Henry M. Mathews

While at war Mathews' reputation as a fledgling leader had spread through his home state. In a post-war state that was dominated by the Republican party, Mathews, a Democrat, was elected to the West Virginia Senate in 1865 but was not allowed to serve due to the restriction that prohibited former Confederates from holding public office.[2] As Democratic support increased in subsequent years, state Republicans amended the West Virginia State Constitution to return state rights to former Confederates in an attempt to appeal to voters. However, the effort backfired as the Democratic party quickly regained control of the legislature.[20] Mathews was sent as a Democratic delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1872 to overhaul the 1863 Republican-drafted state constitution. The drafting of this new constitution, of which Mathews was a part, enabled his rise in the politics of the state.[2][21] The following year, 1873, Mathews was elected 7th attorney general of the state under Governor John J. Jacobs, succeeding Joseph Sprigg, and served one term in which his popularity within his party rose.[22][2]

An 1870s political cartoon calling for "Death to Bourbonism"

At the conclusion of his term as attorney general, Mathews defeated Republican Nathan Goff by 15,000 votes in the most one-sided race for governor in state history at that time.[1] Thus, on March 4, 1877, Mathews became 5th governor of West Virginia, and the first Confederate veteran in the United States to be elected to a governorship.[23][2] Mathews' conservative, pro-business platform aligned him with the Bourbon Democratic movement sweeping the South. Mathews was the first of the Bourbons to ascend to a governorship,[2] though many would follow all over the South in the 1880s.[24]

In his inaugural address, Mathews emphasized unity and progression in the wake of war, promising:

The legitimate results of the war have been accepted in good faith, and political parties are no longer aligned upon the dead issues of the past. We have ceased to look back mournfully, and have said "Let the dead past bury its dead," and with reorganized forces have moved up to the living issues of the present.[25]

Mathews' address was well-received across the state. The Republican Morgantown Post praised Mathews' "broad, manly, and liberal address, which possesses, to our mind, an honesty of purpose, and a freedom from disguise, that is truly refreshing. . . The skies are brightening all around, and argue well for a long lease of the best fraternal feeling."[26] Mathews' inauguration, one "of flowers and flags and banners and music, feasting and revelry,"[26] had been a more elaborate affair than previous gubernatorial inaugurations had been, setting a precedent in the state that has continued to the present.[27]

On assembling his cabinet, Mathews sought "perfect peace, that fighting might cease."[28] He appointed both Republican and Democratic party members to his cabinet, a move that was uncommon in the post-war political climate.[2]

Blockade of engines at Martinsburg, West Virginia, July 16, 1877

Awaiting Mathews in office were economic woes associated with the Panic of 1873 and the subsequent Long Depression. In July 1877, four months into his term, he was alerted that Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, had been stopping trains to protest wage cuts. Mathews called out local militia under Colonel Charles J. Faulkner to disperse the protest, but unbeknownst to Mathews, several in the company were rail workers themselves, and many others were sympathetic to the strike. The militia acted indecisively on arrival, and in the confusion a striker named William Vandergriff fired on the militia and was mortally wounded by return fire. Local papers blamed Mathews for the death and deemed Vandergriff a "martyr." The militia officially conveyed to Mathews that they would thereon refuse his orders.[29]

Mathews responded by sending another militia company—this time making sure no rail workers were among them—to address the growing strike, but he was informed that this company too would not act against the strikers.[30] Mathews finally complied with the urging of his administration to request Federal troops from newly elected President Rutherford B. Hayes. Mathews' decision to call for federal support garnered significant national notice to the strikes. Local newspapers were highly critical of the governor's characterization of the strikes to Hayes as an "insurrection" rather than an act of desperation, with one notable paper recorded a striking worker's perspective that, "[he] had might as well die by the bullet as to starve to death by inches."[31] Mathews' decision to call for federal assistance has been vindicated by historians, who have come to view federal involvement as inevitable.[31]

Hayes had vowed not to involve the Federal government in domestic matters during his candidacy several months prior, and he sought to solve the matter diplomatically. After failed negotiations with leaders of the railway "insurrection," he reluctantly dispatched Federal troops to Martinsburg. However, by this time the strike, by then referred to as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, had reverted to peaceful protest in Martinsburg while violence spread to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Missouri. The strike gained considerable support in other states across the country.[30][32]

In 1880, Mathews was again required to dispatch the militia, this time to Hawks Nest, Fayette County, to stop the state's first major coal strike, as miners from Hawks Nest were being threatened with violence to cease productivity by a rival constituent.[33]

West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston, West Virginia. Charleston was made the state's permanent state capital during Mathews' administration.[34]

From 1863, when West Virginia was formed, through 1875, the capital of West Virginia had traveled between Wheeling and Charleston, with its location largely dependent on political party control of the state, with Republicans favoring Wheeling and Democrats favoring Charleston. Early in Mathews' administration, a vote was held to determine a permanent location for the capital, which was currently located in Wheeling. Three options of Charleston, Clarksburg, and Martinsurg were presented (Wheeling was not listed as a voting option). During the campaigning, state Democrats employed a young Booker T. Washington to engage in a speaking tour to consolidate black opinion in favor of Charleston. Charleston won the vote, and has remained the state capital since.[34]

Questions of debt owed by West Virginia to Virginia persisted throughout Mathews' term in office. The question arose quickly when in 1863 West Virginia was created from the northwestern Virginia region. While both states recognized that a debt existed, determining the value of the debt proved difficult.[2] Virginia authorities had determined that West Virginia should assume approximately one-third of the state debt as of January 1, 1861 — the year Virginia was seceded from the United States, determining West Virginia's total to be $953,360.32. Mathews' advisers countered with the figure of $525,000. Another figure given to him by the Virginians was $7,000,000, owed by West Virginia to its eastern counterpart. Unable to determine the accuracy of these reports, and recognizing that the question had taken on political meaning, Mathews pursued policy intended to suspend a resolution until the specifics had become clear. His successor, Jacob B. Jackson, inherited the same problem and further suspended the resolution of the matter.[35] The argument dragged on throughout the 1800s and the debt was not retired until 1939.[36]

During Mathews' administration, Attorney General Robert White secured a decision by the United States Supreme Court in favor of levying taxes against the burgeoning railroad industry, which to that point had not paid any taxes to the State of West Virginia. This decision resulted in an influx of thousands of dollars into the State treasury.[37]

Before the Civil War, western Virginia had a relatively low slave population compared to the eastern part of the state, or the South as a whole (4% in western Virginia as compared to about 30% in the South).[38][39] Mathews' family were among this slave holding population in western Virginia.[40] Mathews' precise views on race and slavery are unclear, though he was a member of several local political conventions that issued statements and resolutions opposing racial equality, both before and after the Civil War.[9][41] He was also a member of the state convention that wrote the 1872 West Virginia Constitution, which declared that "White and colored persons shall not be taught in the same school."[42] Historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor states that the belief of "the necessity of racial stratification" would have been a common position of a White southerner "and a good many prominent Northerners" around this time.[43]

During Mathews' political rise, he was identified as a Redeemer – the Southern faction of the Bourbon Democrats. Redeemers dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910 and were generally led by wealthy former planters, businessmen, and professionals who expelled the freedmen, carpetbaggers, and scalawags from Southern government and reestablished white supremacy in the South.[44] However, West Virginia historian Otis K. Rice objects to this characterization of the West Virginia Redeemers:

This fails to do justice to the flexibility of West Virginia Bourbons. The West Virginia Democrats who followed the Republican founders of the state included Governors Mathews, Jackson, Wilson, Fleming, and MacCorkle. These men were ready to adjust to changing political conditions and to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the federal Constitution, which conferred freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote and hold office upon former slaves.

From 1865 to 1957 West Virginia passed eleven Jim Crow laws under Democratic leadership. None of these were passed during Mathews' administration of 1877 to 1881.[45] In 1881, following the ruling of the Strauder v. West Virginia Supreme Court case, Mathews reversed a 1873 state law that prohibited blacks from serving on juries.[46]