Cord Byrd: “on June 20, 1863, a new State was added to the Union. Today, 143 years later, we celebrate the birthday of West…”

“on June 20, 1863, a new State was added to the Union. Today, 143 years later, we celebrate the birthday of West Virginia. I am always happy to have an excuse to share my love for West Virginia with the rest of the Nation. The story of West Virginia is unique and fascinating, a one-of-a-kind juxtaposition of geography, history, and politics. It is a story as interesting as the State is beautiful. The steeply folded mountain ridges that define the southern edge of the State, and her rich mineral and natural treasures that more than made up for her paucity of flat agricultural terrain, defined her early years and set her apart socially and economically from the rest of Virginia. West Virginia's natural attributes attracted a hardy, can-do breed of opportunistic settlers determined to scratch a living for their families from her rocky hillsides. They mined salt and coal, hunted and trapped, and cut small family farms out of the hillsides. These mountaineers had little in common with the gentrified, land- owning and slave-owning plantation masters of eastern Virginia's tidewater and piedmont regions. Thus, even as the issue of slavery began to strain the relations between the Nation's industrial North and her agricultural South, the contrasts within Virginia were sharp. A child of conflict, West Virginia's birth was surprisingly peaceful.…”