| Restored Government of Virginia | |||||||||||
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| Restored state government of United States of America | |||||||||||
| 1861–1865 | |||||||||||
 1864 map of the states of West Virginia and Virginia by Samuel Augustus Mitchell. The Restored Government of Virginia asserted itself to be the rightful state government of these lands until the admission of the State of West Virginia into the Union in 1863. After this, it claimed to be the lawful government of the modern state boundaries of Virginia. Over the following two years, it assumed actual control of the entirety of Virginia's postbellum territory as the Union Army occupied it by force of arms. | |||||||||||
| Capital | |||||||||||
| Government | |||||||||||
| • Type | Organized incorporated state/Shadow government | ||||||||||
| Governor | |||||||||||
• 1861–1865 | Francis Harrison Pierpont | ||||||||||
| Historical era | American Civil War (1861–1865) | ||||||||||
| June 11, 1861 | |||||||||||
• Formation of a new state government | 19 June 1861 | ||||||||||
| June 20, 1863 | |||||||||||
| April 9, 1865 | |||||||||||
• Provisional government formed in Richmond | 9 May 1865 | ||||||||||
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The Restored (or Reorganized) Government of Virginia was the Unionist government of Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865) in opposition to the government which had approved Virginia's seceding from the United States and joining the new Confederate States of America. Each state government regarded the other as illegitimate. The Restored Government attempted to assume de facto control of the Commonwealth's northwest with the help of the Union Army but was only partly successful. It raised Union regiments from local volunteers but depended upon recruits from Pennsylvania and Ohio to fulfill its commitments. It administered this territory until, with its approval, the area became part of West Virginia in mid-1863.
The Restored Government thereafter continued to operate, albeit with very limited actual authority, within what it considered to be the Commonwealth's new borders under the protection of the Union Army. The Restored Government therefore became a shadow government similar in many respects to the state governments loyal to the Confederacy that claimed Kentucky and Missouri; however, unlike those governments, Virginia's Unionist government was never completely expelled from its claimed territory and thus did not become a government in exile. Until the end of hostilities, most of its de jure territory remained controlled by the secessionist state government, which never recognized either Unionist state government operating within its antebellum borders. Furthermore, since the Restored Government's claimed territory not under secessionist control only remained so by force of arms, it was placed under Federal martial law, thus further limiting the authority of the Unionist civilian government.
The Restored Government had only executive and legislative branches; it did not form a judicial branch. It met in Wheeling, in the extreme northwestern corner of the state, until that became part of West Virginia. From August 26, 1863, until June, 1865, it met in Alexandria on the right bank of the Potomac River, which had been occupied by Union Army forces in 1861 to protect the adjacent national capital of Washington, D.C. The Restored Government adopted a new state constitution in 1864 abolishing slavery, and, the following year, ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. From its formation, the Restored Government claimed the state's antebellum capital of Richmond (which also became the Confederacy's national capital) as its own de jure capital city. It eventually moved there near the end of the war after the Confederate States government and General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia evacuated it as their capital in late March 1865, and the city returned to Federal control.