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In the election of 1870, ex-Confederates, once again allowed to vote, swept Democrats into political power in West Virginia.

Democrats failed to change the names of Lincoln and Grant counties to Davis and Lee but they managed to move the state capital from Wheeling, that iron-hearted city, as one southern democrat put it.

The effects of government were put aboard a steamboat on the Ohio and taken south to Charleston, a small, nearly inaccessible village in the Kanawha Valley.

Richard O. Curry: West Virginia was now back under the control ironically of ex-Confederates who had been included in the new state against their will. That is one of the great ironies of West Virginia history is that people made it, lost it, and lost it within five years.