Virginia was the only Southern State dismembered by the war. One third of her territory (the richest in many respects) and one third of her people were actually torn from her by the mailed hand of war not only without her consent but contrary to an express provision of the Federal Constitution. The true history of this “political rape” as it was termed by General Wise, is one of the blackest political crimes in the annals of history. “The Confederate Cause and Conduct in the WBTS”

West Virginia was allowed to secede from Virginia and was admitted into the Union as a “slave state” in June of 1863, 6 months after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect and in the second year of a war supposedly being fought to end slavery…