Francis Harrison Pierpont / Peirpoint (1814-1899), Governor of the Reorganized State of Virginia from 1861 to 1868, was a lawyer from a middle-class background. He grew up in what is now Monongalia County, West Virginia, near the Pennsylvania border, where his parents operated a leatherworking business. Pierpont graduated from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and went on to work as a schoolteacher and as an attorney for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He was a supporter of the Whig Party until its collapse.
Pierpont’s wife, Julia Augusta Robertson, was a committed abolitionist. After witnessing the brutal treatment of slaves during a visit to Mississippi as a young man, Pierpont’s antislavery convictions were firmly cemented. He strongly opposed secession, and when the Richmond Secession Convention voted to leave the Union, he joined other prominent Unionists from western Virginia in organizing a rival convention in the city of Wheeling.
On June 20, 1861, Francis Pierpont was unanimously elected governor of the Reorganized State of Virginia, a Unionist rump state that exercised authority over areas under Union military control. Its leaders argued that Governor John Letcher and other state officials had forfeited their offices by embracing secession. President Abraham Lincoln agreed and recognized the legitimacy of the new government.
After West Virginia was admitted to the Union in 1863, Pierpont relocated his government from Wheeling to Alexandria, Virginia. Following the fall of the Confederacy, he moved to Richmond and undertook the difficult work of Reconstruction. Just a few years later, however, Pierpont was unceremoniously removed from office on April 4, 1868, after Congress placed Virginia under military rule. Disillusioned, he returned to West Virginia, where he spent the remainder of his life.
Updated: 19 September 2025
Created: 19 September 2025
Spirit of '61 