The "miserable Virginia country town" that became the workshop of the world, Conflict, consensus and contingency in Wheeling, West Virginia, 1769 - 1900

Abstract

The only US city to have been a state capital on two separate occasions, Wheeling, West Virginia has been generally overlooked except by local historians and its trajectory has not been properly considered within the context of the development of a national political economy. This is surprising because Wheeling offers valuable insights into how and why urban communities are formed and develop into cities; how class and gender power structures evolve and are sustained; and how the growth of America’s national economy changed relations between the workforce and employers. Perched on the eastern banks of the upper reaches of the Ohio River, ninety miles south of Pittsburgh, Wheeling was one of the first gateways to the West, one of first inland cities to industrialize, and was once the largest city in West Virginia. It was also the epicentre of a political movement that led to the creation of West Virginia as the 35th State of the Union mid-way through the Civil War when the viability of the Union was under threat. Wheeling’s prosperity peaked following the Civil War when its factories manufactured more nails than anywhere else in the world.

My research confirms the underlying causes of Wheeling’s success to be its strategic location, the availability of natural resources especially coal, a reliable supply of skilled labor, and the astuteness of Wheeling’s business elite. Wheeling’s postbellum success gave rise to reasonable expectations that the city would continue to prosper but these expectations were not realized, and Wheeling today bears many typical characteristics of rust belt America. Wheeling’s decline is therefore instructive for broader considerations of how national economic growth affected the social fabric of the urban frontier, and why cities fail.