West Virginia was a part of Virginia until after the Civil War started, so technically at the start of the war what would become West Virginia was in the Confederacy. However, West Virginia separated itself form Virginia to join the Union as a free state, so West Virginia was aligned with the North after it came to exist as a separate political entity from Virginia.
Chat with our AI personalities
Early in the Civil War, the Union easily captured some of the western counties of Virginia. It established a capital and admitted those counties to the Union as a free state. It became the state of West Virginia.
West Virginia was originally part of the State of Virginia. After Virginia seceded and joined the Confederacy, West Virginia seceded from Virginia and joined the Union as a new State.
West Virginia was with Virgina, but they disagreed about succeeding from the union, so they broke away from the confederation.
Richmond, Virginia was the second and final capital of the Confederacy, and also that states capital.
West Virginia and Virginia split during the Civil War. Virginia had already joined the Confederacy. There was an attempt to form a State of Franklin out of North Carolina, but it failed.
The mountain people in Virginia's western counties had always felt different to the rest of the state, and when Virginia narrowly voted Confederate, the Westerners planned to secede from Virginia. There was only a little slavery in West Virginia, so it didn't worry Lincoln when they quit the Confederacy and joined the Union.