On June 20, 1863, West Virginia officially became the 35th state in the United States. Its statehood was unusual because it happened during the Civil War. When Virginia voted to secede from the Union in 1861, many people in the western counties did not agree with secession. These western counties had different economic, political, and geographic interests than eastern Virginia, and many residents wanted to remain loyal to the United States.

On June 19, 1865, U.S. Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3. The order announced that enslaved people in Texas were free. Although President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation more than two years earlier, freedom had not been fully enforced in Texas until Union troops arrived after the Civil War.