June 20 · This Day in America
In the middle of the Civil War, a new state enters the Union — and it is carved from the body of one that tried to leave it. When Virginia seceded in 1861, the mountain counties to the west refused to follow Richmond out of the country. They were Unionists, small farmers, men who owned no slaves and resented the planter aristocracy that did. They built their own loyal government at Wheeling and asked Congress to make them a state. It was constitutionally strange, politically fraught, and Lincoln signed it anyway, on one condition: West Virginia must write gradual emancipation into its constitution. On this day it becomes the 35th state, the only one born by breaking away from a rebellion. A state that chose the Union when its own capital had walked out the door. Loyalty, it turns out, can also draw a border.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1782
After six years and three committees, the Continental Congress finally approves a national emblem: an eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch, an unfinished pyramid, and a thirteen-letter Latin phrase, E Pluribus Unum — out of many, one. It was nearly all that survived from the first sketch by Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams. A young country, still at war, had just told itself in three words what it hoped to become.
Source: www.archives.gov