Who watches Jeopardy?

[David Lockmiller]

Final Jeopardy! Round question for Wednesday, May 22, 2019 with Lincoln-related answer:

In 1832, by a narrow margin, this state's legislature rejected considering abolition; a split was completed in 1863.

Answer: What is Virginia?



On December 23, 1862, President Lincoln addressed to his Cabinet members the following letter.

Gentlemen of the Cabinet: A bill for an act entitled 'An Act for the admission of the State of West-Virginia into the Union, and for other purposes,' has passed the House of Representatives, and the Senate, and has been duly presented to me for my action.

I respectfully ask of each [of] you, an opinion in writing, on the following questions, to wit:

1st. Is the said Act constitutional?
2d. Is the said Act expedient?

Your Obt. Servt.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

To this request Secretaries Seward, Chase and Stanton replied affirmatively on both queries. Welles, Blair, and Bates responded negatively to both. Thus the closest advisers to the President were evenly divided. Meantime, Governor Pierpont telegraphed Lincoln on the [December]18, [1862] that a presidential veto would ". . . be death to our cause"; again, two days later, Pierpont telegraphed that ". . . great feeling exists . . . in reference to your delay in signing the bill for the new state." Another ten days passed. Then, on the last day of 1862, Lincoln signed the bill for West Virginia statehood. That he had reflected long and hard on the constitutional question is indicated by portions of a memorandum issued at the time of his signing the bill (West Virginia History, “Lincoln and West Virginia Statehood,” by J. Duane Squires, Volume 24, Number 4 (July 1963)):

The consent of the Legislature of Virginia is constitutionally necessary to the bill for the admission of West-Virginia becoming a law. A body claiming to be such Legislature has given its consent. . . . I do not think the plural form of the words 'Legislatures' and 'States' in the phrase of the constitution 'without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned &c' has any reference to the new State concerned. That plural form sprang from the contemplation of two or more old States contributing to form a new one. The idea that the new state was in danger of being admitted without its own consent, was not provided against, because it was not thought of, as I conceive. It is said, the devil takes care of his own. Much more should a good spirit - the spirit of the Constitution and the Union - take care of its own. I think it can not do less, and live.

But is the admission into the Union, of West-Virginia, expedient? This, in my general view, is more a question for Congress, than for the Executive. Still I do not evade it. More than on anything else, it depends on whether the admission or rejection of the new state would under all the circumstances tend the more strongly to the restoration of the national authority throughout the Union. That which helps most in this direction is the most expedient at this time. Doubtless those in remaining Virginia would return to the Union, so to speak, less reluctantly without the division of the old state than with it; but I think we could not save as much in this quarter by rejecting the new state, as we should lose by it in West-Virginia. We can scarcely dispense with the aid of West-Virginia in this struggle; much less can we afford to have her against us, in congress and in the field. Her brave and good men regard her admission into the Union as a matter of life and death. They have been true to the Union under very severe trials. We have so acted as to justify their hopes; and we can not fully retain their confidence, and co-operation, if we seem to break faith with them. In fact, they could not do so much for us, if they would.
Again, the admission of the new state, turns that much slave soil to free; and thus, is a certain, and irrevocable encroachment upon the cause of the rebellion.

The division of a State is dreaded as a precedent. But a measure made expedient by a war, is no precedent for times of peace. It is said that the admission of West-Virginia, is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the constitution, and secession in favor of the constitution.

I believe the admission of West-Virginia into the Union is expedient.