Wednesday, March 27th
A day to visit Charleston! We got lucky in our timing and hopped onto a reserved tour of the Governor's mansion. It was a pretty place. The tour guides mentioned various items of worth, age, and how things were maintained. It cost $250,000 to build back in 1925 and it's now insured for $10.5 million! Often they invited us to ask any questions we wanted, that they knew all about it. Evidently asking how much it costs to maintain the mansion was not included in the invitation of "any question we wanted." The tour guide thought for a moment, an uneasy look on her face, then gave a 5-8 minute long answer that not-very-neatly went around my question. LoL! I didn't push it.
The front entry to the Governor's mansion.
A second level balcony view out the front. Has a lovely view of the river, the predominant feature of the city.
Next we took a tour of the Capital building. It has a blazing gold dome that stands out brightly as you travel the freeway. There's some interesting history about how West Virginia came to be and why Charleston is the capital.
Virginia seceded from the union in April of 1861 as the civil war began. In May, many delegates met in Wheeling, West Virginia, and voted to secede from Virginia and create the state of West Virginia. There was a lot of consternation and conflict about this act, its legitimacy, etc., as one might imagine. In 1863, in the heart of the civil war and after including an slavery abolitionist clause in its constitution, President Lincoln issued a proclamation admitting West Virginia as a state in the Union.
This proclamation was entirely unconstitutional as only congress has power to admit a state to the union (see Article IV, section 3), but it was wartime and civil wartime at that! After the war, in 1866, Virginia sued to re-annex West Virginia, but meanwhile, congress approved its admittance. The supreme court ultimately ruled against Virginia and West Virginia's independent statehood became undisputed.
Benjo can't smile for pictures. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know how!
The next story about the the location of the West Virginia Capital is also interesting, though I'm afraid I didn't take good enough notes to get the details perfect. Still, the main idea will come through.
Wheeling is where the delegates first met to separate from Virginia and it was named the Capital. However, Wheeling is in the far, far north west edge of the state--a long trip out of the way and over a very mountainous country. The capital was moved to Charleston, a more central location, in 1870. That capital building burned down a few years later, however, and the people of Wheeling, wanting it back, offered to build a capital building without any cost to the state if they would move the capital back to Wheeling. This agreed upon, the capital returned to Wheeling in 1875.
However, 10 years later, the state decided to move its capital back to Charleston, leaving the folks in Wheeling without any remuneration for their efforts. I can only imagine how happy they weren't by this turn of events! Still, given its location, I can't imagine why anyone would think Wheeling a good place for the WV capital!
A picture of the capital building built in Wheeling to bring the capital there.
The current capital building had some roof leaks being fixes while we were there so unfortunately the whole dome area was closed off on the inside. Still, we saw the senate and house of representatives and enjoyed our tour.
Floor of the Senate or House. Unfortunately I don't recall which and they were quite similar.
Lastly we headed to the Charleston museum of West Virginia. This place was impressive! An engaging an interesting walk through the history of the state.
Some of the theme-ing seen in the museum.
The 33-star US Flag, taken down from the Jefferson County Courthouse the day Virginia seceded from the Union.
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