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1 Evolution of the Constitution of West Virginia 1 (1909)

handle is hein.statecon/evlcwv0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Evolution of the Constitution of West Virginia I. Introduction. West Virginia, the only distinctively mountainous state of the Appalachian region, and the only state whose formation represents a logical conclusion of the sectionalism which existed before the civil war in all the southern states from Pennsylvania southlward to Florida, has a constitutional history somewhat unique. Its destiny to form a separate state was largely determined by the flow of its rivers in an opposite direction to the flow of the tide water rivers, and was foreshadowed in the different political ideas of the West--causing it to give a proportionately larger vote than the East for the ratification of the national constitution in 1788, to oppose the Virginia resolutions of 1798, to antagonize the elec- tion of Jefferson in 1801, to favor the American system as a national policy and to advocate the establishment of free schools and the further democratization of social and political institutions. Showing a growing influence in determining the constitutional de- velopment of the mother state before the war and its determination to fight the mother state in order to preserve the Union, the New Dominion still retains in its constitution many evidences of a sur- viving sentiment in favor of the institutions of the Old Dominion. TH. A Half Century Under the Constitution of the Revolution. The first constitution of Virginia was adopted on June 29, 1776 when there were within the limits of the present state of West Virginia only Hampshire and Berkdley counties and the dis- trict of West Augusta. This constitutioni established an annual general assembly of two houses the members of which were elected by the limited number of people who had the right of suffrage. The house of delegates, the members of which were elected each 1. Poore, Charters and Constitutions of the United States, vol. 2, pp. 1910-12.

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