This book was written, according to the author, as an attempt to present an unbiased account of the strange course of events in the history of Virginia from the time of Lincoln's election to the presidency to the time of the admission of West Virginia into the Union. It is, however, more of a polemic than an historical contribution. The author raises this very question himself by his declaration that he has no grudges to satisfy and no patrons to please. "If he seems harsh in his opinions and conclusions regarding the irregular and inexpedient methods employed in cutting off the western counties of Virginia and forming them into a new State," says he, "it is due to the conviction that an unnecessary wrong was committed, a wrong that helped not at all in Lincoln's prosecution of the Civil War." The author is convinced that not only was the act unconstitutional but that it was not desired by more than a small minority of the people of the new State. He believes that the President and Congress, being grateful to the Union men in northwestern Virginia for their loyalty to the Union, rewarded them by giving their consent to the organization of a new State which, nevertheless, was in violation of the principles of the Constitution. Unlike Professor C. H. Ambler who, in his _Sectionalism in Virginia_, has set forth in detail the differing political interests of the sections of Virginia, this author reduces it to a mere exploit on the basis that the end justified the means. Furthermore, the author differs widely from C. G. Woodson who in an unpublished thesis similarly entitled _The Disruption of Virginia_, presented in 1911 to the Graduate School of Harvard University in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, emphasized the economic differences as the underlying causes. Dr. McGregor minimizes such causes by reducing his treatment of the economic situation to a single chapter of ten pages. He then briefly discusses the opening of the breach, the Constitutional Convention of 1829-30 and the growth of sectionalism between that Convention and the Civil War. Approaching the main feature of the work, the author takes up the preliminaries of the Convention of 1861, the various conventions of the northwestern counties out of which evolved the organization of the new State of West Virginia, and finally the question of admission before Congress.