Qualla: State of Kanawha https://qualla.com/state-of-kanawha en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:07 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: State of Kanawha https://qualla.com/state-of-kanawha State of Kanawha: Introduction https://qualla.com/state-of-kanawha/ On December 3, 1861, a delegate from Taylor County named Harmon Sinsel stood up at the Wheeling Constitutional Convention and proposed striking the name Kanawha from the draft constitution of the new state being carved out of Confederate Virginia. The committee had spent weeks landing on Kanawha as the name. It was indigenous, distinctive, and tied to the most important river in the new state's geography. Sinsel's motion was, in essence, an argument for something more conventional. The debate that followed shaped a question every new state has to answer: who are you, and what do you call yourself in front of strangers? The motion passed 30 to 14. The new state would not be Kanawha. It would be West Virginia.

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/m/state-of-kanawha-wp/dnym-state-of-kanawha-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full State of Kanawha: Why a New State https://qualla.com/state-of-kanawha/ Virginia voted to secede from the Union on April 17, 1861. The northwestern counties of the state - mountain country, lightly slaveholding, economically tied to Pittsburgh and Cincinnati rather than to Richmond - voted overwhelmingly against secession. Within weeks, Unionist Virg...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/m/state-of-kanawha-wp/dnym-state-of-kanawha-why-a-new-state.mp3 0:06 2 full State of Kanawha: Kanawha https://qualla.com/state-of-kanawha/ The drafting committee proposed Kanawha for several reasons. The Kanawha River was the dominant geographic feature of the new state - it drains a basin from the highlands of southwestern Virginia to the Ohio River at Point Pleasant, passing through what is now Charleston, the eve...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/m/state-of-kanawha-wp/dnym-state-of-kanawha-kanawha.mp3 0:06 3 full State of Kanawha: The Argument Against https://qualla.com/state-of-kanawha/ Sinsel's objection was practical: there was already a Kanawha County in the new state, and confusion between the State of Kanawha and the County of Kanawha would be inevitable. The argument was real but probably not the deciding factor - other states have lived comfortably with t...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/m/state-of-kanawha-wp/dnym-state-of-kanawha-the-argument-against.mp3 0:06 4 full State of Kanawha: What Did Not Get Considered https://qualla.com/state-of-kanawha/ The historical record of the December 1861 debate does not preserve a careful conversation about whether keeping the name of a displaced Indigenous people for a state where their descendants no longer lived was honoring or appropriating that history. That was not a question 19th-...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/m/state-of-kanawha-wp/dnym-state-of-kanawha-what-did-not-get-considered.mp3 0:06 5 full State of Kanawha: What Came Next https://qualla.com/state-of-kanawha/ The convention adopted West Virginia as the new state's name. The constitution was ratified by the voters of the disputed region in April 1862. President Lincoln admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. The state has now carried the name for more than 160 years. The ...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/m/state-of-kanawha-wp/dnym-state-of-kanawha-what-came-next.mp3 0:06 6 full