Editor’s note: West Virginia turns 163 years old this weekend. To mark the occasion, we are republishing the front page editorial from the Daily Intelligencer of Wheeling’s June 20, 1863 edition, the day West Virginia officially entered the Union as the 35th state.

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This day ushers into being the new state of West Virginia, and adds the 35th star to the constellation of the American Union.

Today is the beginning of a new order of things with us here. The old government goes out and the new one comes in.

Today, Governor Pierpont bids us a formal farewell as our chief magistrate, and Governor Boreman will be inaugurated as his successor.

With the one, the parting cannot be but sad; with the other, the greeting cannot be but joyful.

Governor Pierpont goes to his new field of usefulness and labor, followed by the good wishes and benedictions of a grateful people.

Governor Boreman comes to us as a worthy successor, the unanimously chosen and honored chief magistrate of the new state.

While we gratefully remember the one, let us honor and support the other.

(Today), the new Commonwealth starts upon its career in the midst of turbulence and danger. Its officers have great difficulties and embarrassments to encounter. They will need the moral support of the whole people, and they are worthy of it.

Let us give it to them in unstinted measure.

Today, the legislature of the new state meets for organization. With the beginning of the week, it commences the important labor assigned it of putting the machinery of the new government into smooth and successful operation.

It has an arduous task before it, but, we believe the task will be credibly done.

The occasion is a peculiarly suggestive one, but we do not propose to indulge a retrospect now. Today, we enter into the reward of the long and toilsome struggle.

Two years ago, this day, the people of Western Virginia, in Convention assembled and signed the Declaration against the despotic usurpation and conspiracy at Richmond. That declaration embodied the spirit of all this Western Virginia movement, which on this, the second anniversary of that act, stands completed and consummated.

Never may we depart from either the spirit or the letter of that declaration, which declared that “the true purpose of all government is to promote the welfare and provide for the protection and security of the governed,” and that the rebellion at Richmond seeks “to subvert the union founded by Washington and his co-patriots, and the pure days of the Republic, which has conferred unexampled prosperity upon every class of citizen and upon every section of the country.”

Let us not forget that our new state, which we inaugurate today amid happy auspices, will be destroyed, the liberty it protects overthrown, and the hope it inspires blasted if the federal government is not able to sustain itself and enforce its authority. Our fate and the fate of our national union must be the same. We go on together to prosperity or we go down together to ruin.

Even now, the enemies of the country threaten to invade our homes and the citizen soldiery is under arms for their defense. Let us each and all vow today, in turning this new leaf of our history, undying hostility to this atrocious rebellion, which seeks the destruction of the rights of man, and fealty to the government and union in and under which alone life, liberty, and property are secure.

As citizens we are of the state, but as patriots we belong to the whole country.