“Born of Rebellion: West Virginia Statehood and the Civil War” is located in the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History & Education foyer. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — A new, traveling exhibit created by the West Virginia Humanities Council (WVHC), “Born of Rebellion: West Virginia Statehood and the Civil War,” has made its most recent stop in the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History & Education.

The exhibit opened in the center’s foyer last Monday and will remain there through the end of September. According to WVHC Program Officer Kyle Warmack, it was named after a former WVHC exhibit, which won an American Association for State and Local History award in 2006. While that exhibit focused solely on the constitutionality of West Virginia’s statehood, this new exhibit, which kicked off its statewide tour at West Virginia Wesleyan College last fall, addresses that and a number of other issues that arose in the state around the time of the Civil War.

“I’ve heard folks say that they had seen the exhibit back when it came through the state before, but it’s not at all the same! It’s a completely new exhibit,” Warmack said. “The original exhibit had a ton of merit. It did a great job. But, as we were looking at our traveling exhibits as the COVID-19 Pandemic was going on, we decided that there was a lot in the first iteration of this exhibit that could be revamped and changed.

“We realized that with this exhibit, we would need to get some things reprinted, if we wanted it to exhibit again. And then, as we read through the script and looked at the visuals, we realized that, visually, more could be accomplished with the design technology of the 2020s, versus the early 2000s,” Warmack said. “Now, it’s a lot more accessible.”

The new exhibit takes a more humane approach to the subject of the Civil War, focusing on personal accounts from diaries that were written by men and women in the state during that time and looking at the issue of slavery in the state.

“Born of Rebellion” will be on display in the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History & Education through the end of September. Tabitha Johnston

“The original exhibit focused on the constitutionality so much, that slavery was not mentioned much in it at all,” Warmack said. “We thought that was doing a disservice to West Virginia’s story. Slavery was present in West Virginia. There was only one county in what we consider West Virginia now that never had any slaves — there were less here than in other states, but there were still slaves.”

Warmack noted that, by talking about the subject of slavery in the state, other fascinating, related subjects could also be highlighted in the exhibit, such as the Underground Railroad’s path through West Virginia.

“This was a potential escape route for fugitive slaves. There were multiple sites throughout the state, where stops for the Underground Railroad occurred,” Warmack said. “These are stories that don’t come out, if you just talk about statistics and general trends. We tried to bring out the stories of these human beings — to talk about before, during and after war, what the situation was for enslaved people.”

According to Warmack, the exhibit is also more interactive than before, with the opportunity for visitors to sign loyalty oaths to the United States, like the ones Confederate soldiers had to sign at the end of the war, and to vote for the names they would have chosen for the state among the options proposed at the time of secession.

“I like to say there’s something in it for everybody. You can focus on the aspects of statehood that are of interest to you,” Warmack said. “If you’re not into something, such as the section on military history here in the state, then you can probably just skip that section and not miss out on a lot. We wanted there to be something, so that all kinds of audiences will have something to be interested in.”

The Byrd Center is open to the public, Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.