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WEST VIRGINIA. country. (See ; ; .) The Six Nations of New York also claimed this country by right of conquest, but ceded their claim to the whites in 1754 at Fort Stanwix. The other Indians refused to acknowledge the cession, and in 1774, at Point Pleasant, one of the bloodiest of Indian battles was fought between a confederacy of Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, Cayugas, and other Indians under Cornstalk, and Virginia settlers and militia under Gen. Andrew Lewis. Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Virginia, did not attempt to aid the settlers, though he was near with a strong force, and it was openly charged that his hope was to cripple the colony so that it could not join in resistance to Great Britain. In spite of the King's proclamation of 1763 declaring the western territory to be ‘Indian country,’ colonization was rapid and counties were formed. After the Revolution an entirely different society grew up in the western woods, compared with that in the east. The hardy backwoodsmen had few luxuries, few slaves, and little touch with European culture. Jealousies ensued between the sections, and the west complained bitterly that they had all the burdens of government without corresponding benefits. The representation in the eastern counties was based partially upon the number of negroes, and a western freeman did not have the same representation as a resident of the east. The peculiar shape of the western part of the State made a number of the counties border on the free States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and many of the counties were Northern in sentiment at the approach of the Civil War. When Virginia passed the ordinance of secession there was much dissatisfaction. Numerous small meetings were held, and on May 13, 1861, delegates from twenty-five counties met at Wheeling and called a convention to meet June 11th. Representatives from forty counties attended, declared their independence of Virginia, and took measures for the establishment of a provisional government by electing (q.v.) Governor. On July 2d a Legislature met and elected representatives to the United States Senate, who were admitted by that body. This action was approved by the people October 24th, and delegates were also elected to a convention which met at Wheeling on November 26th, to frame a constitution, which was adopted on May 3, 1862. On May 13th the Legislature of the ‘Restored Government of Virginia’ gave its consent to the formation of a new State. The act of admission was approved by President Lincoln, December 31, 1862, to take effect upon the insertion of a clause providing for gradual emancipation, and the State was formally admitted June 19, 1863. During the war an unusually large part of the population was in arms, and 32,068 men were furnished to the Federal Army. Slavery was entirely abolished February 3, 1865, in advance of the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. The return of the Confederate soldiers to the southern and eastern counties threatened the Republican control, and in 1866 an amendment was added to the Constitution disfranchising all who had given aid and comfort to the Confederacy after June, 1861. In 1869 the number of voters numbered about 50,000, and the disfranchised 29,316. By a compromise, general amnesty and negro suffrage were coupled and adopted in 1871, and in 1872

a new constitution went into force. The vote of the State was cast for Republican electors before this time. For the twenty years from 1872 to 1892 Democratic candidates were uniformly successful. The great development of mining and manufacturing has brought about a change of sentiment, and in 1896 and 1900 the State was found in the Republican column.

. Dodge, West Virginia (Philadelphia, 1865); Summers, The Mountain State: Description of the Natural Resources of West Virginia (Charleston, 1893). For history, in addition to the references for Virginia, consult: Thwaites, ed., Withers's Chronicles of Border Warfare (Cincinnati, 1895); Lewis, History of West Virginia (Philadelphia, 1889); Hale, Trans-Alleghany Pioneers (Cincinnati, 1886); Atkinson and Gibbens, Prominent Men of West Virginia (Wheeling, 1890).  WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY. A co-educational State institution of higher learning at Morgantown, W. Va., founded in 1868. It absorbed the West Virginia Agricultural College (founded 1867), the Monongahela Academy (founded 1814), and the Woodburn Seminary. It now comprises colleges of arts and sciences, engineering and mechanical arts, agriculture, and law, schools of music, military science and tactics, and commerce, and preparatory schools at Morgantown, Montgomery, and Keyser, with an attendance of 1099 students in 1903, and 70 instructors. Its principal sources of support are the land grant of 1862, the Morrill and Hatch funds, and biennial State appropriations, the total income in 1902 being $218,124. The university has a campus of 50 acres bordering the Monongahela River, and a farm of about 100 acres for the use of the agricultural experiment station and the college of agriculture. The buildings and grounds were valued in 1900 at $675,000. The library contained 25,000 volumes.  WESTWARD HO! (1) A comedy by Webster and Dekker, printed in 1607, describing the suburban pastimes of contemporary London. (2) A novel (1855) by Charles Kingsley, whose scene is laid in Elizabethan England and in what is now Venezuela.  WEST′WOOD, (1805-93). An English entomologist and antiquary. He was born in Sheffield, and became a lawyer in London, but never practiced, devoting himself to entomology and antiquarian researches. He was a founder (1833), of the Entomological Society of London, and finally its honorary life president. In 1861 he was appointed Hope professor of zoölogy at Oxford. While his works were largely systematic, he added greatly to our knowledge of the transformations and habits of insects. His Introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects (1839-40) was a work of permanent importance. Several of his works, as the