Harrison County was among the first jurisdictions in western Virginia to support the Union. After Abraham Lincoln was elected president and Southern states were talking of secession, a pro-Union meeting was called for November 24, 1860, at the Clarksburg Courthouse. On January 12, 1861, an anonymous Clarksburg resident wrote that if eastern Virginia seceded, western Virginia would raise the banner of separate state sovereignty and remain in the Union. On April 17, 1861, the Virginia Secession Convention voted 88 to 55 to send the Ordinance of Secession to the people of Virginia for ratification, and delegates from western Virginia who had argued against secession left Richmond under threat of bodily harm. After returning to Clarksburg, Unionist leader John S. Carlile called a public meeting in Harrison County, and on April 22 almost 1,200 residents gathered at the courthouse to decide what course to take in the national crisis. That meeting produced the call for the First Wheeling Convention on May 13, setting the stage for West Virginia statehood. When Harrison County voted on the Ordinance of Secession, its men rejected it by 1,691 to 694. John Snyder Carlile, a Harrison County delegate from Clarksburg who had served as a state senator, a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850-1851, and a congressman, voted against secession in 1861 and led the movement to form a new state government for Virginia on the grounds that secession had vacated the state government offices. He was elected to the United States Senate under the Restored Government of Virginia and at first supported but later opposed West Virginia statehood when Congress added a gradual emancipation provision to the statehood bill. Though he had been one of the earliest advocates of statehood, he ultimately voted against the bill, and he died near Clarksburg in 1878.