“In any aspect, we view the existing state of things in Virginia, nothing but confusion, conflict and strife is foreboded.” —Archibald Campbell.

Narrator: Newspaper editor Archibald Campbell, the nephew of Alexander Campbell, had fallen in with abolitionists while in college in New York. Now he began using his paper, the Wheeling Intelligencer, to rally public support for the creation of a new state free of slavery in Western Virginia.

“There is now on foot a grand counter-movement having for its object a division of the state at the Blue Ridge. This popular movement awaits only the opportunity and pretext for assuming formidable proportions.”