Book excerpt: Excerpt from History and Government of West Virginia The idea of preparing a history of West Virginia as text-book for use in the public and private schools of the State was not born of a sudden impulse. For more than a quarter of a century the author has been engaged in public school work, and nearly all that time in active classwork in the schoolroom. While so engaged he became strongly impressed with the fact that any course of instruction is seriously defective if it does not include a study that enables pupils to grow familiar with the history of their own State and people. History is also entitled to a place in the curriculum because it possesses high value as a character-builder, because its subject-matter is in itself deeply interesting, and because it readily leads into other subjects of the school course. This book has been prepared for the use of schools, and its aim is to place in the hands of the children of West Virginia a faithful, non-sectarian and non-partisan history of the State in which they will eventually have to discharge the duties of citizens or residents. As West Virginia is one of the many States composing the Great Republic, enough of national history has been interwoven to enable the pupil to perceive in what manner and to what extent the local laws, customs and institutions of the State have been affected by events occurring in the progress of the Nation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.