The first iteration of the Confederate States of America, with South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, was a comparatively minor league affair. The capital was in Montgomery, Alabama for crissakes. All except Florida and Texas were geographically small, dim bulbs strung along the southeastern coast, except Texas, strung too far west; all including Florida, excepting Texas again, had small populations compared to the United States; and all were stuck in a planter's economy while the United States was rapidly industrializing.

The accrual of Virginia, however, added gravitas, population heft, a formidable arsenal in Richmond and brought the Confederacy to the border with the United States. It also brought Robert E. Lee. The capital was moved to Richmond, within 100 miles of Washington, D.C. Virginia made the Confederate States of America. And it was its undoing.

The real trouble with the move was...that it compelled the Confederate government, over the long pull, to see the whole war in terms of military action in tidewater Virginia. The enormous importance of the West, of the Mississippi Valley, of Missouri and Kentucky and Tennessee, would be inevitably diminished, in the government's eyes, by the tremendous battles that would be fought within a day's ride of the capital. The focus of vision would be narrowed, and a price would be paid for it.

Catton, The Coming Fury (389)