Virginia reunion?

Lets assume that the Civil War ends in a Confederate Victory, and West Virginia stays in the Union.

For starters, would it call itself West Virginia? Prior to 1863, it was just the Unionist Virginia government based out of Wheeling. If the South went it's seperate way, would the Union just call it Virginia? Or something else entirely?

Second, say in a second war, the USA manages a crushing victory and reabsorbs the CSA. Would they reunite Virginia and West Virginia as a whole state, sort of an East/West Germany on the state level?
 
If they did, I'd imagine Charleston would be the capital of Greater Virginia to show them who is who.
 
If they did, I'd imagine Charleston would be the capital of Greater Virginia to show them who is who.

I would think it would be Charlottesville - it's centrally located, a city of good reputation and on a number of key routes, Virginian as a compromise to CSA Virginia, Appalachian as a compromise to Union Virginia.

Does it strike you as plausible though?
 
For the first scenario, it would depend on the type of victory. Based on West Virginia existing at all, the CSA would have to win after 1861 and can't be decisive enough (defeating Union armies on all fronts, UK and France sending ships and troops prior to Antietam, etc.) for WV to be demanded in peace negotiations.

Union control was spotty prior to, and indeed after, WV statehood, but to limit it to Wheeling or even just the Ohio valley before 1863 drastically minimizes its importance. WV was not just a ploy by Lincoln to split VA, there was significant support and no significant Confederate victories to contest it. Heck, Alexandria, which is on the Potomac and had once been part of the District of Columbia before retrocession, was even the capital of the loyal Virginia government for a period before statehood.

In fact, in a Confederate victory, I could even see WV getting larger, including many the counties north of the Rappahannock from which the Union Army would refuse to withdraw. Unless Confederate troops were able to retake the area, it seems unlikely it would just be given back. Mosby and other partisans were hardly enough of a force to make the Union give up. And without Lee's troops on them, I particularly have difficulty seeing the US giving up the Arlington Heights, the hills across the Potomac from DC.

Kanawha was one name bandied about by the loyal Virginia government, but was eventually discarded in favor of WV because of the desire to maintain the historical legacy of that name. And lots of people probably thought Kanawha was dumb. If the South won independence, they would probably want to directly maintain that legacy and stick with just “Virginia.”

In your second scenario, I think such a crushing defeat of the South would have to come early in the war to keep there from being a separate WV, maybe resulting from a CS route at 1st Manassas or McClellan successfully taking Richmond and driving into the Carolinas in an improved Peninsular Campaign. In that case, I could see VA staying united, but their differences weren't as drastic as the Germanies. The Unionist (and probably Republican) government put in place in Richmond would be far more attentive to small farmers and craftsmen, work with the Federal government to punish large slaveholders and others responsible for the war, and might even move the capital to somewhere more central, such as the Shenandoah Valley. Just remember, the USA won a pretty crushing victory in OTL, and the Virginia's were not reunited.

One important note though, in any USA victory, even a crushing one, before 1863, slavery will not be unilaterally abolished the way it was in OTL.
 
For the first scenario, it would depend on the type of victory. Based on West Virginia existing at all, the CSA would have to win after 1861 and can't be decisive enough (defeating Union armies on all fronts, UK and France sending ships and troops prior to Antietam, etc.) for WV to be demanded in peace negotiations.

Union control was spotty prior to, and indeed after, WV statehood, but to limit it to Wheeling or even just the Ohio valley before 1863 drastically minimizes its importance. WV was not just a ploy by Lincoln to split VA, there was significant support and no significant Confederate victories to contest it. Heck, Alexandria, which is on the Potomac and had once been part of the District of Columbia before retrocession, was even the capital of the loyal Virginia government for a period before statehood.

In fact, in a Confederate victory, I could even see WV getting larger, including many the counties north of the Rappahannock from which the Union Army would refuse to withdraw. Unless Confederate troops were able to retake the area, it seems unlikely it would just be given back. Mosby and other partisans were hardly enough of a force to make the Union give up. And without Lee's troops on them, I particularly have difficulty seeing the US giving up the Arlington Heights, the hills across the Potomac from DC.

Kanawha was one name bandied about by the loyal Virginia government, but was eventually discarded in favor of WV because of the desire to maintain the historical legacy of that name. And lots of people probably thought Kanawha was dumb. If the South won independence, they would probably want to directly maintain that legacy and stick with just “Virginia.”

In your second scenario, I think such a crushing defeat of the South would have to come early in the war to keep there from being a separate WV, maybe resulting from a CS route at 1st Manassas or McClellan successfully taking Richmond and driving into the Carolinas in an improved Peninsular Campaign. In that case, I could see VA staying united, but their differences weren't as drastic as the Germanies. The Unionist (and probably Republican) government put in place in Richmond would be far more attentive to small farmers and craftsmen, work with the Federal government to punish large slaveholders and others responsible for the war, and might even move the capital to somewhere more central, such as the Shenandoah Valley. Just remember, the USA won a pretty crushing victory in OTL, and the Virginia's were not reunited.

One important note though, in any USA victory, even a crushing one, before 1863, slavery will not be unilaterally abolished the way it was in OTL.

All fine points, but I wanted to clarify that by the second scenario, I meant the Union defeats and reconquers the CSA after the CSA had become independent, say in thier WWI or WWII analogue. Given the period of seperation would the two Virginias reunite or not.
 
Perhaps have Virginia become "reunified" with West Virginia after Reconstruction. Rather than the capital going back to Richmond, West Virginia simply becomes Virginia again with the capital maintained in Charleston or Wheeling. Now that would become an interesting arrangement.
 
All fine points, but I wanted to clarify that by the second scenario, I meant the Union defeats and reconquers the CSA after the CSA had become independent, say in thier WWI or WWII analogue. Given the period of seperation would the two Virginias reunite or not.

Ah, I misundestood. In that case it would probably come down to whether the West Virginians wanted to reunify, which seems unlikely. In the decades after Southern independence, they probably would have developed an identity as “the loyal Southerners” or the “guardians of the mountains” or something like that. I doubt they would want to give that up.

Also, even if we image that in the intervening years WV has grown and prospered, more so than in OTL, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where WV would have a larger population than Confederate VA. Then if they reunited, it wouldn’t be long before former Confederates would outnumber and outvote former West Virginians in state-wide elections, returning the state to the friction before the Civil War, only now even worse.
 
I would think it would be Charlottesville - it's centrally located, a city of good reputation and on a number of key routes, Virginian as a compromise to CSA Virginia, Appalachian as a compromise to Union Virginia.

Does it strike you as plausible though?

I like this best. When I was stationed in WV Charlottesville was one of the last 'easy' cities to get to in a day's drive.
 
I like this best. When I was stationed in WV Charlottesville was one of the last 'easy' cities to get to in a day's drive.

Plus, the mountain areas of Virginia have a lot of shared culture with West Virginia - toss in the bits of Virginia above the Rapahanock, which includes most of Northern Virginia, and Union Virginia and Confederate Virginia would be about on par with each other I would think. Would make the reunion go through easier for sure.
 
Lets assume that the Civil War ends in a Confederate Victory, and West Virginia stays in the Union.


Second, say in a second war, the USA manages a crushing victory and reabsorbs the CSA. Would they reunite Virginia and West Virginia as a whole state, sort of an East/West Germany on the state level?

Probably not, if the West Virginians have much say in the matter. They will be economically and demographically dominated by Virginia, so doing a reunion would require the West Virginia leadership and power structure to cede most of their power to a bunch of rebs. Not gonna happen. Only way this does happen with West Virginia consent is if the white Virginia population is getting some pretty ferocious and long-term disenfranchisement.
 
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