As one historian so nicely put it, the Constitution was “a roof without walls,” meaning a political structure designed to facilitate a national ethos that did not exist. Washington’s plea for all citizens to regard themselves as Americans united under a single government can be comprehended only within that prenational context. His thinking at the time was more distinctive than it appears now, because he was arguing that America’s revolutionary energies should be harnessed to the larger purposes of nation-building, while others, most prominently Jefferson, regarded that argument as a betrayal
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