From the very beginning, there was division between eastern and western Virginia.  Families in western Virginia did not usually own the land on which they lived which excluded those white men from voting, and they generally did not own slaves.  This was very different than eastern Virginia where there was a larger degree of land and slave ownership.  Western Virginia was largely tied to white wage labor in a rapidly industrializing economy and many of the area’s residents supported abolition because they felt slaves were taking jobs that white laborers should be paid to do.  The start of the Civil War brought those tensions to a head.  On April 17, 1861, right after the firing on Fort Sumter, a convention of Virginians voted to submit a bill of secession for a vote of the people.  Many western delegates marched out of the Secession Convention and vowed to create a state government loyal to the Union.