(Editorial - Graphic Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

Today, Mountain State residents celebrate another proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln. On Jan. 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. On June 20, 1863, he declared that Mountaineers are always free.

To be more precise, on this West Virginia Day we celebrate the 162nd anniversary of our admission to the Union, after residents here staunchly rejected the tenets of the Confederate States of America and developed their own Unionist state government.

West Virginia’s “secession in favor of the constitution,” was put into motion by Lincoln once the president ensured the new state’s constitution would include the gradual emancipation of slaves within its territory. Soon-to-be Mountain State residents overwhelmingly voted in favor of that change and the rest of the state constitution.

Back then “the loyal people of western Virginia declined to yield to the demand of the secessionists of the state,” as historian Theodore F. Lang put it. For it, they were criticized as “unprincipled radicals,” by those in Washington, D.C., who hadn’t yet sorted out the independent spirit and hard-working common decency they were dealing with in these hills and valleys.

In considering the pleas of those in western Virginia desperate to separate themselves from the values and control of the Confederacy, Lincoln wrote “Her brave and good men regard her admission into the Union as a matter of life and death.” There was much to value about this region, but for Lincoln, part of the appeal was knowing the move would turn “that much slave soil to free.”

Free. All of us.

Later, the wives of Gov. Francis Pierpont and other state officials wrote to Lincoln, telling him they were grateful “you have saved us from contempt and disgrace.”

What wonderful sentiments to bear in mind as we celebrate today.

Happy birthday, West Virginia. Montani semper liberi.