
"The map is from an 1861 edition of Harper's Weekly, and is based on an idea from federal Secretary of War Simon Cameron. Here's how Harper's Weekly described the idea:
This arrangement would reduce the size of the State of Virginia at least one-half, leaving the name of Virginia to that part only which is now mainly loyal.
The disloyal section, comprising all the great cities of Virginia—Richmond, Norfolk, Fredericksburg, Lynchburg, etc.—and all the sea-coast, would be annexed to Maryland, while Delaware would rise, by spreading over the whole peninsula between the Chesapeake and the ocean, to be a State of considerable magnitude. Under this reconstruction Maryland would become one of the three great States of the Union. We need hardly direct attention to the clause in the Secretary's report which hints that emancipation in Maryland must be the price paid for this acquisition of territory.
Alexandria and Arlington would have returned to DC, which would have remained independent of any state." http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/29874/in-1861-maryland-almost-annexed-virginia/ "...In theory, this proposal therefore would have accomplished several goals. It would have: The disloyal section, comprising all the great cities of Virginia—Richmond, Norfolk, Fredericksburg, Lynchburg, etc.—and all the sea-coast, would be annexed to Maryland, while Delaware would rise, by spreading over the whole peninsula between the Chesapeake and the ocean, to be a State of considerable magnitude. Under this reconstruction Maryland would become one of the three great States of the Union. We need hardly direct attention to the clause in the Secretary's report which hints that emancipation in Maryland must be the price paid for this acquisition of territory.
1. Separated off the loyalist western parts of Virginia, allowing them to be reintroduced to the Union as a northern state.
2. Punished eastern Virginia, the intellectual and economic heart of the Confederacy, by taking away its independence as a state.
3. Rewarded Maryland and Delaware for remaining in the Union. 4. Protected Washington from having a hostile territory directly across the Potomac."
In other words, "Virginia" would cease to exist except as a larger version of what would in OTL become West Virginia--besides OL's West Virginia, it would gain the Shenandoah Valley and southwest Virginia as well as western Maryland. The rest of Virginia would become part of Maryland, except that Delaware would occupy the entire Delmarva peninsula, and DC would regain Alexandria and Arlington.
This has so many problems that I would simply dismiss it as ASB except that it is attributed to Cameron, who after all was Secretary of War. Just to note a couple:
(1) The new "Virginia" is supposed to be a "loyal" state. Yet the notion that southwestern Virginia and the Valley were (as *Harper's Weekly* suggests) "mainly loyal" to the US is just plain wrong. In fact, West Virginia itself in OTL was not purely Unionist, precisely because it included portions of those areas. Richard Curry, *A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia* is good on this; see my post at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/soc.history.what-if/KIEIOUIt-LA/wq4tbxSUPuoJ Even the West Virginia of OTL became heavily Democratic for some decades after the ACW (one the test oaths were repealed) thanks to a coalition between ex-Confederates and Copperheads; the "Virginia" of this map will become part of the Solid South (though it will no doubt have more white Republicans than the Deep South).
(2) An even more serious problem, noted in the article, is that while Maryland and Delaware are supposed to be rewarded for their loyalty by taking pieces of Virginia, Maryland even within its OTL borders had considerable numbers of Confederate sympathizers and of course adding central and eastern Virgnia to it is going to "Confederatize" Maryland far more than it will de-Confederatize eastern and central Virginia. (To get this territory Maryland will have to agree to abolish slavery, but that was something she was not yet willing to do in 1861. And she was hardly likely to do so just to get a huge territory that she didn't want and that would submerge her own identity.) Even Delaware, which had very few secessionists, will now get quite a number...