As Owen passed from "Hoosierdom to the old dominion," he was about to join the fight to free the western part of Virginia from Confederate control. The populations of the eastern and western portions of the Old Dominion were as different as the geography that separated them.
The mountainous regions of the west excluded slavery, while the low-lying lands of the east invited it. The natural disaffection that had developed between the east and the west was fueled by tax exemptions granted to the east that those in the west did not receive.
While Virginia Governor Letcher trained the state militia for service against the Union, pro-Union meetings were held throughout the western counties. The secession of Richmond was the catalyst that bolted the western counties to finally assert their independence; when Virginia seceded from the Union, the western part of the state seceded from Virginia. When the western counties declared their loyalty to the Union by unanimous vote, Governor Letcher inaugurated a reign of terror. His anti-Union forces beat and shot pro-Union Virginians. What property they could not confiscate they destroyed. The Union stepped in to defend those who had declared their loyalty.
As head of the Army of Virginia, General George Britton McClellan had to move his troops quickly into western Virginia because the secessionists were destroying the bridges that would serve as vital supply and communication lines in the mountainous region.
