Show Partition of Old Old I Dominion for Expediency I Prior to 1861 Virginia was divided into two sections from each I other In the tile nature of their industry their labor system and the character of their people Eastern Virginia was the land of the slaveholder a region devoted tb the cultivation of tobacco western Virginia possessed but few slaves raised little or no tobacco was Interested In and manufacture manufacture ture tune and had been settled largely from Pennsylvania Thus the legislature at Richmond had to make laws rot two separate communities having divergent divergent divergent diver diver- gent interests Just as the federal government government government gov gov- at Washington had to legis legislate late for the slave holding l south bouth and the industrial North was along a V. along long and bitter clash between the people pee poo- pie of trans-Alleghany trans Virginia and the planters planters' of of the Last East ast The Iho story of ot the separation of West Vest Virginia from the old dominion is chiefly important im im- im- im because S of the fact that it re reproduces reproduces re- re re f tand t produces upon a smaller scale the long I I and bitter controversy between the North and the South which culminated in the Civil war I |