West Virginia is the only state in the Union to have acquired
its sovereignty by proclamation of the President of the United States. Statehood
was proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, midway in the most bitter
chapter of American history--the Civil War. Only seven years later, West
Virginia's seat of government began travelling intermittently between Wheeling,
site of the inauguration of the state's first governor, and Charleston, the
choice for the state capital.