County and Local Governments. Expansion of settlement necessitated the organization of additional counties and towns. Only two of West Virginia's fifty-five counties, Hampshire and Berkeley, formed in 1754 and 1772, respectively, existed at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. The remainer of the state was included in Fincastle County, which embraced the territory south of the New and Kanawha rivers; in Botetourt and Augusta counties, which extended across most of the northcentral section to the Ohio River; and the ill-defined District of West Augusta, created in 1773 to assert the authority of Virginia over the Forks of the Ohio region and provide an administrative shelter for its residents and those of the extreme northern parts of West Virginia.
Further county reorganization occurred during the Revolutionary War. In 1776 the General Assembly divided the District of West Augusta into Yohogania, Monongalia, and Ohio counties. It split Fincastle County into Kentucky, Washington, and Montgomery counties, the last of which included the part of West Virginia south of the New and Kanawha rivers. In 1778 the trans-Allegheny portion of Botetourt County became Greenbrier County.
Continued population increases resulted in the formation of additional counties. By 1800 the General Assembly had created Brooke, Hardy, Harrison, Kanawha, Monroe, Pendleton, Randolph, and Wood. The establishment of Cabell, Jefferson, Lewis, Logan, Mason, Morgan, Nicholas, Pocahontas, and Tyler brought the number of counties in West Virginia to twenty-two in 1830. Even then, the creation of new counties failed to keep pace with the expanding population. Moreover, some new counties were so large and their inhabitants were so isolated that their governments could not adequately meet the needs of the people.
The General Assembly also authorized the establishment of numerous towns. It formally established Shepherdstown and Romney in 1762. Berkeley Springs (originally known as Bath), Lewisburg, Martinsburg, and Moorefield were created by the end of the Revolutionary War. Among other new towns established before the end of the century were Beverly, Bolivar, Charleston, Charles Town, Clarksburg, Darkesville, Franklin, Frankfort, Middletown (later renamed Fairmont), Morgantown, Point Pleasant, Salem, Smithfield (Berkeley County), Smithfield (Harrison County), Union, Vienna, Watson, Wellsburg (first known as Charlestown), and West Liberty.
The Continuing Indian Menace. One of the most serious deterrents to the growth of trans-Allegheny West Virginia was the danger from Indians, which did not abate after the Revolutionary War. Between 1785 and 1787 British agents, including Sir John Johnson, Joseph Butler, and Joseph Brant, urged a confederation of tribes in the Northwest. Frontier leaders such as George Clendenin of Kanawha County, Hezekiah Davisson of Harrison County, and John Stuart of Greenbrier County, declared that West Virginia settlers were in greater danger than ever before and that there was likely to be no peace as long as the British retained trading posts in the Northwest, contrary to the Treaty of Paris of 1783.
For scores of families the Indian menace was etched in sad and bitter memories. Two examples suffice to illustrate their suffering and heartbreak. At Wheeling Indians killed young Andrew Zane and captured Isaac, his nine-year-old brother. Isaac grew up among the Indians, married the daughter of a Wyandot chief, and became the father of eight children. He chose never to return to his family. Another captive, Mary Kinnan, settled with her husband near Elkwater, on the Tygart Valley River. In 1791 Indians killed her husband and young daughter and carried the unfortunate woman to their towns in Ohio. Later they took her to the Detroit area, where she became a slave of an old Delaware squaw. After more than two years, she managed to communicate with relatives in New Jersey, and her brother, with the aid of friends, arranged her release.
The Federal Constitution. Indian dangers dominated the thoughts of many of the sixteen West Virginians elected to the Virginia convention, which met in Richmond from June 2 through June 25, 1788, to consider ratification of the federal Constitution. Although they were but a small proportion of the 170 delegates, their importance exceeded their numbers. At the time of their election, eighty-five delegates were Federalists, who gave strong support to the Constitution. Sixty-six were chosen as Antifederalists. Of the remaining nineteen, three had not made up their minds at the time of their election, and the views of the other sixteen were unknown. Four of the latter were from trans-Allegheny West Virginia.
Leaders of both Federalists and Antifederalists exerted pressure upon wavering delegates and those representing frontier counties. Antifederalists, led by Patrick Henry, argued that a strong central government would have the power to bargain away navigation of the Mississippi River, a vital concern to many residents of the trans-Appalachian region. They also contended that a strong government might jeopardize the rights of persons who had acquired lands from the sequestered Fairfax estate. West Virginians, however, found Federalist arguments more compelling. The Federalist leaders, including George Washington, James Madison, George Wythe, Edmund Randolph, and Edmund Pendleton, held that a strong central authority would be more likely to secure navigation of the Mississippi and derided the idea that Virginia might not be able to protect her citizens who had obtained tracts from the Fairfax proprietary.
Although Charles A. Beard and other historians have stressed a close correlation between personal holdings, such as slaves and continental or state securities, and support of the Constitution, it is clear that the dominant consideration of West Virginia delegates was their belief that the new government might deal more effectively with the continuing Indian menace. Of the sixteen West Virginians, eleven had at some time actively engaged in frontier defense, and all had witnessed the horrors of Indian depredations. Fourteen of them voted for ratification. John Evans of Monongalia County, for reasons not known, opposed the Constitution, and Ebenezer Zane of Ohio County did not vote. Given the narrow margin, eighty-nine to seventy-nine, by which Virginia ratified the Constitution, it is clear that the West Virginia vote was of critical importance.
The Seeds of Nationalism. The new government of the United States, which was launched in 1789 with Washington as president, quickly fulfilled the hopes that westerners entertained for it. After disastrous expeditions into the Indian country under Josiah Harmar in 1790 and Arthur St. Clair in 1791, the Washington administration dispatched General Anthony Wayne westward in 1794. Wayne centered his efforts around Fort Miami, on the southwestern shores of Lake Erie, which the British had built for the protection of Detroit. He attacked about two thousand Indians at Fallen Timbers and dealt them a decisive defeat.
Wayne's victory and the Treaty of Greenville, by which the Indians gave up their claims to most of Ohio, ended the threat to West Virginia. Such seasoned frontier leaders as George Clendenin and William Morris, members of the House of Delegates from Kanawha County, informed Governor Henry Lee that the defeat of the Indians had been so complete that one militia company could defend the Kanawha and Greenbrier settlements.
Largely as a result of Wayne's achievement, the federal government won two diplomatic victories that had important effects on West Virginia. Jay's Treaty with the British in November 1794 contained a provision whereby England agreed to vacate the Northwest posts by June 1,1796, a move that left her no longer in a position to incite Indian attacks upon the frontiers. Less than a year later, in October 1795, Spain agreed, in Pinckney's Treaty, to open the Mississippi River to American navigation and to provide a place of deposit at New Orleans or some other suitable location for goods shipped downstream. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 gave the United States possession of both sides of the Mississippi River for most of its course and further cemented the ties of West Virginians to the federal government.
The Whiskey Rebellion. The importance that West Virginians attached to efforts of the federal government to pacify the Indians, more than anything else, explains their failure to give general support to the Whiskey Rebellion. The disturbance erupted in the late summer of 1794, when Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton put into effect an excise tax on whiskey. A revenue measure, the tax was also intended to demonstrate the power of the federal government to act directly upon the individual. Trans-Allegheny farmers, who marketed