The Disunited States of Virginia
3rd October 2018
Used to be, two northern states, Illinois and New York, took top prize for vivid geographic divergence on matters of political and cultural reality. What had machine-run Chicago to do with the all those prairie-dwellers downstate in the Land of Lincoln? Or sophisticated Manhattan with the upstate provinces north of Yonkers? Not much. More and more, that’s the way things feel in Virginia. It’s not the first time the state has pulled itself apart. It happened, literally and permanently, back in 1863; the counties west of the Allegheny Mountains, not much invested in slavery and distant from the capital in Richmond, sided with the Union and went their own way, hence West Virginia.