The paradox of West Virginia
West Virginia. There is a paradox. A state of natural beauty, glorified by mountains and watered by rivers – including the Shenandoah (surely the most beautiful word in American) – carved out of reluctant nature by hard human labour, then divided by slavery and war, but ending on the Union side – it ought to be an honoured political jurisdiction. But the West Virginians broke away from the rest of Virginia. In its early days, it was governed by cultivated gentlemen, who filled their cellars with fine wine and their libraries with fine books. Yet the way of life which managed this transplant of European civilisation was sustained by slave
