The War of 1812. The people of West Virginia gave further evidences of their attachment to the federal government in the troubles with England in the Napoleonic era. Federalists, still strong in the Eastern Panhandle and some other parts of the state, criticized policies of the Jefferson and Madison administrations as anti-British, but Republicans, by then the majority in most sections, loyally upheld the government. Congressmen from trans-Allegheny districts generally condemned impressment of American seamen and attacks upon American vessels during the years before the War of 1812 and clamored for defense of the nation's rights and honor. They supported the Embargo, the Non-Intercourse Bill, and Macon's Bill No. 2.
No Congressman was a stouter defender of the Republican administrations than John G. Jackson of Clarksburg. A brother-in-law of James Madison, for whom he often acted as spokesman in the House of Representatives, he excoriated Federalist critics. A clash with highly partisan Federalist Congressman Joseph Pearson of North Carolina, in which Pearson impugned the wisdom and integrity of Jefferson and Madison, resulted in a duel between Jackson and Pearson in 1809. Pearson dealt Jackson a wound that forced him to resign his seat and left him lame for the rest of his life. Had Jackson remained in Congress, he almost certainly would have ranked with Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Felix Grundy, and other western and southern War Hawks who entered the House in 1810.
Such was the patriotic spirit in West Virginia that militia captains in the War of 1812 usually filled their companies with ease. Captains Nimrod Saunders and James Laidley from the Parkersburg area expressed the feeling of many members of the fifty-two companies raised wholly or in part in West Virginia, when they wrote Governor James Barbour that they and their men were “members of the Great Union” and would devote their lives to “the security of the whole.”6More than a thousand men, under General Joel Leftwich, joined William Henry Harrison in northern Ohio after the surrender of Detroit by General William Hull in August 1812. Western forces also hastened to the defense of eastern Virginia when the British invaded the state in 1814.
Land Problems. The federal government had little authority over land questions that lay at the root of many problems in West Virginia during the early nineteenth century and that continued to plague the state. Pioneers who occupied the triangle bounded roughly by the Ohio and Little Kanawha rivers and the Laurel Ridge of the Allegheny Mountains encountered the claims of the Indiana Company. Following the collapse of the Vandalia scheme, the company endeavored to win recognition of its claims by the Virginia legislature. On June 3, 1779, however, the House of Delegates rejected the Indiana claim by a vote of fifty to twenty-eight. Three days later the Senate refused even to hear the plea of the company. No more fruitful was the appeal of the company to Congress, which understandably was unwilling to offend Virginia at a time when her support was of critical importance.
In 1802 the Indiana Company resurrected its claims, threatening the rights of twenty to thirty thousand residents of northern West Virginia. Scores of persons facing the loss of their property signed petitions, which circulated in Monongalia, Harrison, Randolph, Wood, and Ohio counties, asking the legislature to appropriate funds for their defense in suits brought by the company. George Jackson, a former congressman, declared that the settlers had won their lands from the Indians, occupied them for nearly thirty years, and paid taxes on them. The legislature declined to underwrite the expenses incurred by residents in the dispute, but it reaffirmed its rejection of the Indiana claims.
Blackwater Falls is typical of the rugged scenery of West Virginia. West Virginia Division of Archives and History (unless noted otherwise, all succeeding illustrations are from this source)
Harpers Ferry, the lowest point in the state. West Virginia Travel Development Division
Left, Cornstalk, leader of the Shawnees at Point Pleasant. Frost, Indian Wars of the United States
Below, Battle of Point Pleasant. Atkinson, History of Kanawha County
Bottom, Grave Creek Mound, Moundsville. Historic Preservation Unit, West Virginia Division of Archives and History
Left, Alexander Campbell, educator and founder of the Disciples of Christ. Courtesy of Bethany Press
Below, Jacob Westfall's fort, built in 1774 at the mouth of Files Creek, Beverly
Bottom, Rehoboth Methodist Church, near Union, built in 1786 and said to be the oldest existing church building west of the Alleghenies. Historic Preservation Unit, West Virginia Division of Archives and History
Harman Blennerhassett Mansion, on Blennerhassett Island, near Parkersburg. After Blennerhassett became involved in the western schemes of Aaron Burr, angry neighbors sacked the mansion, which burned in 1811. Blennerhassett Historical Park Commission
“Harewood,” home of Samuel Washington, near Charles Town. Here James and Dolley Madison were married.
John Brown defending the fire-engine house at the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry
Kanawha Salt Works scene about 1845. Howe, Historical Collections of Virginia
Above, Philippi, site of what has often been called “the first land battle of the Civil War,” in a contemporary sketch by Lafayette Keller
Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, a native of Clarksburg and West Virginia's greatest Civil War general. Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson
Francis H. Pierpont, governor in the Reorganized Government of Virginia and “Father of West Virginia”
Below, Independence Hall, site of the Second Wheeling Convention and capitol of the Reorganized Government of Virginia. Preservation Unit, West Virginia Division of Archives and History
Above,