John S. Carlile was a lawyer, United States Congressman and Senator, and West Virginia Unionist.
Background
John Snyder Carlile was born on December 16, 1817 in Winchester, Virginia, United States. His family was Scotch-Irish, and long settled in the Shenandoah Valley. From his widowed mother, John received the early training in books and morals which the Valley Scotch believed in.
Education
He was educated by his mother until he was fourteen years old, when he became salesman in a store, and at the age of seventeen went into business on his own account. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1840, and began practice in Beverly.
Career
At fourteen Carlile became a store clerk. Developing rapidly, he three years later entered business on his own account, but only to find himself soon overwhelmed with debts, --debts which he later felt in honor bound to pay. Thanks to private study, however, he was able to begin life anew in 1840 as a lawyer in the little town of Beverly. Moving soon to the larger Clarksburg, he eventually fought his way to prominence, though not to preeminence, among the lawyers of the Kanawha section. Political life, however, was his great field. A "bold and forceful speaker, " of attractive personality, and blessed by the gods of western politics with early poverty, his progress was rapid. He was successively senator (1847 - 51), member of the constitutional convention of 1850, and congressman (1855 - 57)--being a member in 1856 of the House Committee of Accounts. Though he obtained in none of these positions more than local distinction and met defeat as the Know-Nothing candidate for Congress in 1857, he at all times represented faithfully the dominating pro-Union sentiments of his constituents. Accordingly they sent him to the secession convention of 1861. Here his extreme views and aggressive conduct made him the target of the Richmond Enquirer and put him in imminent danger of mob violence. Returning home hastily and determined to create a new state and to keep that state in the Union, he worked to secure a convention at Wheeling, notably by drafting the Address of May 22, 1861, to the people of western Virginia. When his proposal that this convention as a sovereign body create a new state was defeated as premature, he accepted the chairmanship of the convention's central committee and contributed to its campaign against ratification of the secession ordinance a widely distributed pamphlet that made no mention of a new state. A little later he embodied his ideas as to the legality of secession and the sovereignty of his people in a "Declaration of the People of Virginia, " which was adopted by the second Wheeling convention, June 17, 1861. A new state government, though not a new state, having been created on the basis of Carlile's argument, he was sent by it to the United States Senate. Already the House had received him as a member, from July 4 to July 13. Now the Senate welcomed him, put him on the Committee on Public Lands and the Committee on Territories; and the chairman of the latter committee, because of Carlile's "lucid mind, " soon entrusted him with entire management of a bill to create the new state of West Virginia. His great ambition now within his grasp, sense and fortune suddenly failed him. For although in the August convention of his state he had favored a West Virginia which was to be limited (for the present) to enthusiastic western counties, he now included in the bill counties of the Shenandoah Valley, which were loyal to the old state, thereby endangering the whole project. Perhaps he hoped thus to defeat the emancipation provisions of the bill, relying on aid from the border state men whom he afterward joined in opposing confiscation and military draft. Instead he was swept aside. Denounced by the home legislature, he was never again elected to office. When President Grant, mindful of Carlile's loyalty, nominated him as ambassador to Sweden, senatorial leaders refused confirmation. He died at Clarksburg.
Politics
Entering politics, he joined the Democratic Party.
He was a leader in the anti-secession movement, and was prominent in the Wheeling Convention of June 1861. On June 13, 1861, at the first session of the Second Wheeling Convention, Carlile authored "A Declaration of the People of Virginia. " The document pronounced Virginia's Ordinance of Secession illegal because the convention at which it had been drafted had been convened by the General Assembly, not by a referendum. It also called for the reorganization of the government of Virginia, arguing that due to Virginia's decision to secede from the United States, all state government offices had been vacated. The pro-Union Restored Government of Virginia was quickly recognized by President Abraham Lincoln and Congress as the legitimate government of the entire Commonwealth of Virginia, with Wheeling as its provisional capital. He was averse, however, to the formation of a new state out of the bulk of the pro-Union territory of Virginia—what became West Virginia.
Carlile was again chosen to Congress in 1861 on a Unionist Party position, but kept his seat in the House of Representatives only from July 4 through July 13, when he was elected as one of two United States Senators representing the Restored Government. He served until 1865. In the Senate, he was uniformly in favor of a strict construction of the Constitution, opposing all measures recognizing that there existed a rebellion of states instead of individuals, and denying the right of Congress to interfere in any way with the slaves (Carlile being a slaveowner himself).
Membership
He was a member of the constitutional convention; a member of the House Committee of Accounts; a member of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia; a member of the Virginia Senate.