referendum. Therefore, since the Secession Convention had not been convened by a referendum, all of its acts--including the Ordinance of Secession--were illegal and void. It also declared the existing government in Richmond void and called for the reorganization of the state government on the grounds that Virginia's secession had effectively vacated all state offices. On June 19, delegates approved this plan unanimously. The next day, June 20, the convention selected new officers of the Virginia state government (usually called the Restored Government of Virginia to avoid confusion with the secessionist government). Francis Pierpont of Marion County was elected governor. On June 25, the convention adjourned until August 6. Chart of delegates The delegates to the Second Wheeling Convention of 1861 from counties in western and northern Virginia. Archives The proceedings of the First Wheeling Convention were recorded by Judge Gibson Lamb Cranmer of Ohio County, Charles B. Waggener of Mason County, and Marshall M. Dent of Monongalia County. Judge Cranmer was also the Secretary of the Second Wheeling Convention and custodian of the manuscript proceedings, journals, and other documents of the Convention. However, his records for the convention were lost during an 1884 flood of Wheeling Island. Copies of the records were sought in Alexandria and Richmond but none were found. Virgil A. Lewis, State Historian of West Virginia, reconstructed them from daily records printed in the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer by Granville D. Hall, and published them as How West Virginia Was Made in 1909 (Hall having published The Rending of Virginia from his editing of the records in 1902). See also East Tennessee Convention, a similar event by pro-Union East Tennessee representatives Alexander Scott Withers, delegate for Lewis County at the First Convention Virginia Conventions References Bibliography External links First Wheeling Convention information Second Wheeling Convention information Text of Carlile's "A Declaration of the People of Virginia" Text of Carlile's "An Ordinance for the Reorganization of the State Government" Secession crisis of 1860–61 West Virginia in the American Civil War Southern Unionists in the American Civil War Wheeling, West Virginia Political history of Virginia 1861 in Virginia 1861 conferences