West Virginia

West Virginia was a state of the United States of America. During the American Civil War, Captain Will Johnson was for a time on duty in Gable. From there, on 21 February 1865, he wrote a letter to his lover, Claire Bartlett. Just weeks before the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the demise of the Confederacy, Johnson described how he had arranged for Doctor John Smith to stay in Gable because it was a pro-Union settlement that had "found [itself] part of the seceded States". (PROSE: Blood and Hope)

Behind the scenes

This reference to West Virginia being part of the Confederacy might at first seem odd to modern readers. In the real world, after all, West Virginia was formed precisely because it didn't agree with Virginia's secession from the Union. However, for about half the duration of the Civil War, what we now know as West Virginia would have been nominally part of Virginia, and so part of a seceded state. Even until Lee's surrender — well after the date of Johnson's letter in Blood and Hope — West Virginian territory was still hotly contested by Confederate guerrillas.