[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 78 (Monday, June 20, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: June 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
WEST VIRGINIA DAY 1994
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, because of unique political exigencies that
existed more than a century-and-a-quarter ago in our country, less than
four-score miles west of Washington lies one of the most unusual
geographical configurations on the face of the Earth--my State of West
Virginia. It is there that one can,
hear the wind laugh and murmur and sing of a land
where even the old are fair,
and even the wise are
merry of tongue.
On the map, West Virginia stretches from north of Pittsburgh to south
of Richmond, and from west of Cleveland, Ohio, almost to Washington,
DC, in the east.
In topography, West Virginia rises 4,861 feet above sea level at
Spruce Knob in the Alleghenies and plunges to 247 feet above sea level
at Harpers Ferry.
In Wheeling and Morgantown, accents are heard that might blend well
in Chicago or Pittsburgh, while in Bluefield and Beckley, some dialects
would fit comfortably in Little Rock, Chattanooga, or Charlotte.
During the War Between the States, West Virginia was officially split
from the mother State of Virginia in loyalty to the Old Union. But,
please note, West Virginia was the birthplace of Stonewall Jackson;
Robert E. Lee oversaw his first Civil War struggles in ``Transmontane
Virginia''; the ``Eastern Panhandle'' of West Virginia was the home of
Confederate agent Belle Boyd; the counties of southeastern West
Virginia remained loyal Confederate territory until nearly the end of
the war; General Lee maintained a ``munitions factory'' in Organ Cave,
near Lewisburg, Greenbrier County; early West Virginia Senator Allen T.
Caperton served as well in the Senate of the Confederate States of
America, Senator Samuel Price was the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia
during its membership in the Confederacy, U.S. Senator John Kenna
joined the Confederate Army at age 16 and is now immortalized here in
the U.S. Capitol Building, and U.S. Senator Charles Faulkner left the
Virginia Military Institute voluntarily to serve under the Stars and
Bars as an aide to both General John C. Breckinridge and General Henry
A. Wise; and reputable historians of the Confederacy maintain that the
strength of Stonewall Jackson's fabled cavalry was a core of recruits
drawn to the defense of their homes from the western counties of Old
Virginia.
June 20, 1863, is the date on which West Virginia was admitted to the
Union as the 35th State.
But, as I have indicated, that admission--as well as the accompanying
secession from Virginia and the Confederacy--was not without
contradiction and opposition, even here in Washington, even here in the
U.S. Senate.
Indeed, when President Lincoln officially proposed West Virginia's
admission to the Union, a number of leading Union politicians and
statesmen opposed that move.
According to the opponents of West Virginia's admission to the Union
at the expense of Virginia, if Virginia's secession from the Union were
unconstitutional, then under what rubric might the Congress allow a
portion of a member State of that Union to separate itself from the
mother State without the mother State's express approval? Likewise, if
Virginia's secession from the Union were unconstitutional, by what
stretch of judicial legerdemain might West Virginia's secession from
Virginia be constitutional?
From descending accounts, Lincoln admitted that the West Virginia
secession from Virginia was, indeed, illegally equivalent to Virginia's
secession from the Union, but, Lincoln is reported to have added that
West Virginia's secession was ``our'' secession--meaning a secession in
favor of the Union.
Senate bill S. 365, the act for the admission of the State of West
Virginia into the Union, passed the Senate on July 14, 1862, by a vote
of 23 to 17; it passed the House of Representatives on December 10,
1862, by a vote of 96 to 55; and it was signed into law on December 31,
1862. The act provided for a proclamation by the President of the
United States, and I quote, ``and thereupon this act shall take effect
and be in force from and after sixty days from the date of said
proclamation.'' President Abraham Lincoln issued his proclamation on
April 20, 1863, and, accordingly, West Virginia became the 35th State
60 days later on June 20, 1863.
Mr. President, West Virginia was admitted to the Union in a
tumultuous hour in our history, dragging with it a collection of
unreconstructed Confederates, some of whom later served as Senators in
this Chamber, with a number of their compatriots from other previously
Confederate states.
But, interestingly but not surprisingly, the recorded history of life
in present-day West Virginia did not begin in 1863.
Indeed, fossilized slate ripped out of mines high up on the
Cumberland Plateau indicates that much of the strata currently in West
Virginia were long millennia ago once part of low-lying tropical
swamps.
Further, geologists maintain that the mountains of the Appalachian
Range, which embrace virtually all of eastern and southeastern West
Virginia, were once as high as today's Himalayas.
Long before the arrival of Europeans to this continent, various
Indian tribes--including the mysterious ``Mound Builders''--inhabited
West Virginia, and during the Colonial Era, current southern West
Virginia was apparently considered part of the Cherokee dominions,
while other tribes used much of the rest of West Virginia as shared
hunting territory.
Subsequent to, and as a consequence of, the French and Indian War,
the Royal Proclamation of 1763 officially forbade settlement of Trans-
Allegheny Virginia by subjects of the British Crown.
But the Royal Proclamation of 1763 was apparently honored more in the
breach than in obedience, as the desire of the colonists of British
North America to move westward had been so long thwarted by the long
conflict just resolved.
Thus, into the region of contemporary West Virginia poured a breed of
explorers and settlers--the vanguard of the great American expansion
toward the Pacific that finally reached its destination only a little
over a century ago.
Into the wild and forbidding terrain of western Virginia rushed men
such as Christopher Gist, Thomas Decker, Morgan Morgan, Andrew Lewis,
Lewis Wetzel, Daniel Boone, ``Mad Anne'' Bailey, and even George
Washington himself, bent upon establishing a vast plantation experiment
along the banks of the great Kanawha River.
Many of those early settlers of West Virginia were, at best, semi-
civilized by Eastern Seaboard standards--men and women who had to brace
themselves against the savagery of an untamed, pitiless frontier where
settlers and aborigines alike gave no quarter, where human life was
worth only its ability to contribute to the survival of the whole
community, where the heat of summer and the bone-chilling cold of
winter were certainties, where a man and woman might bear a dozen
children and see perhaps one or two or three survive to adolescence,
where wounds were cauterized with white-hot pokers and smashed legs and
arms were set with tree branches, where the reputation of a man might
be determined by the numbers of opponents he had killed in a fair
fight, and wealth might be measured in horses and cows and pigs.
Interestingly, the Old Frontier moved north of West Virginia along
the National Road, the Old Cumberland Road and south of West Virginia
by way of the Cumberland Gap, leaving West Virginia frozen, as it were,
in a time fast passing.
Thus, when a group of Virginia officials, led by Chief Justice John
Marshall, attempted to navigate the formidable New River Gorge in 1812,
searching for a viable canal route to the Ohio Valley, they found the
Gorge ``awful and discouraging.''
Consequently, while tides of civilization swept around and past West
Virginia, north and south, the hardscrabble life of the frontier
remained a constant in the western counties of Virginia proper, as it
did up into this century in western North Carolina, much of eastern
Tennessee, and areas of eastern Kentucky.
Today, and for some years now, some people have called this area--
sometimes condescendingly--``Appalachia'' as if to dismiss a vast area
of our country and millions of our fellow Americans with one
oversimplified stereotype.
But in West Virginia and those areas that share her post-Colonial
heritage can be found some of the purest, most potent values and
strengths on which our Nation was originally founded.
In the mountain fastnesses of West Virginia and in the deep valleys
and hollows of my home State live some men and women possessed of a
steely integrity once believed to have perished with the heroes of
Greek antiquity.
The benediction of these covering heavens
Fall on their heads like dew! for they are worthy
To inlay heaven with stars.
Permit me to cite but one example. A long-time friend of mine in
Raleigh County, West Virginia, Walton Riffe was my barber for many
years. Mr. Riffe is deceased now, but to him and his wife Alma, who
still resides at the old homeplace in Raleigh County, were born 18
children, of whom 17 survived to adulthood and are still living today--
17 out of 18. Any Senator who wishes to see this outstanding picture of
an outstanding family should simply visit my office just down on the
next floor. A beautiful family, 17 children together with their mother,
Mrs. Alma Riffe, are portrayed in that picture.
The immediate offspring of Walton and Alma Riffe of Raleigh County,
West Virginia count among themselves 12 bachelor's degrees, 5 master's
degrees, and one law degree, for a cumulative 72 years of higher
education through which Walton and Alma Riffe and their assorted
siblings supported one another and themselves by work--work--and
through shared bank accounts.
As each brother or sister completed college and entered the work
force, that one supported the next brother or sister in his or her
turn.
Further, six of the nine Riffe boys served in the military, both in
peacetime and war, representing among them the Army, the Air Force, and
the Navy.
Highly respected members of their communities, the sons and daughters
of Walton and Alma Riffe have provided 30 grandchildren and 13 great-
grandchildren to enhance the Riffe name.
I know of no better living example of ``family values'' than that of
the experience of the family of Walton and Alma Riffe.
In an instance such as this, the term ``family values'' represents no
cheap political shibboleth to hurl at one's opponents at election time.
Taken in the light of a real West Virginia family, the term ``family
values'' represents a moral system older than the United States of
America itself--a value system based on family love and loyalty, shared
burdens, mutual unselfishness, patriotism, and genuine foresight--a
value system rooted in the Ten Commandments and in the dreams of
prophets and mystics of yore--a value system without which, regardless
of a nation's military prowess, superpower status, economic vigor, or
international prestige, no nation can expect long to exist, much less
forestall the exigencies of history or the caprice of those forces that
swell and shrink the fortunes of empires and states.
Mr. President, no artificial theme park could comprehend wonders
commonplace in West Virginia--natural wonders of forests, mountain
crags, and roaring Alpine gorges--and no movie could ever, ever capture
the saga of human wonders commonplace in West Virginia--heroic wonders
of personal and family triumph and achievement in the face of sometimes
murderous odds.
But I invite any of our colleagues to visit West Virginia on a clear,
warm summer night--to climb to the pinnacle of a mountain peak or to
the summit of a rolling ridge, away from the clamour of urban turmoil,
tension, and the noisy cacophony of rock and roll music and televised
pap that too often substitute currently for culture--to stand there
under the stars and bathe in the moonlight--
* * * when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass, * * *
and to sense there in the might of towering mountains and plunging
crevasses the paradox of individual human life.
There, the--
* * * seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery set; the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, * * *.
There, in the clean night air and the stillness of one's own
consciousness, one might realize anew--or perhaps for the first time--
how men and women long ages ago came to believe in God and to grasp in
part our purpose on this Earth.
There, under a pristine sky, one might hear in his or her own heart
the Voice of God whispering the profoundest truths about the nature and
destiny of our species in the total scheme of life and in the mystery
that is all around us.
There, in the intoxication of such unlimited vastness, one might
imagine that he could reach skyward and take home with him a brilliant,
sparkling star or a blazing comet shooting across the arch of heaven.
There, without the pretenses of civilization to distract one or to
stir up ``vain imaginings'' in the heart, one might intuit, as did the
Psalmist of old, the wisdom of the Old Testament world that says,
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in
trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and
though the mountains be carried into the midst of the
sea;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the
mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the
city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the
most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall
help her, and that right early.
The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his
voice, the earth melted.
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Selah.
Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath
made in the earth.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he
breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he
burneth the chariot in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the
heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Selah.
Mr. President, I have read from Psalm 46, King James version of the
Holy Bible.
So, Mr. President, happy 131st birthday, wild, wonderful, West
Virginia.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daschle). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on behalf of
the citizens of West Virginia. On June 20, 1863, West Virginia broke
away from the State of Virginia and declared its independence as the
35th State to join the Union. I take this opportunity to recognize the
131st birthday of this glorious State.
From the beginning, the forefathers and foremothers of West Virginia
have stood up for the rights and responsibilities of the State as well
as others. Starting with the Civil War, West Virginians have played a
major role in defending our country and what it represents. It has been
costly at times but always rewarding insuring that new generations can
continue to live in freedom.
The pride of the mountain State is always evident. Each year West
Virginians greet, with open arms, hundreds of thousands of guests. They
come to visit white water rafting in the summer, the transformation of
the leaves in the fall and spring, and ski resorts in the winter. Many
people return year after year to the mountain State because of their
growing love for the serenity of the State.
These are only a few of the reasons I am proud to call West Virginia
my home. I ask my distinguished colleagues to join with me to recognize
West Virginia on her 131st birthday.
Mr. DeCONCINI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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