and got even a reluctant President Abraham Lincoln to sign off on it?

It is quite  ironic that politicians who claimed that Virginia's secession from the Union was illegal would then orchestrate a very unclean and illegal secession from Virginia (which was never approved as required by the government of Virginia either) and then claim it was the "restored government of Virginia", and try to sell it to Congress that way, isn't it?  Small wonder that Yankee sympathizers who supported secession from Virginia to form a new state were called in that time "anti-Virginians", and looked upon as disloyal to their own state.

Watch this excellent and impartial documentary which reveals even how former Virginia Governor Henry Wise described it:  "This new state is the bastard child of a political rape!"
 
Clearly the beauty and attractions of this state are much more pristine than its political origins.  The state itself was very divided between Confederate and Union sympathies and the capitol was carried back and forth several times between Wheeling and Charleston, the latter of which was more Confederate oriented.  West Virginia itself was very divided!