CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The candidacy of Gov. Joe Manchin for the U.S. Senate and his predicted success have stimulated intensive speculation about gubernatorial resignation and its effects. Journalistic excess has led one columnist to consult a New Jersey politician who acted simultaneously as governor and president of the state senate. Ex parte legal pronouncements from at least one lawyer have confused the process. A more constructive approach should rely upon the Mountain State constitutional provisions and historical experience.

Fundamental principles in the state constitution provide direction.

In West Virginia's first constitutional convention of 1861-63, delegates unanimously reversed Virginia precedent by eliminating the office of lieutenant governor. That elected official had presided over the Virginia senate and became governor if the office became vacant. All knew that antebellum political parties nominated their lieutenant governor for his ability to gain votes for their gubernatorial candidate rather for his fitness for the highest state office. The state senate was capable of selecting its own president, observed Wheeling banker and lawyer Daniel Lamb.

Only once has a West Virginia governor vacated his office for another. In 1869, Arthur Inghram Boreman resigned seven days before the end of his third two-year term to accept nomination to the U. S. Senate. The joint-legislature then elected Boreman to the office. (Gov. Matthew Mansfield Neely, after serving two years as governor, tried to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 1942, but failed.)

Daniel Duane Tompkins Farnsworth, a Buckhannon Republican, as Senate president, became the state's second governor until March 4, 1869, when William Erskine Stevenson was inaugurated. The people had elected Stevenson in October 1868.

Great contemporary resentment, especially among Republicans, arose from Gov. Boreman's resignation. In the constitutional convention of 1872, Harrison Crisswell, a Moundsville Republican lawyer, asked the Committee of the Legislative Department to inquire into the expediency of a constitutional provision preventing a governor during his term from being a candidate for the U.S. Senate. The delegates did not consider such a prohibition because "every citizen in this republican government has the right to be a candidate for office if he chooses."

Delegates at the 1872 convention considered these questions from several directions.

The Committee on the Executive Department originally envisioned a lieutenant governorship, but Daniel Dye Johnson, a Tyler County Democrat, suggested that very different capabilities were required to be a possible governor compared to presiding over the senate. The senate might prefer a president different from what the electorate would choose for lieutenant governor. James Dillon Armstrong of Romney repeated previous arguments that in Virginia, lieutenant governors served party purposes to win the governor's race. Suitability for the job was not a concern.

The Committee on the Legislative Department also put forward the position of lieutenant governor. Sitting as a committee of the whole, convention delegates rejected it by voice vote.

Differing, one delegate argued that at least a lieutenant governor would be elected by the state at-large, not by a narrow political district. For succession purposes, this characteristic was important.

The committee of the whole and the convention accepted without controversy the Committee of the Executive Department's revised report on gubernatorial succession. It  became Article VII, section 16 of the Constitution: "In case of the death, conviction on impeachment, failure to qualify, resignation, or other disability of the Governor, the President of the Senate shall act as governor, until the vacancy is filled or the disability removed. . . . Whenever a vacancy shall occur in the office of Governor before the first three years of the term shall have expired, a new election for Governor shall take place to fill the vacancy."

Current discussions in newspaper columns and elsewhere sometimes assume that one person can serve simultaneously as senate president and governor. This assumption may arise from the notion that an acting governor exists. The concept of acting governor is analogous to partial pregnancy. The governor has the complete constitutional power of the office, despite how the office is secured. If a vacancy occurs, the senate president simply becomes the governor and ceases to be a state senator.

The framers of the state Constitution are clear on the subject of separation of powers. The Committee on Bill of Rights and Elections, chaired by Samuel Woods of Philippi who was later on the state Supreme Court, divided legislative, executive and judicial departments into their respective spheres of power. The provision prohibited any person from being invested with the power of more than one department at the same time. Without discussion, the committee of the whole and the convention enacted the provision by unanimous vote.

Later, the Revisory Committee of 10 delegates, chaired by the eminent Charles James Faulkner of Martinsburg, considered the separation of powers dictum so important that it emphasized it in a separate article. Article V, section 1 states: "The Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Departments shall be separate and distinct, so that neither shall exercise the powers properly belonging to either of the others; nor shall any person exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time, except that Justices of the Peace shall be eligible to the Legislature."

In debate on the Committee of the Legislative Department report, John Marshall Hagans of Morgantown, a former Harvard law student, warned against blending the three branches of government by having executive officers appointed by the Legislature. It was fatal to the peoples' interests. "The great tribunal is the people," and they should elect executive officers, he intoned.

Later, while prohibiting the governor from succeeding himself, the convention, sitting as a committee of the whole, again specifically provided that executive officers, including the governor, could not hold another office during their term of service. The prohibition appears as Article VIII, section 4: "Neither the Governor, State Superintendent of Free Schools, Auditor, Treasurer, nor Attorney General, shall hold any other office, during the term of his service."

A constitutional amendment of 1904 altered Article VIII, section 4, without changing its meaning. The amendment substituted: "None of the executives mentioned in this article shall hold any other office during his term of service," for the specific executive offices.

In later convention debates, no delegate ever questioned these original prohibitions before final adoption.

From various stories about the present situation, one may gain the impression that the offices belong to the occupants rather than the people. Gov. Arthur I. Boreman understood this concept by resigning when he received the legislative nomination for the U.S. Senate, thus unambiguously opening the process of immediate succession.

 No doubt public and journalistic discussion about these matters will continue. Informed comment should rest on state constitutional principles. Discussion, debate, and constitutional commentary by the framers in the West Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1872 serve to inform and guide the public and those concerned. Probable litigation before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals should also rest upon these touchstones.

Stealey is Distinguished Professor of History at Shepherd University and author of "West Virginia's Civil War Constitution: Loyal Revolution, Confederate Counter-Revolution, and the Convention of 1872," forthcoming from The Kent State University Press.