The founding fathers of West Virginia, if you choose to call them that, Governors Boreman, Farnsworth and Stevenson, originally came from Pennsylvania and New York, they were not native West Virginians. The Statehood movement almost fractured over slavery when the Wheeling Unionists realized they would have to give up their slaves. They reached a compromise, they would only free slaves over the age of 21. West Virginia entered the Union as a slave state.