This evening on the SNN podcast we spoke with Ethan Ritter who is coordinating and hosting the first Trans-Allegheny Conference, which is tentatively scheduled to take place on 18 August 2012 in Warrenton, Virginia to discuss the status of West Virginia and Virginia in the Southern nationalist movement.
Note: This conference has since been cancelled.
Click here for the audio (duration: 8:10)
Click here for all our podcast interviews
Awesome.
But not sure on the history.
WV was Virginia FOR HALF THE WAR; it was not until a meeting under occupation in the Northern Panhandle that WV was made a state. If you look at the map, the Northern Panhandle is only 5 miles across at one point, and is surrounded by the industrial north on either side. The Northern Panhandle really is North. Otherwise, the top of the state is the MD line.
WV really is Virginia. It was and shares much of the history.
The other thing is geography. The WV line is at where it starts turning mountainous (from Virginia). So, many had homes, btw, in both areas. Virginia was more planter English, WV more Scots, also. It’s the only state entirely in the appalachians, and has a special character due to that also.
A thing to reclaim—- is the sense of the Scots-Irish there, which has been swept away by the mainstream that has vilified the West Virginian experience and also the connection for the people there, who have been told all their lives that they are “northern” and they “went with the north.”
It’s a complete lie. That’s not how it happened. They’re sort of like east and west berlin, in a way
It was supreme hypocrisy on the part of the Lincoln administration to acknowledge the formation of the new state of “West Virginia”. Lincoln and the North launched a fratricidal war upon the South supposedly to “preserve the Union” and “put down the Rebellion”.(… and later threw in emancipation of slaves as an afterthought!)The seceding Southern states were completely justified legally, morally, and Constitutionally, yet were denied their rights by force of arms. The creation of a new state from the territory of an existing state was totally illegal and un-Constitutional in the way that it was done with West Virginia. An illegitimate “convention” was held and a self-proclaimed “provisional government” petitioned the Federal government (who had no jurisdiction there!), to create the new state. Even Thaddeus Stevens admitted that it wasn’t Constitutional, but rather because they had absolute power! As former Governor of Virginia and Confederate General Henry Wise stated, the creation of the state of West Virginia was… “the bastard child of a political rape.” Being a native western Virginian, the idea of reuniting the western counties with the Old Dominion is appealing, but I don’t believe it will ever happen. Western Virginia was the first Confederate territory to be permanently occupied and usurped by the tyrannical Federal government. The rest of the South soon followed with the surrender at Appomattox. Unless and until we can revive all the Confederate States, the “bastard child” will remain.
There is no way in hell that I would ever agree to reunite if i were a West Virginian. WV is over 90% White, low gun restrictions and low crime rates. Why would they ever want to trade that to live like those in Richmond?