Wartime experiences had made Washington an American—arguably the first American—but he always remained a Virginian, too. For him, Virginia stood at the nation’s heart.66 It was America’s largest, longest-settled, and most centrally located state as well as Washington’s home. He could not image a United States without it and had been more than ankle deep in the mire of Virginia ratification politics since returning from the Constitutional Convention in September 1787. Within days of his arrival home, Washington began reaching out to Virginia’s political elite, starting with a letter telling the
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