<P> During the Civil War, a Unionist government in Wheeling, Virginia, presented a statehood bill to Congress in order to create a new state from 48 counties in western Virginia . The new state would eventually incorporate 50 counties . The issue of slavery in the new state delayed approval of the bill . In the Senate Charles Sumner objected to the admission of a new slave state, while Benjamin Wade defended statehood as long as a gradual emancipation clause would be included in the new state constitution . Two senators represented the Unionist Virginia government, John S. Carlile and Waitman T. Willey . Senator Carlile objected that Congress had no right to impose emancipation on West Virginia, while Willey proposed a compromise amendment to the state constitution for gradual abolition . Sumner attempted to add his own amendment to the bill, which was defeated, and the statehood bill passed both houses of Congress with the addition of what became known as the Willey Amendment . President Lincoln signed the bill on December 31, 1862 . Voters in western Virginia approved the Willey Amendment on March 26, 1863 . </P> <P> President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which exempted from emancipation the border states (four slave states loyal to the Union) as well as some territories occupied by Union forces within Confederate states . Two additional counties were added to West Virginia in late 1863, Berkeley and Jefferson . The slaves in Berkeley were also under exemption but not those in Jefferson County . As of the census of 1860, the 49 exempted counties held some 6000 slaves over 21 years of age who would not have been emancipated, about 40% of the total slave population . The terms of the Willey Amendment only freed children, at birth or as they came of age, and prohibited the importation of slaves . </P> <P> West Virginia became the 35th state on June 20, 1863, and the last slave state admitted to the Union . Eighteen months later, the West Virginia legislature completely abolished slavery, and also ratified the 13th Amendment on February 3, 1865 . </P> <P> At the start of the Civil War, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which were slave states . Eleven of these slave states issued various emergency declarations of secession from the United States to form the Confederacy and were represented in the Confederate Congress . The slave states that stayed in the Union, Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky (called, border states) were seated in the U.S. Congress . By the time the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, Tennessee was already in Union control . Accordingly, the Proclamation applied only to the 10 remaining Confederate states . Abolition of slavery became a condition of the return of local rule and restoration in those states that had declared their secession . </P>

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