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Those counties of Virginia which lay west of the Alleghanies contained a population which was, by an overwhelming majority, strenuously loyal.  There had long been more of antagonism than of friendship between them and the rest of the State, and now, as has been already mentioned, the secession of Virginia from the Union stimulated them, in turn, to secede from Virginia.  In the summer of 1861 they took measures to form themselves into a separate State; and in April, 1862, they adopted a state Constitution by a vote of 18,862 yeas against 514 nays.  A bill for the admission of “West Virginia” was passed by the Senate in July, and by the House in December, and was laid before the President for signature.  There were nice questions of constitutional law about this, and some doubt also as to whether the move was altogether well advised.  Mr. Lincoln asked the opinions of the cabinet as to whether he should sign the bill.  Three said Yea, and three Nay; and it was noteworthy that the three who thought it expedient also thought it constitutional, and that the three who thought it inexpedient also thought it unconstitutional.  Mr. Lincoln, not much assisted, then decided in the affirmative, and signed the bill December 31, 1862.  A statement of the reasons[49] which led him to this decision concludes thus:  “It is said that the admission of West Virginia is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession.  Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the Constitution and secession in favor of the Constitution.”  Mr. Elaine says that the creation of this State was sustained by “legal fictions;” and Thaddeus Stevens declared that it was a measure entirely outside of any provision of the Constitution, yet said that he should vote for it in accordance with his general principle:  that none of the States in rebellion were entitled to the protection of the Constitution.  The Republicans themselves were divided in their views as to the lawfulness of the measure.  However the law may have stood, it is evident to us, looking backward, that for practical purposes the wisdom of the President’s judgment cannot be impugned.  The measure was the amputation of so much territory from that which the Confederates, if they should succeed, could claim as their own; and it produced no inconvenience at all when, instead of succeeding, they failed.

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Many causes conspired to induce an obstreperous outbreak of “Copperheadism” in the spring of 1863.  The Democratic successes in the elections of the preceding autumn were in part a premonition of this, in part also a cause.  Moreover, reaction was inevitable after the intense outburst of patriotic enthusiasm which had occurred during the earlier part of the war.  But more than all this, Mr. Lincoln wrote, and every one knew, that, “if the war fails, the administration fails,” and thus far the war had been a failure.  So the grumblers, the malcontents, and the Southern sympathizers argued that the administration also, at least so far as it had gone, had been a failure; and they fondly conceived that their day of triumph was dawning.