Politics of a united Virginia after the Civil War

[Lost the game]

Let's say that after the Civil War started the Confederacy is quicker to occupy western Virginia - maybe the run-up to the war is longer and more drawn-out, with raids by the Virginia and Maryland militias into Pennsylvania to capture anyone they suspect of being an escaped slave (basically abducting the free black populations of cities like Lancaster, Gettysburg, and Pittsburgh).

As a result, the Virginia militia, now the Army of Northern Virginia, is already in place in cities like Parkersburg, Charleston, and Harpers Ferry, and the Union therefore considers the mountainous, isolated region to be a low-priority target. Unionist sentiment in western Virginia is dismissed the same as Unionist sentiment in East Tennessee, northern Alabama, and eastern Kentucky.

What happens after the war? You have a large region of the state with no particular affection for the Democratic establishment in the Tidewater. Might the Readjusters find fertile ground here? Enough, perhaps, to remain a competitive force in the state? Would the region become a Republican stronghold the same as eastern Tennessee IOTL? Would a swingier Virginia garner more attention from the Republicans nationwide, putting an early crack in the wall that was the Solid South?

 

[Lost the game]

Anyone?

 

[Derek Jackson]

Could the equivalant or reajusters take charge long term?

 

[m0585]

You might still see a West Virginia ITL. The people of then western Virginia (now West Virginia) had felt neglected by Richmond for a few decades. The Civil War provided the spark for West Virginia to secede, but the resentment had been building over time. Perhaps in this scenario after the war, a few prominent politicians in western Virginia hold a meeting and explain that they can remain a part of Virginia (and be under military rule) or break off and form their own state and decide their own policies. Congress, which was under massive Republican control at the time, would be more than willing to grant statehood since it would net them another congressman and two more senators.

 

[Born in the USSA]

What happens after the war? You have a large region of the state with no particular affection for the Democratic establishment in the Tidewater. Might the Readjusters find fertile ground here? Enough, perhaps, to remain a competitive force in the state? Would the region become a Republican stronghold the same as eastern Tennessee IOTL? Would a swingier Virginia garner more attention from the Republicans nationwide, putting an early crack in the wall that was the Solid South?

In a previous readjusters thread I posited that, in a nation where Virginia could be a swing state into the twentieth century, the idea of the Solid South would not necessarily exist, and could even allow for the concept of the "border state" to continue in national conversation, not between North and South geographically but rather ideologically. I believe Longist Louisiana and some version of Seqouyah were my other proposed political border states.