West Virginia seceded from the state of Virginia in 1861 over concerns about the former's secession from the Union, and was admitted to the Union itself in 1863 at the height of the American Civil War. Was the entire state broadly Unionist or were there pockets of Confederate support? How did the state of Virginia, and the Confederacy as a whole, react? What were the thoughts of the Union and the courts on the legality of this move, given that a portion of a state had never attempted to become its own state previously?